Image: The Australian Tapestry Workshop (ATW)
A sneak peak of a major tapestry in progress at The Australian Tapestry Workshop (ATW) designed by prominent Australian artists LYNDELL BROWN and CHARLES GREEN for the new Sir John Monash Centre (SJMC) in France.
Find out more here.
Pat Brassington, Permissions #6, 2013, pigment print, 21 x 18cm.
Brassington’s art defies easy compartmentalisation – it may draw on the artist’s biography, but it is not autobiographical. The images possess a narrative, but it is not one that is easily deciphered or, for that matter, completely decipherable. They are deliberately enigmatic images, hauntingly memorable and deliberately disturbing.
— Sasha Grishin
Excellent review of PAT BRASSINGTON's practice and current exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, The Body Electric.
Read Sasha Grishin's review here.
The eclectic collection of models in A Working Model of the World is opening in New York City at the Sheila C Johnson Design Centre, Parsons School of Design / The New School.
MARIA FERNANDA CARDOSO's maquette, Microfossil Pollen Found Here, is included in this major group exhibition which explores the way models are used to create and share knowledge. A Working Model of the World investigates the practical, philosophical and symbolic work that models do for us, and asks how we use models to contemplate, experiment, invent and teach.
The exhibition opens Thursday 28 September 6-8pm (with curator's walk-through from 5.30pm).
It continues to 13 December 2017.
Image: Maria Fernanda Cardoso, Microfossil Pollen Found Here, 2014.
TRACY SARROFF's public art installation Light Buoys has been launched at its Yarra’s Edge home in Melbourne’s Docklands.
Light Buoys is an ambitious site specific and interactive light-based sculptural artwork, rising from the waters of the Yarra River. As a tribute to the natural heritage of the riverbank area, the structure of reeds and grasses that once populated the historic marshland have been influential to its form. The technological transfiguration of the environment to its current state, combined with ideas of science fiction and science fact relating to bioluminescence inform the beautiful aesthetic of the artwork, and the unique interactive features of its light.
The artwork consists of 16 buoyant crystalline shards made from cloudy acrylic of varying heights. Acting as conduits for light, each shard incorporates LEDs housed within the stainless-steel buoys to illuminate the acrylic with colourful glows. Their colours and tones are activated by passing pedestrians on the lower promenade via ultrasonic sensors. Shifting icy blues and greens are dominant, but soft and subtle orange and purple hues activate the closer people move towards the work; resembling a life form recognising or responding to another life form.
Daily hours: Lights and ultrasonic sensors from dusk til midnight.
Commissioned by Mirvac for Development Victoria and the City of Melbourne.
Tracy Sarroff, Light Buoys, 2017, installation view, Photos by: John Gollings.
Congratulations to MARIA FERNANDA CARDOSO and NIKE SAVVAS, who have been invited to show work in the 2018 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, curated by Erica Green, founding Director of the Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art. Inaugurated in 1990, the Adelaide Biennial is the country’s longest-running survey of contemporary Australian art and an important platform for Australian artists to realise new works and projects of a scale that require an institutional context for their conception, realisation and presentation.
Congratulations to EUGENIA RASKOPOULOS, who has been shortlisted for this year’s NSW Visual Arts Fellowship (Mid-career/Established). The recipient will be awarded a cash amount of $30,000 from Create NSW, a major Artbank commission of up to $20,000 and a residency at a NSW regional gallery.
Eugenia Raskopoulos's work will be featured in an exhibition at Artbank in Sydney from 26 October 2017 to 16 February 2018, with the Fellowship recipient to be announced on the opening night of the exhibition.
Eugenia Raskopoulos, rootreroot & routreroute, 2016. Installation view Tarrawarra Biennial 2016: Endless Circulation. Photo: Andrew Curtis
NIKE SAVVAS has been featured in the prestigious journal 'Diacritics' in an extensive article on her practice, as well as the front and back covers! Diacritics, a Cornell University publication of literary theory and criticism, has included in the past important writers and philosophers such as Jacques Derrida, Michel Focault and Claude Lévi-Strauss. Keeping a strong visual component, in recent years the journal has highlighted a single artist per issue.
Congratulations to CYRUS TANG, finalist in this year's The Churchie National Emerging Artist Prize!
The Churchie is a highly regarded emerging art prize dedicated to innovation and excellence across contemporary, traditional and new media genres. The winner will be announced at the official opening of the exhibition, at QUT Art Museum on Saturday 11 November 2017.
Find out more here.
Cyrus Tang, When things start to move (still), 2017, HD video in loop.
MARIA FERNANDA CARDOSO and JANET LAURENCE have been curated into an exhibition at Grace Cossington Smith Gallery, titled Seeing Science. The exhibition includes a group of contemporary artists who engage with concepts of science in their practice.
The exhibition will be on view from 15 September to 3 November 2017.
Janet Laurence, Biologist’s Camera Trap, Aceh Camp, Fauna and Flora International, 2012
Image: Julie Rrap, Window Dresser No.1 (Marilyn), 2000, digital print, 195 x 122cm.
ROSE FARRELL & GEORGE PARKIN, JULIE RRAP and ANNE ZAHALKA have been selected to exhibit in the group exhibition 'Self/Selfie' at the Ballarat International Foto Biennale.
Curated by the Biennale Director, Fiona Sweet, the exhibition explores the whimsical nature of selfies, as well as their contribution to the growing culture of narcissism and promotion of conformist behaviour — and the development of the “anti-selfie” on social networks like Snapchat.
Find out more here.
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ROBERT OWEN has been announced as one of the 2017 Melbourne Festival Melbourne Art Tram artists.
Robert Owen's work for the tram, Beautiful Stranger is a continuation of his celebrated series Music for the Eyes, inspired by jazz, movement and light. It plays homage to the history of jazz in Melbourne, and extends Owen’s exploration of art’s capacity to translate mood and emotion through colour.
The Melbourne Art Trams will be launched on Thursday 5 October 2017.
Find out more here.
Dani Marti, My Sad Captain, 2010, 16:9, 18min.
Imants Tillers and Michael Nelson Jagamara unveiling The Messenger at Parliament House, Canberra. Photographs: DPS/Auspic.
IMANTS TILLERS and Michael Nelson Jagamara's newest collaborative painting, The Messenger, has been unveiled at Parliament House, Canberra, by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tony Smith. This significant painting is the third and latest major work to be acquired for the Parliament House Collection in recent years.
An exhibition of works by the two artists was officially opened at the same time - Meeting Place - Michael Nelson Jagamara & Imants Tillers at Parliament House includes collaborative and individual works from the 1980s to present. On view until 12 November 2017.
IN THE PRESS:
"Powerful message from Imants Tillers and Michael Nelson Jagamara", Sydney Morning Herald, 18 August 2017
"Unique ‘Messenger’ artwork unveiled", Canberra CityNews, 17 August 2017
When things start to move (video still), 2017, single-channel video, duration 4:50mins, loop
CYRUS TANG will be exhibiting work in Book Club, curated by Meryl Ryan, at Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery.
The exhibition includes contemporary artists Chris Bond, Deidre Brollo, Simryn Gill, Julie Gough, Stephen Goddard, William Kentridge, Archie Moore, Brigita Ozolins, Patrick Pound, Cyrus Tang, Ahn Wells, and writer Naomi Riddle, who acknowledge the power of books through art.
Exhibition dates: 26 August - 15 October 2017
IMANTS TILLERS has been interviewed for an article in Art Guide about the upcoming exhibition Fred Williams in the You Yangs at the Geelong Gallery. In the article, TILLERS discusses the influence of Williams in his work and Australian landscape painting.
You can read the full article here.
Imants Tillers, At the Beggining, 2013, acrylic, gouache on 54 canvas boards, 229 x 213 cm
Imants Tillers, Breakfast Epiphany (with 9 panels by Michael Nelson Jagamara), 2014, synthetic polymer paint, gouache on 54 canvas boards, 228.6 x 213.4 cm
IMANTS TILLERS will be opening next week the exhibition Meeting Place - Michael Nelson Jagamara & Imants Tillers at the Parliament House in Canberra. The show will include collaborative and individual works from the 1980's until present.
The collaboration between TILLERS and Jagamara began in 2001, sending canvas boards backwards and forwards between their studios in Papunya NT and Cooma NSW to create significant large scale works.
The exhibition will be open from 17 August - 12 November.
For more information, click here.
An article about the exhibition opening by Helen Musa in Canberra CityNews can be read here.
Tracy Sarroff, Light Buoys, 2017, Install view, Photo: John Gollings
TRACY SARROFF's latest public commission was officially opened by Martin Foley, MP, Victorian Minister for the Creative Industries on 1st August 2017.
Located in Melbourne's Docklands, Light Buoys is an ambitious site specific and interactive light-based sculptural artwork.
The work, commissioned by Mirvac for Development Victoria and the City of Melbourne rises six metres at its highest point and approximately 50 metres along the length of the moat. Consisting of 16 buoyant crystalline shards made from cloudy acrylic of varying heights, each shard incorporates LEDs housed within the stainless-steel buoys to illuminate the acrylic with colourful glows activated by passing pedestrians on the lower promenade via ultrasonic sensors; resembling a life form recognising or responding to another life form.
In the press:
NIKE SAVVAS will be discussing her installation-based practice at the Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum, 55 North Terrace, Adelaide, on Tuesday 8 August, 1.30-2.30pm.
Nike Savvas, 2016 (detail), installation view, Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art. Photograph by Sam Noonan.
Catherine Woo, Glimmer (Detail), 2017, mixed media on aluminium, 120 x 120 cm
A master of the surface and abstraction, Catherine Woo’s striking new body of work is the product of an instinctive and powerful alliance with the natural forces that surround us.
For her third solo exhibition at ARC ONE Gallery, Woo continues to explore the mutable boundaries and energies in our relationship with the environment. In these latest works, she employs the concept of the mirage to explore a particular effect of light, at once shimmering and illusory, that dances between real and apparent movement.
Through the application of reflective materials, Woo probes the shifting territory
between what is real (light) and what is manifested in our mind’s eye, effectively highlighting the fluid nature of perception. Drawing on raw materials and natural techniques, the rippled surfaces of her paintings not only evoke the natural world – undulations of water, formations of earth, glistening sand – but are also shaped by it:
“Using a collaborative approach with natural processes and materials – interactions of water, vibration and evaporation giving agency to matter - I am seeking to use process rather than representation to describe this ephemeral quality of light moving in waves; at once trying to capture something in material form whilst acknowledging its essentially elusive quality.” - Catherine Woo, 2017
Woo’s innovative approach to painting is imbued in these remarkable works. Layered and textured, shimmering and ethereal, they simultaneously speak to themes of beauty, nature, and geography, while resisting representation in the pursuit of more philosophical concerns. As with the mirage, they deftly balance between what we know and what we believe we see.
Congratulations to PAT BRASSINGTON who has been awarded the inaugural $50,000 Don Macfarlane Prize.
Established and named in honour of respected Melbourne businessman, Donald (Don) Macfarlane, the Prize is a new $50,000 award given annually to a senior Australian artist in recognition of their unwavering, agenda-setting arts practice, ongoing cultural contribution and leadership, and commitment to mentorship.
Decided unanimously by an Advisory Committee that includes senior members of Australia’s visual arts community, the Macfarlane Prize recognizes Brassington’s groundbreaking, enduring career, which spans four decades.
Pat Brassington's next exhibition at ARC ONE Gallery will be in 2018.
