Talented art curators and powerhouse couple Kav and Beth Temperley will debut a world-first exhibition in Fremantle on September 16.
The Eskimo Joe lead singer and his wife — Temperley Productions co-founder — will bring together 20 established artists and musicians from around the country for a five-day event to create a variety of both physical and digital works.
Their subsequent pieces will be displayed in a one-night exhibition coupled with a live performance — during which Kav Temperley will hit the stage — at Artsource Fremantle and projected on historic buildings around the Fremantle town centre on September 16.
Beth Temperley — who holds a blockchain university course certification — said the project had evolved to create human-initiated, dynamic digital art.
“I’m a technologist, I love technology,” she said. “I’m also very passionate about maintaining humans within this space.”
She said the exhibition would likely revolutionise the digital landscape for artists and it would be a new space for them to explore.
“The greatest challenge is the fear of the unknown, people aren’t really sure what it is they’re going to be doing and being part of a new art movement is quite scary, I suppose,” she said.
“It’s allowing artists and musicians to understand that this is primarily to ‘see what happens’.”
Ms Temperley said the projections served to be an accessible avenue for consuming multimedia art.
“I like to think of it as taking online offline and then projecting it onto something historical,” she said.
“So, it’s blending the old and the new, traditional and emerging technology.”
Temperley said the exhibition would bring together various mediums in a mass immersive event.
“Digital Creation Hub is a five-day event to ignite the creative spirit within artists, both visually and graphically,” he said.
“The multimedia collaboration from various disciplines in this dynamic space will foster innovation and push artistic boundaries.”
Fremantle-based Tessa MacKay will be among the artists involved, painting hyper-realist portraits.
“I have been a practising artist for 14 years but the last 10 have been devoted to painting portraiture in the style of hyper-realism,” she said.
“The opportunity to learn how to turn my painting practice into something I could carry into the digital art space was something I have always wanted to understand.”
While MacKay’s large-scale paintings often take months to years to complete, she said she had adapted a new style of artistry that could work in the five-day Digital Hub project as a “hybrid” of photography and painting.
“I have recently been experimenting with an old photographic process called cyanotype, in which I use the printed image as a base to overpaint with gouache,” she said.
“I see it as a photographic underpainting in which I paint many layers of gouache on top to achieve a realistic finish.”
The art will be projected on historic Fremantle buildings that include the Round House, the WA Shipwreck Museum and the Old Girl’s School.
An online gallery of the works will also be available following the launch.