Wilderness Years - OK Gallery

Wilderness Years promises to be a vibrant end to an exciting year for newly minted OK Gallery, presenting new works from six early career artists.

Working from a range of artistic disciplines, Nathan Barrnett (Melb), David Egan, Tom Freeman Ben Kovacy, Emma McPike and Jacob Ogden Smith explore encounters with real and internal wilderness, exploring the vision quest, the ‘gap year’, the camping trip, the getting and forgetting of wisdom.

Barnett’s ink drawings and a new sculpture constructed from home made plastic, forms a window into a world of mysterious form and subtle magic; David Egan’s embroideries investigate the domestication of abstract expressionism, containing wild, painterly gesture within meticulous craft; Tom Freeman illustrates a journey overseas in search of his family heritage; Ben Kovacy’s small and intricate parquetry sculptures of natural forms contrast with a full scale, functional canoe hand made by the artist; Emma McPike’s series of drawings explore the wilderness contained within the suburban backyard; Jacob Ogden Smith revisits the local mythology of the Australia II, recreating the inebriating victory in ceramic and video.

These rich and tactile works both celebrate and unpick their subjects, juxtaposing craft and gesture, magic and material, the familiar and the foreign.

Wilderness Years is curated by OK Directors Jamie Macchiusi, Andrew Varano and Gemma Weston.

Exhibition till 24 December, 5pm.