Indholdsfortegnelse for March/April 2023 i Art Guide Australia

SOPHIA CAI is a Melbourne-based curator, arts writer, public programmer and greyhound enthusiast. She is particularly interested in Asian art history, the intersection between contemporary art and craft, as well as feminist methodologies and community-based practices. STEVE DOW is a Melbourne-born, Sydney-based arts writer, whose profiles, essays, previews and reviews range across the visual arts, theatre, film and television for The Saturday Paper, The Guardian, The Monthly, the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Sunday Life, Limelight and VAULT. BRIONY DOWNES is an arts writer based in Hobart. She has worked in the arts industry for over 20 years as a writer, actor, gallery assistant, art theory tutor and fine art framer. Most recently, she spent time studying art history through Oxford University. SALLY GEARON works across writing, publishing and contemporary…

The Seed: Sophie Lampert Orange Regional Gallery 25 March—7 May Sophie Lampert uses art to centre the extraordinary lives and work of prominent women, from science to art to ancient times. As curator Lucy Stranger puts it, Lampert creates “soft sculptural works which explore the lives and atypical vocations of a number of women throughout history, whose brilliant careers in unusual fields defied both their gender and the social norms of the times”. And it’s these works which will be showing for The Seed at Orange Regional Gallery. The Seed offers recent National Art School graduates a chance for their first solo exhibition. Lampert is using the opportunity to depict historical women ranging from the German naturalist and scientific illustrator Maria Sibylla Merian, whose work on the metamorphosis of the…

Blue Skirt Waltz Madeline Simm CHAUFFEUR 9 March—1 April “The fog that keeps my words at bay is a sieve, and the colours move through it.” As Madeline Simm poetically explains, her practice interconnects her meandering thoughts with swathing applications of paint. Although created within the parameters of the canvas, Simm’s colourful, abstract paintings do not offer easy resolution. Instead, they deliver a series of what Simm calls “problem creating and solving opportunities”, which she paints her way into, and out of. The Melbourne-based artist’s inaugural solo exhibition, Blue Skirt Waltz, presents new abstract paintings that reference scenes and moods—things like windows, the microscopic surface of a textile, or a blooming garden. As if dancing forward, right, left and backwards—as the title suggests—Simm’s paintings are filled with circular motions, both…

Black Sky Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery (for Perth Festival) 11 February—22 April The night sky tells many stories. Stretching above us, it is a witness to life and history. For Indigenous Australians, it is also a symbol of sovereignty—the black on the Aboriginal flag represents the sky. Taking over the entirety of the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, Black Sky asserts this sovereign vision. “This cultural continuity really strongly,” says co-curator Jessyca Hutchens. and cultural resistance comes through all the works Hutchens worked with fellow Berndt Museum curator Michael Bonner, as well as Lee Kinsella from the Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art, to bring this exhibition to life. Though it primarily consists of new commissions, the show also includes existing work from significant Indigenous artists such as Julie Dowling and Tracey…

Your first art love? I have many, but I do really remember seeing for the first time Hiroshi Sugimoto’s seascapes up close. You work between Bali, Indonesia and Sydney—what does that crossover give your practice? It’s the crossover space that I’m interested in—the friction, connection and creativity that comes from operating between disparate cultures. Are there any contemporary Balinese or Indonesian artists you particularly admire? For a long time I have looked to FX Harsono as an inspiration. The durational performances of Melati Suryodarmo are incredible—start with her iconic Butter Dance. And contemporary Balinese artists Citra Sasmita and I Made Djirna. Your main mediums are moving image and photography—what drew you to these? Initially it was through a keen teenage interest in analogue film and spending hours in the darkroom.…

Within Teho Ropeyarn’s recent vinyl-cut prints, you’ll find the Cape York Lily—a native turmeric plant belonging to the ginger family. Growing prolifically in the tropics of Far North Queensland, it’s known for possessing glossy elongated leaves and blooming purple bracts dotted with delicate yellow flowers nestled in the centre. For Ropeyarn, the Cape York Lily “reminds me of family, especially out camping on Country around Injinoo. It represents my family and lifestyle, camp sites on Country, weather and the wet season.” Injinoo is a remote coastal community in the Northern Peninsula Area (NPA) of Cape York and it is there Ropeyarn spent most of his childhood learning from his Elders and being on Country. Injinoo culture and language, alongside Ropeyarn’s family and their interconnecting stories, are integral to the artist’s…

4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art 4a.com.au 181–187 Hay Street, Haymarket, Warrane/Sydney, NSW 2000 [Map 12] 02 9212 0380 25 Feburary—9 April Dorcas Tang 邓佳颖 : Love Me Long Time 16albermarle 16albermarle.com 16 Albermarle Street, Newtown, NSW 2042 [Map 7] 02 9550 1517 or 0433 020 237 Thu to Sat 11am–5pm, or by appointment. 8 February—11 March Fighting Fear II: It Goes Without Saying It Goes Without Saying reprises 16albermarle’s May 2021 fundraising exhibition Fighting Fear: #whatshappeninginmyanmar, in which 11 artists from Myanmar made work responding to the military coup of 1 February 2021, which deposed the elected government, instituted military rule and deprived the people of democracy and freedom. The new exhibition revisits the ongoing struggle of the people in Myanmar. Coinciding with the second anniversary of the…

Bett Gallery bettgallery.com.au Level 1, 65 Murray Street, Hobart, 7000, TAS 03 6231 6511 Mon to Fri 10am–5.30pm, Sat 10am–4pm. 10 March—6 April Strike Pat Brassington 10 March—6 April Chrysalid Sara Maher 14 April—6 May LOOKS DREAMS AWAKES Brigitta Ozolins 14 April—6 May untitled Valerie Sparks Contemporary Art Tasmania contemporaryarttasmania.org 27 Tasma Street, North Hobart TAS 7000 [Map 17] 03 6231 0445 Wed to Sun, noon–5pm. See our website for latest information. 24 February—2 April Last Messages Zieromuko, John Zobele, Yoshi Sodeoka, Winston Smith, Ryder Ripps, Nik Pepsi, NEGATIVEMEDITATION, Erin Linhart, Ray Harris, Lin Chen, Joey Gracia, Paolo Cirio. Presented by Contemporary Art Tasmania in association with Mona Foma. Curated by Scot Cotterell. Colville Gallery colvillegallery.com.au 15 Castray Esplanade, Battery Point, TAS 7004 [Map 17] 03 6224 4088 Daily 10am–5pm.…

The second I saw Michael Cook’s latest photographic series Fake—an image from which adorns our current cover—I was stunned. It’s not just their impeccable staging, or their near-surreal blend of high materialism against the endurance of Country, or their personal resonances with Cook’s own life, but also the story they tell of a family travelling through Australia, coming to consider what they value, and whether a person can change one’s values—something unpacked in our profile on the artist and his latest work. The concept of value pervades art in all kinds of ways. Our feature on the exhibition A Female Gaze considers how the male gaze has been overvalued throughout art history—and in wider life—and how the work of women artists is inherently, yet not always explicitly, political. Our interview…

Lies, Magicians and Blind Faith Queensland Art Gallery 4 March—30 July When curator Reuben Keenan began envisioning an exhibition of artistic exchanges between the Philippines and Australia, he not only imagined the showing of art, but a display that “serves as an argument for cultural policy that sparks a new kind of dynamism”. Lies Magicians and Blind Faith was soon born, celebrating not only a unique period of artistic exchange between the Philippines and Australia in the 1990s and 2000s, but the larger dialogue between the two nations. While the show features both Australian and Filipino artists, highlighting their artistic and personal connections, it’s inevitably marked by history. “On one hand you had a country [the Philippines] where new forms of expression were flourishing after decades of dictatorship and oppression,”…

The Arrangements: Assembling Nature Catherine Truman Carrick Hill 1 March—28 May Gardens tell us a lot about the natural world and the ways in which humans respond to and shape their surroundings. Through the making of gardens, social concerns become known, as does the tension between the constructed and natural. Catherine Truman, an artist who works between science and art, spent a year researching at Adelaide’s historic Carrick Hill estate, emerging with a body of work that speaks to this relationship, while also acknowledging the colonial history of the site. “Because of the intimate, domestic setting of the house, I’ve been able to really look at these aspects of how we accept the science [of the environment] in our daily lives,” she says. The Arrangements: Assembling Nature probes the space…

Botanically Porcelain: The Third Installment: Seed Dawn Beasley Northern Centre for Contemporary Art 1 March—30 April Last year, Darwin-based artist Dawn Beasley debuted one thousand ceramic pods for the Australian Ceramic Triennale in Alice Springs. Soon after, she exhibited a garden-like collection of lotus-inspired sculptures at the Godinymayin Yijard Rivers Arts and Culture Centre in Katherine. Now, she’s showing the third and final installment of her stunning three-part multimedia project, Botanically Porcelain. “I love that the exhibitions have grown as they worked their way through the Territory,” says Beasley, who uses native flora as a springboard for her art. “Each location has had its own impact on the aesthetic choices made at the installation stage. In Alice Springs, the work was set against a red desert-inspired floor plinth and was…

19 Karen Contemporary Artspace 19karen.com.au 19 Karen Avenue, Mermaid Beach, Gold Coast, QLD 4218 [Map 13] 07 5554 5019 Tues to Sat 10am–5pm, Fri and Sat 10am–2pm. See our website for latest information. Mini Solo Shows: Showcasing a small body of work from a selection of different artists, these ‘mini’ solo shows allow audiences to playfully receive a diverse range of art in one cohesive exhibition. From hyper-realism to the surreal and everything in between, the gallery will hold three mini solo shows featuring a range of local and international artists throughout 2023. 22 April Mini Solo Show 1 Debbie Reda (Spain), Jose Ramon Lozano (Spain), Paolo Pilotti (Italy), Ramona Nordal (Canada), Wayan Sarcita Yasa (Indonesia) Artspace Mackay artspacemackay.com.au Civic Precinct, corner Gordon and Macalister Streets, Mackay, QLD 4740 [Map 14]…

Adelaide Contemporary Experimental ace.gallery Lion Arts Centre, North Terrace (West End) Kaurna Yarta, Adelaide, SA 5000 [Map 18] 08 8211 7505 Tue to Sat 11am–4pm. See our website for latest information. 4 February—18 March A river that flows both ways: Selected works from the 23rd Biennale of Sydney: rīvus Aluaiy Kaumakan (Paiwan Nation), Yuko Mohri (Japan), Imhathai Suwat than a silp (Thailand), and Sopolemalama Filipe Tohi (Tonga), alongside the river voice of the Murrundi/Murray River. Art Gallery of South Australia agsa.sa.gov.au Kaurna Country North Terrace, Adelaide, SA 5000 08 8207 7000 Daily 10am–5pm. Free entry. See our website for latest information. 3 March–14 May Andy Warhol and Photography: A Social Media Exclusive to the Art Gallery of South Australia, this exhibition reveals an unseen side of celebrated Pop artist Andy…

Geelong Atmosphere Clarice Beckett Geelong Gallery 1 April—9 July Working en plein air on a small scale, the modernist, tonalist painter Clarice Beckett (1887 – 1935) possessed a remarkable ability to capture not only the likeness of a place, but also how it felt to be there. Looking at her paintings, one can almost feel the misty rain clinging to the suburban streets of Melbourne—where she lived and worked—and smell the fresh, salty air billowing in from Port Phillip Bay. Curated for Geelong Gallery, Atmosphere covers Beckett’s work from 1919 to the early 1930s and focuses on locations around Victoria, with natural phenomena a key subject. “Compared to the grand landscape narratives being painted by her tutor Frederick McCubbin (1855 – 1917), Beckett focused on everyday locales,” says Atmosphere co-curator…

Clare Longley ReadingRoom 24 March–22 April In 1966, American pop artist Robert Indiana created Love, an iconic image in which the word “love” appears in red letters on a blue and green background. Since then, it’s been reproduced ad nauseam in painting, print and sculpture, and even Indiana confessed his ambivalence on its commercial success: “It was a marvellous idea, but it was also a terrible mistake.” Enter Melbourne-based artist Clare Longley and her experimental painting practice, which repositions such romanticised imagery from a queer perspective. Longley’s appropriation of Indiana’s Love, showing at ReadingRoom, involves a large-scale painting of the word “errs”, meaning to be mistaken or incorrect. By recreating Indiana’s work with the different word, Longley is suggesting an ‘error’; the error being how commercialisation obscured Indiana’s intention to…

Prayer James Webb Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery Until 9 March When James Webb launched his multi-channel installation Prayer in Capetown in 2000, he had no inkling of the enduring scale it might achieve. Back then, working in advertising, he was thinking about the effects of apartheid and imagined a work in which many voices could be heard together, yet independently. There have since been many iterations of the site-specific work in which people from various faith groups are recorded in prayer: now it’s Tasmania’s turn. The South African-born, Stockholm-based artist, who recently exhibited a retrospective of the various versions, says each version becomes a time capsule. Visually, Prayer manifests as a long red carpet with audio speakers hooked up nearby. Attendees remove their shoes and must kneel close to…

Geoffrey Bartlett Australian Galleries Melbourne 7—25 March Geoffrey Bartlett’s new exhibition at Australian Galleries Melbourne sees the renowned sculptor’s career, in many ways, come full circle. Bartlett’s first ever exhibition, in Melbourne in 1976, prominently featured drawings alongside sculpture. For this show, he revisits this combination—but now, as he says, the drawings are “taking centre stage, with sculptures acting as support”. The focus on drawing allowed Bartlett to take a less deliberate approach than with his sculptural practice, arriving at something akin to improvisation. “What is interesting for me about these 48 drawings is they begin with no preconceived idea,” he says. “I begin quite literally with a blank page, with no idea of where it will lead. They have a separation from my sculptural practice, however they have a…

“I’ve always found humour both pleasurable and a way of breaking open things which are hard to break open; seriousness upon seriousness sometimes has its limitations.”—PETER TYNDALL TIARNEY MIEKUS: Your retrospective clearly captures a repeated shape throughout your work from the 1970s to now, which is a minimalist representation of a hanging picture, whether it’s singular, in a geometric grid, or even the exhibition hang itself. What compelled you to the image of an empty picture plane? PETER TYNDALL: Early on [in my practice] I said to a friend, in a moment of lightheartedness, “If I put a line between this inside rectangle and this outside rectangle, we’d have the image joined up to its own object, or the object to its own image.” And if I put a frame…

The idea that all women’s work is intrinsically feminist has been historically transient; ebbing and flowing with each political wave over time. But now, more than ever, with increased focus on bodily autonomy, the surging cost of living further emphasising the wage gap, and the recognition of true intersectionality, the personal is once again proving itself inherently political. When MARS Gallery director Andy Dinan approached the women artists in A Female Gaze, the only brief given was the title of the show. “I simply asked each artist to interpret the phrase how they saw fit within their own practice,” she explains. “I want their work to be true to their own voices and I want their work to scream or whisper as they wish.” The voices heard are those of…

ACAE Gallery acaearts.com.au Australasian Cultural Arts Exchange 82A Wellington Street, Collingwood, VIC 3066 [Map 3] 0406 711 378 Tue to Sun 10am–5pm. See our website for latest information. We are dedicated to developing cultural exchanges throughout the Australasian region and its near neighbours. Primarily focused on the visual arts, our program looks to a range of cultural interests and expressions; it is not limited by contemporary art alone. We invite you to join us as we present new and exciting projects from Australia, Asia and the Pacific. 3 March—1 April 100 Children At Play Elmira Ng Elmira Ng presents recent ceramic sculptures and works on paper. 6 April—21 May Why You Like This Angie Pai In her new body of textile works and video works, Taiwan born artist Angie Pai…

Art Collective WA artcollectivewa.com.au 2/565 Hay Street, Cathedral Square, Perth, WA 6000 [Map 19] 08 9325 7237 Wed to Fri 11am–4pm, Sat 12noon–4pm, or by appointment. 11 March—8 April Tough Pleasures Toni Wilkinson Toni Wilkinson presents two extended suites of images that feature women and food in a new book and exhibition: Tough Pleasures. Revisiting the 2003 series that launched her early career in contemporary art photography, Wilkinson adds new works almost two decades later that meditate on complex themes of femininity, the absurd, desire, and ongoing debates around photography and art in an ever-expanding visual culture. 11 March—8 April Beauty and Menace Connie Petrillo Connie Petrillo immerses herself in the aesthetics of the minimal image as the primary signifier of the cultural erasure of the child in this new…

MAP 1 VICTORIA MAP 2 MELBOURNE CBD MAP 3 FITZROY/COLLINGWOOD MAP 4 GREATER MELBOURNE MAP 5 & 6 NORTHERN MELBOURNE AND SOUTHERN MELBOURNE MAP 7 SYDNEY MAP 8 SYDNEY CITY MAP 9 DARLINGHURST/REDFERN/WATERLOO MAP 10 PADDINGTON MAP 11 & 12 GREATER SYDNEY AND NEW SOUTH WALES MAP 13 & 14 GREATER BRISBANE & QUEENSLAND MAP 15 BRISBANE MAP 16 CANBERRA MAP 17 & 18 HOBART & ADELAIDE MAP 19 & 20 PERTH & FREMANTLE “Part of the idea with it is to look at what society expects ‘success’ to look like. I am not judging, but [rather] asking people to examine their own beliefs …”—MICHAEL COOK, ARTIST, P. 66 “What is contained in Warhol’s Polaroids is that unavoidable, aching question of desire that stretches across sex and celebrity: do we want…