JANET LAURENCE

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

Exciting news from JANET LAURENCE this year! First, she will be part of IGA 2017 in Berlin from 13 April to 15th of October. IGA is a festival that celebrates garden design and green lifestyles in the city. LAURENCE will be presenting Inside the Flower, an experiential medicine garden that works as a living Wunderkammer, which immerses the viewer into the historical, spiritual and mythological relationship with psychotropic plants.

LAURENCE will also be showing her work in Force of Nature II, an exhibition curated by James Putman that examines the way contemporary artists have been inspired not only by nature but also its processes - evolution, birth, growth, ageing, decay, change. The show can be seen first in London from 8th of March to 9th of April at The Mile End Art Pavillion, and then it will travel to Italy to be part of the Venice Biennale from May to Nov 2017.

She will also be participating in a six-week residency at the Hanse-wissenschaftskolleg (HWK), in Delmenhorst Germany between May and June of this year. Also in Germany, LAURENCE will be participating in an exhibition called Nautilus at the Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte in Oldenburg in June and July.

Her work will also be seen in Copenhagen at the Kunsthalle Rønnebæksholm as part of Moving Plants, an exhibition which seeks to explore the entanglements of nature, culture, and history through artistic practices focusing on plants.

JANET LAURENCE has also recently presented Habitat, a new sound work in Darling Harbour, Sydney. In this work, she has taken bird calls to extend and conveyed them into a song. Sydney will also have its last chance to see Deep Breathing at the Australian Museum in February since it will begin to tour nationally later this year.

Troubled Waters, the exhibition presented at the UNSW Galleries last year, will be seen at the Samstag Museum of Art in March.

In Brisbane, join JANET LAURENCE for a discussion on her practice and work, Natural History (Landscape and Residues Series), which features in the exhibition GLASS: art design architecture at the QUT Art Museum on the 18th of February. 

JANET LAURENCE

The Australian Tapestry Workshop is working with JANET LAURENCE on a new tapestry commission, Listen, to the Sound of Plants. The original artwork is comprised of images from Laurence's extensive archive of images of plants. 

In Listen, to the Sound of Plants, the weavers are aiming to capture the layers and use of transparencies and glass that are the hallmarks of Laurence's work. 

Find out more here.

GUAN WEI & CYRUS TANG

CYRUS TANG and GUAN WEI will have work in the group exhibition Closing the Distance, curated by Sophia Cai, at Bundoora Homestead Art Centre.

The exhibition brings together twelve Australian and international artists to explore contemporary issues of migration, place and the Chinese diaspora within Australia and beyond. 

Exhibition dates are 11 February to 30 April 2017. 

Guan Wei, Land of the Dreaming No. 5, 2014, ceramic, 41 x 30cm. 

GUAN WEI

Virgin Australia Voyeur, December 2016, No. 185, p 109.

Guan Wei is featured in the latest issue of Virgin Australia's in-flight magazine Voyeur.

The magazine asked four influential creatives to talk about the destinations that have shaped their work. GUAN WEI's destination of choice was Coastal Australia. 

"My work often looks at land borders and themes of migration, so I have found three elements of the Australian landscape — the sea, beach and islands — very meaningful. I'm drawn to the power of the Australian landscape and its borders in ancient terms as well as in terms of Indigenous and contemporary issues. There's an extraordinary paradox between freedom and closed borders." 

You can download issue No.185, featuring the article here. 

SUMMER CLOSURE

Dani Marti, DOT (Lime green - take 1) [detail], 2016, corner cube reflectors and glass beads on galvanised steel frame, 60 x 60 x 15 cm.

The Gallery will be closed from 18 December 2016 and will reopen on 24 January 2017.

Our current exhibition In the White Square will continue until 4 February, followed by Guo Jian's The Encroachment, 7 February - 11 March 2017.

Thank you to all our friends and supporters for a wonderful year. We wish you a very bright, safe and fun-filled festive season.

ROBERT OWEN

ROBERT OWEN APPOINTED CURATORIAL ADVISOR FOR UNIVERSITY SQUARE

PUBLIC ART MELBOURNE

Congratulations to Robert Owen who has been appointed to lead the City of Melbourne's reimagining of University Square in Carlton.

Following a national open call, Owen was appointed as the Public Art Curatorial Adviser for the $8.8 million redevelopment, which commences in 2017. His creative vision for the project references the site’s rich and diverse associations, the process of change and the transformative journey of education.

More information >

View Robert Owen's Public Art Projects >

Webb Bridge, 2003. Artist: Robert Owen, in collaboration with architects Denton Corker Marshall Pty Ltd. For the Docklands Authority, Melbourne, Australia, Photography: John Gollings.

PETER DAVERINGTON

Peter Daverington, Arcadia (still), 2012, high definition single channel blue-ray video, 9mins.

PETER DAVERINGTON is presenting a solo exhibition at the Minhang Mass Art Centre in Shanghai. 

Before the Apocalypse opens 7 December 2017. 

IN THE WHITE SQUARE

Robert Owen, Pink & Grey Wall, 1978, drymounted inkjet print, 72 x 47 cm.

ARC ONE Gallery is delighted to present In the White Square, a group exhibition exploring themes of new abstraction curated by Laura Lantieri. An opening reception will be held on Saturday 10 December, 4-6pm. 

Showcasing the work of five Australian contemporary artists well-known for their use of abstraction as a primary visual language, In the White Square features Robert Owen, Jacky Redgate and Lydia Wegner, alongside invited artists Caleb Shea and Gemma Smith. Across a dynamic mix of sculpture and photo- based media, the artists in this exhibition are drawn together by a shared emphasis on formal concerns such as colour, form, space, light, optics and geometry. 

The exhibition draws its title from two of the 20th century’s great pioneers of abstract art – Vasily Kandinsky’s In the Black Square (1923), and Kasimir Malevich’s White on White (1918) – while referring obliquely to the ‘white cube’ exhibition space that came to rise in the last century. Situated in the formerly industrial, oblong ‘white cube’ of ARC ONE Gallery, In the White Square also considers the ways in which these artists employ abstraction in the context of a broader historical trajectory.

Variously touching on constructivism, minimalism, and hard-edge painting among other influences, the works blend a pared minimal aesthetic with a more idiosyncratic and playful touch. They invite the viewer to decipher lines, contours, surface textures and reflections in an almost puzzle-solving process, while blocks of colour activate spaces and pulse, oscillating between real and inferred depths of field. Challenging our understanding of what we see and what we know through an eye-popping agenda of geometry, colour and form, the artists of In the White Square collectively interrogate the very act of viewing. 

Please note ARC ONE Gallery will be closed from 18 December 2016 and reopen 24 January 2017.

Gemma Smith is represented by Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney, & Milani Gallery, Brisbane. 

PAT BRASSINGTON

The Art Gallery of New South Wales recently announced their 2017 program. This includes a major exhibition showcasing the work of PAT BRASSINGTON. 

Australian photo-media artist Pat Brassington has an incisive ability to infuse the familiar with the fantastic. Her work explores the domestic uncanny, psychoanalysis and bodily distortion, using a surrealist aesthetic charged with a feminist edge.

This exhibition from the Gallery’s collection traces her interest in the body as a fluid and flexible form. Featuring work from the 1990s alongside more recent work, it considers the haunting presence of the body in Brassington’s photographs and her particular use of visceral and allegorical imagery.

The exhibition, the body electric, will run from 19 August 2017 – 11 February 2018. 

Find out more here. 

Pat Brassington, Candie, 2013, pigment print, 60 x 44cm. 

MARIA FERNANDA CARDOSO

Maria Fernanda Cardoso, Stick Insect's Most Intimate Moments, 2008-2011, single channel HD video, colour, 37min. 

MARIA FERNANDA CARDOSO will be exhibiting her video work Stick Insect's Most Intimate Moments during Art Basel Miami. 

Art Basel runs from 1 - 4 December 2016. 

Watch the video here. 

MARIA FERNANDA CARDOSO

We are pleased to announce that MARIA FERNANDA CARDOSO has been included in the book L’ABC…Z des Héroïnes Figures féminines du monde by Marilyn Degrenne. The book brings together outstanding women’s profiles from around the world.

For more information visit this link. 

MARIA FERNANDA CARDOSO

Maria Fernanda Cardoso, Museum of Copulatory Organs.

Maria Fernanda Cardoso is presenting one of her vitrines of the Museum of Copulatory Organs (MoCO) in the latest group show at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney.  

MoCO’s collection consists of dozens of anatomically accurate models of what is dubbed by scientists as ‘genitalic extravagance’ among invertebrates. MoCO Museum is part an ongoing research project by Cardoso. 

The exhibition Out of Hand: Materialising the Digital continues through to 25 June 2017. 

MARIA FERNANDA CARDOSO

MARIA FERNANDA CARDOSO's public commission, Sandstone Pollen, has been unveiled in the new Darling Harbour precinct.

This major public artwork – a series of unique sandstone pollen sculptures – was inspired by the diversity of pollen microfossils that were found in Darling Harbour, and were later identified by palynionologist Mike Macphail. 

Her ‘pollen morphologies’, combining scientific research and beautiful, complex forms, can be found along the Boulevard Walk, invoking conversation about the story of evolution, of sexual reproduction and the generation of formal beauty.

Cardoso’s work synthesises thought about the story of place and life as it was and as it is at Darling Harbour and Cockle Bay.

Read the artist proposal here. 

PETER DAVERINGTON

Peter Daverington, Learn From the Classics – But Please Don’t Destroy Them, 2015, oil, enamel and gesso on canvas, 198 x 152cm.

Peter Daverington has been listed as the 5th most exciting street artist working today by artnet News.  

An Australian-born artist now based in Beacon, New York, Peter Daverington took up street art at the tender age of 11. As an adult, he’s developed a style all his own, juxtaposing stylized graffiti lettering with superbly-modeled figures that appear to have stepped out of a Renaissance-era canvas. 

Read the entire article here. 

MARIA FERNANDA CARDOSO

MARIA FERNANDA CARDOSO is showing two new works at the latest MONA blockbuster exhibition On the Origin of Art. These works show us the court dance of the male Maratus jumping spiders, also known as 'peacock spiders'. It intends to show us how this beautiful insects are as talented as any human visual or performance artist. The exhibition is open from 5 November to 17 April 2017.

For more information, please click here.

Maria Fernanda Cardoso, On the Origins of Art I & II, 2016, Single channel HD video, hyper realistic sound with tactile dimension, 6:54min

PETER DAVERINGTON

Andrew Frost talks to PETER DAVERINGTON about his latest exhibition at ARC ONE Gallery, Weltlandschaft, in a fantastic interview published today on The Art Life. 

Read the interview here >

Peter Daverington, Akkadian Landscape, 2016, oil on canvas, 158 x 122 cm.

TRACY SARROFF

We are very excited with the advances of TRACY SARROFF's commission in Docklands, to be completed next year. Birrarung Moat, commissioned by Mirvac for the City of Melbourne, will be made of 16 buoys that will hold LED-lit acrylic shards of different sizes, which will respond in intensity and colour to the public and the rise of tides.

NIKE SAVVAS

Nike Savvas is exhibiting in Quicksilver: 25 Years of Samstag Scholarships at the Anne and Gordon Samstag Museum, University of South Australia. The exhibition celebrates the 25th anniversary of Gordon Samstag's remarkable bequest, which led to establishment of the Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarships. 

Quicksilver reflects on the impact of the Samstag Scholarships on the trajectory of Australian contemporary art. Pivotal works by six distinguished Samstag Scholars — including NIKE SAVVAS — highlights the exciting talent that the University of South Australia has had the pleasure of assisting over the last quarter century. 

The exhibition runs from 14 October - 9 December 2016. 

See this link for more information. 

Image: Quicksilver: 25 Years of Samstag Scholarships, featuring work by Nike Savvas, 2016, installation detail,  Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art, University of South Australia. Photograph by Sam Noonan.

JANET LAURENCE

Janet Laurence is exhibiting in the 30th Session of OCEANIC VISIONS at the 6th Biennial of Anglet curated by Paul Ardenne. This anniversary session of VIDEO FOREVER has been selected by Barbara Polla and promotes the way in which contemporary artists work with the ocean as an essential part of our life, as a frontier to cross, as a temple concealing memories and myths. 

The selection of video work will be screened on the 28th of October 2016. 

For more information click here. 

NIKE SAVVAS

Nike Savvas, Halo, 2016, Install View

The installation of a new commissioned work by NIKE SAVVAS has been recently completed. The work called Halo is now part of the Waurn Ponds Estate, a conference centre designed by Mcglashan Everist, at Deakin University’s Waurn Ponds campus.