 | Hui Selwood Defiance Gallery 47 Enmore Road, Newtown, 2042 +61 2 9557 8483. |
Hui Selwood's show of New Works at Defiance is the culmination of 12 months work that further explores the creative elements he has used in the past. These elements include both the physical materials and his inspiration.
Mild steel, square sections, and old chain rings cut up and "re-manipulated" are the, "bunch of elements that I have been continuing to use. I can use them to give me different compositions that remind me of certain parts of the landscape where I grew up which is the Hunter Valley and parts of the urban landscape where I live now."
The resulting works are abstracted, like simplifying a snap shot of a section of the landscape - so it's a small section out of the entire view. "That's what I do with the elements that I use, I make short glimpses or memories of short glimpses of the landscape."
Gemini, "comes from watching "willy willies" and trees and picking things up off the ground and swirling them up into the air." The things are caught - "held up. Like the wind swirling up into the air - sweeping bits of land and objects around the place, being held up in the air." In Gemini the composition is a group of elements that are, "quite locked in together at the top but they're being spun up."
Selwood is inspired by Anthony Caro's approach to constructed sculpture. He likes the idea of taking sculpture away from the monolith. Selwood sites the example of the monolithic human figure on a pedestal that further emphasises its column like structure. Caro changed this by lying the figure along the ground. As you take in Selwood's work you find yourself walking around to see the other side as it angels across space.
Selwood was formally trained at the National Arts School in Fine Arts, grew up in the Hunter Valley and came to Sydney when he was 20 years old. He is now 28. Exhibitions include "New 9" at Sir Hermann Black and in the South of France at a Symposium, "Inhale, Exhale".
Gemini, 2001"The other aspect of my work is to try to get movement." Selwood goes on to explain, "The roots of my work come from the tradition in sculpture that came from cubism and Julio Gonzalez." Like Gonzalez, it's, "about trying to get movement in your composition, causing your eye to move - following the whole object - moving around it."
