Lyndell Brown and Charles Green have been awarded a 3-year Australian Research Council grant to collaborate with artist Jon Cattapan, Indigenous activist, film-maker, musician and playwright Richard Frankland, and eminent biomedicine researcher Gary Anderson.
“THE WAR AT HOME: ART DESCRIBES AUSTRALIA'S TURBULENT PRESENT”
This project investigates the friction between the nation’s stories of itself, and the current massive fracturing of health, of places and of peoples. Because Australia is changing beyond measure, it is appropriate to talk about the war at home. From World War 1 onwards, the Australian government decided that war artists be commissioned to make art about the nation at war. This project proposes that a team of Australian artists, with a deep experience of picturing conflict, investigates the current war at home, guided by a senior Gunditjimara elder and in collaboration with an eminent biomedical scientist.
NIKE SAVVAS COMPLETE PUBLIC COMMISSION IN NORTH SYDNEY
NIKE SAVVAS has recently completed Chroma Haze, a beautifully-executed art commission for 1 Denison, North Sydney.
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Nike says of the work: "I am actively conscious of the colours around me, both in the real world and also in art and science. I collect, observe and record these colours constantly. I believe in the egalitarian power of colour, this is very important to me. ‘Chroma Haze’ can be compared to an ‘open analogue wave signal’ in that it embraces ephemerality and variation through personal encounter.”
JANET LAURENCE CREATES MASK FOR ANNIVERSARY OF PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT
To celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Paris Climate Agreement, JANET LAURENCE was invited to make a mask for the Art for Change Maskbook campaign.
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Maskbook is an international, collective work of art which raises awareness about the link between health, air pollution and climate change, using the mask as a symbol. Originally created for the COP21 in 2015, Maskbook has been featured at every Climate COP since.
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Janet fashioned a beautiful ginkgo leaf creation for the face of the campaign, Layne Beachley.
Check out the other masks here!
BOWNESS FINALIST EXHIBITION NOW ON
Screenshot from the virtual tour of the exhibition, featuring Cyrus Tang’s work.
The Bowness Photography Prize exhibition is in full swing and open to the public Thursday - Sunday at the MGA!
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The Bowness is an important annual survey of contemporary photographic practice in Australia and one of the most prestigious prizes in the country. The prize continues to showcase excellence in photography. ARC ONE artists Honey Long & Prue Stent, Cyrus Tang and Anne Zahalka are finalists in this year’s pool and their works are on display in the exhibition.
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The gallery has also just launched the virtual exhibition if you’re unable to attend in person. Take a tour here.
ARC ONE'S SUMMER SHOW, 'MINUTIAE'
ARC ONE Gallery is delighted to present Minutiae, a group exhibition for the summer of 2020-21.
“If you look for the minutiae in an artist’s work, particularly a master’s work, then you become part of them, closer to them, locked in their presence.”
– Fran Clark, Director, ARC ONE Gallery
Featuring works by Pat Brassington, Peter Daverington, Janet Laurence, Honey Long & Prue Stent, Vanila Netto, Robert Owen, Jacky Redgate, Julie Rrap, Eugenia Raskopoulos, Cyrus Tang, Catherine Woo, John Young and Anne Zahalka, this exhibition asks you to stop, slow down, and take in the ne details. Celebrating the beauty and ecstasy in lingering over the minutiae, allowing it to unfold as you pause and lean in, the artists’ work across painting, photo-media, and sculpture is layered, intricate and complex. Confounding, subtle and delightful, Minutiae presents places in which we can roam, explore and become intimate. Venture through immersive worlds of deep observation and thought.
LONG & STENT REFERENCED IN GREAT ART ESSAY
Using HONEY LONG & PRUE STENT’s work as a reference point, Irina Baconsky has penned an insightful essay for the British Journal of Photography on how visual language can productively infiltrate environmental debates.
Honey Long & Prue Stent, Field Sip XVII, 2018, granite stone, blown glass, water sample
"There is little doubt that documentary image-making has been instrumental in shedding light on the environmental crisis. Yet, the potential of abstract and even utopian imagery can be equally radical. What, then, may we ask, is the role played by the creative visual language and non-documentary mediums amid the urgency of the climate crisis?” questions Baconsky.
The author goes on to elucidate how Long & Stent’s work dissolves the lines between the human and the natural, allowing us to see ourselves as part of (as opposed to separate from) our broader ecosystem: this being a vital first step it healing the man-inflicted wounds on the environment.
LONG & STENT FEATURED IN MGA'S BOWNESS POSTER PROJECT
Honey Long & Prue Stent's work Mineral Growth from the artists' recent exhibition, Touching Pool, is currently displayed on the corner of Tinning St and Sydney Road, Brunswick.
This year the MGA is creating more opportunities for audiences to get up close and personal with contemporary photography. A selection of ten Bowness Photography Prize finalists’ works are now reproduced as large format posters and can be spotted around inner city suburbs of Melbourne.
In partnership with Shout Out Loud these brilliant works can be seen on the streets until 7 January 2021!
ANNE ZAHALKA SOLO SHOW IN TASSIE
ANNE ZAHALKA has just opened Lost Landscapes – a solo show at Launceston’s Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery.
In this exhibition, Zahalka turns her lens towards QVMAG’s historic dioramas for the latest iteration of her series Wild Life: a project in which she unearths habitat displays from around Australia and re-imagines them to reflect contemporary concerns about the environment.
The popularity of dioramas has faded with the advancement of technology in museum displays. Today they are mostly lost or destroyed. This exhibition brings together QVMAG’s historic dioramas, restored as they were originally displayed, alongside Zahalka’s radial interpretations.
In an era of climate change awareness, this exhibition calls us to notice the drastic changes in the Tasmanian environment and our role in it’s degradation or preservation. Using digital manipulation to interrupt the idealistic and static landscapes depicted in the dioramas, Zahalka offers both apocalyptic and utopian visions of what our future could be.
Lost Landscapes continues at QVMAG until October 2021.
ANNE ZAHALKA IN 'KNOW MY NAME' AT NGA
ANNE ZAHLKA’s The Cleaner is part of ‘Know My Name’ at the NGA.
This work is part of Zahalka's Resemblance series – a group of photographs based on seventeenth- century Dutch genre paintings. In The Cleaner we see the black-and-white tiled floor associated with Vermeer, and a painting on the wall that references the earlier art historical period. But at the same time, the subject wears headphones around her neck.
The image functions as a formal, contemporary portrait of a real person, but in a pastiche style quoting a genre of painting that has been functionally redundant for centuries. As Martyn Jolly observed, Zahalka “stretches the assumptions underpinning our conventions of candid portraiture”.
Through quotation and reference, the artist allows the visual images of the past to enter our contemporary world and create new meanings for new audiences.
PAT BRASSINGTON AT WOLLONGONG ART GALLERY
PAT BRASSINGTON is featured in the exhibition Every Body, now showing at Wollongong Art Gallery.
This is an exhibition of works from the collection that explores narrative, mythological, historical and reflective depictions of the human body.
Three of Pat’s pink works from the early 2000’s are included. "It’s not my intention to feminise the image by using pink. It's 'nastier' than that. Pink smothers,” says the artist.
Every Body continues until July next year.
PAT BRASSINGTON & ANNE ZAHALKA IN NEW GEELONG GALLERY SHOW
PAT BRASSINGTON & ANNE ZAHALKA are featured in Geelong Gallery’s new exhibition Framing the Figure - contemporary photography and moving image works from the collection.
This exhibition explores artists’ use of the camera to capture their human subjects in both still and moving images. Through performative gestures, constructed narratives or a focus on specific body parts, these lens-based artists work closely with their subjects to compose the figure within the camera’s frame.
Framing the figure opens today and continues until 25 April 2021. Book a free, timed-entry ticket ahead of your visit!
Pat Brassington, Akimbo, 1999, pigment print, 72 x 52 cm
JULIE RRAP'S FULL SERIES 'PERSONA AND SHADOW' AT NGA
JULIE RRAP was interviewed by Brisbane Times about her series ‘Persona and Shadow’ which is now on show in ‘Know My Name’ at the NGA.
When Julie first showed ‘Persona and Shadow’ in 1984, two of the works were acquired my the NGA. Last year, the remaining seven were obtained so that the full suite may hang in ‘Know My Name’. “You think of the whole series as one set of work”, says Julie, “so it’s significant for me, and I think for the institution, to collect substantial bodies of work like that by women artists."
These works were made after Rrap returned from Europe having seen two major contemporary art exhibitions where only one female artist was represented amongst approximately 80 men. In the photographs, Rrap acts out imagery from paintings by Edvard Munch in an investigation of the stereotypical depiction of women in art and, more widely, in society.
Read the full interview with Julie here.
'Know My Name' (Part 1) continues until 4 July 2021.
JANET LAURENCE 'EARTH CANVAS' EXHIBITION OPEN
Earth Canvas, an exhibition featuring JANET LAURENCE, is now open at Albury City Library Museum.
This exhibition displays works by leading contemporary artists, developed in response to regenerative farming properties situated between the Murray and Murrumbidgee rivers in southern NSW.
Inspired by their immersive contact with both the farmer and the landscape, the artists reveal a mutual creativity, appreciation and understanding of the natural forces that sustain us.
Janet says of the work she has created for the project:
“My work has been evolving slowly, moving between a performative project held onsite at Yabtree West, and a series of exhibition works that trace the complex symbiotic processes that are being nurtured by Rebecca on the farm. The great trees along the river have taken root in my memory and remain the dominant theme throughout the work. These trees for me express hope and habitat.”
The exhibition was officially launched by Patrice Newell, Phillip Adams and Gill Sanbrook, together with the exhibition curator and some of the artists and farmers involved in the project. Watch the virtual launch here.
JANET LAURENCE: THE PALM AT THE END OF THE MIND installation view, The Johnston Collection, 2019.
Photograph by Adam Luttick
JANET LAURENCE EXHIBITION SHORTLISTED FOR MAGNA
Congratulations to JANET LAURENCE, whose exhibition JANET LAURENCE: THE PALM AT THE END OF THE MING (8 July - 17 September 2019) at The Johnson Collection has been shortlisted for the ‘Temporary or Travelling Exhibition’ category of the 2020 Museums and Galleries National Awards (MAGNA).
In the exhibition Janet explored The Johnston Collection alongside her own creative practices - collecting and saving, nature and the environment - within the context of Fairhall exhibition-house.
The title of the exhibition is drawn from the poem Of Mere Being by Wallace Stevens:
The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze decor,
A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.
You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.
The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird's fire-fangled feathers dangle down.
JANET LAURENCE EXHIBITING IN VIENNA
JANET LAURENCE is currently exhibiting in Vienna at Galerie Ernst Hilger alongside her friends and fellow artists Danie Mellor, Linde Ivimey and Tamara Dean.
This exhibition Terra Australis - a survey of contemporary art is a representation of contemporary art practice in Australia and marks the first time these artists have shown in Vienna.
Terra Australis continues at Galerie Ernst Hilger until 20 November.
Janet Laurence, Harvesting Dew, 2011, Duraclear on acrylic, mirror, earth and pigment in oil, 100 x 168 cm
JACKY REDGATE IN UOW EXHIBITION
JACKY REDGATE has two works currently showing at University of Wollongong in the exhibition Chrysalis, jointly curated by UOW Art Collection and The School of Arts, English and Media.
These works connect Redgate’s well-known interest in the mirror photographs of Florence Henri with her little-known interest in American photographer Dare Wright, author of the 1957 children’s book The Lonely Doll.
Chrysalis continues until 14 November.
See our available works in Sydney Contemporary for one of Jacky’s 2020 HOLD ON works exploring similar themes!
CHARLES GREEN LECTURE ON WAR ART
Take an educational lunch break today at 1pm to hear CHARLES GREEN give a one-hour lecture on the subject Afterstorm: postnational story-telling and Australia’s wars.
Charles Green is Professor of Contemporary Art at the University of Melbourne in the Art History department. He will speak today about the distinction between War Art and war art: War Art, which emerged during World War 1, is art officially commissioned to commemorate a nation’s experience of war, often nationalist and self-congratulatory but also often soul-searching, for better or worse. This is a sub-set of the vaster field of war art. Made across the globe, it takes the experience of war as its subject, mostly not commissioned and often scathing about the artists’ own nations, sometimes with humanitarian intentions.
And so the argument that war art, not War Art, really requires transnational — or postnational — story-telling.
This event is hosted by the Australian Centre at University of Melbourne and will take place via Zoom.
More info and registration HERE.
Lyndell Brown & Charles Green, Turkey’, 2018, watercolour on rag paper, 81 x 97 cm (framed)
JANET LAURENCE IN KATOOMBA EXHIBITION
JANET LAURENCE is participating in the exhibition critical mass: the art of planetary health at the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre, opening tomorrow.
Janet Laurence, The memory of nature, 2010, mixed media installation, 180.5 x 300 x 170.3 cm overall
This exhibition is part of a multi-disciplinary project that explores new and more sustainable practices relating to environmental living, inclusive of food, energy, and resource sharing within an Australian and local context.
The participating artists, social activists and traditional owners provide reflections on eco-anxiety, yet remain hopeful for the future state of the world, as they imagine better scenarios for our planet and future generations.
The exhibition continues until 6 December.
LONG & STENT FINALISTS IN FISHER'S GHOST
Honey Long & Prue Stent, Somatic Stalk, 2019, archival pigment print, 58 x 87 cm & Hydro, 2020, archival pigment print, 108 x 72 cm.
HONEY LONG & PRUE STENT are finalists in the Fisher’s Ghost Art Award with their pair of photographs Hydro and Somatic Stalk!
The Fisher’s Ghost Art Award is an annual art prize now in its 58th year which coincides with Campbelltown’s annual Festival of Fisher’s Ghost.
The exhibition will be held from Saturday 31 October - Friday 11 December 2020 at Campbelltown Arts Centre, with all finalists’ works available for purchase.
SYDNEY CONTEMPORARY GOES LIVE ONLINE
Sydney Contemporary is taking a different shape this year. From tomorrow, the art fair will be live online for the entire month of October!
ARC ONE Gallery will be featuring new works by PETER DAVERINGTON, MURRAY FREDERICKS, HONEY LONG & PRUE STENT, JACKY REDGATE and GUAN WEI.
This year’s art fair is free to browse! The SC Team have worked tirelessly to build a custom platform to connect artists & galleries with the arts community.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
VIP Preview: 1 October 10am
Public Viewing: 1 October 2pm
Visit the fair HERE!
