Bowerhouse Blues

‘This exhibition consists of separate collections to do with blue, centering on the Bowerhouse with its beckoning blue light and blue neon sign. The ideas for it came from several different directions, but centrally from the satin bowerbird’s display of objects in its courting ritual, objects that are blue and preferably shiny like the male satin bowerbird’s plumage.’ Mary Newsome

Newsome is an artist glaneuse – an insatiable collector of assorted ephemera. In previous exhibitions her diaristic enquiries have focused on the French patisserie, Australian creeks and rivers, hotel room vistas and slipper-wearing through image and text. Her explorations and documentations – of traditional forms of delectable cake and paper packaging, journeys, itineraries and maps, alphabet forms and bird songs – vividly reflect inherited cultural codes and personal understandings. Newsome’s work for this exhibition incorporates screenprinting, painting in acrylic and oil, digital prints, etching, constructions, artist books and reverse glass tinsel painting to create a playful, theatrical display in the ‘bowerhouse’ of the gallery space. Inspired by the notion of blue and shiny, works ‘gleaned’ from the archive of Newsome’s own practice, are presented alongside a bricolage of new work.