ONE OF THE most celebrated African photographers of his generation, Pieter Hugo will soon be showing work from his Nollywood series at Greenaway Art Gallery in Adelaide. Read more about the artist and his fascinating subject matter from the Nigerian film industry in our 8-page feature article in AP Issue 10, where Hugo speaks with curator Federica Angelucci in an exclusive interview.
PIETER HUGO — NOLLYWOOD
GREENAWAY ART GALLERY, ADELAIDE
LUKE CAVALAN (aka Lc Beats) is a Sydney young aerosol artist, beat-boxer, claymation filmmaker and graduate of AFTRS (Australian Film, Television and Radio School). Thanks to sponsorship from 567 King graffiti art supply store in Newtown and Australian aerosol paint company Ironlak, he’s produced his second claymation, single frame stop-animation feature film KAOS IN KING STREET—20 minutes long, 12 months in the making and tackling a tough new legal regime confronting the local street art scene.
Kavlan has created claymation caricatures of well-known Sydney graffiti artists Teazer, Pnash, Phibs and Mystery—right down to their mini nike airmax—and built a storyline set in the streets of Newtown that looks at the effects on the urban landscape of the recently enacted anti-graffiti laws, which state any person in possession of a spray can be arrested. The artists have created miniature versions of their work for his miniature urban streets.
“I wanted the small scale sets to mirror the actual streets of Newtown”, Cavalan said, “so I invited the artists to create their signature work on a small scale.”
For some great images and information on his claymation process, check out his blog here. And below is the teaser for the film, which will be launched at 6 March, 6-10pm at the contemporary art space—AT THE VANISHING POINT—565 King Street Newtown, Sydney.
“AT FIRST glance, artist Kate Shaw (FEAT. AP ISSUE 6) is dabbling with a subject painted by artists throughout art history. But Shaw’s landscapes, although recognizable as such, are not mere pictorial representations of polar ice caps and interior Australia. Her spectacularly hallucinogenic paintings remind us of the threat of global warming and environmental degradation …”
28 FEB – 13 MAR 2010
KATE SHAW — SPILLING TWILIGHT
RYAN RENSHAW GALLERY, BRISBANE
THREE OF Melbourne’s art informers have teamed up to start a new art fair … that is not an art fair. Taking their lead from brilliant satellite events like Zoo Art Fair that run in tandem with London’s art world spectacle Frieze, the NotFair is a new curated project from artists Sam Leach and Tony Lloyd and writer Ashley Crawford, that will run at the same time as the Melbourne Art Fair in August.
Rather than inviting galleries and dealers to select artists, the trio will be inviting artists directly based on skills, innovation, concepts, and, according to Leach, with “an emphasis on the intriguing, the innovative, the emerging and the adventurous”. The venue will be Wardlow studios in Fitzroy—a breezy 10 minute walk from the frenetic money-changers at the Melbourne Art Fair—and will also be covered on artinfo.com.au.
It is well worth putting in the diary. For more info, check out this video:
NOW IN ITS third year, the Port Jackson Press Australia Graduate Printmaking Award 2010 offers printmaking graduates the professional experience of exhibiting in a commercial gallery along with a $4000 cash prize, and a feature article in Imprint, sponsored by the Print Council of Australia. This award is acquisitive and is open to any student who majored in printmaking and completed their course of study in 2009 at any tertiary institution in Australia.
The panel of three judges who will select the award recipient are Des Cowley, Rare Printed Collections Manager, State Library of Victoria; Graham Fransella, Melbourne Based Artist (AP Issue 10); and Anne Virgo, Director, Australian Print Workshop.
The award finalist’s artwork will be on display at the James Makin Gallery from 4 – 27 Feb 2010 and the award will be announced on Thursday 18 Feb 2010, from 6 – 8 pm.
Image: PETER THOMSON Minnie and Me, 2009, screenprint on plywood, 112 x 117 cm
DRAWN FROM the National Gallery of Victoria Collection, Love, Loss & Intimacy will feature over sixty prints and drawings from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, including works by Picasso, Rembrandt, Munch, and David Hockney amongst others—with Australian artists such as modernist Joy Hester (AP Issue 3), contemporary Indigenous artist Vernon Ah Kee (AP Issue 2) and painter Jon Cattapan.
13 Feb – 25 July 2010
NGV International—St Kilda Rd, Melbourne
Tags: Jon Cattapan, Joy Hester, NGV, Vernon Ah Kee
GEORGE BALDESSIN WAS only 39 when he died in 1978 and is no star performer in the stiflingly ordinary Australian art auction market—in large part due to his dogged focus on printmaking and sculpture, the unloved siblings of Modernist painting.
Stories of his ‘bohemian’ lifestyle and prickly charm, peppered with anecdotes of an ambiguous sexuality, are much of what has kept his reputation alive at all. As former National Gallery of Victoria Director Patrick McCaughey remembers, his life and art were inextricably interwoven: ‘as man and artist [he] was enigmatic and vivid, secretive and theatrical … He was a mildly but persistently intimidating presence.’
Yet among many cognoscenti of 20th Century Australian art, particularly other artists, a deep respect for his extraordinary work lives on. TarraWarra Museum of Art is holding a survey exhibition curated by Maudie Palmer and Elizabeth Cross, GEORGE BALDESSIN, running through to 14 March 2010—prints, sculpture, watercolour, paintings and photographs of the artist have been sourced from public and private collections as well as the artist’s estate. To coincide with the exhibition, Australian Galleries have teamed with author Harriet Edquist and the George Baldessin Estate to publish a 260 page monograph, GEORGE BALDESSIN: PARADOX & PERSUASION.
The works in this magical exhibition and publication are sexy, surreal, and dark—everything that we at AP like in our art. All deaths are premature, depending on your perspective, but it is tempting to consider what Baldessin’s ongoing contribution to Australian Modernism might have been had we not lost him so young.
WHEN WE PROFILED Skalitzers Berlin in October for Issue 9, we predicted their chic concrete exhibition space showing the best international street art would get an enthusiastic response—they got that but not in the way they had hoped.
After opening with a show of work by Fernando Carlo aka Cope2—one of New York’s most respected taggers—a group of thieves broke into the gallery and stole all but four works. Witnesses say four young men were later seen on the U-bahn with the works and are believed to have targeted the gallery specifically for Cope2’s tags.
Police are on the case and the gallery has offered a reward for the return of the works, no questions asked.
TAKE YOUR TIME: OLAFUR ELIASSON has now opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, and will continue until 11 April 2010.
In our latest issue, Gillian Serisier caught up with Olafur Eliasson, one of the most recognised artists working today, and discussed his career and his trademark immersive environments in the lead up to this major survey.
For the background on this celebrated artist’s career, get your copy of Artist Profile Issue 9 now and read our exclusive interview.
“Environmental issues, such as those we’re experiencing today, weren’t part of the world agenda when I set out to be an artist. My seeing Iceland as a source of inspiration has much more personal reasons.”—Olafur Eliasson, Issue 9
