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Update | Program now available for Scottish Australia Symposium

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Thomas WATLING Scottish, b.1762, Australia 1792–1797, d. c.1814 Scarlet and Green Parrot (1792-1797) watercolour on paper 21.7 x 20.1 cm Natural History Museum, London

Scottish Australia Symposium | Art Gallery of Ballarat

The Scottish Australia Symposium will take place from the 9-11 May in Ballarat. It will bring together a range of speakers on topics related to the exhibition and on the relationship between Scotland and Australia.

Keynote Lecture ‘A country of enchantments’: Scottish Observations of Colonial Australia by Dr Lizanne Henderson, University of Glasgow is at 6:30pm, Friday 9th May 2014 at the University of Melbourne, Parkville – full details here.

The full Symposium Program is now available here.

Parallel sessions through both days, commencing at 9.30am and including an exhibition tour

Symposium Venue: Arts Academy, Federation University Australia Ballarat Campus, Camp Street, Ballarat

Dates: 9-11 May, 2014

All sessions of the Scottish-Australia Symposium, including the Keynote Address are free but registration is requested as space is limited.

Register here

Enquiries call 5320 5858 or artgal@ballarat.vic.gov.au

 

The Scottish Australia Symposium is presented by the Art Gallery of Ballarat in association with University of Melbourne Arts Faculty and the Arts Academy, Federation University Australia

Part of the Helen Macpherson Smith Schedule of Public Programs for the exhibition For Auld Lang Syne: Images of Scottish Australia from First Fleet to Federation at the Art Gallery of Ballarat until Sunday 27 July.


Exhibition | Being Human: The Graphic Work of George Baldessin | Heide Museum of Modern Art

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Being Human: The Graphic Work of George Baldessin

Heide Museum of Modern Art until Sunday 19 October 2014

George Baldessin, Seated Figure, 1973, colour etching and aquatint plate 56.2 x 50.5 cm Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne Gift of Tess, Gabriel and Ned Baldessin 2010 © Estate of George Baldessin

About the Exhibition | In a short but intensive career as a painter, sculptor and printmaker, George Baldessin attracted critical acclaim from peers and audiences alike, admired for his expertise in intaglio printing (etching) and his radical figurative style during the 1960s and 70s when abstraction was dominant.

Being Human: The Graphic Work of George Baldessin, focuses on Baldessin’s powerful prints and drawings, created between the artist’s exhibition debut in 1964 and his untimely death in 1978, aged thirty-nine.

The exhibition includes seventeen works recently gifted to the museum by the Estate of George Baldessin, which will be exhibited together at Heide for the first time, along with prints from the Heide Collection by Baldessin’s contemporaries including Roger Kemp, Les Kossatz, Jan Senbergs and Fred Williams, which provide a vivid context for Baldessin’s work.

The artist’s distinctive silvery-grey and black-and-white images of female nudes and dramatic figure tableaux—which draw on the surreal world of the circus and European New Wave cinema among other influences—are at once both emotionally confronting and poetic, offering meditations on the body as the concrete basis of experience.

Heide has worked closely with the artist’s widow, Tess Edwards Baldessin, on this project, and a number of related programs will be offered to complement the exhibition, including a tour of The Baldessin Press. Built by George and Tess Baldessin in the 1970s, the print-making studio now operates as a creative retreat for artists’ workshops and residencies.

Curated by Linda Short.

George Baldessin was born in Italy in 1939 and immigrated to Australia with his family in 1949. He studied painting at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) from 1958-61, but was also drawn to the activities of the printmaking and sculpture departments. After graduating he travelled to Europe then London where he attended printmaking classes at The Chelsea School of Art before commencing studies at the Brera Academy, Milan under the Italian modernist sculptor Marino Marini. He returned to Australia in 1963 and in 1964 he became a part-time lecturer at RMIT. He held his first solo exhibition of prints, drawing and sculpture at Melbourne’s Argus Gallery in the same year.

Baldessin went on to exhibit in over forty solo and group exhibitions in Australia and overseas. His work is held in many major private and public collections in Australia and overseas, including Museum of Modern Art, New York, National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of South Australia, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Museums & Art Galleries of the Northern Territory, Queensland Art Gallery, Tasmania Museum and Art Gallery, other regional galleries and university collections. One of his most celebrated sculptures, and the last he created before his death in 1978 is Mary Magdalene 1978-1983 which is part of the permanent outdoor sculpture collection at Heide, on view near the entrance to Heide II, the modernist house.

Related Programs

Art Talk with Tess Edwards Baldessin | Saturday 31 August, 2pm

Morning Teat with Tess Edwards Baldessin and Katrina Strickland | Thursday 14 August, 10–11.30am

Art Tour to the Baldessin Press | Saturday 13 September, 10am–2pm

See the exhibition website for further information: http://www.heide.com.au/exhibitions/current/exhibition/being-human-the-graphic-work-of-george-baldessin/edate/2014-05-03/eid/596

 

Public Lecture | Wreckage and Reclamation: Politics and Art in Brisbane 1987-1997 | Doug Hall

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Peter Tyndall, Detail of A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/ someone looks at something..., Oil on canvas and enamel on wood with braided nylon cord, Gift of the artist through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 2002. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program Collection: Queensland Art Gallery, © The artist

“The greatest thing that could happen to this State – and the Nation – is when we can get rid of the media. Then we could live in peace and tranquility, and no one would know anything.” 
Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, former Queensland Premier, the Spectator, London, 12 December 1987.

“This, December 2, 1989, is the end of the Bjelke-Petersen era.”
Wayne Goss, election victory speech, 2 December, 1989.

The one-liner, ‘it could only happen in Queensland’, is now but a well-worn and a meaningless cliché. The conduct that it supposedly represents has now become established as a trans-state phenomenon. Queensland has long-struggled to shake off its reputation as a haven for vulgar hedonism, being intellectually thin, culturally remote with an inglorious history of political corruption, often underpinned by the obligatory acquiescence of its public institutions.

This lecture is a personal profile of the political and public policy conduct of the time and will place the Gallery in this context. It will reveal how an art museum critically revaluated its past and shaped its possible future, most of which was eventually realised. It will suggest that there are contemporary lessons to be learnt in the wake of political turmoil, atonement with the arts as inseparable in defining who we are and what we might become.

Doug Hall was born, raised and educated in Victoria and is a graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts, and was director of two regional galleries before moving to Brisbane in 1987. He was the Commissioner for the Australian exhibitions at the Venice Biennale in 2009 and 2011. In 2014 he was appointed Associate Professor and Honorary Principal Fellow at the Australian Institute of Art History at the University of Melbourne.

Under his directorship the Queensland Art Gallery expanded its international focus and developed a strong engagement with Asia, especially through his initiative, the Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art. He conceived the idea for the $140 million Gallery of Modern Art and oversaw its development. It opened on 1 December 2006.

In 1999 he was awarded the University of Queensland’s degree of Doctor of Philosophy honoris causa for his contribution to the visual arts in Queensland. In 2001 he was awarded a member of the Order of Australia, and in 2006 was made a Chevalier dans l‘Ordre des Arts et Lettres by the Republic of France.

Date: Tuesday, 3 June 2014 | 6.30pm – 8.00pm

Venue: Lyle Theatre, Redmond Barry Building, The University of Melbourne, Parkville

Free and open to public. registration required as seating is limited. Register here.

Exhibition | From the Home of Mirka Mora | Heide Museum of Modern Art

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‘To me, painting and drawing are natural, I’ve done them for as long as I can remember’. Mirka Mora

Mirka Mora in her studio Photograph: Fred Kroh (2014)

About the Exhibition | Mirka Mora is one of Melbourne’s best-loved artists and most colourful personalities. This special exhibition, drawn from the treasure trove that is her home studio spans her entire practice, from her first surviving painting through her most recently completed works and includes paintings, drawings, soft sculptures, tapestries, sketchbooks and ceramics.

Rarely seen in public before, the works will be displayed in the former home of Mirka’s close friends and Heide founders John and Sunday Reed, the modernist house now known as Heide II.

Mirka and her husband Georges arrived in Melbourne from Paris in 1951 and brought with them a taste of la vie bohème. Their studio residence at 9 Collins Street became a hub for Melbourne’s bohemian set and they became friends with many now famous Australian artists such as Charles Blackman, Arthur Boyd, Sidney Nolan and Fred Williams, as well as art patrons John and Sunday Reed.

Mirka observed that to know the Reeds was to ‘sharpen your sensitivity’ for they ‘could read a painting like a musician can read music.’ To her they were more than friends ‘because they could read my soul.’

A talented and dedicated artist, whose career spans over sixty years, for Mirka, art and life are inseparable. She has long captivated audiences with instantly recognisable works created in a remarkable range of materials and styles, all created in Mirka’s sensuous, naïve style and marked by her idiosyncratic iconography of recurring motifs, from children, dogs and birds to angels, devils and snakes.

The works in this exhibition lead us through Mirka’s first years in Melbourne living at 9 Collins Street, family beach holidays at Aspendale, her love of St Kilda, the joys and demands of relationships and motherhood, and the pain of separation and loss.

The exhibition runs from Saturday 17 May – Sunday 9 November 2014

Related Programs

ART TALK WITH WILLIAM MORA

Sunday 25 May, 2pm

William Mora, director of William Mora Galleries and curator Kendrah Morgan discuss some of the many treasured objects and images from Mirka’s studio that have never before been publicly displayed. Celebrating Mirka’s sixty year association with Heide and her close ties to John and Sunday Reed, William will share personal accounts of one of Melbourne’s most colourful personalities and best-loved artists.

FREE with admission

EXHIBITION TOURS

Every Thursday, 5 June – 28 August, 2pm

FREE with admission

For further information and other programs related to the exhibition see the Heide MOMA website.

Talk | Why Being Real Matters: Art and Authenticity in Australia | Robyn Sloggett

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Why Being Real Matters: Art & Authenticity in Australia

Robyn Sloggett

In this talk, Associate Professor Robyn Sloggett presents an outline of the history of art and cultural heritage fraud in Australia. She examines the ways in which scholarship intersects (or does not intersect) with art fraud investigations and what is at stake when art fraud goes unreported. With the Australian indigenous art market estimated at around $500 million and with estimates for the amount of problematic art in the market at about 10%, the issue is significant in both economic and social terms. This talk looks at these issues and at the current options for dealing with the problem of art fraud in the Australian market.

Associate Professor Robyn Sloggett is Director of the Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation, which delivers industry-focused teaching, research and consultancy programs related to cultural preservation. Her current research incorporates art authentication, the scientific and cultural analysis of painting and mediums used in Australia, art market development and the impact of art fraud, cultural conservation in Southeast Asia, and the preservation of cultural material and archives held in remote and regional communities. In 2003 she was awarded the AICCM’s Conservator of the Year Award for ‘Services to the Conservation Profession’.

This talk will launch the Humanities 21 series New Interpretations of Australia, in which experts will present undiscovered aspects of Australia’s history and culture over a sit-down lunch.

Date: Tuesday 10 June 2014, 12:15pm for 12:45pm until 2:00pm,

Venue: Morgans at 401, 401 Collins St, Melbourne 3000.

Cost: Humanities 21 members: $45, non-members: $60. Sit-down lunch included.

To book and for further information see the Humanities 21 website:  https://humanities21.com.au/event/talk-why-being-real-matters-art-and-authenticity-in-australia/

Exhibition Review | Genius and Ambition. The Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1768–1918 | David R. Marshall

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Genius and Ambition. The Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1768–1918

David R. Marshall  

Henry Fuseli, Thor battering the Midgard Serpent, 1790, Royal Academy of Arts

At the Bendigo Art Gallery 2 March–9 June 2014. (Closes 9 June; an exhibition of antique sculpture from the British Museum follows on 2 August.)

The regional galleries have some interesting exhibitions on at the moment. At the Ballarat Art Gallery is Auld Lang Syne while at Bendigo, with only a few days to run, is Genius and Ambition, which consists largely of works from the Royal Academy, London and is an exhibition generated by Bendigo and the only Australian venue. Following the success of its fashion shows, especially Grace Kelly, the Bendigo Gallery has stimulated an arts-led tourism industry serving day-trippers from Melbourne who come by car, train or chartered bus. Bendigo has a lot of offer in this respect. Its architectural charms are considerable, with the old timber stadium in one direction from the Art Gallery, monumental architecture—Gothic spires and Mansard roofs—in another, and nice old, restful houses in another. Opposite the Art Gallery are the necessary antique or mock-antique shops and cafés, while at the back the gallery café faces a park (as gallery cafés should) serving good-value bookable lunches in a suitably metropolitan style. And most importantly, it enables Melbournians to forget for the day the over-development that is destroying what was good about their city.

Certainly when I was there a few weeks ago on a Wednesday the exhibition was quite busy, if not packed as it was for the Grace Kelly exhibition, and the people I spoke to were all up from Melbourne for the day. The demographic was largely the one with free time in the middle of the week and an interest in looking at paintings; that is to say, people over 60. It may well be that in this regard the regional galleries are less conflicted than the metropolitan galleries, who are attempting to attract a broader demographic with large installations in vast spaces, festivals such as white night, and intensive programs for children and toddlers.

The Bendigo and Ballarat Galleries (not to mention the Castlemaine Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of South Australia and the Art Gallery of New South Wales) have fine top-lit nineteenth or early twentieth-century galleries to house their permanent collections, which give them a clear typological identity as Art Galleries. At Bendigo the decision was made to install the temporary exhibition in these nineteenth-century galleries, which means the paintings are exhibited in sympathetic surroundings.

Access to the café is now by way of a long roundabout route, rather than by means of the loggia with its display statues that face a reflecting pool towards the park, turning what is one of the nicer features of the Bendigo gallery into a dead zone. (Incidentally, a green marble version of the Uffizi Wrestlers joins the white marble line-up here, the subject of an academy drawing in the exhibition by Millais, although the connection is not made.)

The exhibition galleries are painted a dark blue-green, not unlike the main Old Master galleries at the NGV before they turned pale blue-green, which, with low lighting levels makes the rooms a little too dark for comfort and serves to detach the walls from the vault. Some of the displaced pictures have been relocated to white-walled new galleries, and it is interesting how much less well they read there than against dark: the white of the walls dominates, and washes out the colours. In the darker temporary exhibition the colours of the pictures emerge much more effectively.

John Constable, A Boat passing a Lock, 1826, Royal Academy of Arts, London

The Genius and Ambition exhibition takes up four large rooms. The first is devoted to the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, dominated by works by Reynolds, Gainsborough, Constable and Turner, and perhaps best exemplifies one common image of the Royal Academy as a Georgian institution. The next two rooms, however, take us from the Victorian to the Edwardian periods. Most are diploma pictures, in the tradition of the reception pieces that all academies required their members to submit on admission. But this does not mean they were products by newly graduated artists: most are by artists fully established in their careers. These rooms are interspersed with works on paper designed to illuminate the academic process. The last room contains works not from the Royal Academy, but from state and regional galleries, devoted to Australian artists who exhibited at the Royal Academy in its rooms (still in use) at Burlington House. (It is not clear, however, whether all the works were exhibited there, or have been chosen to throw light on the Australia-Royal Academy connection more broadly.) This section is useful in displaying works (including two sculptures) that are not normally on display in their home galleries but which deserve to be. Being hung in this context makes these works more intelligible, emphasising the Britishness of most Australian art before 1939, and serving to undermine the narrow nationalism that attempts to separate ‘national’ from ‘international’ art, crudely embodied in the physical separation of the NGV on two separate sites.

This is a surprisingly rich exhibition, with more to see the deeper you go. I recommend that if you haven’t seen it to catch it before it closes on 9 June, and if you have been to it make the effort to go again.

Engraved by Charles Bestland after Henry Singleton, The Royal Academicians in General Assembly 569 X 760 mm

The tenor of the first room is established by Charles Bestland’s engraving after the painting (which did not travel) by Henry Singleton showing the Royal Academicians in General Assembly in their premises at New Somerset House in 1795. This shows all the bigwigs, with casts of the Belvedere torso, the Apollo Belvedere, and above all the Laocöon in pride of place. Although the catalogue does not point this out, on the wall can be seen Reynold’s self-portrait (represented in the exhibition by a mezzotint, Cat. 3) and John Singleton Copley’s The Tribute Money, which is present in the flesh nearby. This strange piece of Italian seventeenth-century revival (the hands are pure Guercino, and it would not be out of place in the Prado exhibition at the NGV) is a good indication of where the exhibition is not headed, as is Reynolds’ Theory, his only ceiling painting, made for the ceiling of the library of New Somerset House. Rather fun is a delightful eighteenth-century spin-off of a superhero movie—oops, that can’t be right—Henry Fuseli’s Thor Battering the Midgard Serpent, 1790 (above). Thor’s six-pack surpasses in inauthenticity those of the Spartans in 300. Gainsborough’s Romantic Landscape with Sheep at a Spring, c. 1783 and Turner’s Dolbadarn Castle, 1800 would be at home in Ballarat, where this kind of sublime imagery is identified with Scottishness. Equally atmospheric is a full Constable composition, A Boat Passing a Lock, 1826 (above) accompanied by some studies. And there is the poor man’s Stubbs, Sawrey Gilpin, where all these atmospherics have a direct effect on the animal world (Horses in a Thunderstorm, 1798).

Thomas Gainsborough, Romantic Landscape with Sheep at a Spring, ca. 1783, Royal Academy of Arts, London

In the second room is a very interesting selection of works associated with academic education, picking up on some of the themes in the Bestland/Singleton engraving. The scene is set with Edward Burney’s The Antique School at New Somerset House, c. 1780, where the greatest sculptural hits of the eighteenth century at its most Neoclassical moment appear: it is interesting to note the absence of the most dynamic of these ancient statues—the Laocöon and the Torso Belvedere—which are so prominent in Singleton’s image fifteen years later. The Laocöon also appears in an academy study after a cast by an unknown artist, dating from the period 1851–73, and there are other studies of casts by Richmond, Millais and Landseer. In the academic system, it was necessary to complete these satisfactorily before moving on to the life class. It is remarkable how long this tradition persisted. In the exhibition there are a few life drawings, including a superb Mulready. There are also anatomical drawings, including a famous and hypnotic drawing by Stubbs made in preparation for his book on horse anatomy.

Edward Burney, The Antique School at New Somerset House, ca. 1780 pen and ink with watercolour wash on laid paper, Royal Academy of Arts, London

There is also a range of architectural items, including a Design of a Capital Illustrating the Supposed Origin of the Corinthian Order, c. 1757-70 by Sir Williams Chambers. There are many illustrations of the passage in Vitruvius describing the accidental creation of the Corinthian capital—this involved a tile placed on a basket on a grave with acanthus plant growing up around it—and there have been attempts to show what the prototypical Corinthian capital was like, but Chamber’s shows us instead a fancy capital that alludes to the story in a poetic way. Hence the acanthus leaves are not as we find them in standard Corinthian capitals, but are tender young shoots, the stems of which form a basket weave with horizontal bands at the bottom of the bell. Although it uses the orthographic projection standard for such academic architectural drawings, it remains a wholly pictorial conception that could never be executed in stone.

The Gateway to the Great Temple at Baalbec, 1841, Royal Academy of Arts, London

A less comfortable architectural image is found further along the same wall in David Roberts’ The Gateway to the Great Temple of Baalbek, 1841. This image of a gigantic gateway with its slipped keystone is a very powerful piece of represented architecture. It demands that you imagine yourself daring to pass under it. (It is notable that in the painting no-one is standing directly below, although one man is close.) Giulio Romano played with the slipped keystone as an architectural motif at Palazzo del Te, but for purely intellectual effect. Roberts, by contrast, employs the full repertoire of Romantic techniques to make you experience the terror of impending collapse. Although this looks like a keystone (that is, the central member of a flat arch), what puzzles me is that the sides seem to be parallel. Even if they are slightly tapered, this is a building that is asking to fall down. There is a later nineteenth-century photograph that makes you appreciate Roberts’ powers as an artist. The slipped block has been prosaically supported on a crude brick pier, and the whole things looks a lot smaller than Roberts would have us believe.

Nearby is an intriguing work by Alma-Tadema, although a bit dark, which has a striking sense of design in the tall format he sometimes employed. There are sinister silhouetted shapes at the top that take their cue from the legs of an archaic Greek pinwheel figure. These lead to a constricted view of a gaudy Etruscan temple. One’s attention is made to shift restlessly from front to back and top to bottom, and characteristic of Alma-Tadema is the way the archaeological hyper-realism of the red-figure vase in the foreground clashes with the very Victorian Covent-Garden flower seller masquerading as an ancient priestess behind. Alma-Tadema deserves more credit that he gets for the sophistication of such syncopated compositions, which maintain your interest by forcing you to make sense of them. There is much more to Alma Tadema than the ability to paint marble, as a glance at Poynter’s The Fortune Teller 1877 makes clear.  The marble is carefully painted but the composition is wooden, the clothed woman flat and excessively rectilinear, and the naked woman clumsily painted.

John Frederick Lewis, The Door of a Cafe in Cairo, 1865, Royal Academy of Arts, London

Much more fun is J.F. Lewis’ The Door of a Café in Cairo, 1865, which doubles as a rather evasive portrait of a sheikh of Lewis’s acquaintance. This too has a very interesting design, with the wooden screen echoed by one behind, and, as with Pre-Raphaelite painting (and to some extent Alma Tadema), you get a series of little independent rectangular views that are flattened by the perspective. You are forced to focus on the colour for its own sake, and try and make sense of the forms, as in a waking dream.

Moving into the twentieth century, there is Stanhope Forbes (of the Newlyn School). This artist I was not much aware of until recently when I went to Cornwall and stayed at a B&B that turned out to be Stanhope Forbes’ house. It was rather grand, on a hill above Newlyn, with a run-down garden of sorts and—the owner informed me—a helipad, because some of his custom was business groups having a getaway after strenuous negotiating in London. The room I was in, he told me, was Stanhope Forbes studio. I headed off on his recommendation through the dark and rain (it was an English summer after all) to the Ship Inn in the intriguingly named Mousehole (pronounced Mowzle). The pub faced a tiny harbour with the fortress-like breakwater, which is what you see out the window in Forbes’ The Harbour Window, which was painted from an upstairs room of the same pub. It is curious how Forbes shows us the same place but a different world; few people would experience Mousehole today as the setting for a quietly introspective manual occupation with the sitter absorbing the view rather than photographing it.

Stanhope Forbes, The Harbour Window, 1910, Royal Academy of Arts, London

The reputation of painters like Stanhope Forbes has suffered in Australia because he does not fit the avant-garde mould. Another painter with a similarly compromised reputation is Sir John Lavery, whose diploma piece is a view of The Van Dyck Room, Wilton House, c. 1920. This is paired with John Singer Sargent’s An Interior in Venice, 1899, and while in the catalogue the two paintings appear to apply a similar use of light and shadow, in the flesh the Lavery looks flat compared to the Sargent. Sargent rarely disappoints, and this little painting is quite spectacular in the sharp tonal contrasts, informal figure groupings, painterly treatment and brilliant touches of gold. It works better that his high keyed At Torre Galli: Lades in a Garden, 1910.

Of all the painters who tackled Velázquez, Sargent understood him best (much better than Manet), because he understood that Velázquez was about illusionism, not fancy brushwork. His Daughters of Edward Darley Boit (Boston) is the only painting that can stand up to Velázquez’s Las Meninas. Sir John Everett Millais, by contrast, misunderstood Velázquez completely. His A Souvenir of Velázquez, 1868 is a display of choppy and showy brushwork that never ceases to be simply that, at whatever distance you view it. In the sentimental face of the girl he abandons Velázquez and reverts to Millais, and this is the best part of the picture.

In the room of Australian painters, there are early works by the big names that are often more interesting than their famous works.  Dobell’s Boy at a Basin, 1932 is all the better for a naturalism that he later abandoned. (The boy’s striped pyjamas somehow remind me of early Rembrandt), while the early Streetons are similarly refreshing.

In conclusion, this is a really interesting exhibition that rewards close viewing, and as an initiative of the Bendigo art gallery, is another example of the interesting international collaborations this regional gallery has pursued in recent years.

 © David R. Marshall 2014

 

Exhibition | Gunter Christman: Now and Then | Heide Museum of Modern Art

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GUNTER CHRISTMANNSmoke OZKAR (2001) acrylic and mixed media on canvas 137 x 122cm © The Estate of Gunter Christmann and Niagara Galleries, Melbourne

GUNTER CHRISTMANNSmoke OZKAR (2001)
acrylic and mixed media on canvas
137 x 122cm
© The Estate of Gunter Christmann and Niagara Galleries, Melbourne

Gunter Christman: Now and Then is on now at Heide Museum of Modern Art until 16th November 2014.

EVENT | This Saturday (2nd August 2:00pm) Artist Simon Barney, a friend and colleague of Gunter Christmann for thirty years, talks about Christmann’s inspirations, techniques and perspectives on art. Free with entry.

About the Exhibition

At the time of his death in 2013, Gunter Christmann was gathering anew the type of critical and public attention that surrounded his striking debut as an artist in the 1960s. Painting for himself rather than the market throughout his long career, he moved easily between personal subjects and themes with universal qualities, finding a congenial truce between his European sensibility and an affection for the intimacies of his Sydney locale.

Christmann left his native Germany and arrived in Australia via Canada in 1959. He started painting three years later. Though he studied briefly at the East Sydney Technical College his practice was almost entirely self-directed, with interests in international art, music and literature operating alongside the influences of street culture in the inner-Sydney suburb of Darlinghurst.

By his own account, it was from the European tradition of geometric abstraction—Mondrian, Max Bill, Vantongerloo—that he first took his cue. A participant in the National Gallery of Victoria’s landmark ‘The Field’ exhibition in 1968, he presented works which were among the more lyrical of the purely abstract paintings on show, revealing a sensuality of surface, instinct for colour and form and reference to literary themes that would continue to characterise his work over the years to come.

After 1970 Christmann made a conscious shift to ‘let the painting find its own order’, and an alternating balance between abstract and figurative modes followed, unified by close observation of the world around him. His German past and life with artist Jenny Christmann contributed rich narrative material, and the lively and ongoing appeal of politics, current affairs and the activities of the mind made his work a type of diary, making connections between ideas and objects. ‘There must be power and attractiveness to galvanise the viewer’, he said. ‘In dialogue with people a successful work of art is a world without end’.

‘Gunter Christmann: Now and Then’ is the first exhibition to survey the fifty-year career of this remarkable Australian artist. It includes sound works, photographs and drawings alongside his paintings, and traces the evolution of his major themes and series, from the geometric and constructivist abstracts, splatter and shaker box paintings through to his sensitive figure studies, silhouette paintings and landscapes.

Heide Museum of Modern Art | 7 Templestowe Road, Bulleen VIC 3105

Exhibition Dates: 26th July – 16th November 2014

Opening Hours: Tuesday – Sunday 10am – 5pm Exhibition entry is free with admission to the gallery (Adult $16/Senior $14/Concession $12/Child under 12 FREE) Member FREE http://www.heide.com.au/exhibitions/now-showing/exhibition/gunter-christmann-now-and-then/edate/2014-07-26/eid/670

Talk | Jason Smith on the correspondence of John Reed at Heide Museum of Modern Art

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Detail of the Reed Christmas Card from 1955. Via Heide Website.

Detail of the Reed Christmas Card from 1955. Via Heide Website.

2014 marks eighty years since John and Sunday Reed purchased the property and named it Heide, after the nearby town of Heidelberg. As part of the celebrations of this milestone Heide is holding series of programs that reveal their unique history, the remarkable achievements of its founders John and Sunday Reed and the fascinating art, architecture and gardens that make Heide one of Melbourne’s best-loved public art museums.

This Sunday Heide director & CEO Jason Smith looks back over the eighty-year history of Heide through the fascinating, thought-provoking and revealing correspondence of John Reed.

Date: Sunday 17th August, 2:00pm

Venue: Heide II

Talk is free with paid admission to Heide.

Website: http://www.heide.com.au/programs/celebrating-80-years/


Free Lunchtime Lecture at Homlesglen | Noël Skrzypczak

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Noël Skrzypczak (pronounced Scrip-jack) is a Melbourne artist whose work has consistently addressed the materiality of painting and surface. Her wall paintings, a major one of which was commissioned for the lobby of the Melbourne Crown Metropole Hotel, recall the expressive spontaneity of surrealism and the pour and drip of action painting.

Screen Shot 2014-08-12 at 10.32.58 PM

© Noël Skrzypczak. Nine Hundred and eighty three dog days, 2003 Reproduced courtesy the artist and Neon Parc, Melbourne

The Holmesglen Collection includes three early works by the artist – these are currently installed in the Information Commons, Moorabbin campus. Noël is represented in significant public and private collections throughout Australia and will be speaking at the Chadstone campus in a free lunchtime lecture.

Please join us for what promises to be an inspiring discussion.

Date: 12.30 – 1.30pm, Thursday 21 August 2014

Venue: Holmesglen, Room C.1.1.33, Chadstone Campus, Batesford Road, Chadstone, Melways ref: 69F1

Bookings are essential

Please contact Anna Long

E: artcollection@holmesglen.edu.au

T: 9209 5605

Opening Weekend Events for TarraWarra Biennial 2014 – Whisper in My Mask | Saturday 16th August

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Sandra Hill Home-maker #7 - Cake Making 2012 oil on linen 76 x 91 cm Murdoch University Art Collection Courtesy of the artist and Mossenson Galleries, Perth

Sandra Hill
Home-maker #7 – Cake Making 2012
oil on linen
76 x 91 cm
Murdoch University Art Collection
Courtesy of the artist and Mossenson Galleries, Perth

This weekend (Saturday 16th August) is the opening weekend of the TarraWarra Biennial 2014: Whisper in My Mask will feature a premiere of a one act play and a series of talks by artists featured in the exhibition.

About the Biennial

16 August 2014 – 16 November 2014

The TarraWarra Biennial was inaugurated in 2006 as a signature exhibition to identify new developments in contemporary Australian art practice under an experimental curatorial platform. The TarraWarra Biennial 2014: Whisper in My Mask, curated by Natalie King and Djon Mundine, is the fourth iteration of this signature event on the national exhibition calendar.

This year the Biennial includes the work of: boat-people (Safdar Ahmed, Zehra Ahmed, Stephanie Carrick, Dave Gravina, Katie Hepworth, Jiann Hughes, Deborah Kelly, Enda Murray, Pip Shea, Sumugan Sivanesan, Jamil Yamani) (NSW), Daniel Boyd (NSW), Søren Dahlgaard (VIC), Destiny Deacon & Virginia Fraser (VIC), Karla Dickens (NSW), Fiona Foley (QLD), Tony Garifalakis (VIC), Sandra Hill (WA), Gabriella Mangano and Silvana Mangano (VIC), Romaine Moreton (VIC), Nasim Nasr (SA), Polixeni Papapetrou (VIC), Elizabeth Pedler (WA), Sangeeta Sandrasegar (VIC), The Telepathy Project (Veronica Kent and Sean Peoples) (VIC) and The Tjanpi Desert Weavers Project with Fiona Hall (SA/NT/WA). More on the TWMA website[...]

‘Weavings and Whispers: Miwi wisdom’

11.30am and 12.00 midday
Premiere of the one act play by Diane Bell, featuring the Ngarrindjeri Weavers

Professor Bell was inspired to write the one act play after being asked to write an essay for the exhibition catalogue on the TarraWarra Biennial’s theme of masking, and its many hidden narratives and meanings.

She says the play, which features a special live performance by the Ngarrindjeri Weavers from South Australia, will, “Take us into the world of the Ngarrindjeri women, who came to national prominence in the mid-1990s when they were accused of lying about their sacred places in order to thwart the building of a bridge. Their stories, told as they weave, reveal the hidden truths of their relationship to their country, families and sacred beliefs. This knowledge is inaccessible to those who privilege written texts and dismiss oral traditions. Through their Miwi, their ‘sixth sense’, located in the pit of the stomach, Ngarrindjeri wisdom comes to full voice”.

The Ngarrindjeri are the traditional owners of the lands stretching from Cape Jervis in the west along the Coorong to The Granites in the southeast, taking in the lower reaches of the Murray River, western Fleurieu Peninsula, Lakes Albert and Alexandrina of South Australia. The weavers will be travelling specially to the Yarra Valley to do two performances of the play on the Biennial’s opening weekend.

Diane Bell is a pioneering Australian feminist anthropologist, author and activist, Professor Emerita of Anthropology at the George Washington University in Washington, D. C., Writer and Editor in Residence at Flinders University, South Australia and Visiting Professor School of Social Sciences, University of Adelaide. In 2005, after 17 years in the United States, she returned to her native Australia to retire and currently lives and writes in Canberra.

The performance will be followed by an audience discussion led by Diane Bell

Time: Saturday 16 August, 11.30am and 12 noon (repeat performance)

Free with museum entry

Artist Talks

12:45 pm Discussion with the Tjanpi Desert Weavers and Fiona Hall

1:20 pm| Søren Dahlgaard

1:40 pm | by Fiona Foley

2:20 pm | Gabriella Mangano & Silvana Mangano

2:40 pm | Polixeni Papapetrou

3:00 pm | Destiny Deacon & Virginia Fraser

3:40 pm | Sandra Hill

4:00 pm | The Telepathy Project (Veronica Kent & Sean Peoples)

Free with museum entry fee, no bookings required.

Museum Entry: Adults $7.50, Seniors $5.00, Children, students and pensioner concession card holders free-of-charge

Address: TarraWarra Museum of Art, 311 Healesville -Yarra Glen Road, Healesville, www.twma.com.au

Exhibition Review | TarraWarra Biennial 2014: Whisper In My Mask | Denise M. Taylor

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TarraWarra Biennial 2014 | Whisper In My Mask | AT TWMA until 16th November 2014

Reviewed by Denise M. Taylor

Tony Garifalakis, The Hills Have Eyes (detail) 2012, fabric collage, 170 x 130 cm. Courtesy of the artist

Tony Garifalakis, The Hills Have Eyes (detail) 2012, fabric collage, 170 x 130 cm. Courtesy of the artist

Face masks of dough, wire and the Australian flag; portraits of royalty dripping with black paint; veils, dots and paper cut-outs masking memory and identity; videos hinting at masked abuses in Australia’s history—these are a few of the contemporary art works by approximately 20 Australian artists on display at the TarraWarra Museum of Art (TWMA) Biennial 2014 exhibition, ‘Whisper in my Mask’—a clever take on a line from Grace Jones’ 1981 song ‘Art Groupie’:

Touch Me in a Picture,

Wrap Me in a Cast,

Kiss Me in a Sculpture,

Whisper in My Mask

As Deborah Cheetham AO pointed out in her remarks at the opening of the exhibition on August 15th, the mist that most of us encountered across the indigenous landscape of the Yarra Valley on our way to TWMA was a fitting prelude for the exploration of masks that we were about to experience. What lies behind the mask? In consideration of the bigger picture, Deborah suggested that our nation has many masks that prevent us from fully knowing each other: a smokescreen perhaps?

Elizabeth Pedler, ‘Smokescreen’, 2013-14, styrofoam beans, fans, paint, electricity supply, wood, PVC plastic, construction materials, dimensions variable, courtesy of the artist. Photo: Elizabeth Pedler.

Elizabeth Pedler, ‘Smokescreen’, 2013-14, styrofoam beans, fans, paint, electricity supply, wood, PVC plastic, construction materials, dimensions variable, courtesy of the artist. Photo: Elizabeth Pedler.

The first room of this exhibition is exciting because it immediately stimulates the visitors’ senses and their thinking about masks and masking. Elizabeth Pedler (born 1988) is an emerging Western Australian artist, and her playful experiential installation, ‘Smokescreen’ (2013-2014), with its 3,500 litres of beanbag beans, is installed in an enclosed corner with windows to view the fan-forced beans swirling around those who choose to enter. This interactive work of escapist fun can also be linked to more sinister issues of conscious and sub-conscious, national and personal cover-ups: the intangible mask.

‘Whisper in Your Mask’ is a collaborative curatorial effort between non-Indigenous curator Natalie King and acclaimed Aboriginal curator Djon Mundine, both of whom have enviable CVs and well qualified to ensure that this Biennial has snared cutting edge works by emerging and established Australian artists. King and Mundine wrote in the catalogue that “the mask in its multifarious forms and functions can both reveal and conceal personalities”—this is immediately evident in the first room.

Søren Dahlgaard, ‘Jack Charles, Dough Portrait’, 2014, type C photograph, courtesy of the artist.

Søren Dahlgaard, ‘Jack Charles, Dough Portrait’, 2014, type C photograph, courtesy of the artist.

The concept of the cover-up can be applied to the series ofDough Portraits’ (2014) by artist Søren Dahlgaard (born Copenhagen, Denmark, 1973; now lives in Melbourne). The curators explain that the bread dough placed on the head of the sitter is “both a gesture of obliteration and a sculptural cast that is completely absurd”. These ‘portraits’ explore the notion of concealment, giving new meaning to portraiture. The large photograph shown above is hanging adjacent to a wall covered with smaller photographs of these ‘dough’ portraits, all attached to the wall with dressmaking pins.

Further along the wall in the first room is Tony Garfalakis’ confronting series of portraits, ‘Bloodlines’ (2014), hung horizontally along a strip of flocked wallpaper: black paint masks most of the faces and identities of European royalty. Many may find these ‘portraits’ amusing, but on a deeper level they reference the ‘invisible’ masks that crowned queens and kings wear to hide long histories of corrupt power. Garfalakis’ art practice brings to our attention the invasive nature of institutions. On the opposite wall are fabric banners by Garfalakis (born 1964), ‘The Hills Have Eyes’ (image above: Tony Garifalakis, The Hills Have Eyes (detail), 2012, fabric collage, courtesy of the artist) and are well described in the catalogue as “camouflage wall hangings with ominous eyes”.  The eyes engage the viewer directly with secret narratives that relate to “military and government surveillance”.

Tony Garifalakis, ‘Untitled’, the ‘Bloodline’ series, 2014, enamel on C type print, 60 x 40 cm, courtesy of the artist.

Tony Garifalakis, ‘Untitled’, the ‘Bloodline’ series, 2014, enamel on C type print, 60 x 40 cm, courtesy of the artist.

In a dark room next to Pedler’s ‘Smokescreen’ installation, a 13 minute digital video Vexed, 2013, by Aboriginal artist Fiona Foley (born 1964) reflects upon the masking of the reprehensible theft of Aboriginal women by white men during Australia’s colonisation and how this destructive practice interfered with traditional kinship structures. This film resonates with melancholy and the silence is only broken by the narrator and the screeching of black cockatoos. The breath of masked social histories is felt throughout this exhibition.

View of the Yarra Valley through pixelated overlay

Standing in this first room, the viewer’s eye is drawn right through the Museum to the large window at the end, which overlooks the fertile Yarra Valley. TWMA curators often make use of the natural light that streams through this window to enhance specific works, but in this exhibition the window is used to magnify and emulate an element of Daniel Boyd’s signature motif in his paintings: pixilated dots.

Holes cut out of a black background cover the window, effectively distorting the view of the landscape and challenging the viewer to ‘see’ beyond the visible. Boyd (born 1982) is an Aboriginal artist whose works are overlaid with clear resin dots, intended to confuse, or mask, any attempt at identifying the image or narrative that often explores the veiled history of Indigenous Australians following white settlement and the difficulties associated with assimilation. In many of his paintings he incorporates photographs of his own family. The ‘pixilated’ painting below, which masks the identity of the person, is a fine example of Boyd’s evocative work.

Daniel Boyd, ‘Untitled’, 2014, oil, charcoal and archival glue on canvas, 81.5 x 71 cm, courtesy of STATION, Melbourne.

Daniel Boyd, ‘Untitled’, 2014, oil, charcoal and archival glue on canvas, 81.5 x 71 cm, courtesy of STATION, Melbourne.

In this sunlit room at the end of the gallery, woven works by the Tjanpi Desert Weavers collective (formed in 1995 by Indigenous women from Central Australia) are scattered across the floor space. Delightful sculptural forms of Australian animals currently threatened with extinction (such as the rufous hare wallaby, bilby, numbat, western quoll and echidna) have been woven from grass (tjanpi) and emu feathers. There are also bodily forms of introduced species that have had a devastating effect on native animals (such as feral cats). This project was commissioned for the TarraWarra Biennial and partnered by Australian artist, Fiona Hall (born 1953), who worked alongside twelve women from the collective in June this year at a desert camp near Pilakatilyuru about 30kms from the community of Wingellina in Western Australia, just over the border from South Australia in the Ngaanyatjarra Lands. They produced these woven works that demonstrate the positive and negative aspects of disguise and camouflage.

Fiona Hall and the Tjanpi artists with their work at the end of camp, 2014, Photo: Jo Foster, © Tjanpi Desert Weavers, NPY Women’s Council.

Fiona Hall and the Tjanpi artists with their work at the end of camp, 2014, Photo: Jo Foster, © Tjanpi Desert Weavers, NPY Women’s Council.

The large central room is dominated by sculpted letters forming two words, BLACK VELVET. Positioned on the floor, the wood and metal artwork was created this year by Fiona Foley in association with Urban Art Projects; the sexist and racist connotations relate to the ongoing reality of Indigenous dispossession and displacement. By contrast, the striking colours and high definition photographs of Polixeni Papapetrou’s creepy clowns in various costumes and poses (seven large photographs, which are intended to convey seven stages of grieving) dominate the long wall. Papapetrou (born 1960) is interested in the image of “the clown as mask” and the concealing and revealing of emotion. These photographs reinforce my perception that clowns mask a menacing melancholy, which goes some way to explain my lifelong aversion to clowns.

Sangeeta Sandrasegar, ‘I listen for you 9’, 2014, cut paper and watercolour, approx. 150 x 100 cm each, Photo: Ari Hatzis, courtesy of the artist and Murray White Room, Melbourne.

Sangeeta Sandrasegar, ‘I listen for you 9’, 2014, cut paper and watercolour, approx. 150 x 100 cm each, Photo: Ari Hatzis, courtesy of the artist and Murray White Room, Melbourne.

Sangeeta Sandrasegar (born 1977; Malaysian/Australian parents) explores memory and questions identity in her series of delicate paper works, ‘I listen for you’. Her cut-outs, featuring female ghosts, create shadows suggesting alternate personas and lingering memories that ‘whisper’ haunting narratives and folklores to the viewer. As King and Mundine write in the catalogue: “There are a myriad of masks and disguises that sneak up on us, to whisper to us seductively.”

This gem of a museum is not only a shrine to modern and contemporary art made by Australians, but it is a shining beacon that beams out its strong spirit of collaboration with the local area and its people. In other words, it is a museum that sits comfortably within its environment, committed to presenting exhibitions and public programs with themes that challenge the public.

The TWMA Biennial 2014, Whisper in My Mask, runs until November 16.

© Denise M Taylor 2014

http://www.denisemtaylor.com.au/2014/09/review-tarrawarra-museum-of-art-2014-biennial-whisper-in-my-mask/

On October 19 the Museum will hold a special day of events curated for the Melbourne Festival, Whisper in My Mask: A day in the valley, featuring Søren Dahlgaard; The Telepathy Project libretto Reading Solaris to the Great Moorool; artists of the TarraWarra Biennial 2014 in conversation with curator Natalie King; poetry readings by Romaine Moreton and A Special Conversation: Henry Reynolds, Djon Mundine & Fiona Foley.

Exhibition | Delinquent Angel: John Perceval’s Ceramic Angels | Shepparton Art Museum

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awm-australian-war-memorial-listening-angel-john-perceval-art90099-1tif

John Perceval Listening angel c. 1957 Melbourne glazed ceramic 32.5 x 22.7 x 20.9 cm Australian War Memorial ART90099 Image courtesy the Australian War Memorial © The Estate of John Perceval

The exhibition Delinquent Angel: John Perceval’s ceramic angels is on at Shepparton Art Museum (SAM) until 24 November 2014.

John Perceval AO is one of Australia’s most celebrated and loved artists renowned for his radicalism, expressiveness and prolific output, along with his complex personal life. As a member of the Angry Penguins avante-garde movement that began in the 1940s, Perceval joined with other Australian art luminaries Arthur Boyd, Albert Tucker, Sidney Nolan, Danila Vassilieff and Joy Hester to rail against the insular conservatism of Australian society and push for new voices and modes of expression.

Perceval is largely known for his painting practice, however from 1957–1962, during what is considered to be one of his most creative periods, Perceval produced a series of ceramic angel sculptures as a result of his involvement with Arthur Merric-Boyd’s pottery studio at Murumbeena. Perceval’s ceramic angels are often an over-looked aspect of his oeuvre despite their technical and conceptual sophistication, humour and beguiling charm. Perceval created more than 70 ceramic angels that range from self-portraits and tributes to friends and family, to figures that illustrate allegorical stories and comment on the threat of nuclear weaponry.

The exhibition brings together approximately 40 of John Perceval’s ceramic angels from major public and private collections across Australia, including the Australian War Memorial, Canberra; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne; Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne; Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane; and the Shepparton Art Museum. The exhibition will explore the themes of the angels and examine their place within John Perceval’s artistic practice and world-at-large as a father, friend, and avante-garde member of society in conservative 1950s and ’60s Australia.

An essay on the angels by Damian Smith, Delinquent Angel: John Perceval’s ceramic angels, is available to read on the exhibition blog www.percevalsangels.com where you can also find images of the angels, interviews, guest blog entries and education resources.

Details of floor talks and other associated events can be found on the SAM website http://www.sheppartonartmuseum.com.au/programsandevents/

SAM is open 7 days from 10am to 4pm (public holidays 1pm to 4pm).

Shepparton Art Museum is proudly provided by Greater Shepparton City Council, located at 70 Welsford Street, Shepparton. For general SAM enquiries and bookings please contact: (03) 5832 9861, email art.museum@shepparton.vic.gov.au, or visit www.sheppartonartmuseum.com.au for more information.

 

Lecture | Kenneth Clark and Australian Art – Simon Pierse

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Sir Kenneth Clark and Sir Colin Anderson at the opening of 'Recent Australian Painting' at Whitechapel Gallery, June 1961.

Sir Kenneth Clark and Sir Colin Anderson at the opening of ‘Recent Australian Painting’ at Whitechapel Gallery, June 1961.

In this lecture Simon Pierse sheds new light on the role that Sir Kenneth Clark (later Baron Clark of Saltwood) played in bringing Australian art to a new audience in Britain during the early 1950s. Pierse examines the crucial part that Joseph Burke, inaugural Herald Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Melbourne, had in directing Clark’s attention towards the work of Sidney Nolan and Arthur Boyd and attempts to discover what may have lain beneath Clark’s abiding passion for Australian art and life.

Simon Pierse is Senior Lecturer at Aberystwyth University and visiting fellow at the Australian Institute of Art History. His research focuses on British perceptions of Australian art, landscape and identity. His award winning book Australian Art and Artists in London, 1950-1965: an antipodean summer, was published by Ashgate in 2012.

Date: Thursday 25th September, 6:30pm

Venue: Theatre D, Old Arts Building, University of Melbourne

More ifnormation and registrations (attendance is free and open to all but registration is recommended): http://events.unimelb.edu.au/events/4459-kenneth-clark-and-australian-art

2014 Joseph Burke Lecture | Thomas Woolner in Australia -Angus Trumble

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Woolner, Thomas,  Charles Joseph La Trobe, plaster medallion, 1853. State Library of Victoria.

Woolner, Thomas,
Charles Joseph La Trobe, plaster medallion, 1853. State Library of Victoria.

Thomas Woolner (1825-1892), sculptor and poet, born 17 December 1825 at Hadleigh, Suffolk, England. In 1842 he gained admission as a student at the Royal Academy. In 1847 Woolner met D. G. Rossetti and became an original member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Woolner arrived Melbourne 23 October 1852. He was at the diggings in the Ovens Valley and in the Fryer’s Creek, Castlemaine and Sandhurst areas. Woolner found some gold but after six months sold his tools and returned to Melbourne. He began to model medallions but had to dig the local clay, grind his own gypsum and make his own tools. He then cast reliefs in bronze of well-known citizens, charging twenty-five guineas each, and their influence and the patronage of Lieutenant-Governor Charles LaTrobe brought him commissions.

Angus Trumble was recently appointed Director of the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. Before this he was the senior curator at the Yale Centre for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut for eleven years.He is the author of A Brief History of the Smile (2003) and The Finger: A Handbook (2010). His latest book co-edited with Professor Andrea Wolk Rager (Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio), is Edwardian Opulence: British Art at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century.  He is a regular contributor to The Times Literary Supplement, The Burlington Magazine, The Paris Review, Esopus Magazine and The Australian Book Review.

Date:5:30-6:30pm,Thursday, 25 September 2014

Venue: Wright Lecture Theatre in the Medical Building, University of Melbourne, Parkville

Free Public Lecture. All Welcome.

The Joseph Burke Lecture in Art History was established in honour of the first Herald Chair of Fine Arts at the University of Melbourne, Professor Sir Joseph Burke.

Exhibition | Albert Tucker and the Mystery of H. D. | Heide Museum of Modern Art

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H. Dearing Approach to Princes Bridge c.1925 oil on canvas on cardboard 46 x 75 cm Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne Purchased from John and Sunday Reed 1980

H. Dearing, Approach to Princes Bridge, c.1925, oil on canvas on cardboard, 46 x 75 cm, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, Purchased from John and Sunday Reed 1980

The exhibition Albert Tucker and the Mystery of H. D. is on at Heide Museum of Modern Art until 15th February 2015.

In 1944 Albert Tucker discovered two intriguing paintings in a bicycle shop in Swanston Street, Melbourne. Attracted by their naive artistry set about trying to identify the painter, the works were  unsigned. He was told that the pictures had belonged to Professor Alfred Henry Tipper, a travelling showman and trick cyclist who was depicted in the images, and who had died in April that year.

After being told that the paintings had belonged to Professor Alfred Henry Tipper, Tucker traced Tipper’s last place of residence, where he found a further three paintings in the showman’s old cart in the back yard. Although his attempts to learn more about the artist were unsuccessful, he convinced John Reed to publish an article on H. D. and images in Angry Penguins magazine. Tucker and his modernist peers admired the fresh, untutored approach of outsider artists, taking their cue from Picasso’s discovery and promotion of naïve painter Henri Rousseau nearly forty years earlier. He wrote, ‘These paintings bear the unmistakeable mark of the natural artist … the man who accepts his own vision of the world with a simple unquestioning faith and paints it because he wants to, the best of all reasons’.

In 1945 the Contemporary Art Society hung four of H. D.’s works in its annual exhibition, leading to the revelation by Herald art critic Clive Turnbull that the artist was in fact H. Dearing, made clear by a signed sixth work that had come to light. It is now known that H. Dearing was an amateur artist who painted country life around regional Victoria during the 1920s and 1930s.

This exhibition brings together four of the paintings that Tucker found in 1944, with 26 hitherto unexhibited works by Henry Dearing recently acquired by Heide Museum of Modern Art.

Heide Museum of Modern Art | 7 Templestowe Road, Bulleen VIC 3105

Exhibition Dates: 13 September 2014 – 15 February 2015.

Opening Hours: Tuesday – Sunday 10am – 5pm Exhibition entry is free with admission to the gallery (Adult $16/Senior $14/Concession $12/Child under 12 FREE) Member FREE http://www.heide.com.au/exhibitions/now-showing/exhibition/albert-tucker-and-the-mystery-of-h-d/edate/2014-09-13/eid/716


Lecture | Australian Art and Artists in Post-War London | Simon Pierse

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Australian artists' exhibition poster by Klaus Friedeberger

Australian artists’ exhibition poster by Klaus Friedeberger

In this lecture Simon Pierse sheds new light on the role that Sir Kenneth Clark (later Baron Clark of Saltwood) played in bringing Australian art to a new audience in Britain during the early 1950s. Pierse examines the crucial part that Joseph Burke, inaugural Herald Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Melbourne, had in directing Clark’s attention towards the work of Sidney Nolan and Arthur Boyd and attempts to discover what may have lain beneath Clark’s abiding passion for Australian art and life.

Simon Pierse is Senior Lecturer at Aberystwyth University and visiting fellow at the Australian Institute of Art History. His research focuses on British perceptions of Australian art, landscape and identity. His award winning book Australian Art and Artists in London, 1950-1965: an antipodean summer, was published by Ashgate in 2012.

Date: Wednesday 08 Oct 2014, 6:30–7:30PM

Venue: Old Arts Theatre D, The University of Melbourne, Parkville

More information and register online herehttp://events.unimelb.edu.au/events/4491-australian-art-and-artists-in-post-war-london

Lecture | Art, Nature and Living in the Contemporary World | John Wolseley

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John Wolseley, The Language of Lizards (detail) 2007-08. Found charcoal, graphite, watercolour on paper, 90.7 x 306cm, Bendigo Art Gallery, The Gift of Grace and Alec Craig of Bendigo, Victoria 2008. Photo: Terence Bogue

John Wolseley, The Language of Lizards (detail) 2007-08. Found charcoal, graphite, watercolour on paper, 90.7 x 306cm, Bendigo Art Gallery, The Gift of Grace and Alec Craig of Bendigo, Victoria 2008. Photo: Terence Bogue

Since moving from England to Australia in 1978, John Wolseley has immersed himself in the landscape. His large scale works on paper, watercolours and installations are often based around scientific themes like the movement of tides or sand-dunes or even the forces of continental drift and evolution. John’s lecture will focus on Henry David Thoreau’s dictum – “In wildness is the preservation of the world”.

John’s work can be found in all state galleries in Australia and numerous public and private collections. In 2005 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science by Macquarie University, Sydney and the Emeritus Medal from the Visual Arts Panel of the Australia Council.

Lines for Birds – Poems and Paintings by John Wolseley and Barry Hill was published in 2010. He is represented in Sydney by Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery and in Melbourne by Australian Galleries.

The Rae Alexander Lecture is named in honour of the first president of the Art History Chapter of La Trobe University Alumni, established in 1996.The lecture is organised by the La Trobe University Art History Alumni, with the support of the National Gallery of Victoria.

Bookings are essential. Please click the link below to register and pay online, call us, or download the payment slip and return it to Alumni and Advancement Office, La Trobe University, Bundoora VIC 3086.

Date: Thursday 30 October 2014, 6:00 pm

Venue: Clemenger BBDO auditorium, NGV International, St Kilda Rd

Bookings: http://www.latrobe.edu.au/events/all/art,-nature-and-living-in-the-contemporary-world Tickets are from $20-$35

Contact: Alumni and Advancement Office, alumnievents@latrobe.edu.au; 1300 737 133; 03 9479 2011; www.latrobe.edu.au/alumni

Discussions and Workshops for the opening of Emily Floyd: The Daw at NGV

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Emily Floyd, The Dawn (Maquette) 2014, wood, synthetic polymer paint 37.5 x 60.0 x 70.0 cm (overall), Collection of the artist, Melbourne. © Courtesy the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne

Emily Floyd, The Dawn (Maquette) 2014, wood, synthetic polymer paint
37.5 x 60.0 x 70.0 cm (overall), Collection of the artist, Melbourne. © Courtesy the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne

Celebrate the opening weekend of Emily Floyd: The Dawn at the National Gallery of Victoria with a series of discussions and hands-on workshops.

About the Exhibition | Emily Floyd: The Dawn is a survey exhibition of the work of Melbourne-based artist Emily Floyd. The exhibition will feature works dating from 2001 to 2014 including lesser-known early works, major installations and a newly commissioned children’s project based on Feminist activism from the 1970s and 80s. Floyd works across the mediums of sculpture and printmaking and is known for her installations and public art. From the 21st November 2014 to the 1st March 2015.

Events
Saturday 22nd November
12.30pm: Play sculptures for the 21st century
| Artist Emily Floyd and curator Jane Devery give an introductory tour of The Dawn

1.15pm: Mary Featherston and Emily Floyd discuss the children’s commission and The Dawn for Kids

2-4pm: Drop into Small Press and join Sticky Institute for a hands-on zine workshop

Sunday 23rd November
12.30pm:
Discover why theory doesn’t have to be boring with Nikos Papastergiadis looking at cultural studies as a form of play

1pm: Dr.Wes Hill explores hands on learning nineteenth-century style

Venue: In the exhibition space atThe Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia at Federation Square, Level 3

Website: http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/whats-on/programs/public-programs/opening-weekend/date-6841

News | A New Museum of Contemporary Art for Melbourne University

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A Large House and Garden, 1997 Acrylic on canvas  Estate of Howard Arkley 213 X 305 cm via http://michaelbuxtoncollection.com.au/the-collection/2

A Large House and Garden, 1997
Acrylic on canvas
 Estate of Howard Arkley
213 X 305 cm via http://michaelbuxtoncollection.com.au/the-collection/2

News that Melbourne University has received a $26 million gift of contemporary art from the property developer and art collector Michael Buxton. The collection will be housed in a new purpose-built museum on the VCA Southbank campus.

The museum will operate in conjunction with the University’s Ian Potter Museum of Art. Director, Kelly Gellatly said, “The Collection, which has been established with curatorial rigour, will enable the establishment of an extraordinary museum. It will showcase exhibitions that embrace experimentation and explore some of the major concerns of the 21st Century. Through the activities of the Potter’s Academic Programs unit – unique within Australia – the museum will facilitate object-based learning for undergraduate and graduate students from the University’s diverse faculties and different campuses.”

From the university

The Buxton Collection is one of the most important private contemporary collections in Australia, and features over 300 works by 55 of the country’s most influential contemporary artists, including Howard Arkley, Tracey Moffatt and Bill Henson.

The University’s Southbank campus will house the Collection in a new purpose-built museum – the Michael Buxton Centre of Contemporary Art – to be built and endowed as part of the gift and due to open in 2017.  Sitting alongside the Faculty of the Victorian College of the Arts and the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, the Buxton Collection is a wonderful addition to the Southbank campus, and will add significantly to the vitality of the Melbourne arts precinct.

It is particularly exciting to note the value of this gift as an educational resource for students and the people of Melbourne.  Under the guidance of staff from the Ian Potter Museum of Art, the Collection will play an important role in teaching and learning across disciplines, and help foster an appreciation for contemporary art amongst future generations.

The Age also has a report here: http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/michael-buxtons-26-million-art-gift-to-university-of-melbourne-will-create-new-gallery-20141202-11yo0s.html

In which Buxton says:

“It was always our goal to build a museum but the difficult thing for a family is giving it longevity to see it through for more than a generation. The university can offer that… Right from the beginning, we wanted it to be the best. We set about deciding who were the six top artists in Australia and every three years, we would review that group of artists and we’ve done that all the way through, so over 20 years we’ve had 53 artists and in excess of 300 works in this collection”

-Katrina Grant

Exhibition | Justene Williams: The Curtain Breathed Deeply at MUMA

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Yves Klein Eyes 2014 (film still) courtesy the artist and Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney

Yves Klein Eyes
2014
(film still) courtesy the artist and Sarah Cottier
Gallery, Sydney

The Curtain Breathed Deeply at Monash University Museum of Art | MUMA from 7th February – 2nd April 2015

Opening function: Saturday 7 February 2014, 3-5pm. With opening remarks by Anne Loxley, C3West Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia

The Curtain Breathed Deeply is an exhibition of a series of newly commissioned video installations by Sydney artist Justene Williams. In this rich environment of pattern, colour and texture, curtains and screens act as thresholds between the energy of one realm and another.

For Williams, the curtain and the exhibition pay tribute to her father, to his life and work, as well as the hospital curtain that marked the final stage of his life when he passed away from mesothelioma. The Curtain Breathed Deeply is poignant and celebratory, acknowledging the life of a loved one while also taking pleasure in the movement of living, breathing, sexual beings.

Williams draws from many sources, for instance her personal experience of dance classes and time spent in her father’s wrecking yard; early twentieth-century avante-garde art and theatre; and contemporary pop culture. Found objects evoke the Australian suburban vernacular: the garage, the inflatable pool and the barbeque are some of the objects transformed to create a series of interconnected environments that when brought together ‘breathe’ like a vast and mysterious body.

This exhibtion comes to MUMA from Artspace in Sydney. The Curtain Breathed Deeply has been developed through a Catalyst: Katherine Hannay Visual Arts Commission and will be accompanied by a major new monograph.

Please be aware that this exhibition contains nudity.

Address: Ground Floor, Building F, Monash University, Caulfield campus, 900 Dandenong Road, Caulfield East

Website: http://monash.edu/muma/

Opening Hours: Tuesday – Friday: 10am – 5pm; Saturday: 12 – 5pm

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