News

Richard Lewer in 'What they didn’t teach me at school: Richard Lewer -The Waikato Wars’ at the New Zealand Portrait Gallery (Te Pūkenga Whakaata)

We are excited share the launch of Richard Lewer's upcoming solo exhibition ‘What they didn’t teach me at school: Richard Lewer -The Waikato Wars’ at the New Zealand Portrait Gallery (Te Pūkenga Whakaata) on Thursday 22nd February.

For his exhibition Lewer has created a new body of work resulting from his own personal journey learning about the Waikato Wars.

Lewer began researching and making this body of work because he, like many New Zealanders wasn’t taught about the New Zealand Wars when he went through school in Hamilton in the 1980’s. He feels it’s important for all New Zealanders to acknowledge and digest what happened, to help better understand our complex and disputed colonial history. Lewer thinks this will be the most important artwork series he will ever create, as he develops an understanding of the history of the place he comes from and his place within and resulting from that history.

This exhibition is a part of the Aotearoa Festival of the Arts.

‘What they didn’t teach me at school: Richard Lewer -The Waikato Wars’ is on display at the New Zealand Portrait Gallery (Te Pūkenga Whakaata), Wellington, New Zealand from 22 February to 12 May 2024.

 

Hugo Michell Gallery Opening: Justine Varga | Maningrida exhibitions

Hugo Michell Gallery invites you to the opening of Justine Varga’s solo exhibition ‘Diffusion’ and the group exhibition ‘Warraburnburn’ featuring works by Jeremiah Bonson, Serena Bonson, and Chubasco Pascoe from Maningrida Art Centre on Wednesday 7th February 6-8pm.
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Justine Varga
Diffusion
Justine Varga creates photographic works from an intimate exchange between a strip of film and the world that comes to be inscribed on it. Employing analogue techniques, sometimes using a camera and sometimes not, her exposures capture instantaneous moments or distill lengthy durational periods. Her working process complicates both the act of looking and the experience of time. The photographs that result are therefore documents of transformation and remembering, being simultaneously situational and autobiographical.
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Jeremiah Bonson, Serena Bonson, and Chubasco Pascoe
Warraburnburn
The Warraburnburn figures are representational carvings of ‘ghost spirits’ that hold an essential role in indicating cycles of death, life, transitions and rebirth, being closely associated with the waterhole An-mujolkuwa in the artists’ ancestral territory, as other Wangarra are related to other sites for other clans. This exhibition brings together sculptural Warraburnburn by Jeremiah Bonson, Serena Bonson, and Chubasco Pascoe from Maningrida, Arnhem Land.
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Hugo Michell Gallery are proud to partner with Bird in Hand Winery for this opening event.
This exhibition will be on display from 7 February to 9 March 2024.
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.
Jeremiah Bonson, Serena Bonson, Chubasco Pascoe in 'Warraburnburn' at Hugo Michell Gallery, 2024

Happy Holidays from Hugo Michell Gallery | Opening Hours

We are pleased to share that Hugo Michell Gallery will be open during the following hours prior to Christmas.

Tues – Fri: 10am-5pm
Sat – Mon: CLOSED
23 December 2023 to 8 January 2024: CLOSED
Open by appointment from 9 January

Please save the date for our first exhibitions for 2024 on Wednesday 7 February; Justine Varga and group exhibition from Maningrida Art Centre.

Enquiries to mail@hugomichellgallery.com

Hugo Michell Gallery Open: Summer in the Stockroom

'Summer in the Stockroom' brings together new works and gems from the Hugo Michell Gallery stockroom. Featuring works by Sally Bourke, Nyunmiti Burton, Tony Garifalakis, Bridie Gillman, Sam Gold, Lucas Grogan, Richard Lewer, Julia Robinson, and Garawan Wanambi

This exhibition is open until 21 November 2023 and can be viewed on the Hugo Michell Gallery website.

Richard Lewer in 2023 Triennial, National Gallery of Victoria

We are excited to share the Richard Lewer’s series ‘Adam and Eve’ will be presented as part of the 2023 Triennial at the National Gallery of Victoria which launches on 3 December.

Richard Lewer’s work often depicts biblical references, drawing on signs and symbols deeply rooted in these narratives. His latest series, twelve large-scale paintings, depicts the biblical story of Adam and Eve, conjuring modern relevance to the moral tale of desire, shame and original sin. Lewer’s work probes what is beautiful and sinister without moralising. For ‘Adam and Eve’, Lewer interrogates the innate human instinct to revel, neglect, and ignore consequences at a time of uncertainty, changing global politics and climate crisis at a time when decline and demise are becoming the hallmarks of society.

Join artists Richard Lewer, Diana Al-Hadid, Heather B Swann, and NGV curator Tedd Gott for an artist talk on Sun 3 December, 2.15pm–2.45pm, around the themes of memory and magic explored in the artists' work.

The Triennial will be on display at the National Gallery of Victoria from 3 December 2023 to 7 April 2024. 

View Richard Lewer's 'Adam and Eve' series here. 

Celebrating 15 Years of Hugo Michell Gallery: 21 November to 9 December 2023

The exhibition Celebrating 15 Years of Hugo Michell Gallery will be open to the public from 21st November to 9th December 2023, celebrating the gallery’s represented artists:

Clara Adolphs, Narelle Autio, Sally Bourke, James Darling & Lesley Forwood, James Dodd, Marc Etherington, Zaachariaha Fielding, Tony Garifalakis, Bridie Gillman, David Booth [Ghostpatrol], Sam Gold, Lucas Grogan, Kate Just, Ildiko Kovacs, Janet Laurence, Richard Lewer, William Mackinnon, Fiona McMonagle, Trent Parke, Julia Robinson, Georgia Spain, Paul Sloan, Justine Varga, Garawan Wanambi, Sera Waters, Amy Joy Watson, Min Wong, Paul Yore.

Please note that the gallery will be closed on Saturday 18th November. 

Preview requests & enquiries | mail@hugomichellgallery.com

Paul Yore in BECOME WHAT YOU ARE, Brisbane Powerhouse Museum

Paul Yore’s exhibition ‘BECOME WHAT YOU ARE’ is now showing at Brisbane Powerhouse Museum, presented as part of Melt Festival for 2023.

‘BECOME WHAT YOU ARE’ brings together a suite of the artist’s intricate textile works, interrogating popular culture, nationalism, neo-liberalism, consumerism, and sexuality. Drawing on a vast array of recycled materials, forms, texts and images, Yore’s work deploys laborious and time-honoured craft methodologies such as embroidery, quilting, mosaic, collage, and bricolage. These experimental works engage in a kind of queer and linguistically deconstructive free association within which a plurality of meanings is made available.

The exhibition also features selected garments drawn from the collaboration Yore made with celebrated fashion house Romance Was Born for their 2023 winter collection entitled Stronger Together. These one-off couture pieces combine Yore’s bold vernacular with signature Romance Was Born techniques such as hand beading and sequin work, appliqué, and upcycled vintage fabrics including crochet blankets, military uniforms, and floral silk quilts.

‘BECOME WHAT YOU ARE’ is on display from 11 November to 10 December 2023.

Julia Robinson in From the other side, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art

Julia Robinson is exhibiting in ‘From the other side’ at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) that launches this weekend.

Curated by Elyse Goldfinch and Jessica Clark, ‘From the other side’ brings together Australian and international artists to unsettle the tropes of the horror genre and its relationship to vulnerability, anxiety, rage, and revenge.

‘From the other side’ draws upon horror’s shared cultural imaginary and its ability to transgress and destabilise institutions of power, conjuring counternarratives and alternative mythologies that challenge the assumed boundaries of the body, gender, the self and the ‘other’.

Horror often speaks to the collective anxieties and fears of our times, from sexual liberation to new technologies, racial tension to gender subversion. This fear proliferates across shared cultural imaginaries to lay bare our innermost desires, tendencies for self-destruction and the conflicting impulses to confront and exorcise our darkest fantasies. Horror provides a language with which to be scared and to respond to challenges that might be beyond our control.  

From the other side brings together nineteen Australian and international artists, integrating historical and contemporary works, alongside key new commissions that draw upon horror’s capacity to transgress and destabilise forms of power and subjugation. The exhibition summons the impulse for rage and revenge, while embracing feelings of vulnerability and unease. Rather than speculating on the field of horror as a whole, the exhibition embeds and casts a lens upon feminist, queer and non-binary subjectivities to consider the transgressive pleasures and liberations of horror, as makers, masters and consumers of the genre. 

Centring the fear of the monstrous-feminine, the exhibition raises questions about the often-harmful representation of female monsters — the witch, the hag, the monstrous mother, the shapeshifter, the possessed woman — and how she has been reclaimed by female storytellers in recent years. The monstrous-feminine resists the prototypical role of women in horror, as either victims or final girls; instead she performs the dual roles of temptress and castrator — alluring yet repulsive, contaminating yet pure.  

The exhibition crosses the artificial parameters of horror in the everyday, as something that exists as part of society but also from outside of it. Culminating in a potent synthesis of dread, camp, humour and catharsis, From the other side challenges the traditional narratives and assumed boundaries of the body, gender, the self and the ‘other’. 

This exhibition will be open to the public from 9 December 2023 to 31 March 2024.

Julia Robinson in Eeerie Pageantry at City Gallery Wellington, New Zealand

Julia Robinson is currently showing at City Gallery Wellington, New Zealand, alongside the late Don Driver in the exhibition ‘Eerie Pageantry’.

‘Eerie Pageantry’ is a cornucopia of folk horror and art played out through a ritualistic meeting of made and modified materials, textures, colours, tools, bodies and nightmares. Julia Robinson and Don Driver's assemblages and sculptures form an elaborate ceremonial procession in the gallery space—an eerie pageantry of the Antipodean Gothic.

‘Eerie Pageantry’ is curated by Aaron Lister and Dr Chelsea Nichols as part of their project Curator of Screams which explores connections between contemporary art and horror films.

‘Eerie Pageantry’ is on display at City Gallery Wellington (Te Whare Toi), New Zealand, from 28 October to 18 February 2024.

Hugo Michell Gallery Opening: Zaachariaha Fielding & Alfred Lowe | Tarnanthi Exhibition

Hugo Michell Gallery invites you to the opening of Zaachariaha Fielding & Alfred Lowe’s ‘Z munu A Titutjara’ (Z and A Forever) on Thursday 5th October 6-8pm.
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‘Z munu A Titutjara’ features new works by Zaachariaha Fielding and Alfred Lowe. Both artists combine traditional influences from their respective cultures with contemporary artistic practices. While the journey the two have taken to become practising artists is different, they are now travelling on the same path to recognition and reconciliation. This exhibition celebrates their journeys so far, as well as looking towards the future.
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Please join us in celebrating the launch of these two exhibitions!
Hugo Michell Gallery are proud to partner with Bird in Hand Winery for this opening event.
This exhibition will be on display from 5 October to 11 November 2023, as part of Tarnanthi Festival presented by the Art Gallery of South Australia.
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.