DANI MARTI has a solo exhibition at the University Gallery at the University of Newcastle entitled Still life in yellow, steel and mandarins. The aromatic installation explores the physical, psychological and emotional boundaries around intimacy, sexuality, relationships and the role of the artist.
This exhibition will continue through to 12 November 2016.
Find out more here.
Dani Marti, Still life in yellow, steel and mandarins (installation view), 2016, mixed media.
"What drew me to art in the first place was this way of communicating through the creation of something; an object that can resist speech and that can be powerfully silent."
Art Almanac interviewed JUSTINE KHAMARA about her recent exhibition at ARC ONE Gallery, Stratum.
Justine Khamara, Stratum (installation view), ARC ONE Gallery.
A new exhibition at Glen Eira City Council Gallery, A Collecting Vision: Ten Cubed, will feature eight works by PAT BRASSINGTON. The exhibition features key works by mid-career and established Australian and international artists from the Ten Cubed Collection, offering an insight into the evolution of this significant and diverse collection of contemporary art. Now in its sixth year of operation as a private art collection open to the public, Ten Cubed continues its objective to acquire and promote the work of 10 outstanding contemporary artists over a 10 year period, with a recent commitment to collect an additional 10 artists.
A Collecting Vision: Ten Cubed will run from 7 to 30 October 2016.
Pat Brassington, The Flight of the Duchess, 2013, pigment print, 83 x 120 cm.
OPENING WEDNESDAY 5 OCT 2016, 6-8 PM
Salvation No.3, 2015, bronze sculpture, 45 x 28 x 24 cm
Highly respected Chinese-Australian artist Guan Wei returns to Melbourne this October with a new exhibition of paintings and sculptures, titled Salvation. An opening reception will be held on Wednesday 5 October, 6-8pm.
Guan Wei’s latest exhibition at ARC ONE Gallery presents two series of work: Body, a suite of expressive paintings laden with spiritual and philosophical meaning, and Salvation, sleek and playful bronze sculptures depicting little human figures tethered to the Buddha’s head.
In Body, Guan Wei examines the relationship between the physical and psychological through an integration of symbols and the human form. Using Chinese calligraphy and sketching, he renders religious motifs into simple, graffiti-like images. Enchanting creatures, people, angels and little elves perch, float and tumble across the bodies of his canvases, pointing to the various spiritual and subconscious experiences that allow us to transcend the stresses and banality of quotidian life.
Such themes are similarly explored in Guan Wei’s sculptures, which bring together the tranquil Buddha with the lively human in a gentle equilibrium inspired by the Buddhist teachings of Zen. According to Guan Wei:
“Each of us wishes to be good, and has an inmate yearning for happiness. But amongst a busy, bustling world and our stressful, uncertain and secular lives, we have lost ourselves. Salvation is to present a happy life of Zen. A spirit which believes in people’s inherent tranquility and goodness, Zen requires a person’s heart to be free and to discover their true self – ultimately leading to a life of wisdom and happiness.”
With his consummate ability to create work at once light in tone and profound in message, Guan Wei finds a higher order of expression in these beautifully produced paintings and sculptures. Interlaced with the artist’s emblematic clouds, the works in this exhibition are powerfully drawn together through a material and metaphysical exploration of human life.
Guan Wei was born 1957, Beijing, China, and lives and works in Beijing and Sydney. He has won many awards, including the 2015 Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize, Bendigo Art Gallery, 2002 Sulman Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales, and was selected for the prestigious 2009 Clemenger Contemporary Art Award, National Gallery of Victoria. Solo exhibitions include: Archaeology, ARC ONE Gallery, 2014; Spellbound, He Xiang Ning Art Museum, OCT Contemporary Art Terminal, Shenzhen, China, 2011; The Enchantment, ARC ONE Gallery, 2012; Other histories: Guan Wei’s fable for a contemporary world, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, 2006–07; Looking, Greene St Studio, New York, 2003; Zen Garden, Sherman Contemporary, Sydney, 2000; and Nesting, or the Art of Idleness 1989–1999, MCA, Sydney, 1999.
Major group exhibitions include: Borders, Barriers, Walls, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne; Collaborative Witness: Artists responding to the plight of the refugee, University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane, 2011; Shanghai Biennial, Shanghai Museum, China, 2010; 10th Havana Biennial, Cuba, 2009; The China Project, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 2009; Handle with Care, Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Adelaide, 2008; Face Up: Contemporary Art from Australia, Hamburger Bahnhof Museum, Berlin, 2003–04; Sulman Prize Exhibition, Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney, 2002; Osaka Triennial, Japan, 2001; Man and Space, Kwangju Biennale, South Korea, 2000; Third Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 1999. Key collections include: Art Gallery of New South Wales; Art Gallery of South Australia; Art Bank, BHP Billiton Collection; Contemporary Art and Culture Centre, Osaka, Japan; Deutsche Bank; Ian Potter Museum, Melbourne; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; and Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China.
A fantastic review of Troubled Waters, including work by JANET LAURENCE, has been published by Artlink. Troubled Waters is a suite of interdisciplinary exhibitions and projects that consider the impact of human activity and climate change on natural and marine environments, currently on view at the UNSW Galleries until 5 November.
Ann Finegan describes Laurence's work:
"Janet Laurence’s multimedia installation was the most compelling. Her trademark glass vessels, filled with drinking water, sat like flasks on a riverbank over a flowing river of semi-transparent white fabric onto which were projected the ghostly swimming skeletons of tiny fish and micro organisms. This highlighted the disconnect between town and country, between the life-supporting water of fragile inland river systems and, a world away, the sterile product of filtered city water from plentiful coastal dams."
Janet Laurence and Andrew Belletty, River Journey, 2016, multimedia installation based on the audio and visual research archive of Professor Richard Kingsford. Installation view, UNSW Galleries, Sydney. Photo: silversalt
NIKE SAVVAS is one of six distinguished artists exhibiting in Quicksilver: 25 Years of Samstag Scholarships. The exhibition celebrates the 25th anniversary of Gordon Samstag’s bequest, which led to establishment of the Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarships, and will showcase pivotal work by the participating artists. New work by Nike Savvas will be on view in the show.
Quicksilver will be on view from 14 October to 9 December 2016.
A review by Tessa Laird of the TarraWarra Biennial 2016 exhibition Endless Circulation, at the TarraWarra Museum of Art, appears as a key feature on Art Agenda.
EUGENIA RASKOPOULOS's video works within the show are described within the review:
Eugenia Raskoupolous’ Rootreroot (2016) figures a north/south divide. Above, an olive branch sweeps a perfect clockwise circle into soil; below, the same arm sweeps a native Australian wattle branch counter-clockwise. The aerial perspectives (shot with drones) turn the hermetically sealed loops into an infinity symbol.
The exhibition continues through to 6 November 2016.
Read the entire review here.
JANET LAURENCE and MARIA FERNANDA CARDOSO will be participating in the upcoming Cuenca Biennale in Ecuador, Frágil. Laurence and Cardoso are two of the four Australian artists who have been selected to represent Australia. The Cuenca Bienal is one of Latin America's longest-standing and most established Biennials and 2016 is the first year Australian artists have been invited to participate.
The exhibition will run from 22 October to 31 December 2016.
Read the Art Almanace review here.
Image: Janet Laurence in the studio. Photograph: Fabian Jensch.
JANET LAURENCE has been invited to participate in The 56th October Salon, The Pleasure of Love, at the Belgrade City Museum and Cultural Center of Belgrade, Serbia, curated by David Elliot (UK).
This October Salon will pay homage to the history of the Salon - specifically the 'anti-establishment' Autumn Salon of Paris in 1903 - and show the work of approximately 60 emerging and established artists from Serbia, the Balkan region and around the world. The Salon will concentrate on what role emotion plays in contemporary art and how it may be framed in ways that are neither banal nor kitsch.
The Pleasure of Love, 56th October Salon will take place from 23 September until 6 November 2016.
More information >
View Janet Laurence's work >
Press Release >
Guan Wei, Meditation, 1986, acrylic on canvas, 133 x 50cm.
GUAN WEI is exhibiting several works in the group exhibition The Eye of the Collector in the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Strasbourg, France.
For The Collectors Eye: Nine Personal Collections in Strasbourg, nine collectors have agreed to make accessible to the public some of the works they have gathered over the years and treasured in the privacy of their homes.
The exhibition opens 17 September 2016 and continues through to 26 March 2017.
The University Gallery, the University of Newcastle, is showing a solo exhibition by DANI MARTI titled Still Life in Yellow, Steel and Mandarins. The exhibition continues Marti's exploration of the physical, psychological and emotional boundaries around intimacy, sexuality, relationships and the role of the artist.
Well-known for creating challenging portraits that delve beyond the surface of human experience, Dani Marti uses unconventional processes and materials to capture the essence of his subject and emotional estates. In this exhibition, he presents a series of 'still-life' installations that read like portraits of life.
The exhibition runs from 5 October to 12 November 2016.
Dani Marti, Notes for Bob, 2:1, 5k video projection 20'41", funded by the australia council.
Left: Eugenia Raskopoulos, Rootreroot, 2016, HD digital video, single channel, colour, stereo, 8:45 min. Right: Eugenia Raskopoulos, Routereroute, 2016, murano glass neon, dimensions variable.
EUGENIA RASKOPOULOS's work is currently on view in the TarraWarra Biennial 2016: Endless Circulation, curated by Victoria Lynn and Helen Hughes.
"Eugenia Raskoupolous has created two new works for this exhibition, a video entitled Rootreroot and a neon work entitled Routereroute. In the video we see a woman dragging an olive tree in a clockwise direction in the upper section, and in the lower section the same woman dragging a wattle tree in an anticlockwise direction. The struggle and the labour involved in the gestures are evident in the image, as we follow her slow but determined trajectory around each endless loop. Shot from above using drones, the two circles intertwine at one point, with the shadow of each figure dissolving into the other. At this fleeting intersection, we glimpse a moment of completeness.
In Routereroute, two red neon signs spell out the title of the work, one in Greek (in reference to the artist’s Greek heritage and first language) and one in English. The letters of the Greek words form a larger circle than the English, as if to emphasise the gaps of translation. The emphasis is, rather, on the route, direction or road travelled. Translation never really meets its destination; it is in continuous and endless circulation." - Victoria Lynn
PETER DAVERINGTON is a Finalist in the 2016 John Leslie Art Prize at the Gippsland Art Gallery. According to Curator Simon Greeg, his shortlisted work, The Floating Terraces of Philistinia, "continues the plot to derail common sense. We discover a monochrome world densely populated with floating checkerboard planes, connected by hovering steps. Such fractured, 'world' landscapes were popularised by Dutch artists in the sixteenth century, and while Daverington similarly employs multiple narratives through a steeply raked panorama, he does so only to hold a mirror to the absurdity of our 'real' world."
Peter Daverington, The Floating Terraces of Phillistinia, 2016, oil on canvas, 158 x 122cm.
Imants Tillers, Once upon a time, 2009, synthetic polymer paint, gouache on 90 canvas boards, 229 x 356 cm.
An impressive IMANTS TILLERS work is currently on view in the Art Gallery of NSW entrance court. Signs and symbols to live by is a curated exhibition in which the artists respond to the question of whether art could still offer signs and symbols to live by in the 20th Century.
The exhibition is on view at the AGNSW through to 2017. More information >
Congratulations to CYRUS TANG who has been awarded the Highly Commended Award in the 2016 Sunshine Coast Prize! Judge Jane Deeth described Cyrus's photographic work, 7403.00s, as a delicately alluring conceptual piece:
"This piece enacts events that are befalling our contemporary world – flood, tsunami and the destruction of war ... The work is subtle, capturing time and encouraging close scrutiny, its immediate impact belying this devastation." - Read the press review here.
The Sunshine Coast Art Prize exhibition is on display at the Caloundra Regional Gallery in Caloundra, QLD through to Sunday 2 October 2016.
Cyrus Tang, 7403.00s, 2016, archival giclee print, 90 x 90cm.
Prudence Gibson has written a fantastic review of JANET LAURENCE's Deep Breathing: Resuscitation for the Reef at the Australian Museum. In this installation, Gibson writes, Janet Laurence "reminds us of the gift of life and to be more aware of how we live and function on the planet."
To read the full article click here >
Janet Laurence, Deep Breathing: Resuscitation for the Reef, Australian Museum, installation view.
ANNE SCOTT WILSON is taking part in a pop-up exhibition titled Threshold, at the Carlton Hotel, fourth floor, 193 Bourke Street Melbourne.
Threshold opens 31 August as part of the Deakin @ Carlton Festival. A diverse group of art practices will represent a kind of threshold where free association will be encouraged.
Rooms will be occupied by artist’s work created through live performance in response to site, visual art, photography, performance inspired installation.
The exhibition runs till Saturday 3 September.
JANET LAURENCE is featured in Auftrag Landschaft / (com)mission Landscape, on view from 9 September 2016 to 2 April 2017, at the Schloss Biesdorf in Berlin. On 9 September Schloss Biesdorf will celebrate its re-opening as a recently restored cultural heritage site and new major destination for art and public space in the eastern part of Berlin.
The exhibition looks at humans' relationship to landscape and questions its role in artistic production, while deliberately touching on the conflict and ambivalent reputation of commissioned art. Nine contemporary artists, who developed (commissioned) projects for the upcoming International Garden Exhibition (IGA) taking place in Berlin in 2017, have been curated into the show: Erik Göngrich, Jeppe Hein, Martin Kaltwasser, Janet Laurence, Seraphina Lenz, Anna Rispoli, Michael Sailstorfer, Jeanne van Heeswijk and the studio for landscape architecture, Atelier le Balto. Their projects reflect their way of looking at and working with different aspects of landscape.
Lydia Wegner, Yellow Cut, 2016, light jet print, painted frame, 46 x 32 cm.
LYDIA WEGNER's work is currently included in a group show, Genteel Notions, at LON Gallery, Collingwood. The exhibition builds upon the gallery’s established structure of showing a mix of conceptually curated exhibitions as well as shows that favour process and intuition as a framework for curating. Genteel Notions brings together a group of emerging and established photgraphers.
JANET LAURENCE is featured in Your Collection: Off the Wall at the Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery. The exhibition celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Gallery's sculpture park. The exhibition includes drawings, photographs and other archival documentation that provide an insight into the history and development of the park and a window into the working processes of the artists.
An official celebration will take place on saturday 21 August with performances and talks from 11:30am to 3:30pm.
The exhibition is open until 25 September.
For more information please click here.