Sandra Bridie| colour + form : art + play
Sandra Bridie
colour + form : art + play (a fiction)
colour + form : art + play (a fiction)
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Imagine if Bauhaus master Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack had spawned an artists group in Melbourne in the early 1960s. Using this hypothesis, Melbourne artist Sandra Bridie has invented a fictional artists group called colour + form.
The fiction: colour + form was created by three student teachers who met at Kew Kindergarten College in 1958. Inspired by their lecturer, Bauhaus master Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack, and the aesthetic of formalism and its pedagogical possibilities that he introduced them to, Brian Hutting, Hilary Sorensen and Sandra Bridie decided to embark on a series of art projects outside of college hours, using simple colours and forms.
In 1960, after leaving college, Hutting, Sorensen and Bridie distilled their ideas for their project further; they formulated a series of conceptual constraints and wrote a brief manifesto – and an artists group was born. Called colour + form, the parameters the group set themselves were minimal: a basic geometric form attached to a primary colour was allocated to each member, and they would produce work purely from that form and in that colour. The allocations were as follows: Brian Hutting: Blue Triangle, Hilary Sorensen: Red Circle, Sandra Bridie: Yellow Rectangle. From this seemingly straitened premise, a surprising array of both serious and playful possibilities emerged that have generated an extensive collection of artworks, events and publications that the group continue to produce to this day.
Now in their mid-seventies and laying claim to being the longest running abstract art movement in Australia, c+f has an extensive exhibiting history as a group and as individuals within Australia, Europe and South America. These include numerous collaborations or 'intersections' with international groups such as GRAV (Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel, Paris (1960-68) and the Neo-Concret movement in Brazil (1959-61).
This exhibition, colour + form : art + play, re-enacts a series of interactive installation works first presented by the group in the 1970s.
Sandra Bridie is a Melbourne-based artist curator. Her solo practice involves the invention of fictional artists who sometimes bear her own name, imagined into the Melbourne art landscape of the 20th and 21st centuries. This ongoing conceit allows Bridie to play out numerous possibilities for the artist within a familiar locale.
Using altered PMP (Perceptual Motor Program) equipment, on loan from Eltham Primary School, Bridie presents a primary-coloured, geometric-interactive play environment. Please be prepared to remove your shoes for play.
22–31 March 2012
GREENWOOD STREET PROJECT: 9 Greenwood Street Abbotsford, 3067
Hours open: 2-5pm Thursday to Saturday or by appointment
Contact Sandra Bridie: 0417 232 594 bridiesandra@gmail.com www.sandrabridie.com
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