mark datodi
works in progress
14 february - 15 march 2014
Mark Datodi's artworks continue to explore ideas relating to suburbia, or more precisely, the impact of our sprawling urban expansion on West Australian native bushlands.
His artworks during the early 2000's often juxtaposed abstract forms relating to the pattern of road plans with images of rooftops, native grass trees or power line towers. These exquisitely made works combined sculptural elements, such as the 3D balsa wood street patterns, with screen-printing directly onto the wooden surface of the artworks.
Over the last few years his works have become even more poetic and pared back. He has zeroed in on the patterns of nature, printing leaf skeletons over wooden panels that are then cut and respliced, 3D land contours worm their way across wooden panels, and elliptical forms emulate seeds and pods.
The major works of this exhibition, Sprawl, Enclave, and Repeat, have been simplified even further. These three-dimensional wooden emulations of the sea of Colorbond rooftops that sprawl like a geometric cancer from our urban centres, are painted in subdued shades of grey, with no printing or patterning. Datodi's colours are actually from the Colorbond range, such as Dune, Shale Grey, Surfmist, Evening haze, Ironstone and Windspray. Their lyrical names belying the monotony of the treeless suburbs where rooftops sit in such close proximity to their neighbours you could jump from one to the next.
"With urban sprawl comes the clearing, stripping of the land, and subsequent loss of the natural environment, the native trees and shrubs. The land is manipulated, flattened, carved up into plots, roads, walls and houses are built and new suburbs are created. The built forms so different from the natural environment, new vistas are formed, a mass of roof tops, a sea of brick, terracotta and Colorbond."
[Mark Datodi January 2014]
Datodi refers to the land more closely in the works Landform #1 and #3. The carved wooden panels seem to ripple like the pattern of wind on sand dunes (or cleared land) or water. However their Colorbond palette separates them from nature and emphasises the exquisite beauty of their simple repetitive patterning and optical illusions.
Datodi departs from working with wood to work with copper in the series named Replace. These small-scale sculptural works are based on the shape of a simple rooftop, and the surfaces are etched with elegant plant forms, reminding the viewer of what has been irrecoverably lost from the urban sprawl.
This is Mark Datodi's first solo show in eight years. During the intervening years he has immersed himself in public art projects, often with other artists, creating an impressive total of 35 large-scale during that time. He studied at Curtin University, graduating in 1988 and went on to do a Masters of Visual Arts with Edith Cowan University from 1995-98. This is Datodi’s sixth solo exhibition and he has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Perth and nationally. His artworks can be found in the collections of Bankwest, Royal Perth Hospital, Edith Cowan University, Central Institute of Technology, City of Joondalup, Ministry for Culture & the Arts, and King Edward Memorial Hospital.
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- TURNER GALLERIES | showcasing contemporary art
at 470 WILLIAM STREET NORTHBRIDGE WESTERN AUSTRALIA 6003 - TURNER GALLERIES HAS NOW CLOSED.
This website is an archived record of the exhibitions and artwork shown at the gallery. - Turner Galleries acknowledges the Whadjuk Nyoongar people as the Traditional Owners of the lands and waters where Turner Galleries is situated, and pay our respect to Elders past, present and emerging.
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