Tag: Australian Art

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

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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…

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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   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,…

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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…

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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 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…

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

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“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…

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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 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…

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Update | Program now available for Scottish Australia Symposium

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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…

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Public Lecture and Symposium | Scottish Australia | Art Gallery of Ballarat and University of Melbourne

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Public Lecture ‘A country of enchantments’: Scottish Observations of Colonial Australia Dr Lizanne Henderson, University of Glasgow This public lecture will focus on the observations, perceptions and representations of the natural world by Thomas Watling (1762-c.1814), the Scottish born artist and engraver who was transported to Botany Bay for forgery in 1792. This will be done by investigating the late eighteenth-century intellectual and artistic contexts surrounding Watling’s life and works and the ways in which these influences might have shaped his opinions of Australia. Taking a multi- and interdisciplinary perspective, the lecture will ask, and attempt to answer, whether or not Watling should be regarded as an artist or an illustrator? Though not always flattering in his written descriptions of his host nation Watling, like so many of his countrymen and women, was impressed by the sheer unusualness of the…

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Artist Talk | William Mackinnon | Holmesglen

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Art Talks Free Lunchtime Lecture William Mackinnon William Mackinnon is a Melbourne artist who graduated with a Master of Visual Arts at the VCA in 2008. As the recipient of the prestigious Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship in 2008, the artist used the two year bursary to travel through the Kimberley; working for Papunya Tula Artists as a Field Officer serving the Kintore (NT) and Kwikurra (WA) communities and as artist in residence at Mangkaja Arts, Fitzroy Crossing. Mackinnon has presented an uncompromising version of indigenous community life – one that finds human strength and dignity amongst a bleak landscape where two cultures collide. The artist will talk about his experiences as a Field Officer, how they are manifest in his work and about his life back in Melbourne as a practising artist. Date: 12 noon – 1pm, Wednesday 7 May…

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Exhibition | The Medium is the Message | La Trobe University Museum of Art

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The Medium is the Message Chris Bond | Eolo Paul Bottaro | Juan Ford | Sam Leach | Amanda Marburg | Victoria Reichelt LUMA | La Trobe University Museum of Art Curated by Michael Brennan Exhibition Dates: 30 April – 27 June 2014   About the Exhibition The death of painting has been declared – again and again – for the better part of two centuries. Photography did it. There was no longer a need to labour with pigment and brushes when a more faithful representation could be achieved with the press of a button. Of course, they were wrong. The demise of painting was a mistruth – a furphy. But as with any aspersion, spread the word often enough and the smear will leave a stain – maybe even in the minds of the most ardent of devotees. One…

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Exhibition | For Auld Lang Syne: Images of Scottish Australia from First Fleet to Federation | Art Gallery of Ballarat

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Keeley Halswelle The Heart of the Coolins 1886 oil on canvas National Gallery of Victoria

The exhibition For Auld Lang Syne: Images of Scottish Australia from First Fleet to Federation is now on at the Art Gallery of Ballarat until July 27. About the Exhibition For Auld Lang Syne brings together artworks and objects from across Australia and overseas to mark the extraordinary contribution by the Scots to the cultural, social and political life of this nation. Throughout the nineteenth century the Scottish impact on Australia was profound. Scots contributed to the exploration of the continent,  set up schools, estbalished businesses, and were influential in medicine and the arts. The connections between Scotland and Australia are still strong today with one-in-five Australians claiming Scottish heritage. ‘The exhibition takes the viewer on a journey from First Fleet to Federation, delving into details such as fashion, sport, high art and whiskey and bringing all manner of curious stories to the…

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Lecture | Murujuga Marni – the Burrup Petroglyphs in Context Australia’s Oldest Rock Art Under Threat? | Ken Mulvaney

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Murujuga Marni – the Burrup Petroglyphs in Context: Australia’s Oldest Rock Art Under Threat? Dr Ken Mulvaney, archaeologist and cultural heritage specialist, will explain the global significance of the rock art of the Burrup Peninsula/Murujuga. Ken Mulvaney lives in Dampier and is Rio Tinto’s Cultural Heritage specialist. His PhD in archaeology was on the rock art of the Dampier Archipelago, including the Burrup Peninsula / Murujuga. The site contains over a million ancient rock carvings that provide a unique record of human culture going back 30,000 years. It’s older than any rock art in Europe. Yet astoundingly the landscape also supports a thriving billion dollar energy business- a gas refinery, which in 2014 will export 4 million tonnes of LNG to China! Ken will talk about the history of the Archipelago, the many conflicting interests in its management, and what…

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Solitaire: Artists in Conversation | TarraWarra Museum of Art

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TarraWarra Museum of Art is hosting a lively conversation with exhibition artist Heather B. Swann, poet Kevin Brophy and curator Anthony Fitzpatrick, as they tease out the themes of the Solitaire exhibition and broader aspects of the depiction of figuration in Australian art. Venue: TarraWarra Museum of Art Date: 4:00pm – 6:00pm, 16 March 2014 (4pm – 5pm: Artists in conversation, 5pm – 6pm: Refreshments) Tickets $20 adults, $15 students, includes refreshments and museum entry. Bookings essential www.twma.com.au About the Exhibition The exhibition features works from the TarraWarra Museum of Art collection and selected loans. The exhibition explores the solitary human figure in modern and contemporary Australian paintings and sculptures. Throughout the exhibition, which includes painting and sculptures by artists Rick Amor, Charles Blackman, Peter Booth, Louise Hearman, Sidney Nolan, Mike Parr, Sally Smart, Albert Tucker, Jenny Watson and many…

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Fellowship | Spiros Zournazis Memorial Fellowship at the Australian War Memorial

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The Spiros Zournazis Memorial Fellowship has been initiated to support research into the Australian War Memorial’s extensive art collection by early career scholars. The Fellowship is open to honours or postgraduate students undertaking a thesis as part of their degree, or those who have completed a PhD since January 2012. Fellows are free to determine their own course of research provided it focuses primarily on the Memorial’s art collection. Scholars working in the fields of art history, cultural studies, museology, sociology and related disciplines may apply. Research projects that demonstrate methodological innovation will be considered favourably. The Fellowship is four weeks in duration and the recipient will be awarded return airfares to Canberra (from within Australia), accommodation in a studio apartment at the Gorman Arts Centre and a stipend of $2000 to cover other expenses. The Fellowship also includes a…

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Floortalks | Melbourne Now – Mark Hilton, Penny Byrne, Nick Braun-Sibling

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Floortalks | Melbourne Now – Mark Hilton, Penny Byrne, Nick Braun-Sibling Designer Floor Talk- Nick Braun, Sibling SIBLING is a Melbourne design collective that works at the intersection of architecture, urbanism, cultural analysis and graphic communication to produce new and unexpected spatial outcomes. SIBLING’s approach insists on intelligent forms developed from a positive, socially engaged agenda. The practice is a network of eight people – Amelia Borg, Nicholas Braun, Jonathan Brener, Jessica Brent, Jane Caught, Qianyi Lim, Timothy Moore and Alan Ting – who are all trained in architecture and work actively across the globe. Additional fields of expertise include landscape architecture, graphic design, cultural studies and commerce. The reading room designed by SIBLING for Melbourne Now occupies an interstitial or ‘in-between’ space at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. This room has been created to allow a moment of…

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