Gary Carsley

Situated in an old walk-up apartment block in a quiet suburban meighborhood, Gary Carsley's latest exhibition lends another sense to the notion of the contemplation garden. Here an IKEA Gilbert chair - selected for its playful link to Gilbert & George, who in Carsley's words "make works that allowed the viewerd to be with and in the art" - sits in front of a round Chinese garden gate, Astria Portia 4 (Moongate/Stargate) (all works 2014); this lifesize lambda print... (Download PDF for complete article)

Once upon a time, before the word ‘awesome’ began to be used to describe just about everything, it was reserved for things that were grand, or particularly admirable, or possibly even those inspiring an overwhelming feeling of reverence. It’s this kind of description that matches the awesomeness of Sciencefictive, Gary Carsley’s ‘interior garden’ at Brisbane’s Institute of Modern Art.

 Influenced by a project in Singapore, which matched the planets of the solar system with the gardens of that small island nation, Carsley has installed his fantasy ‘Mappa Mundi’ (or map of the world, medieval style) in two large gallery spaces. Placing his hometown of Brisbane at the imaginary ‘centre of the world’, viewers are led through this fantasy display via a winding path painted on the floor.

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Where are you right now? Indoors or outdoors? What if it could be both - or like,neither, man. That's the question the Gary Carsley's new exhibition at the Institute of Modern Art asks, bringing the constructed ideas of garden and galley together. Two galley spaces will be punctured by 'Moondoors' (much less murderous than the Game Of Thrones kind) turning the traditional white walled art space into a window into gardens from around the world. Running from May 31 to July 26, the exhibition also features re-surfaced Ikea furniture and other pieces to disrupt our ideas of inside and out.

Brisbane-born, Sydney-based artist Gary Carsley has become internationally recognised for his large digital photographs, where he swaps out tonal areas in the image (usually a landscape) for similarly toned woodgrain patterns. He calls these posterised images "draguerrotypes" (referring to an early form of photography) because they are like photography in drag: photography dressed as impressionist painting.

The drageurrotypes collapse and conflate the analogue into the digital, the old-fashioned into the new-fangled, painting into photography, and conceptualism into craft. 

Carsley's show will take the form of a large landscape garden that articulates values common to the garden traditions of both East and West. It will contain follies, water features and paths, and several moongates (or stargates) that magically link remote parts of the world to each other.

Coincidences and relationships connect like a web in Gary Carsley’s new exhibition 'Sciencefictive’ (2014) at the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane. Here, East meets West, exterior meets interior, art meets science, global meets local, and natural meets constructed.

Carsley’s immersive work spreads out across two galleries, the walls punctuated by ‘Moongates’. Rendered in a combination of textures and colours, including wood panelling, linoleum and marble, these ‘moongate’ apertures open onto natural vistas for an effect that is simultaneously familiar and alien.

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Gary Carsley’s new installation at IMA places Brisbane at the centre of landscape traditions.

Sciencefictive is a new installation by artist Gary Carsley, opening at Brisbane’s Institute of Modern Art (IMA) this weekend, Saturday 31 May.

Brisbane-born Carsley has become known for his modular furniture installations that create spatial gardens, illusions inserted into the gallery, museum and art fair to contest and question our perception and relationship to the natural environment.

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Blacktown Arts Centre will host a discussion about the legacy of Gough Whitlam, who chose the suburb to launch the ''It's Time'' federal election campaign in 1972.

A panel of writers and artists will share their thoughts on the former Labor prime minister, who introduced free university education, Medibank (Medicare's predecessor), FM radio and the Australia Council for the Arts, at the free Sydney Writers' Festival event on May 23.

They include authors Jane Caro and Fiona McGregor, film producer Gary Paramanthan and artist Gary Carsley, who curated the current related It's Timely exhibition.

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27 March 2013 | Sydney artist Gary Carsley has a new work exhibited inAgainst the Grain: Wood in Contemporary Art, Craft and Design at the Museum of Art and Design (MAD) in New York. Carsley’s large-scale work, entitled D.100 A Tree Struck by Lightening (Wave Hill), was selected for the exhibition as part of MAD’s focus on material and processes in contemporary art.

One of the largest landscape artworks in NSW has been installed at the $330 million Parramatta Justice Precinct.

The 22.4-metre wide and 6.3-metre high artwork, entitled Pharmacopeia of the Burramatta occupies an entire wall of the lobby at the new Justice Precinct Offices.

Internationally renowned artist, Gary Carsley said the landscape of Parramatta Park was the largest assignment he had undertaken.