Exhibition title/s: Strange new ways: group exhibition
Artists: Andrew Arnaoutopoulos, Cheolyu Kim, David Paulson, Matthew Johnston, Milan Milojevic, Miles Allen, Pat Hoffie AM, Stephen Hart & Yvonne Mills-Stanley
Exhibition duration: 3 – 24 December 2024
Where: FireWorks Gallery, 9/31 Thompson St, Bowen Hills
Exhibition opening: Saturday 7 December 2-4pm
Media contact: Phone: 0418 192 845 Email: michael@fireworksgallery.com.au
Exhibition cost: Free
The final exhibition of 2024, Strange new ways, is a group show featuring nine FireWorks Gallery represented artists with locals, Andrew Arnaoutopoulos, David Paulson, Miles Allen, Pat Hoffie, Stephen Hart and Yvonne Mills-Stanley exhibiting alongside interstate artists Cheolyu Kim, Matthew Johnston and Milan Milojevic. New studio pieces as well as works selected from the stockroom include sculpture, acrylic and oil paintings and works on paper.
Three new rustic sculptures by Miles Allen include Hope Springs and Tails; a reflection on the artist’s “sinking feeling” regarding this “crazy, momentous year”. Ever phantastic and peculiar, Flora Terra Incognita 1-5 by Milan Milojevic is another iteration of the artist’s strange and quirky subject matter. Stephen Hart experiments with new materials in MOMENT , painted in oil on a disused computer case and mounted on velvet. The work depicts former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnball “shaking hands with a robot in Tokyo on a diplomatic visit”.
Stockroom works by Yvonne Mills-Stanley will also be featuring. Diverging from her usual medium, a series of works on paper including Books I Haven’t Written Yet I (Image 4) see Mills-Stanley’s signature detailed elegance realised in another medium. Meanwhile, Andrew Arnaoutopoulos’ abstraction markings cluster embraces abstraction in the ‘here and now’ and the perpetual motion of artistic processing.
Upstairs, Cheolyu Kim’s immaculately detailed five-panelled work in red and black pen, Journey to Nowhere #60 will be showcased alongside rotating artworks also from the stockroom.
FireWorks Gallery director, Michael Eather, remarks that “this is an entirely eclectic grouping of artworks that cross cultures, mediums and artistic techniques. A fitting finale to 2024”.