Arts & Cultural Professional
Gallery Assistant | Brenda May Gallery
Art Stage Singapore 2014 + 2015
16 to 19 January 2014
In 2014, Olivia Welch accompanied Brenda May Gallery to the annual art fair Art Stage Singapore as a Gallery Assistant. Her involvement with this project began in 2013: writing the initial proposal, devising some of the exhibition text, discussing the display with the project team at weekly meetings, helping install the exhibition and, finally, invidulating the space.
In 2014, Brenda May Gallery presented Mylyn Nguyen’s installation, ‘Bombus’, comprised of about one thousand, life-sized bumblebees, intricately crafted out of hand-painted, cut and folded paper, at Art Stage Singapore. Each bumblebee sat atop a fine clear acrylic strand with a perspex base, constructed so that the slightest breeze or even a breath would cause the colony to ‘hover’. As one would expect of a bumblebee, they had a furry, black and yellow striped back, however Nguyen’s tiny creatures may also have had a tiny green strip of lawn and some even carried minute, cut-out, watercolour houses, complete with driveways and trees.
22 to 25 January 2015
In 2015, Olivia Welch was a part of Brenda May Gallery's project team at Art Stage Singapore, once again attending as a Gallery Assistant. This year her tasks included: drafting the initial proposal, writing the exhibition text and biographical information, assisting in the layout design of the artwork, wrapping the works to be sent overseas, aiding with the installation in Singapore, as well as invidulating the exhibition.
This year there was also the additonal curated component Video Stage. Olivia was responsible for submitting artists for consideration. Works by Nina Ross, Flatline and Claire Anna Watson were accepted.
So that visitors would remember Brenda May Gallery from the previous year, Brenda May Gallery also took along an intricate paper work by Mylyn Nguyen.
ROBERT BOYNES | LONG TAKE - SLOW DISSOLVE
Across fifteen panels, ‘Long Take – Slow Dissolve' encapsulates the aesthetic and energy of a contemporary, urban environment. Though the artist uses layers of iconography that are site-specific, such as the National Gallery of Victoria's ‘water-wall’ and a veil of hanging ping-pong balls installed at the end of a tiny alley in Melbourne, Robert Boynes' work evokes the overall energy of the big city, imaging no particular place and therefore lending itself to reflect any modern metropolis. Fractured imagery of crowds, references to the chaotic noise of communication, glowing fluorescent lights and junctions of human interaction are composed in a linear narrative - colours and shapes radiating from the canvases throughout the strip. The heat and activity of many of the panels in ‘Long Take – Slow Dissolve' are grounded and juxtaposed with moments of strong colour and texture, though a definite emphasis on the human form in relation to urban spaces is always evident. Though each canvas is compiled of multiple layers, they exist as fleeting moments; peripheral glimpses of a familiar city-scape.