News

Launching at the Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art on Thursday, June 29, The Summation of Force is a collaborative multimedia installation by South Australian artist duo Trent Parke and Narelle Autio.

In their creative collaboration The Summation of Force, Parke and Autio turn their gaze to the possibilities of filmic narrative, and look to family and sport for subject material.

A multi-channel video work that pitches competitive sport and the mythical power of cricket as a metaphor for life and parenthood, The Summation of Force is no less than a Lynchian suburban dreamscape. It is a paean to collective dreams, youthful determination, and the bonds that sporting ambition can create both within families and nations.   

The Summation of Force by Trent Parke and Narelle Autio has been produced in association with Closer Productions and the Adelaide Film Festival, and is presented by the Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art for the 2017 SALA Festival.

Exhibition runs from June 30 to September 1. Head here for more information.

Press:

• Press release: The Summation of Force bowls into Samstag
• Art Guide: Trent Parke and Narelle Autio: The Summation of Force
• The Australian: Summation of Force pushes the boundaries of bat and ball
• ABC Radio: Photographer couple explores the evolution of cricket
• Arts Hub: Surprise! Arts sector to challenge screen world in Hive #4
• UniSA Alumni News: Narelle Autio

Janet Laurence is exhibiting in a number of international exhibitions, including Warning Shot at Topographie de l’Art, France, Moving Plants at Rønnebæksholm, Denmark, and Force of Nature, streaming online. An advocate for environmental issues, Laurence creates immersive installations that investigate the relationship between nature and the greater eco-system.

Warning Shot, Topographie de l’Art, France

Warning Shot, curated by Barbara Polla, features Janet Laurence alongside Amy Balkin, Ursula Biemann, Janet Biggs, Shaun Gladwell, Joanna Malinowska, and Gianluigi Maria Masucci. Laurence will exhibit Deep Breathing: Resuscitation for the Reef, a video work which was exhibited widely through 2016, including at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle and the Australian Museum. 

Exhibition runs from July 5 to 27. For more information head here.

Force of Nature, Carte Blanche to James Putnam

Force of Nature is an ongoing contemporary art project previously staged in London and Brussels. It aims to examine the way contemporary artists have been inspired not only by nature but also its processes – evolution, birth, growth, ageing, decay, change. Taking inspiration from nature’s inherent forces, their acute observations and individual approaches can result in works that are site-specific, monumental or ephemeral. Nature is constantly in a state of change and the artists’ awareness and sensitivity to this change is crucial to the creation of their work that can be representational, conceptual, abstract, and sometimes otherworldly.

Curated by James Putnam, Force of Nature features Janet Laurence, Antti Laitinen, Iyvone Khoo, and Cameron Robbins. Laurence exhibits a 2016 video work titled The Persistence of Nature.

See Ikon website for streaming details, and for more information head here.

Moving Plants at Rønnebæksholm, Denmark

Moving Plants is an exhibition and event series focusing on local plants based on the Laurence’s work in climate and environmental issues, including why plants are among our main earthbound partners, if we want to understand and survive in the new, climate-changed world.

The exhibition displays works by various artists from Denmark, Sweden, Hong Kong, Japan, USA, and Australia, many of whom have traveled halfway around the globe to work with local plants. Consequently, the exhibition examines global issues, while relating to Rønnebæk Holm’s own framework and local roots.

Laurence exhibits alongside Watanabe Koichi, Yukiki Iwatani, Yeung Lin On, Camilla Berner, Wai Yi-Lai, Åsa Sonjasdotter, and Karin Lorentzen.

Exhibition runs July 1 to September 24. For more information head here.

Hugo Michell Gallery invites you to the opening of Fiona McMonagle’s A dog named Chop, and Tim Sterling’s Blinding by the light, on Wednesday, June 28 from 6pm!

Fiona McMonagle’s latest body of work, A dog named Chop, sees the artist present an entirely new body of work in her signature style. Echoing snapshots from a past era, the work appears uncannily familiar, yet loaded with personal relevance. Based in Melbourne, McMonagle recently exhibited in the 2016 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Magic Object at the Art Gallery of South Australia. McMonagle also has works in numerous public collections, including the National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Artbank, and various regional galleries.

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The denial of contingency is not simply an issue of aesthetics and visual order, but a much wider one of social control and cultural cleansing.

– J Till, 2008

Tim Sterling presents three large-scale investigations that dissect visual codes through the use of gridding, layer, and camouflage. Sterling’s work invites audiences to examine intrinsic patterns within mass representation. Tim Sterling received The Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship, attending the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Sterling has exhibited widely including significant institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, Australian Experimental Art Foundation, and the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art.

Please join us in celebrating the launch of these two exhibitions on Wednesday, June 28!

Paul Yore is exhibiting as part of mad love a group exhibition at Arndt Art Agency (A3) curated by Del Kathryn Barton. mad love is part of the cultural initiative Australia now – a year-long program celebrating Australian arts, culture, science and innovation across Germany. Yore will exhibit alongside Brook Andrew, Del Kathryn Barton, Pat Brassington, Dale Frank, Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori, Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Patricia Piccinini, and Ben Quilty.

A3 is pleased to present the group exhibition mad love, that provides a contemporary image of current Australian art within the context of Germany and Europe. Held at Arndt Art Agency’s premises in Berlin, the show is curated by leading Australian artist Del Kathryn Barton.

Barton’s personal selection of prominent Australian visual artists each engage with ideas surrounding instinct, innate urges and the corporeal. Artworks included will consist of paintings, sculpture, mixed media, photography, and works on paper.

Body as pleasure. Body as machine. Body longing, always longing. Hungry body, filthy body. Body to run. Body to deny. Thinking body. Muscle Body. Body as instrument and song, as instinct towards life. Body light. Body dark. Evolutionary body, dinosaur body. Plastic body. Colour body. BODY as unmitigated surges of light and energy, just briefly, but oh, such, such love……… mad, mad love.
– Del Kathryn Barton

Congratulations to Justine Varga, who has been announced as a Finalist in the inaugural Ramsay Art Prize! The $100,000 acquisitive prize will be held biannually, and will be awarded to an artist under the age of 40.

The Ramsay Art Prize invites submissions from Australian contemporary artists under 40 working in any medium. Held every two years and presented by the James & Diana Ramsay Foundation, the Ramsay Art Prize is an ongoing acquisitive prize. Finalists are selected by an international judging panel.

Made without a camera over extended periods of time, the photographs of Justine Varga offer an autobiographical witnessing of the world; a memoire rather than merely an act of representation.

In Varga’s practice, film registers performative gestures, or in some instances, the film is drawn upon, handled, scratched, spat on and weathered, among other things. Exposed to light for periods of months and even years, the film is processed and then printed at large scale in the darkroom – itself a process of transformation. Functioning as ‘ravaged memorials to lived experience’, the works appear to be abstractions, but are, in fact, rigorous distillations of the real.

See Varga’s work at The Art Gallery of South Australia from May 27 to August 27.

For more information and a full list of finalists, click here.

Janet Laurence is featured in Troubled Waters at the Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art. Troubled Waters is a UNSW Art & Design exhibition curated by Dr Felicity Fenner. Originally exhibited at the University of New South Wales, the exhibition will travel to Adelaide in late April.

A major collaborative project between UNSW Science and UNSW Art & Design, Troubled Waters illustrates the complex ecosystem of rivers and oceans by tracing the Murray from its source at Corryong in Victoria to its mouth in South Australia’s Coorong region. Works by multimedia artists, in close collaboration with leading environmental scientist Richard Kingsford, bring environmental research into the gallery to poetically interpret information not easily accessed by non-scientific audiences. The exhibition features work by Nici Cumpston, Tamara Dean, Bonita Ely, Georgia Wallace-Crabbe, Richard Kingsford, Andrew Belletty, and Janet Laurence.

Exhibition runs from April 28 to June 9.

For more details head here.

Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg (HWK)

Janet Laurence will also undertake a six-week residency at the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg (HWK) in Delmenhorst, Germany. As an international Fellow, Laurence will continue work on her research project Blood and Chlorophyll. My Heart Wears Flowers and Fruits in the Night, commenced late last year.

The HWK promotes the disciplinary and interdisciplinary collaboration of internationally-renowned scientists and young investigators by offering guest scholars (Fellows) the opportunity to concentrate on research projects for a certain space of time without the distractions of their regular academic responsibilities.

Laurence will undertake the residency from April to June this year.

For more information head here.

Congratulations to James Dodd, who has been selected as a Finalist in the Bayside Acquisitive Art Prize!

The Bayside Acquisitive Art Prize (BAAP) is an annual prize and exhibition that aims to increase opportunities for participation in Bayside’s arts and cultural program, foster a sense of identity, pride, and place in Bayside through a community event, and enable the acquisition of suitable artworks for the Bayside City Council Art & Heritage Collection. This year the major prize of $15,000 will be awarded to a painting.

Dodd will exhibit a piece from his ongoing Painting Mill series. The Painting Mill prototype was exhibited during CACSA Contemporary 2015, and Painting Mill V.2 was exhibited at Bus Projects in 2016. The exhibition will be held at the Bayside Arts & Cultural Centre Gallery from May 6 until June 18, with the winner announced on May 11.

The Australian Tapestry Workshop presents its Artist-in-Residence exhibition, featuring the work of 15 artists who participated in residencies in 2016, including Sera Waters!

Of the piece, Waters says:

This towel, Fashioning Locals, is from a larger series of towels, each telling passed along tales from Australia’s settler colonial and domestic histories. Though towels are often dismissed as innocuous, they have intimate relationships with their owners. They dry bodies, offer warmth and protection, wipe away dirt and soak up spills, and are subject to regimes of homely repetitive care … often for decades. They witness all kinds of goings on, and sometimes even get passed along family lines. The towels of this series are all pre-loved, have somewhat faded patterns, and are marked and worn from such exposure.

Home-based textiles, including towels and embroidery, have often had a penchant for translating nature (from outside) into comforting, decorative and idealised versions to live with inside. The embroidery and textile collage upon this towel weaves a not-so-comforting story around the part my ancestor played in domesticating her surroundings, in a specific time and region in our history. In a plethora of palm pattern she stands proudly, not wearing a fashionable fox fur, but sporting a Toolache wallaby, a now extinct species which inhabited the south east of South Australia. I use needlework to recognise and question intergenerational legacies and I push traditions into discomfiting territories with an aim of shifting trajectories.

Exhibition opens Tuesday, May 16 from 6 to 8pm, and runs from May 17 to July 7.

For more information head here.