Dylan Mooney and Izabela Pluta Hoarding Commissions
Early 2024 will bring the installation of our first two artist commissions for the construction hoarding surrounding the Art Gallery expansion site.
New large-scale works of art by Dylan Mooney and Izabela Pluta will be on display at this busy pedestrian intersection to enliven the precinct with the artists' unique interpretations of renewal, anticipation, and change.
Dylan Mooney is a proud Yuwi, Torres Strait, and South Sea Islander artist currently based in Queensland. Intertwined (2023) is a 70-meter long digital illustration along Darby St, depicting native tropical plants, flowers, and butterflies from Mooney's ancestral Yuwi Country near Mackay interspersed with hand painted ochre patterning. His distinctive and highly stylised floral imagery is abundant and flourishing, signalling a thriving community of both plants and people. Through his mix of digital technology and traditional materials Mooney points to a hopeful future where Country and environment can be revitalised, so long as we listen carefully to it.
Izabela Pluta is a locally-based artist born in Poland, whose practice spans photography and installation. She uses her art to examine ideas of impermanence and belonging, and for her 40-meter long commission Pluta has captured Newcastle Art Gallery at this expectant moment in its history. Before construction commenced, Izabela documented the Gallery's interior with film and digital photography, and created lumen prints by placing photographic paper in the shafts of afternoon light that moved across the floor of the Gallery from its windows. These images have been digitally layered to create her commission on Laman Street titled Sleep Rhythms (2023). This collage of images can be thought of as a cumulative portrait of Newcastle Art Gallery at a moment of transformation.
These works of art will be on display until late-April 2024, following this the hoarding will be refreshed with a second round of commissioned works by Diana Baker-Smith and Agus Wijaya from May. Accompanying each of these presentations will be a range of public programs offering deeper insights into the artists, ideas, and processes that have formed these new large-scale commissions.
Artist Biographies
Dylan Mooney is a proud Yuwi, Torres Strait, and South Sea Islander man from Mackay in North Queensland working across painting, printmaking, digital illustration, and drawing. Legally blind, the artist uses digital drawing as his medium as the backlit display allows him to produce a high-impact illustrative style with bright, saturated colour that reflects his lived experiences. His use of digital technology brings a unique contemporary approach to ancestral knowledge. He aims for his work to exude pride and optimism, reflecting the strength he takes from his culture and to communicate the importance of sharing and respecting culture.
Dylan Mooney, Intertwined, 2023
Digital illustration with ochre, reproduced as digital print in eight parts.
Dylan Mooney is represented by N.Smith Gallery, Sydney.
Izabela Pluta is a locally based, Polish born Australian artist. Pluta’s studio practice spans photography and installation, engaging with questions of impermanence and belonging. She creates her layered images through many working methods: by experiencing places and conducting photographic fieldwork, by undertaking imaging processes to capture environmental phenomena, and by using found images that arise in her research. By bringing these many sources together and uniting them in her work, Pluta reveals the complexities of both the production processes and viewer perceptions that lie behind photographic images.
Izabela Pluta, Sleep Rhythms, 2023
Digital collage comprising gelatin silver photographs and lumen prints, reproduced as a digital print in four parts.
Izabela Pluta is represented by Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert, Sydney.
Image: Izabela Pluta, Sleep Rhythms, 2023 (detail), Digital collage comprising gelatin silver photographs and lumen prints, reproduced as a digital print in four parts
