Art Almanac July / August 2020 $6
Tony Albert Darcey Bella Arnold Nyapanyapa Yunupiŋu
Art in Australia News and Books – Art Almanac team Art Without Borders
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Tony Albert, Duty of Care – Chloe Mandryk 42 Darcey Bella Arnold, me say edit be – Soo-Min Shim 47 the moment eternal: Nyapanyapa Yunupiŋu – Jeremy Eccles 50 Conflict in My Outlook – Melissa Pesa 54 Miranda Skoczek, Floating Moons and Dizzying Hues – Alice Dingle Select exhibition previews – Art Almanac team
Art & Industry Artist Opportunities and Awards 71 Submissions and Proposals 78 Studio Spaces 78 Materials 79 Services 80 Consultants and Valuers 83 Member Organisations 83 Training 83
What’s On Melbourne 84 Victoria 102 Sydney 108 New South Wales 128 Australian Capital Territory Tasmania 138 South Australia 141 Western Australia 144 Northern Territory 147 Queensland 149 Artist Index 160
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Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair The Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair (DAAF) goes online, providing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists and a broader Australian and international audience with a new ‘virtual fair’, digital events and programming through which to connect, from 6 to 14 August. Online exhibition portals enable more than 50 Art Centres to showcase and sell their artists’ work. At the same time, the public program comprises cultural performances, workshops and demonstrations, Indigenous food experiences, panel discussions, lunchtime music gigs and a children’s collaborative art project hosted on the DAAF website and social platforms. Six online sessions via the ‘Cultural Keepers Program’ will bring together Indigenous curators, senior Art Centre staff and special guests from international Indigenous Nations, to facilitate an exchange of stories and a ‘behind the scenes’ look into the world of arts workers and curators. Don’t forget to turn on your TV sets or open your laptops to watch the Inaugural National Indigenous Fashion Awards ceremony, broadcast live. More details, conveniently, online. daaf.com.au Artists of Ampilatwatja Booth at the 2019 Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair Photograph: Dylan Buckee
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Art Without Borders Touring exhibitions play a pivotal role in connecting the arts community. They provide access to collections and permit collaboration between cultural bodies, ensure access to a broader audience and encourage artistic dialogue with our neighbours. When mandatory restrictions prevented these shows from travelling from place to place, they were forced to close temporarily; some sought new modes of viewing through the digital realm, others remained in storage. With restrictive measures easing, most art galleries and institutions have re-opened to the public; once again allowing us to physically engage with art; strengthening connectivity, and creating an inclusive cultural landscape. In our second instalment of such exhibitions, we focus on the significance of contemporary Indigenous culture and art practices in addressing, and redressing the past, present and future, in shows previously published in Art Almanac’s editorial and What’s On guide – add them to your arts calendar.
Void ‘Void’ explores the multiple ways in which contemporary Aboriginal artists visually express the unknown as space, time and landscape through sculpture, ceramics, textiles, painting, drawing, photography and video. ‘Indigenous artists are innovative, constantly changing and finding new ways to articulate old ways,’ explains curator Emily McDaniel, from the Kalari Clan of the Wiradjuri nation in central New South Wales. ‘These artists are engaging with art as a visual and a metaphorical means to articulate the complexity of their experiences.’ Artists such as Pepai Jangala Carroll, Jonathan Jones, Mabel Juli, John Mawurndjul AM, Hayley Millar-Baker, Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri, Rusty Peters, Doreen Reid Nakamarra, Andy Snelgar, Dr Thancoupie Gloria Fletcher AO, Freddie Timms, James Tylor, Jennifer Wurrkidj, and Josephine Wurrkidj, do not merely define the void as denoting vacancy; instead, they utilise form to represent the formless. ‘The void is a politicised space that cannot be defined as simply an absence or a presence. It is the space between distinct worldviews, which implicates our ways of seeing, understanding and knowing. As a spatial notion, the void holds misconceptions of 30
Tony Albert Duty of Care Chloe Mandryk
Tony Albert is celebrated for his incisive, witty and personal practice, working in assemblage, collage, painting, video, found materials, photography and now glass, he addresses the contemporary legacies of colonialism and interrogates representations of Aboriginal people from an Indigenous perspective. His work has been collected and exhibited by Australia’s leading galleries and internationally; in addition he’s received major awards and a public commission to commemorate Indigenous soldiers in Sydney’s Hyde Park. In late 2019, Albert spent six weeks as an artist in residence at the Canberra Glassworks where he produced a new body of work, on view now as ‘Duty of Care’. In past works he has subverted objects, images and language, and in this show continues this with sand-etched glass text works and re-cast items of ‘Aboriginalia’ (a term the artist coined to describe kitschy objects and images that feature naive portrayals of Aboriginality) from his own collection in glass, including ‘invisible lamps’ and a nest of boomerang tables. On our cover we highlight the evolving and exceptional work Brothers (the prodigal son) (2020). ‘Brothers’ was a series that began in 2013 after an incident occurred, a car full of young Aboriginal teenage boys lost control and drove onto the footpath, hitting a pedestrian. In the police response, the driver was shot, a passenger wounded and another passenger pulled onto the street – witnesses documented this on mobile phones and a rally followed at Parliament House in Sydney. There Albert observed a group of teenage friends remove their shirts to reveal targets painted on their chests, inspiring this body of work, which has ongoing relevance at a local and global level. Albert has said ‘for such young people how incredibly profound a statement that was, how incredibly brave it was and how we metaphorically as Aboriginal men are looked at.’ At the time Albert discussed this constant metaphorical and real target (also a reference to the use of the target as a symbol by artist Richard Bell) with his subjects to create the portrait images in 42
the moment eternal: Nyapanyapa Yunupiŋu Jeremy Eccles ‘This is what spontaneity looks like… Nyapanyapa Yunupiŋu paints without anxiety about outcome’ praises Will Stubbs, director of the Buku Larrnggay Art Centre at Yirrkala in the far north-east of Arnhemland, where Nyapanyapa lives and works. So, what has lead the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT) to give Nyapanyapa its first ever solo show by an Aboriginal artist? In explaining this breakthrough, MAGNT’s Curator of Aboriginal Art and Material Culture, Luke Scholes recalls seeing one of Nyapanyapa’s first major works at the 2008 Telstra NATSIA Awards – when her bark painting of an episode from her youth, in which she was gored by a water buffalo, was augmented by a film in which she told this story dramatically: ‘I couldn’t help thinking both the bark and the film were so revolutionary’. And this was partly because her community’s Yolngu practice demanded that bark painting had to have ‘some kind of function’. But this was just her personal story. ‘And since then’, Scholes continues, ‘she’s never sat still. Her dramatic visual evolution really deserved being seen in one place to observe the development.’ Her earliest works featured that buffalo story – wacky, two-legged giant striped creatures with what looked like antennae on their heads - the horns that caused her injury. Also featured were what appeared to be fairy-lit Christmas trees – actually, the trees that carried the fruit that had drawn this hunter/gatherer woman into the bush in the first place.
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The Storytellers Museum of Brisbane From 17 July, 2020 Queensland Historical objects, artworks, moving image and sound complement true and creative stories from some of Brisbane’s most unique voices – including Victoria Carless, Simon Cleary, Matthew Condon, Trent Dalton, Nick Earls, Benjamin Law, Hugh Lunn, Kate Morton and Ellen van Neerven. Together they reveal the nuance of the city from Law’s family pilgrimages to Chinatown, Condon’s take on its underbelly from corruption to crime and Earls who spins a tale about doing up a neglected Queenslander in Red Hill.
Todd Fuller, The Last Kangaroo, 2020, animation still, digital video, chalk, charcoal and acrylic animation on paper Writer and narration: Simon Cleary Museum of Brisbane Collection Courtesy the artists, MAY SPACE, Sydney and Museum of Brisbane, Queensland
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Kylie Stillman Not fully or properly either of two things Town Hall Gallery 11 July to 30 August, 2020 Melbourne
In Kylie Stillman’s first solo exhibition at Town Hall Gallery, she will present 20 years of practice as well as new sculptural works. Stillman is drawn to overlooked or discarded objects, in which she can imbue a new materiality and meaning. Sheets of plywood, furniture and more are approached with a unique sensibility for negative space – for example she uses pinprick holes to depict a forest through Venetian blinds and a flock of birds cut across the fore edges of a deaccessioned collection of books.
Park Views, 2003, hand-laced venetian blinds, four blinds, 180 x 95cm Courtesy the artist, Utopia Art Sydney and Town Hall Gallery, Melbourne
Vivian Cooper Smith
Celia Gullett
Actions for a Luminous World
Changing Places
Presenting new works embracing the process and action of drawing and the expressive and constructive aspects of photography, this show by Vivian Cooper Smith uses the dialogue of materials to reveal the global state of crisis. The artist explains, ‘The world we live in no longer feels safe, and while this is not new for many, it is for those that took it for granted. Our actions have always had consequences, but now they are grotesquely visible, and we must learn new ways to live.’
‘Negations express presence,’ writes Wayne Koestenbaun in ‘Schuyler’s Colours’. ‘Such negatives provide the pleasure of an atmosphere half-there, half-gone.’
ACTION 4053 (ERASURE), 2020, digital C-type, edition of 3 + 1 AP, 70 x 60cm Courtesy the artist and Galerie pompom, Sydney
Variations series II, 2020, oil on panel, 30 x 25cm Courtesy the artist and Jan Murphy Gallery, Queensland
Galerie pompom 19 August to 13 September, 2020 Sydney
Jan Murphy Gallery 14 July to 1 August, 2020 Queensland
In ‘Changing Places’ Celia Gullet presents a new series of works that refuse definition and clear description – thickly painted surfaces, conflux layers reduced to geometrical shapes, lines and block colours. Gullet’s paintings reference place attachment and emotional response by negating them, simplifying these memories, places and feelings to abstracted forms. However, Gullet speaks to the surface; and in turn, the surface speaks back.
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Thank You Our sincere thanks go to the galleries and artists listing in this issue of Art Almanac. Please note that due to spatial distancing restrictions at the time of printing, not all listings will appear in this issue. Be sure to check our website for changes, or contact the gallery. Art Almanac is proud to showcase our vibrant and resilient art community. Thank you for sharing your art with Australia! To list in our next issue, send your material to listing@art-almanac.com.au
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Artist Opportunities We have selected a few galleries and funding bodies calling for submissions for Art Awards, Artist Engagements, Grants, Public Art, Residency Programs, Exhibition Proposals and more. Enjoy, and good luck! ACCA Open Commissions Launched in April, in response to forced closures and social distancing measures, the ACCA Open invited proposals from contemporary artists and collaborators for new works to be presented in the digital realm. The inaugural program originally intended to commission three new works, however with additional support from Creative Victoria’s Strategic Investment Fund, three further projects have been added to the series. Our congratulations go to the commission recipients: artists Archie Barry, Zanny Begg, Dr Léuli Eshrāghi and Sean Peoples, and collaborators Madeline Flynn and Tim Humphrey, and Amrita Hepi and Sam Lieblich.
ACCA Artistic Director and CEO, Max Delany, stated that ‘The response to the open call was enormous, with over 340 diverse and wide-ranging submissions received – from artists who had inherently worked this way thoughout their artistic careers, to others keen to adapt their practice in response to the current landscape.’ ACCA Open projects will be revealed in August. Interdisciplinary artist Archie Barry’s audiovisual work Multiply presents a pathogen’s perspective exploring domestic life to question our determination to survive. A video work will be created in Sydney’s defunct Waterfall Sanatorium by Zanny Begg, exploring anxieties analogous to immunity/contagion, solidarity/individualism, and liberty/authoritarianism. Dr Léuli Eshrāghi engages with and intervenes in display territories to champion Indigeneity. For his commission, Eshrāghi has devised a digital platform featuring drawings, poems and videos, serving as a decolonised archive. As an extension of his hypothesises of a skewed universe, Sean Peoples will develop a virtual galaxy, showcasing the imbalance and unease in our modern world. Audio artists Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey’s How much time do we have? is a sonic work of break, flows, junctures and shifts, revealing the timeless state of the present evernow and Neighbour is a chatbot devised by Amrita Hepi and Sam Lieblich providing answers to the question: how does it feel? acca.melbourne
Regional Arts Fund National Fellowship Recipients Announced We congratulate Kristina Chan, Jack Sheppard, Alex Wisser, Bethany Reece and Vanessa Keenan, who are the successful applicants of the National Fellowships program – a newly formed Regional Arts Fund initiative to support regionally-based Australian artists, at any stage of their career.
Dr Léuli Eshrāghi, 2019 Photograph Rhett Hammerton
Kristina Chan Photograph: Joshua Morris
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Mornington Peninsula Cook Street Collective
41 Cook Street, Flinders 3929. T (03) 5989-1022. E info@cookstreetcollective.com.au W www.cookstreetcollective.com.au H Fri-Mon 10.00 to 4.00, Tues-Thurs by appt. To July 26 Blackroom Gallery: Forest to the Sea by Melinda Marshman. Aug 1 to 23 Blackroom Gallery: Exploring – Peninsula Elements by Russell Newman.
Frankston Arts Centre and Cube 37 Galleries
27-37 Davey Street, Frankston 3199. T (03) 9784-1896. W www.thefac.com.au Free entry. H Check website for gallery opening hours. Glass Cube & Art After Dark view 24/7 from the street front: to Aug 2 Black and White Series by Josh Muir. From Aug 6 EQUILIBRIUM Interconnectedness – Kathleen Gonzalez, Maria Esther Pena Briceno and Sebastian. Cube and FAC Galleries: Please check website for current information on access and re-opening dates prior to visiting. In Essence by Agata Mayes. #STYLE by Bronwyn Kidd.
Gordon Studio Glassblowers A Working Hot Glass Studio & Gallery
290 Red Hill Road (cnr Dunns Creek Road), Red Hill 3937. T (03) 5989-7073. E mail@gordonstudio.com.au W www.gordonstudio.com.au H Daily 10.00 to 5.00.
Manyung Gallery Flinders
1/37 Cook Street, Flinders 3929. T (03) 9787-2953. W www.manyunggallery.com.au H Mon-Fri 10.00 to 5.00.
Russell Newman, Coast, 2020, oil on canvas, 50 x 50cm Courtesy the artist and Cook Street Collective
EVERYWHEN Artspace
1/39 Cook Street, Flinders 3929. T (03) 5989-0496. E info@mccullochandmcculloch.com.au W www.mccullochandmcculloch.com.au H Fri-Tues 11.00 to 4.00. EVERYWHEN Artspace features an extensive range of barks, ochres, and sculptures from the 40 + Aboriginal-owned community art centres that gallerists Susan McCulloch and Emily McCulloch Childs represent. To Aug 4 In Black & White + Top End Sculptures – paintings, barks and ochres in black and white from around Australia, plus ceremonial poles, Mimih, Yawk Yawks and fibre sculptures by leading artists of Buku Larrnggay Mulka and Maningrida Arts. Exhibition in gallery and online + informative online catalogue. Aug 7 to Sept 1 Wildlife! – a celebration of Australia’s Indigenous animals, birds, fish and reptiles in Aboriginal art from the sublime to the quirky. Exhibition in gallery and online + informative online catalogue.
Manyung Gallery Sculpture
3/37 Cook Street, Flinders 3929. T (03) 9787-2953. W www.manyunggallery.com.au H Fri-Mon 10.00 to 5.00.
Manyung Gallery Sorrento
113a Ocean Beach Road, Sorrento 3943. T (03) 9787-2953. W www.manyunggallery.com.au H Fri-Tues 10.00 to 5.00. Selected new works on display from Rick Matear.
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Hobart Sullivans Cove Battery Point
expands the field of contemporary sculpture through intricate collage-based works that combine folded banknotes and precise colourful cut-outs of various military hardware. Artworks consider religious and political themes in contrast to the hostilities of war, individually placed elements denoting the perilous balance between the profits and loss attributed to war. July 22 to Aug 15 Abstraction – joint exhibition of three leading abstract painters – Anne Morrison, Leah Theissen and Julienne Harris.
Bett Gallery Hobart
Level 1, 65 Murray Street, Hobart 7000. T (03) 6231-6511. E info@bettgallery.com.au W www.bettgallery.com.au Directors: Carol Bett, Emma Bett and Jack Bett. H Open by appt only, Closed Sat. July 31 to Aug 22 Picturing by Pat Brassington. Also, Breaking Horizons by Amber Koroluk-Stephenson.
Despard Gallery
Level 1, 15 Castray Esplanade, Hobart 7000. T (03) 6223-8266. E hobart@despard-gallery.com.au W www.despard-gallery.com.au H Mon-Fri 10.00 to 5.00, Sat 10.00 to 4.00, Sun by appt. To July 18 An Animistic Dialectic solo exhibition by established contemporary sculptor Glen Clarke. Clarke’s practice
Glen Clarke, Location Data (detail), 2020, cut paper and cotton thread, 96 x 96 x 7.5cm Courtesy the artist and Despard Gallery
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Brisbane Art from the Margins Gallery & Studios
Graydon Gallery
29 Merthyr Road, New Farm 4005. T 0418-740-467. E graydongallery@gmail.com W www.graydongallery.com.au Two week hire space, for all art practices and artisans.
136 Brunswick Street, Fortitude Valley 4006. T (07) 3151-6655. E aftm@wmq.org.au W artfromthemargins.org.au H Mon-Fri 10.00 to 4.00. To July 17 Survival. Balance. Growth: 2020 AFTM Emerging Artists Exhibition. July 25 to Sept 18 Showtime a photographic exhibition reminiscing on the cancelled Brisbane Ekka during the pandemic.
Graydon Gallery
Institute of Modern Art
Craig Rhys, Rhys, 2018, reduction relief print Award prize recipient 2018 Courtesy the artist and Art from the Margins Gallery & Studios
FireWorks Gallery
9/31 Thompson Street, Bowen Hills 4006. T (07) 3216-1250. E info@fireworksgallery.com.au W www.fireworksgallery.com.au H Tues-Fri 10.00 to 6.00, Sat 10.00 to 5.00. July 31 to Sept 5 Joanne Currie Nalingu: Maranoa Paintings and Alick Sweet: Isle of Dogs.
Michelle Vine, Contested Biography I (quadrat) (detail), 2017, cyanotype on altered book, stitched, 138 x 216cm
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Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts, 420 Brunswick Street, Fortitude Valley 4006. T (07) 3252-5750 F (07) 3252-5072. E ima@ima.org.au W www.ima.org.au H Tues-Fri 10.00 to 5.00, Sat 10.00 to 3.00. To July 25 IMA Belltower: Sancintya Mohini Simpson: Kūlī nām dharāyā / they’ve given you the name ‘coolie’. Simpson evokes the lived experiences of indentured labourers taken from India to Natal, South Africa (now KwaZulu-Natal) to work on sugar plantations during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Continuing to trace her familial history, Simpson creates a new archive that speaks to shared narratives of indentured labour. To Aug 22 Marianna Simnett: CREATURE – often featuring the artist performing alongside a cast of non-actors, UK artist Marianna Simnett’s work speaks to the relationships we develop with our bodies—shifting between control and violence, phobia, and dysmorphia—as they undergo intervention and transformation. Online now Making Art Work a new commissioning initiative of the IMA. Visit makingart.work. New work by Tony Albert, Kieron Anderson, Mariam Arcilla, ∑gg√e|n, Hannah Gartside, Mindy Gill, Kinly Grey, Susan Hawkins, Tori-Jay Mordey, Sally Olds, Amy Sargeant, Des Skordilis, and more to come.