GUAN WEI awarded Creative Australia Award for Visual Arts 2024

Congratulations to Guan Wei, who has been presented the Creative Australia Award for Visual Arts 2024. A recognition of an incredible career, this major award acknowledges the achievements of an artist who has made an outstanding and sustained contribution to Australian art.

Guan Wei has been living and working between Beijing, China and Sydney Australia since 1989. Guan Wei is an iconic figure in the Australian contemporary art scene and critically acclaimed internationally. Through his art, he reflects upon the human condition as we engage with critical contemporary issues, such as climate change, questions of identity, migration and exile. Guan Wei has held over 80 solo exhibitions in Australia and internationally from the Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney to OCT Contemporary Art Terminal (OCAT) Shenzhen China and has been included in countless group exhibitions from South Korea to Cuba.

New publication featuring MARTI, ZAHALKA, LAURENCE, YOUNG

Celebrating the launch of Mordant Collection Highlights, a publication devoted to the collection of Simon and Catriona Mordant.

"We never set out to build a collection. What has driven us is a passion to be surrounded by creative people, whether in the visual or performing arts. We have only purchased a work when it evoked a reaction in us ... We have never bought a work for a particular wall or because someone told us the artist was important. We have loved this journey together."—Simon and Catriona Mordant

Featured in the highlights are these pieces by Dani Marti, Anne Zahalka, Janet Laurence and John Young.

JOHN YOUNG Artist Talk at TarraWarra Museum of Art

On Saturday, ‘Portrait of a Collection: TarraWarra Museum of Art’ was launched at TarraWarra Museum of Art.

In conversation with Victoria Lynn and Claire Roberts, JOHN YOUNG discussed Claire’s chapter ‘Visual Thinking: Ian Fairweather and John Young' which draws on the affinities between Fairweather and Young's artistic practices.

“For both men, art is a transcultural practice and part of a larger process of becoming.” - Professor Claire Roberts

You can purchase a copy of this important overview of TarraWarra Museum of Art’s collection of 20th- and 21st-century Australian art via the link below.

Purchase a copy here >

HONEY LONG & PRUE STENT - Upcoming Workshop @ Golburn Regional Gallery

⭐ Photograph the body with Honey Long and Prue Stent ⭐

Meet the artists at the Gallery and make your own surreal images.

With a live model on hand and a range of materials, participants will have the opportunity to capture their own images, experimenting with angles, light, objects, lenses and materials to create unique visual narratives.

Bring your own camera and get creative with these extraordinary artists.

Honey Long and Prue Stent are a collaborative duo who construct surreal scenes where the body serves as both raw material and haunting apparition. Dreamy, fluid and fleshy, their distinctive and highly sensual practice has garnered worldwide recognition, spanning the realms of photography, performance, installation, and sculpture.

When: 11:30 - 2:30pm Saturday 2 November
Who: Adults and teens 16+
Where: Goulburn Regional Art Gallery
Cost: $45.00 + booking fee

Book here >

JULIE RRAP: Past Continuous @ MCA

"At the beginning, my work was critiqued through self-conscious feminism. Now, I don’t know how it will be received. And when I have used a body it’s been my own, but you don’t find out much about me in that personal sense. You just see a body moving through time. I also think that this show is as much about time as it is about a body. I show a body through time."

Head to Art Guide to read a fantastic interview with Julie Rrap by Lauren Carroll Harris. In a conversation Rrap discusses her current survey ‘Past Continuous’ at the MCA, which exhibits ‘Disclosures’ with newer works that consider the cultural invisibility of the ageing female body.
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Read the full interview here >


Julie Rrap: Past Continuous
📅 28 June 2024 – 16 February 2025
📍Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney

IMANTS TILLERS Artist Talk @ Bundanon Trust

ARTIST TALK SUNDAY

In NSW this weekend, Imants Tillers is giving an artist talk at Bundanon.

Tillers will be in conversation with Sophie O’Brien (Head of Curatorial & Learning, Bundanon), exploring the cultural landscape for young Australian artists in the 1980s, both here and internationally.

In 1984, Tillers was one of three young artists in the exhibition An Australian Accent, presented at MoMA PS1, New York. Also including the work of Mike Parr and Ken Unsworth, the exhibition was one of several to articulate new Australian art to an international audience.

Tillers’ incredible painting ‘Pataphysical man’ (1984), from the collection of the AGNSW, is currently on display at Bundanon Art Museum as part of the group exhibition ‘Wilder Times: Arthur Boyd and the mid-1980s landscape’. ⁠

Tickets available here >

Imants Tillers: In Conversation
📅 Sunday, 6 October, 11am-12pm
📍 Bundanon, 170 Riversdale Road, Illaroo

PAT BRASSINGTON Photo Essay in VAULT Magazine

Vault explores Pat Brassington's gutsy work in this photo essay.

"Mundane activities take on unsettling overtones and domestic environs are rendered strangely ominous as disembodied protagonists engage in sometimes confronting or irrational scenarios."

Grab issue 47 here >

CHARLES GREEN New publication 'When Modern Became Contemporary Art'

Congratulations to Charles Green and his co-author Heather Barker, who have published a new book with Routledge on the history of Australian art from 1962 to 1988.

This book is a portrait of the period when modern art became contemporary art. It explores how and why writers and artists in Australia argued over the idea of a distinctively Australian modern and then postmodern art. The book reflects on why the embrace of Aboriginal art was so late in art museums and in histories of Australian art, arguing that this was because it was not part of a national story dominated by colonial, then neo-colonial dependency.

"When Modern Became Contemporary Art begins with the excellent point that the study of art history has lagged behind artistic practice in contemplating Indigenous art. The book corrects that in the most welcoming way, by bringing hundreds—perhaps thousands—of points of reference, from anthropology, art history, journalism, curating, and the art market, into productive dialogue.”
– Professor James Elkins, E.C. Chadbourne Chair of Art History, Theory, and Criticism, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

HONEY LONG & PRUE STENT feature in exhibition at Goulburn Regional Gallery

Honey Long & Prue Stent currently feature in the exhibition ‘Echoes’ at Goulburn Regional Gallery.

Echoes explores reverberations in the human experience. The exhibition brings together works by eight Australian artists who examine the idea of echoes in diverse ways. It presents works that uncover past lives, alter egos and feedback loops. The works unpack personal, social and cultural histories and considers the distortion and loss of memory over time. The works utilise repetition, surrealism, and abstraction to communicate the unstable and subjective way that we recall lived experiences and histories.  

ECHOES
📅 23 Aug - 9 Nov 2024
📍Goulburn Regional Gallery, NSW

Honey Long & Prue Stent, Scallop, 2017.

CATHERINE WOO - Signs of Progress

TONIGHT! EXHIBITION OPENING

As the saying goes, red skies can signal good or bad weather: in the morning, they are a “shepherds’ warning,” while at night, they forecast “sailors’ delight.” Continuing the artist’s fascination with sky-watching, Catherine Woo’s new paintings are vivid firmaments of billowing magentas, oranges and maroon. Her “grand, amorphous and ambiguous” works capture the brilliant red hues that slip into both “delight” and “warning”; are they beautiful sunsets or skies tainted by bushfire? Woo understands that the sublime moment often contains both awe and terror.

CATHERINE WOO
SIGNS OF PROGRESS
📅 Opening: Wednesday, 28 August, 6-8PM.
📍 ARC ONE Gallery
All welcome.

Email mail@arc1gallery.com or DM us for a catalogue of available works.

ANNE ZAHALKA in conversation at The National Art School

IN CONVERSATION TODAY

This afternoon (Saturday, 17 August 2024, 2PM), join Anouska Phizacklea, Director of the Museum of Australian Photography (MAPh) in conversation with acclaimed Australian artist Anne Zahalka at the National Art School, Sydney.

Zahalka will discuss the her career spanning four decades, the survey exhibition ZAHALKAWORLD: an artist’s archive and key themes explored within her practice.

IN CONVERSATION: ZAHALKAWORLD – An artist’s archive
📅 17 August 2024, 2:00pm – 3:00pm
Bookings essential via the National Art School website
📍National Art School, Sydney

JANET LAURENCE artist residency talk at State Buildings in Perth

This week Janet Laurence will travel to Perth to take up an artist's residency in the iconic State Buildings in Perth.

During August, audiences will be invited to visit Laurence's studio and observe her process, from her exploration of initial concepts and materials, to how these emerge within her practice.

On 9 August, visitors can do just that, with a private viewing of Laurence's latest work where the artist will discuss her artistic journey, creative process, and the environmental themes that influence her work. This will be followed by an afternoon tea of finely curated teas and luxurious treats.

See @statebuildings website for bookings.