Janne Kearney’s solo exhibition Dystopia explores the urban environment focusing on graffiti street art. This latest body of work originates from visits to a derelict abandoned Electrical Power station. The factory was a magnet for underground graffiti artists, making ever-changing backdrops for Janne’s paintings. Since beginning this series, the substation has been re-invented as the ‘Powerhouse’ art hub and graffiti gallery. The five storey high walls, inside and out, have been transformed with the most incredible graffiti art imaginable, by artists from all over Australia and abroad, and has hundred of awestruck visitors each week. “I would take my son and daughter, and other young friends or students of mine that were daring enough to ignore the ‘trespassers will be prosecuted’ signs, and dangers associated with entering an old decaying factory. The building; a huge five-storey cement and brick shell devoid of all machinery; hundreds broken of upper storey windows surround it, it is very imposing and possesses a very miasmatic atmosphere, quite dank, dangerous and foreboding. During winter months the light was perfect for chiaroscuro effect.” “This year I was selected as a semi-finalist in the prestigious BP Portrait Award (UK) for my painting Miasma. The painting shows a contemplative youth sitting in a grungy, graffitied, decaying urban landscape. Hence, the naming of the series Dystopia… an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, and in this case, an environmentally and emotionally degraded one.” Dystopia 16 July – 8 August Opens Friday 17 July 5:30 – 8pm
