News

We are very excited to share that Kate Just has been selected as one of 10 finalists in the Beechworth Contemporary Art Award (BCAA)!

The Beechworth Contemporary Art Award is a $10,000 non-acquisitive prize, and an opportunity for artists on the national stage, regional and remote artists to exhibit in a unique historic and culturally significant village setting.

The first art award of its kind, this national award is to be held within the streets, alleyways, parks and buildings of the small Victorian community of Beechworth. Audiences will have opportunities to engage directly or incidentally with the ideas, techniques and entertaining ways of Australia’s contemporary artists.

The award offers a new platform for creative opportunity. The town’s granite boulders, numerous waterways and heritage preserved facades allow a unique dialogue between artists and the community. In creative ways, contemporary artists will connect the past with the present, inviting audiences to be entertained and experience new interpretations of the world around them and their place within it.

As an artist primarily focused on the deployment of craft forms including knitting, sewing, textiles, and photo media in contemporary art works that question histories of female and queer representation through the lens of subjective experience, for the BCAA Kate Just plans to activate familiar spaces in new ways and invite audiences to participate in a unique and powerful art event.

Hugo Michell Gallery welcomes the addition of Garawan Wanambi to our represented artists!

Born in 1965, Garawan Wanambi belongs to Marrakulu clan and works out of the Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre in Northern Arhem Land.

After his father’s death in 1973, Garawan was brought up by Wayuŋga Wanambi of the Marraŋu clan. Through this connection, Garawan paints Marraŋu designs, the counterpart of Marrakulu from the other side of Arnhem Bay. Garawan and his family continue to live and work at Gängan, to the south of Yirrkala, and he has emerged as one of the most gifted of the new generation of artists based there.

Garawan extends the history and practice of Yolŋu painting. Whilst continuing to use natural pigments and miny’tji (sacred clan designs), he extends the possibilities of these methods through the mixing of natural pigments to form unique colours and deliberate tonal variations. His precise geometry and complex layering of designs create a depth of field on an otherwise flattened surface and a mesmerising optical effect. In doing this, Wanambi explores the Yolŋu concept of Buwayak ‒ simultaneously making elements both visible and invisible.

He was a finalist in the Telstra Art Prize in 2009, 2014, 2020, and a finalist in the Kate Challis RAKA Award in 2013. In 2014 he was awarded the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award Best Bark painting prize.

Garawan has works held in a number of significant collections; Kerry Stokes Larrakitj Collection, The Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection (USA), Art Gallery of New South Wales, Charles Darwin University Art Collection, Artbank, Art Gallery of South Australia, National Museum of Australia, Monash University Art Museum Collection. His works are also held in private collection both nationally and internationally.