MURRAY FREDERICKS IN THE WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN

MURRAY FREDERICKS is featured in The Weekend Australian Magazine this week.

Speaking about Array 1, the final work in his award-winning, 16-year SALT Project, Murray says: "The shore disappears, the sky and water merge... there's nothing around, so you lose all reference points. And your mind just dissolves into the space."

"It felt like the crescendo at the end of a piece of classical music. After 16 years on this project I thought, that's the one to go out on."

Murray Fredericks has been drawn to Kati Thanda (Lake Eyre), South Australia, over the course of 16 years, creating dazzling abstract images that bear witness to the transcendent capacity of the natural world.

Read the full article here >

Murray Fredericks, Array 1, 2019, digital pigment print on cotton rag, 120 x 300 cm

ROBERT OWEN INTERVIEWED IN SPECTRUM

ROBERT OWEN is interviewed in The Age’s Spectrum today!

Ray Edgar speaks to Robert about some of his career highlights, including heading the sculpture department at RMIT, representing Australia at the Venice Biennale, and his recognisable architectural commissions such as the Webb Bridge at Docklands and the Craigieburn Bypass over the Hume. The two also discuss Robert's time as a ‘boho expat’ on the Greek island of Hydra in the 60s, his mentorship by Leonard Cohen and his study of Buddhism, alchemy and theoretical physics.

Edgar writes: “Witnessing a natural phenomenon in Hydra had a...profound impact: an eclipse of the sun creating a spectacular spectrum. Beguiled from that moment, Owen sought to recreate its numinous light. “I wanted the spectrum,” Owen declares. “that’s the colour I wanted to see. I was interested in this inner self, that’s the soul inside, that’s full of light”.

Edgar also looks into the breadth of the 70 works now showing in Owen’s retrospective at HEIDE and speaks to curator Sue Cramer.

Read article here >

ANNE ZAHALKA AT CHINA CULTURAL CENTRE

Anne Zahalka, Flocking Flamingos, 2018, pigment ink on canvas, 100x 150cm

ANNE ZAHALKA is featured in the new exhibition at the China Cultural Centre in Sydney. ‘AIR WATER LOVE’ is now open at CCC and will continue until 29 April.
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This is the second exhibition at CCC privileging a cross-cultural women’s perspective after the successful ‘WHOSE STORY IS THIS?…anyway!’ in 2020. In this exhibition eight women artists from China and Australia have a dialogue under the same theme, calling for a rethink of crucial environmental issues. Three keywords of water, air and love were selected to present the relationship between humanity and nature.
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‘AIR WATER LOVE’ highlights the true effects of global warming and climate change – showing the impacts, offering solutions, and telling real-life accounts, this exhibition is interactive and creative.
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More information >

DANI MARTI NEW WORKS IN DUSSELDORF

DANI MARTI is currently showing in in the exhibition FARBMATERIAL at the Galerie Lausberg in Dusseldorf.

This body of work, ‘Songs of Surrender’, was made in Barcelona in 2019, where Dani had these beautifully designed ropes custom-made. He uses the lines of rope to create pictorial and sculptural surfaces strung over powder coated aluminium frames, bringing the works into an “object dimension”.

FARBMATERIAL (Colour Material) will continue until 21 March.

You can watch Dani introduce the work here.

PAT BRASSINGTON & JACKY REDGATE IN BOWNESS ANNIVERSARY EXHIBITION

Pat Brassington, Shadow Boxer, pigment print, 72 x 50 cm

JACKY REDGATE & PAT BRASSINGTON have works on display at Smith & Singer on Collins Street for the next few weeks, as part of the MGA’s travelling exhibition Bowness Photography Prize Celebrates 15 Years.

In 2020 the Bowness Photography Prize marked its 15th year. To celebrate MGA has partnered with Smith & Singer to showcase the previous 15 recipients during the International Photo Festival. As the recipients of the 2011 and 2013 prizes respectively, Redgate and Brassington’s works are on view!

The Bowness Photography Prize has become an important survey of contemporary photographic practice and one of the most prestigious prizes in the country. The Prize reveals artists’ continued fascination with exploring and pushing the boundaries of the photographic medium, embracing its capacity to explore a diversity of voices and perspectives.

The exhibition will continue until 7 March.

More information >

ROBERT OWEN FEATURED IN ART COLLECTOR

Image: Art Collector Magazine issue 95.

ROBERT OWEN is featured in the latest issue of Art Collector Magazine.

Jacqueline Millner writes about the the artist's forthcoming survey exhibition at Heide Museum of Modern Art, 'Blue Over Time: Robert Owen - A Survey'.

'The Heide survey's title underlines the importance of the colour blue in Owen's practice, with its evocation of infinite space and the possibility of dimensions beyond those we currently know. In Owen's work, blue occupies that place between earthly and otherworldly realms, embodying the reverie and imagination that the artist hopes his art will also spark, along with the capacity to patch and heal what has been fractured. Owen inflects the materiality of colour, light and place through the beauty of mathematics, having some time ago observed that "geometry is a good way to find yourself through a crisis" (a sentiment all too pertinent today)', writes Millner.

'Blue Over Time: Robert Owen - A Survey, curated by Sue Cramer, shows at Heide Museum of Modern Art from 27 February to 23 May 2021.

EUGENIA RASKOPOULOS MONOGRAPH RECOGNISED IN PUBLISHING AWARDS

EUGENIA RASKOPOULOS’ artist monograph, co-published by The Power Institute and Formist, has been recognised with a Highly Commended in the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand’s 2020 Art Writing and Publishing Awards.

Eugenia Raskopoulos: Vestiges of the Tongue was highly commended in the 'Artist-led Publication' category.

The judges described the publication as: 

Eugenia Raskopoulos: Vestiges of the Tongue, 224 pages, 30 x 23 cm, hardcover, published by Formist (Sydney).

“...a fine book on the artistic practice of Eugenia Raskopoulos, whose family cultural background and experiences of multicultural Australia informs her interest on a range of issues including the feminine body, language, translation, cultural exchange, knowledge and power. Between sumptuous colour plates of images representative of an artistic practice that prompts critical reflection and response, a collection of engaging and insightful essays by curators and academics brings a scholarly rigour to this high quality publication that is to be commended for both its aesthetic and intellectual appeal."

Congratulations to the team!

Buy the book here >

JANET LAURENCE IN MUMA SHOW

Janet Laurence, Conversations with Trees (detail), 2020, duraclear prints and dibond mirror, 120 × 80 cm

JANET LAURENCE is featured in MUMA Monash exhibition Tree Story, opening tomorrow.

Tree Story brings together creative practices from around the world to create a ‘forest’ of ideas relating to critical environmental and sustainability issues. At its foundation—or roots—are Indigenous ways of knowing and a recognition of trees as our ancestors and family. An exhibition, publication and podcast series, Tree Story takes inspiration from the underground networks, information sharing and mutual support understood to exist within tree communities, and poses the question: what can we learn from trees and the importance of Country?

Janet’s exhibited artwork Conversations with Tree’, is based on work that she undertook for her solo exhibition in Taiwan last year. Images of the forest are printed on transparent duraclear and suspended in front of mirrors, recalling greenhouse windows or museum display cases—forms of mediation of nature.

Tree Story continues at Monash University Museum of Art until 10 April.

More information >

PAT BRASSINGTON'S 'NIGHT SWIMMING' EXHIBITION NOW OPEN

One of Australia’s most significant and influential artists, Pat Brassington, returns to ARC ONE with Night Swimming, a new body of work presented as part of the PHOTO 2021 International Festival of Photography. An opening reception will be held on Friday 19 February, 6-8pm.

Pat Brassington’s work uncovers how the endless possibilities of our deep and complex inner states — narratives of sex, memory and identity — run quietly rampant.

Influenced by surrealism, feminism and psychoanalysis, Brassington is known for her ability to combine the ordinary with the unusual, making her work provocatively ambiguous.

Pat Brassington, Footloose, 2019, pigment print, edition of 6, 75 x 75 cm

In Night Swimming, she employs photomontage to reveal the power of the mind to transform mundane objects and situations into sites/sights of sensuality, desire, horror or menace. Baulking prior to resolution, Brassington leaves her work open to interpretation; allowing the viewers’ visual mind to make its own associations. Digitally manipulated and evocatively juxtaposed, bodily fragments, inky tones, fetish objects and claustrophobic interiors are rendered abject or sublime, unsettling or seductive by the viewer; exposing our innermost predilections, hopes, biases and fears.

Typical of the artist’s work, these monochromatic images bring together a series of fragments which
create a strange and ambiguous world.

Pat Brassington, Precious, 2019, pigment print, edition of 6, 75 x 75 cm

The parts of the images – a fish slipping down a throat, a jarring clash of sharp fingernails, heads which twist into a strange darkness and feet that curl – are drawn from Brassington’s vast archive of visual material and are deeply personal. These disjointed compositions offer contradictions between the soft charcoal tones of the pigment print, the intimacy of the forms and the unsettling charge of the juxtapositions. Night Swimming rouses a sense of disquiet as the images subtly and humorously scratch at the underbelly of the human condition.

HONEY LONG & PRUE STENT IN 'PINK' EXHIBITION

Honey Long & Prue Stent, Venus Milk, 2015, archival pigment print, 106 x 159cm.

HONEY LONG & PRUE STENT are featured in Wyndham Art Gallery’s first show of 2021, ‘PINK’. 

Intended as a platform for dialogue, this exhibition explores where the combination of second wave feminism and neo-liberal feminism has brought women artists today. Covering a range of mediums and styles, the pieces present a variety of creative practices and approaches to feminist narratives, each using pink as an element to strengthen their work, not minimise it. 

‘PINK’ is a digital exhibition curated by Caroline Esbenshade. The online virtual tour will be available until 8 March.

More information >

Listen to Honey & Prue interviewed here >

Read the catalogue essay here >

ROBERT OWEN – A BOOK OF ENCOUNTERS

Introducing Robert Owen – A Book of Encounters – the first major monograph on one of Australia’s most eminent artists. Made in close collaboration with Owen and his studio, this extensive volume assumes at once poetic, critical, historical and biographical modes in its unpacking of six decades of the artist’s archives, offering a comprehensive insight into a figure who has stood at the forefront of contemporary art since the 1960s.

Robert Owen – A Book of Encounters is published to coincide with the survey exhibition Blue Over Time: Robert Owen – A Survey at Heide from February 27 to May 23, 2021.

The book not only examines Owen’s nomadic practice – spanning sculpture, painting, photography and installation – but traces through-lines from his early life in the regional Australian town of Wagga Wagga to Sydney, the Greek island of Hydra, London and Melbourne. In doing so, A Book of Encounters expands into Owen’s wider interests in philosophy, psychology, science, mathematics, music and literature.

The book features essays and texts from some of Australia’s leading writers, curators and artists, including Carolyn Barnes, Sue Cramer, Victoria Lynn, Pippa Milne, Robert Nelson, Alex Selenitsch, Mike Parr, Leslie and Miriam Stein, and Angela Connor.

Published by Perimeter Books and designed by Public Office, the book is available for pre-order here!

Images: ‘Robert Owen - A Book of Encounters’, designed by Stuart Geddes, Paul Mylecharane and Kim Mumm Hansen of public.office. 400 pages, 23.7 x 16.9 cm, leather softcover with OTA bind, Perimeter Editions (Melbourne).

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