Sydney Contemporary 2024

The butterfly effect is a befitting metaphor for Saint Cloche Gallery’s return to Sydney Contemporary in 2024. The creative shapeshifting that sees larvae and pupae emerge through a chrysalis to take flight as technicolour-winged creatures not only characterises the practices of presenting artists Bec Smith, Evi O and Saxon Quinn, but perfectly describes Saint Cloche’s evolution from the ‘Future’ section to a fully-fledged player in the art fair’s main arena for the first time.

“At the heart of our exhibition lies the transformative power of metamorphosis and the convergence of diverse influences,” says curator Kitty Clark, founder of Saint Cloche, which celebrates its 10th birthday in 2024.

The synthesis of very different modes of visual communication – from street art to fashion and graphic design – and their sublimation into a singular contemporary art language is a unifying feature of the three artists in this year’s showcase and emblematic of Saint Cloche’s cross-fertilisation of art and design.

This dynamic push and pull can be traced in the acrylic and mixed-media panels of Bec Smith that defy painting constraints to playfully pivot as kinetic objects from the wall. Similarly active are the cut, folded and unfolding aluminium pieces of Evi O, gleaming in automotive paint, that seek speed, flight and regeneration as the extraterrestrial offspring of her signature paintings. Their fertile interconnectivity, and the way one medium gives birth to another, is echoed in the paintings and ceramic sculptures of Saxon Quinn, where the creative sparks of his mark making evolve with the revelry of child’s play into subliminal signs and symbols.

Within these twisting transfigurations and shifting sensibilities, Metamorphosis captures the butterfly effect of the three presenting artists and Saint Cloche Gallery, evidencing states of being and becoming – and in the process revealing their scintillating true colours.

“In Tectonic, I’ve been reiterating my shapes, using them to merge into each other to form more visual material and renewed feedback, while employing colour to differentiate the repetition. I’ve engaged in the notion of removing conventional painting constraints such as rectangles and frames, allowing the forms to sit off the Z-plane. I’ve chosen to use the wall itself as the wider stage in the interplay of form and depth. Introducing sculptural elements yields a new dimension, adding texture and shadow, enriching the visual experience. I become intrigued by the layers and the conundrum of colour choices they create. In doing so, I am creating a problem that needs solving which is the designer within me, yet I can feel myself stepping away from shapes-as-story and towards shapes-as-object.”

- Bec Smith

“SUPERNOVA is a transformative collection where I have instinctively undergone a creative metamorphosis, the result of an enquiry to promote optimistic possibilities, open-mindedness and to embrace chaos as a creative agent. I’ve freed myself of my signature painterly approach and embraced three-dimensionality, new materials, new scales and new creative attitudes. Each piece is made of cut and hand-folded aluminium, painted with ultra-gloss automotive paint. The artworks naturally find new physicality when interacting with light, casting ever-evolving shadows. Forms of caterpillars turning into butterflies, surrounded by blooms are depicted together with the governing Sun and Moon, symbolising the cycle of time – or life – and the mystical regenerations in between.”

- Evi O

“The works I’m presenting at Sydney Contemporary are a mashup of personal expression, inspiration and mood while also nodding to things to come. Nostalgic references scatter across my canvas and ceramic works along with figures that pay homage to the CoBrA movement of the 1940s and 1950s. Faces seen across the works are like figures in a crowded festival, dancing to their own rhythm yet all welcoming each other with open arms. Ceramic heads give a cheeky wink to the marble mythology of ancient empires and a kiss and smile to my mother’s work, evoking the same feeling of a kid collecting figurines. These works also act as a teaser for my upcoming solo exhibition at Saint Cloche Gallery in October 2024. Masked Masks is a metaphor for the way we shield our emotion. We present ourselves in a rosy light to others on social media, only to then reveal another version of ourselves in person – a version closer to the truth.”

- Saxon Quinn

“Intrigued by layers and the conundrum of colour choices they create, I can feel myself stepping away from shapes-as-story and towards shapes-as-object.”

- Bec Smith

Bec Smith is a Melbourne-based artist who has practised art and design in Australia and overseas for over 20 years. In pursuit of her creative practice she has attended RMIT University, the Art Academy, London, and Swinburne’s National School of Design. She has been selected for the Belle Arti Prize and has exhibited at the Melbourne Design Festival. She has remained interested in abstract, non-objective and colourfield painting from the last century – a natural extension of her grounding in the early design language of the Bauhaus. Her art explores dynamics within structures and systems, translating them into static moments in time – liminal spaces depicting stories of fiction and non-fiction, duality and multiple truths.

“I’ve freed myself of my signature painterly approach and embraced three-dimensionality, new materials, new scales and new creative attitudes.”

- Evi O

Evi O is an artist, designer and publisher with more than 15 years of award-winning industry experience. Her art practice was initiated by a genuine personal drive to explore and express human curiosity and ultimately understand and further contribute to the bigger environment. Finely balanced colour is a cornerstone of her painting and sculpture, with works that are reduced and abstracted. She has exhibited in Sydney, Melbourne and New York. Running a design practice (Evi-O.Studio) and publishing imprint (Formist Editions) exposes her to varied dimensional and spatial challenges that influence her artistic approach. Here the play of media and materials become tools that convey the conceptual foundation. Art and design are conduits to her creative odyssey.

“Faces seen across the works are like figures in a crowded festival, dancing to their own rhythm yet all welcoming each other with open arms.”

- Saxon Quinn

Raised by his Australian artist mother, Dianne Coulter, in country Victoria, and later immersed in fashion, design and tech that took him to New York City in 2016, Saxon Quinn has honed a visual vocabulary that communicates in the subliminal signs and symbols of global culture and trade. This past decade his work has shifted seamlessly between Sydney, Melbourne, Los Angeles, Manhattan, Hong Kong, Seoul, Madrid and Copenhagen in a series of shows that have resisted the idea of an artist being fixed by a particular time and place. His work is held in Australian and international collections, including: tv.va.collection, Paris and Prague; the Fundación María Cristina Masaveu Peterson, Madrid; and the Moxy Sydney Hotel.