CJ Hendry Exhibition, Surry Hills.

Last weekend we visited the CJ Hendry exhibition in Surry Hills, Sydney. It was held in a private home on a very busy Sydney street. On a first approach it looked like your average warehouse home but once you stepped in the door and on to the black and white marble tiled foyer it was a whole different ball game.

CJ Hendry is a Brisbane based artist who works mainly with pen and ink to create large scale hyper-realism  images of iconic objects. From afar her work look to be nothing more than big black-and-white photographs but on a closer inspection you can see the labour of hard work that goes into each piece with every stroke of her black pen. I've read that some of her works can up to 200 hours to finish and go through more than 40 UniPin pens! 

Her first solo exhibition was housed in a converted warehouse home with features such as an indoor pool, nightclub area, smoking area, dj booths upstairs and downstairs (!), a specially made white bedroom pod, flooring made from leather belts, glass ceilings, multiple courtyards and an immaculate metallic kitchen. Though the home is incredibly extravagant it was even more pleasing to see that the small details, joins, finishes of all of the different areas have been well considered. The building was huge and there was so much space, yet it never felt like there was too much space. Everything just fitted in, where it was meant to be, perfectly. 

The house, the art, the floral arrangements to accompany both, was nothing less than amazing. It might have been someone's home, it might have been an art exhibition, but more than that it was an experience. So much so that we left and then came back two hours later to make the most of it.