Tag: 20th Century Art

Symposium | The Turbulent Thirties | NGV

In a series of illustrated presentations, curators and historians speak on a chosen artwork from Brave New World: Australia 1930s, concluding with a walk through of the exhibition hosted by co-curators Dr Isobel Crombie and Elena Taylor. SPEAKERS Dr Isobel Crombie, Assistant Director, Curatorial and Collection Management, NGV on Max Dupain’s Sunbaker (1938) Prof Rachel Fensham, Professor of Dance and Theatre, University of Melbourne on Andre’s Sonia Revid posing against a wall (1934) Dr Caroline Butler-Bowdon, Director of Strategy and Engagement, Sydney Living Museums on Grace Cossington Smith’s The Bridge in-curve (1930) Myles Russell-Cook, Curator, Indigenous Art, NGV on Percy Leason’s Thomas Foster (1934) Elena Taylor, Curator of Art, University of New South Wales on Danila Vassilieff’s Street scene with graffiti (1938) Date: SAT 16 SEP, 10AM–1.30PM Venue: NGV Australia $28 M / $35 A / $32 C, includes exhibition admission More information and bookings via the NGV website: https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/program/the-turbulent-thirties/

Lecture | Dr Christopher Heathcote – Discovering Dobell | TarraWarra Museum of Art

William Dobell Gentleman conversing with a prawn 1970 oil on panel 27.8 x 25.4 cm Private collection © Sir William Dobell Art Foundation

2pm, Saturday 22 July Dr. Christopher Heathcote, curator of Discovering Dobell, as he shares his fresh insights into the work of William Dobell. Exploring in detail Dobell’s London years, his portraits of Sydneysiders, and the more experimental New Guinea paintings, Heathcote’s lecture will present a close examination of the artist’s practice, shedding new light on the processes and methods by which the artist developed ideas from sketches to paintings. Exploring in detail Dobell’s London years, his portraits of Sydneysiders, and the more experimental New Guinea paintings, Heathcote’s lecture will present a close examination of the artist’s practice, shedding new light on the processes and methods by which the artist developed his ideas through several drawings and studies to reach one or more paintings. Dr. Christopher Heathcote is one of Australia’s foremost art critics and has written on a broad range of topics…

Faculty of Arts Dean’s Lecture | Art and Detection: Investigating Louis Duffy, a Forgotten British Painter of the Second World War – Ted Gott | University of Melbourne

In September 2006 the National Gallery of Victoria acquired at auction a remarkable painting by a virtually unknown artist: Christ Turning Out the Money Lenders, a work attributed by the auction house to a ‘Louis Duffy, 20th century’. This impressively large painting shows sixteen men dressed in c. 1940 business suits, gathered in tense confrontation in a modern-day retelling of the New Testament account of Christ expelling the money changers from the Temple. In Duffy’s composition, the Temple setting has been transmuted into a modern graveyard, and the money changers have morphed into mid-20th-century arms dealers trading munitions on the graves of the dead, the ultimate profit-and-loss indicators of their grim transactions. The subsequent arrival of Duffy’s painting in Melbourne in late 2006 sparked considerable debate about the meaning and significance of the gallery’s new acquisition. Examination of the painting’s…

News | Major Georgia O’Keefe, Margaret Preston and Grace Cossington-Smith exhibition to tour Australia in 2016-2017

Georgia O’Keeffe Ram’s Head, Blue Morning Glory 1938 Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Gift of The Burnett Foundation © Georgia ’Keeffe Museum

O’Keeffe, Preston and Cossington Smith: Making Modernism The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Heide Museum of Modern Art and Queensland Art Gallery have partnered with the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe. O’Keeffe, Preston and Cossington Smith: Making Modernism. The exhibition will open at Heide Museum of Modern Art on 12th October 2016 until 17th February 2017, after which it will travel to the Queensland Art Gallery from 11 March – 11 June 2020 and the Art Gallery of New South Wales between 1 July – 1 October 2017. The exhibition will include the art of Georgia O’Keeffe, one of the most significant American painters of the twentieth century, alongside modernist masterpieces by Australian artists Margaret Preston and Grace Cossington-Smith. The paintings of these three artists represent distinct modernist visions that express the identity and culture of their respective nations. The landscape and…

Symposium | Turning on Burn: A Reflective Conversation | VCA

A symposium presented by Art & Australia at VCA |Turning on Burn: A Reflective Conversation This symposium explores and speculates upon the work and legacy of Australian conceptual artist Ian Burn (1939–1993). After graduating from the National Gallery of Art School (now the VCA School of Art), Burn spent much of his career working in the avant-garde scenes of London and New York. He was a key member of Art & Language, a collaborative group who produced the ground-breaking publication  Art–Language and included artists Roger Cutforth, Joseph Kosuth and Mel Ramsden. Returning to Australia in 1977, Burn became involved in the Art Workers Union (AWU), a political and social platform that championed artists’ rights and helped change the landscape and expectations under which artists work in Australia. In addition to his artistic practice he also taught art history, developing an…

Exhibition | Making History – The Angry Penguins | Heide Museum of Modern Art

Making History celebrates the influential role of Heide founders John and Sunday Reed in the development of Australian art and intellectual culture from the 1930s right up to the early 1980s. The Reeds’ first home at Heide, the Victorian farmhouse now referred to as Heide I, provides the setting for a changing selection of art works, archival material and personal effects which reveal the range of their activities and commitments: as art collectors and benefactors; as instigators of significant cultural organisations; and as cultivators of their extensive property, developed so that one day it would become a public gallery and park for all to enjoy. The first display features works by the revolutionary and now highly acclaimed artists who congregated at Heide during the watershed years of the 1940s: Arthur Boyd, Joy Hester, Sidney Nolan, John Perceval, Albert Tucker and…

Exhibition and Forum | 1969 The Black Box of Conceptual Art

1969 The Black Box of Conceptual Art Ian Burn, Roger Cutforth and Mel Ramsden. Curated by Ann Stephen. Opening Celebration: Thur 7 April, 5.30–7.30 PM There will be a lunchtime forum at the VCA on Thursday 7th April 12:30pm – 1:30pm where Ann Stephens with Raaf Ishak and guests will discuss the exhibition ‘1969: The Black Box of Conceptual Art’. The forum will be held in VCA’s Art Auditorium (more info here). Exhibition Dates: 8 April to 7 May 2021 1969 The Black Box of Conceptual Art reconstructs the first Conceptual art exhibition staged in Australia, held at Pinacotheca gallery in 1969, with work sent from New York by Ian Burn, Roger Cutforth and Mel Ramsden. The exhibition is accompanied by some video, journals, and other works made at the time to reveal both the broader context for the work, and how influential it became…

Exhibition | In Fond Memory: The Barbara Tucker Gift

From 22 August 2015, Heide Museum of Modern Art will present In Fond Memory: The Barbara Tucker Gift, an exhibition that will commemorate Barbara Tucker’s extraordinary contribution to Heide and celebrate her continuing presence in the life of the museum. On 16 May 2020 Heide Museum of Modern Art sadly lost one of its most treasured friends and supporters. Barbara Tucker had a long association with Heide, initially as a personal acquaintance of John and Sunday Reed with her late husband, artist Albert Tucker, then during the evolution of the museum as Heide Fellow (2000), Life Benefactor (2004) and Co-Patron. Prior to Albert’s death in 1999, the Tuckers offered Heide a major donation of artworks, to be transferred progressively over a number of years. To their minds it was a fitting acknowledgement of the role the Reeds had played in both…

Exhibition | Halcyon Days: Heide in the 1940s | Heide MOMA

Exhibition Dates: Saturday 20 June – Sunday 13 September 2020 Throughout the 1940s, John and Sunday Reed’s home, Heide, formed a focal point for some of Australia’s most avant- garde artists, who rejected conventional ways of living and learning and spearheaded the modernist movement in Melbourne. This constellation of rising talent included the young Sidney Nolan, cerebral painter Albert Tucker and his partner Joy Hester, the quiet yet passionate Arthur Boyd and free-spirited John Perceval. Each developed a distinctive practice and came to hold an undisputed place in the canon of Australian art. Such was John and Sunday’s belief in this group that they supported them financially and materially and in some instances formed close attachments to them. As poet Barrett Reid observed, the Reeds provided a ‘total concentration of life’ at Heide, which not only gave rise to unprecedented…

Symposium | The Legacy of Hugh Ramsay | National Gallery of Australia

Hugh Ramsay’s life was short but his impact endures. In celebration of the endowment of a chair in Australian art history at the University of Melbourne in his name, by his great niece Patricia Fullerton, the Australian Institute of Art History together with the National Gallery of Australia present this one day symposium reassessing his legacies. Date: Monday 30th March 2015, 9:00am – 5.00 pm Venue: James O Fairfax Theatre Free to attend but bookings are essential. Register here. Program 9.45 – 11.00am SESSION ONE Hugh Ramsay and philanthropy Gerard Vaughan, Director, National Gallery of Australia The life of Hugh Ramsay Patricia Fullerton  Hugh Ramsay in an Australian Context Mary Eagle 11.30am – 12.30pm SESSION TWO Hugh Ramsay and George Lambert Anna Gray The portraiture of Hugh Ramsay Angus Trumble 2.00 – 3.00pm SESSION THREE Conservation of Ramsay’s paintings at the NGV Michael Varcoe-Cocks Ramsay’s paintings…

Floor Talk| Kelly Gellatly on Richard Avedon People | Ian Potter Museum of Art

Join the Potter’s Director Kelly Gellatly for a director’s tour of Richard Avedon People. American photographer Richard Avedon (1923–2004) produced portrait photographs that defined the twentieth century. The exhibition Richard Avedon People explores Avedon’s work from 1949 to 2002. Avedon is best known for transforming fashion photography from the late 1940s onwards. The full breadth of Avedon’s renowned work is revealed in this exhibition of 80 black and white photographs. The exhibition include instantly recognisable portraits of artists, celebrities, and countercultural leaders as well as many of Avedon’s portraits that capture ordinary New Yorkers and the people of America’s West. Richard Avedon People pays close attention to the dynamic relationship between the photographer and his sitters and focuses on Avedon’s portraits across social strata, particularly his interest in counter-culture. At the core of his artistic work was a profound concern with the emotional and social freedom of the individual in society. The…

Lecture | Terence Maloon on Tony Tuckson and Ian Fairweather at TarraWarra Museum of Art

‘Tuckson, Fairweather and the Crisis of the Easel Picture’ | Terence Maloon, Director, ANU Drill Hall Gallery and Art Collection To celebrate the exhibitions Ian Fairweather: The Drunken Buddha and Tony Tuckson: Paintings and Drawings, the curator, art historian and critic Terence Maloon will present a keynote lecture on these two major Australian artists. In particular, he will discuss how each artist responded to, and acted out, what the critic Clement Greenberg described in 1948 as the ‘crisis of the easel picture’. The lecture followed by refreshments. Date: 8th February, 4-5pm Venue: TarraWarra Museum of Art, 311 Healesville -Yarra Glen Road, Healesville. Website: www.twma.com.au Tickets $20.00 adult / $15 concession (Pension & Student card holders). Includes Museum entry, lecture & refreshments. Bookings essential at http://www.trybooking.com/Booking/BookingEventSummary.aspx?eid=111343 Or email hanna@twma.com.au

Conversation | Andy Warhol’s Jewish Geniuses | NGV International

Held in conjunction with The Jewish Museum’s exhibition Andy Warhol’s Jewish Geniuses (20 Nov 2014-24 May 2015), join the Director of the Jewish Museum of Australia Rebecca Forgasz in conversation with the Director of the Jewish Museum Vienna Danielle Spera. Danielle Spera was appointed Director of the Jewish Museum Vienna in 2010. From 1978 till 2010 she worked as a journalist, correspondent, reporter, and anchorwoman at ORF-TV Austrian Broadcasting Cooperation. She is the author of numerous books and articles on contemporary art, Jewish topics, and for the magazine NU. Since 2013 she serves as President of ICOM Austria as well as a member of the council of the Medical University Innsbruck/Austria. For the Jewish Museum Vienna she curated several exhibitions including Jewish Geniuses. Warhol’s Jews (2012, together with Astrid Peterle), A Good Day. Installation Andrew M. Mezvinsky (2013), and The…

Conference | Contemporary Outsider Art: The Global Context

The University of Melbourne – 23 – 26 October 2020   Forty years after the term ‘Outsider art’ was coined by Roger Cardinal to encompass works by untrained artists who work outside the established art world, new paradigms and definitions are being sought. The current enthusiasm for these forms of expression culminated in Massimiliano Gioni’s 2013 Venice Biennale, which dedicated several exhibits to self-taught or Outsider artists. Reviewing the Biennale in Art and America, Travis Jeppesen wrote ‘the success of Gioni’s bold production signals a move beyond ‘the contemporary’ as the default category we have relied upon for far too long’. Such comments demonstrate the timeliness of this topic and the potential for this conference to contribute to and enrich our understanding of contemporary culture at the broadest level. The increased interest in Outsider art, however, has also raised a…

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

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…