News

Congratulations to Janet Laurence who has been selected to participate in the 56th October Salon in Belgrade, The Pleasure of Love: Transient Emotion in Contemporary Art and the XIII Bienal de Cuenca: Fragile. 

56th October Salon, Belgrade

The 56th October Salon in Belgrade, The Pleasure of Love: Transient Emotion in Contemporary Art will feature Janet Laurence alongside fellow Australian artist Tracy Moffatt. Curated by David Elliot, the 56th October Salon includes 60 artists both emerging and established, Laurence will be exhibiting two major works Underlying (2016) and Vanishing (2009).

“Laurence explores what it might mean to heal, albeit metaphorically, the natural environment. Trees are the lungs of our cities – they exchange carbon dioxide and oxygen – and they usually live for several generations. Today, however, very old trees are dying in our cities, while the crops and fields in the outback have been transformed into vast barren expanses. Janet Laurence fuses this sense of communal loss with a search for connection with powerful life-forces. Her work alerts us to the subtle dependencies between water, life, culture and nature in our eco-system. In the face of this, we yearn for a form of alchemy, for the power of enchantment or transformation. It seems that the only place for that sensation is the place of art. In the tradition of Joseph Beuys, and some of the Arte Povera artists from the 1960s, such as Jannis Kounellis or Mario Merz, Janet Laurence reminds us that art can act as a kind of transformation point for ideas and it can provoke its audience into a renewed awareness about our environment.” – Victoria Lynn

Exhibition runs from 23 September to 6 November 2016

For more information click here.

XIII Bienal de Cuenca

Janet Laurence will also exhibit in the XIII Bienal de Cuenca in a parallel exhibition Fragile curated by Natalia Bradshaw. This marks the first time Australian artists have been included in the Bienal de Cuenca, Laurence will be exhibiting alongside fellow Australian artists Maria Fernanda Cardoso, Reko Rennie and Caroline Rothwell.

“…Janet Laurence too explores impermanence, transparency and opacity Within her presentation for Cuenca. Known for her elegiac installations That address pressing environmental issues, she explores the physiology of medicinal plants from Ecuador and Their vital relationship to the human world Through This new, site-specific work. A long table supports glass vials, plastic tubing and laboratory equipment plant alongside locally sourced samples, all partially concealed (or Alternately revealed) fabric beneath a white veil. The imperiled state of the natural world, due to human intervention and catastrophe, is a recurring theme Within Laurence’s practice. All living things are Interrelated, she points out, and if we continue to treat the natural world With disregard, we will impact our own future survival as a species. Recently, Laurence has Explored the concept of the hospital as a space for the rehabilitation of plants and ecosystems under threat. The incorporation of laboratory equipment and white gauze in her works, treats including Cuenca, Suggests a space for healing and resuscitation.Through This new work, themes of interdependence and equilibrium are Brought to the fore, offering a sustainable future if we choose to acknowledge our own fragility and place Within the wider scheme of things.” – Rachel Kent, Chief Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Sydney, Australia

Exhibition runs from 21 October to 31 December 2016

For more information click here.

Lisa Roet’s Golden Monkey has been installed in Bejing on The Opposite House. This large inflatable monkey measures an impressive 45 ft high and is manufactured out of gold thread.  The installation is designed to inspire thought about our connections with primates exploring similarities, acceptance and peace.

Roet has collaborated with Inflatable Design and Felipe Reynolds and the project was supported by the City of Melbourne Arts Grants Program, The Australian Embassy, Creative Victoria, Asia Link and Australia-China Council. 

Check out the press coverage here: Wallpaper | The Opposite House | Asia Link

Now on display at the Australian War Memorial (AWM), WW1 Avenue of Honour is a series of twenty-two images by Trent Parke. The exhibition will run until early next year and was previously exhibited as part of The First World War Now in Bruges, Belgium presented by Magnum Photos.

Produced after a period of time spent understanding and researching the Ballarat Avenue of Honour, a site in which since 1971, 3,801 trees have been planted to honour the service of an local individual. The Avenue of Honour is the largest of it’s kind and now stretches 22kms.

“In selecting and photographing a particular tree he sought to explore both tangible and abstract parallels between the natural forms as he encountered them and the fate of the individual whom the tree commemorates. Parke undertook detailed research drawing on the Red Cross Wounded and Missing files to find links between biographical records and the appearance of the corresponding tree in planting position, size, shape, texture, irregularities of growth, setting in the landscape or it’s silhouette against the sky. His photographs capture these visual forms as an act of contemporary commemoration. “

For more details and information about this exhibition, visit the Australian War Memorial website here.

William Mackinnon will present a solo exhibition, The World is as You Are, at Hamilton Gallery in Victoria.

Hamilton Art Gallery was established in 1961 and is situated in the city-centre of Hamilton, Western Victoria. It is a perfect location for an exhibition of Mackinnon’s work, who himself grew up in regional Victoria. A connection through place is demonstrated in subject matter within the paintings, often reflecting local landmarks.

Exhibition opens September 16 and runs until October 30.
For more details, click here.

Janet Laurence will be exhibiting at the Australian Museum opening Thursday 28th of July. The installation Deep Breathing (Resuscitation for the Reef) has returned from the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle in Paris as Laurence participated in the Paris Climate Change Convention. Focusing on coral bleaching, Janet’s multi-disciplinary practice creates metaphoric propositions that are based on known science and her own experience of threatened natural environments.

Visit the Australian Museum website for full details.

Richard Lewer is exhibiting in Close to home: Dobell Australian Drawing Biennial 2016 at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, alongside Jumaadi, Maria Kontis, Noel McKenna, Catherine O’Donnell, and Nyapanyapa Yunupingu. The artists have been selected as they share similarities within presenting themes of narrative, memory, and experience through drawing.

“Melancholy is the theme of eight portraits and a self-portrait by Richard Lewer, that form a gallery of friends who have suffered from “mental illness”, which almost certainly means ‘depression’. Each figure is captured in a frontal format that resembles a mug shot or a passport photo. A few manage a smile, or the hint of a smile. The tone of each picture is appropriately grey, but viewers will be seduced by the dexterity of Lewer’s pencil work.”

Exhibition runs July 20 to December 11. For more details head here.

Dobell Australian Drawing Biennial 2016 by John McDonald.

Congratulations to Richard Lewer, winner of the 5th Basil Sellers Art Prize!

Now in its final year, the Basil Sellers Art Prize is a $100,000 acquisitive prize, with a focus on the theme of ‘art and sport’. The exhibition creates a mutual appreciation between the two, providing a platform for artists to discuss issues that impact sporting culture. The Theatre of Sports is a large 12 panel piece presenting Lewer’s dedication and passion, examining the close relationships between sport, mental illness and failure.

Samantha Comte The Theatre of Sports 

“Art and sport are not so different: “both are public spectacles that reflect society and depend on paying customers. The only real difference lies in the uncertainty of the outcome.”1 If you attend the theatre you will generally know, unlike a sporting event, the result in advance. The fascination with watching sport is the unknown. The drama is often in the moment of winning or losing – a remarkable turn-around, the tragic downfall of the top team or a heart-breaking career-ending injury. Sport, like theatre, can reveal so much about who we are – our fears, our capacity for resilience and our need to belong.

 

Richard Lewer’s The Theatre of Sports (2016) is a compendium of twelve paintings that form one work. It represents Lewer’s sustained passion for art and sport, and examines the role sport can play in relation to mental illness. His practice looks at extremes of behaviour, centering in this work on the very public moments of failure of well-known sporting figures.

 

Fascinated by the highly publicised story of swimmer Ian Thorpe’s struggle with depression, Lewer started to investigate elite athletes who suffer from extreme mental stress. He then began to research events in which those athletes had lost, come second or been injured. Having gathered hundreds of images from the web, television and magazines, Lewer selected twelve that document public scenes of the athletes’ despair, anger, frustration and dejection, rendering these in paint. Tennis player Nick Kyrgios throws his racket to the ground in frustration and rage; disbelief is written on the face of martial arts champion Ronda Rousey as she loses her title; Olympic champion Sally Pearson clutches her broken wrist in agony after crashing over a hurdle; Ian Thorpe is dejected in the pool; and a moment of despair is shared by an AFL football team. Lewer is interested in the person who comes second and what happens next to these athletes.

 

Years of hard training have gone into the twelve sporting moments Lewer depicts. Sport, like art, requires discipline; the ability to take risks and to keep going despite failure. Embedded in the surfaces of the paintings are the struggles, the risk-taking and the failures of the artist. Layer upon layer has been rubbed back, built up again and changed over the months that the works have taken to complete. Lewer’s Theatre of Sports documents the struggles of elite athletes. It captures the moment of loss, the agony and the disbelief. We watch the athletes struggle very publicly and are left wondering what will happen next. It is, perhaps, not through the triumphs but through the tough moments that we truly find resilience and a deeper understanding of ourselves.”

The Basil Sellers Art Prize exhibition is on display at the Ian Potter Museum of Art until November 6. Be sure to see this work alongside the entries of William Mackinnon, Trent Parke & Narelle Autio. These artists were selected from over 100 entires to make the 15 finalists.

You can view the catalogue here.

Congratulations to Justine Varga on winning the 2016 Josephine Ulrick & Win Schubert Photography Award!

The $20,000 prize has been awarded to Justine for her work ‘Marking Time’. This is the second time Varga has won this prestigious prize, the first being in 2013. This year the prize was judged by Professor Susan Best from Griffith University’s Queensland College of Art. In addition to this prize the Gold Coast City Gallery has acquired Marking Time.

“Marking Time is a chromogenic, hand-printed, cameraless photograph that sits at the edge of forgetfulness. The product of a duration of bodily actions (in which a piece of film was drawn on and handled, among other things), each mark, action and moment slips into the next. The palimpsestic quality of this photograph, where a drawn layer submits to, is subsumed by, the laying down of yet another – manifests the act of remembering as a kind of magic writing pad. These elements are embodied within the photograph, which has become a bruised skin of emulsion supported by a fragile armature of memory.”

All finalists work will be exhibited at the Gold Coast City Gallery from 25 June – 21 August 2016.

We’re very excited to see Varga’s most recent work in September for her solo show Memoire at Hugo Michell Gallery.

See Gold Coast City Gallery website for additional programs and more information.