Exhibition: In The Light Of Small Things

 There is a tiny, exquisite exhibition entitled “In the Light of Small Things” on display in the Brisbane Square Library at the moment – I found it to be well worth the visit.

 "...investigate how our relationships with small and intimate objects ... can have great power in our lives personally and culturally." Access Arts Inc.

In the opening statement, the curator of the exhibition, Ross Barber, related a story told to him by a Greek friend whose family migrated to Australia after Abdul Nasser Hussein forcibly ousted them from Alexandria in 1956 (because they weren’t Egyptian.)

The story goes - As his mother was preparing to leave “…she gathered all the seeds she could from her home garden, from friends and the markets and proceeded to sew them into the seams and linings of the clothes of the children. The seeds were eventually to be the nucleus of an extensive garden in Marrickville, Sydney that helped to absorb the shock of forced dislocation and nurtured success generations of the family’s growth including a love of gardening. “

- A wonderful story of wise forethought and the tremendous value of something as tiny as a seed.

I loved Cate Collopy’s piece which was 3 forms knitted / woven out of ultra fine copper wire.

Cate says

“In this exhibition I am representing my copper forms, pods and droplets. Copper is the hidden princess of metals, an unseen hero in contemporary life, so often discarded despite being a limited resource, difficult to procure and a necessity as a conduit for power, light, heat and water. I bring this beautiful material into the light in elusive, tactile and poetic soft sculptured forms. Underpinned by notions of what we value as material, and what we view as waste and the environmental implications of these perceptions, I have a genuine concern for re-use, the value of materials and challenge contemporary acts of waste. “

Above: A poor illustration, from memory (sorry Cate) showing a loose approximation of the shapes of these exquisite artworks. You really need to see the real objects to appreciate how clever, inspired, delicate and beautiful they are.

I was also taken with the work of Tricia Smout.

Tricia presented a delightful little wheel of tiny pages with powerful thoughts.. The lovely speckled hand made paper has been written on with a beautiful calligraphic hand (one of these thoughts per page) and then assembled into a 3D book, which can be viewed and read from all angles.

“The value of time”

“The influence of example”

“The power of kindness”

“The intelligence of economy”

“The importance of hope”

“The style of simplicity”

“The joy of creating”

“The awareness of duty”

“The virtue of patience”

“The delight of working”

“The success of perseverance”

Above: An illustration to show the form

Other artists represented (and all very interesting) were Anthea Patrick, Christine O’Reilly, Catherine McCue Boes, Corrie Wright, Marissa Allen, Jasmine O’Hara, David Wood, Steve Roberts and Kari, Kathryn Farrell, Paul Hastings and Henriette Daudley, Stephanie McLennan, Val Bennett, Wendy McGrath, Shayna Wells and Beth Jackson, Craig Ball and David Hooper.

Ros x