new work by edward koumans
In this business, rarely do you have the good fortune of walking into an exhibition by an artist whom you know, anticipating one thing, yet walking away afterwards with the feeling that the artist has delivered more than you expected. Edward (less formally known as Eddie or Ed) Koumans latest exhibition Artland at KickArts in Cairns, is one such show.
Knowing that the exhibition was being held in the first floor Upper Gallery (effectively, no more than a single room), I was anticipating at most a modest display consisting of a few new works produced during Ed’s recent sojourn at ‘The House’ (a now defunct artist-run studio space that has succumbed to the real estate developer’s bulldozer). Contrary to expectations, what I found was what amounted to a mini-retrospective of Koumans’ output over the last decade, packed into an itty-bitty exhibition space. There were effectively four thematic rooms of work crammed into one (and a third, if you include the Lift Foyer). By this I mean, that the exhibition weaves together four distinct though interrelated strands in Koumans oeuvre, which can be loosely classified as, assemblages, environmental figures, (neo-)expressionistic paintings and drawings, and ‘new territory’, all of which deserve attention.
The process of assemblage (indebted to the Cubist collage) has been a driving force in Koumans output since he burst onto the Sydney art scene in the mid-1980s, with a couple of sell-out shows at the Hogarth Gallery. Then just as the artist’s star was rising, he set off from Sydney for Far North Queensland, turning his back on a big city career for the outer reaches of the galaxy. But the centre’s loss is the periphery’s gain.
Koumans