JANET LAURENCE and HONEY LONG & PRUE STENT have donated works for auction in the FBi Radio Digital Art Auction 2020, an online fundraiser and silent auction raising critical funds for the station so that it can continue to champion Sydney arts and culture.

This is the fourth art auction hosted by FBi Radio and the first one held digitally. Previous auctions were held in 2009, 2010 and 2018 at the MCA, AGNSW and NAS respectively attracting a mix of collectors, investors and first time art buyers alongside FBi Radio’s loyal listeners.

Bidding closes tomorrow at 7pm - see the auction & bid here!

'JACKY REDGATE: HOLD ON' REOPENS AT GEELONG GALLERY

Good news! Geelong Gallery has reopened, which means their exhibition JACKY REDGATE: HOLD ON has resumed.

Jacky’s work in HOLD ON sees her contaminating the objective geometries of her backgrounds with toys and dolls that are redolent of childhood.

The key reference point in these new works is the 1957 book by Dare Wright, called The Lonely Doll, in which the author established scenarios and photographs of a doll and her 2 teddy bear friends in a series of unsettling narratives that speculated on friendship and loneliness.

In JACKY REDGATE: HOLD ON, the artist examines how we negotiate and construct memories through photographic images, drawing on her long-standing interest in visual storytelling.

Timed-entry tickets are required to visit the Gallery. Book in now for free!

Jacky Redgate, HOLD ON #8, 2019-20, pigment ink on fabric, 197 x 203 cm

Jacky Redgate, HOLD ON #8, 2019-20, pigment ink on fabric, 197 x 203 cm

HONEY LONG & PRUE STENT IN DIGITAL EXHIBITION

Honey Long & Prue Stent, Suckle, archival pigment print, 87 x 58 cm.

Honey Long & Prue Stent, Suckle, archival pigment print, 87 x 58 cm.

HONEY LONG & PRUE STENT are part of a digital remount of the exhibition Anticipation is half of the seduction.

Curated by Jonathan Homsey, this exhibition was first shown at Blindside Gallery as part of the 2018 Emerging Curator Mentor Program. It has now been reimagined with new artworks to help us negotiate touch again after months of physical distancing.

This 2020 digital exhibition has been supported by City of Melbourne COVID grants.

See the exhibition here >

JANET LAURENCE CATALOGUE NAMED IN BOOK DESIGN AWARDS

Janet Laurence: After Nature, the catalogue from last year’s survey exhibition at the MCA, has been honoured in a competition naming the best of book and cover designs in 2019.

The book was chosen for its demonstration of design excellence by esteemed jurors of the AIGA, the professional association for design. It will now become a part of the AIGA collection at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University’s Butler Library in the city of New York.

Congratulations to designer Claire Orrell, curator/author/editor Rachel Kent, and artist Janet Laurence. 

More information >

LYNDELL BROWN & CHARLES GREEN SIGN OPEN LETTER ON WORLD REFUGEE DAY

Today, on World Refugee Day, Australia’s Official War Artists have come out in condemnation of the punitive treatment of a fellow artist held in detention.

LYNDELL BROWN & CHARLES GREEN are signatories on an open letter published today in support of Farhad Bandesh, a refugee whose art has helped him survive 7 years of imprisonment and whose materials are now being arbitrarily withheld.

“The scary intensity we felt in active war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan intensified our profound empathy for all those who flee their homes in times of conflict,” said Brown and Green. “Refugees deserve to be given a chance.”

The letter, published via @nava_visualarts, asks “Why withhold art materials? They are not illegal or unsafe. The threat lies, instead, in the ability of art to challenge injustice, the power of a free voice in an unfree system…A paintbrush can be a lifeline for a prisoner.”

More information >

Inset painting detail from Lyndell Brown & Charles Green’s work The Far Country (2019) showing refugees fleeing across the high Kurdish mountains.

Inset painting detail from Lyndell Brown & Charles Green’s work The Far Country (2019) showing refugees fleeing across the high Kurdish mountains.

ANNE ZAHALKA IN #NGVPhotosFromHome

ANNE ZAHALKA is featured in #NGVPhotosFromHome, a project featuring photographers, whose work is in the NGV Collection, sharing their current lived experience, or a moment in time through images and words. 

“These pictures of my family taken during the month of May reveal the small rituals performed within daily life. They lightly draw on the language of documentary photography, genre painting and Reality TV, referencing an earlier body of work, Open House (1995), held in the collection of the NGV and shown in the exhibition Civilization: The Way We Live Now.

The scenes may be staged, but the environments are real – a readymade set against which we perform and present ourselves.

The still lives of objects lovingly arranged around my family have a special value. They are reminders of places travelled, people known and things passed down. From a collection of summer frocks suspended in time to op-shop prints by Albert Namatjira, to plants we have tended and art acquired, these anchor us to our home in uncertain times.

Surrounded by our possessions and the memories they hold, I feel fortunate to have a place filled with treasures that provide such comfort to me and those I share them with.”

— Anne Zahalka

GUAN WEI STUDIO VISIT IN LOOK MAGAZINE

Photographed by Felicity Jenkins

Photographed by Felicity Jenkins

GUAN WEI is interviewed by Miriam Cosic for the latest edition of AGNSW’s Look Magazine. 

The artist was visited in his home studio in Sydney’s south-west. He talks about dividing his time between Sydney and Beijing, where his studio is twenty times the size. Asked where he feels he belongs, he ums and ahs, chuckles, and says, “Maybe I just belong to myself. And my family.”

Guan Wei’s work Revisionary (1998) is showing in the AGNSW’s exhibition In one drop of water, and two of his new porcelain pieces are in their show Under the Stars. 

FRAN CLARK INTERVIEWED FOR ART COLLECTOR MAGAZINE

Art Collector recently visited ARC ONE Director Fran Clark to see what's in our gallery stockroom.

Hear what she has to say about some key works that are currently available here.

“The key thrill of an artwork’s power is if the work makes me ask questions, questions about wanting to know why and what the connections are”, she says, invoking the diverse references in IMANTS TILLERS’ work Stillness Speaks.

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JANET LAURENCE 'DO IT' - KALDOR PUBLIC ART PROJECT 36

janetlaurence_doit.png

JANET LAURENCE is a contributing artist to Kaldor Public Art Project 36:  do it (australia).

do it (around the world) is a new chapter of curator Hans Ulrich Obrist’s exhibition-in-progress, which for 27 years has tapped creative luminaries to share simple instructions for their audiences to make an artwork themselves.

Hans Ulrich Obrist initiated do it in Paris in 1993 with artists Christian Boltanski and Bertrand Lavier, gathering recipes for artworks from twelve artists. Since then, it has grown into a global collective art project including some of the world’s most famous figures.

In this time of global lockdown, do it (around the world) has artists making brand new instructions for people to do at home. "I’m encouraging people to have a conversation with a plant and begin to imagine the answers," says Laurence.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

do it (australia) is presented in partnership with Serpentine Galleries, Independent Curators International (ICI) & Google Arts & Culture, and supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies.

More information do it (australia) >

More information do it (around the world) >

DANI MARTI AT UNSW GALLERIES

Dani Marti, The Pleasure Chest, 2015, second hand necklaces and beads on powder coated aluminium frame, 255 x 170 x 12cm

Dani Marti, The Pleasure Chest, 2015, second hand necklaces and beads on powder coated aluminium frame, 255 x 170 x 12cm

DANI MARTI’s work is on display at UNSW Galleries in ‘Friendship as a Way of Life’ - a new exhibition exploring queer kinship and forms of being together. Presented across the entire gallery and online, this major project seeks to foreground the way LGBTQI+ communities create alternative networks of support through various creative and resourceful means.

Marti is showing two works: a two channel video work, Notes for Bob (2012-14), and a woven necklace wall sculpture The Pleasure Chest (2015). These are prime examples of the seemingly stark division between Marti’s work as a painter/weaver, and a film-maker whose subjects probe the sexual lives of others.

Morgan Falconer says of Marti’s oeuvre, “Marti’s painting-objects are metaphorical, his films are allegorical: both use one thing to describe another. Beads describe their wearer; tales of sex describe a life with or without love. Marti doesn’t pretend to offer up the whole, essential individual to our gaze. Indeed, his work insists on the fact that identity is not a stable essence that can be recognised and captured again and again; instead it is something performed, and it changes each time in the performance.”

More information >

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INSIDE 'YOU ARE HERE' AT TOWN HALL GALLERY

Sadly the exhibition You Are Here, featuring new work by ANNE ZAHALKA, had to close early at Town Hall Gallery. One of the works on display was You Are On Gundungurra Land!.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Anne Zahlaka, You Are On Gundungurra Land!, 2020, Archival pigment ink print on rag paper, 115cm x 161cm

Anne Zahlaka, You Are On Gundungurra Land!, 2020, Archival pigment ink print on rag paper, 115cm x 161cm

Using negatives taken over 20 years ago for her Leisureland series, Zahlaka has scanned and digitally manipulated this landscape to conform with an early painting by Conrad Martens depicting the Jamison Valley and Gully with a group of Aboriginal people gathering around a small fire on an unlikely outcrop.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Zahalka comments on the dichotomy between European visions of the picturesque, and the spirituality of place for indigenous peoples. 

The idyllic vistas of the Blue Mountains are nowadays framed by windows, set apart by safety railings, and surveyed from viewing platforms and gondolas high above the landscape. It is not a place to venture into, but rather to look at from a distance. But the Gully is an important spiritual site for the Gundungurra and Darug people who have lived in this region for over 40,000 years. 

Zahalka seeks to bear witness and acknowledge the Indigenous people to whom these lands have always belonged and lament the lack of care we have shown for this country.

You can now see the install photography and download the exhibition catalogue here.

JANET LAURENCE IN VOGUE LIVING MAGAZINE

“Janet Laurence, one of Australia’s foremost contemporary artists, has long fossicked in the muddy space between ethics, aesthetics and environmental science, seeding the dry matter of others’ data in the fertile soil of her concept to frame a case for the interconnection of all things.” — Annemarie Kiely

This month’s edition of Vogue Living features interviews with creative practitioners pushing collaboration to the edges of brilliance. JANET LAURENCE’s Earth Canvas project is highlighted, in which she has partnered with soil scientists, regeneration farmers, horticulturalists and the esteemed ecologist Professor David Watson.

The Earth Canvas project will result in an exhibition starting at the Albury Library Museum later this year followed by a tour of regional galleries including the National Museum of Australia.

CURATOR INSIGHTS: 'JACKY REDGATE - HOLD ON'

Join Geelong Gallery Director and CEO, Jason Smith, as he shares Curator insights on a tour of Jacky Redgate—HOLD ON. This exhibition will continue when government and health authorities deem it safe to re-open the Gallery.

Jacky Redgate has a 40-year practice and is critically acclaimed as one of Australia’s leading contemporary artists. Redgate’s career began in the context of late 1970s feminism, minimalism and conceptual art. Redgate is well known for her sculptural and photographic works using systems and logic, and particularly for her sustained series of ‘mirror’ works over the past two decades that have engaged with optical phenomena, ‘perceptual dislocations’ and slippages between representation and abstraction.

JANET LAURENCE INTERVIEWED FOR STUDIO INTERNATIONAL

Janet Laurence, Wonder (Herbarium), 2018-19. Installation view, Janet Laurence: After Nature, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, 2019. Photo: Zan Wimberley.

Janet Laurence, Wonder (Herbarium), 2018-19. Installation view, Janet Laurence: After Nature, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, 2019. Photo: Zan Wimberley.

JANET LAURENCE has been interviewed for the online art journal Studio International.

In the article Laurence talks about colonisation and using her art to address the fragility of nature and climate change.

The artist discusses her recent exhibitions around the world, reflects on what she learnt as a flying artist in the ‘80s, and describes the state of the nation after the Australian bushfires this past summer.

Read the full article here >.

DANI MARTI FINALIST IN ALICE PRIZE

Dani Marti, Dust (Stone), 2019

Dani Marti, Dust (Stone), 2019

Congratulations to DANI MARTI, who is a finalist in the 2020 Alice Prize.

The Alice Prize is an acquisitive national contemporary art prize judged by an expert selection panel in Mparntwe/Alice Springs.

Dani’s work Dust (Stone) will be on show in the finalist exhibition at the Araluen Arts Centre.

More information >

ANNE ZAHALKA AT MANLY GALLERY

ANNE ZAHALKA’s work The Couple is featured in Manly Art Gallery & Museum’s exhibition Treasures from the Vault.

MAG&M celebrates its 90th anniversary in 2020. While their gallery is closed, they have launched the ’90 Years: 90 Stories’ project. Each day for the next 3 months, MAGAM is featuring one artwork from the exhibition on their Instagram stories, so that it may eventually be viewed as an online catalogue.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Walkers & joggers may also glimpse the show by day and night through the gallery’s foyer and eastern windows!

More information >

Anne Zahalka, The Couple, 2015, archival pigment ink print, 55.8 x 40.5 cm

Anne Zahalka, The Couple, 2015, archival pigment ink print, 55.8 x 40.5 cm

EUGENIA RASKOPOULOS & NIKE SAVVAS AT THE CCC

Nike Savvas, Zero to Infinity, 2003, blown glass storks

Nike Savvas, Zero to Infinity, 2003, blown glass storks

EUGENIA RASKOPOULOS & NIKE SAVVAS are featured in the exhibition Whose Story Is This? Anyway! at the Chinese Cultural Centre, Sydney.

This exhibition is a dialogue between Chinese & Australian women artists, curated by Ll Hong. It reflects the the invaluable contributions and positive efforts made by women artists from China & Australia, and how such contributions influence, change and reconstruct both the culture & the society we live in.

The exhibition continues until 30 April.

More information >

JANET LAURENCE SOLO SHOW IN TAIWAN

JANET LAURENCE opens a solo exhibition at the Yu-Hsiu Museum of Art in Taiwan today. In Entangled Garden for Plant Memory, Laurence uses the 'garden' to represent the interconnectedness of living creatures and to visualise the memory of plants, which differs from, and surpasses, the human experience.

Laurence and the Yu-Hsiu Museum have collaborated with the National Taiwan University's museums of zoology, geo-specimens & the herbarium, as well as the Taiwanese Council for Agriculture & the Endemic Species Research Institute. Using these collections of natural specimens, Janet's work foregrounds the beauty of Taiwan's forest & mountain ecology whilst also deconstructing their systems of classification in order to reinterpret the history and meaning of the collections.

The exhibition continues until 26 July.

More information >

FLOOR TALK WITH JOHNNY NARGOODAH & TRENT JANSEN

Trent & Johnny in the Thirroul studio. Photo: Romello Pereira.

Trent & Johnny in the Thirroul studio. Photo: Romello Pereira.

Come to ARC ONE Gallery at 3:30pm tomorrow (Sat 14 March) to hear insights from JOHNNY NARGOODAH & TRENT JANSEN on the cross-cultural collaboration and experimental making processes that lead to Partu, their latest collaboration in furniture design, realised in animal skin.

Johnny Nargoodah is a Nyikina man who has spent much of his life working with leather as a saddler on remote cattle stations, and Trent Jansen is an avant-garde object designer from Thirroul in New South Wales, who regularly experiments with leather and animal pelts in his collectable design work.

The artists will be present for the floor talk from 3:30 - 4:30pm.

This event is part of Melbourne Design Week, an initiative of the Victorian government in collaboration with the National Gallery of Victoria⁣⁣.⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣ The project is assisted by the Australian government through the Australia Council for the Arts.