With thanks to all our readers and supporters for a wonderful year, we wish you all a happy and safe festive season surrounded by family and friends.
We look forward to bringing you more, next year, from the artists behind the art.
Issue 14, on sale, February 2011.
Installation view, Bowen Galleries, Wellington
The latest iteration of our sponsored artist expedition and resulting touring exhibition, in conjunction with Winsor & Newton, has returned to where it all began. Bowen Galleries, Wellington, has kindly taken on a small satellite show of works by eight of our participating artists – Euan Macleod, Idris Murphy, Steve Lopes, Julie Harris, Lucy Culliton, Peter Simpson, David Keeling and Ann Thomson.
If you missed either of the full survey exhibitions at Hazelhurst Regional Art Gallery or Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, you can read the catalogue essay here and view installation shots here.
On This Island, Bowen installation view
The exhibition continues at Bowen Galleries until 14 December, 2010.
Kate Hopkinson-Pointer
Vast skies and endless ocean – both are iconic elements of the Australian landscape. They are also the subject matter of Kate Hopkinson-Pointer’s latest collection. A master colorist, her large-scale canvases dominated by Prussian and cobalt blues, are entry into a watery world both dream-like in mood and epic in nature. “Dream-like” is a phrase that Kate Hopkinson-Pointer uses most often to describe these works. She’s referring to the heightened reality that is the familiar territory of our sub-conscious. Although these large oils (1.4 x 1.35m) might bring to mind the German Expressionists in their use of colour and form, Kate Hopkinson-Pointer says that she is more influenced by the Russian Rayonist movement whose leading figure Mikhail Larionov became fascinated with how to depict light in painting after discovering the works of Turner.
Kate Hopkinson-Pointer’s new paintings share this fascination with light, its reflection and refraction on water, the way shafts of light break through clouds, or more mysteriously, the way light is seen from underwater – an effect both mysterious and unnerving.
This collection, although on a similar watery theme to “Upon Reflection”, her show at Iain Dawson gallery two years ago, is quite different. Here, the artist uses French watercolour paper, applying oil paint in layers to build up a depth of vision that is both assured and dynamic.
Although very different from Turner in style, Kate Hopkinson-Pointer’s share the English painter’s sense of drama. These seascapes are constantly in a state of flux, alive to the changing weather conditions and the potential of nature to unleash its power.
10 – 30 November, 2010 at Gallery@28
Simon Lake - Curator, New Walk Museum & Art Gallery
On a recent trip to the UK we came across an exquisite collection of Expressionist works that are held by the New Walk Museum & Art Gallery in Leicester. The Leister collection is unique and internationally renowned in its focus on German expressionist art. The origins and development of the collection were the result of a particular combination of local and historical circumstances and the contributions of individual members, benefactors and the museum’s staff. Thanks to the generosity of curator Simon Lake, Artist Profile was given a private view of the top rate German works and the private stories on how they ended up in the UK.
These works were highlighted in a successful exhibition titled “A Journey Out of Darkness”which ran until earlier this year. It was a stunning exhibition of over 100 artworks, which explored the development of Leicester’s German Expressionist Art Collection.The overall collection, which began in 1944 amidst the darkness of war with paintings saved from destruction in Nazi Germany, now numbers over 350 artworks, the first and largest of its kind in the UK.The exhibition featured works from private collections which were brought to England for safe keeping from the Nazis by artists and private collectors. Expressionist art was a revolutionary art form pivotal in the evolution of modern art but which was attacked and outlawed in Hitler’s Germany.
Some of the most popular works are a testament to the energy, breadth and enduring quality of the collection, these include works by Frans Marc, Kandinsky, Münter, Heckel, Schmidt-Rottluff, Kirchner, Kollwitz, Dix, Feininger and Grosz.
The exhibition is now closed, but a new permanent re-display of a selection of the German Expressionist artworks will open in Spring 2011.
New Walk Museum & Art Gallery, 53 New Walk, Leicester, LE1 7EA. email: museums@Leicester.gov.uk
beyond the field invitation
Maria Gorton, Matthew Allen and Marisa Purcell first met at Sydney College of the Arts in 2006 when undergoing their Masters of Visual Arts under the supervision of Lindy Lee. The artists shared a fascination with colour field painting, the sublime and the philosophy of nonduality. Their paintings unite in this exhibition through an exploration of colour and space, light and dark, memory and time.
Maria Gorton, Matthew Allen and Marisa Purcellʼs common language is the unknown. As a musician plucks sounds from the aether and a writer groups words from an endless pool – these painters layer colour and form from an infinite field of connections. Rarely pre-determined, the paintings culminate in paintings that trace the process of discovery itself.
Visitors to this exhibition will be entranced by large abstract and minimal paintings that work to engage the viewer on both emotional and physical levels. Intense colour sit alongside the deepest shades and seem to suspend time allowing the viewer to move quietly into a suspended reality.
Until 24 October at Bondi Pavilion Gallery, Bondi Pavilion, Queen Elizabeth Drive, Bondi Beach – open daily from 10am until 5pm
KUDOS AWARD
The annual award for COFA artists and designers will be announced next Tuesday!
The major prize is $1500 with runner up prizes including a fully subsidised exhibition in 2011 at Kudos Gallery, a space in the amazing PYD Design markets, an Ariel bookshop and Matisse product vouchers, a subscription to Artist Profile magazine, a Sherman Foundation donation and membership pack, a feature spread in DasSuperpaper, and a double pass to Gaff Aff from the Sydney Opera House.
This year’s judging panel includes artist Janet Laurence, designer Benja Harney, and curator Anna Davis.
Finalists will for part of an exhibition that runs in the Kudos Gallery from 11-23 October.
Brent Harris, Rome No. 5 (Moses), 2009, charcoal and gouache on panel, 42 x 28cm. Courtesy the artist and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne
Harris is a painter who engages with a multitude of genres. His paintings use a cartoon-like aesthetic, often abstracted by cropping and magnifying. The paintings are at once humorous and confronting often displaying an overt sexuality over the canvas. His depth of art history knowledge sees his work reference surrealism and modernism. Overall, though, Harris’ exquisite skill as a colourist sees these varying forms bind together as a truly unique and ever evolving style and manner.
His latest body of work at Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne, continues this exploration of form and texture. A large suite of work makes up this stella exhibition. Justin Clemens says of the exhibition, in his catalogue essay, “a set of intuitive gestures in colour demands to be modelled; the modelling becomes an injunction to line; the lines transmogrify to a composition; the composition in turn becomes a new experiment with colours from which forms emerge as line is submerged; the forms suggest characters, scenes, narratives which never quite, to quote Paul Valéry, ‘vanish into meaning’; the scenes shift before they settle. For something to come, something has to go; something has to be surrendered in order for something to be embraced.”
These observations cement the reputation Harris has developed for himself as one of Australia’s foremost contemporary, abstract and colourist painters of unique and commanding talent. This is an exhibition not to be missed.
Installation view, Tolarno Galleries
The exhibition, at Tolarno Galleries, runs until 18 October – Level 4, 104 Exhibition Street, Melbourne, VIC
Tags: Melbourne, painting, Tolarno Galleries
Jai McKenzie, Superstructure, 2010 (detail)
Firstdraft – one of Sydney’s many successful artist-run, not for profit, gallery spaces – is currently divided into four gallery spaces. On exhibition are Barbara Knezevic, Kirra Jamison, Giselle Stanborough and Jai McKenzie.
Each artist is using their space independently of one another and the result is four wonderful exhibitions of varying mediums.
In gallery four is Jai McKenize, an artist whose practice engages with light, space and time. Interested in contemporary experiences of technology, her work explores this experiential theme in a variety of media – from installations and sculptures, to film and photographs. The work in this exhibition, Superstructure, further explores these notions by looking at specific mid-twentieth century architectural concepts.
As McKenzie explains in her artist statement, “Buckminster Fuller and Superstudio proposed the unrealized construction of large circumscribing forms intended to encase or disrupt urban spaces to enable holistic systems for living, connection, and growth”. Superstructure is a site specific installation which borrows from and refers to this notion through its form, while at the same time, conceptually, it asks the viewers to consider the role of space, time and technologies in our contemporary social organisation.
Super structure is on exhibition alongside In pursuit of a state of uncertainty (Knezevic), Surrender Star (Jamison), and Space Exploration (Stanborough).
Until Sunday 26 September 2010. 116-118 Chalmers Street, Surry Hills, NSW.
Artist talks will take place on Sunday 26 September from 4pm.
Tags: exhibition, Firstdraft, Sydney
Adam Craven, 'Moonrise, Smiths Lake', 2010, photographic print
This year sees the inaugural NSW Parliamentary Plein Air Photographic Prize. With its theme asking artists to explore New South Wales landscape in focus, the prize was established to compliment the three year old NSW Parliamentary Plein Air Painting Prize.
Chair of the Community Relations Commission, Stepan Kerkyasharian, saw the competition as an opportunity to explore not only the physical landscape of the state but also the socio-cultural environment – “The history of the modern development of rural New South Wales is the history of settlement by people of all backgrounds including the Chinese, Italians, Greeks, Germans, Lebanese and Sikhs who are all well known for their contribution to agriculture and rural life in New South Wales.”
The first, second and third prize winning photographs will be acquired by the Parliament and will form the basis of an ongoing photographic collection, depicting aspects of New South Wales life.
This year’s finalists include: William Yang, Warren Hinder, Rahul Goel, Sylvia Balog, Peter Elliston, Peter Solness, Gordon Undy, Simon Bullard, David Helsham, Louise Whelan, Andrew Quilty, Christian Fletcher, George Tsoutas, Ben Rak, Marcus Stimson, Adam Craven, Kylie Bishop, Rene Vogelzang, Russell Bray, Kajo Merker, Victoria Monk, Jan Newby, Ian Waldie, Ingrid Morley, Jeff Stockton, Jade Cantwell, Neil Duncan, Jeremy Turner, Daniel Irvine, Thomas Rayner, Gary Poulton, Nick Bowers, and Dean Sewell.
The exhibition, at New South Wales Parliament House runs until 23 September with the winners being announced at a gala event on 9 September.
Tags: photography
Youthful Experience (detail), 2010, mixed media, dimensions variable
Come Closer (Now Go Away) is the latest solo exhibition by Jane Gillings at NG Art Gallery, Sydney. The work that forms this exhibition is the recycling of and engaging with – what some would call – hoarded waste. Gillings compulsively collects and, by her own admission, hoards before she reassembles by way of embracing and engaging with her creative impulses.
Gillings hates waste and disorder. Her studio is a refuge for perceived waste. Organised by size, colour and object, Gillings compiles objects from knitting needles, discarded board game pieces and small toys to indiscriminate incidentals from around the kitchen and second hand shops. It is at this point her art making practice launches.
Just like an abstract painter, Gillings’ sculptures are constructed, for the most part, through her response to the materials. In her own words, Gillings has “little influence on what it [the sculpture] will become until [she] start[s] to study its possibilities and limitations”.
The works in Come Closer (Now Go Away) expose the viewer to waste – is it their own? How do they conserve? What do they discard? It is the open ended questions that lure you in (‘Come closer’ and observe); But the abstract form that belies the work leaves open their interpretation – are they about the environment? Are they simply an indulgent, personal journey for Gilling to which we as viewers are privileged to view? (‘Now Go Away’ and contemplate).
The exhibition runs until 11 September at NG Art Gallery, Sydney
Tags: Art, exhibition, NG Art Gallery