News

We’re thrilled to see that Paul Sloan’s majestic, mirrored pigeon has become an overnight icon for South Australia! The 2.3 m tall sculpture, which was unveiled on 6 November, has been drawing record crowds to Adelaide’s Rundle Mall.

Simply titled ‘Pigeon’, the striking work sits in good company close to Bert Flugelman’s ‘Spheres’ and Lyndon Dadswell’s ‘Progress.’

‘Pigeon’ is the world’s first large-scale, permanent public artwork of the internationally omnipresent bird. It is also Paul’s first major public art work.

Commissioned in 2019 as part of the City of Adelaide’s Gawler Place Upgrade, it is one of the city’s most significant commissions in recent times.

Paul is interested in examining that which often escapes our attention. Ubiquitous, yet often overlooked the sculpture elevates the humble pigeon to the realm of awe and wonder.

For many years, Paul has studied the form and symbolism of this common bird. For him, the pigeon speaks of migration and immigration, it connects the urban realm to the natural world, suggests navigation and homing instincts, reminds us of the messages and news we bring each other, and is a unifying feature of cities across the globe.

Birds, navigation, history and the natural world are all enduring themes of exploration in Paul’s work, as are geometric abstraction and mirrored surfaces.

Through the poetry of geometry and the escapism of the spectacle, this sculpture playfully disrupts the everyday. Through its mirrored surfaces, it reflects its viewer, environment and surrounding architecture while inviting closer inspection.

The work speaks of the built world (materials, structures and sculptures), of the natural world (birds and abstracted natural, geological forms), of direction, movement and mapping. It generates intrigue, makes passers-by stop, investigate, circumnavigate and explore the artwork.

Recognised as a homing pigeon from the band on its leg, the bird’s place of residence is recorded in GPS coordinates – cementing a sense of place and patriality for everything this resilient, remarkable bird symbolises.

Despite its fledgling status, for many the sensitively considered sculpture seems like it has always been in the public realm – a masterful achievement for this artist’s first major public art commission.

Congratulations to Paul!

Pictured: Paul Sloan, Pigeon, Adelaide, Australia, 2020. Sam Roberts Photography

Hugo Michell Gallery welcomes the addition of Sam Gold to our represented artists!

Sam Gold is a South Australian artist living and working on Kaurna Yerta (the Adelaide Plains). Gold turned their hand to ceramics in earnest in 2018, bringing over a decade of training in Transpersonal Art Therapy (Ikon Institute), Furniture Design (TafeSA) and studies in Contemporary Art (UniSA, ACSA) to the medium. Currently practicing out of the JamFactory in a tenant studio, Gold works in ceramics, sculpture and installation. 

Gold explores the bodies ontology and poiesis through documenting movement and memory. Utilising clay for its mimetic, metaphorical and therapeutic qualities. This process-oriented work is held together by the indexical trace of gesture, repetition and healing. The works are made with the intention of marking the clay from the body, the body as a tool and the clay as a site to document. The intention in Gold’s work is to speak to the storiness of our lived materiality and view objects as artefacts that are imbued with intimate acts of meaning.  

Gold has exhibited widely, including such galleries as JamFactory, Southwest Contemporary, End Space Gallery, Praxis Artspace, Manly Art Gallery and Museum, Floating Goose Studios, CraftACT, and the Museum of Contemporary Art. Most notably they were featured in the 2019 Australian Ceramic Triennial, Hobart, and were recently selected as one of five emerging artists for Primavera, the Museum of Contemporary Art’s annual exhibition of emerging artists living and working in Australia, aged 35 years and under.

Gold has works held in the ArtBank collection, as well as numerous private collections nationwide. They have been the recipient of several awards, grants, and residencies. Selected awards and grants include Australia Council Grant, The Australian Ceramic Council Award (University of South Australia), JamFactory Award, Guildhouse Catapult Mentorship, Helpmann Academy Creative Investment Fund, and George Street Studio Residency.

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

Congratulations to William Mackinnon who has been selected as a finalist in the prestigious Arthur Guy Memorial Prize with his painting Strive for the light.

Held every two years, the Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize attracts some of Australia’s most accomplished artists, awarding a generous acquisitive cash prize of $50,000. The Prize provides Bendigo Art Gallery with the opportunity to survey a breadth of contemporary painting by established and emerging artists from across Australia.

The Prize was initiated by Mr Allen Guy CBE (1917-2007) to honour his brother Arthur Guy (1914-1945) whose life was tragically cut short whilst in military service in New Guinea. Inaugurated in 2003, Bendigo Art Gallery acknowledges all those who have contributed to the success of the Prize and look forward to the continuation of this prestigious and highly regarded acquisitive prize.

The finalists’ exhibition opens at Bendigo Art Gallery on Saturday 20 November, and will be on display until Sunday 13 February, 2022. For more information, visit the Bendigo Art Gallery website.