Painting by fine artist Emily Humphries titled ‘Inclination’ part of an open studio  (click for details Erotica and the Muse on Sat. 29 Nov. 10-6pm and Sun. 30 Nov. 2014, 10-3pm

Emily Humphries fine artist and second child of Australian icon Barry Humphries is opening her home and studio to the public.Emily is a well loved Melbourne Artist who has been exhibiting professionally since 1986. Her first exhibition seeing her placed alongside leading artists Rick Amor and Brian Dunlop.

The 90’s saw Humphries specialise in Printmaking at the VCA where she received a National Gallery Trustees Award in her first year. Emily then went to exhibit with Stuart Gerstman Galleries in South Bank.

After marrying Melbourne film composer and co founder of 80’s group, Not Drowning Waving, John Phillips, the couple and their three children moved to Europe where they worked independently predominantly in France and Italy.

Emily works across media creating magical canvases and illuminated sculptures, spaces which inhabited and build in the imagination. Her sculptures read like little stages on which still lives and symbolic narratives play themselves out.

A committed painter Emily says, “the most challenging and captivating of arts is when one can inspire a relationship or narrative within a single two dimensional frame,” Emily’s recent journey into film echos this rather alchemical idea where she asks of the viewer to try to distil what consciousness they may wish to find in their own lives through the arc of fantasy whilst she reflects on the utility of art in this regard.

In 2010 Humphries exhibited in Italy on an Artegiro Galleria award, where she was supported for three months to work beside the volcanic lake Bolsena where she ultimately mounted a show in and around notions of the Sublime.

In 2012 still with Artegiro Emily exhibited a series of photographic works captured serendipitously on her Samsung Gallaxy mobile where she explored Paris as a visceral city treading within it’s well worn romantic cliché of romantic love.

She is also working on a documentary project around how we utilize fantasy to construct our realities where she traversed Europe interviewing those she found most fascinating, including her self declared mentor, the French film maker Agnes Varda.

This Year has seen Emily publish her first Poetry cycle, The Divining Tower, written between 2010-2013, and published here in Melbourne by Little Fox Press. For her poem, Melbourne, which is contained within this collection she received an award in the Doris Leadbetter Poetry Cup 2012, which is quite an honour in the contemporary writing scene. This book will be available too at her open studio to where it is a great opportunity to get hold of one signed.

There is much more I can say about this artist but it would simply take too long. You can visit her site at www.emilyhumphries.com for more details.

This Open studio will show her most recent suite of etchings available framed or unframed and are formed around notions of the erotic.

Her South Yarra residence will be open from 10 am – 6 pm on Saturday the 29^th of November and again on Sunday from 10 am -3 pm. It is a rare opportunity to get a glimpse into the more intimate world of one of our fine artists.

I urge you, don’t miss out!