News

Hugo Michell Gallery are thrilled to be presenting the work of Richard Lewer and Lucas Grogan in Sydney

Contemporary Presents 2020!

Hugo Michell Gallery welcomes the addition of Clara Adolphs to our represented artists!

Referencing abandoned photographs, Clara Adolphs works explore the notion of time and memory. She is fascinated by the question of what remains after a moment has passed. 

Based in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, Adolphs completed her Bachelor Degree in Fine Arts at the University of New South Wales in 2008. Adolphs has exhibited in numerous solo exhibitions in commercial and public galleries. Adolphs has also been a finalist in the Archibald and Sulman Prize.

In 2018 Adolphs was the recipient on the Eva Breuer Traveling Scholarship, travelling to Paris for a residency at the Cite International des Arts. She has also undertaken residencies at Corridor Projects, ArtSpace Mackay, Leigh Creek, The Armory, and the New York Studio Art School.

Adolphs has work in numerous private and public collections including ArtBank, Goulburn Regional Gallery and Gold Coast City Gallery.

We congratulate Clara on all of her achievements and are thrilled to be working together in the future.

Congratulations to Richard Lewer and William Mackinnon who have been announced as finalists in the 2020 Archibald Prize, presented by Art Gallery of New South Wales!

The Archibald Prize, first awarded in 1921, is Australia’s favourite art award, and one of its most prestigious. Awarded to the best portrait painting, a who’s who of Australian culture – from politicians to celebrities, sporting heroes to artists.

Of the work, Lewer says: “It is easy to feel an instant rapport with Elizabeth Laverty (a fellow red-head) because she is a warm, passionate, humble woman. I will always remember her response when I first asked if I could paint her portrait, “Why would you want to paint me, what have I done?”  

Liz and her late husband Colin were among the first collectors to travel the country and stay in remote Aboriginal communities to visit the art centres and meet the artists of the work they were falling in love with. Over several decades, they built one of Australia’s best collections of indigenous Australian contemporary art whilst championing the artists and art centres and working tirelessly to raise money to provide dialysis centres on country and swimming pools for the communities they visited. 

The portrait’s rugged materials allegorise Australia’s beautiful yet harsh outback landscape and required a physical painting process involving scrubbing and scraping of the paint and working with the mercurial rusting process until the final portrait revealed itself.”

Of the work, Mackinnon says: “Birth is such an overwhelming and emotional moment. The image of one’s newborn suckling his mother’s breast is just incredible. I thought it would make a great painting, so simple but so powerful; however my emotional register was so overflowing, I was finding beauty and meaning everywhere. I let the idea and initial drawings percolate then last year revisited the subject, working in quite a realistic way, which didn’t capture the intensity. I began using collage and included pieces of fabric from the gown Sunshine wore at the birth and a kimono from a memorable holiday when we were falling in love.

‘I made seven successive paintings, continually simplifying the composition and managed to make the mother/son interconnection more powerful and sensual. The final painting came out in a week or so, the speed and familiarity with the subject giving the painting a freshness and intimacy.”

 Exhibition runs 26 September until 10 January 2021.