“My challenge is to capture the moment in 3-D. My sculpture creates a drawing in space and time”, writes Jenny Green.
As part of Art Month and one of three exhibitions currently on at the Traffic Jam Gallery, Jenny Green’s SUN AND MOON exhibition delights.
The gallery is located within an industrial style four level building, making one think of a of a New York loft that has been turned into a studio and gallery. It is itself an island ,surrounded by a major bus stop and the busy hustle and bustle of Falcon Street and the Big Bear shopping centre located at Military Road, Neutral Bay.
President of the Sculptors Society, Green is is represented in private, public & corporate collections, & has won a number of awards. Her sculpture The Sentinel has been shortlisted for the North Sydney Art Prize (7-22 March, 2015 at the Coal Loader, Waverton.
SUN AND MOON features sculptures in broze, steel and aluminium. Her attempt to capture an instant, a feeling, is reflected in the tension between space and material, line, form and texture.
The exhibition is inspired by Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem Love’s Philosophy examining the bonds between humans and heaven and earth. Vibrant abstraction of the figure is displayed against the cool perfection of the sphere. For some of the works much is made of the various textures of the large geometric wedges as contrasted with the smooth, unblemished sphere that is also part of the composition.
Traditionally, in the great myths that Green and Shelly have been inspired by, the moon is female, the queen of the night, and the ruler of emotions. The sun is often male, the god of light, fire and energy. Therefore they are opposites yet complementary, a kind of yin and yang.
Nymphs 1 and 2 against the wall , painted steel in black and reddish brown, are leotard shaped like lines of the essence of movement- you can see Daphne running from Apollo perhaps – the seared energy is palpable. It is as if they have just vanished around the corner.
Moonkiss is a fruitcake like textured brown bronze, textured like cheese, with floating ,elegant silver balls.
Sunburnt, a green and brown bronze, is like an open, overripe, wilting night flower, dying in the heat of mid afternoon, and quite phallic in appearance.
Luminous, another stunning bronze , consists of floating shapes of three different sizes with a tree like support at the back.
Red Moon of painted steel is black and red with dynamic twists.
The Sun and Moon series consists of vibrant red ,orange and black flat shapes in abstract designs, Miro–like, similar to coloured flowers on black stalks.
Selene , Goddess of the Moon is a quietly elegant abstract female form .Armless and with a blank formless faceshe has a glorious long ‘line’ and calmly awaits our attention.
Edge of Tomorrow another bronze, tilts dynamically, like a lunar eclipse.
Green’s work is dynamic, bold and colourful with smidgens of influences from John Olsen ,Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore visible. Most of the works have been mounted on small plinths.
Jenny Green’s exhibition at the Traffic Jam Gallery runs till the 26th March. Also on at Traffic Jam is an exhibition by Rebecca Peirce .
For more about Jenny Green Sun and Moon, visit http://www.tjg.com.au/