News
Clara Adolphs has been featured in the most recent issue of Artist Profile magazine.
About Adolphs' painting practice, Elli Walsh writes: "Working mostly from old black and white photographs, Adolphs invents her palette of stormy greys, subterranean blues and smokey greens. As we talk in her studio, I suggest that her colours feel melancholy, stirring, which seems to surprise her. Her relationship to the past, to moments lapsed and people gone, isn’t one of loss. “I like to think that everything exists all at once. Or everything that has existed, still exists,” she explains. She ponders for a second, “I used to think it was nostalgia, but I’m not glorifying the past.” For Clara, time is not linear, for the past replays in the present through a shared thread of humanity, some inexplicable essence that she captures in bucolic scenes of leisure, rest, social gatherings, children playing outdoors. She relates her paintings to the phenomenological reflections of Roland Barthes, who posits photographs as markers of presence; not absence."
Clara Adolphs’ exhibition ‘Silent Reply’ is on display at Hugo Michell Gallery until 20th May.
Read the article in full here.
Enquiries to mail@hugomichellgallery.com
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Marisa Purcell
Light Savour
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Kate Ballis
Liminality Antipodes
___Hugo Michell Gallery are proud to partner with Bird in Hand Winery for this opening event.
ARTIST NEWS
We are delighted to share that Zaachariaha Fielding and Idiko Kovacs have been announced as finalists in the 2024 Wynne and Sulman Prizes.
Winner of the 2023 Wynne Prize, Zaachariaha Fielding has been named as a finalist in both the Wynne and Sulman Prizes. About his work in the Sulman Prize, Zaachariaha states: “I am one of nine children, Robert and Kay’s oldest. Since my birth, the songs of my Country have filled my soul. Alongside their beautiful lessons, came my responsibility to protect and celebrate this knowledge. These songs will always be the most immense joy of my life, my anchor and my kurunpa (spirit). They kept me safe as I grew up in one of the toughest places in Australia, amongst violence and sickness. While the brightest and loudest discussed how to close the gap, how to make First Nations people healthy and live another 20 years, Australia voted ‘no’. Some referred to my achievement of winning last year’s Wynne Prize as winning the lottery, as if it was a fluke. I’m left to wonder: will me and my mob ever have access to those ‘lucky numbers’?”
Zaachariaha Fielding, Who won the lotto?, synthetic polymer paint on linen, 200 x 152.4 cm
This work depicts the sounds of Paralpi, a special place found just outside of Mimili on the eastern part of the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands, South Australia. ‘Paralpi is a place where people come to embrace and celebrate children,’ says Fielding. ‘They are taught by the Elders how to move and mimic their clan emblem, and, for Mimili, this has always been the maku (witchetty grub).’
Paralpi is an extension of Fielding’s previous Inma series (2019–23), which includes the titular work that won him the 2023 Wynne Prize. Fielding’s scratchy application of Pitjantjatjara text as a stylistic element used to outline and define Country also captures reverberations of bodies performing the act of inma (ceremonial song and dance).
‘When this inma is sung, the sounds of the soprano, alto, tenors and baritone are thick, hitting the heart and then returning to the ngura (country),’ Fielding describes. According to Fielding, who is also a finalist in the 2024 Sulman Prize, this is a cyclical process unique to Aṉangu culture, which celebrates one’s interconnectedness with the land.
Zaachariaha Fielding, Paralpi, 2023, acrylic and ink on canvas, 300 x 200 cm
About her work selected as a finalist in the Sulman Prize, Ildiko Kovacs shares: “Two-up is a gambling game played on Anzac Day. Tossing a coin upward and its inevitable falling are attributes of a certain kind of line. It isn’t a straight line, nor a singular line, but a line drawn from kinetic energy. A line fuelled with emotion, unpredictability and the excitement of chance.”
Ildiko Kovacs, Two-up, oil on wood, 220 x 90 cm
We would also like to extend our congratulations to Christopher Zanko who the gallery is excited to be working with in 2025.
Congratulations Zaachariaha, Ildiko, and all the finalists!
The Archibald, Wynne, and Sulman Prizes will be on display at the Art Gallery of New South Wales from 8 June to 8 September 2024.
Please join us for the launch of Kate Just’s ‘50 Rules for Making Art’ and Fiona Roberts’ ‘Hereafter’ at Hugo Michell Gallery on Thursday 23rd May from 6-8pm, with an artist talk with Kate Just at 6pm to launch her accompanying publication.
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Kate Just
50 Rules for Making Art
Artist talk with Kate Just at 6pm to launch her accompanying publication.
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Fiona Roberts
Hereafter
‘Hereafter’ explores humanity's eternal quest for psychological and physical safety, manifested through the interplay of symbolism, superstitions, rituals and belief systems. Drawing upon symbolic representations of life and existence beyond, Roberts explores the profound existential inquiries that have plagued human consciousness throughout history.
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Hugo Michell Gallery are proud to partner with Bird in Hand Winery for this opening event.
Please join us in celebrating the launch of these two exhibitions!
Hugo Michell Gallery acknowledges the Kaurna people as the traditional custodians of the Adelaide region, and that their cultural and heritage beliefs are still as important to the living Kaurna people today.
About this body of work, Kate shares: “My Self Care Action series explores the radical roots of self care and its origins in community organising. I knitted it to remind myself and others of the ways we have learned to sustain ourselves and support each other through grief, global upheaval, family stress, and life changes. The touch and tactility in each work seeks to translates a message of love and care.”
This edition of CONTEXTILE 2024, proposes a reflection on Touch. ‘We believe touch is the foremost sense capable of repositioning people in relation to the world and from a less ocular-centric perspective. Touch is a powerful tool for fostering closer, collaborative, and healthier human relationships. Touch, when used with respect, consent, and consideration, can create environments where people feel more connected to each other, a fundamental aspect in building stronger communities and more cohesive societies. Ethical touch goes beyond the physical aspect, representing, above all, an expression of recognizing humanity in one another.
CONTEXTILE 2024 will be presented from September to December 2024.
Pictured: Kate Just with ‘Self Care Action Series’, 2023, hand knitted acrylic yarn, canvas, and timber, 55 x 40 cm each.
Please note that Hugo Michell Gallery will be closed on Thursday 25th April for the Anzac Day Public Holiday.
The gallery will be open during usual hours from Friday 26th April onwards with Sally Bourke's 'Silence is just a sound' and Bridie Gillman's 'The Bend'.
Enquiries to mail@hugomichellgallery.com
Hugo Michell Gallery invites you to the opening of Sally Bourke's 'Silence is just a sound' and Bridie Gillman's 'The Bend' on Thursday 18th April, 6-8pm.
Sally Bourke
Silence is just a sound
In Sally Bourke's exhibition 'Silence is just a sound', abstracted portraits serve as portals to the depths of memory. With a deft hand and keen introspection, Bourke captures the essence of silence—not as absence, but as a profound presence. Through her evocative paintings, she invites the viewer into a realm where silence reverberates with the echoes of the past, offering a nuanced reflection on the complexities of human experience. Her paintings beckon us to listen, to immerse themselves in the quietude where memories echo softly.
Bridie Gillman
The Bend
This exhibition has been made in response to a specific moment experienced while walking in Washpool National Park, NSW, on Gumbaynggirr, Bundjalung and Ngarabal Country. A dramatic shift in light and atmosphere on a bend of the track that called us to pause. From within the bend – hanging, holding vines connect trees to each other, drawing lines to follow from one point to another, left to right, light to dark. This experience and the observations made, act as the starting point for the paintings, translated through colour and line.
Collected field recordings blend seamlessly with Reuben Schafer's instrumentation to create a captivating soundscape.
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Hugo Michell Gallery are proud to partner with Bird in Hand Winery for this opening event.
Please join us in celebrating the launch of these two exhibitions!
Hugo Michell Gallery acknowledges the Kaurna people as the traditional custodians of the Adelaide region, and that their cultural and heritage beliefs are still as important to the living Kaurna people today.
GALLERY CLOSURE
Wishing you all as safe and fun filled Easter long weekend!
Please note Hugo Michell Gallery will be closed across the long weekend and will reopen on Tuesday 2nd of April with exhibitions by:
Marc Etherington | My Old Heart
Jeremy Blincoe, Jodie Di Natale, Ella Dunn | The artist
is always alone
Exhibitions continue until 13 April 2024.
Enjoy the break, drive safe!
Georgia Spain has been selected as a finalist in the Bayside Painting Prize with her painting ‘Cosmic Hook’.
The Bayside Painting Prize remains a celebration of contemporary Australian painting. The finalist exhibition brings together a broad range of artists, both established and lesser known, whose varied approaches to the painted medium conveys the breadth and diversity of painting in Australia today.
The finalist exhibition will be held at Bayside Gallery from 3 May to 23 June 2024.
Congratulations Georgia!
Pictured: Georgia Spain, Cosmic Hook, 2023, oil on linen, 183 x 176.5 cm
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