ROSE FARRELL & GEORGE PARKIN

ROSE FARRELL & GEORGE PARKIN are included in the exhibition A Very Special Collection, now showing at Deakin's Downtown Gallery.

This exhibition presents highlights from Deakin University Library's Rare Books & Special Collections. On view is Farrell & Parkin's Owl Pair, a pair of papier-mâché busts exploring ancient personality profiling. In the 16th century it was argued that human physiognomic resemblances to animals could provide insights into a person's behaviour. This theory provided the impetus for the last body of work Farrell & Parkin created together before George's death in 2012, in which they created a series of sculptural busts and photographic works.

Each of the human pairings, like Man from Owl Pair' is made from photographs of Parkin's face which were printed onto cotton fabric, sliced into fragments and delicately pinned onto a papier-mâché support.

The exhibition continues until 13 December.

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PETER DAVERINGTON

Gail Albert Halaban, photo of Peter Daverington’s Bald Eagle, Audubon Mural Project. Photo courtesy of Aperture.

PETER DAVERINGTON's painting of a bald eagle on a shopfront in uptown Manhattan has been documented in a new photographic project by Gail Albert Halaban.

The Audubon Mural Project commissioned a spectrum of artists to create murals of imperilled birds, with each mural loosely based on the watercolours of John James Audubon, the pioneering 19th century ornithologist. Today, more than 100 bodegas, barbershops & other businesses in Harlem & Washington Heights are home to large-scale paintings of North American birds endangered by global warming.

The murals, like the birds they depict, are threatened by changing weather conditions and will soon begin to fade or disappear. Gail Albert Halaban has captured the paintings within the context of the community, before they are worn away.

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JANET LAURENCE

Janet Laurence, Knowledge (Tree of Life), 2018-19, botanical books from the artist's private library, artists sketch books, wood specimens, prints on watercolour paper, prints on opalescent paper, handwritten text, video extracts, plywood, metal, duraclear and bird's nests

JANET LAURENCE is featured in a new exhibition at Grace Cossington Smith Gallery, opening today. Arboreal Narratives is curated by Louise Fowler-Smith and includes works that create an interdisciplinary experience of the important environmental subject - the tree.

There will be a public opening and symposium today, 19th October, featuring presentations by a scientist, two poets, and a musician.

The exhibition continues until 2 November.

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DANI MARTI

Dani Marti, Dust, 2019, customised reflectors on aluminium frame, 110 x 110 cm

Dani Marti is showing this new work Dust in Coterie to Coterie, the inaugural reductive and non-objective biennale event in Sydney, curated by Billy Gruner.

The Biennale of International Reductive and Non-objective Art takes place in three cities, Kyiv, Grenoble and Sydney. 'Coterie to Coterie' opens today between 2-5 pm, also marking the launch of a new venue for the arts and community use in Parramatta, The Stores Building. Over 120 artists from abroad and from Australia are presenting for this event in Sydney.

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HONEY LONG & PRUE STENT

Honey Long & Prue Stent, Supreme, 2019, archival pigment print, 60 x 40 cm

HONEY LONG & PRUE STENT are included in the exhibition ...PHOTOGRAPHERS...ARTISTS AND THE SNAP CARDIGAN , at agnès b. Galerie, Paris.

Celebrating 40 years since agnès b. first designed the snap cardigan, the exhibition features work by 60 photographers and artists from 14 different nationalities who have responded to the timeless fashion piece in their own way.

The exhibition continues in Paris until 19 October, and will then travel to Hong Kong, New York and Tokyo.

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JANET LAURENCE

Janet Laurence, The Palm at the End of the Mind installation view, The Johnston Collection, 2019, photo by Luts Photography.

JANET LAURENCE’s exhibition The Palm at the End of the Mind at The Johnston Collection has been warmly reviewed in Inside Magazine.

"As an exhibition The Palm at the End of the Mind is an experience par excellence...Each room has been infused with the artist's imagination and the interior has been brought to life in a fresh and sometimes unexpected way. New sits beside and within the old and there in texture and layering as is the inimitable style of Laurence," writes Jan Henderson.

Inside (Issue #107) is available in stores now.

PAT BRASSINGTON

Pat Brassington, The Wedding Guest, 2005, pigment print, 84 x 62 cm.

PAT BRASSINGTON is featured in the latest edition of Art Collector Magazine, with her work The Wedding Guest.

"At her best, which she is most always at, Brassington's images strike like lightning and then in the aftershock seep into us with he bloom of an infection, or burrow in like a worm...At it’s best, as in The Wedding Guest, her photographic work is visionary but as a stolen glimpse of something unacceptable, unpalatable, the taste for which is fuelled by a cocktail of phobia and fascination", writes Edward Colless.

Art Collector (OCT - DEC) is available in stores now.

JOHN YOUNG

Portrait of John Young by Leah Jing

JOHN YOUNG is interviewed in Liminal Magazine. Speaking to Cher Tan, Young unpacks the Asian-Australian identifier, the new paradigm being evolved by the culturally-orientated, the problematic indolence of the contemporary art viewer, and his current playlist!

"My early periods of making art were based on constant re-invention and re-interpretation of my own life condition...What drove me then was having seen or stumbled into, on occasion, the possibility of making a work that makes everything in your life make sense—something that prompts things to fall into place with immense clarity."

-John Young

Read the long-form interview here.

GUAN WEI

THE MCA has just opened Guan Wei: MCA Collection, an exhibition of works by GUAN WEI from the MCA Collection.

This exhibition brings together four works from the MCA Collection; ranging from significant suites of early works on paper, which look at life and the political landscape in China in the late 1980s, through to the large-scale mural painting Feng Shui, which is concerned with a harmonious relationship between all living things and the planet. The more recent Paper War, comprising of animated video and an accompanying work on paper, explores war as an experience mediated and understood through symbols and signs.

Over the past 30 years artist Guan Wei has developed a distinctive style and personal language of symbols and metaphors that explore his Chinese cultural heritage and many influences of the West. Working across painting, sculpture and site-specific installation, his reflections upon the human condition engage with critical contemporary issues, including climate change, questions of identity, migration and exile.

The exhibition continues until 9 February 2020.

More information >

The Guardian review by Joanna Mendelssohn > (also appears in The Conversation)

The Australian review by Nicholas Jose >

Sydney Morning Herald review by John McDonald >

Arts Hub review by Gina Fairley >

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LYNDELL BROWN & CHARLES GREEN

LYNDELL BROWN & CHARLES GREEN, along with fellow artists Paul Gough and Jon Cattapan, have put together an exhibition at Domain House in the Botanic Gardens. Turbulence, Conflict and the Garden of Remediation explores the ways in which gardens and plants have unexpected relationships with times of turbulence.

Gardens have offered refuge as places of rehabilitation and healing. The plants growing within have figured as talismans of home, as medicines and now, as harbingers of conflict-driven climate change.

The exhibition opens today and continues until 3rd November.

The artists have also curated a symposium featuring presentations and panel discussions on the place of gardens within the movements of humans caught in turbulent flows. This is a free event happening across 25th & 26th October. Register here.

Lyndell Brown & Charles Green with Jon Cattapan, Afterstorm 2 & Afterstorm 1, 2019, oil and acrylic on digital print on canvas, 175 x 240 cm, courtesy of ARC ONE and Station Gallery.

JOHN YOUNG | CYRUS TANG

Join JOHN YOUNG today for a panel discussion with artist CYRUS TANG, historian Karen Schamberger and curator Michael Do on the use of archives in art, and the stories presented in The Lives of Celestials.

1:3- - 3 pm today, at the Boroondara Arts Centre.

This is a free event, but bookings are essential.
Book here >

John Young, The Lives of the Celestials installation view, Hawthorn Arts Centre, 2019

NIKE SAVVAS

NIKE SAVVAS is the cover artist of Art Monthly Magazine, October. Accompanying the cover is an insightful essay by Savvas herself, detailing the inspiration behind Finale: Bouquet', her major installation at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongawera.

Savvas explores the history of ticker-tape parades and her work's relationship with the domain of abstract expressionism. In particular, Savvas mentions her unexpected affinity with the work of Lee Krasner, and how painting may exist in a post-medium condition no longer tied to traditional materials.

Pick up a copy of Art Monthly to read the full story now.

ANNE ZAHALKA

Anne Zahalka is currently artist in residence at the Bēhal Fejér Institute in Prague.

Anne Zahalka, If these objects could speak [detail], 2018, archival ink on rag paper, each 40 x 32 cm framed

She recently presented an exhibition called The Fate of Things. The works in the exhibition respond to recalled family stories and histories in an attempt to reconnect emotionally with lost family members, particularly Zahalka’s female predecessors. While this exhibition references post-memory and intergenerational trauma, it presents the perspective of an Australian artist whose family relocated from Europe in circumstances that will be relatable to those who have suffered diaspora, trauma or isolation.

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JANET LAURENCE

JANET LAURENCE has collaborated with the Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig for an exhibition in Bonn, Nach der Natur. This exhibition makes room for an encounter between life sciences, ethics and art.

Janet Laurence, Nach der Natur installation views, Museum Koenig, 2019

The collaboration follows the painful realisation that humanity has evolved from being an integral part of the community of life to a source of disturbance in nature that does not make appropriate use of its epistemic, moral and aesthetic abilities. In her work, Janet Laurence redirects our view to the community of life, especially to the deep connection between plant and animal life cycles over the millennia.

The exhibition runs until 20th October.

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LYNDELL BROWN & CHARLES GREEN | ANNE ZAHALKA

Civilization: The Way We Live Now is an international photography exhibition of monumental scale, featuring the work of 100 of the world's finest photographers. LYNDELL BROWN & CHARLES GREEN and ANNE ZAHALKA are included in this significant exhibition.

Having shown at the major institutions MMCA in Seoul and UCCA in Beijing, Civilization has now landed at the NGV until 2 February 2020.

In this increasingly globalised world, the exhibition explores photographers’ representations of life in cities and presents a journey through the shared aspects of life in the urban environment. The selected works create a picture of collective life around the world and document patterns of mass behaviour. The exhibition looks at the phenomenal complexity of life in the twenty-first century and reflects on the ways in which photographers have documented, and held a mirror up, to the world around us.

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HONEY LONG & PRUE STENT

Honey Long & Prue Stent, Earth Tissue, 2019, archival pigment print, 159 x 106 cm

HONEY LONG & PRUE STENT are finalists in the 2019 Fisher’s Ghost Art Award with their work Earth Tissue.

The exhibition will run at Campbelltown Arts Centre from 26 Oct - 5 Dec, with all works available for purchase. It coincides its Campbelltown’s annual Festival of Fisher’s Ghost, a festival dating back to 1956 celebrating Australia’s most famous ghost - Frederick Fisher.

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CYRUS TANG

Cyrus Tang, Topophilia 2, 2019, bronze, Paula Tsui’s cassette tape, crystal, mirror box, 44 x 43 x 61 cm

CYRUS TANG is one of five artists whose work makes up the new exhibition at RMIT Gallery Insistent Gestures. This exhibition brings together artists who live, work or were born in Asia to explore personal narratives.

The repetitive movements – or insistent gestures – of making carry a sense of ritual and intimate recollection that resonates with the artists’ personal histories. Here an insistent, female and labour creating subjectivity is woven into being.

Tang's bronze series Topophilia is on show, with nos. 1 & 2 visible through specially installed peepholes, and no.3 mounted on the wall.

The exhibition continues until 9 November.

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JOHN YOUNG

John Young, The Lives of Celestials, 2019, installation view at Hawthorn Arts Centre

The Lives of Celestials, a solo show by JOHN YOUNG, is now open at Hawthorn Arts Centre.

Young invites us on a journey into the lives of significant figures of the Chinese diaspora in Australia, exploring important events in Chinese-Australian history from the 1840s onwards. Re-interpreted memories are distilled into large-scale installations of chalk drawings, photographs, video works and paintings.

A culmination of 3 recent History Projects by the artist, this exhibition reflects on the forces of survival, memory and otherness that continue to shape Australia's contemporary social context.

The exhibition will run until 20 October and is open 7 days a week!

More information >

Review in Art Almanac >

GUO JIAN

GUO JIAN is the cover artist of the latest edition of Artist Profile magazine.

Artist Profile is presenting a new series of paintings by Guo Jian at Sydney Contemporary. These paintings engage with traditional Song dynasty landscapes to interrogate the relationship between China's 'rubbish culture', the disposability of celebrity and the destruction of minority cultures. Some of these new works are featured in this issue of the magazine alongside a fascinating story about the artist's career to date.

ARC ONE will also be showing some new paintings by Guo Jian in our booth at Sydney Contemporary!

The magazine is on sale now!

CYRUS TANG

Cyrus Tang, 'The Imperative', HD video, 1.48 min

CYRUS TANG is supporting Sleepless Summer, a solidarity project bringing together artists from Hong Kong and Australia which endeavours to rally support for democracy protests in HK.

Curated by Nikki Lam, Sleepless Summer will present a group exhibition alongside a public program of artist discussions, performances and solidarity actions like protest-banner-making.

A selection of independent publications on Hong Kong's civil rights struggles, collected by Zine Coop, will also be presented.

Tang is showing her video work, The Imperative.

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