A colourful fusion of art, design and fashion describes the new exhibition, Olsen and Ormandy: The Art of Dinosaur Designs, which opens at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre on April 1.
The exhibition will feature more than 40 large-scale sculptural forms that celebrate the 30-year creative partnership of artists Louise Olsen and Stephen Ormandy.
Originally meeting at art school, Louise Ormandy and Stephen Ormandy started Dinosaur Designs working in resin, sterling silver, brass, wood and ceramic to make handmade objects, homeware and jewellery.
Olsen and Ormandy: The Art of Dinosaur Designs features works such as Series 8: Movement (2011), a set of eight disks in dazzling colours commissioned to mark the fifth anniversary of Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA).
More recent commissions include Loop (2014), a wall-hung sculpture evocative of “the rhythmic lines created when you drop a rock in a lake” as Louise Olsen describes it.
A highlight of the show is a set of life-sized totems in the artists’ signature resin.
Originally developed for London Design Week 2016, the collection includes two new totems created specifically for the Hazelhurst exhibition.
While developing new vases, Stephen Ormandy created larger sculptural forms from interconnected pieces.
As pieces grew they embodied the characteristics of totem poles using and interplay of bold, solid colours and variations of outline and forms.
New additions to the exhibition include pieces with thousands of hand-made and hand-cast beads, which have been threaded and layered upon each other to form a sculpture.
Caterpillar (2017) is another new artwork which has been constructed using elongated layers of multi-coloured hand-cast dewy drops to form a sculptural wall piece of colour and texture.
“We tackle each project the way you would tackle a painting or a drawing, really following your eye and allowing those accidents and developments to happen,” Stephen Ormandy said.
Louise Olsen & Stephen Ormandy: The Art of Dinosaur Designs will show at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery & Arts Centre, 782 Kingsway, Gymea from April 1 to May 14.
The gallery is open daily from 10am to 5pm and entry is free.