ANNE ZAHALKA AT HAWTHORN ARTS CENTRE

ANNE ZAHALKA's work is included in You Are Here - a new exhibition of landscape photography at Town Hall Gallery, Boroondara. 

Anne Zahalka, A Quite Day at Spring Creek, 2017, pigment ink on rag paper, 26.4 x 34.8 cm

For the First Peoples of Australia, who have inhabited this country for over 60,000 years, and for those more recently arrived, our relationship with the Australian landscape is defined by both a deep cultural belonging and a history of conflict and displacement. Expanding on the longstanding tradition of landscape photography, this exhibition centres on each of the artists’ connection and disconnection to country. The works deconstruct how we occupy the land and explore ideas of home and identity within the environment informed by cultural, personal and historical narratives.

Anne's included works are from her The Landscape Revisited series (2017) in which she creates photomontages based on early Australian paintings from the Heidelberg School that seek to rewrite colonial narratives and construct a less Anglo-centric image of Australia. 

This exhibition is part of the PHOTO2020 program and runs 12 March - 10 May. 

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JACKY REDGATE AT GEELONG GALLERY

Jacky Redgate, HOLD ON #4, 2019-20, pigment ink on fabric, 197 x 203 cm

JACKY REDGATE - HOLD ON opens this Saturday 7 March at Geelong Gallery. This major solo exhibition coincides with PHOTO2020, the International Festival of Photography. 

Jacky Redgate—HOLD ON will present the most recent iteration of Redgate's mirror work in its entirety that reflects how, while continuing to make her experimental ‘hybrid' mirror works over the past ten years, Redgate has been recalling and introducing into her work the autobiographical images and subjects of her juvenilia. Embodying a cathexis on emotionally laden subjects, these photographs tease with a combination of abstraction and autobiographical mirroring that seemingly contradicts the Cartesian sobriety of her well known ‘impersonal’ works.

The exhibition runs until 17 May. 

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GUAN WEI AT CASULA POWERHOUSE

GUAN WEI has co-curated Pulse of the Dragon at Casula Powerhouse. His immense work from 2017 Cosmotheoria is featured in the exhibition.

Pulse of the Dragon is an exhibition emphasising themes of religious witchcraft, mythology, folk art and folk culture as methods for opening up understandings and perspectives of Chinese culture. It features a dynamic line-up of Chinese and Chinese-Australian artists who approach these concepts from their local and international perspectives. 

The exhibition continues until 19 April.

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Guan Wei, Cosmotheoria, 2017, acrylic on linen, 282 x 750cm, (1-42 panels, 6cm gap between each panel)

JANET LAURENCE TAPESTRY COMMISSION

The Australian Tapestry Workshop is working on a private commission to weave JANET LAURENCE's work 'Plant Song'. The original design by Laurence is a composite digital image created with her extensive archive of images of plants. The ATW weavers have selected a wide palette of lush greens to create this tapestry, including a high ratio of cotton yarns which are used to create areas of luminosity in the tapestry. 

Janet stopped by the workshop to check on the progress and was very taken with the work! You too can see this tapestry being woven during opening hours of the workshop: 10am - 5pm Tuesday to Friday. 

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Images: Work in progress 'Plant Song', 2020, designed by Janet Laurence, woven by Chris Cochius, Sue Batten, Amy Cornall and Cheryl Thornton. 

EUGENIA RASKOPOULOS & JULIE RRAP AT THE AGNSW

EUGENIA RASKOPOULOS & JULIE RRAP are featured in the exhibition Shadow Catchers, opening today at the AGNSW. This exhibition investigates the ways shadows, body doubles and mirrors haunt our understanding of photography and the moving image.

Eugenia's Diglossia (2009) series is on display, along with Julie’s Body Double (2007).

The exhibition runs until 17 May.

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PETER CALLAS IN SURVEY OF AUSTRALIAN VIDEO ART

PETER CALLAS is featured in Cognitive Dissidents: Reasons to be Cheerful, now open at Griffith University Art Museum. The exhibition examines the experimental practices central to the development of the video medium in Australian from the 1970s to the 1990s.

"Throughout the 1980s and 1990s Callas' work was often cited as a paradigm case of 'postmodern aesthetics' whereby video and digital technologies provided a means for the rapid, freewheeling interrelation of all kinds of imagery; this was supposedly aid and abet the developments of that shrinking, borderless, increasingly multicultural, globe. And it's easy to see how Callas' videos embody this potential, as they set in train elements drawn from various cultures, side-by-side, overlapping, fast and furious throbbing montage. Callas himself cites Japanese advertising as the protean form of this burgeoning aesthetic..."

- Stuart Koop, 2002

The exhibition continues until 9 April. 

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GUAN WEI: A CASE STUDY

Guan Wei, Salvation No.1, 2015, bronze, 33 x 19 x 32 cm

The MAC (Museum of Art & Culture Lake Macquarie) has just opened Guan Wei: A Case Study - an exhibition of Guan Wei's work with an accompanying case-study publication geared specifically towards Year 12 Visual Arts students. 

The exhibition runs until 5 April. 

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DANI MARTI AT MUSAC

Dani Marti, The Stamp Collector [cropped video still], 2007, video 6’40min

DANI MARTI's work The Stamp Collector is part of the exhibition Five itineraries with a point of view at MUSAC (Museum of Contemporary Art of Castilla y León). This exhibition celebrates the 15th anniversary of MUSAC and explores five themes that have guided the museum's acquisitions and programming since 2013.

In this video work we see a close-up of a man in a leather suit engaging in a chat exchange. The character remains anonymous - we hear only the sound of the keyboard and see the screen reflected in his glasses. Conflating the genres of portraiture and social documentary, the work displays many of the defining features on Marti's video practice - constrained scale, focus on the body and an intense concentration on an everyday scenario. "I call them portraits as a starting point, as a reference...but these portraits go beyond the person being portrayed - the individuals are just vehicles for something else. It is a search for some kind of abstraction, or maybe you could call it emotion," says Marti.

The exhibition at MUSAC runs until 7 June. 

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EUGENIA RASKOPOULOS WORK IN VENICE

Eugenia Raskopoulos, Rootreroot [video still], 2016, HD digital video, single channel, colour, stereo, 8:45 min;

EUGENIA RASKOPOULOS is exhibiting 'Rootreroot' in 'The Body Language', an international exhibition at THE ROOM Contemporary Art Space in Venice. 

In this video work, the artist is filmed from above as she drags an olive tree clockwise is the upper section, and a wattle tree anticlockwise below. Where the circles fleetingly intersect, we glimpse a moment of completeness between Raskopoulos' Greek & Australian identities. "Whether gestures are recorded or photographed, my body becomes a means for mark-making during performative acts that involve translation, transformation and fragmentation," says the artist. 

The exhibition continues until 12 March.

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PAT BRASSINGTON AT MGA

Pat Brassington, Untitled VII , 1980–2002, printed 2010, pigment ink-jet print, 370 x 249 mm

PAT BRASSINGTON has three works featured in the exhibition Dressing up: clothing and camera, closing soon at the Monash Gallery of Art (MGA).

This exhibition draws together photographs from the MGA collection that feature dress or clothing as a significant element in their making

The exhibition will close this Sunday 9 February.

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PETER DAVERINGTON COMPLETES MURAL IN SOUTH MELBOURNE

PETER DAVERINGTON has completed a large-scale mural at South Melbourne Primary School, the first public vertical school in Victoria.

Featuring an Australian landscape of banksias and verdant growth interrupted by geometric, hard-edge line work continued from the building's facade, the mural will be enjoyed by students for years to come.

Watch Peter at work in the footage captured by Danny Ronin here.

Peter Daverington, Coxsakie mural, 2019, South Melbourne Primary School, Victoria.

JOHN YOUNG AWARDED ORDER OF AUSTRALIA

A huge congratulations to JOHN YOUNG AM, who last week became a member of the Order of Australia. John has been recognised for his significant service to the visual arts, and as a role model.

Since his first exhibition in 1979, Young has had more than 70 solo exhibitions and over 160 group exhibitions nationally and internationally. He has devoted a large part of his four-decade career towards regional development in Asia, and recently focused his work on transcultural humanitarianism. Young was seminal in establishing the Asian Australian Artists’ Association (Gallery 4A) in 1995, now 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, where he has been a board member since 2009. Young was also a lecturer in painting at University of Sydney, Sydney College of the Arts has undertaken residencies and fellowships with the Australia Council for the Arts and is a trustee of McClelland Sculpture Park+Gallery.

As evidenced by the career highlights above, this is truely a well-deserved achievement. Congratulations John!

ART AUCTION FOR BUSHFIRE RELIEF

ARC ONE artists JANET LAURENCE, HONEY LONG & PRUE STENT, NIKE SAVVAS and ANNE ZAHALKA are among sixty leading contemporary artists who are working in solidarity to raise funds for the Australian bushfire crisis.

On Wednesday 12 February, the National Art School will host a silent art auction event. Raised funds will be donated to nominated charities The Climate Council, Firesticks Alliance Network and WWF Australia.

The artworks for sale can be previewed now via the Home Bushfire Relief website.

Live auction on 12 February from 7-10pm. Register your attendance here!

JANET LAURENCE AT ‘NUIT DES IDÉES’

Janet speaking at the opening of Continuous Regeneration in Shanghai.

JANET LAURENCE will join a panel of artists and scientists for La Nuit des Idées (Night of Ideas) at the Sydney Opera House this Thursday 30 January.

Founded five years ago in Paris, La Nuit des Idées has grown into a global celebration of arts, culture, science and philosophy. In 2020, for the first time, Sydney will be part of this international festival. The theme "Being Alive" promises vibrant, cross-cultural and interdisciplinary conversation about life and the universe.

Janet will be joined by Dr Thierry Hoquet, Professor of Philosophy of Science, writer Olivia Rosenthal, composer Eryck Abecassis, artist Richard Bell & academic Karlie Noon. 

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CATHERINE WOO’S FACADE FOR THE RITZ CARLTON

Catherine Woo has created a facade for the newly developed Ritz-Carlton hotel in Perth. Her work titled Cascade was designed to evoke shimmering water, referencing the nearby Swan River and the falling water of the famous Kimberley Gorges of Western Australia. 

Woo's original work was scanned into a 3D model and developed at monumental scale using virtual reality technology. Cast in recycled aluminium, the rippling surface comes to life under the changing light of day and creates a powerful physical presence through scale and reflection. 

Built by UAP in collaboration with the artist and the construction team at ProBuild.

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Photos by Robert Frith - Acorn Photo.

ANNE ZAHALKA

Anne Zahalka, installation view of Wild Life, Australia at ARC ONE Gallery, 2019 featuring Sea Bird Colony, Admiralty Rocks with turbulent seas, Lord Howe Island, 2019, pigment ink on adhesive paper, 275 x 375 cm (Source: Australian Museum)

ANNE ZAHALKA is featured in the exhibition Sublime Sea: Rapture & Reality at the Mornington Peninsula Gallery, opening this Saturday 14th December.

The exhibition is a spectacular immersive exhibition about the power of the sea in human imagination. It combines art and the natural sciences to chart the evolution of a ‘sublime’ perception of nature and the sea’s benevolence as a primal source of life. Contemporary works reflect new realities and insights into human interaction with the sea, the tragic voyages of refugees, threat of plastic pollution and alienation from natural forces.

The exhibition continues until 23 February.

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CYRUS TANG

CYRUS TANG's solo exhibition Golden Hour, previously shown at ARC ONE in 2018, is being exhibited at Galerie Oasis in Bangkok.

Opening today, this exhibition comprises a suite of photographic works that continue Tang's project of paradoxically reconstructing and recording ephemeral mental images and sensations in permanent materials. The title is inspired by the multiple meanings of the term 'Golden Hour' - sometimes referring to the narrow margin of time for treating casualty patients in trauma yet also used by photographers to refer to a brief moment of time just before sunset or just after sunrise.

The exhibition continues until 12 January.

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CYRUS TANG

Cyrus Tang, still from Remote Nation, 2008, standard definition video loop, 13.56 min

CYRUS TANG’s work Remote Nation is currently showing at MS.SUE as part of the exhibition EVERYTHING THAT EXISTS IN THE CURRENT.

The exhibition, part of the Due West Festival program, explores the emotional and social implications of moving between different states of being. When the flow of our existence is interrupted and relocated, the context shifts, and everything we knew then is no longer.

Tang’s video work Remote Nation shows a city made of clay gradually disintegrating underwater, thereby alluding to a fading sense of 'home'. The water, however, transforms the city into another state of existence. Tang says she is particularly moved by the residue left from the melted clay.

Curated by Nikki Lam, EVERYTHING THAT EXISTS IN THE CURRENT is installed at multiple sites in central Footscray.

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JANET LAURENCE

Janet Laurence’s installation at Continuous Regeneration

JANET LAURENCE is exhibiting a version of 'Desire, Elixir Lab' at Columbia Circle in Shanghai. Continuous Regeneration, an exhibition on sustainability, sees 30 world-renowned artists and designers address the issue of environmental protection.

Columbia Circle is a historical compound built in the 1920s during Shanghai's grand epoch. It used to house, among other things, the Columbia Country Club, a popular hangout for the American elite society in the ‘30s & ‘40s including a clubhouse, gym and outdoor pool. Having sat vacant for years, the site is now being renewed by OMA Architecture and is fast becoming a prominent public space in Shanghai again, full of commercial and cultural activities, restaurants and creative business.

Continuous Regeneration is an exhibition committed to creating an organic and interactive space to deeply explore the environmental and ecological issues facing the world today, with the hope of triggering public concern and action.

The exhibition will run until 16 February.

LYNDELL BROWN & CHARLES GREEN

Charles Green & Lyndell Brown with one of their works on display in Civilization: The Way We Live Now at NGV Australia.

LYNDELL BROWN & CHARLES GREEN are featured in the latest edition of NGV magazine. In an edited transcript of a conversation that took place in April this year, Charles & Lyndell discuss the role of artists on war missions and their experiences in wartime.

LB: Our works are what you could call ‘slow art’. They are often finely worked, detailed realist paintings, and they take us a long time to do in the studio. We weren’t keen on the idea of working like that in difficult situations. We were in the desert conditions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

CG: We were possibly the first Australian official war artists to resist the idea of painting and drawing on the spot. It’s an immensely complicated process to get artists into those zones and a place where they can work. We. told them we could go in with cameras

Read the full article here >