Image: Murray Fredericks, Icesheet #2338, 2013, digital pigment print, 50 x 140 cm.
National Geographic has featured a fantastic write up on MURRAY FREDERICKS' Greenland project (2010-13). The article, 'What Does Nothing Look Like?', provides a fascinating insight into Fredericks' practice which has taken the artist to some of the world's most remote and challenging terrain. Read the full article here.
The Sydney Morning Herald featured an article on GUAN WEI, in time for Chinese New Year. The article celebrates Guan Wei’s trans-cultural living between China and Australia and how he depicts the cultures in his art through his distinctive stylistic qualities and elements of wit, knowledge and humour.
Read the article here
Maria Fernanda Cardoso, Museum of Copulatory Organs.
MARIA FERNANDA CARDOSO took part in a residency in Chocó Base, in the pacific coast of Colombia from December 2013 to January 2014. Cardoso’s experiences with water during the residency lead to the contribution of a chapter in a publication by Más Arte Más Acción, exploring ‘water’. While reflecting on the theme of water, Cardoso presented her work The Museum of Copulatory Organs. Communities of Chocó selected the theme of water for the topic of focus due to the increased contamination of rivers, affecting the indigenous communities and the region’s biodiversity.
The book launch is on 26 February at the Museo de Arte at the National University of Colombia, Bogota campus and on 11 March at the University of Antioquia, Medellín.
Maria Fernanda Cardoso
MARIA FERNANDA CARDOSO is taking part in a public commission at Green Square in Sydney – one of the largest urban redevelopments in Australia. The commission features native garden beds filled with bottle trees, built out of sandstone blocks that double as benches, arranged to spell out the words, ‘while I live I will grow’, situated at the South Sydney Hospital site.
Anne Zahalka, Summer – Another Australian Feature 1982, printed 1986, Type C print, edition of 20.
ANNE ZAHALKA’s artworks are in a group exhibition ‘A time and a place: Landscapes from the Griffith University Art Collection’. This group show brings together a collection of contemporary and historical artworks of the Griffith University Art Collection that reflect the many themes of landscape and the influence it has on Australian and Aboriginal artists.
The exhibition is on display from 20 February – 18 April 2015 at Griffith University Art Gallery, Queensland.
Image: Anne Scott Wilson, video still from video in 'Transductions #18' at ACMI.
ANNE SCOTT WILSON is involved in a three-part exploration presented by Deakin University and ACMI. Transductions reflects the ways in which philosophy and futurism take part within contemporary art and curation. Transduction #18 is a pop-up exhibition located at the Tech_Bar at ACMI and brings together 18 artists, including a video work by ANNE SCOTT WILSON. This feature reflects the notions of energy within a space and the experience of combining artists, artworks or concepts simultaneously. Anne Scott Wilson describes her video work:
'Taking heavily pixelated material from youtube of the iconic Grand pas de Deux from the Nutcracker Suite, I have created a pastiche that is faithful to choreography within its musical structure. Footage is from 13 different interpretations performed between the 1950's and 2000's. The idea considers how the web, now an archive of material not previously accessible, constitutes a new way of seeing or reading antiquated art forms.'
Transductions is showing at ACMI Studio 1, Tech_Bar @ Beer Deluxe.
Pat Brassington, Mind Game, 2013, pigment print, 60 x 46 cm
Pat Brassington | Justine Khamara | Janet Laurence | Robert Owen | Julie Rrap | Anne Scott Wilson | John Young
Curated by Laura Lantieri
Bringing together seven artists from the eminent ARC ONE stable, Mind Shadows is a curated exhibition exploring themes of human consciousness. From our waking hours, to the enigma of dreams, and the deep sleep that houses our subconscious, Mind Shadows examines the ways in which these states can inform and infiltrate creative enquiry. Whether through process, subject or aesthetic, the works presented engage with consciousness through notions of memory, automatism, reality and hyperreality, and conveying the internal and the unknown.
Featuring new and key works by Pat Brassington, Justine Khamara, Janet Laurence, Robert Owen, Julie Rrap, Anne Scott Wilson and John Young, the exhibition spans photo media, sculpture, painting and video, and draws upon the somatic and the cognitive in proposing the body as the seat of consciousness as well as the mind.
For Mind Shadows, these artists inhabit liminal spaces; their works often alluding to the periphery – or shadows – of awareness and open to fluid interpretation and perceptual doubt.
Julie Rrap, 2009, Castaway (video still), DVD 5 minutes, edition of 5.
JULIE RRAP’S video work Castaway is part of a group exhibition at the Australian Centre for Photography (ACP), Sydney. Titled Dear Sylvia, the exhibition is curated by ACP Curator Claire Monneraye.
The exhibition is an elusive response to the deepest concerns intensely depicted by Sylvia Plath. The female photomedia artists in Dear Sylvia explore some of the many ways of representing the female body, whether they show their own body, recreate those of others or document the political or social realities of bodies that suffer and fight.
Alongside Rrap, artists include Alma Haser, Dina Litovsky, Polly Penrose, Dana Popa, Michelle Sank, Flore-Aël Surun, Jessica Tremp and Marlous Van der Sloot.
The exhibition runs from 31 January - 22 March 2015.
Tracy Sarroff, Docklands commission, 2015
TRACY SARROFF has been chosen by Mirvac, The City of Melbourne and Places Victoria to complete an ambitious public art commission in Melbourne’s Docklands, Yarra Edge precinct.
The commission includes individual tendrils that will incorporate LED light with colours and tones that are activated by passing pedestrians via sensors. Cobalt blues and icy greens will be dominant, but soft red and pink glows will be activated to warm up and intensify the closer people move towards the work. This colour change resembles a life-form recognising or responding to another life-form. When people aren’t there to activate the work, it will simply pulse in a calm way as if breathing and resting.
The inspiration for this work includes the historic marshland area of the Docklands and what was once the West Melbourne Swamp, reeds, wallaby grass, 2001 Space Odyssey, Tron, Avatar, phosphorescent gene splicing/engineering, Glowing Plant, synthetic biology, genome compiling and sci-fi ‘alien’ plants that possess animalistic traits.
This ambitious project that encourages interaction and interplay at the water's edge is expected to take place in August 2015.
Anne Zahalka, The Bathers, 1989, c type photograph, 74 x 90 cm, State Art Collection, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Purchased 2013.
The Art Gallery of Western Australia’s exhibition New Passports, New Photography celebrates the recent acquisition of contemporary portraits by national and international artists, including several works by ANNE ZAHALKA and PAT BRASSINGTON.
The exhibition focuses on the quest for identity and its representation through over one hundred works from contemporary photographers, including Zahalka and Brassington.
The exhibition runs from 15 November to 8 February 2015.
For more information, click here
Justine Khamara, VCA Masters Exhibition installation view, 2014.
JUSTINE KHAMARA has been awarded the coveted $10,000 VCA Travel Scholarship at the end of year VCA Masters Exhibition, which will enable her to travel to a major international art biennial.
Read more in The Age
Phaptawan Suwannakudt, studio image of work in progress for Broken the Spell component of the exhibition Retold-untold Stories.
PHAPTAWAN SUWANNAKUDT is having a solo exhibition at Chiang Mai University Art Centre, titled Retold-untold Stories. Part of her Asialink Arts Residency Program in Thailand, the exhibition explores personal experiences and the Lanna culture and dialect. Particularly, the work connects with Suwannakudt’s mother who was born in Chiang Mai and became a nun after giving birth to her last child, the same age as Phaptawan when she gave birth to her first.
There are three components to the exhibition including Let me tell you, Child which consists of a floor installation poem in Lanna dialect, There, there is a mask Suwannakudt made from locally sourced fabric that forms the bust sculpted of her mother in an earlier work completed in Sydney. The sculpture made prior to her Thailand residency, was made from memory of the artists’ mother. In addition, the Lanna dialect is connected with this component of the exhibition, where Suwannakudt’s mother lost her memory and spoke in Lanna dialect. The third group of work, titled Broken the Spell references tattooing and magic spells in which only men of the Lanna community would take part. Phaptawan created a piece where she performed a rhythmic piercing routine onto piece of paper with Lanna poems, written from spilt tea and coffee.
The exhibition is on from 9 – 28 December 2014.
Dani Marti, Disclosure (video still), 2009/2014, HD Video, Colour, Stereo, 35mins, commissioned by the Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow.
Dani Marti is part of the program 'Your Nostalgia is Killing Me!' at GOMA’s Australian Cinemathèque, in Brisbane, from 26 November to 1 December. The program reflects on artistic responses to HIV/AIDS in the last three decades, emphasising the intersection between art and activism in film and video. Marti’s included video works are ‘Grey’, screening on 26 November, and ‘Disclosure’ (2009), screening on 29 November. For more information, click here
Guan Wei, Archaeology (Installation view), ARC ONE Gallery, 2014
Robert Nelson has reviewed GUAN WEI's exhibition Archaeology in The Age. To read the full review, click here
Peter Daverington's Bald Eagle on the front page of The New York Times.
PETER DAVERINGTON has made the front page of The New York Times for his participation in a mural project by the National Audubon Society. Across Manhattan, the project aims to promote the National Audubon Society's campaign to raise awareness of North American birds threatened by climate change. This street art project takes inspiration from John James Audubon's watercolour works The Birds of America and includes 314 roll-down gates which are all painted as bird themed murals.
To read the article and view a video on the project click here.
Dani Marti, Midden (concept drawing/work in progress), Newcastle Courthouse, NSW, 2014.
Dani Marti is currently working on a commission for the new Courthouse in Newcastle. Titled Midden, the large scaled concrete formwork wall extents over 60 square meters constructed from dark grey concrete, the sculptural wall is informed by abstraction and simplicity with sensual curves contrasting with the glass wall entrance and rigid angles of the building.
Nike Savvas, Colours are the Country, 1 Martin Place Sydney.
NIKE SAVVAS has recently completed a major public art piece for the Macquarie Group in Sydney. This kaleidoscopic artwork consists of thousands of vibrant kinetic suspended, dual coloured discs that immerse the viewer in a continuous shifting mass of colours, intimating the subtle movement and changing colours that unfold during the spectacular Australian sunrise. The artwork is installed in a partially external 26 metre long lightwell, through the core of an iconic heritage building in Sydney.
Jacky Redgate, Light Throw (Mirror) #8, 2011, C-type photographs (hand-printed from original negative) Facemount to UV Perspex, 126 x 158cm
Jacky Redgate is part of the exhibition SNO 109: Abstract Photography at the SNO Contempoary in Sydney from 8 – 30 November 2014. Curated by Ruark Lewis, the exhibition includes artists Václav Krůček, Karin Lettau, Carl Plate, Rik Rue, Vsevolod Vlaskine and sound artist Thomas McConville.
Image courtesy of SNO Contemporary Art Projects.
Nike Savvas, Sliding Ladders (detail view), 2014, wool, wood and stainless steel, 61 x 61 x 74 cm each.
NIKE SAVVAS' work is included in a curated group show titled Pattern, at Glen Eira City Council Gallery from 6 to 23 November 2014. The exhibition explores the use of geometric and abstract patterning in contemporary practice through the work of six artists, across a variety of mediums.
More information here
