We love seeing shows pop up at No Vacancy, and the next great one is by an artists whose work we first saw a year or two ago, and were completely enamoured by – Katherine Gailer.

“Katherine Gailer, a young Colombian artist, has been painting and exploring her passion and thoughts about the meaning of what it is to be a woman in the twenty-first century.

Through her pictorial storytelling she weaves her magic and displays her electric vibrancy through all aspects of her arts practice. Her experience in Melbourne over the past five years represents a clear and distinctive period in her artistic career. Having lived away from South America during these years she has investigated many pathways in her pursuit of new artistic dimensions. Katherine studied for a Bachelor of Fine Arts at RMIT University and was the winner of the 2011 Tolarno Hotel Annual Award and the 2009 NMIT Printmaking Award. She recently completed a Masters degree.

Gailer is soon to reveal her latest series of artworks with the support of RMIT University.
In the works presented in ‘Zero’, the artist finds and ignites in each of her characters the ‘spark’ that lives in their vulnerable and passionate hearts. Connections between women, nature and body are Gailer’s universe: one where imaginary paradises are re-created and re-presented through the experience of being a woman. We see in these works magical and colourful brushstrokes of organic sensory worlds that are born in the fantasy and the poetics of the inner connection between mind and soul. These are splendid and generous worlds – powerful, exciting, feminine and exotic.

The artist is enamored by notions of ‘fragility’ and ‘strength’ and her artwork can be interpreted as a series of confronting tensions to articulate the essence of female existence. Gailer uses vulnerability to entice us to re-focus our eyes in order to penetrate into the potency of woman. This is the starting point of a narrative in which she connects with the reality of the every day woman as a means of revealing her metaphysical qualities.
‘Zero’ as a metaphor is a reflexive matrix of the female experience as a source of power. Paintings portraying women- from different backgrounds- finding shape, emerging, fusing and becoming visible through the thick colorful brushstrokes are ‘powerfully proclaiming the face of women, of all women, coming into power and expression of its own’ (King, 1998, p.2).

These images of power and beauty, with a sense of mystery and achievement, aim to present a positive re-evaluation of women through the investigation of the female bodily existence and its organic interconnectivity.”

Katherines work is wonderfully seductive, portraying every day women in mysterious, paint splashed beauty. Hers is the kind of stuff I’d love on my own walls, just for its sheer vibrancy, and, of course, pleasure of having it in my vision. Head down to No Vacancy this Thursday night to see this wonderful collection of work for yourself.

Who: Katherine Gailer
What: ZERO solo show
Where: No Vacancy Gallery, 34-40 Jane Bell Lane, Melbourne 3000. QV Building (enter from Russell St)
When: Show opens Thursday 10th October from 6pm til 9pm and runs until 20th October.

Check out Katherine Gailer website, and the Facebook event page for more info.