Spring1883 Art Fair | Melbourne : The Hotel Windsor

For Spring 1883, Melbourne, {Suite} presents work by artists Ans Westra, Wayne Youle and Richard Lewer.

Richard Lewer presents five new paintings on brass and copper alongside three mirror self-portraits created during Melbourne's fourth lockdown in 2021. Lewer described the works as a sort of “self-initiated therapy”, realized through the manipulation of mercurial residue on fragile mirror film.

Ans Westra CNZM (1936 – 2023) was a pioneer of photography in Aotearoa, New Zealand, renowned for her candid portrayals of “ordinary life”. The works chosen for Spring 1883 are seven unique Polaroids alongside a silver gelatin triptych of a funeral procession in the rural setting of Hiruhārama (Jerusalem), and two large-scale studies of a burned-out interior.

Continuing his series NFT (National Fuckin’ Treasure), Wayne Youle presents work based on Sidney Nolan’s famous Ned Kelly paintings. Youle’s interest in Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kelly series started during his three-month residency at Artspace in Sydney in 2012. In Youle’s work, Ned Kelly and his helmet become a caricature of Nolan’s version, broken down to a simplified, almost comic book style rendering set amongst a variety of familiar locations.

This is the fifth {Suite} showing at Spring1883.