PIED-À-TERRE
CARISSA KARAMARKO
PIED-À-TERRE
13 – 24 January 2021
VISIT PIED-À-TERRE ONLINE VIEWING ROOM
Meet the Artist: Saturday 16th January, 11am – 2pm
Catalogue & Price List: View PDF Catalogue (3 Mb)
This January, Saint Cloche invites you to escape, explore, luxuriate, and relax in our mid-summer presentation of a Pied-à-terre – A charming, intoxicating world of vibrant colour and opulence inspired by the enchanting post world-war II imagery of friend and photographer to the jet-setter elite of the 50’s – 70’s, Slim Aarons.
A Pied-à-terre is a lodging or dwelling, esp. one used only part time or temporarily.
Before the new age of social media, it was the American photographer Slim Aaron’s pursuit for capturing perfection in captivating idyllic settings that defined a golden era of postwar celebrity which made him the pioneer of the modern day ‘Influencer’. Aarons famously describing his practice as “Attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places.” His images of heirs and heiresses, princes and princesses, actors and actresses, jet-setters extraordinaire lounging poolside in Antibes, apres-ski in Gstaadt, on the patio in Palm Springs poolside would be coined in today as ‘Gone Viral’, appeared in a wide array of sought after magazines including, Life, Adventure, Travel & Leisure, Town & Country, Holiday, Look and in his own book, A Wonderful Time.
Pied-à-terre showcases contemporary still-life painter Carissa Karamarko. Carissa’s paintings possess an ineffable ability to capture scenes of daily life, arresting the in-between moments of captivating individuals and irresistable locations. The body of work seeks to invoke the nostalgic feeling of summer and a relaxed vacation vibe. Her intuitive approach to colour and texture exude that quintessential vintage yet stridently modern aesthetic of the mid-century, like a well-appointed pied-à-terre.
“This series brings into focus the “in-between moments”; drinks half finished, cigarettes left to burn, a book laying poolside with a drink as though the reader had just risen to a dip or to welcome guests. The scale of “ordinary” in the golden age of wealth, privilege and leisure begins in these unremarkable moments, inadvertently captured by Slim.
Just as Slim’s photographs provided a glimpse into a world of everyday opulence, so too do these paintings, echoing those glimpses of what it is to live a life that is thoroughly embedded in the spectacular. I wanted to explore the idea of that life as entertainment with no audience. Like a film playing in a closed theatre.
Before Slim, the lives of the elite were performed but not watched and perhaps that is what makes it so intriguing, and what pulls us into that bygone era. These works are inspired by the colour, frivolity, gossip and exuberance of the time and of Slim’s photographs.”
Carissa Karamarko is an emerging Australian artist from Sydney whose artistic career came via the converging paths of music and design. Her work is inspired by journals, process diaries and scenes of daily life, and unpinned by an intuitive investigation of objects, colours, textures, and her own emotions.
Carissa’s work is defined by a whimsical yet layered homage to the reverence and tradition of a still life. Through an intuitive approach to colour and texture, Carissa’s creations have an ineffable quality that has come to be highly sought after in private collections locally and internationally.
In 2018 Carissa was a finalist in the Geelong Contemporary Art Award & Exhibition, Muswellbrook Art Prize & Exhibition, Mosman Art Prize & Exhibition, and Kangaroo Valley Art Prizes.
For more information, please contact us.