LIMESTONE Coast sculptors Kamunde Sadiki, Ivo Tadic and Mark de Nys are presenting limestone, metal and wood in abstract and figurative forms in the Carve, Cut, Polish exhibition on show at the Riddoch Art Gallery.
Gallery director Dr Melentie Pandilovski said the artists had vastly diverse practices, with the exhibited works providing thought provoking artefacts with the three sculptors uniting for the display.
“We hope this exhibition and the associated workshops to be held later this year will assist in the creation of an artistic dialogue to help generate a stimulative environment for the development of sculpture throughout the Limestone Coast,” Dr Pandilovski said.
Bosnian-born and Mount Gambier-based Ivo Tadic is an artist who likes to explore the big picture.
His eye-catching sculptures created during 2017 and 2018 could be considered as abstract and experimental in their form, but they have a strong conceptual research element.
“Tadic’s works always provide for a stimulating conversation about the origin and nature of temporality, form, materiality and spatiality, which includes thinking about the three-dimensional space his sculptures occupy,” Dr Pandilovski said.
“His work refers us to geometrical concepts such as flat plane, curved plane, solid object, bi-polar space and infinity in the final instance.”
Mount Gambier based Mark de Nys creates sculptures made from industrial materials such as metal.
He works in a minimalist fashion, presenting simplified and reduced geometric forms, referencing both the Dada and Assemblage techniques, as well as using junk as a sculptural material.
“He uses objects he has found such as a clock mechanism and a hospital bedpan in an unmistakeable Duchampian style,” Dr Pandilovski said.
“Exceptional treatment of shadow, light and reflection all play a part in the work which de Nys terms ‘Additive Sculpture’, putting an emphasis on the materiality of the works by smashing together different components in order to create a new and unique art-form.”
Congo-born Kamunde Sadiki arrived in Australia in 2015 after spending 13 years in a refugee camp in Zambia.
Sadiki has been inspired by the spiritual and artistic traditions of the African continent, as well as by the historical and contemporary political realities of Africa.
In his work, Sadiki sculpts in a figurative fashion and uses diverse materials ranging from wood to limestone.
“The subjects he depicts hold personal, symbolic, mythological, religious or political significance of his lived experience – at moments touching on the sentimental and allegorical, such as the series depicting people from his village, which he sculpted using black ebony wood,” Dr Pandilovski said.
“In his work, Sadiki references the Luba culture of the Congo and especially the importance of the representation of women that is omnipresent in Luba art.”
The public is invited to attend the formal opening of the exhibition on February 23 at 6pm.
The exhibition is now on show in the Cathleen Edkins Gallery until March 11.
