HONEY LONG & PRUE STENT IN 'PINK' EXHIBITION

Honey Long & Prue Stent, Venus Milk, 2015, archival pigment print, 106 x 159cm.

Honey Long & Prue Stent, Venus Milk, 2015, archival pigment print, 106 x 159cm.

HONEY LONG & PRUE STENT are featured in Wyndham Art Gallery’s first show of 2021, ‘PINK’. 

Intended as a platform for dialogue, this exhibition explores where the combination of second wave feminism and neo-liberal feminism has brought women artists today. Covering a range of mediums and styles, the pieces present a variety of creative practices and approaches to feminist narratives, each using pink as an element to strengthen their work, not minimise it. 

‘PINK’ is a digital exhibition curated by Caroline Esbenshade. The online virtual tour will be available until 8 March.

More information >

Listen to Honey & Prue interviewed here >

Read the catalogue essay here >

ROBERT OWEN – A BOOK OF ENCOUNTERS

Introducing Robert Owen – A Book of Encounters – the first major monograph on one of Australia’s most eminent artists. Made in close collaboration with Owen and his studio, this extensive volume assumes at once poetic, critical, historical and biographical modes in its unpacking of six decades of the artist’s archives, offering a comprehensive insight into a figure who has stood at the forefront of contemporary art since the 1960s.

Robert Owen – A Book of Encounters is published to coincide with the survey exhibition Blue Over Time: Robert Owen – A Survey at Heide from February 27 to May 23, 2021.

The book not only examines Owen’s nomadic practice – spanning sculpture, painting, photography and installation – but traces through-lines from his early life in the regional Australian town of Wagga Wagga to Sydney, the Greek island of Hydra, London and Melbourne. In doing so, A Book of Encounters expands into Owen’s wider interests in philosophy, psychology, science, mathematics, music and literature.

The book features essays and texts from some of Australia’s leading writers, curators and artists, including Carolyn Barnes, Sue Cramer, Victoria Lynn, Pippa Milne, Robert Nelson, Alex Selenitsch, Mike Parr, Leslie and Miriam Stein, and Angela Connor.

Published by Perimeter Books and designed by Public Office, the book is available for pre-order here!


Images: ‘Robert Owen - A Book of Encounters’, designed by Stuart Geddes, Paul Mylecharane and Kim Mumm Hansen of public.office. 400 pages, 23.7 x 16.9 cm, leather softcover with OTA bind, Perimeter Editions (Melbourne).

JANET LAURENCE CURATES WEEK-LONG PROGRAM AT SYDNEY FESTIVAL

JANET LAURENCE curated a fantastic programme of events for REQUIEM at the Sydney Festival 2021. Within the ethereal inner chamber of the Paddington Reservoir Gardens on Gadigal land, Janet has curated a stellar line-up of artists and talks exploring how we can mourn and remember the inestimable loss - of animals, of flora, of ecological worlds - wrought by the black summer fires of 2019-2020.

REQUIEM wove together visual art, music, poetry, performance, literature, science, philosophy and environmental advocacy to craft a time-space for us to lament and be present to the reality of loss. Janet also created a new work for the event – ‘Water Bar’ was glistening installation of waters from bushfire-affected regions is an ode to lost aquatic ecosystems.

More information >

NIKE SAVVAS COMPLETE PUBLIC COMMISSION IN NORTH SYDNEY

NIKE SAVVAS has recently completed Chroma Haze, a beautifully-executed art commission for 1 Denison, North Sydney.
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Nike says of the work: "I am actively conscious of the colours around me, both in the real world and also in art and science. I collect, observe and record these colours constantly. I believe in the egalitarian power of colour, this is very important to me. ‘Chroma Haze’ can be compared to an ‘open analogue wave signal’ in that it embraces ephemerality and variation through personal encounter.”

JANET LAURENCE CREATES MASK FOR ANNIVERSARY OF PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT

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To celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Paris Climate Agreement, JANET LAURENCE was invited to make a mask for the Art for Change Maskbook campaign.
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Maskbook is an international, collective work of art which raises awareness about the link between health, air pollution and climate change, using the mask as a symbol. Originally created for the COP21 in 2015, Maskbook has been featured at every Climate COP since.
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Janet fashioned a beautiful ginkgo leaf creation for the face of the campaign, Layne Beachley.

Check out the other masks here!

BOWNESS FINALIST EXHIBITION NOW ON

Screenshot from the virtual tour of the exhibition, featuring Cyrus Tang’s work.

Screenshot from the virtual tour of the exhibition, featuring Cyrus Tang’s work.

The Bowness Photography Prize exhibition is in full swing and open to the public Thursday - Sunday at the MGA!
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The Bowness is an important annual survey of contemporary photographic practice in Australia and one of the most prestigious prizes in the country. The prize continues to showcase excellence in photography. ARC ONE artists Honey Long & Prue Stent, Cyrus Tang and Anne Zahalka are finalists in this year’s pool and their works are on display in the exhibition.
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The gallery has also just launched the virtual exhibition if you’re unable to attend in person. Take a tour here.

More information >

ARC ONE'S SUMMER SHOW, 'MINUTIAE'

ARC ONE Gallery is delighted to present Minutiae, a group exhibition for the summer of 2020-21.

“If you look for the minutiae in an artist’s work, particularly a master’s work, then you become part of them, closer to them, locked in their presence.”
– Fran Clark, Director, ARC ONE Gallery

Featuring works by Pat Brassington, Peter Daverington, Janet Laurence, Honey Long & Prue Stent, Vanila Netto, Robert Owen, Jacky Redgate, Julie Rrap, Eugenia Raskopoulos, Cyrus Tang, Catherine Woo, John Young and Anne Zahalka, this exhibition asks you to stop, slow down, and take in the ne details. Celebrating the beauty and ecstasy in lingering over the minutiae, allowing it to unfold as you pause and lean in, the artists’ work across painting, photo-media, and sculpture is layered, intricate and complex. Confounding, subtle and delightful, Minutiae presents places in which we can roam, explore and become intimate. Venture through immersive worlds of deep observation and thought.

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LONG & STENT REFERENCED IN GREAT ART ESSAY

Using HONEY LONG & PRUE STENT’s work as a reference point, Irina Baconsky has penned an insightful essay for the British Journal of Photography on how visual language can productively infiltrate environmental debates.

Honey Long & Prue Stent, Field Sip XVII, 2018, granite stone, blown glass, water sample

Honey Long & Prue Stent, Field Sip XVII, 2018, granite stone, blown glass, water sample

"There is little doubt that documentary image-making has been instrumental in shedding light on the environmental crisis. Yet, the potential of abstract and even utopian imagery can be equally radical. What, then, may we ask, is the role played by the creative visual language and non-documentary mediums amid the urgency of the climate crisis?” questions Baconsky. 

The author goes on to elucidate how Long & Stent’s work dissolves the lines between the human and the natural, allowing us to see ourselves as part of (as opposed to separate from) our broader ecosystem: this being a vital first step it healing the man-inflicted wounds on the environment. 

Read the essay here >

LONG & STENT FEATURED IN MGA'S BOWNESS POSTER PROJECT

Honey Long & Prue Stent's work Mineral Growth from the artists' recent exhibition, Touching Pool, is currently displayed on the corner of Tinning St and Sydney Road, Brunswick.

This year the MGA is creating more opportunities for audiences to get up close and personal with contemporary photography. A selection of ten Bowness Photography Prize finalists’ works are now reproduced as large format posters and can be spotted around inner city suburbs of Melbourne.

In partnership with Shout Out Loud these brilliant works can be seen on the streets until 7 January 2021!

More information >

ANNE ZAHALKA SOLO SHOW IN TASSIE

ANNE ZAHALKA has just opened Lost Landscapes – a solo show at Launceston’s Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery.

In this exhibition, Zahalka turns her lens towards QVMAG’s historic dioramas for the latest iteration of her series Wild Life: a project in which she unearths habitat displays from around Australia and re-imagines them to reflect contemporary concerns about the environment.

The popularity of dioramas has faded with the advancement of technology in museum displays. Today they are mostly lost or destroyed. This exhibition brings together QVMAG’s historic dioramas, restored as they were originally displayed, alongside Zahalka’s radial interpretations.

In an era of climate change awareness, this exhibition calls us to notice the drastic changes in the Tasmanian environment and our role in it’s degradation or preservation. Using digital manipulation to interrupt the idealistic and static landscapes depicted in the dioramas, Zahalka offers both apocalyptic and utopian visions of what our future could be.

Lost Landscapes continues at QVMAG until October 2021.

More information >

ANNE ZAHALKA IN 'KNOW MY NAME' AT NGA

ANNE ZAHLKA’s The Cleaner is part of ‘Know My Name’ at the NGA.

This work is part of Zahalka's Resemblance series – a group of photographs based on seventeenth- century Dutch genre paintings. In The Cleaner we see the black-and-white tiled floor associated with Vermeer, and a painting on the wall that references the earlier art historical period. But at the same time, the subject wears headphones around her neck.

The image functions as a formal, contemporary portrait of a real person, but in a pastiche style quoting a genre of painting that has been functionally redundant for centuries. As Martyn Jolly observed, Zahalka “stretches the assumptions underpinning our conventions of candid portraiture”.

Through quotation and reference, the artist allows the visual images of the past to enter our contemporary world and create new meanings for new audiences.

More information >

PAT BRASSINGTON AT WOLLONGONG ART GALLERY

PAT BRASSINGTON is featured in the exhibition Every Body, now showing at Wollongong Art Gallery.

This is an exhibition of works from the collection that explores narrative, mythological, historical and reflective depictions of the human body. 

Three of Pat’s pink works from the early 2000’s are included. "It’s not my intention to feminise the image by using pink. It's 'nastier' than that. Pink smothers,” says the artist. 

Every Body continues until July next year.

More information >

PAT BRASSINGTON & ANNE ZAHALKA IN NEW GEELONG GALLERY SHOW

PAT BRASSINGTON & ANNE ZAHALKA are featured in Geelong Gallery’s new exhibition Framing the Figure - contemporary photography and moving image works from the collection.

This exhibition explores artists’ use of the camera to capture their human subjects in both still and moving images. Through performative gestures, constructed narratives or a focus on specific body parts, these lens-based artists work closely with their subjects to compose the figure within the camera’s frame.


Framing the figure opens today and continues until 25 April 2021. Book a free, timed-entry ticket ahead of your visit!

More information >

Pat Brassington, Akimbo, 1999, pigment print, 72 x 52 cm

Pat Brassington, Akimbo, 1999, pigment print, 72 x 52 cm

JULIE RRAP'S FULL SERIES 'PERSONA AND SHADOW' AT NGA

JULIE RRAP was interviewed by Brisbane Times about her series ‘Persona and Shadow’ which is now on show in ‘Know My Name’ at the NGA.

When Julie first showed ‘Persona and Shadow’ in 1984, two of the works were acquired my the NGA. Last year, the remaining seven were obtained so that the full suite may hang in ‘Know My Name’. “You think of the whole series as one set of work”, says Julie, “so it’s significant for me, and I think for the institution, to collect substantial bodies of work like that by women artists."

These works were made after Rrap returned from Europe having seen two major contemporary art exhibitions where only one female artist was represented amongst approximately 80 men. In the photographs, Rrap acts out imagery from paintings by Edvard Munch in an investigation of the stereotypical depiction of women in art and, more widely, in society.

Read the full interview with Julie here.

'Know My Name' (Part 1) continues until 4 July 2021.

JANET LAURENCE 'EARTH CANVAS' EXHIBITION OPEN

Earth Canvas, an exhibition featuring JANET LAURENCE,  is now open at Albury City Library Museum.

This exhibition displays works by leading contemporary artists, developed in response to regenerative farming properties situated between the Murray and Murrumbidgee rivers in southern NSW.

Inspired by their immersive contact with both the farmer and the landscape, the artists reveal a mutual creativity, appreciation and understanding of the natural forces that sustain us. 

Janet says of the work she has created for the project:

“My work has been evolving slowly, moving between a performative project held onsite at Yabtree West, and a series of exhibition works that trace the complex symbiotic processes that are being nurtured by Rebecca on the farm. The great trees along the river have taken root in my memory and remain the dominant theme throughout the work. These trees for me express hope and habitat.”

The exhibition was officially launched by Patrice Newell, Phillip Adams and Gill Sanbrook, together with the exhibition curator and some of the artists and farmers involved in the project. Watch the virtual launch here.

More information >

JANET LAURENCE EXHIBITING IN VIENNA

JANET LAURENCE is currently exhibiting in Vienna at Galerie Ernst Hilger alongside her friends and fellow artists Danie Mellor, Linde Ivimey and Tamara Dean.

This exhibition Terra Australis - a survey of contemporary art is a representation of contemporary art practice in Australia and marks the first time these artists have shown in Vienna.

Terra Australis continues at Galerie Ernst Hilger until 20 November.

More information >

Janet Laurence, Harvesting Dew, 2011, Duraclear on acrylic, mirror, earth and pigment in oil, 100 x 168 cm

Janet Laurence, Harvesting Dew, 2011, Duraclear on acrylic, mirror, earth and pigment in oil, 100 x 168 cm

JACKY REDGATE IN UOW EXHIBITION

JACKY REDGATE has two works currently showing at University of Wollongong in the exhibition Chrysalis, jointly curated by UOW Art Collection and The School of Arts, English and Media.

These works connect Redgate’s well-known interest in the mirror photographs of Florence Henri with her little-known interest in American photographer Dare Wright, author of the 1957 children’s book The Lonely Doll.

Chrysalis continues until 14 November.

See our available works in Sydney Contemporary for one of Jacky’s 2020 HOLD ON works exploring similar themes!

CHARLES GREEN LECTURE ON WAR ART

Take an educational lunch break today at 1pm to hear CHARLES GREEN give a one-hour lecture on the subject Afterstorm: postnational story-telling and Australia’s wars.

Charles Green is Professor of Contemporary Art at the University of Melbourne in the Art History department. He will speak today about the distinction between War Art and war art: War Art, which emerged during World War 1, is art officially commissioned to commemorate a nation’s experience of war, often nationalist and self-congratulatory but also often soul-searching, for better or worse. This is a sub-set of the vaster field of war art. Made across the globe, it takes the experience of war as its subject, mostly not commissioned and often scathing about the artists’ own nations, sometimes with humanitarian intentions.

And so the argument that war art, not War Art, really requires transnational — or postnational — story-telling.

This event is hosted by the Australian Centre at University of Melbourne and will take place via Zoom.

More info and registration HERE.

Lyndell Brown & Charles Green, Turkey’, 2018, watercolour on rag paper, 81 x 97 cm (framed)

Lyndell Brown & Charles Green, Turkey’, 2018, watercolour on rag paper, 81 x 97 cm (framed)

JANET LAURENCE IN KATOOMBA EXHIBITION

JANET LAURENCE is participating in the exhibition critical mass: the art of planetary health at the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre, opening tomorrow.

Janet Laurence, The memory of nature, 2010, mixed media installation, 180.5 x 300 x 170.3 cm overall

Janet Laurence, The memory of nature, 2010, mixed media installation, 180.5 x 300 x 170.3 cm overall

This exhibition is part of a multi-disciplinary project that explores new and more sustainable practices relating to environmental living, inclusive of food, energy, and resource sharing within an Australian and local context.

The participating artists, social activists and traditional owners provide reflections on eco-anxiety, yet remain hopeful for the future state of the world, as they imagine better scenarios for our planet and future generations.

The exhibition continues until 6 December. 

More information >