Tag: Ballarat

Exhibition | Eugene von Guérard: Artist–traveller | Art Gallery of Ballarat

EUGENE VON GUERARD: ARTIST–TRAVELLER Saturday 24 March to Sunday 27 May 2020 A remarkable exhibition telling the story of the art and travels of Eugene von Guérard, the preeminent landscape painter of colonial Australia, opens in Ballarat in late March. The exhibition focuses on the artist’s life of travel and adventure, as revealed by his sketchbooks, which offer a glimpse into the heart and mind of one of our greatest and most enduringly relevant artists. Von Guérard travelled extensively throughout south-eastern Australia, methodically recording the landscape, trekking into some of ‘the wildest and least-known portions of Australian territory’, his pencil and pocket-sized sketchbooks always close at hand. Back in the studio, he transformed his sketches into meticulously executed paintings which are remarkable for their detail. During his twenty-eight years in Australia, he filled twenty-two sketchbooks with drawings that capture his…

Book Launch | Eugene Von Guérard Tom Darragh and Ruth Pullin in Conversation | Art Gallery of Ballarat

For a period of nine years, between 1876 and 1885, landscape painter and founding curator of the National Gallery of Victoria Eugen von Guérard (1811–1901) corresponded with his friend and fellow-German Julius von Haast (1822–1887), geologist and founder of the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch. These letters, written by one of Australia’s greatest landscape painters, an inveterate collector and the dedicated inaugural custodian of the collections of the National Gallery of Victoria, to his good friend and colleague, a distinguished and pioneering geologist, writer and museum director, shed new light on the personal and professional lives of both men and their institutions. Date: Saturday 21st April, 2pm Venue: McCain Annexe, Art Gallery of Ballarat Free, book online: https://artgalleryofballarat.com.au/gallery_events/book-launch-tom-darragh-and-ruth-pullin-lieber-freund/

Job | Director | Art Gallery of Ballarat

The Art Gallery of Ballarat (AGB) is Australia’s oldest and largest regional gallery and is home to one of the most significant collections of Australian indigenous, post-colonial, and contemporary works of art in the country. The AGB also has, and is increasingly building, a reputation for curating its own exhibitions as well as hosting national exhibitions attracting significant local and intrastate and interstate visitors. The opportunity to be the next Director of the AGB presents at a very exciting time where the City of Ballarat is pursuing an arts and cultural agenda which aims to position Ballarat as the leading cultural destination for regional Australia with the AGB as the cornerstone. This position offers an exciting prospect for an incoming Director to lead the AGB with a fresh perspective and extensive business acumen to drive future growth and development of…

Call for Papers | Victorian Margins (Ballarat, July 2016)

Victorian Margins | AVSA 2016 Ballarat 7-9 July 2016 Call for Paper deadline 3rd February 2015 In 2016, AVSA will join the Australasian Historical Association conference in Ballarat from 5-8 July, with a stream of AVSA papers and Keynote scheduled on 7-8 July, and a program of local sight seeing on Saturday 9th July. The conference will be held in Ballarat’s historical precinct. Delegates may wish to allow time to explore local sites such as the Ballarat Mechanics’ Institute’s extensive library of 19th-century books, periodicals and newspapers. AVSA’s Keynote Speaker will be Professor Joseph Bristow (UCLA), on “Homosexual Blackmail in the 1890s,” drawing on research for his new study of Oscar Wilde’s two criminal trials. Papers (20 minutes) or panel proposals (2-3 papers) are invited on the AVSA conference theme ‘Victorian Margins’ – some possible angles include: geographic margins (in…

Ballarat International Foto Biennale Symposium – Borderless Futures, Reimaging the Citizen

Second Ballarat International Foto Biennale Symposium, Presented by Photography Studies College In the catalogue for the The photograph and Australia exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales this year, Senior Curator Judy Annear wrote, ‘There is much at stake in what might constitute the nation state, which is as porous as photography is mutable’. Among its many ideas, the exhibition posited photography in Australia as a medium for the constant renegotiation of the nation. This symposium aims to continue the discussion generated by the most important exhibition of photography in Australia in 25 years, by looking beyond national borders to ask what it means to be a global citizen, with particular reference to the role of images. The keynote speakers will be Professor Nikos Papastergiadis, from The University of Melbourne, and Senior Curator Judy Annear, from the Art…

Exhibition Review | For Auld Lang Syne: Images of Scottish Australia from First Fleet to Federation – John Weretka

For Auld Lang Syne: Images of Scottish Australia from First Fleet to Federation is on at the Ballarat Art Gallery until the 27th July 2014. Victorian regional galleries are more than pulling their weight when it comes to hosting exhibitions in centres beyond Melbourne, as Genius and Ambition: The Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1768-1918 at the Bendigo Art Gallery has recently proved. Ballarat Art Gallery is playing host to For Auld Lang Syne: Images of Scottish Australia from First Fleet to Federation, curated by Alison Inglis and Patricia Tryon Macdonald. The sheer scale of the exhibition, which surely must make it one of the — if not the — most significant exhibitions of Scotland-related material in Australian history, makes it noteworthy. Spanning four gallery spaces of the Ballarat Art Gallery, the exhibition is co-ordinated under five main subject areas.…

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

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…

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

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…

Call for Papers | Contesting Identities: photography, narrative and the self

Contesting Identities: photography, narrative and the self Inaugural Biennial Photographic Symposium, 31st August 2013, Ballarat, Victoria Call for Papers – extended date for submissions Due to continued expressions of interest the deadline for submissions for the inaugural Ballarat International Foto Biennale Symposium has been extended until 24 June 2013. We are also pleased to announce that our two keynote speakers will be Anne O’Hehir, Assistant Curator of Photography at the National Gallery of Australia, and Jill Orr, renowned international performance artist based in Australia. J.M. Coetzee has said that ‘all autobiography is storytelling, all writing is autobiography’. If we take this maxim to include visual self-representation, what does this say about the relationship between notions of truth and identity in contemporary visual and literary culture? The Symposium will address ideas surrounding photographic and literary representations of selfhood and constructions of…