3 – 8 August 2025
‘Icons of Modern Days’,
El Rocco Jazz Room
Group Painting Exhibition
154 Brougham Street, Kings Cross, Sydney.
“This Exhibition is the second group exhibition organised by the Art Drawing Social Club. It follows a group of artists during 6 sessions where 6 art models would incarnate 6 icons of the 20th Century. It is an exploration of modern iconography but also of the painting relationship between artists and muses with 6 of the best art models in Sydney.
Each painting exhibited in ‘Icons of Modern Days’ was created within the context of a painting workshop in the fine art studio at May Street Artists’ Studios with the help of Artist Natalia Gorbunova. This group exhibition also displays a varied array of contemporary and emerging artists within the new figurative school of Sydney.”
Kim Nguyen Ngoc
“This is a group painting exhibition that captures the raw immediacy, energy, and humanity of last century icons through live painting sessions exhibited in one of Sydney’s most iconic creative spaces at the El Rocco Jazz Room. Over four years, this cellar has hosted an evolving collective of artists, life models, and musicians. In this intimate space, the rhythm of live jazz and the physical presence of the human figure have inspired a body of work that is both spontaneous and deeply grounded in observation. This exhibition also honours the resilience and adaptability of artistic communities that continued to create through isolation and reconnection, across both physical and digital spaces. El Rocco, with its jazz legacy and creative spirit, has become a new home for this vibrant artistic exchange. Icon of Modern Days is not just a record of artistic practice, it’s a portrait of now: improvised, intimate, and alive.”
Taljana Pentes
ARTISTS:
KIM @artdrawing_socialclub
Geoffrey Weary @geoffreyweary
Natalia Gorbunova @natalia_fineart
Derek Fernandez @derek.arts
Tatjana Pentez @tatjanapentez
Joanna Durney Sanz @joannadurneysanzart
Jo Parker @asjospar
Judy Stone-Herbert @judystoneherbert
#abstractfigurative#ElRoccoRoom#ElRoccoJazzCellar
#lifedrawing#figurativeabstraction#acrylic#oilpanting#watercolour#colourpastel#Japaneseink#charcoal#stylus#brush#freeform#lifedrawing#artmodel#electronicmusic#artclass#abstraction#ornamentation#chaiselounge#bluevelvet#studiocartesblanches IMAGE: Geoffrey Weary, Portrait After Katya 40x50cm acrylic on cartridge paper 2025
Art Models and their incarnations:
Image 1: Laria — @laria9269 as ‘Mike Tyson’
Image 2: Kat – @kat_models as ‘Patty Smith’
Image 3: lan @sydneybuildermodel as ‘George Dyer’
Image 4: Seaton- @off_the_seaton_track as ‘Yves Saint Laurent’
Image 5: Emily – @goulet_art06 as ‘Marilyn Monroe’
Image 6: Bianca – @bi.an.ca.m as ‘Kate Bush’@studiocartesblanches
This art show was preceded by Luminous Bodies, 15 -16 April 2023, at Luna Studio, 465 King Street, Newtown, Sydney. The first exhibition from Studio Cartes Blanches, a collective of artists emerging from El Rocco Jazz Cellar in Kings Cross, where Australian Jazz Modal and Free Jazz began in 1957 and in the footsteps of the Yellow House, which housed an artists’ collective in 1950s Sydney. A celebration of two years of life drawing in the intimate jazz cellar, where an active community of artists, life models, and musicians continues to create a unique collection of artworks infused with the spirit of jazz improvisation and spontaneity.
Artist Kim Nguyen Ngoc explains the ambiance of the jazz cellar salons:
“The intimate setting of the cellar is translated into the artworks. Models are in close proximity to the artists, while live musicians inspire and provide a tempo for art practice. The original artworks on show represent poses of between 5 and 20 minutes of intense creativity.”
Luminous Bodies is also a celebration of two years of online life drawing classes featuring international models from Argentina, the UK, the Czech Republic, Russia, Spain, and Australia. The COVID pandemic, paradoxically, created a virtual space where life drawing experienced a renaissance, bringing people together in a virtual creative space.
The group show features unique works by Kim Nguyen Ngoc, Joanna Durney Sanz, Tatiana Pentes, Simon Weir, and Geoffrey Weary and is open daily from 10am – 5pm, 15 and 16 April, at Luna Studio, 465 King Street Newtown.
An electronic montage of the artworks will screen on a digital interactive screen in the gallery.
Media inquiries Kim Nguyen Ngoc e: Kimnn09@gmail.com
Follow @Studio_Cartes_Blanches on Instagram.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES
JOANNA DURNEY SANZ
Joanna studied Fine Art at the University of Sydney and received a Certificate in Drawing from the National Art School, Sydney. She also holds a Graduate Diploma in Design from the University of Technology, Sydney and has worked as a graphic designer. Joanna was a finalist in the Blue Thumb Digital Art Prize, Hornsby Prize and Willoughby Art Prizes, and has won prizes at Hornsby and Parramatta Art Society Exhibitions. In 2022 she held a solo exhibition at Tiliqua Tiliqua Gallery (artist-run) in Enmore featuring lyrical abstract artworks and life drawings.
KIM NGUYEN NGOC
Kim Nguyen Ngoc is an artist, art director and designer architect who graduated from the Beaux Arts faculty of Architecture in Paris. In 2011, KIM created Cartes-Blanches, a collective of designers which participated in the Vivid Light Festival from 2011 to 2013, creating interactive electronic art installations (Artificial Light Form), (Cloudscape) (WeSeeSaw) and set design, ILTS (The Memory Room) in 2013. KIM digital art was also displayed in Perth from 2017 to 2021 for Urban Screening. Since 2019, KIM has art directed Studio Cartes Blanches, continuing his work on the form of the human body within the framework of Life Drawing.
TATIANA PENTES
Tatiana is a digital artist in the electronic interactive medium, with an inter/national exhibition record for over a decade. These new mixed media works were produced over an intense two year period 2021 – 2023 at the El Rocco Jazz Cellar, Kings Cross, Sydney with Studio Cartes Blanches. They are a homage to her late father Serge Ermoll (Sergei Ermollaeff) a Shanghai-born Sydney jazz pianist and composer. His first album ‘Blown’ at the Rocco: Saturday Night’ was recorded live in the jazz room in 1968. Explore strangeblackbox.net to find out more.
SIMON WEIR
Simon Weir is Associate Dean at the Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney. Weir has exhibited paintings and drawings for over twenty years with work held in private collections nationally and internationally.
GEOFFREY WEARY
Geoffrey’s creative work has been in the fields of experimental film and photography. Recently he has extended his practice into the medium of drawing, with a specific interest in rendering the human form. Working with charcoal, pastel, conté and pencil, he prefers a spontaneous and often improvised way of drawing the body. Participation in life drawing sessions with Studio Cartes Blanches at the El Rocco Jazz Cellar, Kings Cross, has facilitated these different ways of drawing.
Follow the individual artists on instagram at: @kim_artdesign, @tatjanapentez, @simon_weir, @geoffreyweary and @joannadurneysanzart.
Luna Studio Newtown, 15-16 April 2023
Strange Black Box 