‘How difficult it is to speak of a single thing- one takes notice of a stone at the foot of a mountain, steps back to look at the mountain, walks far enough away to see the top of it, climbs another mountain to to see the plain beyond the first one, and little by little widening the view sees from a very long way off our little cloud wreathed planet swimming in the sea of space, and it is only one thing after all.’ (Russell Hoban)
Max Berry presents new works in his latest exhibition ‘MAPS’. An intriguing visual rhetoric displayed via several modes of representation. Viewers may start out from personal experience but begin to explore more general situations as the association of images entails the association of ideas.
Selected works explore the relationship between image and reality, curiously less explicit and more poetic, prompting ideas of context and finite space; of our planet and our place within it. The new paintings are accompanied by drawings and photographs in the form of an independent publication in addition to an exhibition specific soundscape.
‘To become orientated is a phrase that carries implications of greater concerns than simply knowing ones present location in a physical sense. Knowing where one is without knowing why can be tantamount to being lost. Disorientation is a state of mental confusion which may even involve a loss of self identity. Becoming orientated can also imply becoming accommodated to a new set of circumstances and values, and being absorbed into a new state of social or cultural situation, that has different frame of references than the old one. It can mean knowing why you are where you are, where that is located in relation to those circumstances. It implies a matching up of histories, a general one and a personal one. It means a comparison of models and a testing of assumptions.’ (Found text)
Max Berry (b.1987) Since completing A Bachelor of Design at the UNSW Art and Design, Max has received the Australian Council for the Arts ‘Artstart Grant’ and awarded the Lloyd Rees Memorial Youth Art Award. Berry has been selected as a finalist in numerous art prizes including The Art Gallery of New South Wales Wynne Prize, The S H Ervin Gallery Salon De Refuse and the William Fletcher Travelling Art Scholarship. Consecutive solo exhibitions interstate and overseas since have led to acknowledgment in publications such Artist Profile and the Sydney Morning Herald. He has been selected for an artist residency programs at Bundanon Trust, Cill Rialaig Arts Center, Ireland and Nelimarkka Museo, Finland. This is Max Berry’s sixth solo exhibition at China Heights Gallery and marks ten years of exhibiting in Sydney.