Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 51 i Artist Profile

In February 2020, I meet at Prudence Flint’s studio above an old shop on Melbourne’s terminally busy St Kilda Road. Flint has painted here for twenty years. Afternoons are her most productive time when the light is ‘intense and warm’, falling through two sash windows. Propped around the room are five paintings for her new exhibition ‘The Wish’ at Fine Arts, Sydney. On a hefty wooden easel in the middle of the room lies a man stretched naked on a mattress, arms by his sides, eyes closed, face tilted towards an ominous little ornament – a witch’s head in a green hood. A diminutive bedside clock is frozen at 1:09. A woman stands by his side drinking from a small green cup, clad in bra and a long sheathe of…

“Teaching myself allowed me to paint the way I wanted” The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent border control measures have abruptly severed Tasmania’s connection to the mainland, temporarily suspending that sense of not-so-far-awayness. With our parks now closed to day walkers and campers, your unpeopled landscapes seem more relevant now than ever. You can feel like the only person on earth in Tassie. This cut-off has made the thought of isolation even more poignant. I hope that the ‘closing of the borders’ will make us realise how unique and important our wilderness is. These are ancient and endemic places that are being taken for granted. But on the other hand, for a lot of Tasmanians, self-isolation is nothing new. It’s a way of life down here. This virus highlights our vulnerability.…

The current Biennale of Sydney (BoS) opened on 14 March at six venues across the city and shut ten days later as the result of government restrictions put in place to arrest the spread of COVID-19. BoS was due to run until 8 June, but now looks as though it will be shut for many weeks to come. The Biennale was not alone in shutting, many other museums and galleries across the country had already done so and many had shifted to online platforms, as a way of delivering virtual tours and walk-throughs to their constituents. In comparison, BoS seemed to enter into what some might describe as, at best, a trading halt. While its 700 artworks from 101 global artists gathered dust in the shuttered venues, BoS refused to…

Cole is not particularly well-known in his native Victoria, having largely exhibited for most of his life with Ray Hughes, initially in Brisbane and subsequently in Sydney. Nor has he ever been an ‘art market darling’, one who has chased publicity or framed his art within popular collectability criteria amongst investor collectors. In 1975, when Cole was twenty-nine, the National Gallery of Victoria included him in their ‘Artist’s Artists’ show, along with Paul Partos, Robert Rooney and Asher Bilu. Thus it has remained – Cole is an artist revered by his peers and the art cognoscenti – but hardly a household name. Cole originally trained as a painter at the Prahran College of Technology in its newly erected five-storey building with Lenton Parr at its helm. He painted in a…

Juniper’s artistic practice is influenced by her experience of moving from Perth to Sydney. Once in Sydney, she was confronted by a larger, more rapidly developing environment, where support structures such as scaffolds, struts, formworks and tilt-props dominated the cityscape. Responding to this visual chaos, Juniper’s artworks capture a fleeting moment, one that is of ‘in progress’ – a temporary curtain, or what Juniper calls ‘cocoons’ – to the polished structure that will emerge from within. They draw the viewer’s attention to the beauty of the shadows and compositions cast by the support structures, captured by Juniper’s grand scale still life works within the refined gallery space. Juniper’s attraction to the colours, shapes and textures of the construction and deconstruction process propelled her to develop an experimental screen-printing process. Materials…

Integrated action to stop the COVID-19 pandemic has been completely necessary to guide Australasians to avoid the catastrophic spread and deaths recorded in other regions of the world. However, we should be cautious of returning to old systems with their propensity to turn partial truths into absolutes; and to the entirety of ideas to which they have become so closed and fixed. Governments seem to be learning that placing citizens first is paramount to the long-term health of a country’s economy and culture. This refocused spirit could revitalise a decimated visual arts sector that was already on the brink of breakdown before COVID-19. Unavoidably, throughout this fifty-first issue of Artist Profile – which celebrates on the cover the revered painter Prudence Flint – there are many stories tracing the impact…

How do you picture your childhood? A lot of freedom. I was allowed to do what I wanted most of the time. Plenty of painting in dad’s studio and bike riding through Marrickville. It was a happy time with my brothers and sister. I was always playing. When did you come to Roy Jackson’s studio in Wedderburn? About two years ago through an application process. All the members liked my paintings and thought I’d fit in well. Why did you change your name from Alexander to Al? I changed my name when I was five, because mum and dad used to call me Ali. I just said one day that my name was Al, and it was Al from then on. I was named by my dad. It’s a Russian…

Prouvost has become known for her expansive and immersive mixed-media installations that are at once poetic, chaotic and humorous. Working across video, sound, drawing, installation and performance, she has a distinctly recognisable oeuvre. The word ‘tentacular’ is often used in relation to Prouvost’s practice – fitting, given her fondness for the octopus. The term also aptly describes her accumulated body of work, which continues to creep outwards from a central point – that of the artist’s self-styled mythological universe. The more you delve into her practice, the more sense you make of it and yet, at the same time, you realise the impossibility of fully understanding her world. Prouvost was born in 1978 in Croix-Lille, France, and relocated to London to study at Central St Martins and Goldsmiths College. The…

In the early days of the pandemic, Helen Eager works in a routine seemingly unaltered by a disruption that is tearing at the fabric of what many understand to be daily existence. From the beginning of this period of isolation, artists quipped that they had be preparing for social distancing their entire lives – the discipline of solitary work practices were already familiar to them; one might even say desirable. In the midst of the upheaval, Eager maintains her daily practice of drawing and preparing works for upcoming exhibitions in a studio that houses the sketches and experiments of her life’s work. The space is light and poised, ready for activity. A studio that incongruously exudes simultaneous warmth and industry. Visitors enter through an iron grill created in the signature…

Some of my earliest memories are of the landscape. I moved around a lot as a child – six cities, ten houses and six schools by the time I was eleven years old. We lived in Papua New Guinea (PNG) for my primary years where I was homeschooled by my mother. Being home-schooled allowed me the flexibility to spend the majority of my day outside in nature. PNG is an untouched place in many areas. My dad is an aircraft mechanic and pilot, so we spent lots of time in small aeroplanes – they fly really low to the ground, so the land starts to look like an interesting collection of sectioned off fields of colour. This perspective of the landscape has sat with me throughout the development of my…

It is impossible, when talking to Lindy Lee, not to question whether her Buddhist practice or her art making comes first. Such is her commitment to both. Zen Buddhism, a religious philosophy enabling enlightenment through disciplined meditation along with Taoism, a Chinese philosophy based on sourcing harmony with nature, have underpinned Lee’s thinking for decades. A portrait of Lee meditating by artist Tony Costa won the 2019 Archibald Prize. Lee’s philosophical foundation, and the way art flows from this, is what is intrinsically interesting about her work – and what makes her forthcoming exhibition at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) much anticipated. ‘Moon in a Dew Drop’ surveys Lee’s impressive forty-year art practice, taking its title from a book by thirteenth century Japanese writer Dogen Zenji whose philosophy centred…

Dead just two months shy of his twenty-ninth birthday, Ramsay enjoyed considerable success, most notably in Paris where he lived for less than two years from 1901 to 1902. Here he lived as the archetypal bohemian artist in a shared, cold, cramped studio apartment. But in March 1902 he had no less than four paintings accepted in the Paris New Salon – unheard of for any artist, let alone an unknown Australian – three of which were included in the recent NGA survey (concluded 29 March). At about the same time he was introduced to Dame Nellie Melba who commissioned him to paint her portrait in London. It was never finished because Ramsay’s health forced him back to Australia (the 1902 sketch for the painting was in the survey), but…

The arts are a weathervane, they spin in the gusts of a robust financial climate and are the first to stall in the economic doldrums. When money is tight, the first funding curtailed is that allocated to the arts and entertainment, and consequently, the reaction to COVID-19 has been abrupt. Many events, festivals, concerts, and performances were cancelled and theatres, venues, and galleries closed. As roughly two-thirds of the country’s artists and artworkers are employed as casuals or sole traders, the impact on their fragile incomes was severe and immediate. The newly established website ‘I lost my gig’ reported on 7 April that lost income had reached $330 million and impacted the lives of over 600,000 artists and artworkers. We know from previous experience of wars, global financial crises, and…

Toby you grew up in Western Australia. How did you stay connected to Torres Strait Islander culture when you were living on the other side of the continent? When the pearling industry died down my father’s family moved from the Torres Strait to the mainland. In about 1960 my father went to school in Townsville. After that he worked in the railways around Queensland and then the railway took him to Western Australia (like many other Torres Strait Islanders). I grew up with a community of Islanders that maintained strong culture and traditional ways. We gathered every weekend and learnt dancing, hunting and protocols. What stimulated your art career? I knew my culture from our community in Dampier. Then one day Anthony Mundine was fighting and after he won he…

“There’s a strong western cultural belief that the artist is solo” Destiny, let’s begin with your upcoming exhibition at the NGV. D: This is my first survey at a state art gallery and the biggest show I’ve had in Melbourne. Even though I’ve been around for years and live in Melbourne I’ve mostly shown interstate, especially Sydney, and overseas, so it’s been exciting to see a couple of my works blown up huge on billboards in Flinders Street. I had a previous survey show, ‘Walk and don’t look blak’, that travelled between 2004 and 2006. It started at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, went to the Tjibaou Centre in Noumea, New Caledonia (one of my great great grandmothers came from Lifou in New Caledonia), to Wellington, NZ, the…

You draw from a wide range of imagery and ideas. What are the major sources of inspiration for your works? The process for gathering content to use in my paintings is a combination of information snacking, image hoarding and autobiographical content. What I’m exploring changes rapidly, governed by anything from music, art or ideas that I’ve shared with peers, to conversations with strangers at my places of work. Although thematic odds and ends can shift frequently, some things remain constant. The various places in which I’ve lived or travelled always seem to influence what I’m doing. In addition to physical places, websites like Tzvetnik, AQNB, Contemporary Art Daily and Artviewer are inspirational places for me. Going out to openings and gigs was something I’ve always enjoyed, but since I started…

I have made a career of making dark, menacing work in times of prosperity and affluence like an arsehole. It’s so easy to be a bully in the artworld. The universe stabs a hole in the meaninglessness of my practice. In a slithering attempt to rebrand as an essential worker I have recoiled back towards pseudo functionality, quickly clambering for the oozing, timeless breast of domestication and usefulness. When the lake runs dry the fisherman becomes a hunter or starves. Under thirties cannibals are the new rich. Supermarket isles of despair. A run on paracetamol. A run on beer. A run on the runs. Toilet paper jogs out the door. What will my contribution to this enormous moment be? Strange change is the ultimate evolutionary challenge for an artist. Redundancy…

As an Asian in Australia I have always been aware of the fissures and cracks in the colonial project of White Australia. When one thread starts to come loose, the entire fabric of colonial Australia is untangled. My relationship to the nation-state is intertwined in the triangulation of racial a. airs, simultaneously complicit in and victim to its insidious machinations and constructions. Suspended in this tension, it has always been clear to me that ideas of citizenship and racialised identity have always been a global issue. Many Australian critics have decried identity as myopic and it took a pandemic to remind us that identity and art are interlinked. This year’s Biennale of Sydney (BoS), led by the first First Nations Director Brook Andrew, is a significant reminder that marginalised groups…

HOME The annual ‘Home’ exhibition, curated by the City of Greater Dandenong, supports artists seeking asylum or those with a refugee background. The program enables six artists from across Australia to undertake professional development opportunities, including an exhibition, workshops, artist talks, a publication and a range of online offerings. The presentation, staged at Walker St Gallery and Arts Centre, celebrates diversity through works that give voice to each artist’s story and history, centred on the theme of ‘home’ – something that has taken on new meaning in our current Covid world. The artists in this year’s program are: Dr Dacchi Dang, Elham Eshraghian, Humaira Fayazi, Mastaneh Azarnia, Mirela Cufurovic and Saidin Salkic. 9 July to 15 August 2020 Walker St Gallery and Arts Centre, Victoria TWENTYONE Operating outside of the…

My mommy likes to sing along with me But she won't sing this song If she reads all the lyrics She'll pity the men I know –Bad Guy lyrics by Billie Eilish and Finneas O'Connell Approaching Lucas Grogan’s show ‘LONG STORY SHORT’ (22 February to 17 May 2020), these lyrics from Bad Guy were a persistent riff in my head. Grogan uses punch lines in his work, and I mean this in the sense that they may wind you. In his work God Damn Commands (2017), the text reads: ‘no#1 Try not to be a c*nt’. In the next breath; ‘no#4 Friends don’t let friends go to Woy Woy’. Raised in Maitland to a large Catholic family, Grogan’s show at Maitland Regional Art Gallery (MRAG) is a kind of homecoming.…