Cyrus Tang, 4505.00s, 2016, archival giclee print, 100 x 100cm.
SAM SHMITH and CYRUS TANG have been selected as finalists in the 2016 MAMA Art Foundation National Photography Prize. The Prize tackles the themes of Narrative, Object, Landscape, Portrait, Documentary and Construct.
The National Photography Prize finalists can be viewed at the Murray Art Museum Albury from 21 May - 27 August 2016.
GUAN WEI features in a group exhibition, We Are Here, at the Glen Eira City Council Gallery. Organised by The Contemporary Collective, and curated by Dr Helen Light, the exhibition honours post-war refugees who journeyed across the globe in order to establish new lives and families.
The exhibition continues through 29 May 2016.
Guan Wei, Up in the Clouds No.5, 2012, bronze sculpture, 52 x 32 x 24cm.
JANET LAURENCE will be participating in VIDEO FOREVER at the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature in Paris on May 4th at 7:30pm. VIDEO FOREVER is a monthly projection organised by Analix Forever Gallery where artists, experts and other galleries meet and discuss around a certain theme. JANET LAURENCE's Deep Breathing and Fleurio will be part of May's showcase titled Ocean, which reflects on how artists use the body of water as a representation of "space - time".
For more information, please click here.
Janet Laurence, Deep Breathing, 2015, Installation, Paris.
Geoffrey Edwards, former Director of Victoria’s Geelong Gallery, details a stunning painting by PETER DAVERINGTON in a recent article in The Australian.
Welcome to the Pleasure Dome-A Homage to Bierstadt and Death of a Frontier is part of the Geelong Gallery collection and is currently on display at the gallery.
Click here to read the article.
Peter Daverington, Welcome to the Pleasure Dome-A Homage to Bierstadt and Death of a Frontier, 2009, oil and enamel on canvas, 183 x 154cm.
Guan Wei, Boatman No.1, 2005, acrylic on canvas, 137 x 162cm.
Chinese artist GUAN WEI will be exhibited in a group show, curated by Francis E. Parker, at the Monash Univeristy Museum of Art.
Borders, Barriers, Walls features 25 artworks from both Australian and international artists. Many of the works in the show address the subsequent shift in geopolitics and political unrest that has resulted in the displacement of peoples and the dramatic increase of refugees world-wide.
The exhibition continues 30 April - 2 July 2016.
TRANSFORMER
Lyndell Brown Charles Green, El Dorado (Detail), 2015, Oil on linen, 175 x 240 cm
ARC ONE Gallery is delighted to present Transformer, a major new exhibition by one of Australia’s foremost artist collaborations, Lyndell Brown & Charles Green. An opening reception will be held on Thursday 14 April, 6-8pm.
Brown and Green’s extensive practice has long been informed by currents of the past, whether (art) historical, cultural or geo-political. Their latest exhibition of large-scale paintings - alluringly titled Transformer – emerges from the intersection of the hippie, countercultural movement of the 1970s with their established visual language of cultural ‘mapping’ across continents and centuries.
The paintings in Transformer show contemporary and historical images mapped together like pictures of the subconscious, with overlaid, blurred, juxtaposed and exquisitely-rendered Tibetan, Nepalese and Australian landscapes. Transformer traces a genealogy in which, first, the pair’s autobiography and, second, their cry against the environmental catastrophe of climate change and ecological loss, is interwoven with 19th century yogis, Earth art, performances and the Beat Generation’s founding father, William S. Burroughs, all encountered in the form of newspaper fragments, found images, the authors’ own photographs and archival documents. The shapeshifting across themes is achieved through a meticulously painted trompe l’oeil. We are presented with clusters of information in constant flux, encouraging a navigational experience that is simultaneously thrilling and disorienting. This exhilaration was encapsulated in Swedish daily newspaper, Goteborgs Posten, which wrote that Brown and Green “are stupendously skilful painters … they pitch our modern society against ancient tradition and knowledge … Their art is difficult to grasp but exciting to experience.”
In Transformer, Brown and Green – themselves remarkable foragers, transformers and conduits of knowledge – draw on the capacity of painting to create new resonances between images and meanings. Transformer’s maps of the mind resemble night skies, with ideas forming, fading and finally resolving into their own and also each viewer’s histories.
Pat Brassington, Untitled VI, 1980-2002, inkjet print, 36.5 x 23.5cm.
PAT BRASSINGTON is included in the major group exhibition Public Image, Private Lives: Family, Friends and Self Photography at the Art Gallery of South Australia.
This exhibition highlights the often close connections between the photographer and subject, whether they be friends, family members or the photographers themselves.
It continues through 3 July 2013.
IMANTS TILLERS is included in the major exhibition of Aboriginal and Oceanic art Taba Naba - Australia, Oceania, Arts by People of the Sea at the Musée Océanographique de Monaco.
Tillers' work is included within the exhibition, Living Waters, which features the works of Australian contemporary artists invited to illustrate the intercultural themes of the exhibition and their relationship to water.
The international exhibition continues through 24 March - 30 September 2016.
Image: Imants Tillers, The Porous Vessel, 2015, acrylic, gouache on 54 canvas boards, 228 x 212cm.
Dani Marti, Black Sun, installation view, Fremantle Art Centre. Photo: Rhianna Nelson
Gemma Weston has written a fantastic review of DANI MARTI's exhibition Black Sun, for Artlink. The text analyses the show, acknowledging the honesty and sensitivity innate to Marti's works.
Black Sun was on display at the Fremantle Arts Centre, for the 2016 Perth International Arts Festival, from 7 February to 28 March.
To read the full review click here.
Congratulations to PAT BRASSINGTON, Winner of the 2016 Redlands Konica Minolta Art Prize!
Her spectacular work Pair Bonding challenges the audience's senses and undermines the authority of photography. One of Australia's most prestigious awards, the Redlands Konica Minolta Art Prize is celebrating its 20th Anniversary and is being presented in partnership with the National Art School, Sydney. Brassington's winning work, along with the other finalists, can be seen at the NAS Gallery until 14 May 2016.
Don't miss Pat Brassington's latest solo exhibition Just So, also currently on view at ARC ONE Gallery until 9 April.
For more information on Pat Brassington, click here.
PAT BRASSINGTON, Pair Bonding, 2015, pigment print, 78 x 59 cm.
PETER DAVERINGTON's work will feature in Divine Abstraction, the inaugural show at Justin Art House Museum in Prahan, Victoria.
Curated by Rachael Kohn, presenter and producer of ‘The Spirit of Things’ on ABC Radio National, the exhibition explores how ‘abstract art’, using examples drawn from the Justin Collection, can represent the various manifestations of the ‘abstract divine’.
Divine Abstraction will run March - May, 2016.
Peter Daverington, An Imbricated Universe, 2006, oil and enamel on linen, 122 x 153cm.
ANNE SCOTT WILSON has been selected to participate in the inaugural show for Melbourne Central Art Loop. Curated by Andy Dinan of MARS Gallery, this will be Australia's largest installation of video art on display outside of an institution.
Watch the exhibition trailer here.
ANNE ZAHALKA has been listed, by Blouin Artinfo, as one of the 10 photographers not to miss at Dubai Photo Exhibition 2016. Zahalka's inclusion in the international exhibition features four spectacular works from her 1987 series 'Resemblance'.
Dubai Photo Exhibition continues from 16 - 19 March 2016.
You can read the article here.
Anne Zahalka, The Cook (Michael Schmidt/architect, cook), 1987, cibachrome photograph, 80 x 80cm.
JUST SO
One of Australia’s most highly respected and preeminent artists, Pat Brassington, returns to Melbourne with a new solo exhibition, Just So. The show continues from 8 March - 9 April 2016 at ARC ONE Gallery.
Working predominantly in photo-media, Pat Brassington is recognised as a leading exponent of Australian contemporary art. She has developed a singular practice that draws on ideas from psychoanalysis, feminism and Surrealism, consistently producing visually- and psychologically-intriguing work and enticing critics, curators and the public alike.
For this exhibition Brassington takes her title from Rudyard Kipling’s famed Just So Stories, a collection of short and highly-fantasised tales on the origins of animal phenomena. Trading wildlife for humans, Brassington describes her images as ‘fanciful depictions of human biological traits and behaviours that … feel to be just so’.1Her visual fallacies unite the strange with the familiar, creating – in a distinctively Brassington fashion – an ambiguity that causes our interpretations to falter.
Among the fifteen new works exhibited, images and motifs observed throughout the artist’s oeuvre resurface and present freshly precarious insinuations; tongues poke and mouths gape, a lonely fish stagnates in an indeterminate hollow, and a crimson pearl balances delicately at the apex of feminine thighs. In Just So, as with much of Brassington’s work, there is a persistent sense of the uncanny, the dream-like and downright unknown that permeates her often beguiling and at times disquieting imagery. Reds and fleshy tones quietly pulsate within an otherwise monochromatic palette – like blood through veins – and signal danger and pleasure in equal measure.
But there is also beauty and a decidedly wry humour to be found. On closer inspection of Pearl, subtle tufts of pubic hair peep out from behind their shiny shield, revealing the artist’s penchant for cheek. In Home and Away, Brassington explores the relationships we have with loved ones and the effects of distance in a compositionally-striking diptych of an incoming airplane mirrored with the outstretched arms of a pre-Raphaelite nude. It is at once arresting and moving
Just So offers a fresh round of musings from a brilliant artist’s mind. Provocative, luring and mysterious, Brassington might be taunting or charming us – at times it’s impossible to know.
"Fredericks and Schutzinger have done a wonderful job of creating an affecting and atmospheric piece that quite literally resonates with history's voices."
The March/April 2016 issue of ArtGuide features Dylan Rainforth's review of MURRAY FREDERICKS and Tom Schutzinger's Inside the Dome (DYE2) exhibition.
Read the entire review here.
Murray Fredericks and Tom Schutzinger, installation view. Photograph by Reg Ryan.
Anne Zahalka, Newtown, where you can be yourself, 2009, Type C print, 119 x 84cm.
ANNE ZAHALKA is the first artist to exhibit at the contemporary public art space, Newtown ArtSeat, for 2016. The photographic work, from her Homeground! series, is based on original pub paintings from the 1930s that idealised Australian sport and leisure.
Zahalka’s installation continues through to 31 March 2016.
Congratulations to PAT BRASSINGTON on the recent acquisition of The Branching (2015) by the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Pat Brassington, The Branching, 2015, pigment prints, diptych, 94 x 130 each
Jacky Redgate, Miss Pears’ Contest Photographs March 1959, 2015 (detail). Image courtesy of Doris Redgate.
JACKY REDGATE: MIRRORS, a new monograph on one of Australia's leading contemporary artists, launches this week. This first monograph on the artist in over a decade takes readers through a series of carefully orchestrated reversals, smoke and mirrors to throw new light on contemporary artistic practice.
Jacky Redgate: Mirrors is co-published by Power Publications with the University Art Gallery, The University of Sydney, in partnership with the University of Wollongong.
Dani Marti, Black Sun, installation view, 2016.
DANI MARTI's solo exhibition at the Fremantle Arts Centre is an opportunity to see the work of one of Australia’s most challenging and exciting contemporary artists. The exhibition continues through to 28 March 2016.
You can read a fantastic review of Black Sun from the Sydney Morning Herald here.
Artist Profile also wrote about the exhibition here.
See also Leigh Hill's interview with MARTI for OUTinPerth here.
JANET LAURENCE is featured in Sanctuary, now showing at the Glen Eira City Council Gallery from 4 March - 10 April 2016. Curated by Diane Soumilas, this exhibition addresses the notion of the garden as a sanctuary or site for reflection, contemplation and healing in contemporary culture.
Janet Laurence, What Could a Garden Be (video still), 2015, Camera Sophie Austergren, editing LIndi Harrison, 7'36"