Innholdsfortegnelse for July/August 2024 i Art Guide Australia

SALA Festival Various Adelaide locations 1—31 August The annual South Australian Living Artists (SALA) Festival is a much-beloved, month-long celebration of contemporary art and artists across South Australia. “You can walk into nearly any building during the month of August and see art, from galleries and artist-run spaces to hairdressers and cafes—everyone is involved,” says Leigh Robb, curator of contemporary art at the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA). “There’s this wonderful sense of solidarity, it has a presence throughout the city, and the state. It’s always a great chance to connect with practices that you might not have otherwise seen.” Spanning scores of exhibitions and events, and hundreds of creatives, every year the festival chooses a feature artist—and this year SALA is celebrating Julia Robinson, who will exhibit at…

SEA FLOWER Jane Guthleben Edwina Corlette 15—31 August Jane Guthleben’s paintings bring native flora to life: flowers and plants sit in vases, as Guthleben’s eye for colour and arrangements tell their histories. For her upcoming show in Brisbane, the Sydney-based artist is focusing on coastal plants and the sea around the region, tracing back to logs from Joseph Banks and James Cook’s voyage to Australia in 1770. “The reason for thinking about what they encountered on that voyage is to look at and consider what has been lost since colonisation,” Guthleben explains. The show includes what Guthleben calls waterscapes and floralscapes: “an amalgamation of flora, where the land version of the water is the sky”. Seaweed and coral feature among land-based plants to give a panoramic view of the diversity…

The Land is Us: Stories, Place & Connection Shepparton Art Museum On now—1 September In dedicating itself to landscape in Australian art, The Land is Us: Stories, Place & Connection takes on a broad remit. But it’s precisely that broadness—alongside an expansive interpretation of what landscape art is—that this exhibition celebrates. Featuring works from the National Gallery of Victoria, the exhibition goes back as far as John Glover’s Mount Wellington with Orphan Asylum, Van Diemen’s Land, 1837, moving through the years to reach contemporary artists including Brook Andrew, Patricia Piccinini and Destiny Deacon. “In all our stories, memories, histories and places, the land is present,” says curator Belinda Briggs, ”physically, spiritually, economically informing and shaping our identities, and our social and cultural relationships.” While the exhibition acknowledges the influence of…

The gesture feels so intimate, it’s as if we shouldn’t be watching. The woman in the leotard hunches over a bucket. She dips her fingers into a thick black liquid, before raking them over her scalp. She mops the ground with the substance, the swish of her hair marking the floor with lines and splodges and patterns. As she shuffles backwards on all fours, the audience exits the gallery. She commands the space and imbues her movements—which we read as servile and degrading—with power and authority in the process. Loving Care, a performance by the American artist Janine Antoni, took place in 1993 at London’s Anthony d’Offay Gallery. It was named for the brand of dye the artist’s mother used to cover the greys in her hair. The work, which…

From pink tasselled capes to catwalk footage, to how identity and politics are inextricably woven through the garments we wear, the title of the National Gallery of Victoria’s (NGV) latest exhibition says it all: Africa Fashion. With collections borrowed from the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) in London, the NGV is showing the largest exhibition of African fashion in Australia to date. Yes, it is about the clothes—but it begins with the African independence movement and the mid-20th century cultural renaissance, exploring how revolutionary ideas influence culture and fashion through designers like Alphadi and Näma Bennis. Africa Fashion also extends to current creators, with over 200 pieces from 20 countries and regions on the continent. Alongside exploring the effects of digitalisation and celebrity culture, the show threads together stylists and…

Artspace Mackay www.artspacemackay.com.au Civic Precinct, corner Gordon and Macalister Streets, Mackay, QLD 4740 [Map 14] 07 4961 9722 Tue to Fri 10am–5pm, Sat & Sun 10am–3pm. Free admission. Artspace Mackay enthusiastically re-opens its doors to the public 10am Saturday 10 August following an extended closure for renovations. 10 August—6 October ProppaNOW: OCCURRENT AFFAIR Established in 2003, proppaNOW is one of Australia’s leading cultural collectives, exploring the politics of Aboriginal art and culture, and provoking, subverting, and re-thinking what it means to be a ‘contemporary Aboriginal artist’. Conceived as a collaborative activist gesture, OCCURRENT AFFAIR will address current socio-political, economic, and environmental issues, while celebrating the strength, resilience and continuity of Aboriginal culture. An exhibition from The University of Queensland Art Museum touring with Museums & Galleries of NSW. This project…

MAP 1 VICTORIA 1 Ararat Gallery TAMA 2 Art Gallery of Ballarat 3 Artpuff 4 Arts Space Wodonga 5 Benalla Art Gallery 6 Bendigo Art Gallery 7 Bendigo Visitor Centre 8 Castlemaine Art Gallery 9 Central Goldfields Art Gallery 10 Cusack & Cusack 11 East Gippsland Art Gallery 12 Everywhen Art at Whistlewood 13 Geelong Art Space 14 Geelong Gallery 15 Gippsland Art Gallery 16 Hamilton Art Gallery 17 The Hive Gallery 18 Horsham Regional Gallery 19 Latrobe Regional Gallery 20 La Trobe Art Institute 21 Maffra Exhibition Space 22 Mildura Arts Centre 23 Platform Arts 24 QDOS Art Gallery 25 Post Office Gallery Art Academy 26 RACV Goldfields Resort 27 Ross Creek Gallery 28 Salt Contemporary Art 29 Shepparton Art Museum 30 Silver Leaf Art Box 31 Stockroom Gallery…

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

and the little things Belinda Fox Arthouse Gallery 25 July—10 August For Melbourne-based artist Belinda Fox, a home is not just the materials it’s made from; it’s deeply connected to the people who live there. To illustrate this, Fox invited artists from Australia and abroad—including Glenn Barkley, Juan Ford and Leila Jeffreys, among many others—to contribute an artwork she could respond to, requesting each reflect on what home means to them. “All of the artists are either long-term friends and collaborators, or artists I greatly admire and have had opportunities to work with,” Fox explains. “They are all people I regard as part of my sense of self and home.” In addition to creating a collection of new paintings, Fox constructed the centrepiece of the exhibition—a 20-metre-long wall print based…

Lands of Light: Lloyd Rees and Tasmania Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery On now—27 October While Lands of Light focuses on Lloyd Rees’s (1895-1988) late paintings inspired by the Tasmanian landscape, these are contextualised with works made near his Sydney home, his Brisbane birthplace, and his trips to Europe. As Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG) lead curator Peter Hughes says, “Lloyd Rees may be the best draughtsman that Australia has produced. The exhibition is about the Tasmanian aspect of his practice, but these later works need the introduction to his genius.” Rees began visiting Hobart consistently, twice a year, after his son Alan moved there in 1967, and this exhibition was developed through the ongoing association with his family. The Tasmanian paintings, created between 1967 and 1988, reflect a…

Collection Focus #3 //Stillness Holmes à Court Gallery at Vasse Felix On now—25 August When we think of stillness in art, the still life genre often comes to mind. Paintings of floral bouquets in vases; a cornucopia of fruits. Seeking to reframe this idea of still life, curator Laetitia Wilson has researched the contents of the Janet Holmes à Court Collection and unearthed the work of 21 artists who push the boundaries of what still life can be. “I wanted to expand still life into the domestic space, to ideas of stillness within that space and to psychological responses to interior space,” Wilson explains. “It gets quite abstract at points.” Marking the third instalment of the Collection Focus exhibition series, Stillness spans emerging and established artists from across generations. William…

For generations, popular culture has presented motherhood as a time of sweet contentment and effortless joy. Yet in reality, the transition to becoming a mother can be wrought with physical and emotional upheaval, bringing about seismic shifts in the body, identity and sense of self. There is a label for this time in a woman’s life: matrescence. Encompassing pregnancy and birth, and recognising the gravity of this time. Matrescence was initially coined by medical anthropologist Dana Raphael in the 1970s. While the term has been in existence for over four decades, it was not until recently that Melbourne-based artist Lillian O’Neil began exploring it in her work. “I first came across Dana Raphael’s term matrescence on the wall text for Ying Ang’s photographic series, The Quickening,” she says. Exhibited at…

ACAE Gallery www.acaearts.com.au Australasian Cultural Arts Exchange 82A Wellington Street, Collingwood, VIC 3066 [Map 3] 0406 711 378 Tue to Sun 10am–5pm. See our website for latest information. ACAE Gallery is a cultural venture presenting artworks and exhibitions by contemporary Australian and Asian artists. 8 June–20 July Unfolded Lines Aisha Hara Aisha Hara is the winner of the inaugural ACAE Gallery Prize, awarded to a graduating artist from RMIT School of Art. Following a subsequent 2023 artist residency at Metropolitan Fukujusou, Kyoto, Japan ポリタン福寿創, Hara presents recent paintings created in Japan and Australia. Alcaston Gallery www.alcastongallery.com.au 84 William Street, Melbourne, VIC 3000 [Map 2] 03 8849 9668 Thu 12pm–6pm or by appointment. See our website for latest information. Established in 1989, Alcaston Gallery is based in Melbourne with a national…

Aarwun Gallery www.aarwungallery.com.au 11 Federation Square, Gold Creek, Nicholls, ACT 2913 [Map 16] 0499 107 887 Daily 10am–4.30pm and by appointment in the evening. See our website for latest information. 20 July–4 August Favourite Places & Spaces Sandra Hendy AWI This exhibition by watercolour artist Sandra Hendy is aptly named Favourite Places & Spaces. “Variety is the spice of life,” could be attributed to this collection considering the diversity of subjects and styles displayed. Each of these paintings are contemporary in nature, stylish and sophisticated in approach, and creative and imaginary in execution and by taking a subject and approaching each one in an individual style makes for an interesting variety when grouped together. Eye catching cloisonné paint, paper collage, watercolour and pen work are signature markings of Sandra’s paintings,…

Adelaide Contemporary Experimental www.ace.gallery Lion Arts Centre, North Terrace (West End) Kaurna Yarta, Adelaide, SA 5000 [Map 18] 08 8211 7505 Tue to Sat 11am–4pm. See our website for latest information. 1 June–10 August Fragments; a widening vision Lee Salomone Art Gallery of South Australia www.agsa.sa.gov.au Kaurna Country North Terrace, Adelaide, SA 5000 [Map 18] 08 8207 7000 Daily 10am–5pm. Free entry. See our website for latest information. 6 July–20 October Brent Harris – Surrender & Catch This exhibition explores the work of contemporary Australian artist Brent Harris. Moving between figuration and abstraction, Harris deploys both humour and the grotesque to examine psychological subject matter and visualise his complex and contradictory feelings. Indeed, the exhibition title refers to Harris’ interest in sociologist Kurt H. Wolff’s notion of ‘surrender and catch’…

WRITERS Briony Downes, Sally Gearon, Louise Martin-Chew, Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen, Barnaby Smith, Andrew Stephens. Giḻiŋur djuḻuḻ’yun – Hidden in the ripples Wurrandan Marawili Outstation Gallery, with Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre 3—17 August While Wurrandan Marawili only began painting in 2017, he has shared culture through music since 2009. His band Garraŋali (home of the crocodile) is known for their sound, songs in Yolŋu language, and wide cultural resonance. As Dave Wickens from Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, where Marawili paints from, says, “For Wurrandan and Yolŋu people, there is no differentiation between music and dance. He is a Yolŋu lawman who has responsibilities to lead ceremony and for whom culture is holistic. What we are seeing now is him reaching his full power as an artist.” Giḻilŋur djuḻuḻ’yun – Hidden in the ripples…

Tim Johnson Tolarno Galleries 17 August—14 September Collaboration seems to come naturally to Tim Johnson, whose interest in exploring connections between spiritual disciplines and the material world brings with it an openness to many approaches. In his latest pieces, he has been working with a psychology professor he encountered at his group-studio in Newtown, and they have produced paintings that burst with stories and allusions. Johnson’s interest in working with others extends back to the 1980s when he collaborated with Papunya artists, who were enthusiastic about teaching and sharing their methods. In Johnson’s new works, images seem to be suspended in an otherworldly atmosphere. For their first painting together, Johnson and his collaborator decided to tackle the Book of Revelations (the final book of the New Testament), which Johnson says…

Darwin Festival Various Darwin locations and galleries 8—25 August “Much of the work that’s made in the Territory is very inspired by place, culture, community and landscape,” says Darwin Festival director Kate Fell. She is speaking in relation to Kathryn Dwyer’s exhibition, Colour Conference, at the city’s Tactile Arts gallery—paintings defined by their colourful detail and exuberant depictions of the Northern Territory environment. “[Her] paintings look at light, colour and the birdlife up here, and very much have a sense of nature and place.” Dwyer’s show is one among many gallery exhibitions part of this year’s festival, which, as ever, has a strong emphasis on the breadth of contemporary Indigenous art. “We work with all the galleries in Darwin, who curate their own exhibitions and become part of the festival,”…

Gauguin’s World: Tōna Iho, Tōna Ao National Gallery of Australia 29 June—7 October Paul Gauguin was largely unrecognised in his lifetime (1848-1903), during which he spent almost 20 of his later years living in Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia. While the art made there by this gifted painter eventually became celebrated, in recent decades, as art historian Norma Broude explains, there has been a growing, complicated “image of Gauguin in the critical media—as a predatory womaniser, agent of colonial domination, and even sexual offender whose art should be ‘cancelled’.” Broude’s words feature in a catalogue essay for the National Gallery of Australia’s exhibition, Gauguin’s World: Tōna Iho, Tōna Ao, with the show raising such issues for examination, while also acknowledging Gauguin as hugely popular among museum-goers. Curated…

“But it was also opening up the fact that as women, we should support each other…”– LESLEY DUMBRELL Since her first exhibition at Bonython Gallery in Sydney in 1969, Lesley Dumbrell has defined geometric, hard-edge abstract painting in Australia. She became prominent in the 1970s for her use of colour and line, and also her involvement in the Women’s Art Movement and co-founding the Women’s Art Register. Since 1990 she has lived and worked between Thailand and Victoria, and is now being recognised with a career-defining survey at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, with a title that aptly captures the experience of her work: Thrum. Curator and writer Kelly Gellatly talks with Dumbrell about the Women’s Art Movement, slowness in creating and viewing, and how Dumbrell is reflecting…

Björk believed the dress made her sing better. It was commissioned to wear for performances in support of Utopia—her breathy, love-struck record, full of birdsong and flute, where the Icelandic star imagines the apocalypse’s aftermath. Her vision isn’t one of destruction or doom but of generative and freeing mutation—where humans are merging with plant and bird life. The dress captured all of this, and then some. On Björk’s torso were cables, a kind of nervous system, gesturing outside of the body. At the cable’s ends were giant, satiny leaves, or perhaps bird feathers, that encircled her figure. On stage, the dress lit up and turned bioluminescent. “I think when I put the dress on,” Björk told the BBC later, “I kind of embody [Iris’s] splendidness.” The splendidness of Dutch fashion…

314 Abercrombie Gallery www.314abercrombie.gallery 314 Abercrombie Street, Darlington, NSW 2008 [Map 14] 0404 146 738 Sat to Tues 10am–6pm or by appointment. See our website for latest information. This small, inviting, bright gallery nestled snugly in Darlington beside the Redfern area is the up-and-coming art precinct of Sydney. We have Carrigeworks, the White Rabbit and many smaller galleries nearby. 11 June–27 August Understanding Abstract Art Stefan Kater Annandale Galleries www.annandalegalleries.com.au 110 Trafalgar Street, Annandale, Sydney, NSW 2038 [Map 7] 02 9552 1699 Wed to Sat 11am–4pm. Through varying styles and contexts the aim of Annandale Galleries is to show the best of Australian and international contemporary art. Recent exhibitions have included a range of artists recognised and revered the world over. Artbank Sydney www.artbank.gov.au 222 Young Street, Waterloo, NSW 2017…

Bett Gallery www.bettgallery.com.au Level 1, 65 Murray Street, Hobart, TAS 7000 [Map 17] 03 6231 6511 Mon to Fri 10am–5.30pm, Sat 10am–4pm. 5 July—27 July Atmospheres Michaye Boulter 2 August—24 August Waymarking / Painting / Undertow Neil Haddon 2 August—24 August Bone Country David Stephenson Contemporary Art Tasmania www.contemporaryarttasmania.org 27 Tasma Street, North Hobart, TAS 7000 [Map 17] 03 6231 0445 Wed to Sat, noon–5pm. See our website for latest information. 7 June–6 July Constellations 2024 Pipeline, Reptrillion Culture Club, Colin Langridge, Alicia King, Philip Sulidae, Abi Whitton, Chloe Catto, Alfie Barker, Lee Booth, Nicole O’Loughlin, Emma Bugg, Isabella Foster, Caine Chennatt, Harrison Bowe, Keith Deverell and more to be announced. Exhibitions, talks and performances. Constellations is an artist-led development program. Devonport Regional Gallery www.paranapleartscentre.com.au Paranaple Arts Centre, 145 Rooke…

Art Collective WA www.artcollectivewa.com.au 2/565 Hay Street, Cathedral Square, Perth, WA 6000 [Map 19] 08 9325 7237 Wed to Fri 11am–4pm, Sat 12pm–4pm, or by appointment. 29 June–3 August Growing Pains Olga Cironis Olga Cironis’ new sculptural installation grapples with our shared sorrow in the face of incomprehensible loss. Through an orchestra of violins enveloped in grey institutional blankets, she explores the depths of personal and collective wounds, symbolising the silencing of grief and the stark imperative to protect what is invisible to the eye. The poignant work reflects on the interplay between destruction and preservation, sorrow and resilience, urging a re-examination of our past and a call to action for the future. 29 June–3 August Searching for Memories, Searching for Kindness Anne Neil In this deeply personal exhibition, Anne…

Araluen Arts Centre, Mparntwe www.araluenartscentre.nt.gov.au 61 Larapinta Drive, Alice Springs, NT 0870 08 8951 1122 Open daily 10am–4pm. See our website for latest information. 1 June–11 August GROUND SWELL Araluen at 40 This exhibition reflects on the four decades of the Araluen Arts Centre and its role as the key exhibiting, collecting and lending gallery on Arrernte Country in Mparntwe/Alice Springs. Curated around five guiding currents; catalyst, immersion, collision, divergence, surprise, the exhibition presents artworks from Araluen’s extensive permanent collection and artworks it holds on long-term loan. Across these currents it brings into dialogue 200 artworks by Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists, created across more than 90 years, that embody, engage, explore, challenge and pay homage to this ancient place; the country, its stories and peoples. Featuring artists of national significance…