Join ROBERT OWEN for an intimate tour of his exhibition Blue Over Time at Heide tomorrow, followed by a delicious morning tea at Heide Café with the artist and his studio manager, Angela Connor.
Robert will share stories and insights into his journey as an artist. Museum admission, tour, and morning tea included!
JOHN YOUNG’s new solo show Diaspora, Psyche opens at Bunjil Place Gallery today! This is a major survey of works spanning 17 years, from 2003 to 2019.
John Young, Three Worlds, 2004, (from the Double Ground Paintings: The Persian Paintings), digital print and oil on linen, 189.5 x 231.5 cm, Private collection
In the most comprehensive presentation of his practice since 2005, Diaspora, Psyche brings into dialogue two of Young’s most significant bodies of work: the History Projects (2008-2019) and the celebrated Double Ground Paintings (1995-2005). This pairing will contextualise Young’s recent focus on the history of the Chinese in Australia since 1840 within his four-decades long investigation into the condition of diaspora and the negotiation of bicultural ethics and perspectives.
This exhibition brings together, for the first-time, key paintings and installations to present an exploration of transcultural perspectives, examining how meaning is created through historic expressions of cross-cultural ethics, material and cultural exchange, and the effects of diasporic experience on the psyche.
Diaspora, Psyche will be supported by a selection of research and archival material that has informed these works to provide visitors with greater insight into the complexities of the artist's working practices.
CYRUS TANG’s new solo show Sky Orchestra is now open at Incinerator Gallery.
Sky Orchestra is a project exploring Confucian values of filial piety through the lens of Chinese history and pop culture, and how it relates to the artist’s experience within a Western context. Through Sky Orchestra, Tang delves into the history and legacy of a poem by a well-known Chinese poet Su Shi of the Song Dynasty, whose words evoke the joys and sorrows of human existence from a Buddhist worldview.
Additionally, this project explores the power of music, which was believed to have great moral powers in ancient China. For Sky Orchestra, Tang revisits childhood memories and Confucian thought, with the resultant exhibition conveying themes of loss and renewal.
The exhibition will continue until 1 August.
DANI MARTI’s video work Time Is the Fire in Which We Burn and sculpture Time is the Fire (2010) are the subjects of an essay by Daniel Mudie Cunningham, published as part of MUMA’s new writing project: ‘Queer Readings of the Monash University Collection’.
‘Queer Readings of the Monash University Collection’ invites 20 LGBTIQ+ writers to make queer readings of artworks from the MUMA Collection, forming part of MUMA’s ongoing efforts to diversify writing on the Collection and launching alongside their 60th anniversary program in 2021.
Daniel Mudie Cunningham, curator, writer and Director of Programs at Carriageworks, Sydney, writes:
"Marti’s video practice borrows from the codes and questionable ethics of observational documentary. Naming the exchange established between artist and subject as Intimacy Porn foregrounds the arousal of sexual desire for a spectator of images trading in so-called reality. Watching Marti with John is like being at the end of their bed, positioned polyamorously as a viewer hanging on their every word like foreplay for an excised sex act.”
Image 1: Dani Marti, 'Time Is the Fire in Which We Burn’ [still], 2009, video, colour, sound; 1 hour 8 minutes 4 seconds; Image 2: Dani Marti, 'Time Is the Fire’, 2010, stainless steel, galvanised iron and copper scourers and galvanised fencing, 220 x 200 cm
Congratulations to EUGENIA RASKOPOULOS, finalist in the Martin Kantor Portrait Prize with her work Astro!
Named in honour of the late portrait photographer Martin Kantor, this prize is awarded for an exceptional photographic artwork of a significant, living Australian in the fields of art, letters, science, sport or politics. Finalists were carefully selected by judges Naomi Cass, Max Delany, Bill Henson and Fiona Sweet.
See all of the finalists in the one room at the 2021 Biennale this August.
Eugenia Raskopoulos, Astro, 2013, digital print on archival paper, 100cm x100cm
JANET LAURENCE’s video work Vanishing is on display at KulturForum Ansbach in Art from Elsewhere, an exhibition in real space of digital and video works from the Momentum Berlin Collection.
Art from Elsewhere focuses on global issues through video work and installation, reflecting on the environmental traumas we inflict on our planet and its creatures and exploring the (un)quiet poetry of the day-to-day.
Vanishing is Janet Lauence’s first video work, made during a residency at @tarongazoo. It shows close-up footage of threatened mammal species, and the rise and fall of their breathing flanks. Originally shown as a two-screen installation, this single channel version was specially released for the Momentum Collection.
Art from Elsewhere continues until 25 July.
Janet Laurence, Vanishing, 2009. Installation view, Janet Laurence: After Nature, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, 2019. Single-channel video, sound, 9 minutes (looped). Collection of the artist. Image courtesy the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia © the artist. Photograph: Zan Wimberley
Tomorrow Saturday 19 June at 2pm, JANET LAURENCE will speak at the National Art School exhibition John Olsen: Goya’s Dog.
Drawing on the central importance of critical dialogue, friendship and inspiration shared between fellow artists, the 'Artists x Artists’ talk series brings leading Australian artists into the NAS Gallery to talk about their interpretations, experiences and interactions with the work of Dr John Olsen AO OBE.
John Olsen: Goya’s Dog is a powerful exploration of an extraordinary Australian artist – from his creative awakening in Spain, through the darkness that threatened to overwhelm him at times, and his ability to reach for the light, pursuing a long and acclaimed career.
Image 1: Janet Laurence photographed by Christopher Pearce; Image 2: John Olsen, Reflections on Goya’s dog III (detail), 2021, acrylic on Belgian linen
![Julie Rrap & Cherine Fahd, Give and Take [video stills], 2021, 4 channel video work;](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54012345e4b0f72d40b6c44e/1623993524054-S7GXSI6I1ELH2FEP4BW8/TOP4.jpg)
Julie Rrap & Cherine Fahd, Give and Take [video stills], 2021, 4 channel video work;
Curated by Julie Rrap and Cherine Fahd, The Other Portrait has just opened across UTS Gallery and SCA Gallery.
Featuring new work by Julie Rrap, this exhibition brings together work by artists who have an established relationship to the concept and traditions of portraiture. Through existing and newly commissioned works, the exhibition provokes a new analysis of the self and the other and examines the ways artists draw on their bodies, families, communities, cultures and experiences to underscore the paradoxes of subjectivity. Located across two spaces – UTS Gallery and SCA Gallery – The Other Portrait proposes the self and the institution as sites in conversation.
More information >
PANEL DISCUSSION
Join Julie Rrap, Cherine Fahd, Rachel Kent, Lee Wallace and Patrick Pound for an afternoon exhibition viewing and discussion moderated by Stella Rosa McDonald.
JULIE RRAP’s Double Eclipse (2015) is programmed at Dark Mofo, happening this week 16-20 June.
A great pair of eyes will begin to go blind, as if by solar eclipse – a metaphor for the power of the gaze, the blindness of desire, and a window to the mind of artist Julie Rrap.
The eyes are projected at 129b Bathurst St, in Dark Downtown.
Image courtesy of Darklab Media
Opening today at @gippslandgallery is Middle Ground, an exhibition celebrating the contribution of female photographers to the Gippsland Art Gallery Collection, featuring LYDIA WEGNER.
Focusing on a snapshot of seven significant artists, this exhibition showcases the diversity of the works in the Collection and highlights the way these women have impacted the creative industry.
Middle Ground will continue until 1 August.
Wonderful news for the Wegner family, and ARC ONE Gallery's LYDIA WEGNER. Congratulations to Peter Wegner, winner of the 100th Archibald Prize with his portrait of 100-year-old artist Guy Warren.
Left: Peter is pictured here with his daughter and fellow artist Lydia Wegner.
Right: Peter Wegner, Portrait of Guy Warren at 100, oil on canvas, 120.5 x 151.5 cm
Diego Ramirez has penned an insightful reflection on CYRUS TANG’s artwork ‘Power Cables’, a finalist exhibition of the @sovereignasianartprize. Published on @cobosocial, Ramirez writes:
“[Cyrus Tang’s] migratory experience inspires much of her practice, where memory is a ruin that she reconstructs in labour intensive processes. Her body of work ‘Remember me when the sun goes down’ (2020) looks at the empty streets of Vermont and the city of Melbourne area during lockdown as an elegy for the future, documenting the social wreckage of COVID-19.
[…]
![Cyrus Tang, Remember me when the sun goes down: Power Cables [detail], 2020, archival pigment print, 90 x 90 cm.](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54012345e4b0f72d40b6c44e/1622422950417-IDKU23DB10X6H8CJ9KBX/Remembering-me-when-the-sun-goes-down-_Power-Cables_Detail.jpg)
Cyrus Tang, Remember me when the sun goes down: Power Cables [detail], 2020, archival pigment print, 90 x 90 cm.
These are the optical traces that collectively form the impression of a blurry memory, a strategy that characterises Tang’ oeuvre, where mental images seem to find form on paper.
[…]
By photographing locations for extended periods of time, then compositing all images into a single frame…the mundane becomes fantastical.”
Read the full article here >
Revered contemporary artist Guan Wei returns to Melbourne this May with a spectacular new exhibition of paintings titled A Digital Age.
Guan Wei’s latest exhibition at ARC ONE Gallery presents three bodies of work: A Digital Age, a suite of paintings laden with philosophical meaning, The Metamorphosis, a video work depicting migration, identity, and notions of boundaries and place, and Cosmotheoria, a major 42-panel work which explores our individual and collective knowledge.
In A Digital Age, Guan Wei examines the realities of contemporary life and our relationship to, and increasing reliance on, numbers, symbols and signs. In the face of increasing alienation, digitalisation, virtual reality, and global change, this body of work invites us to reflect on our humanity:
“Numbers which represent highly abstract symbols are present in philosophies, religions, sciences, arts and cultures throughout human history. The information embodied in numbers has been absorbed in our genetic make-up. We recognise the capability and power of numbers by intuition. Numbers embody codes of information from ancient times, for example, dualism, the Trinity, four elements of nature, and the Chinese wisdom of the sixth day of the sixth month, the list goes on. The advance of modern digital technology is mind-boggling. The binary numeral system, Big Data, the Internet, and so on, are all about digitalisation which has intruded into every corner of our lives. Have digits become the essence of humankind? Yuval Noah Harari in his book ‘Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow’ questions, “Are organisms really just algorithms, and is life really just data processing?” – Guan Wei, 2021
Such themes are similarly explored in the key work Cosmotheoria. The title is drawn from a Latin term for “world-view” and considers the ways in which the known and unknown are constantly changing. Our knowledge and understanding of the immense universe, but also of nations, societies, others, civilisations, history and geography are constantly in flux, varying throughout time and place. In this work, Guan Wei has merged eastern and western philosophies, art histories, eras and empires, signs and symbols, using, as the artist explains, ‘a kind of magic collage, with an oriental perspective, to confuse the viewing point’. Representative images from different cultures are extracted and placed in the same painting to create an imaginary cross-cultural realm that explores contemporary issues and an up-to-date view of the world.
With his consummate ability to create work at once light in tone and profound in message, Guan Wei finds a higher order of expression in these beautifully produced paintings and video work. Interlaced with the artist’s emblematic clouds and iconic characters and motifs, the works in this exhibition are powerfully drawn together through a material and metaphysical exploration of human life.
Guan Wei, Cosmotheoria, 2017, acrylic on linen, 42 panels, 282 x 750 cm
Guan Wei was born 1957, Beijing, China, and lives and works in Beijing and Sydney. He has won many awards, including the 2015 Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize, Bendigo Art Gallery; Sulman Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2002; and was selected for the prestigious 2009 Clemenger Contemporary Art Award, National Gallery of Victoria. In 2018 The Australian Tapestry Workshop completed ‘Treasure Hunt’, a tapestry designed by Guan Wei and woven by Chris Cochius, Pamela Joyce, Jennifer Sharpe and Cheryl Thornton. Solo exhibitions include: Guan Wei: MCA Collection, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2019; Chivalry, ARC ONE Gallery, Melbourne, 2018; Cosmotheoria, White Box Art Center 798 Art District Beijing, 2017; Guan. Perspective, Scene Sense Art Gallery, Beijing, 2017; Salvation, ARC ONE Gallery 2016; Archaeology, ARC ONE Gallery, 2014; Spellbound, He Xiang Ning Art Museum, OCT Contemporary Art Terminal, Shenzhen, China, 2011; The Enchantment, ARC ONE Gallery, 2012; Other histories: Guan Wei’s fable for a contemporary world, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, 2006–07; Looking, Greene St Studio, New York, 2003; Zen Garden, Sherman Contemporary, Sydney, 2000; and Nesting, or the Art of Idleness 1989–1999, MCA, Sydney, 1999. Major group exhibitions include: Between Two Worlds, Newcastle Art Gallery, 2019; Between the Moon and the Stars, Museum and Art Gallery Northern Territory, 2019; The Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes exhibition, AGNSW, Sydney, 2017; Closing the Distance, Bundoora Homestead Art Centre, Bundoora, Victoria, 2017; Borders, Barriers, Walls, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne, 2016; Collaborative Witness: Artists responding to the plight of the refugee, University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane, 2011; Shanghai Biennial, Shanghai Museum, China, 2010; 10th Havana Biennial, Cuba, 2009; The China Project, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 2009; Handle with Care, Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Adelaide, 2008; Face Up: Contemporary Art from Australia, Hamburger Bahnhof Museum, Berlin, 2003–04; Sulman Prize Exhibition, Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney, 2002; Osaka Triennial, Japan, 2001; Man and Space, Kwangju Biennale, South Korea, 2000; Third Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 1999.
Guan Wei, No. 10, 2020, acrylic on canvas, 87 x 46 cm
Emerging first in the 1960s, Robert Owen is one of Australia’s most eminent artists. His art traverses an ambitious and far-reaching range of mediums and contexts, from painting, sculpture, photography and installation, to public art and architectural commissions. Grounded in geometry and abstraction, his visually stunning works are inspired by his diverse interests—encompassing philosophy and psychology, science and mathematics, music and literature—and reflect his life-long curiosity about the world. Owen’s approach is underpinned by a poetic and intuitive exploration of the expressive potential of space, light, colour, context and materials.
The first museum survey of Owen’s practice for twenty years in Melbourne, this exhibition will encompass his work from the 1960s and 1970s living in Greece and London, while also featuring new and more recent paintings and sculptural installations.
Pat Brassington is featured in The Work of Art, currently showing at artbank.
Curated by Sabrina Baker and Anja Loughhead as part of the Artbank Emerging Curator program, the exhibition brings together a selection of works from the Artbank collection that interrogate our relationship to art and traditional notions of labour.
Join Sabrina and Anja alongside artist Darcey Bella Arnold at 1pm on Saturday 22 May as they discuss the physical, conceptual, material and emotional exertion tied to creative production and the importance of placing value on the - work of art.
More information >
TRACY SARROFF is featured in the Flinders Quarter Augmented Art Walk, on now until 2 July.
Discover Tracy's artwork pasted up in the foyer of Journal Cafe and City Library, 253 Flinders Lane, Melbourne, then unlock each its animation and sound using your phone or tablet device via the augmented reality EyeJack app, free to download for iPhones and Android.
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.
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