MARMAY 2020
members newsletter no. 80
CELEBRATING
25 YEARS
DIRECTOR’S FOREWORD
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IMAGE FRONT AND BACK COVER Sidney NOLAN Ned Kelly (detail) 1946 from the Ned Kelly series 1946 – 1947 enamel on composition board, 90.8 x 121.5 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Collection Gift of Sunday Reed, 1977 © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
IMAGE P.P. 3, 4 Sidney NOLAN Stringybark Creek, 1946 from the Ned Kelly series 1946 – 1947 enamel on composition board, 90.7 x 121.5 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Collection Gift of Sunday Reed, 1977 © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
This year we continue our push to be nationally recognised for innovative and ambitious exhibitions and programs, such as 2019s Queen’s Land Blak Portraiture, which came second in Arts Hub’s The Big List 2019 of 10 small-to-medium organisations that presented exhibitions worthy of any major institution in Australia. 2020 marks the Gallery’s 25th birthday and the start of a decade that will arguably pose unprecedented global challenges. Art continues to be a universal language for articulating and commenting on new ideas and ways of seeing. Our international screen program focuses on how artists around the world are using the moving image to engage with global social, political and environmental issues. Our major exhibition during the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair is an ambitious exploration of ritual as used in traditional and contemporary
art practices of north Australian and Asia Pacific artists. We are delighted that both the Australia Council and Arts Queensland have recently confirmed funding for this project. Finally, with the support of the Gallery Foundation, we have recently acquired Patricia Piccinini’s No Fear of Depths, a major sculptural work that was created for her recent exhibition at the Gallery. I would also like to congratulate ARTNOW FNQ exhibition artists, Madge Bowen, Gertie Deeral, Wanda Gibson, Daisy Hamlot, Melanie Hava, Walter R. Lui, Roland Nancarrow, Brian Robinson, Jennifer Valmadre and Jason Wegger whose works were acquired for the Gallery’s Collection. I hope you will enjoy all the exhibitions and programs that we have planned for the coming year. Andrea May Churcher Director
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6 MAR—14 JUNE 2020
SIDNEY NOLAN’S NED KELLY SERIES A NATIONAL GALLERY OF AUSTRALIA EXHIBITION
Experience some of the most famous and poignant masterpieces of 20th-century Australian art.
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THE EXCLUSIVE QUEENSLAND VENUE
EXHIBITION OPENING EVENT
FRIDAY 6 MARCH, 6PM WITH DR DEBORAH HART, HEAD OF AUSTRALIAN ART AND SENIOR CURATOR OF AUSTRALIAN PAINTING AND SCULPTURE, NATIONAL GALLERY OF AUSTRALIA
The Cairns Art Gallery is the exclusive Queensland venue for the national tour of Sidney Nolan’s famous Ned Kelly series from the collection of the National Gallery of Australia (NGA). For the first time in fifteen years, the Ned Kelly series of paintings, which is widely regarded as a masterpiece of 20th century Australian art, is touring Australia. It will be shown at the Cairns Art Gallery from 6 March to 14 June 2020. Timing of the exhibition at the Gallery is significant, as 2020 marks our 25th birthday. As a birthday gift to the people of Cairns and to celebrate this milestone event, the Gallery has decided to make entry to the exhibition free. The iconic Ned Kelly series demonstrates Nolan’s extraordinary ability as an artist and storyteller who could weave history with myths and legends to create an evocative and compelling series of works that celebrate an anti-hero and an infamous outlaw.
Nolan was born in Melbourne in 1917 and grew up during the Great Depression. He took menial jobs to support himself, and from an early age was an avid reader, spending much of his time reading modern art books and poetry at the State Library of Victoria, which arguably shaped his developing passion for creating his own style of visual poetry in the form of episodic artworks. Nolan was profoundly intrigued by myths and legends. It was this passion that inspired him to create mythical landscapes and places in which he could locate himself and explore and create symbolic and imaginative connections between fact and fiction. In the 1940s Nolan discovered the Ned Kelly story, which was to become a lifelong preoccupation and inspiration in his art. Between 1946 and 1947 Nolan painted his first series of works that offered an imaginative interpretation of the life and times of one of Australia’s most loved anti-heroes, Ned Kelly. This series is also considered to be
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6 MAR—14 JUNE 2020
SIDNEY NOLAN’S NED KELLY SERIES
autobiographical, in that the artist explored for himself issues inherent in the work of the artists and writers he most admired, including Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and most especially, the poems of French Symbolist, Arthur Rimbaud. Together, these influences shaped a style of art instantly identifiable as that of Nolan, a style that is naïve, poetic, emotional, innovative and utterly experimental. Nolan painted the majority of the Ned Kelly works in glossy enamel-like paint on the dining-room table at Heide, the home of John and Sunday Reed in the Melbourne suburb of Bulleen. The Reeds had a great library which included up-to-date art journals from Europe that provided great inspiration for Nolan.
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The National Gallery of Australia in 1972 acquired its first Ned Kelly work from the series, Death of Sergeant Kennedy at Stringybark Creek 1946. In 1977 Sunday Reed donated twenty-five of the twenty-seven paintings from Nolan’s first exhibited Kelly series to the NGA. Together, these twenty-six paintings, all of which are included in the exhibition, provide a masterclass on Australian art history and the development of a new figuration and landscape painting in Australian art. NGA Curator Deborah Hart explains that the Ned Kelly paintings were not created in the order in which they were originally exhibited. It was not until 1948 that Nolan determined a new perspective for their presentation, starting
Sidney NOLAN Steve Hart dressed as a girl 1947 from the Ned Kelly series 1946 – 1947 enamel on composition board, 90.6 x 121.1 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Collection Gift of Sunday Reed, 1977 © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
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SIDNEY NOLAN’S
6 MAR—14 JUNE 2020
NED KELLY SERIES
with Landscape 1947 – a muddy environment, all moody and low-key tonalities – which was used to ‘set the scene’ for the other works in the series. Not all the paintings in the series are equally crucial to the narrative. Some are indicative of small incidents documented in historical records that caught Nolan’s robust imagination. These quiet non-events are counterpoints to the heraldic and iconic works that depict more dramatic incidences from the Kelly story. There are gentle works of pure fabrication, like Quilting the armour 1947 of Ned’s sister Margaret ‘quilting the armour to protect a precious head done with tenderness and love, while a peaceful world goes about its life’. It is the one work that gives a feeling for small rural communities involved in subsistence farming at the time. Then there are those key works that convey a sense of the violent drama that unfolded, like Death of Constable Scanlon and Burning at Glenrowan, both painted in 1946. It is precisely this alteration in the pacing—from quiet to dramatic, from quirky, seemingly irrelevant incidents to totally life-changing episodes—that give the series its dramatic, filmic qualities.
The image reproduced on the cover of this issue of the Gallery magazine is perhaps one of the most iconic and recognisable works in the Kelly series. It was painted in 1946 and is titled, simply, Ned Kelly. Speaking about this work, Nolan explained: This is Kelly the defiant. I put Kelly on top of the horse in a particularly orderly manner. I wanted an air of authority. It looks simple but I wanted the maximum feeling of space, so the cloud appears through the aperture in the mask.
The national tour of the Ned Kelly series aims to inspire audiences across Australia to engage with this remarkable group of paintings, and to debate and contemplate the history or the myth of an Australian story that will never die.
Dr Deborah Hart, Head of Australian Art, NGA
Sidney NOLAN Burning at Glenrowan 1946 from the Ned Kelly series 1946 – 1947 enamel on composition board, 121.5 x 90.7 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Collection Gift of Sunday Reed, 1977 © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
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UNTIL 29 MAR 2020
JOHN MAWURNDJUL I AM THE OLD AND THE NEW
Yo karreborledmeng mane wanjh bolkki mankerrnge laik, new generation. Bad ngayi ngakarrme bokenh ngakarrme. Mankerrnge la mankare. The old ways of doing things have changed into the new ways. The new generation does things differently. But me, I have two ways. I am the old and the new.
John Mawurndjul
John Mawurndjul is not simply Australia’s premier bark painter, he is one of our greatest artists of all time.
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John McDonald, Sydney Morning Herald art critic
John MAWURNDJUL Ngalyod (detail) 2012 earth pigments on Stringybark (Eucalyptus tetrodonta) Museum of Contemporary Art, purchased with funds provided by the MCA Foundation, 2015 © John Mawurndjul / Copyright Agency, 2020 photograph: Jessica Maurer
UNTIL 15 MAR 2020 INTERNATIONAL SCREEN SERIES
CHARWEI TSAI HEAR HER SINGING IN COLLABORATION WITH TSERING TASHI GYALTHANG
The artist takes the universal nature of song to present the multiple voices of women refugees - their struggle, resistance and hope.
Charwei TSAI in collaboration with Tsering Tashi GYALTHANG Hear Her Singing 2017 video, 16 min 28 sec Commissioned by Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, London UK
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20 MARCH-3 MAY 2020 INTERNATIONAL SCREEN SERIES
MELANIE SMITH FORDLANDIA
An extraordinary visual narrative that ponders Henry Ford’s failed utopia in the tropical Brazilian rainforest and the tensions between colonisation, industry and nature.
20 MARCH-3 MAY 2020
MELANIE SMITH FORDLANDIA
Fordlandia is a gripping filmic work that has engaged audiences around the world with its bizarre storyline of wealth and greed, obsession and destruction, and the power of nature to win over the ultimately futile obsessions of mankind.
machinery and prefabricated homes, and attempting to urbanise the surrounding jungle, the project failed and twenty years later the city fell into ruin and was eventually subsumed by the rapacious jungle.
British-born artist, Melanie Smith lives and works in Mexico City. She is internationally acclaimed for her masterly use of different media, including videos, films, photographs, and paintings to explore the legacies of modernism and postavant-garde movements as they manifest themselves in Latin America.
Fordlandia initially presents as a nature-style documentary, where the complex Amazonian ecosystem appears to resist the colonising imposition of empirical order. However, Fordlandia is not a simple story about a failed industrial utopia. Rather, it is an immersive fiction featuring an intensely atmospheric soundtrack, to engage audiences in complex narratives about industrialisation, global expansion and the fantastical resilience of our natural environment.
Smith’s single-channel video, Fordlandia, has been likened to Werner Herzog’s film, Fitzcarraldo, with industry, power and obsession pitted against the unremitting force of a surrounding tropical jungle. Fordlandia was filmed in a small settlement on the River Tapajos in the Brazilian part of the Amazon, where industry magnate Henry Ford set up a rubber industry in the 1920s. It was here that Ford set about creating an all-American-style city which could produce the largest amount of rubber in the world. Despite shipping in expert technicians,
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IMAGE P.P. 15, 16, 18 Melanie SMITH Born Poole, England, 1965 Fordlandia (still) 2014 single channel video, colour, sound 29:42 mins Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich, Switzerland
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3 APRIL - 21 JUNE 2020
ARTHUR BOYD LANDSCAPE OF THE SOUL A BUNDANON TRUST TOURING EXHIBITION
This exhibition explores the trajectory of one of our nation’s most important artists, looking at a life-long career engaging with the real and imagined landscape.
Deborah Ely, CEO, Bundanon Trust
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3 APRIL - 21 JUNE 2020
ARTHUR BOYD LANDSCAPE OF THE SOUL
CURATORS TALK FRIDAY 3 APRIL, 5.30 FOR 6.00PM WITH JENNIFER THOMPSON COLLECTIONS & EXHIBITIONS MANAGER BUNDANON TRUST
Landscape of the Soul provides a rare opportunity for audiences in Far North Queensland to experience the full range and breadth of landscape works by one of Australia’s most important 20th century artists.
Landscape of the Soul explores a lifetime of landscape paintings. The exhibition features major paintings from public gallery collections, as well as works on paper, letters, photographs and sketchbooks that span almost half a century.
Barry Pearce, a personal friend of Boyd, guest curator and Emeritus Curator of Australian Art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, brings a unique insight to his curatorial role, allowing this exhibition to move beyond the traditional academic understanding of Boyd’s career and delve deeper into the rich personal landscape of the acclaimed Australian artist.
Arthur Boyd was a painter, potter and printmaker from a distinguished family of artists. He painted lyrical and emotive allegories on universal themes of love, loss and shame, often located in the Australian bush. These artworks draw on a wealth of literary and mythological sources as well as intensely personal and often ambiguous symbolism.
Barry Pearce explains,
Boyd had a strong social conscience and his paintings engage deeply with humanitarian issues. In the 1950s he travelled around central Australia and was shocked by the conditions of Aboriginal people living in and around Alice Springs. This experience gave rise to one of his most famous series of paintings, Love, marriage and death of a half-caste also known as The bride.
Boyd’s profound delirium of light and dark, swinging between euphoria and apprehension through diverse notions of landscape over almost half a century, is the focus of this exhibition. The story of Arthur Boyd is one of genius evolving out of childhood innocence to which in some ways, through extraordinary complexity, it returned at the end of a long productive life. His was an artist’s odyssey through landscape both seen and imagined.
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Boyd was associated with the Antipodeans, a group of painters founded in 1959 and
IMAGE P. 19 Arthur BOYD Reflected kangaroo c1976 oil on canvas Bundanon Trust Collection
IMAGE ABOVE Arthur BOYD Nebuchadnezzar with blue flowers and white dog 1968-69 oil on canvas Bundanon Trust Collection
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3 APRIL - 21 JUNE 2020
ARTHUR BOYD LANDSCAPE OF THE SOUL
championed by art historian Bernard Smith, who sought to promote figurative art at a time when abstract painting and sculpture were increasingly being explored by artists. In 1959 the Antipodeans had a successful exhibition at the Victorian Artists’ Society in Melbourne. In the same year Boyd moved to the UK where he lived until his return to Australia in 1971. Despite living ‘abroad’ Boyd never lost his passion for depicting the Australian bush, often locating allegorical and mythical figures in Australian bush settings.
This exhibition is supported by the National Collecting Institutions Touring and Outreach Program, an Australian Government program aiming to improve access to the national collections for all Australians.
Arthur Boyd: Landscape of the Soul brings together a number of never-before-seen works created by Boyd, including works from his teenage years, offering the first in-depth look at this famous Australian artist’s powerful early grasp of the landscape as a subject. Bookended by Boyd’s youthful paintings of the Mornington Peninsula in the 1930s, and the final phase of his career depicting the Shoalhaven area in southern New South Wales in the mid-1970s, Landscape of the Soul considers not only the topographic landscape, but also the landscape Boyd carried within himself.
Arthur BOYD Nebuchadnezzar in a clearing 1968-69 oil on canvas Bundanon Trust Collection
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8 MAY-21 JUNE 2020
LIVING TREASURES: MASTERS OF AUSTRALIAN CRAFT \ PRUE VENABLES
Acclaimed ceramicist Prue Venables is the ninth artist in this series of exhibitions that celebrate the achievements of Australia’s most iconic crafts practitioners
An ADC on Tour exhibition:
Exhibition supported by:
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Exhibition partners:
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LIVING TREASURES:
8 MAY - 21 JUNE 2020
MASTERS OF AUSTRALIAN CRAFT \ PRUE VENABLES
Living Treasures: Masters of Australian Craft \ Prue Venables presents an outstanding body of work by one of Australia’s greatest artists working in clay. Together, the works in this exhibition explore the significance of everyday objects through multiple sequences of forms in porcelain, incorporating additional elements in metal and wood. Prue Venables is the ninth artist in the Australian Design Centre series Living Treasures: Masters of Australian Craft, which celebrates the achievements of Australia’s most iconic crafts practitioners, their mastery of skill, their achievements, their contribution to Australian craft, and the unique place they occupy in the national design culture.
She explains, ‘I enjoy the contradictory nature of the pieces, where the sprung tension of the throwing remains clear, but the origins of forms are uncertain. Risks are high but failure only motivates me to try again’. Prue Venables demonstrates a profound understanding of porcelain, using a precious and extremely temperamental clay, with fine-grain and opaque qualities, to create handmade functional artworks that possess clarity, luminosity and a quiet beauty.
Motivated by a particular interest in functional objects and a search for simplicity, quietness and an essential stillness, Prue makes objects that are pared back, serene and deceptively simple.
IMAGE P. 25 Prue VENABLES Betty’s Kitchen 2017 Image: Terence Bogue
IMAGE LEFT Prue VENABLES In her studio 2018 Image: Angus Lee Forbes
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6 MARCH-26 APRIL 2020
DESTINATION NORTH ARTIST STUDIO RESIDENCY AND EXHIBITION PROJECT
Bringing artists and their studio practice into the Gallery. This project supports the Gallery’s Works On Paper initiative that provides mentoring and professional development opportunities for regional artists
Julie MCENERNY Pink Bananas (Musa velutina) 2020 watercolour pencil 76 x 56 cm Collection of the artist Photo courtesy High Scan
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6 MARCH-26 APRIL 2020
DESTINATION NORTH ARTIST STUDIO RESIDENCY AND EXHIBITION PROJECT MELANIE HAVA JULIE MCENERNY HANNAH PARKER CATHY SNOW
ARTIST TALK SATURDAY 7 MARCH, 2PM
Destination North is an initiative of the Cairns Art Gallery that comprises an exhibition, an interactive artists’ studio space, and merchandise developed by the artists for exclusive sale through the Gallery Shop. For the exhibition this year, four local artists have been mentored to create new works on paper that celebrate and interrogate the natural environment of Far North Queensland.
Cathy Snow’s new works on paper feature flora and fauna as well as her mother’s stories, including one about an auntie who used broken freshwater mussel shells to incise body markings in her arm to represent the three rivers on their traditional country.
Hannah Parker’s series of watercolours interprets ways in which plants and creatures of great beauty and energy exist in tropical north Queensland despite a threat of imminent extinction.
Melanie Hava’s works portray the Palmerston rainforest region which is home to the Ma:Mu people. For this exhibition she has removed people from her whimsical rainforest scenes. In so doing the forests become silent. Melanie believes that it is the sound of the Ma:Mu people living traditional lives in the forests that bring them to life.
Julie McEnerny is fascinated by the colours of a flowering Jade Vine and other exotic plants in the region, all of which need the soaking rains of a tropical wet season to flourish.
Through their new works on paper, each of the women artists tells a uniquely different story about connections to life forms and ecosystems in Far North Queensland.
Cathy SNOW Sleeping Barramundi and Seed Lilies 2019 acrylic paint on paper Collection of the artist Photo courtesy High Scan
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8 MAY-21 JUNE 2020
COLLECTION IN FOCUS FAMILY ACTIVITY SPACE
ARTISTS: NAOMI HOBSON HEATHER KOOWOOTHA CLAUDIA MOODOONUTHI JAMES MORRISON
Explore works in the collection and the diverse cultures of our region through hands-on art and language activities.
James MORRISON Goodenough Bay 1959 (detail) 2016 oil on linen 91 x 91 cm Cairns Art Gallery Collection Purchased through the Cairns Art Gallery Foundation, 2017
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CAIRNS ART GALLERY
FOUNDATION The Gallery and the Gallery Foundation have a very special partnership based on a shared understanding of the power of art and culture to transform people’s lives and create enduring legacies for generations to come. We are thrilled that the Foundation continues to provide generous support for the purchase of works for the Gallery’s Permanent Collection, including the recent acquisition of a major work by internationally acclaimed Australian artist, Patricia Piccinini, and the purchase of works by some of the region’s most exciting and talented contemporary artists from the Gallery’s 2019 ARTNOW FNQ biennial showcase exhibition. The Gallery also purchases works for the Collection an in this way, professionally and financially supports local artists. Representation in the Collection also provides an opportunity for artists’ works to be seen by audiences outside the region. Last year, the Gallery loaned a number
Patricia PICCININI No fear of depths (detail) 2019 silicone, fibreglass, hair, clothing 150 x 150 x 110 cm Cairns Art Gallery Collection Purchased through the Cairns Art Gallery Foundation © Patricia Piccinini
of works acquired from previous ARTNOW FNQ exhibitions, including three works by Shirley McNamara, to the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, and a major installation by Grace Lillian Lee to the University of Queensland Art Museum.
No Fear of Depths by Patricia Piccinini was acquired with the assistance of the Gallery Foundation and is an extraordinarily important and powerful work from the artist’s highly celebrated exhibition at the Gallery last year, attended by record crowds - 52,000 visitors which was more than the annual attendance figures to the Gallery in 2012. No Fear of Depths was based on the artist’s research of life forms found in the tropical regions of Far North Queensland and the imaginative ways they might adapt for survival in our changing world. This important acquisition will further strengthen our future Art+Science program initiatives that respond to the national schools’ curriculum.
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ARTNOW FNQ is recognised as a major acquisitive exhibition and around thirty artists are selected and mentored by the Gallery’s curators to develop new works for the exhibition. This year twelve works by ten artists have been acquired, with three purchased by the Foundation with funds raised from their annual fundraising dinner, one purchased in partnership between the Gallery and the Foundation, and eight purchased by the Gallery. Congratulations to the following artists whose works have been acquired from ARTNOW 2019: Brian Robinson, Melanie Hava and Roland Nancarrow purchased by the Foundation, Jennifer Valmadre purchased by the Foundation in partnership with the Gallery, and Madge Bowen, Wanda Gibson, Daisy Hamlot, Gertie Deeral, Walter R. Lui and Jason Wegger purchased by the Gallery.
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Brian ROBINSON Pada Kuyk: Power beyond the grave 2019 pa-light plastic, enamel spray paint, PVC 85 x 85 x 85 cm Cairns Art Gallery Collection Purchased through the Cairns Art Gallery Foundation Photo: Michael Marzik
Brian Robinson’s work, Pada Kuyk: Power beyond the grave 2019 extends the Gallery’s holdings of prints and low relief sculptural works by this important Torres Strait Islander artist. Madge Bowen, Gertie Deeral, Wanda Gibson and Daisy Hamlot belong to the Gamba Gamba group (senior women) at the Hope Vale Art Centre. Artworks by the Gamba Gamba women draw on traditional Guugu Yimmithirr Warra culture and contemporary and mission-time histories. The women hold deep cultural knowledge of family kinship systems, sacred sites, esoteric characters and totems. They are passionate about recording language and traditional stories to hand down to the younger generations. These important artists were not previously represented in the Gallery’s Collection.
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Wanda GIBSON Bayan 2019 30 x 80 cm synthetic polymer paint on board Cairns Art Gallery Collection Purchased 2019
Gertie DEERAL Walmbaar (stingray) 2019 30 x 80 cm synthetic polymer paint on board Cairns Art Gallery Collection Purchased 2019
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CAIRNS ART GALLERY
MEMBERS SPECIAL DISCOUNTS FOR MEMBERS DURING MARCH–MAY 10% discount on Destination North Works on Paper Collection
for the period of the Destination North II exhibition, (6 March - 26 April 2020). (Please note, member’s discounts do not normally apply for original works on paper)
Exhibition Merchandise
Double your Member’s Discount - 20% discount on merchandise from the following exhibitions
Destination North Exhibition
All Gallery produced exhibition merchandise including tea-towels, prints, stationery.
Sidney Nolan Ned Kelly Series All exhibition related publications
Arthur Boyd
Exhibition Catalogue
Two year discounted renewal offer
Renew for two years and received a 10% discount on your second year.
Melanie HAVA Rainforest Rumours 2019 42 x 29.5 cm mixed media on paper Photo: Highscan
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CREATIVE LEARNING PROGRAMS Workshops includes a guided art-appreciation session in which children will learn more about the Gallery and exhibitions on display.
SCHOOL HOLIDAY WORKSHOPS MONDAY 6 APRIL
Ceramics: pinch pot planter with Marian Wolfs, artist 10.00am - 12.00pm 5 - 8 years* Cost $22 ($27 non–members) Get creative with clay while learning professional ceramicist techniques to make your own unique ceramic planter. Work will be kiln-fired and collected at a later date. Ceramics: wall hanging planter with Marian Wolfs, artist 1.00 - 3.30pm 9 - 13 years Cost $24 ($29 non–members) Create a ceramic planter designed to be hung on the wall. Learn hand-building techniques and experiment with rolling and pressing to create surface textures. Work will be kiln-fired and collected at a later date.
TUESDAY 7 APR
Mixed Media: experimentation with landscapes with Adrienne Shaw, artist 10.00am - 12.00pm 5 - 8 years* Cost $15 ($19 non–members) Have fun using mixed media and different materials to create a series of landscape images. Use existing images or photos for inspiration to create your very own ‘somewhere else’ landscape. 43
TUESDAY 7 APR
Mixed Media: experimentation with landscapes with Adrienne Shaw, artist 1.00 - 3.30pm 9 - 13 years Cost $18 ($23 non–members) Experiment with mixed media and use a range of materials to create a series of landscape images. Use images, photos and your imagination to create a wonderful landscape image.
WEDNESDAY 8 APRIL
Painting and Drawing: Who’s wearing Wings with Zita Sudnika, artist 10.00am - 12.00pm 5 - 8 years Cost $15 ($19 non–members) Use your imagination to draw and paint tropical, winged creatures. Work at an easel while learning the elements of drawing and painting such as composition, proportions and mixing colours to create an original work of art. Painting: Rainforest Creatures (frog and lizard focus) with Zita Sudnika, artist 1.00 - 3.30pm 9 - 13 years Cost $18 ($23 non–members) Discuss and examine simple anatomical details of familiar rainforest creatures to bring realism to your drawing before experimenting with the use of colour, proportion and composition to complete your painting
THURSDAY 9 APRIL
Ned Kelly hand puppet with Hayley Gillespie, artist 10.00 - 11.30am 3 - 6 years Cost $17 ($21 non–members) Young artists will make their very own Ned Kelly hand puppet using felt shapes to bring form and features on a black base. Ned Kelly hanging diorama with Hayley Gillespie, artist 1.00 - 3.30pm 9 - 13 years Cost $21 ($26 non–members) Design, paint and cut all the elements required to create a hanging Ned Kelly diorama including a landscape background to look like a miniature theatre set.
TUESDAY 14 APRIL
Life drawing: portraiture with Yixuan Ruan, artist 10.00 - 12.00am 8 - 11 years Cost $15 ($19 non–members) Study the structure of the face and learn step-by-step skills such as shading, blending and tonal colours, to create a portrait.
TUESDAY 14 APR
Life drawing: portraiture with Yixuan Ruan, artist 1.00 - 3.30pm 12 - 14 years Cost $18 ($23 non–members) Analyse facial structure and features and apply more advanced techniques of shape, tone, proportion and perspective to create a portrait.
WEDNESDAY 15 APRIL
Drawing En Plein Air with Yixuan Ruan, artist 10.00 - 12.00am 8 - 11 years Cost $15 ($19 non–members) Be inspired by nature in this ‘en plein air’ drawing class. Use your artist’s eye to explore the formation of trees on the Cairns esplanade before using artist-grade pencils to capture their unique colours and forms. Landscape Drawing En Plein Air with Yixuan Ruan, artist 1.00 - 3.30pm 12 - 14 years Cost $18 ($23 non–members) The sky’s the limit when you draw ‘en plein air’. Explore how light and perspective works in the environment before creating a landscape drawing using artist-grade materials.
THURSDAY 16 APRIL
Ned Kelly lampshade with Hayley Gillespie, artist 10.00am - 12.00pm 5 - 8 years Cost $19 ($24 non–members) Decorate a plastic flowerpot with a Sidney Nolan inspired landscape. This scene will then be transformed into a small night light using a battery-powered candle. Ned Kelly iron mask with Hayley Gillespie, artist 1.00 - 3.30pm 7 - 11 years Cost $21 ($26 non–members) Use paint on card to create a Sidney Nolan inspired landscape featuring Ned Kelly before turning your creation into a free-standing helmet.
FRIDAY 17 APRIL
10.00am - 12.00pm 5 - 8 years Cost $15 ($19 non–members) Creative Collage: Homage to Australian animals with Adrienne Shaw, artist Create a collaged image of an Australian animal using mixed media with a strong focus on natural materials. 1.00 - 3.00pm 9 - 13 years Cost $18 ($23 non–members) Use mixed media, especially natural materials, to create a collaged image of an Australian native animal.
ART CLASSES FOR ADULTS (16+) CHINESE BRUSH PAINTING
with Yixuan Ruan, artist Mondays: 5.30 – 7.30pm 16, 23, 30 March, 6 April Cost $120 ($140 non-members) Explore fundamental Chinese brush painting skills and the aesthetics of Chinese art. A new image will be created each week using ink and rice-paper.
CERAMIC SCULPTURE
with Amanda Mcgahan, artist Mondays: 5.30 – 7.30pm 20, 27 April, 11, 18 May Cost $135 ($155 non-members) In this 4-week course, learn the tricks and techniques required to sculpt the human form in clay. Learn to manipulate the clay to create gestural qualities which add character and depth. Work will be kiln-fired to be collected at a later date.
YOGA IN THE GALLERY with Jeany Schall, yoga instructor Mondays: 5.30 – 6.30pm 2, 9, 16, 23, 30 March, 6, 20, 27 April, 11, 18, 25 May Cost $15 per class 5 class pass $56 ($70 non-members) Conducted in the peaceful setting of the Gallery, participants will be guided through the various yoga techniques, including learning postures, meditation and breathing to improve core strength, mind and body.
booking essential www.cairnsartgallery.com.au Children under 5 years of age must be with an adult guardian * Artists and techniques are correct at time of printing Cairns Art Gallery may vary program content where necessary 44
DIARY DATES
MAR
6
EXHIBITION OPENS Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kelly series details pg. 6
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ARTIST TALK Destination North, details pg. 31
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EXHIBITION OPENS Destination North, details pg. 30
FINAL DAY Charwei Tsai, Hear her singing ADULT ART CLASS CHINESE BRUSH PAINTING details pg. 44
20 EXHIBITION OPENS Melanie Smith Fordlandia details pg. 16
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Prue VENABLES Betty’s Kitchen (detail) 2017 Image: Terence Bogue
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FINAL DAY John Mawurndjul I am the old and the new
Arthur BOYD Nebuchadnezzar with blue flowers and white dog 1968-69 oil on canvas Bundanon Trust Collection
APR
MAY
3
EXHIBITION OPENS Arthur Boyd, Landscape of the soul details pg. 20
3 FINAL DAY Melanie Smith Fordlandia
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SCHOOL HOLIDAY WORKSHOP MIXED MEDIA LANDSCAPES details pg. 43
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SCHOOL HOLIDAY WORKSHOP CERAMICS: PINCH POT PLANTER CERAMICS: WALL HANGING PLANTER details pg. 43
SCHOOL HOLIDAY WORKSHOP PAINTING AND DRAWING details pg. 43
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EXHIBITION OPENS Living Treasures: Masters of Australian Craft / Prue Venables details pg. 25 EXHIBITION OPENS Collection in Focus details pg. 34
SCHOOL HOLIDAY WORKSHOP NED KELLY HAND PUPPET NED KELLY DIORAMA details pg. 43 SCHOOL HOLIDAY WORKSHOP PORTRAITURE: LIFE DRAWING OF THE FACE details pg. 43
SCHOOL HOLIDAY WORKSHOP LANDSCAPES: DRAWING EN PLEIN AIR details pg. 43 SCHOOL HOLIDAY WORKSHOP NED KELLY LAMPSHADE NED KELLY IRON MASK details pg. 43 SCHOOL HOLIDAY WORKSHOP MIXED MEDIA COLLAGE details pg. 43 ADULT ART CLASS CERAMIC SCULPTURE details pg. 44 FINAL DAY Destination North
RIGHT: Julie MCENERNY Pink Bananas (Musa velutina) 2020 watercolour pencil 76 x 56 cm Collection of the artist Photo courtesy High Scan
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OPEN DAILY
GALLERY SHOP
1. ALPERSTEIN DESIGNS TEA-TOWEL $21.95 COASTER $22.95 MUG $19.95
2. ALPERSTEIN DESIGNS TRAVEL MUG $19.95 REAL NEAT PLANTS FROM $17.95 3. NED KELLY & THE GREEN SASH CHILDREN’S BOOK $16.95 4. SIDNEY NOLAN : A LIFE $49.95
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5. OCCULTURE JEWELLERY FROM $54.95 REAL NEAT PLANTS FROM $17.95 6. MOLLIE BOSWORTH CERAMICS FROM $64.95 7. MARIAN WOLFS CERAMICS FROM $12.95 MINDFUL RECREATIONS CERAMICS FROM $11.95 KATE HUNTER CERAMICS FROM $11.95
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CELEBRATING
25 YEARS
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We acknowledge the Gimuy Walubarra Yidinji and Yirrganydji as the Traditional Owners of the area today known as Cairns
VISIT US Cnr Abbott & Shields St, Cairns M to F: 9am – 5pm Sat: 10am – 5pm Sun: 10am – 2pm Closed on Public Holidays 07 4046 4800 shop@cairnsartgallery.com.au www.cairnsartgallery.com.au Cairns.Art.Gallery @cairnsartgallery @cairnsgallery CairnsArtGallery
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VIP PROGRAM PARTNER
MEMBERSHIP PROGRAM PARTNER
The Cairns Art Gallery is a proud supporter of the Indigenous Art Code 50