>For the opening of the Berlin venue we have organized an exhibition of 3 Australian Artists on different stages in their carrer. They are showing in Berlin for the first time.

SALLY SMART

The Exquisite Pirate is an ongoing body of work, begun in 2004. It has been recently presented as wall installations of varying dimensions and is made primarily from felt, canvas and everyday fabrics.

The Exquisite Pirate work has developed from a long-term interest in representations of feminine identity with reference to contemporary and historical models. It also brings forth the woman pirate as a metaphor for contemporary global issues of personal and social identity, cultural instability, immigration and hybridity, and reflects on the symbolism of the ship and its relevance to postcolonial discourse and, specifically, its relevance to contemporary and historical Australia. My work places a practical and theoretical emphasis on the installation space, on mutable forms and methodologies of deconstruction and reconstruction. My use of materials is integral to the conceptual unfolding of my work: the process of cutting, collage, photo-montage, staining, sewing and stitching – and their association with women’s practices – are refined and reassessed in the context of each installation.

The Exquisite Pirate develops my ideas about the woman pirate as a metaphor for personal and social identity, cultural hybridity and immigration. The project initiated from a simple question – “were there any women pirates?” Parallel to this was the seemingly huge growth in popular culture imagery connected to pirates and continuous reference of the word itself in the media as relating to cyberspace activities. In contemporary and historical Australia the boat and ship have loomed large around immigration issues and for me have become expressive, powerful images for postcolonial discourses. Sally Smart, 2008

MATTHEW BRADLEY

An old discarded telescope with a very basic web-cam, inspired by science and science fiction, were the basic ingredients for this work. Lunar-Cam is improvised and hand made and that you can tell. It's a Do It Yourself attempt to get in touch with the universe, or rather Do It For Yourself. There's an enormous difference between this and someone struggling with an IKEA sofa. This takes initiative, honest materials and a sincere desire to experience the depths of existence first hand, by your own hand.

One screen shows the artist’s footage of the Moon, and the second screen is the video NASA sent to the artist. Production costs between the two versions aside, Bradley’s work is about the experience, about participating; he wanted a sublime experience.

Science now owns the big ideas about existence and the universe; not art or religion. Bradley tries to take back the sublime from outcome-driven research labs of governments and corporations, and show that individuals can grasp it and feel it for themselves. He believes it should be a human right to engage in that sort of pioneering spirit first hand, but concedes there is a paradigm shift here. It used to be that as our technology improved we used it to uncover new lands and universal truths which all pre-existed. Now it seems we are aware that we can change reality itself and that perhaps nothing pre-exists, that we all play a role in shaping the universe and each of us is a vector for its development.

MICHELLE NIKOU

‘In memory of…” is a work that consists of stretched out tissue boxes made from resin that glows in the dark. The shapes give reference to the skins of stretched dead animals - they lay something bare that is both vulnerable and deceased.

These works however do not appear sombre or macabre, the flaps laid out straight are an open greeting and the glow in the dark gives these works a ‘life’ and presence that seems eerily alive. In an attempt to talk about the unknown the artist has chosen the apparently neutral forms of tissue boxes and given them a life here and beyond.