You can always tell when visitors are enjoying an exhibition, they don't just linger, they go out and come back in over and over again. I know I've made two excursions to this venue and I'm not the only one to enter and re-enter the Main Gallery and Print Gallery many times.
In the Main Gallery, Denaro presents monumental constructions that hang from the ceiling or cling to the walls high above our heads. There are fine plinth sculptures too which show how this artist can work well in any scale. These wood and metal works, inspired by Denaro's association with the Biology and Tissue Culture Departments at UWA, link science to art. They also connect with the forest and sea around the Margaret River region where the artist works. For example Cilia relates not only to tiny throat hairs bending with the passage of air, it also references sea grass moving in currents of water. And the repeated circular pattern of Polyp Network echoes the growth of coral.
The artist employs low tech tools and techniques to produce intriguing sculptures that emulate images made available by the high tech electron microscope. But there are no smooth meeting of edges or slick finishes of cold clinical precision, instead we run our hands over rough welds and abrasive surfaces of tactile interest. Science may demand flawlessness but thankfully art and nature doesn't. However the exhibit Field comes pretty close. Here metal rod is employed like a 3D line to draw forest forms that hang from ceiling to floor. Like a wispy curtain it sways in the breeze and invokes ideas of the delicacy and strength found in nature, and the creative skill of the artist.
Williams offers us a different sense of delicacy, strength and creative skill. In the darkened Print Gallery stands a wall of cardboard with randomly placed peep holes. Initially we feel inhibited about stepping up on a box or kneeling down on the floor to place one eye up to a hole in the wall and view what lay beyond. But curiosity soon overcomes decorum and once you succumb there's no going back.
Every peep hole presents a different scenario, each complete in itself. Some are ordinary others evocative all amazingly well constructed. Williams creates miniature worlds and landscapes, objects of myth and ritual, mouth watering fruit and practical objects, all carefully crafted in perfect proportion from cardboard. At first you feel like a voyeur taking part in a snooping exercise but soon you're so involved in the experience, you feel the same delight as a child discovering something new.
You'll find yourself going back again and again, to look through the holes then to watch others look. Many visitors are timid, until they break the taboo, then there's no holding back. Some are prepared to forsake all dignity to ascertain they haven't missed a single peep hole. Now that's a high compliment to the artist indeed.
These two exhibitions couldn't be more diverse yet each is exciting and highly engaging.