Pattern & Complexity

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Guest edited by Margot Osborne

Pattern and complexity in art parallel the latest scientific thinking mathematics and biology and can be cultural metaphors for the tensions between order and chaos. The works discussed are part of a global resurgence in the use of highly complex forms created, often with advanced technology, as paintings, digital imagery, 3D art, interactive works and public art interventions. Some reflect fundamental building blocks of our reality in the form of fractals and complex systems, others use more intuitive approaches. Artists include Caroline Durre, Sam Songaillo, Mesne, Tracy Cornish, Paul Brown, Kerrie Poliness, Champagne Valentine, Gregor Kregar, Antony Gormley and Janet Echelman. Other sections include polemic by Alison Carroll on Australian art overseas and new work by Eko Nugroho.

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Articles in Vol 32 no 1, 2012

Editorial

Editorial by Margot Osborne

Curator, scholar and guest editor Margot Osborne is interested in the current resurgence of pattern and complexity in the practices of contemporary Australian and international artists and the way they share borders and frontiers with recent developments in complexity theory in science whether deliberately or intuitively. Osborne has also curated an associated exhibition, Art, Pattern and Complexity at the Royal Institution of Australia's Science Exchange, Adelaide, on from 16 February to 16 May 2012. — More »

A Meme is born

Feature by Peter Drew

Adelaide writer and artist Peter Drew looks at various examples of recent street art and the many ways it is circulated and reproduced as a meme in a wired and globally connected world. "As it turns out," he says, "memetics can be very useful in understanding the patterns of street art." — More »

Caroline Durré: Reforming the earth

Feature by Stephen Garrett

Drawing Studio and Program Co-ordinator at Monash University Stephen Garrett examines the optically challenging artworks of Caroline Durré which blend patterns and perspectives. — More »

Fractal food

Feature by John Walker

John Walker is the founder of Autodesk, Inc. and co-author of AutoCAD. In Fractal Food he discusses the marvel of fractal forms (complex shapes which look more or less the same at a wide variety of scale factors) as they are seen in a rather wonderful vegetable - the chou Romanesco. — More »

Mesne: Stitches in the Air: computational craft

Profile by Fee Plumley

Media artist, techno-evangelist and digital nomad Fee Plumley responds to Mesne Design Studio's lacemaking environment 'Pricking Version 2.0' which is their answer to the question "what happens if you apply computational processes to the historical notion of craft?". — More »

Not just black and white

Feature by Cath Bowdler

Scholar and inaugural director of the new Godinymayin Yijard Rivers Arts and Culture Centre in Katherine Cath Bowdler discusses the work of two indigenous artists Brook Andrew and Gunybi Ganambarr and suggests that they are both operating at a conceptual level as bricoleurs in a globalised world, inventing new juxtapositions of materials and revealing new ways of seeing the world through the prism of local histories and traditions. — More »

Openwork patterns: Love Lace

Feature by Lindie Ward

Powerhouse Museum Curator of Textiles Lindie Ward discusses the groundbreaking 'Love Lace' exhibition on show at the Powerhouse until April 2013. A globally sourced series of works it showcases 130 designs for openwork structures from 20 countries. — More »

Patterns that Connect

Feature by Paul Downton

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Prophecy, pattern, progeny

Feature by Melinda Rackham

Peripatetic artist, curator, writer Melinda Rackham explores the current interlaced wild borders of technology and art as seen in the work of Champagne Valentine, Mitchell Whitelaw, Peter Miller and Tracy Cornish. She finds both order and chaos on this joy ride of the connectivity of digital and non-digital spaces and realities. Yes, she says, the world as we know it - is ending. — More »

The inchworm revisited

Feature by Paul Brown

Artist, writer and honorary visiting Professor at the Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics at the University of Sussex in England Paul Brown sketches out the long intertwining history of the relationship between C.P. Snow's two cultures - art and science, design and mathematics, beauty and computation, and extrapolates upon Lady Ada Lovelace's famous words: "We may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves." — More »

Australian art abroad: Doing it better

Topics by Alison Carroll

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Shadows of meaning in the Eko Chamber: Eko Nugroho

Topics by James Bennett

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Socially engaged FIFO art? IASKA's Spaced

Topics by Gregory Pryor

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Choreography of the elements: Janet Echelman

Profile by Margot Osborne

American artist Janet Echelman reshapes urban airspace with monumental, fluidly moving sculpture that responds to environmental forces including wind, water, and sunlight. The artist's ongoing series of aerial net sculptures started in 1997 when she was in India as a Fulbright Scholar and became fascinated with the beauty and movement of traditional fishing nets. In 2011 her installation 'Tsunami 1.26' hung over the Town Hall traffic intersection in Sydney as a joint initiative of the Powerhouse Museum and Art and About Sydney. — More »

Helen Fuller: Bless this mesh

Profile by John Neylon

Critic and author John Neylon unpacks the long and illustrious career of Helen Fuller who has turned to handbuilding clay vessels in the last three years. He writes: "Responding to patterns of connection based on colour, shape, functionality, memory or caprice is the hallmark of Fuller's behaviour as an artist. The pas de deux of pattern-based painting and patterning embedded within objects is a constant reminder of the role which patterning, particularly grid and checkered, continues to play in expressing an inner state of mind which simultaneously celebrates and defies a call to order. " — More »

Mesne: Pattern In(formation)

Profile by Tim Schork Paul Nicholas

Tim Schork and Paul Nicholas founded MESNE Design Studio, an innovative architecture and urban design studio working globally as one office from London and Melbourne, to explore the relationship between architecture and divergent domains of knowledge through the use of computation in order to create innovative design strategies for novel spatial structures. They write about the back story of the project "Pricking', an interdisciplinary collaborative project between MESNE Design Studio, Ian Maxwell (supermanoeuvre) and Indae Hwang, which involves an interactive lace-making table with an infra-red based multi-touch interface. — More »

Shape of the wind: pattern & chaos in Sue Lovegrove's island art

Profile by Peter Hay

Head of Environmental Studies at the University of Tasmania and writer Peter Hay describes the recent paintings of Sue Lovegrove made from her experience of different islands off the coast of Tasmania - Maatsuyker Island, Egg Island and most recently Tasman Island. Lovegrove began with painting clouds but has moved on to paint the shape of the wind. — More »

The future is now: Songailo's short-circuits

Profile by Matt Huppatz

Sam Songailo's hypnotic artwork "goes directly to the heart of pattern and its universal application across human cultures throughout history". Matt Huppatz vividly describes and contextualises both recent and earlier manifestations of Songailo's paintings and installations that use colour and design to create experiences that resonate in your eyes, body and mind in a kind of 'techno-archaeology'. — More »

The Poliness wall drawings: not quite right

Profile by Kerrie Poliness

Artist Kerrie Poliness writes about her wall drawing projects, one of which appears in the exhibition 'Art, Pattern and Complexity' at RiAus, Adelaide from 16 February to 16 May 2012. The wall drawings begin with the artist's instructions but are produced with intuition rather than rulers. — More »

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