Locations - Byron Bay
Overview
This world heritage listed rainforest on the Byron Bay hinterland provides a magnificent inspiration to our artists this week. Multi awrd winning artist Jenny Sages leads three locals, Hobie Porter, Stephen Phibbs and Linelle Stepto on a two masterclass in this lush area near Mullumbimby, in northern NSW.
Master Artist
Jenny Sages
Having completed an outback painting workshop in the Bungle Bungles, Jenny Sages became a fulltime artist at the age of 52. Having worked her life as a freelance writer and illustrator, her conversion to serious art was like her personality – sudden, intense and complete. Since then there has been no turning back, with a string of art awards, including the 2005 Wynne Prize and acquisition by the National Portrait Gallery and the NSW Art Gallery. She has been an Archibald finalist 15 times, in which she was also highly commended 5 times and won the Portia Geach Memorial Award for portraiture in 1992 and 1994.
Jenny was born in Shanghai to Russian Jewish parents, and came to Australia in 1948. She studied at East Sydney Technical College (from which she was expelled), and the Franklin School of Art in New York.
Jenny’s artwork is unlike any other – by rubbing encaustic oil and pigment powders into a scarred and scratched waxed surface, her paintings achieve a density and dimension rarely seen. One of her favourite tools is her mother’s kitchen knife. It is, admittedly, a very labour intensive and intuitive method of working, for which she fluctuates between despair for each gouge, and immense satisfaction.
Known more for her desert work (up until now her muse has mainly been the desert, particularly around Arnhem Land), Jenny is undergoing her own seachange, moving from the centre of the Australian continent to it’s coast as she follows her beloved daughter’s family. Consequently, our journey to Northern NSW with Jenny takes off on a slightly different footing to previous episodes, where rather than having an established link with the area, we will discover the region through her eyes as she establishes her own responses to this sub-tropical landscape.
Her work is represented in public and private collections including the National Portrait Gallery and the Art Gallery of NSW. She is represented by King Street Gallery on Burton in Sydney and the Chapman Gallery in Canberra.
Emerging Artists
Hobie Porter
Hobie Porter has an Honours Degree in Visual Arts, a Diploma of Education and is a Henry Lawson Scholar. Originally born in Sydney, Hobie's parents were interested in alternative ideas, wanting a better life for their son outside of the city. He moved to the Tweed Valley when he was one.
His practise largely involves miniatures. 'I work on things very close up from the natural environment from around here'. He seeks out microelements, and places them within a macrocosmic landscape. His macro-scapes are sublime vistas, really large things, painted with a delicate smallness. 'The large and the small are interconnected in the world around us. This is my point'. His paintings suggest signs of human impact, human presence on both scales. They are characteristically iconic, almost Dali-esque emblems to connectivity, magic, change and mortality.
He was recently selected as a finalist for the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship and included in the prestigious Conrad Jupiters Art Prize in 2006. He is represented by Arthouse Gallery, Sydney, and regularly shows in northern NSW and southern Qld.
Finished Work by Hobie Porter
Stephen Phibbs
Stephen lives in East Ballina, on the top of a hill that is full of the local landscape, looking out over the water, to the Goonengerry Mountains and Nightcap Ranges. He has been painting professionally five years. He began his working life as an electrician, following the ‘safe’ career path that was encouraged. He then went into marketing in telecommunications. In 1987 on a visit to Amsterdam, he had a sense of coming home. Walking around the streets Stephen looked up and saw a man painting a portrait of a woman. It was the epiphany that he needed: he came home and seven years ago became the artist who he had always wanted to be.
Stephen brings a little of his background to his artistic approach: he believes you have to be fast to be successful, and you need to have your ‘signature’ style. He works in layering, and until now has used a ‘secret’ method to achieve his style. This method evolved through accidents from completing around 750 paintings, “I’ve taken those experiences, combined everything together, and hopefully created a new landscape style for myself”. His landscapes encompass a multi-dimensional approach, and are, “about the metaphysical and physical elements of a site.”
Finished Work by Stephen Phibbs
Linelle Stepto
Linelle Stepto is an artist based in the hinterland of the North Coast of New South Wales. The significance of being a regional artist and the isolation that entails underpins her entire practice. Linelle's current work embraces and reflects her professional studies in art at RMIT and art history and philosophy at Sydney University: exploring notions of the impact of colonisation on our environment. The duality of the on-going tension between the built and the natural environment is also a source of continuing investigation.
Linelle's practice draws no distinction between two-dimensional and three-dimensional areas - her focus is the concept. To that end, she paints, draws and explores materials as diverse as cane toad skin, wallpaper, feral cat fur and perspex.
The paintings specifically are an intimate reflection of place and memory- they are based on the property on which she and her family live. This landscape is viewed from an aerial perspective and the work attempts to describe more than a direct visual representation of the land. She uses a variety of mark making techniques, using, among other things, acrylic, wax, bitumen and oilstick on canvas.
Finished Work by Linelle Stepto
Master Class
by Jenny Sages
Don’t be an artist if you can possibly avoid it.
For the last 22 years in the dry season I go inland, mostly to Arnhem Land, to country that is so old it makes our time on earth but a blink of an eyelash.
We confront what we see with what we already know. I don’t paint on site, I just walk the land. The process of walking makes one available, to experience as opposed to carrying out a program of intentions.
The things that appear hanging on gallery walls are images after the fact - they don’t come near the sensations in the doing of it.
There is an enormous gap between what is in your head and the intention for the work – what you end up doing is never remotely connected. That’s is scary
P.S. When you are in your comfort zone get out and move and look for things that you don’t know that you know.
Where Are We?
Byron Shire is located on the Far North Coast of NSW and shares boundaries with the Tweed, Lismore and Ballina Local Government Areas. The Shire is 55,666 hectares in size and has a population of around 30,000 people.
Byron Bay is the largest population centre in Byron Shire. It is also the township that experiences the greatest impact, both positive and negative, of tourism. Byron Bay is host to an increasingly high number of tourists, both from within Australia and overseas. The beaches are popular with both domestic and international tourists, including backpackers. No longer restricted to a seasonal influx, tourists visit Byron Bay throughout the year. Byron Bay is the second most visited tourist destination in NSW. During the Summer Holiday period the Byron Bay community experiences rapid population growth as a result of tourism. It is estimated that the resident population can increase up to 300% during the summer months.
