Indholdsfortegnelse for Issue 71 i Artist Profile

STORIES + PHOTOS EFFY ALEXAKIS is a documentary photographer based in Sydney JUDITH BLACKALL is a curator and writer based in the south coast of NSW. BROOKE BOLAND is an arts writer on Wodi Wodi, Jerrinja and Yuin Country of the NSW south coast. DR. JOSEPH BRENNAN is a Lambda Literary Award-nominated author based in Tropical North Queensland. PROF. BRAD BUCKLEY is an artist, writer, and occasional curator, Sydney. RHONDA DAVIS is the senior curator at Macquarie University Art Gallery, Sydney. WILLEM-DIRK DU TOIT Is a photographer based in Melbourne; willem-dirk.com DR. NOLA FARMAN is an interdisciplinary artist and writer based in Sydney. DR. FELICITY FENNER is a curator of contemporary and public art based at UNSW Art & Design, and lives in Sydney. BERNIE FISHER is a photographer based…

When questioned if she had always wanted to pursue an artistic career, G.W. Bot responded “nobody said I could be an artist, I just was. It wasn’t even a question.” The continuous, and at times obsessive making, emerged in her early years and persisted into young adult life. At the completion of her schooling, G.W. Bot consciously rejected the pursuit of formal art school training, and instead, embarked on a practice that “she discovered for herself in her own way," which was later refined through study in London, Paris, and Australia. In the years following, having had time to refine her practice, Christine Grishin assumed the nom de guerre "G.W. Bot". The name G.W. Bot derives from her own experience of observing the abundant common wombat, found in her local…

A calderacarved from a retinal patternstored in fractures along your brow Grids slice along the surfacejut out across the wetland in rigid extensions- a taut mineral canvas You meander through the shallowscollecting stubborn blades of dead grassand chips of moss green agate The world is hollow hereand the endlessness of the earthbeyond the moon-lip rim is an illusion At the centre of the depressionwe exist only as the curvature of our own eyesand our wax-capped fingertips This is the first and last time a river is madesmudging sideways across the surfacelike a scrape of wet paint You push the dead grassinto my fingertipsI will set the chips of agateinto your eyes…

Sometimes it takes the fresh eyes of foreigners to bring new perspectives to city spaces that, either through over familiarity or a lack of curiosity, have become unremarkaeble to locals. British artist Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate, 2004-06, quickly became the world’s most Instagrammable work of public art by capturing novel views of the Chicago skyline. In Sydney, Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s 1969 wrapping of Little Bay brought global attention to the natural beauty of a coastal strip historically more associated with its nearby prison and foul-smelling sewerage works. Three recent commissions in inner Sydney have provided Melbourne-based artist, Callum Morton, the opportunity to explore, research and reimagine aspects of Sydney’s urban infrastructure rarely noticed by locals: grimy service lanes used by office workers on a smoko; train stations swiftly breezed through…

1 FRANCK of 3 ARTWORKS BY GOHIER 01 Franck Gohier, A day in the life of Picasso, 2023, 4 colour screen-print, hand printed on acid free, carbon neutral, 290 gsm ivory board, 325 x 455 mm, 11/99 editions. Numbered and signed in pencil 02 Franck Gohier, Become an Artist!, 2021, 2 colour screen-print, letterpress, printed on ‘Chardonnay’ acid free, carbon neutral, 300 gsm ivory board, 325 x 455 mm, 3/99 editions. Numbered and signed in pencil 03 Franck Gohier, Good for ‘YOUR’ Career, 2014, 4 colour screen-print, hand printed on acid free, carbon neutral, 290 gsm ivory board, 325 x 455 mm, 58/99 editions. Numbered and signed in pencil Subscribe to Artist Profile before 21 August 2025 to enter the competition to WIN 1 of 3 editioned screen-prints, valued at $80.00 AUD…

The story of humanity or modern humans (homo sapiens) is explained by various creation myths across different religions and cultures. Many of these myths have striking similarities with the story of Adam and Eve. For instance, the three great monotheist religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, each hold that man and woman were created by their God. In Norse mythology, the first two humans, Ask and Embla, were given life by the gods Odin, Vili and Vé, who found two tree trunks on the beach and breathed life into them, creating the first man and woman. As we move beyond such myths, the use of mitochondrial acid (mtDNA) provides us with the tools to explore the true origin of modern humans. The best science at present supports the “out of Africa”…

“The word cultivar describes a plant variety that has been produced by humans for desired attributes such as smell, flavour, colour, robustness,” Melitta Perry tells me. Her new exhibition, Cultivar, will feature between ten and twelve new pieces. “In taking this theme into the realms of metaphor, this new body of work explores how we cultivate our surroundings and how we are inspired by the natural world, shaping it to our desire.” Perry’s new works depict elements that have been selected or cultivated and yet where there remain remnants of the natural, untamed space. “This juxtaposition bears themes like environmentalism, species protection, historical land usage and its legacy, sovereignty, identity and memory,” Perry says. Based in the Northern Rivers of New South Wales, a signature of Perry’s work has been…

The qualities that have empowered cover artist Janet Dawson to move back-and-forth from figurative to non-figurative works is closely observed in Sasha Grishin’s essay. Dawson studied at a time when students expected and respected art teachers to teach. Senior artists and art teachers today tell me they feel almost powerless to apply their years of knowledge and experience because, in this era of user pays, art school curriculums favour what students think they want, as opposed to what they may learn from their teachers. Grishin contextualises Dawson’s early art studies to a diversity of prominent artists and teachers including Harold Septimus Power, Sir William Dargie CBE and Alan Sumner. Dawson recognised that these teachers gave her solid foundations in drawing, painting and printmaking, and importantly the confidence to work as…

Nigel Helyer is an internationally renowned sculptor and sound artist whose innovative practice encompasses installation and public art, audio, interdisciplinary, and research-based environmental projects. For more than four decades, he has consistently and eloquently engaged with concerns of cultural and social histories through sonification and other technologies in a confluence of poetics and technics. Helyer was born in the south of England. He cites the interstice between art and science as pivotal to his life’s work: “The small Sussex fishing village in which I spent my childhood contained two significant buildings, significant not for their formal qualities, they were both simple cottages, but because one had been the home of William Blake the poet, whilst the other, ‘Comet Cottage’ was named for the astronomer Halley. Without being conscious of the…

A life-time of working with clay provides you with an ease of association and a comfortable familiarity that greatly helps with confidence at the beginning of a working sequence. My early years of practice in the 1970s were dominated by the pragmatism of the functional ceramic form. With the benefit of an excellent training in ceramics in vibrant art schools with strong, disciplined curriculums, my pathway as a ceramic practitioner seemed quite clear. However, things evolved and by the 1980s I was taking a different path. The very nature of the material and my early training in painting were putting ideas and opportunities before me that gradually took hold and an evolution began in an unexpected new direction, which amazingly continues to this day. Fluency with the ceramic medium is…

“Never before has a volume of works of this size and national significance toured internationally,” Tony Ellwood, director of the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), tells me in relation to the exhibition tour of The Stars We Do Not See: Australian Indigenous Art to the United States and Canada. The exhibition features over 200 works by 130 artists—all drawn from the NGV’s collection of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art—with many of these works never leaving Australia before. How an exhibition and tour of this magnitude came together is my first question to Ellwood. He tells me the idea developed through his friendship with Kaywin Feldman, director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, and their shared ambition to show art histories not always available to their audiences. Myles…

When the doors of Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art opened in November 1991, in the newly renovated premises of the old Maritime Services Board building on Circular Quay, I was there—discreetly standing in the corner—as one of a team of gallery attendants or “hosts,” the term more often used today. In those opening weeks and years to come, Leon Paroissien, as the MCA’s inaugural director, with his partner, MCA chief curator, Bernice Murphy, introduced me to what in my estimation remains an unrivalled program of contemporary art exhibitions and associated events. This ambitious program was all the more remarkable as the MCA did not rely on government funding. To put this new museum in broader context, back in 1991 no other state or national museums and galleries were giving significant…

Hebrew is not merely the language of the Jews. Jewish people trace their lineage to Abraham, the first Hebrew—Ivri—a word derived from traversing to the other side of a river. However, rather than a strictly oppositional phenomenology, Ivri is a perplexing and sacred non-positionality. It is the fluidity between homeland and here, wherever “here” may be. It is perpetual ethical debate. It is limbo between safety and peril, acceptance and otherness. It is the obligation to cultivate both the self and the tribe. Ivri is the continuous and precarious, liminal positionality that shapes the Jewish experience. To turn that into art, like Marc Chagall, Mark Rothko or Judy Chicago takes a certain brazen, unapologetic and absurd confidence. Jews have a word for that too. Chutzpah. First mentioned in the Mishnah…

Working in the intersections of drawing, AI, video, and painting, Matt O’Brien’s work is a symphony of colours and textures, led by encounters of the natural landscape from the Northern Rivers of New South Wales. Playing between representational and abstract depictions of the bush, O’Brien explores what he says is: “the dynamic relationship between seeing, walking, noticing, listening and picking up dialogue in place.” After completing an honours degree in visual arts and teaching from Southern Cross University O’Brien went through a period of “over-theorisation” in his art making. A residency at the Corridor Project, near Cowra, in 2020 offered him the opportunity to go “back to form and material.” He refers to the residency as a turning point which helped him realise a new sense of “guided discovery,” to…

Led by curator Kelli Cole, Emily Kam Kngwarray at the Tate is a continuation of the retrospective Emily Kam Kngwarray: Alhalkere—Paintings from Utopia curated by Cole and Hetti Perkins at the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) in 2024. The lasting impact of Emily Kame Kngwarreye (c.1910–1996) on the international art world has been great despite her short career. Beginning painting at the age of seventy-seven, in the last decade of her life Kngwarreye created over 3000 works, averaging one a day. This creative momentum was built throughout her life, as Cole explains, “Kngwarray’s art wasn't a new beginning; it was a direct continuation of her lifelong cultural practices. Everything she painted was rooted in her prior experiences and cultural knowledge.” For those who have been privy to the rhythmic, pulsations…

Paint is like light with failure added in Since leaving New York in 2001, where I was a professional storyboard artist and illustrator, I have avoided literal representation in my work. I think it is due to a series of traumatic events including witnessing 9/11. Every time I went to draw something it reminded me of that throw away industry that I wanted to leave behind. It stopped me drawing and led me to find a language which was a form of expressive gesture and description of landscape through emotive gesture and form contained within the substance of paint. The movement to abstraction in my work grew since arriving back in Australia, as a response to connect to my emotions and the allure of paint. It’s why there have only…

In the hot summer of February this year, over 400 guests flocked to Defiance Gallery in celebration of its thirtieth anniversary. A line-up of collectors, artists, curators, writers, critics and friends spilled out onto Mary Place, Sydney. This support is testament to the gallery’s outstanding reputation. The founder and director, Campbell Robertson-Swann, was shocked by the sheer numbers in attendance. “It took me right back to the old days,” he said, referring to when he first opened Defiance at 47 Enmore Road, Newtown, back in 1995. Campbell’s full-strength, unrestrained character exemplifies his artistic idioms when it comes down to doing serious art business. The naming of Defiance matches too, his ideological traits, as Campbell recently told me, “Anyone saying it can’t be done, you just watch.” Notable artist Ann Thomson,…

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) is perhaps best known for her intimate self-portraits exploring pain, love, and loss, replete with potent symbolism and social commentary. She gained global popularity for her defiant style that challenged prescribed gender norms and embraced the pleasure of self-adornment. Per the curatorial premise, Frida Kahlo enriches viewers with a wealth of materials illuminating the artist’s life and uniquely crafted image. The exhibition is curated by Mexican-born fashion curator, Circe Henestrosa, historian Gannit Ankori, and Bendigo Art Gallery managing curator Lauren Ellis. It includes personal items from Mexico’s Museo Frida Kahlo, never seen before in Australia. It begins by contextualising Kahlo’s middle-class upbringing before expanding on her modernist self-taught artistry, communist activism, fame, challenging disabilities and iconic aesthetic. Across multiple galleries, select artworks are curated alongside photographs, written…

Juno Gemes was born in Budapest, Hungary, emigrating to Australia with her family in 1949. From the 1970s onwards, the movement for Aboriginal rights became the focus of her work as a documentary photographer. In her own words, as quoted by Djon Mundine in his introductory essay in Until Justice Comes, “it was because I saw that Aboriginal people were invisible that I took up the camera.” She became an ally and friend to many of the people she photographed, and her work is a record of this important part of Australia’s history up to the present moment, including post-referendum disappointment and shock. Until Justice Comes chronicles fifty plus years of the movement for Indigenous rights across 220 photographs, from 1970 to 2024. Gemes captures the energy, humour and passion…

Canberra-based Hannah Quinlivan’s artist statement for Bound by the Sky both grounds the exhibition and transcends that ground in a statement as simple as it is recognisable: “As a child, I would lie on the sand and watch the sky transform above me, feeling both grounded and connected to something far beyond myself.” Her work has this grace, atonce ethereal and material, expressed in a language that in everything it says, communicates the passion of drawing. Rough bodies carved out of a wilderness of lines describe the shape of the air, the energy, and the imagination as they converge on the moment that manifests itself as a work of art. These “spatial drawings” are made mostly of wire, creating undulous forms that hold all the spontaneity of a quick sketch…

Hi Desirée, Last Friday evening at the Intensive Care Café was a blast. So many up-and-coming artists together in one place at one time. Darting from topic to topic. The sting and itch of irritating ideas. There was a buzz about that pesky infestation of bugs you mentioned last week—the Grave-hoppers. Why do they hover around graves? Are they watching and listening? Are they collecting data for sinister purposes? It reminds me of your recent nasty experience with the introduction of teleportation as a means of exit for MoHA (Museum of Hot Air) viewers. Is there a connection? It seems that even in the artworld there’s nowhere safe anymore, as surely art galleries and cemeteries should be. Cheers, T.C. Hey T.C. Tiny Bubbles is a great host, and more thanks…