IMANTS TILLERS

Imants Tillers and Michael Nelson Jagamara, Fatherland, 2008.

IMANTS TILLERS is part of an exhibition held at the Museo Carlo Bilotti, Roma, Italia: Dreamings: The Australian Aboriginal Art meets de Chirico, curated by Ian McLean and Erica Izett. The exhibition is on until 2nd November 2014, and presents a wide selection of works representing the acrylic painting movement of Australian indigenous art. The exhibition will include a section devoted to Imants Tillers alongside works created in the last decade in the most remote communities in the western and central deserts of Australia. Tillers works provide correspondence between the two distinct, yet parallel experiences associated with the idea of ‘dreaming’ – as depicted in Aboriginal art and the metaphysical art of Giorgio de Chirico.

More information

PETER DAVERINGTON

Ahmet Erdogdular (left); Peter Daverington (right). Erdogdular photo by Ali Osman Erdogdular; Daverington photo courtesy of the artist.

In the month of July, PETER DAVERINGTON will showcase his extraordinary talent for the ney flute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, performing a series of Moroccan Court Music - the makam musical traditions of Turkey, the Balkans and the Levant.

For more information click here

PAT BRASSINGTON

Pat Brassington, By the Way, 2010, pigment print, 90 x 72cm.

PAT BRASSINGTON’s survey exhibition À Rebour', is currently showing at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG) as part of DARK MOFO. 

The exhibition, curated by Juliana Engberg, brings together a selection of Brassington’s work from her over 30-year career and has been described by the Sydney Morning Herald as "Mofo's most striking, sinister and thrilling offering". 

To read the full article and other media coverage visit: 

'Dark Mofo: Hobart salutes the solstice'

'Quietly unsettling: Pat Brassington returns to her roots at Dark Mofo in Hobart'

The exhibition runs to 14 September 2014. More information
 

SAM MARTIN

SAM MARTIN presents his second solo exhibition at ARC ONE Gallery, For the Problem is No Longer, 17 June - 12 July 2014. 

'Sam Martin’s recent paintings are literally covered with news content: he transfers newspaper directly to the canvas so it forms the ground upon which he works. But like the layout man he cares little for the transient vicissitudes of reported events, seeing only elastic boxes nested within a grid. Martin recognises the implicit emptiness of these figures and so treats the otherwise loaded surface as a space in which to act.

His first action is to undo the existing layout of the news and rearrange it to address his own concerns. To this end he corrals clusters of images according to colour, or overlays whole pages so that the white margins form a diagonal grid. Sometimes he accretes months of newsprint in one spot to inflict light-sucking wounds upon the canvas. These strategies serve to flatten the diachronic structure of the news to fit the synchronic arena of painting, where our customary reading collapses into the instantaneous radiation of colour and form.

The newspaper is a surface for the painter to work upon, but one that is distorted by magnetic influences. Martin responds to this by coaxing latent geometry to vault across pages, creating passages of egress between adjacent time frames. He creates visual echoes by methodically duplicating and enlarging images from the ground with pointillist strokes. The gaps around prose and stock market results become an armature to support descriptive line-work in place of a describable subject. The news is never lost under Martin’s brushstrokes, every halftone unit is held in comparison to its lustrous oil-painted cousin. The effect is of the news re-edited and luminously augmented to address the limits of painting and the compulsion that sustains its practice.

The accumulation of newspaper on the surface presents us with an overload of information, yet the paintings approach a mute and monolithic abstraction. This doesn’t signify Martin’s antipathy to world events, rather his consciousness of how the subject can be spoken in the language of painting. Unlike the newspaper, paintings aren’t designed to be used within a particular instant of time. With this in mind Martin draws out figures that address a potentially vast time-scale: the most pervasive and obdurate actors that narrate the blur of time, such as division, occlusion, exclusion, repetition and constraint.'

- Excerpt from Layout Man, essay by Bryan Spier, 2014

Sam Martin is a Melbourne based artist who graduated from Monash University in 2009 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours).  On graduating, Sam was awarded the ARC ONE Gallery/Monash Prize, culminating in his ARC ONE solo exhibition Crystalise Borders (2012) and now his second solo exhibition, For the Problem is No Longer (2014).  Martin has also been awarded a Commonwealth Education Scholarship, the Tolarno Hotel Painting Prize and the Australian Decorative and Fine Arts Society, Yarra Inc Award.  Martin’s career as an artist is developing in an impressive trajectory, as demonstrated by his inclusion in a number of group exhibitions and private collections. 

For all enquiries, please contact Annabel Holt at mail@arc1gallery.com

JANET LAURENCE & DANI MARTI

Janet Laurence, Dingo, 2014, video, 4'08".

Dani Marti, The Golden Years, 2014, 4k video, 8'23", sound design by Alex Macia.

Nervous Tension, at Careof / DOCVA, Milan, is a screening including video works by JANET LAURENCE (Dingo, 2014) and DANI MARTI (Golden Years, 2014) on 17 June 2014. Nervous Tension is curated by Anabelle Lacroix, as part of an FDV residency at DOCVA, Milan.

Nervous Tension explores the notion of survivance, a sta­te of being between surviving and resistance. This video screening addresses survivance as a global concept and examines the responses by Australian-based video artists - artists as witnesses and artworks as testimonies.

Originally coined by French Canadians to describe the loss of their language, a frequently used term in Quebec be­fore the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, survivance relates to cultural dispossession. The concept was popularised by well-known historian Gerald Vizenor to describe the con­dition of the indigenous peoples of the Americas as a sense of presence over absence and nihility; an active state of being through resistance as opposed to disappearance.

Nervous Tension aims at opening ideas of survivance as a lens to the wider contemporary context of cultural pro­duction and existence. This can be seen in the video works through different states or positions of resistance, whe­ther physical, metaphysical, personal, environmental, or to the artistic medium itself. Furthermore, concepts or truth and permanence underline this project by conside­ring Jacques Derrida’s take on survivance as tied to a wit­ness, someone who lives beyond an event. Here artworks are taken as testimonies, or perhaps as evidence. The wor­ks of Megan Cope and Inez de Vega particularly highlight this idea, and are also layered with personal histories.

Survivance as a contemporary notion evolves as a state of becoming and of potentiality. The remanning works in this screening are speechless, never silent, but wordless. In their distinct approaches the works of Dani Marti, Janet Laurence, Bar Yerushalmi, Diego Ramirez, Kieran Boland and Brie Trenerry, demonstrate to state of contemplation, of reflection and of poesies.

ANNE SCOTT WILSON

Anne Scott Wilson, First Movement 2012 (video still), 2012, 1'49'.

ANNE SCOTT WILSON’s video work, First Movement 2012, features in Deakin University’s group reel, now showing at Federation Square’s annual winter program, The Light in Winter.

In its eighth year running, this program's theme focuses on the circle of life. This idea is highlighted through art, music and performance and brought together by local and international artists. 

To view First Movement 2012, click here
For more information click here

JULIE RRAP

Julie Rrap, Loaded: Blue #1, 2012, digital print, face-mounted on Perspex, 126 x 126cm.

Glasshouse Port Macquarie Regional Gallery is currently showing Uploaded, an exhibition showcasing JULIE RRAP’s most recent body of work. This exhibition features the works of Rrap’s 2012 photographic series Loaded, as well as two new video works.

This pairing of past and current work continues Rrap’s investigations of performative art and how her body is used as a tool in the art making. As a result, Uploaded presents a series of abstract and vibrant works, with Rrap wearing cast frozen ink shoes to mark the canvas as they melt, simultaneously achieving elements of the artist’s presence and absence within the work.

Uploaded is open until Sunday 22 June 2014.

More information

GUO JIAN

Many are concerned for the welfare of artist GUO JIAN after hearing news of his recent detainment by the Chinese government due to the anniversary of Tiananmen Square.

We recommend all who are interested to listen to an ABC National Radio interview in which Linda Jaivin expertly discusses the situation.

Download the ABC National Radio segment here

Read an article written by his friend Madeleine O'Dea in The Guardian recently.

Guo Jian also recently appeared on ABC's Q&A - watch the program here

EUGENIA RASKOPOULOS

Vestiges #11, 2010-2014, digital pigment print on archival paper, 142 x 105cm.

EUGENIA RASKOPOULOS' exhibition Vestiges has been reviewed in Robert Nelson's article, Artists pay tribute to the nameless in The Age. Nelson's latest comprehensive review addresses a certain recurrent theme in the Melbourne art world of late.

Read the article here

NIKE SAVVAS

Nike Savvas, Atomic: Full of Love, Full of Wonder, 2005, polystyrene, nylon wire, electric fans, dimensions variable.

NIKE SAVVAS's installation Atomic: Full of Love, Full of Wonder (2005) is currently on the cover of Arte Al Limite Magazine. The article featured in the magazine discusses Savvas’ ability to transform a space through various dimensions and simultaneously through minute and enormous forms. Savvas' work delves into the notions of repetition, colour and space - qualities that are epitomised by ‘Atomic’.

More information

ANNE ZAHALKA

Anne Zahalka, Marble Foyer – Parliament House, 2014, 2014, inkjet print, 80 x 160cm, Parliament House Art Collection, Canberra.

ANNE ZAHALKA has recently completed a commission for Parliament House in Canberra, marking its 25th Anniversary. The series of photographs will go into the Parliament House Collection, as part of the commission.

Zahalka’s work explores all levels of the Parliament building from the subterranean basement to the monumental marble foyer, reflecting on the role staff play in securing, maintaining and breathing life into its hallowed halls. This includes the varied tasks undertaken each and every day, such as maintaining the building, its grounds and collections, as well as providing services to parliamentarians, workers and visitors. Zahalka truly captures and highlights Parliament House not merely as a piece of architecture or the seat of our government, but as a place, a symbiosis of people, power and architecture.

ROSE FARRELL GEORGE PARKIN

Rose Farrell and George Parkin, Unified Field, 2011- 2014, digital print on archival cotton rag, 57 x 121cm.

The Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery is currently exhibiting National Works on Paper 2014. The exhibition opened on the 23rd of May and is on until the 20th of July, featuring a work by ROSE FARRELL AND GEORGE PARKIN titled Unified Field.

The following is an artist statement by Rose Farrell on the exhibited collaborative work: 

“Throughout our collaboration, performance was at the core. In 2003 we drew the camera closer and photographed our own faces which began an ongoing interest in the self portrait. This image of George’s and my face was taken in 2011 and was pixilated, distorted and constructed by George at that time. It shows our embrace of the changing digital technology which had, since 2003, allowed for the more extreme "closeup" in order to experiment with the face "as the landscape or tableau."

I, Rose, in 2014, with George’s passing in 2012, have incorporated a collaged digital landscape to reference our love of historical landscapes and nature which previously we used to paint as background sets in our large constructed photographic tableaux. Here the landscape of our faces are joined and unified across the imaginary field which divides us now.”

For more information, click here

MARIA FERNANDA CARDOSO

Image: by Tamara Dean. Maria Fernanda Cardoso wins Australia Council grant to video insect sex, The Age, 22 May 2014.

Internationally-acclaimed artist MARIA FERNANDA CARDOSO has been awarded the Australian Council Fellowship grant of $100,000. Artists are awarded the grant whose practices address the exploration and experimentation in a cross-disciplinary approach. Through the blending of art and science, Cardoso’s project depicts the sexual organs of insects in the forms of sculpture. For this work she will be focusing on Australia’s smallest spider species, the Maratus, a project that has been in development for the past two years. The grant will go towards funding the creation of a documentary on the Maratus spider, highlighting high standard elements of installation, sound and performance. Titled Dancing With Spiders, Cardoso will capture visual and auditory proof of the 3-4mm-long spiders' dance and subsonic vibrations, inaudible to the human ear but revealed to us through the use of laser vibrometer technologies in what could be called music. Using large-scale, multi-screen HD Projections, Cardoso will make a video art installation featuring the different mating dances and looks of several of the Maratus species, including the amplified sounds they make.

Read more in the articles below.

 Sydney Morning Herald

The Age

ROBERT OWEN

Image: Robert Owen and Joanna Buckley, Under the Sun, 2014, stainless steel, aluminium, acrylic and dichroic glass, 435 x 660cm.

ROBERT OWEN and Joanna Buckley have unveiled a public commission at the Point Cook Town Centre for Stockland in association with Places Victoria and Wyndham City Council. The title of the work, Under the Sun, engages the interplay of light, space and time between earth, moon and sun, offering a profound reminder of our mysterious broader environment.

Under the Sun pays homage to this relationship, metaphorically bringing the moon closer to the ground plane to frame its distant mirrored self at night. Or, in conjunction with the sun during the day, casting a filigree shadow on the ground and those passing below.   

The presence of the Point Cook Coastal Park and Cheetham Wetlands remains a significant aspect of Point Cook's identity and Under the Sun provides a vehicle to create and enhance new meanings to the site and its environment. It reinterprets nature and draws focus from our constructed world and the tightly determined space of transit, towards a connection to the sky and contemplation of our broader reality.

Artists' Statement: "Under the Sun, the moon is our most significant heavenly body offering precious moments of perspective and wonder. The moon as feminine recognises the important role of women in the community, and embodies a memory of nature in the life and tides of the Bellarine Peninsula Wetland."

NIKE SAVVAS

NIKE SAVVAS was recently interviewed by Triple J reporter Tom Tilley on Art after Hours to discuss her colourful installation at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), Rally. This newly commissioned work is currently being exhibited above the entrance hall of the Gallery and is composed of more than 60,000 strips of coloured plastic bunting. Savvas discusses the process of her creative decisions and the significance of colour and energy in her art. The exhibition's title, Rally, plays upon the physically-immersive nature of a parade or protest, but is not linear in meaning.

To watch the interview, click here

DANI MARTI

Dani Marti, the making of Armour for Adelaide Biennial 2014.

DANI MARTI’s sculptures, Armour, featured in the 2014 Adelaide Biennial, have been acquired by the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA) for its permanent collection.

This year, the Adelaide Biennial attracted more than 110,000 visitors over approximately two and a half months – a 10 percent increase on attendance in 2012.

For further information click here

EUGENIA RASKOPOULOS

Eugenia Raskopoulos, Vestiges #1, 2010-2014, digital pigment print on archival paper, 142x105cm. 

EUGENIA RASKOPOULOS

Vestiges

13 May – 14 June 2014

ARC ONE Gallery is excited to present Eugenia Raskopoulos’ photographic series, Vestiges, from which she won the 2012 Josephine Ulrich & Win Schubert Photography Award with the work Vestiges #3.  

In Vestiges, Raskopoulos has photographed carefully kept pieces of material and wrapping – plastic, paper and fabric – used to wrap gifts given to her over her years of birthday celebrations from 2010 to 2014. The series of twelve archival digital prints illustrates a ritualistic and physical connection between giver and receiver, as well as a sense of emptiness; of roles played out, of things been and gone. Anneke Jaspers, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, Art Gallery of New South Wales, refers to the photographs as records of ‘soft violence’ - ‘an act of destruction that is inflected by tenderness’ while Raskopoulos unwraps her gifts.  Within these images, we are left with a strange yet familiar vessel, imprinted with Raskopoulos’ touch and testament to a moment past. In its capture, each piece of decorative refuse becomes an object that hangs in a state of temporal logic.

Raskopoulos has exhibited in numerous exhibitions nationally and internationally including, Read your Lips, Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney (2013); footnotes at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2012); Words Are Not Hard – Intrude 366, Project Zendai MoMA, China (2008), and Writing Towards Disappearance, at ARC ONE Gallery, Melbourne (2009).  

Raskopoulos has also participated in various group exhibitions such as Image Anxiety/Ansiedad Visual, PhotoEspana, Spain (2012); Light Works, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2012); Group Exhibition, William Wright Artist Projects Space, Sydney (2011); How We Know that the Dead Return, Gertrude Contemporary Art Space, Melbourne (2010); Mirror Mirror Then and Now, Samstag Museum of Art, Adelaide (2010) and Video Logic, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2008). In 2007, Raskopoulos’ work was shown in Nightcomers at the 10th International Istanbul Biennale.

In 2012 Raskopoulos was awarded the Josephine Ulrich & Win Schubert Photography Award for her work, Vestiges #3. In 2010 and 2009 Raskopoulos was a finalist for the Albury City National Photography Prize and the Redlands Westpac Prize respectively. In 2006 she received a MoMA scholarship for The Feminist Future conference from the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Raskopoulos has also been the recipient of a number of grants from the Australia Council.

Raskopoulos’ work is in Australian and international collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Art Gallery of New South Wales; Queensland Art Gallery; Art Gallery of Western Australia; Artbank Collection; Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Greece; Polaroid Corporation Australia; Bodo University, Norway; Malmo University, Sweden; Gold Coast City Art Gallery, QLD; Groningen Hochschule University, Netherlands.  Raskopoulos’ works are also held in private collections in Australia, Greece, China, Switzerland and the USA. 

For all enquiries contact Annabel Holt at mail@arc1gallery.com

ROBERT OWEN & PETER DAVERINGTON

Robert Owen, Endings - Kodachrome 64, No. 00, 22/07/1992, 2009, archival print on 310gms Carsons BSK Reeves Paper, edition of 7, 104x72.5cm.

ROBERT OWEN and PETER DAVERINGTON has been selected to participate in the exhibition Perceptions of Space: Justin Collection at Glen Eira City Gallery. Owen will participate with an archival print, titled Endings - Kodachrome 64, and Daverington with a video work, titled Arcadia.

The Endings series comprises a series of colour photographic prints that are the result of an expansive collection of film stubs that Owen collected from 1968 to the mid 1990s. From these accidental end bits of film Owen has transformed chance images into what could be viewed as “apocalyptic landscapes” and refers to more than just the end of film. Marking the end of film itself and the beginning of the digital age, these film ends are notations in time, recording the residue of analogue image construction.

Robert Owen’s practice engages with a sensory investigation of nature, light, colours, time relations and situations in space that play between the physical and metaphysical.

Peter Daverington, Arcadia, 2012, HD single channel BluRay video (loop) 8:54 min.

Daverington's Statement

"Arcadia is an audio-visual meditation on a basic unit of perceptual reality, the Monad. In science, the Monad is often used to describe the primal unseen entity of creation, which has lead some people to describe it as the God particle. Arcadia begins as a single point in the nameless void from where a linear narrative develops suggesting that all things are intricately connected. As we follow a line that develops from a point in space to a complex hypercube we travel through the microcosmic labyrinth of quantum physics and out into the landscape.  The landscape here represents the sublime - a reference to the romantic portrayal of nature by the Hudson River School painters.
 
Arcadia is an attempt to fuse my oil paintings and music together in a single work. In this way I refer to it as a moving image painting. I am interested in finding a way for images and music to represent the experience of being in the world as an infinite cycle of duration and extension - a meditation on how the ‘One’ reflects the many and how a grain of sand can reflect the entire universe."
 

The exhibtion runs from 16 May - 15 June 2014.

Opening night: Thursday 15 May 2014 at 6:30pm.

For further information, click here

PAT BRASSINGTON

Pat Brassington, Blush, 2014, pigment print, 80 x 72cm

PAT BRASSINGTON has been featured in the visual arts section of The Age. Robert Nelson's fantastic overview of ARC ONE's current exhibtion offers some insight into Brassington's overarching themes. In this selected exhibition, Brassington's unique surrealist aesthetic is eminent, as are the charming and disquieting undertones that induce a sense of beauty and morbidity. 

Read the article here

GUAN WEI

Guan Wei, The Enchantment No. 11, 2012, acrylic on linen, 180x100cm.

Congratulation to GUAN WEI, who has been shortlisted for the Redlands Konica Minolta Art Prize, curated by Tim Johnson.

The exhibition, which will be held at the National Art School, Sydney, runs from 11 April - 15 May 2014.

More information

Download the catalogue here