JANET LAURENCE solo exhibition 'Tears of Dust' opens at the Museum of Australian Photography (MAPh)

Janet Laurence’s immersive, multisensory installation Tears of dust reflects upon the fragility and power of the natural environment. Her intensely seductive and yet haunting evocations of the natural environment create encounters with our changing planet.

In this world premiere show, these wunderkammers (cabinets of curiosity) provide windows into our fragile ecosystem—of breathing forests, extreme weather events and dying glaciers—and offer a sense of connection with, and mourning of, our vanishing life world.

When encountering these familiar and yet otherworldly environments, we become profoundly aware of the interconnection of all life forms and the alchemical wonder of plants' ability to regenerate.

Janet Laurence, EDEN 11, Dye sublimation Photographs printed silk veils, video. Photo: Jackie Manning

ANNE ZAHALKA - Future Past Present Tense

ANNE ZAHALKA | NEW EXHIBITION

FUTURE PAST PRESENT TENSE
1 March – 6 April 2024
📍Opening: Friday, 1 March, 5.30PM, ARC ONE Gallery
All welcome

This exhibition is presented as part of PHOTO 2024.

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Artificial truths are Anne Zahalka’s preoccupation. Drawn to the constructed aspect of dioramas, Zahalka has spent many years working with the airless logic of museum displays.

In her new exhibition FUTURE PAST PRESENT TENSE, Zahalka inserts the original diorama-makers—scientists, assistants, and illustrators—into the scenes themselves. This meta-narrative gives the dioramas a recursive effect, akin to ‘embalming the embalmer’, like a waxwork of Madame Tussauds.

With a career spanning 40 years, Anne Zahalka is a landmark artist in Australian contemporary art. Her work explores cultural and environmental points of tension, interrogating them with humour and a critical perspective. Appreciated by audiences and curators alike, her work starts conversations.

GUO JIAN and GUAN WEI featured in "In Our Time" at the National Art School, Sydney

GUO JIAN and GUAN WEI shine bright in "IN OUR TIME: FOUR DECADES OF ART FROM CHINA AND BEYOND THE GEOFF RABY COLLECTION" at the National Art School in partnership with La Trobe Art Institute. This exhibition is on display until March 30th.

Over a 35-year period beginning in the mid-1980s, Australian economist and diplomat Dr Geoff Raby AO assembled an outstanding art collection of artworks by more than 75 artists working in both China and in Australia, as members of the Chinese diaspora. "In Our Time" presents a selection of works from this special collection, now part of the La Trobe University Art Collection.

Installation view of “IN OUR TIME: FOUR DECADES OF ART FROM CHINA AND BEYOND THE GEOFF RABY COLLECTION"

CYRUS TANG & JOHN YOUNG Feature in 'Assembly' at ANU

Opening tonight! 🥂 CYRUS TANG and JOHN YOUNG are part of a must-see group exhibition called 'Assembly' at The Australian Centre on China in the World (CIW) at ANU from 5:30–7:15pm.

Curated by Dr Olivier Krischer, 'Assembly' brings together eight Hong Kong-born artists from different generations of the diaspora. Amid the current wave of migration, this exhibition explores the act of ‘making sense’ of layers and fragments, of memories and stories, told or untold. 'Assembly' embraces the resonance and dissonance between the diverse creative practices of these artists, questioning readymade notions of diasporic identity.

IMAGE: Cyrus Tang, In memory’s eye, we travel…, 2016, 3 channel HD video, 8.38 min loop

JULIE RRAP Interviewed by Jennifer Higgie

Julie Rrap interviewed in Ocular by Jennifer Higgie. In the interview Rrap discusses the evolution of her latest commission - a double cast of her body in bronze - and evaluates its place amongst four decades of feminist practice.

Rrap is the recipient of the 2024 Melbourne Art Foundation Commission. Her work, titled 'SOMOS (Standing On My Own Shoulders)', is a life-sized bronze sculpture that will be unveiled at Melbourne Art Fair next week, before travelling to the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) where it will be included in Rrap's solo show, 'Past Continuous', opening in June 2024, and later to its permanent home in the collection of the Art Gallery of Western Australia.

Read the article here >

DESMOND LAZARO Interviewed by Sophia Cai

"It is at this point that I realise maybe there are no such thing as coincidences. Lazaro has been using labyrinth motifs in his work for a number of years prior to moving next door to one." - Sophia Cai on visiting Desmond Lazaro at his studio in Kyneton, Victoria.

Read more in the Art Gallery of New South Wales' magazine 'Look'.
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IMAGES: Kristoffer Paulsen and the Art Gallery of NSW.

MURRAY FREDERICKS Online Artist Talk at MAPh

ONLINE ARTIST'S TALK

MURRAY FREDERICKS
Wednesday 14 February
2.30pm-3.30pm

In 2003, Murray Fredericks first visited Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre, one of the world’s largest salt lakes, located in the deserts of central Australia. Driven by the boundless potential of abstract space, Fredericks has returned to Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre 31 times over the past two decades.

Join Murray Fredericks with Senior Curator Angela Connor in this online artist talk for The Museum of Australian Photography's exhibition 'Murray Fredericks | The salt lake', to learn about the chapters of Fredericks’s extraordinary creative journey – the influences and ideas that underpin his work and the personal and technical knowledge he has gained from his extensive experience.

Please note, this session will take place via Zoom. Bookings via the Museum of Australian Photography’s website.
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IMAGE: Jo Armao (SMH)

JULIE RRAP in 'Suppose You Are Not' at Arter in Istanbul, Turkey

JULIE RRAP is part of 'Suppose You Are Not' a group exhibition at Arter in Istanbul, Turkey. The exhibition, drawn from the Ömer Koç Collection is curated by Selen Ansen, will be on view at Arter between 19 January–29 December 2024.

Suppose You Are Not, the first private collection exhibition held at Arter, spans a wide and deep territory not only in terms of the artworks and objects it encompasses but also the diverse mediums and themes that these artefacts are concerned with. Titled with inspiration from a line in Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat [Quatrains], the exhibition which brings together over 600 works, functional objects, rarities, furniture, and books produced in different periods explores the relations that emerge through the juxtapositions formed by a collection.

Suppose You Are Not delves into the passionate striving to collect and preserve the traces of humanity, the good and the evil, the ephemeral gestures, states, allusions and movements ranging from the most sublime to the most mundane, from the most permanent to the most ephemeral, which manage to persist by being conveyed from the dead to the living.

IMANTS TILLERS Reviewed by John McDonald in the Sydney Morning Herald

'Imants Tillers: The Mosman Years' has been reviewed by John McDonald in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Imants Tillers: The Mosman Years looks at the works produced from 1981-89, when the artist and his family lived on Sydney's North Shore. Tillers started to experiment with small, store-bought canvas boards that could be laid side-by-side, like tiles, to create wall-sized compositions.

The survey exhibition continues until Sunday 4 Feb at Mosman Art Gallery

Photo: Jacquie Manning

PETER DAVERINGTON mural at the Lofts in Beacon, New York

PETER DAVERINGTON has just completed an epic large-scale mural at the Lofts in Beacon, New York. Executed entirely in spray paint, Daverington's mural depicts an idealised landscape, like the Hudson River School artists before him. To capture the essence of the valley, he amalgamated features of the region, including Bannerman Island and the Catskill Mountains, all tied together by the Hudson River.

"The romantic tradition of landscape painting really came on the back of the Industrial Revolution, of which this valley was a key player," explains Daverington. "The impact the revolution was having on the environment led the Hudson River School painters to focus on the beauty of nature. When I started incorporating the school into my work, I didn't even know what the Hudson River was. But it's really an essential piece of America." - Peter Daverington

GRACE STEVENSON awarded the 2023 ARC ONE Artist Opportunity

ARC ONE has once again teamed up with the VCA to offer an Artist Opportunity to an outstanding graduate from the VCA Masters or Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours) Program. We are thrilled to announce that Grace Stevenson has been awarded the 2024 ARC ONE Artist Opportunity.

Grace's exquisitely painted uncanny portraits explore the anonymity of identity through portraiture and the found image. We look forward to showcasing Grace's work in a group exhibition at the gallery next year.

This is the second year that ARC ONE has partnered with the Victorian College of the Arts to present this award. We are proud to be supporting this outstanding graduate.

'What is Postnational Art History?' edited by Charles Green and Ian McClean launched at Perimeter Books

Edited by Charles Green and Ian McLean, designed by Beaziyt Worcou, and conceived as part of a colloquium of art historians convened at the Buku-Larrngay Mulka Centre – the Yolgnu art centre in Yirrkala, situated in north-east Arnhem Land, in Australia’s Top End – this book aims to tease out and better understand the transnational resonances and connections between artists across cultures and borders that increasingly shape the emerging post-Western world.

During the past half-century, contemporary art practices, theories and criticism have engaged intently with notions of the postnational. Nonetheless, the presence of the nation-state and nationalisms in art history remain steadfast. In posing the question ‘What is postnational art history?’ this publication aims not for definitive answers, but rather to broach the broader concept of postnationalism and how it might function to disrupt, rethink and complicate established discourses around national art.

A collection of essays, reflections and conversations, this new book features contributions from ARC ONE Gallery artists CHARLES GREEN and DESMOND LAZARO, alongside authors including Anna Arabindah-Kesson, Rex Butler, Wulan Dirgantoro, A.D.S. Donaldson, James Elkins, Helen Hughes, Nicholas Jose, Susan Lowish, Carol Yinghua Lu, Margaret MacNamidhe, Ian McLean, Nina Miall, Nikos Papastergiadis, Nur Shkembi, Terry Smith, and Mr Wanambi.

Honey Long and Prue Stent open new solo exhibition in Rome, Italy

Grotto launches a solo exhibition from Honey Long and Prue Stent at GOMMA, Rome.

“In Grotto – explains the curator and gallerist Camilla Carè – Long and Stent bring a series of surreal snapshots that speak of mystery, letting us enter a synthetic cave of their imagination. The artists use their camouflaged bodies, allowing faceless apparitions to emerge from the female form. Sometimes statuesque, sometimes creators, the bodies in Grotto inhabit a timeless space. We have a history of appropriations behind us. Of lands, of bodies, of animal, vegetal and aquatic otherness. In the thirst for individual existence, these colonizers proceeded to categorize, designing a modern past under the banner of the supremacy of man and science over nature. To this day, there still remains a cultural weight on these bodies, which instead claim their belonging to an interdependent plurality. We flow, they seem to whisper. They are human, non-human and more-than-human beings, aquatic and shimmering and changeable forms, which draw new relationships between the organic and inorganic world.”

'Imants Tillers: The Mosman Years' opens at Mosman Art Gallery

Today marks the opening of 'IMANTS TILLERS: THE MOSMAN YEARS' curated by Kelly McDonald at the Mosman Art Gallery in Sydney.

The exhibition explores the pivotal moment in the 1980s when Tillers began creating large-scale canvasboard paintings while living in a small Federation duplex in Mosman. IMANTS TILLERS: THE MOSMAN YEARS features 25 works from the last four decades, and will include the first canvasboard work Tillers ever created in 1981.

Imants Tillers, View, 1989, oilstick, gouache, synthetic polymer paint on 72 canvasboards, nos. 21007–21078 228.6 x 304.8 cm Private collection

Desmand Lazaro is now showing 'Point and Line to Plane' at AGNSW

Desmand Lazaro is now showing 'Point and Line to Plane', a specially commissioned artist project, at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, curated by Jackie Dunn.

Nestled in the heart of the AGNSW's major exhibition 'Kandinsky', Lazaro’s work explores our fundamental relationship with the cosmos through ‘sacred geometries’ – the hidden meaning of shapes – probing the laws of art and nature to consider their mysteries. It features several of Lazaro's interstellar paintings and sketchbooks, combined with some truly beautiful exhibition design inspired by Lazaro's work.

Imants Tillers awarded the University of Sydney's 2023 Alumni Award

Congratulations to Imants Tillers who has been awarded the University of Sydney's 2023 Alumni Award for Cultural Contribution. Awarded to alumni who have achieved excellence in the arts, culture or creative sectors, it recognises those whose efforts have promoted the understanding and values of cultural diversity.

Though he was studying architecture, Tillers was drawn to the arts and the culture around the newly-formed Tin Sheds galleries. The style he developed in this period has made him one of Australia's most recognisable post-modern artists.

Tillers recent exhibition at ARC ONE Gallery ‘After De Chirico’ explored a relationship which transcends the usual definitions of homage and influence. Maintaining an intimacy with the work of Giorgio de Chirico over five decades, Tillers interest in de Chirico is spurred on not only by the early so-called ‘metaphysical’ paintings that made him legendary amongst the early Surrealist artists, but also the once-controversial, much reviled ‘late’ paintings.

ANNE ZAHALKA wins William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize

Last night Sydney-based artist Anne Zahalka was named winner of the 2023 William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize for her work Kunstkammer (2023).

Rhana Devenport (ONZM, Director, Art Gallery of South Australia) and Michael Cook (Brisbane-based contemporary photographic artist of Bidjara heritage) joined MAPh Director Anouska Phizacklea to select the winner and three Honourable Mentions from a shortlist of 66 exceptional works.

The judges comments:

'Anne Zahalka’s archival project is a mammoth undertaking documenting a lifetime of practice, both monumental and intimate, this work is rare and important.' — Rhana Devenport

'I was looking for works that created an emotional response and was amazed with the depth in the entire field. Winner Anne Zahalka’s work stood out given the huge scale she has produced that travels beyond the two dimensions.' — Michael Cook

'Anne’s Zahalka’s ‘Kunstkammer’ is a tour-de-force reflecting a practice that she has sustained for more than 40 years. This work challenges assumptions about photography and how immersive and experiential it can be on a grand scale. It invites you into the artist’s process and innerworkings in a way few artists have ever achieved.' — Anouska Phizacklea

Visit MAPh to view this work, alongside the other incredible finalists.

JACKY REDGATE solo exhibition opens at Wollongong Art Gallery

JACKY REDGATE’S new, major solo exhibition Hypnagogia with Mirrors: Old and New Work, 1977-2023, has recently opened at the Wollongong Art Gallery.

Hypnagogia with Mirrors is an artist project that encompasses some of Jacky Redgate's best-known works along with others previously unseen, and new and archival materials. In her work, mirrors are at once means and metaphors, reflecting other times, other dimensions. This show is also site-specific, playing on the Wollongong Art Gallery’s architecture, history, and collection.

One of Australia’s leading contemporary artists, Redgate has a practice extending across six decades. Emerging within the contexts of late modernism, minimalism and conceptualism, and feminism, she is known for her photographic and sculptural works exploring systems and logics, impersonal and personal.

The exhibition is open 16 September-26 November 2023.

Jacky Redgate, Wedding Wishes, 1977, resin, doll head, plastic, fabric, 13.5 x 18.5 x 18.5cm.