The McClelland Collection: 50 Years of Spatial Practice is now open.
Featuring this stunning work by Janet Laurence , Forensic sublime (Crimes against the landscape series: Styx Forest), the exhibition explores the significant collection McClelland has developed in its 50-year history.
The exhibition continues to 15 August.
ROBERT OWEN is the subject of the fourth episode of Art Guide’s podcast series The Long Run, now streaming. In the episode, Robert talks with host Tiarney Miekus about what it means to create over six decades, and what he feels is the truth of his art: a sense of oneness.
Listen to the podcast here >
Robert Owen's survey show, Blue Over Time, is currently on display at Heide Museum of Modern Art, closing 23 May.
Award-winning author and art historian Janine Burke has written a new book, My Forests: Travels with Trees. Published by Melbourne Uni Publishing, My Forests offers an enchanting and illuminating meander along forest trails within art, myth, history and present day.
Reflecting on JANET LAURENCE'S Forest (Theatre of Trees) recently exhibited at the MCA, Burke writes:
"I’m in a forest in a gallery. It’s a labyrinth made of drifting voile curtains in tones of mauve and silver, imprinted with towering images of trees. It reaches from ceiling to floor. Though in a public place, this forest makes me feel sequestered. It’s shadowy; tantalising. What’s around the bend? Revelation? A nasty surprise? I think of Little Red Riding Hood and the other fairytale children whose exploration of the forest symbolises maturity, courage and independence. The trek into the unconscious, the reward of self-knowledge, a process psychologist Bruno Bettelheim described as “the uses of enchantment”. As I follow the circular path, the tree-curtains move gently in my wake."
My Forests: Travels with Trees is available to purchase here.
Peter Daverington, The Raft of the Clan, 2018, oil and acrylic on canvas, 260 x 397 cm.
PETER DAVERINGTON'S The Raft of the Clan is featured in Out of darkness: A survivor's journey, which opens today Art Gallery of Ballarat.
Out of the darkness: A survivor’s journey is an exhibition of works collected, commissioned and curated by Robert House, a survivor of child sexual abuse. The memories of House’s childhood experiences have continued to haunt him and affect his mental wellbeing, but he has employed determination and resilience to become an advocate for survivors, and work towards a more just society.
House has developed a passion for art, becoming convinced of its ability to represent the complexity of the trauma and other emotions experienced by survivors. He has commissioned, collected and created art, building a unique collection of works that reveal the journey of our society as it comes to terms with this shocking history. His collection reflects his personal journey, carrying the message that the voices of survivors should be heard and responded to with compassion and understanding.
“This was a difficult subject to portray,” says Daverington. “I settled on the idea of survival at sea as a metaphor for the survivors of child abuse - they were abused by a system entrusted with their care. I chose Gericault’s, ‘raft of the Medusa’ (in the louvre) as a source of inspiration… The young people in my painting are empowered, fighting for their rights and protesting injustice. This is a tribute to the people of the CLAN (Care Leavers Australia Network) , who after years of protest, have their voices finally heard. The portraits on the border are significant individuals involved with bringing the case to a royal commission. They include former prime ministers, politicians, royal commissioners and CLAN members.”
The exhibition continues to 1 August.
More information >
This afternoon Heide will host a book talk with ROBERT OWEN, his studio manager and book editor Angela Connor, and book designers Stuart Geddes and Paul Mylecharane. The panel will discuss the journey of producing Robert Owen – A Book of Encounters, the first major monograph of one of Australia’s most eminent artists. The talk will be facilitated by Dan Rule, director of Perimeter Books.
Tickets to this event include museum entry and a glass of wine. It’s set to be a rainy afternoon: great museum weather! Reserve your spot at the book talk now and enjoy an afternoon at Heide with a tipple afterwards!
Book here >
Robert Owen with his monograph, photographed by Jake Roden.
Tomorrow Saturday 24 April at 3pm, Heide x Cinema Nova will be presenting Marianne & Leonard, Words of Love to celebrate the exhibition Robert Owen: Blue Over Time – A Survey, with an introduction by the artist. Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love is a documentary film about the relationship between Marianne and Leonard, and their time spent on the Greek island of Hydra in the 1960s and 1970s.
In 1963, Robert Owen set off on a Greek boat for London. Along the way, he stopped off on Hydra intending to only stay a night. Unbeknownst to him, Hydra was a haven for bohemian expatriates, including George Johnston, Charmian Clift, William Lederer, Jack Hirschman and Leonard Cohen.
For three years (1963 – 66) Robert lived and worked on the island, making musical instruments and artworks, writing poetry and selling jewellery to tourists in the summer. It was also on Hydra that two events occurred that would change the course of Robert’s arts practice: an eclipse of the sun over the Peloponnese and the discovery of a Maggi soup cube wrapper.
More information >
Catherine Woo, Current I-IV, 2021, acrylic on aluminium, 183 x 503 cm (overall)
A master of the surface and abstraction, Catherine Woo’s striking new body of work is an instinctive and powerful examination of the human connection with the natural world.
Catherine Woo is known for her visually arresting oeuvre of ‘painting with weather’. By using a range of unconventional materials and processes, Woo creates works that are both macro and micro-interpretations of natural phenomena. Her delicate, abstract forms, rendered in intensely detailed surfaces, draw forth various analogies between the body and the environment. In this recent body of work, Woo continues this investigation into the interrelationship between humans and the natural world via layered, undulating and ethereal paintings that examine the complex systems and structures of nature.
In previous works Woo found herself a silent partner to the visualisation of natural forces – vibration, evaporation, reticulation. In this chapter, she is now compelled to make the human element more present by incorporating intimate, hand-painted forms.
Intricate compositions weave together evoking water currents; leaf veins; coral skeletons; pulsing arteries; webs; microscopic snapshots from within the body and formations of earth. In conflating the regions
of the body and the environment, new possibilities are explored where the self is inextricable from the environment that contains it. Drawing the exhibition title from a text by philosopher Jane Bennett, Woo suggests that by seeing ourselves as part of a network of Vibrant Matter, we can begin to think more ecologically:
“Rather than seeing the environment as something ‘outside’, beyond our bodies, these patterns and processes suggest being within it – where our own bodies are part of a larger body, intimately and inextricably linked. It is a kind of visual acknowledgment of our participation in a vast changing body of living matter.” - Catherine Woo, 2021
As Jane Bennett asserts in the text “such a new found attentiveness to matter and its powers will not
solve the problem of human exploitation or oppression, but it can inspire a greater sense of the extent to which all bodies are kin in the sense of inextricably enmeshed in a dense network of relations. And in the knotted world of vibrant matter, to harm one section of the web may very well be to harm oneself. Such an enlightened and expanded notion of self-interest is good for humans.” 1
Visually stunning, these extraordinary paintings simultaneously speak to themes of nature, beauty, the body, and geography, while resisting representation in the pursuit of more philosophical concerns.
Catherine Woo graduated with a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Tasmania in 2013, having also studied at Sydney College of Fine Arts and the ANU School of Art. She has exhibited her work across Australia and internationally since 1997. In 2008 and 2011, Woo was awarded a $20,000 New Work grant by the Australia Council Visual Art Board, and was included in the Biennial of Australian Art, Art Gallery of South Australia (2008). In 2010, Woo was curated into an exhibition at the Samstag Museum in Adelaide titled Abstract Nature. She has been a Finalist in the City of Hobart Art Prize in 2002, 2011 and 2012. Her major corporate commissions include: Visy Corp Australia, the Chinese World Trade Centre, Beijing, Shangri-
la Hotel, Beijing; Four Seasons, Hong Kong; and the Ritz Carlton Hotel, Shanghai and Perth. Her work is represented in private and public collections in Australia, including Artbank, Macquarie Bank, and RACV, as well as in the UK and Asia.
1 Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Duke University Press, 2010), 13.
Cyrus Tang, Remember me when the sun goes down: Power Cables, 2020, archival pigment print, 90 x 90 cm.
Congratulations Cyrus Tang! Her work Remember me when the sun goes down: Power Cables is shortlisted for the Sovereign Art Prize.
The Sovereign Asian Art Prize was launched in 2003 to increase the international exposure of artists in the region, whilst raising funds for programmes that support disadvantaged children using expressive arts. Held annually, The Prize is now recognised as the most established and prestigious annual art award in Asia-Pacific.
In the wake of the past year, Tang wishes to memorialise images that address our collective experiences, anxieties, and hopes, allowing us space to remember and recover. Having had a renewed opportunity to explore her landscape, Tang created 'Remembering me when the sun goes down - Power Cables'. The artist, drawn to the geometrical composition of the sky, took daily photos of the power cables. She then collated the images, creating composite, ethereal layers. At the centre point of convergence, the image condenses and vibrates, as if to confirm a moment of real existence.
The finalists’ artworks will be presented to the public at 9 Queen’s Road Central, Central, Hong Kong from 5 – 16 May 2021. The artworks will then be exhibited at Art Central at Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre from 20 – 23 May 2021.
More information >
LYDNELL BROWN & CHARLES GREEN have work showing at the Castlemaine Art Museum in their new exhibition Cloudy - a few isolated showers.
In this exhibition, clouds gather in the Whitchell Gallery with historical and contemporary painting, photography, sound, watercolour and sculpture, curated by Jenny Long.
Castlemaine-locals Charles and Lyndell present three new works made during 2020, over a period of uncertainty, crisis and the suspension of sociability and travel. The paintings depict Castlemaine clouds, the winds of change, and the wider world and its turbulence.
Cloudy - a few isolated showers continues at CAM until the end of the year.
Left to right: Lyndell Brown & Charles Green, Activism is Learning, 2020, oil on linen; Lyndell Brown & Charles Green, Orpheus, 2020, oil on linen; Lyndell Brown & Charles Green, Into the White Light, 2020, oil on linen.
Janet Laurence. ‘Tree of Knowledge’, 2021, mixed media installation
JANET LAURENCE is featured in the new show at S.H. Ervin Gallery, ‘TREE of LIFE: a testament to endurance’.
Opening today, this group exhibition led by First Nations artists will generate a fresh, positive energy towards the reclamation of diminishing natural resources. Threads woven through 'Tree of Life' will recognise the deep spiritual and physical associations that connect all forms of life – life that must be nurtured as we chart a course of action through this perilous age of climate change, pandemics and wildfires.
The exhibition will continue until 30 May.
MURRAY FREDERICKS is featured in The Weekend Australian Magazine this week.
Speaking about Array 1, the final work in his award-winning, 16-year SALT Project, Murray says: "The shore disappears, the sky and water merge... there's nothing around, so you lose all reference points. And your mind just dissolves into the space."
"It felt like the crescendo at the end of a piece of classical music. After 16 years on this project I thought, that's the one to go out on."
Murray Fredericks has been drawn to Kati Thanda (Lake Eyre), South Australia, over the course of 16 years, creating dazzling abstract images that bear witness to the transcendent capacity of the natural world.
Murray Fredericks, Array 1, 2019, digital pigment print on cotton rag, 120 x 300 cm
Lyndell Brown and Charles Green have been awarded a 3-year Australian Research Council grant to collaborate with artist Jon Cattapan, Indigenous activist, film-maker, musician and playwright Richard Frankland, and eminent biomedicine researcher Gary Anderson.
“THE WAR AT HOME: ART DESCRIBES AUSTRALIA'S TURBULENT PRESENT”
This project investigates the friction between the nation’s stories of itself, and the current massive fracturing of health, of places and of peoples. Because Australia is changing beyond measure, it is appropriate to talk about the war at home. From World War 1 onwards, the Australian government decided that war artists be commissioned to make art about the nation at war. This project proposes that a team of Australian artists, with a deep experience of picturing conflict, investigates the current war at home, guided by a senior Gunditjimara elder and in collaboration with an eminent biomedical scientist.
ROBERT OWEN is interviewed in The Age’s Spectrum today!
Ray Edgar speaks to Robert about some of his career highlights, including heading the sculpture department at RMIT, representing Australia at the Venice Biennale, and his recognisable architectural commissions such as the Webb Bridge at Docklands and the Craigieburn Bypass over the Hume. The two also discuss Robert's time as a ‘boho expat’ on the Greek island of Hydra in the 60s, his mentorship by Leonard Cohen and his study of Buddhism, alchemy and theoretical physics.
Edgar writes: “Witnessing a natural phenomenon in Hydra had a...profound impact: an eclipse of the sun creating a spectacular spectrum. Beguiled from that moment, Owen sought to recreate its numinous light. “I wanted the spectrum,” Owen declares. “that’s the colour I wanted to see. I was interested in this inner self, that’s the soul inside, that’s full of light”.
Edgar also looks into the breadth of the 70 works now showing in Owen’s retrospective at HEIDE and speaks to curator Sue Cramer.
Anne Zahalka, Flocking Flamingos, 2018, pigment ink on canvas, 100x 150cm
ANNE ZAHALKA is featured in the new exhibition at the China Cultural Centre in Sydney. ‘AIR WATER LOVE’ is now open at CCC and will continue until 29 April.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
This is the second exhibition at CCC privileging a cross-cultural women’s perspective after the successful ‘WHOSE STORY IS THIS?…anyway!’ in 2020. In this exhibition eight women artists from China and Australia have a dialogue under the same theme, calling for a rethink of crucial environmental issues. Three keywords of water, air and love were selected to present the relationship between humanity and nature.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
‘AIR WATER LOVE’ highlights the true effects of global warming and climate change – showing the impacts, offering solutions, and telling real-life accounts, this exhibition is interactive and creative.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
More information >
DANI MARTI is currently showing in in the exhibition FARBMATERIAL at the Galerie Lausberg in Dusseldorf.
This body of work, ‘Songs of Surrender’, was made in Barcelona in 2019, where Dani had these beautifully designed ropes custom-made. He uses the lines of rope to create pictorial and sculptural surfaces strung over powder coated aluminium frames, bringing the works into an “object dimension”.
FARBMATERIAL (Colour Material) will continue until 21 March.
You can watch Dani introduce the work here.
Jacky Redgate, Light Throw (Mirrors) #4, 2011, silver halide Chromogenic photograph handprinted, 126 x 158 cm
Pat Brassington, Shadow Boxer, pigment print, 72 x 50 cm
JACKY REDGATE & PAT BRASSINGTON have works on display at Smith & Singer on Collins Street for the next few weeks, as part of the MGA’s travelling exhibition Bowness Photography Prize Celebrates 15 Years.
In 2020 the Bowness Photography Prize marked its 15th year. To celebrate MGA has partnered with Smith & Singer to showcase the previous 15 recipients during the International Photo Festival. As the recipients of the 2011 and 2013 prizes respectively, Redgate and Brassington’s works are on view!
The Bowness Photography Prize has become an important survey of contemporary photographic practice and one of the most prestigious prizes in the country. The Prize reveals artists’ continued fascination with exploring and pushing the boundaries of the photographic medium, embracing its capacity to explore a diversity of voices and perspectives.
The exhibition will continue until 7 March.
Image: Art Collector Magazine issue 95.
ROBERT OWEN is featured in the latest issue of Art Collector Magazine.
Jacqueline Millner writes about the the artist's forthcoming survey exhibition at Heide Museum of Modern Art, 'Blue Over Time: Robert Owen - A Survey'.
'The Heide survey's title underlines the importance of the colour blue in Owen's practice, with its evocation of infinite space and the possibility of dimensions beyond those we currently know. In Owen's work, blue occupies that place between earthly and otherworldly realms, embodying the reverie and imagination that the artist hopes his art will also spark, along with the capacity to patch and heal what has been fractured. Owen inflects the materiality of colour, light and place through the beauty of mathematics, having some time ago observed that "geometry is a good way to find yourself through a crisis" (a sentiment all too pertinent today)', writes Millner.
'Blue Over Time: Robert Owen - A Survey, curated by Sue Cramer, shows at Heide Museum of Modern Art from 27 February to 23 May 2021.
EUGENIA RASKOPOULOS’ artist monograph, co-published by The Power Institute and Formist, has been recognised with a Highly Commended in the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand’s 2020 Art Writing and Publishing Awards.
Eugenia Raskopoulos: Vestiges of the Tongue was highly commended in the 'Artist-led Publication' category.
The judges described the publication as:
Eugenia Raskopoulos: Vestiges of the Tongue, 224 pages, 30 x 23 cm, hardcover, published by Formist (Sydney).
“...a fine book on the artistic practice of Eugenia Raskopoulos, whose family cultural background and experiences of multicultural Australia informs her interest on a range of issues including the feminine body, language, translation, cultural exchange, knowledge and power. Between sumptuous colour plates of images representative of an artistic practice that prompts critical reflection and response, a collection of engaging and insightful essays by curators and academics brings a scholarly rigour to this high quality publication that is to be commended for both its aesthetic and intellectual appeal."
Congratulations to the team!
Janet Laurence, Conversations with Trees (detail), 2020, duraclear prints and dibond mirror, 120 × 80 cm
JANET LAURENCE is featured in MUMA Monash exhibition Tree Story, opening tomorrow.
Tree Story brings together creative practices from around the world to create a ‘forest’ of ideas relating to critical environmental and sustainability issues. At its foundation—or roots—are Indigenous ways of knowing and a recognition of trees as our ancestors and family. An exhibition, publication and podcast series, Tree Story takes inspiration from the underground networks, information sharing and mutual support understood to exist within tree communities, and poses the question: what can we learn from trees and the importance of Country?
Janet’s exhibited artwork Conversations with Tree’, is based on work that she undertook for her solo exhibition in Taiwan last year. Images of the forest are printed on transparent duraclear and suspended in front of mirrors, recalling greenhouse windows or museum display cases—forms of mediation of nature.
Tree Story continues at Monash University Museum of Art until 10 April.
One of Australia’s most significant and influential artists, Pat Brassington, returns to ARC ONE with Night Swimming, a new body of work presented as part of the PHOTO 2021 International Festival of Photography. An opening reception will be held on Friday 19 February, 6-8pm.
Pat Brassington’s work uncovers how the endless possibilities of our deep and complex inner states — narratives of sex, memory and identity — run quietly rampant.
Influenced by surrealism, feminism and psychoanalysis, Brassington is known for her ability to combine the ordinary with the unusual, making her work provocatively ambiguous.
Pat Brassington, Footloose, 2019, pigment print, edition of 6, 75 x 75 cm
In Night Swimming, she employs photomontage to reveal the power of the mind to transform mundane objects and situations into sites/sights of sensuality, desire, horror or menace. Baulking prior to resolution, Brassington leaves her work open to interpretation; allowing the viewers’ visual mind to make its own associations. Digitally manipulated and evocatively juxtaposed, bodily fragments, inky tones, fetish objects and claustrophobic interiors are rendered abject or sublime, unsettling or seductive by the viewer; exposing our innermost predilections, hopes, biases and fears.
Typical of the artist’s work, these monochromatic images bring together a series of fragments which
create a strange and ambiguous world.
Pat Brassington, Precious, 2019, pigment print, edition of 6, 75 x 75 cm
The parts of the images – a fish slipping down a throat, a jarring clash of sharp fingernails, heads which twist into a strange darkness and feet that curl – are drawn from Brassington’s vast archive of visual material and are deeply personal. These disjointed compositions offer contradictions between the soft charcoal tones of the pigment print, the intimacy of the forms and the unsettling charge of the juxtapositions. Night Swimming rouses a sense of disquiet as the images subtly and humorously scratch at the underbelly of the human condition.