‘Rawhide’ featuring Abbey McCulloch & Tara Marynowsky

National Film and Sound Archive of Australia first major original exhibition in two decades opened to the public on Friday, bringing with it an insight into Australian films and film talent - both behind and in front of the camera.

"Australians & Hollywood is both a celebration and a provocation to rethink Australian cinema today, at home, in Hollywood and beyond. Visitors will be taken on a journey through the pivotal moments in recent and contemporary Australian cinema, starting from the ‘70s." - Tara Marynowsky

Curator Tara Marynowsky shares how this treasure trove of beloved cinema moments came to life.

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WHEN: Wednesday 5 June 2019, 6pm - 8.30pm

WHERE: Griffith University Art Museum

COST: $20.00 including refreshments

Join us for a lively life drawing workshop facilitated by contemporary artist and Queensland College of Art alumna Abbey McCulloch!

Suitable for all ages and abilities, the class will foster different ways of seeing, drawing and thinking, using observational and intuitive methods to learn and investigate ways to express their own mark making.

Drawing materials will be supplied, however participants are also encouraged to bring their own journals and media.

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Abbey McCulloch's work 'The Forcefield' 2019 has been selected as a finalist in the 2019 Sunshine Coast Art Prize, administered by Caloundra Regional Gallery.

The Sunshine Coast Art Prize 2019 is a national contemporary acquisitive award presented by Sunshine Coast Council. The award is open to any artist who is an Australian resident, working in a 2D medium. Forty finalists have been selected for exhibition at the Caloundra Regional Gallery and the winning work will be added to the Sunshine Coast Art Collection.

The Sunshine Coast Art Prize 2019 offers a prize pool of more than $30,000 in cash and prizes.

Image: The Forcefield 2019, oil on canvas, 66 x 100cm

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Abbey McCulloch was awarded 'Highly Commended' in the Ravenswood Australian Women's Art Prize with her work 'Mammoth' 2019.

The annual prize was launched in 2017 to advance art and opportunity for emerging and established female artists in Australia. There are two prize categories, including a $35,000 prize — the richest professional art prize for women in Australia. Artwork judging will be overseen by Ravenswood Australian Women's Art Prize Patron and acclaimed artist, Jennifer Turpin, and announced at the exhibition opening on 31 May, 2019.

Image: 'Mammoth' 2019, oil on canvas 101 x 101cm

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In 2017, three of Sydney’s major galleries – Carriageworks, Art Gallery of NSW and the Museum of Contemporary Art – presented the first instalment of the The National, an ambitious look at contemporary art in Australia.

Far from a quick snapshot of the art world, The National is a six-year project encompassing three shows at three galleries every two years. It features more than 100 emerging, mid-career and established artists. Each iteration speaks to the present, charting a brief arc in the story of Australian contemporary art.

Daniel Mudie-Cunningham, senior curator at Carriageworks, has worked on his section of the show for two years. He travelled around the country to meet artists and find new voices to add to a list of already-established names.

“There are connections between what we’re doing,” Mudie-Cunningham says of the three galleries and their curators. “Often there’s a particular zeitgeist, or political themes that recur.”

There are 65 artists involved in The National 2019. Tara Marynowsky is one to seek out:

Tara Marynowsky: the interventionist

'At a glance: A Sydney-based artist who doesn’t start with a blank canvas but builds on existing images, interacting with and subverting the past. She has appeared in exhibitions here and overseas.

What she’s known for: Her watercolour and gouache “interventions” on vintage postcards, which merge colour and surrealism with sepia-tinted images of young women. Her 2018 exhibition at Brisbane’s Edwina Corlette Gallery, Balancing Actress, featured vintage images of nude dancing “girls” with their faces obscured, bathed in pastel textures.

For The National: Her work starts with a more recent jumping-off point, and an angrier, more overtly political tone. For her piece, Coming Attractions, Marynowsky found 35-millimetre reels of ’90s Hollywood film trailers, including Pretty Woman, Shakespeare in Love, Species and Indecent Proposal, and took to the negatives with a knife, scratching each frame. It’s a labour-intensive and imprecise process. When the film is scanned and played back the result is a series of frenzied animations. Julia Roberts’s face is removed, making her almost monstrous. Gwyneth Paltrow is given a Medusa-like head of snakes. The dodgy gender politics of each film is subverted by force.' BROADSHEET March 2019

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Anna Dunnill reviews Tara Marynowsky's work in The National for Art Guide. She writes:

'Artist Tara Marynowsky has long been fascinated with the monstrous feminine – the twin forms of female beauty and ugliness. She collects old photographic portraits from the first half of the 20th century, often sent as postcards, and applies delicate layers of watercolour and gouache – giving the women bulging brains, greenish skin and purple rouge; eyes blank or goggling.

In addition to her well-known drawing practice, Marynowsky has long worked with film and video; in fact, video came first, having majored in time-based art at Sydney’s College of Fine Arts (now University of New South Wales, Art & Design). However, after focusing on video for some time, her drawing practice came out of a yearning for the tactile: “I just really wanted to get back to using my hands,” she says.

In her forthcoming installation for The National, she has managed to do both. To be exhibited at Carriageworks, Marynowsky’s work Coming Attractions consists of four videos, each taking as its raw material a film trailer from the 1990s: Pretty Woman (1990), Indecent Proposal (1993), Species (1995), and Shakespeare in Love (1998). While at one level these films may spark nostalgia, in each of them the female character is an object of men’s pursuit and desire: variously bought, sold, rescued, hunted and bargained over. Their release dates mark out Marynowsky’s adolescence and highlight some of the female role models available for mass consumption at that time.'

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Andrew Frost writes:

Key works at Carriageworks include Sean Rafferty’s Cartonography (FNQ), a wall of cardboard fruit boxes, everyday objects given a monumental treatment that highlights the surreal oddity of their design, and in Coming Attractions (2017-19) there’s another use of found objects. Tara Marynowsky takes 35mm feature film trailers sourced from eBay and scratches out key figures from the image, such as Julia Roberts from Pretty Woman. The result is amusing but pointed – the pretty woman is erased.

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An initiative of Tweed Shire Council, and housed within the creative hub of Murwillumbah’s vibrant M-Arts Precinct, Gallery DownTown aims to act as a driver of creative and economic development in the heart of Murwillumbah’s CBD.

Many artists within the geographical footprint of the Tweed Regional Gallery have mounted their first solo exhibitions through the Community Access Exhibition Program (CAEP) which offers a valuable exercise in professional development, and raises artists’ profiles in the regional community and beyond.

Ensemble: artists from our region at Gallery DownTown showcases the visual arts practice of 10 of the artists who have recently held exhibitions at the Tweed Regional Gallery through the CAEP.

These artworks highlight the talent of artists living on our doorstep. Many of these artists held their first solo exhibition through the CAEP and have gone on to have further successful shows.

Artists featured in Ensemble are Phil Barron, Andew Hmelnitsky, Helle Jorgensen, Gatya Kelly, Abbey McCulloch, Deb Mostert, Lae Oldmeadow, Dale Rhodes, Craig Tuffin and Oksana Waterfall.

The Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), Carriageworks and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) today announced that The National 2019: New Australian Art will present the work of 65 emerging, mid-career and established Australian contemporary artists living across the country and abroad.

A major collaborative venture, The National 2019 is the second edition of a six-year initiative presented in 2017, 2019 and 2021, exploring the latest ideas and forms in contemporary Australian art.

Connecting three of Sydney’s key cultural precincts – The Domain, Redfern and Circular Quay – The National 2019 follows a successful first edition of the exhibition held in autumn of 2017 that attracted 286,631 visitors.

Tara Marynowsky will present new work for the National 2019 at Carriageworks.

Exhibition Dates

Art Gallery of New South Wales: 29 March – 21 July 2019

Carriageworks: 29 March – 23 June 2019

Museum of Contemporary Art Australia: 29 March – 23 June 2019

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Abbey McCulloch's work 'Beyond' 2016 is part of an exhibition at the new Home of the Arts (HOTA) on the Gold Coast until 15 July 2018.

WE ARE GOLD COAST: WORKS FROM THE GALLERY AT HOTA COLLECTION

The Gold Coast is often misjudged and scorned by out-dated beliefs that it’s just surf, schoolies and theme parks.

But we know ‘The Goldie’ is driven by youthful and infectious energy; incredible natural wonders and a talented, thriving artistic community.

Featuring works from the collection, this vibrant exhibition is a visual exploration of our identity and sense of place. It provides the opportunity to contrast the ‘old’ and ‘new’ Gold Coast and documents the vibrant cultural evolution of the area.

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Chris Bond, Ricky Emmerton, Tara Marynowsky, Daniel Mudie Cunningham, Nicola Smith

Sauced Material brings together a group of artists who extend the narrative or form of existing media. Their works have been shaped, moulded and crafted from film, music, personal histories and literature but with flavour anew and enhanced. This adaptive approach orients audiences to and from a new point of orbit in reference to the work. Memory is at play - but so is the politics of origin and ownership.

Within the breadth of time that has passed between the first and the now, a clear history has been created. These artists reveal that distance in their own remaking. Their approaches differ but the commentaries and techniques are crystallised and ready for service.

From 2 March - 14 April 2018

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Abbey McCulloch has been awarded the Sunshine Coast Art Prize Residency for 2017. The residency is administered by Caloundra Regional Gallery and sponsored by Montville Country Cabins.

The award was judged by Angela Goddard, Director of Griffith Artworks, responsible for the Griffith University Art Collection and the Griffith University Art Gallery in Brisbane.

Image: Abbey McCulloch | Exile | 2017 | acrylic on canvas | 150 x 100 cm

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Art Enquirer is a new publication and joint initiative of the Flying Arts Artiz and IMA Art Club programs. It hosts a collection of essays written by senior students of visual arts from Queensland state and non-state high schools.

Student Charlee Dornauf (Launceston Church Grammar School) wrote an essay, 'Behind a Person' which featured works from McCulloch's solo exhibition Zero. Dornauf's focus was a visual analysis drawing attention to remerging themes in McCulloch's practice of femininity and sexuality.

The publication is available at the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane.

Artist Abbey McCulloch is a finalist in this years Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Award (JUWSPA).

This year the award holds special significance as the Gold Coast honours the memory of Win Schubert and her extraordinary generosity, a lifelong custodian of Australian photography, art and creativity.

There is a diverse range of themes in this years exhibition from both established and emerging artists including portraiture, landscape, abstract and fashion, along with a strong representation of contemporary topics affecting twenty-first century Australians such as climate change, gender representation and shifting economic and technological landscapes.

Congratulations to Polly Borland for her winning photograph Two Heads A.

Artwork: Abbey McCulloch, The Nerve, 2017, inkjet print, 60 x 80 cm

Abbey McCulloch's recent exhibition 'Zero' is featured in the current edition of Art Almanac:

'Abbey McCulloch’s portraits articulately render the complexities of human emotion. ‘Zero’ is a series of new paintings of opaque pigments and translucent washes, reflecting on the idea that stillness is an illusive and yet essential state of being. Through her portraiture, McCulloch explores the inherent battle in what she calls ‘silencing our self-chatter’.'

See more here.

The Sunshine Coast Art Prize is a national contemporary acquisitive award presented by Sunshine Coast Council. The Award is open to any artist who is an Australian resident, working in a 2D medium.

Forty finalists have been selected for an exhibition at the Caloundra Regional Gallery and the winning work will be added to the Sunshine Coast Art Collection.

Angela Goddard is the judge for the Sunshine Coast Prize 2017. Angela is the Director of Griffith Artworks, responsible for the Griffith University Art Collection and the Griffith University Art Gallery, Brisbane. Angela was previously the Curator of Australian Art at the Queensland Art Gallery I Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA). Winners announced 31 August.

Image: Abbey McCulloch | Exile | 2017 | acrylic on canvas | 150 x 100 cm

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Like bursts from a camera shutter, Abbey McCulloch’s new series Performance at Tweed Regional Gallery captures not only the most consciously posed and poised bodies, but those moments in between that reveal the out-takes, where gestures belie the vivacious, confident woman caught only a millisecond before.

Somehow, we all know one of these fabulous creatures. She oozes with self-possession, acuity and style. She has a kind of élan, or je ne sais quoi that can be neither bought or photoshopped. With a prolonged and desiring gaze we realise that she is not one, but many women. She is composite and contemporary taste. She is a construction created by you and I, and them ‘out there’.

In this moment, McCulloch’s aim comes into sharp relief, problematising the very act of looking. She asks simply, “What do you want from her?” And in asking this question, McCulloch characterises the expectations we place on others and ourselves in the performance of everyday life.  Dr Laini Burton, 2016

Friday 9 December, 2016 to Sunday 26 February, 2017 at Tweed Regional Gallery. 

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The Art Life's Sharne Wolff recently posed six and a half questions to Abbey McCulloch about being a finalist in the 2016 Portia Geach prize, and what it's like to paint portraits.  

Sharne Wolff: You’ve been an Archibald finalist twice and your portrait of curator and arts writer Alison Kubler Two 2016, is now showing in the Portia Geach Memorial Award. Tell us a bit about the process of making portraits.

Abbey McCulloch: Actually three times in the Archie but hey, who’s counting? They’ve all been great experiences getting to meet the subjects – even the ones that didn’t make the cut – so in some ways the motivation to have a specific encounter is behind my wanting produce a portrait at all. I think my idea of a person shapes the portrait, and playing around with that preconception is far more interesting to me than simply re-creating someone on canvas. I keep the sitting brief as there is usually something that happens in those initial moments of meeting someone that sticks with you and I don’t like to lose that feeling. There is this immediate wrestle with the person you expected in your mind and I like to play around with that. I also hope to capture some of the nerves as they’re there somewhere too – for both of us.

Read more here.

Abbey McCulloch's work 'Two', a portrait of writer and curator Alison Kubler has been selected as a finalist in the Portia Geach Memorial Art Award for women artists for 2016.

The award, which was first given in 1965 in memory of the artist Portia Geach, displays selected entries from artists across the nation representing diversity in contemporary portraiture. The award is recognised as one of the most important celebrations of the talents and creativity of Australian female portrait painters and has played a major role in developing the profile of the nation’s women artists.

Abbey McCulloch’s current practice has been transforming over the summer, from small ink on paper studies to large oil on canvas works. 

“We seem to let more of our hidden selves bubble to the surface as we age but perhaps it is just the prickly self-consciousness of youth that dissolves away. I think that at times we all struggle with honest versions of ourselves. Perhaps that is the best part about getting older, the guard lowers, our Dobermans settle."

With this idea that we can be too careful for own good, the images explore the impossible and yet wonderful abandon in letting aspects of our hidden selves surface. Allowing the consequences to fall around us, even if for a moment.

Abbey McCulloch and Tara Marynowsky joint exhibition 'Rawhide' is on from 14 June – 9 July, 2016. To view Abbey’s available works, click here.

Congratulations to Abbey McCulloch who has been selected as a finalist in the Gold Coast Art Prize 2015 with her work 'Abundance'.  The winner will be announced at the Official Opening on the 5th December. Exhibition current until 31 January 2016.

Abbey's next exhibition at Edwina Corlette Gallery is in June 2016. To view available works click here.

We are very pleased to announce Abbey McCulloch was a finalist in the Portia Geach Memorial Award. The Award is recognised as one of the most important celebrations of the talents and creativity of contemporary Australian female portrait painters.

The Portia Geach Memorial Award was established by the will of the late Florence Kate Geach in memory of her sister, Portia Geach. The non-acquisitive award of $30,000 is awarded by the Trustee for the entry which is of the highest artistic merit, 'for the best portrait painted from life of some man or woman distinguished in Art, Letters, or the Sciences by any female artist resident in Australia.'

Carrie McCarthy writes, "There is a lot of water in The Shallows, which surprises me as it always does in artists’ work. Using such an obvious trope is a big risk. Art and literature are already so full of stories of rivers and beaches, and waves that overwhelm. Water as a metaphor – cleansing, baptism, renewal – the phases of human life depicted in the ebb and flow of the tide. We stay afloat, tread water, swim against the tide." 

McCarthy's deeply thoughtful review of Abbey McCulloch's 'The Shallows' can be found here.

In an interview with DAILY IMPRINT, Abbey says: “I have just always loved communicating through images for as long as I can remember. Drawing was just something that I had to do, in a compulsive and almost therapeutic sense.”’ See here for the full interview.

Congratulations Tara Marynowsky for receiving a Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship worth $20,000. The scholarship is paid over a two year period to support the scholars in furthering their artistic careers.

Tara Marynowsky will travel widely with her scholarship funds, including to New York, where she will engage with contemporary art practices, and the UK, where she will collect Edwardian and Victorian documents and artefacts. These experiences will inform her new work, which she will commence during a four month residency at La Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris). Her overarching aim is to investigate symbolism in art and cultural belonging through African American art, French symbolism and English culture.

Congratulations Tara Marynowsky for featuring in the latest issue of Art Collector magazine. Tara was listed as one of Art Collector’s ’50 Things Collectors Need to Know About’ and is considered to be one of the artists who will be shaping the Australian and New Zealand art worlds in 2015.

Abbey McCulloch's work features in the March 2015 issue of Harper’s Bazaar Magazine.

Tara Marynowsky features in Artbank’s exhibition ‘Sealed Section’ curated by Miriam Kelly, showing from 28 November, 2014 until 7 February, 2015.

“Tearing open the ‘perforated pages’ of the Artbank collection, Sealed Section reveals works that canvas the topics of impolite dinner conversation: sex, politics and religion. Underpinning these often controversial topics is a consideration of the complexities of human relations and the human condition. As a result, Sealed Sectionincludes a rich and diverse group of works that highlight the strength and pertinence of contemporary art as a response to the key issues of our time.”