MICHAEL WOLFE Studio

We specialise in Conservation and Archival framing.

Our clients include Bendigo Art Gallery, Post Office Gallery, Castlemaine Art Museum, Buda Historic Home, historical societies, professional artists, printmakers, photographers, painters and enthusiastic amateurs.

We are skilled in the preservation and framing of 3D objects, textiles, photographs and artworks.

We work to the ‘do no harm’ principle that all glues, adhesives and mounting techniques should be reversible, removable and to the highest preservation standards.

At Union Studio you’re working ‘artist to artist’ and with many years of experience framing exhibitions we can assist in creating a simple and elegant look across a number of pieces.

We have a large range of timber moulding profiles that can be stained and finished to enhance the professional presentation of your work.

We build stretchers and stretch canvases of all sizes. We have a range of slim shadow line frame mouldings that can be finished to best suit the artwork.

We have a real passion for hand finished native Australian Hardwood frames. Beautiful, sustainably grown and harvested timbers like Mountain Ash, Jarrah and Blackwood.

We stain, we wax, we rub, buff and polish to create frames that complement not dominate your artwork.

Upcoming Exhibitions:
Shimmer
Ballarat International Foto Biennale
August 24 - October 20 2019
Mitchell Harris Wines Barrelroom
38 Doveton Street North, Ballarat
Curated by:
Emma Busowsky Cox, independent curator and writer
Dr Kent Wilson, La Trobe Art Institute

 “Out in the heartlands of Australia silos are the skyscrapers of the bush. They shimmer on the horizon, like accidental sculptures or the remains of an ancient civilisation looming over, yet firmly embedded in the landscape.” 

What began as a roadtrip searching for the ruins of my g-g-grandparent’s Union Flour Mill near Dunolly has become a project to record, document and interpret the grain silos of Australia.

So far, it’s a treasure hunt through the heartland of Victoria and NSW, following the decommissioned rail lines, through small towns where the grain silo was often a centre of local seasonal life, where millions of tonnes of blood, sweat and soil came to be delivered, crops compared, stories told, lives lived. Fundamental changes to farming practices, on farm and bulk storage and high capacity headers have led to the closure of many concrete and steel silos.

Shimmer is a series of photographic studies of grain silos both as Archetype – symbols in rural landscapes of production, cultivation, prosperity, decline and change; and Typology – classification according to general type – comparing their forms and designs based on function, capacity, regional idiosyncrasies, age and condition.

While unmistakeably Australian, the location of the silos provides the narrative meaning, the ‘where’ is as important as the ‘what’. The historic and cultural status of these structures is specific to locality – the town, the railway line, the community - yet can be viewed as collective symbols of the built landscape.

The photographs are multi-exposures which are shot to emphasise the intense interplay of shadow and light and grand scale of the silos - their monumental and sculptural stature in otherwise fairly flat and featureless landscapes. The intentional use of densely layered imagery then inhabits the space between abstraction and figuration and speaks to the themes of history, cumulative experience and the collapse of time into single moments. The use of multi-exposure creates an optical intensity and hallucinatory layered painterly effect and rhythmic continuity while meticulously controlling minute variances in contrast, brightness and opacity.

Michael Wolfe

Paintings available at https://www.michaelwolfe.com.au

Painter, photographer, designer and pretty handy leg spin bowler, Michael Wolfe enjoys making pictures and has been doing it fairly seriously for most of his adult life. Michael is a Cancerian who likes pizza and beer. He has survived a career in advertising and works as a graphic designer and picture framer.

“I have been painting and photographing the country around Central Victoria for the better part of 30 years and never tire of the rolling hills, granite outcrops, rhythms, textures and colours.

There’s order and geometry, but mostly wonderful chaotic confusion. It’s a beautiful, rugged, inspiring landscape which I love using as a backdrop and motif in my paintings.”

Michael’s work is included in public, corporate and private collections.

“I saw in this image of the land below me and undreamed-of freedom from formal arrangement. I was thrilled. My country! My own country. Unknown to me. Its history mysterious, inscribed in the hieroglyphics and elaborate arabesques of its unrecognised landforms, waiting to be deciphered. As we shuddered and bumped our way across the uneven sky my inner voice announced to me, No one has painted this. It was a thought that carried for me the force of revelation. No one has painted it. It is uncelebrated. Untouched by my culture. And (what is more) it is undreamed in the dreams of Europe.”

Alex Miller, Autumn Laing