Innholdsfortegnelse for May/June 2024 i Art Guide Australia

QAGOMA On now—18 August In 2014, Bruce Pascoe published Dark Emu. The book sparked conversations about Indigenous Australia’s relationship with the land, and transformed “mainstream Australia’s imagination of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders”, according to Sophia Sambono. Sambono is the curator of Seeds and Sovereignty, an exhibition inspired by Dark Emu as well as the writings of academics Zena Cumpston and Bill Gammage. It draws on the Queensland Art Gallery and the Gallery of Modern Art’s (QAGOMA) Indigenous Australian art collection to celebrate the connection between plants and Country. “It’s about reconceptualising the use of land, and the sustainability that comes out of this connection to plants through totemic and kinship relationships that’s expressed through songlines and teachings over countless millennia,” Sambono says. It’s a vast show, presented across four…

Laure Prouvost Australian Centre for Contemporary Art On now—10 June With her hallmark absurdism, Laure Prouvost is a leading figure in contemporary art. She centres the female, drawing on her own experiences to meet the real with the ludicrous. In the French-born/Belgium-based artist’s practice, language, humour and theatricality meet to create deliberate comments on contemporary life. Now, her tropes of grandmother and grandfather, mother and child, environmental parentage and artistic lineage, are animating her first major Australian survey at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA). As curator Annika Kristensen explains, “We wanted to think of the exhibition as a total experience. To survey 10 years, we’ve begun with Prouvost’s Wantee, 2013—a work that has become synonymous with Prouvost and secured her the 29th Turner Prize.” Wantee presents a fictional…

Nat Penney Newmarch Gallery 14 June—13 July Trained in timber furniture making and metal fabrication, Adelaide-based artist Nat Penney centres her professional practice around creating functional objects with purpose. Taking a looser and more subjective approach to her personal creative work, Penney also creates evocative abstract forms from contrasting materials like Huon pine and steel. Interested in how we move through multiple states of distraction to find a place of focus, Penney’s latest work hooks into calming elements of the marine environment. Inspired by “vivid childhood memories of being fascinated by dolphin noises and oceanic creatures in a fishing guidebook”, Penney has created a series of forms carved from beech timber that resemble the sinuous, smooth body of a dolphin. These are nestled at the base of a large, centrally…

Growing up in Brisbane in the 1980s, I remember businessman Alan Bond and the America’s Cup sailing competition frequently mentioned in the nightly news—Bond was determined to win the race. In 1988, I received the Australian Bicentennial Medallion given to school students and visited all the pavilions at Expo 88 in Brisbane, which hosted over 15 million visitors for its laser displays, parades and more. Big money and big politics seemed to shape everything. Harnessing the vibe of this time, curator Gemma Weston has used political philosopher Francis Fukuyama’s 1989 essay, ‘The End of History?’, as a loose conceptual backbone for an exhibition of work from the University of Western Australia art collection. Part of Fukuyama’s central idea was that history should be viewed as an evolutionary process. Applying this…

Araluen Arts Centre, Mparntwe www.araluenartscentre.nt.gov.au 61 Larapinta Drive, Alice Springs, NT 0870 08 8951 1122 Open daily 10am–4pm. See our website for latest information. 1 June–11 August GROUNDSWELL To celebrate its 40th anniversary in 2024 the Araluen Arts Centre is presenting a major survey exhibition drawn primarily from its Collection and artworks it holds on long-term loan. It will have a particular focus on artists from Central Australia and how their knowledge and experience of place influences diverse and innovative art practices. It will highlight artists of national importance, also well represented in the Collection, who have not only influenced arts practice but also how we, as a nation, see ourselves and understand this country. Spanning two major galleries, this exciting exhibition is a celebration of the richness and depth…

STEVE DOW is a Melbourne-born, Sydney-based arts writer, whose profiles, essays, previews and reviews range across the visual arts, theatre, film and television for The Saturday Paper, Guardian Australia, The Monthly, the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Sunday Life, Limelight and VAULT. BRIONY DOWNES is an arts writer based in Hobart. She has worked in the arts industry for over 20 years as a writer, actor, gallery assistant, art theory tutor and fine art framer. Most recently, she spent time studying art history through Oxford University. SALLY GEARON works across writing, publishing and contemporary art. Based in Naarm/Melbourne, she has a background in art history and book publishing. She is the assistant editor at Art Guide Australia. NEHA KALE is a writer, journalist and critic who has been writing about…

Stacey McCall Michael Reid Murrurundi 12—30 June Stacey McCall’s work celebrates the domestic. The Melbourne-based artist’s paintings depict everyday objects with a distinctly handmade touch; brush strokes are evident, as is a strong sense of home. “I’m very intent on making things by hand—I knit and I cook, so I think my painting comes from that place of domestic chores and life. There’s nothing particularly slick about it—it’s quite vernacular,” she says. “One of my favorite painters, Ben Nicholson, described his work as being as important and ordinary as housework…That’s the narrative that I’m putting forward in my work.” McCall’s latest exhibition, Breathwork, continues this theme. Its name comes from the meditative process of creation that has been a fixture of McCall’s career, from making bespoke jewellery to landscape and…

Matilda Davis Hervey Bay Regional Gallery 11 May—30 June Matilda Davis’s The White Man’s Web emerged out of the Badjala/Batjala artist’s memories of environmental destruction in the vicinity of her coastal home during childhood and adolescence. “I first thought about making this work as a teenager after seeing discarded crab pots with juvenile milbi [turtles] and shovelnose rays stuck in them,” says Davis. “When I was a kid, I would visit the islands of Korrawinga [the Great Sandy Strait], seeing bird skeletons with their stomachs filled with plastic, birds with fishing line bound around their feet and young mangroves being strangled.” The White Man’s Web is a single large-scale installation crafted from dead birri (mangroves), milbi, fish skeletons, bird skulls and, Davis says, “the white man’s trash” that she has…

HOTA Gallery On now—4 August The beachside charm of the Gold Coast is getting the Renaissance treatment with the region’s major gallery, Home of the Arts (HOTA), exhibiting not “old master” paintings per se, but a series of multifaceted, immersive projections of works by Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Sandro Botticelli and Caravaggio, among many others. With its huge scale, alongside subtle animation and various visual effects, Italian Renaissance Alive harnesses technology to display many familiar works in the Western canon in a three-dimensional setting (engineered by the team behind the popular Van Gogh Live immersive exhibition in Melbourne). “Aside from displaying works on a large scale, we relish the opportunity to guide the eye to details not noticed at first glance,” says Gary Moynihan, head of visitor experiences at Grande…

There’s an enduring fascination with ancient Egypt. Perhaps it’s the imagery—there is a pictorial nature to the culture, through hieroglyphs and the adornment of objects. Or maybe it’s the abundance and quality of materials from the period—burying objects deep in the desert surrounding the fertile soil of the Nile Valley allowed for the preservation of organic material, in a way uncommon in many other ancient civilisations. Through these materials we know a surprising amount about ancient Egyptians. Considering the 5,000 years separating us, there are many different stories to tell—and people are still riveted. The story the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) is telling in their 2024 Winter Masterpieces exhibition is of the pharaoh. “The pharaoh was the most powerful person in ancient Egypt,” says Miranda Wallace, senior curator of…

ACAE Gallery www.acaearts.com.au Australasian Cultural Arts Exchange 82A Wellington Street, Collingwood, VIC 3066 [Map 3] 0406 711 378 Tue to Sun 10am–5pm. See our website for latest information. ACAE Gallery is a cultural venture presenting artworks and exhibitions by contemporary Australian and Asian artists. 27 April–25 May New Sculptural Works Thang Do 27 April–25 May Recent Paintings Tony Scott Alcaston Gallery www.alcastongallery.com.au 84 William Street, Melbourne, VIC 3000 [Map 2] 03 8849 9668 Thu 12pm–6pm or by appointment. Established in 1989, Alcaston Gallery is based in Melbourne with a national and international focus and exhibition schedule. The gallery represents contemporary artists from Australia and the Asia Pacific Region and is renowned for representing and exhibiting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists. Anna Schwartz Gallery www.annaschwartzgallery.com 185 Flinders Lane, Melbourne, VIC…

Above and Below Gallery www.aboveandbelowgallery.com.au Shop 12a, Port of Airlie, 33 Port Drive, Airlie Beach, QLD 4802 [Map 14] 0419 941 162 Wed to Sat 9am–4pm, Sun 9am–1pm. Focusing on the ocean as a canvas, from both above in the aerial sphere and below the waters surface, this collection will have you in awe of nature and its wonderous colours and spaces. Brooke’s goal is to capture the moment and slow down time, one photo at a time. Artspace Mackay www.artspacemackay.com.au Civic Precinct, corner Gordon and Macalister Streets, Mackay, QLD 4740 [Map 14] artspace@mackay.qld.gov.au 07 4961 9722 Mackay’s regional art gallery is closed for renovations with public programs ongoing in various locations throughout the region. Visit artspacemackay.com.au for current information and events, to search the art collection, take virtual tours…

Bett Gallery www.bettgallery.com.au Level 1, 65 Murray Street, Hobart, TAS 7000 [Map 17] 03 6231 6511 Mon to Fri 10am–5.30pm, Sat 10am–4pm. 10 May–1 June Philip Wolfhagen 10 May–1 June Minor Falls, Major Lifts Kelly Austin 7 June–29 June Dermatologists hate her! Mish Meijers 7 June–29 June Monument Rosie Hastie Contemporary Art Tasmania www.contemporaryarttasmania.org 27 Tasma Street, North Hobart, TAS 7000 [Map 17] 03 6231 0445 Wed to Sat, noon–5pm. See our website for latest information. 12 April–18 May Embraced In The Loving Arms of an Algorithm – v1.1 Zachary Doney, Grace Gamage, Adelphie He, Billie Rankin Curated by Jon Smeathers. A speculative project centralised around the generation of a curatorial algorithm. 7 June–6 July Constellations 2024 Pipeline, Reptrillion Culture Club, Colin Langridge, Alicia King, Philip Sulidae, Abi Whitton, Chloe…

Geelong Gallery 18 May—28 July Despite working in different styles across painting and printmaking, renowned Australian artists Margaret Preston (1875—1963) and the contemporary Cressida Campbell each have an affinity for the Japanese ukiyo-e print. Initially, Preston was inspired by what she saw on her travels through Europe and Asia in the early 1900s, while Campbell studied Japanese woodblock printing at Tokyo’s Yoshida Hanga Academy in the 1980s. Focusing on these similarities, curator Lisa Sullivan has brought a selection of their work together with historical ukiyo-e prints drawn from the Geelong Gallery collection and further afield. Viewing all the works together, one can see how both Preston and Campbell applied what they had learned of the Japanese print to their own work as they created landscapes and florals from Sydney locales…

Hunnah James Tactile Arts 10—25 May The paperbark tree is an Australian mainstay. Popular with native wildlife and resistant to drought, many grow throughout Darwin, where Hunnah James currently lives and works. “Paperbarks have this shedding that’s quite symbolic of what we go through [as humans], shedding off our layers over the years,” says James, who has incorporated the bark as a material into her work, layering it among watercolour paintings of Australian flora and fauna—from banksias and wattles to zebra finches, with common crow butterflies fluttering among Geraldton wax flowers. “I don’t paint on the paperbark,” explains James of her process. “I use fineliner and then do highlights in gold. I don’t paint with colour because I want there to be that negative light and shadow effect, the brightness…

DRAW Space 2—26 May Layering, smudging, frottage; the language of drawing is iterative, mutable. It is a language that imagines the human hand as it makes uncertain contact towards yet-known forms. As American artist Amy Sillman reminds us, drawing in-forms, re-forms and trans-forms. Drawing within the expanded field, which considers other mediums in relation to contemporary drawing, is the ongoing project of artist and curator Daniel Press. Fabrication, a co-curatorial project with Press and Sarah Eddowes, brings together 10 contemporary artists working in the intersections of drawing and digital fabrication. Many of the artists “consider themselves drawers, but use fabrication methods in order to convey their practice”, says Press. “One of the core premises of what we are trying to do is expand the notions of what drawing is.” Expand,…

Craft Victoria 11 May—22 June “There’s something about aluminium, there’s this allure. Even the name—to illuminate, it has that association with light and attraction,” says Eliza Tiernan, curator of Aluminium, an exhibition at Craft Victoria that asks six creatives—artists, makers, designers—to respond to the material. As part of Craft Victoria’s Conscious Craft initiative, the show is about promoting sustainable making practices in art and design. “We have an organisation-wide focus on conscious craft. Whether that be making processes, material provenance and mindfulness, or just being aware of where your materials come from and how you’re working with them.” All the aluminium in the show is recycled. “It’s a pretty contradictory material,” says Tiernan. “It’s so resource-heavy to get virgin aluminium, but on the flip side, it is incredibly sustainable when it’s…

Skewed body parts; allusions to genitalia, sex and violence; tinges of the fleshiest pink; a girl with a lightbulb for a head. Since the 1980s Pat Brassington’s images have entranced the psyche of contemporary Australian art. The photo-media artist’s staged, crafted scenes evoke something complicated, quietened, even repressed, in human nature, with her works often linked to psychoanalysis, feminism and surrealism. With a new solo exhibition at ARC ONE Gallery, Brassington, now 82 years old, talks about first studying art in her thirties, and her early encounters with feminist texts through a wives’ book club. She also talks about her feelings on living and working in Hobart, the role of psychoanalysis in explaining her work, and what it means to mine the unconscious. TIARNEY MIEKUS It’s often noted that you…

The artist Jumaadi paints and draws on the tough hide from water buffalo once used to plough rice fields. His art, which depicts Javanese folk culture, also encompasses cloth canvas, laboriously stretched and sealed in a large pond of rice glue, hand pressed like a silk screen. The studio Jumaadi has kept in Imogiri in Yogyakarta for the past 11 years is surrounded by a beautiful dry landscape, contrasting with tropical expectations of Indonesia. It reminds him of his adopted second home in Australia, where he maintains a studio in the northern Sydney suburb of Brookvale. “That familiarity gave me that comfort of drying trees in the summer,” says the quietly spoken 51-year-old. We are talking outside Bundanon Art Museum, inland from the New South Wales south coast, where Jumaadi…

314 Abercrombie Gallery www.314abercrombie.gallery 314 Abercrombie Street, Darlington, NSW 2008 [Map 14] 0404 146 738 See our website for latest information. This small, inviting, bright gallery nestled snugly in Darlington beside the Redfern area is the up-and-coming art precinct of Sydney. We have Carrigeworks, the White Rabbit and many smaller galleries nearby. 1 May–25 May Landscapes Stefan Kater Stefan has developed an eye for painting elegant graphic design and fantastic three-dimensional compositions. Stefan’s painting is different from the 20th century’s modernism and avantgardism. He brings to his work tastes of Boomer pop art and shares much of the Z Millennials’ slick smoothness, bright hyper-realism, and reflective surfaces. Stefan’s aesthetic emerges from the combination of all these sources, making Stefan’s art extraordinarily fresh and new. Opening night, 4 May, 5pm–8pm. Annandale…

Aarwun Gallery www.aarwungallery.com.au 11 Federation Square, Gold Creek, Nicholls, ACT 2913 [Map 16] 0499 107 887 Daily 10am–4.30pm and by appointment in the evening. See our website for latest information. 4 May–26 May En Plein Air – A Modern Impressionist Ken Knight Artists Shed www.artistshed.com.au 1–3/88 Wollongong Street (lower), Fyshwick, ACT 2609 0418 237 766 Tue to Sat 9am–5pm, Sun 10am–4pm. See our website for latest information. The Artists Shed has works by the principle artist Margaret Hadfield and ‘Shed Artists’ who are rising students and friends. The Artists Shed is a unusual artist run Gallery, Art School and Art Store. Margaret Hadfield’s work is varied in subject and mediums. Margaret is well travelled to many corners of the world including Antarctica. Some of her works are conceptual and delve…

Adelaide Contemporary Experimental www.ace.gallery Lion Arts Centre, North Terrace (West End) Kaurna Yarta, Adelaide, SA 5000 [Map 18] 08 8211 7505 Tue to Sat 11am–4pm. See our website for latest information. 1 June–10 August 2024 Porter Street Commission – Lee Salomone Art Gallery of South Australia www.agsa.sa.gov.au Kaurna Country North Terrace, Adelaide, SA 5000 [Map 18] 08 8207 7000 Daily 10am–5pm. Free entry. See our website for latest information. 1 March–2 June 18th Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Inner Sanctum The 2024 Adelaide Biennial offers an encounter with twenty-four artists and poets. Curated by José Da Silva, Inner Sanctum offers a snapshot of contemporary Australia that is reflective and hopeful. Carrick Hill House Museum and Garden www.carrickhill.sa.gov.au 46 Carrick Hill Drive, Springfield, SA 5062 08 7424 7900 Wed to Sun…

Art Collective WA www.artcollectivewa.com.au 2/565 Hay Street, Cathedral Square, Perth, WA 6000 [Map 19] 08 9325 7237 Wed to Fri 11am–4pm, Sat 12pm–4pm, or by appointment. 20 April–18 May Beyond the Lines Eveline Kotai Eveline Kotai continues her ongoing exploration of how patterns reveal themselves in unexpected ways – original paintings hand-cut into lines and sewn with invisible thread in pre-determined sequences. Depending on the colours and patterns of the sometimes-deliberate painted surfaces, the final assemblages may resemble growth patterns, musical notations, or ripples in water. Or they may simply settle into a composition of complex harmonies. Either way, they are instinctive evocations of an underlying universal order. The element of surprise and chance that keeps the process alive. The resolution of one artwork, by its own nature, can often…