By Meg Cowell
As part of the well intentioned but nonetheless struggling attempts to revitalise the west end, there is a number of small galleries now located on Hindley and adjoining lanes, many of which are hosting exhibitions during SALA.
Ruby Chew is at Magazine Gallery (on Clubhouse Lane – somewhere you only want to visit in day light hours). Ms Chew first came to notice for her colourful portraits in this year’s Helpmann Academy’s Fringe exhibition (for which she won the Hill Smith Gallery / Helpmann Academy Friends Award), her feature work of ‘Tom’ with Mickey Mouse ears.
This first solo exhibition has 32 pieces, five large oil canvasses and the remainder as small water colours. With her oils, the standard motifs are colourful large red lily like plants with black veins (that set off her subjects’ lips) adorning burnt orange backgrounds (use to compliment skins tones on others), with white dresses and hats carrying black zigzag like patterns.
The water colours are much less striking, not only by virtue of their size or the media employed (and are priced accordingly.)
The 32 pieces are portraits of four sitters, the two most interesting of which are ‘Tom’ (not certain it is the same Tom as previously mentioned), shirtless with a shocking wave of blond hair and ‘Stavroula’ a saucy yet strong womanwho wears aforementioned the white dresses with zig zags well.
While the exhibition has been fabulously successful, all but a handful sold on opening night, the paucity of sitters is perhaps a weakness as one seeks to understand Ruby’s abilities to create stunning images beyond these four and whether amidst all the stylised motifs she can capture the sense or personalities of others. Time will tell but certainly this exhibition is worth a visit and Ruby Chew is a new force in the local art world to follow as she develops.
Meg Cowell’s photos a hundred metres west on Hindley in the Reading Room are perhaps less successful.
These feature feminine garments removed from road sides, car parks and public toilet waste bins which are immersed in water and photographed with some bubbles. Cowell suggests there is a tension created between the new characteristics of the garment, its former life and the circumstances of the abandonment.
To be sure the images are large and bright and superficially interesting but beyond they lack that third dimension that draws the viewer in; the how of their construction, that something extra that indulging inspection reveals or any real interest in the subject matter as presented.
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