Finalists and winners of the Abbotsleigh Grace Cossington Smith art award have been selected this year by judges Barry Keldoulis, Artbank Client Services Coordinator, and Anna Davis, curator at Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.

Sally Anderson's Balancing jug, Augie's 1S underwater painting, Haberfield window, horse for dad 2026 (acrylic on polyester, 168 x 137 cm) has been selected as a finalist for the award.

Exhibition of Finalists: Saturday 18 July to Saturday 15 August 2026

Opening and awards presentation: Wednesday 22 July 2026 6-8 pm

Read more here.

We are delighted to announce that Vipoo Srivilasa is a finalist in the 2026 Wynne Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

‘Guardian Light’ 2025
earthenware, glaze and gold lustre
100 x 50 x 50 cm

Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes 2026
9 May – 16 August 2026
Art Gallery of New South Wales

READ MORE HERE

Miranda Skoczek was featured in Amber Creswell Bell's 'Australian Abstract'. The curator and bestselling author interviews and examines over forty contemporary abstract painters. Find out more about the book here.

Designed by Skoczek and woven by ATW weaver David Pearce, this intimate tapestry was produced during a short residency at ATW in 2025. A scaled-down translation of the artist’s 2024 oil painting of the same name, the work renders an ornate vase of white flowers suspended against a painterly field of reds and pinks, hinting at curtains and domestic textiles.

For Skoczek, ‘Flowers for Gosia’ is an ode to her late Aunt. The composition intertwines two memories: a bouquet of vibrant dahlias and cosmos received after her passing, and the image of Gosia herself, who permitted only white flowers in her home and garden. The quiet tension between restraint and abundance gently animates the work.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE: 'Flowers for Gosia' in progress

The Yarrenyty Arltere Artists are among the standout contributors to the National Gallery of Australia’s fifth National Indigenous Art Triennial, After the Rain, opening in Canberra on 6 December 2025. The exhibition explores renewal, resilience and cultural transformation through ten newly commissioned, large-scale installations.

Known for their deeply expressive soft sculptures and multidisciplinary practice, the Yarrenyty Arltere Artists bring a poignant, community-driven perspective to the Triennial’s theme of rebirth.

The exhibition unites elders and emerging voices to honour cultural memory while imagining future possibilities. Designed to be physically and emotionally immersive, 'After the Rain' invites audiences to reflect on renewal and the enduring strength of First Nations storytelling.

The exhibition runs from 6 December 2025 - 26 April 2026 at the National Gallery of Australia, before touring nationally.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:

Yarrenyty Arltere Artists, Beautiful Ulkumanu (old woman), after the rain,Installation view, 5th National Indigenous Art Triennial: After the Rain, National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra, 2025

Sally Anderson presents works in Town Hall Gallery’s latest exhibition, ‘OBJECTIVE’, which brings together a group of seven contemporary Australian artists to reimagine the boundaries of the still life genre. Artists in the exhibition include Pia Murphy, Tony Albert, Nadine Christensen, Adam John Cullen, James McGrath and Louise Paramor.

This ambitious exhibition challenges traditional expectations of the still life genre, presenting painting, video, sculpture and installation works that transform everyday objects into unique experiences. The participating artists each bring a distinctive conceptual and aesthetic approach: familiar items are abstracted, recontextualised and elevated, while subtle narratives encourage viewers to connect personally with the inanimate.

Several artists explore the interplay between the natural and the artificial, using form, colour and humour to reframe how ordinary scenes are perceived. Others embrace bold experimentation, offering playful and sometimes whimsical reinterpretations that refresh the still life tradition for contemporary audiences.

Within this diverse group, Sally contributes works that balance representation and abstraction, adding intimate reflections on memory and lived experience. Collectively, the exhibition presents a vibrant cross-section of current artistic practice, demonstrating how the still life genre continues to evolve.

‘OBJECTIVE’ is on view at Town Hall Gallery, Boroondara, until 24 January 2026.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGES:
Installation images of 'OBJECTIVE' at Town Hall Gallery, courtesy Boroondara and Christian Capurro.

Congratulations John Bokor who is a finalist in this year’s Kedumba Drawing Award, with his work ’Studio Table’.

The Kedumba Drawing Award is one of the longest running Australian drawing prizes, now in its 35th year. The winning drawing is acquired by the Kedumba Collection, housed in a gallery space provided by Blue Mountains Grammar School at Wentworth Falls in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. This extensive collection of works are on display to the public throughout the year in curated exhibitions.

The exhibition of finalists will be at the Kedumba Gallery in Wentworth Falls from 15 November to 28 January.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
JOHN BOKOR
‘Studio Table’ 2025
charcoal, wash and collage
90 x 70 cm

Vipoo Srivilasa’s re/JOY is now open at Tweed Regional Gallery.

The exhibition, supported by Creative Australia and the Australian Design Centre, has been touring the regional galleries of Australia since November 2024. This project is some of Vipoo’s largest works to-date, with seven ceramic sculptures towering at 1.5 metres high. Each piece has been carefully made by repurposing broken fragments of pottery, from members of the community who have experienced migration to Australia. The exhibition captures the diversity of experiences in Australia, and symbolises a careful rebuilding of life, highlighting the complex feelings and challenges that come with change. re/JOY is a joyful, playful and hopeful project.

Vipoo Srivilasa’s ‘re/JOY’ is open at Tweed Regional Gallery 15 November 2025 - 8 February 2026. The opening event is on Friday 14 November 6pm.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
Vipoo Srivilasa Standing with his work 'Goddess of Independence’ from re/JOY Australian Design Centre, courtesy Jacquie Manning

We are delighted to announce the opening of Vipoo Srivilasa’s new exhibition, Express Yourself, at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art’s Children’s Art Centre.

Developed in collaboration with the Children’s Art Centre, this interactive project invites young visitors to explore the many ways we experience and express emotion through drawing, movement, and digital activities. The exhibition features a new iteration of Vipoo’s 2021 work Garden of Love, presented alongside a series of fresh participatory installations designed to inspire creativity, curiosity, and self-expression.

Conceived and developed over the past year, Express Yourself reflects Vipoo’s ongoing commitment to creating joyful spaces where art becomes a catalyst for connection.

The exhibition is open at GoMA's Children's Art Centre 11 October 2025 – 13 September 2026

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:

Express Yourself installation view, courtesy QAGOMA and Chloë Callistemon

Yarrenyty Arltere Artists have been announced as the next cohort of Indigenous Fashion Projects Pathways Program for 2025–2027. The program supports First Nations fashion designers to build sustainable fashion projects, fostering visibility, industry access, and long-term leadership across the Australian fashion landscape. The program focuses on community, connection and shared learning, as a First Nations-led model, grounded in respect, reciprocity, and real-world application.

Renowned for their richly hand-stitched soft sculptures and distinctive textile practice, Yarrenyty Arltere Artists expansion into fashion marks a transformation of community narratives into wearable art. This inclusion affirms the collective’s ongoing innovation, creative leadership, and the strength of their intergenerational practice. Yarrenyty Arltere are the first ever Art Centre participant.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:

Yarrenyty Arltere Artists model their clothing designs, courtesy Yarrenyty Arltere Artists

Paul Ryan's painting Cook and Hounds II features in the exhibition ‘Good as Gold’, at Rockhampton Museum of Art. The exhibition celebrates artists whose works have been acquired into the collection through the Gold Award. Good as Gold celebrates the legacy of the Gold Award through highlighting the development of, and connections between artists from the award's history. The exhibition is also a celebration of the rich culture of giving and philanthropy in Rockhampton, and is named for benefactor Moya Gold.

Cook and Hounds II was first shown at Edwina Corlette Gallery in his 2018 exhibition ‘The Colonies, South by Southeast’

The exhibition is open 8 November 2025 - 1 March 2026 at Rockhampton Museum of Art.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGES:
1/ Rockhampton Museum of Art staff members stand in front of Cook and Hounds II by Paul Ryan
2/ PAUL RYAN
Cook And Hounds II 2017
oil on linen
153 x 138 cm

Bundit Puangthong's painting 'Sharp Knife' features in the exhibition ‘Good as Gold’, at Rockhampton Museum of Art. The exhibition celebrates artists whose works have been acquired into the collection through the Gold Award. Good as Gold celebrates the legacy of the Gold Award through highlighting the development of, and connections between artists from the award's history. The exhibition is also a celebration of the rich culture of giving and philanthropy in Rockhampton, and is named for benefactor Moya Gold.

Sharp Knife was first shown at Edwina Corlette Gallery in 2018, in the exhibition 'The Object of Life'

The exhibition is open 8 November 2025 - 1 March 2026 at Rockhampton Museum of Art.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
BUNDIT PUANGTHONG
Sharp Knife 2018
acrylic, spray paint and soft pastel on linen
168 x 168 cm

Miranda Skoczek has collaborated with Australian jewellery brand Pandora, to create a signature charm collection, featuring in Cosmopolitan.

“Collaborating with Pandora has allowed me to transform my symbolic language and designs into meaningful, wearable jewellery,” Skoczek says. “From my charm edit, in store artwork, packaging and engravable designs, there’s a natural alignment in how we both value storytelling, symbolism and self-expression which has made this partnership so special.”

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
Miranda Skoczek modelling her Pandora jewellery collection.

Ode: Margaret Olley and Sally Anderson is a celebration of important still life paintings by Margaret Olley (1923–2011) together with new work by Gadigal/Sydney-based artist Sally Anderson.

During her 2025 residency at the Nancy Fairfax Artist in Residence Studio, Sally embarked on a new body of work that responds not only to Margaret Olley’s remarkable still life paintings featured in Ode: Margaret Olley and Sally Anderson, but also to selected objects from the re-creation of Olley’s home studio. Interweaving deeply personal experiences and themes of domesticity, care, maternity, and mortality within her work, Anderson invites us to reconsider Olley’s still life paintings in a new light.

A Tweed Regional Gallery initiative. The Nancy Fairfax Artist in Residence Studio is supported by benefactor Mr. Tim Fairfax AC via the Tweed Regional Gallery Foundation Ltd.

“Olley’s still life paintings feature and appear as postcards or portals within mine, just as Cézanne, Matisse, and Manet (to name a few) appear within hers. I’ve deliberately arranged objects borrowed from Olley’s reconstructed home–studio alongside personally significant items within my compositions to give them new context and meaning. I think a lot about arranging—how we arrange thoughts, words, time, memories, clothes, households, feelings, gardens, furniture, objects, colour—and how rearranging the order of things ultimately shifts meaning, revealing new truths, narratives, and histories.”

The Nancy Fairfax Artist in Residence Studio is a live-in studio supporting artists from across Australia, encouraging connection between artist, community, and place.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:

SALLY ANDERSON
Study of MO’s still life in green 1947 with a banksia for dad, GM orchid and PP Bathers postcard 2025
acrylic on polycotton
137 × 153 cm

Belem Lett was selected as a finalist in the 2025 Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award with his work 'Lift me up'.

The biennial Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award promotes excellence and innovation in the field of art on paper while supporting and encouraging artists who specialise in this medium. Finalists and winners are recognised for outstanding explorations of the materiality, versatility, and potential of paper as a medium for artistic expression.

The finalist exhibition runs from 27 September 2025 – 25 January 2026 at Hazelhurst Gallery.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
BELEM LETT
‘Lift Yourself Up’ 2025
oil, gesso on Stonehenge Paper 245gsm
76 x 56cm

We are delighted to share that Sally Anderson's painting ‘Middle Brother Mother Mountain Fountain (PP Nude in a Garden, BT Mother and Child)’ is a finalist in the Calleen Art Award.

The Calleen Art Award is an annual acquisitive painting prize and exhibition. It presents the best of contemporary Australian painting in any style, theme or subject. Since its inception in 1977 by Cowra Art Patron Mrs Patricia Fagan OAM the Calleen Art Award has celebrated contemporary art practices and fostered originality, creativity and excellence in the visual arts.The winning artwork will join the Calleen Collection at Cowra Regional Art Gallery collection.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
SALLY ANDERSON
‘Middle Brother Mother Mountain Fountain (PP Nude in a Garden, BT Mother and Child)’ 2024
acrylic on polycotton
183 x 197cm

We are thrilled to announce that Sally Anderson’s work is a finalists in the Gosford Art Prize, with her work ‘November bells, BT mother, birth banksias, PP nude in a garden’.

The Gosford Art Prize will be presented at Gosford Regional Gallery and is open to all artists across Australia. It attracts entries in all mediums from traditional forms to new media artworks. The 2025 iteration is the 26th time the prize will be presented at Gosford Regional Gallery, and it continues to grow in size and popularity every year.

The finalists exhibition is on until 9 November, 2025 at Gosford Regional Gallery.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
SALLY ANDERSON
‘November bells, BT mother, birth banksias, PP nude in a garden’ 2024
acrylic on polycotton,
183 x 198 cm

We are pleased to announce that Belem Lett has been selected as a finalist in the 2025 Calleen Art Award for his work Nocturnal. The piece combines raw pigments with oil paint, layered over a rich indigo matte background, creating a striking exploration of colour, depth, and atmosphere.

The Calleen Art Award is an annual acquisitive painting prize and exhibition awarded to one, established or emerging, artist across Australia. The finalist’s exhibition will be held at Cowra Regional Art Gallery from 30 August to 5 October. Voting is open for the People’s Choice Award until the end of the exhibition.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
Nocturnal 2025
oil, gesso, marble dust, pigment on aluminium composite panel
122 x 94cm

Congratulations to Belem Lett who is a finalist in the 2025 MAC Yapang Art Prize, with his work 'Red Shift'.

This inaugural national art prize invited submissions from artists working in all disciplines across Australia. The winning artist receives an acquisitive prize of $30,000, with their work becoming part of the MAC yapang’s permanent collection.

The exhibition is open at Museum of Art and Culture, yapping, from 18 October - 7 December 2025

IMAGE:
Red Shift 2025
oil, gesso, marble dust on aluminium composite panel
150 x 122 cm

READ MORE HERE

Congratulations to Belem Lett, who has been announced as a finalist in the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize with his work 'Life Cycle'.

The Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize exhibition showcases sculptural works from artists across Australia and internationally, working across a broad spectrum of materials, forms and conceptual approaches

The finalists exhibition is open at Woollahra Regional Gallery 26 September - 16 November 2025, with an artist talk 25 October.

IMAGE:
BELEM LETT
Life Cycle 2025
clear coat, acrylic, gesso, shellac, wood putty, screws, polyurethaneglue, wood glue, pine
70 x 54 x 48cm

Vipoo Srivilasa's upcoming exhibition at Edwina Corlette 'Iconic Figures: Devas, Deities and Divas' has been featured in an article for Colossal titled 'Terracotta and Gold Figures by Vipoo Srivilasa Conjure Joy and the Divine' by Grace Ebert. Colossal is an online art magazine that celebrates contemporary art and visual culture across a wide range of creative disciplines.

"Joy and the possibilities of creative communion ground the practice of Vipoo Srivilasa (previously). The artist, who lives and works between Australia and Thailand, is known for his ceramic sculptures that take an ebullient approach to life.

Standing between one and two feet tall, Srivilasa’s figures are clad in floral baubles, mandala-like motifs, and gold details, often with their fingers shaped like a V. The lively characters invoke both the mundane and the divine as they portray aspects of the spiritual world while firmly rooted on the earth."

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
About Colossal magazine, courtesy Colossal webpage.

Congratulations to Belem Lett who was announced as a finalist in the 2025 Gosford Art Prize, with his work 'Television'.

Starting in 1970 as a community-driven project, the Gosford Art Prize has grown to become an important part of the cultural landscape of the Central Coast in New South Wales, and a well renowned prize. The 2025 iteration is the 26th time the prize will be presented at Gosford Regional Gallery. The competition is open to all artists across Australia and attracts entries in all mediums.

The finalist's exhibition is open at Gosford Regional Art Gallery 6 September - 9 November 2025.

IMAGE:
BELEM LETT
Television 2024
Oil, gesso, marble dust on aluminium composite panel
180 x 150cm

READ MORE HERE

We are thrilled to announce that Belem Lett has been selected as a finalist in the 2025 Sir John Sulman Prize, one of Australia’s most prestigious art awards.

Lett’s shortlisted work, Modern Love, showcases his signature approach to colour, using hand-mixed oil paints and raw pigments on aluminium to create a surface that seems to shift and breathe. The piece explores the dialogue between modern art and modern love, encouraging viewers to reflect on intimacy, connection, and what lies beneath the surface.

This year’s Sulman Prize received a record 732 submissions, with only 30 works chosen as finalists. Being recognised among this select group is a testament to Lett’s distinctive voice and growing presence within Australian contemporary art.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:

BELEM LETT
Modern Love
oil, pigment, gesso and marble dust on aluminium composite panel
150 x 122.2 cm

Vipoo Srivilasa's work Beneath the Love has been acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria, using funds donated by the Rob Gould Foundation.

Vipoo says of the work:

"Beneath the Tree of Love is my way of honoring love, commitment, and companionship. Inspired by the ceramic sculpture "The Music Lesson" from the Chelsea Porcelain Factory in the NGV collection, I wanted to blend old styles with a modern twist. This piece shows the close bond between two people and their pet, symbolizing unity and harmony in a loving relationship. It also shows a few pairs of animals who often visit my backyard. I hope the piece brings you the feelings of warmth and happiness. A celebration of love."

IMAGE:
Beneath the Tree of Love 2024
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased with funds donated by Rob Gould Foundation
Image courtesy the artist

Congratulations to Bridie Gillman whose work 'Pink room, pink womb' has been selected as a finalist in the 2025 Ramsay Art Prize at the Art Gallery of South Australia.

The Ramsay Art Prize supports contemporary Australian artists under 40 to make their best work in any medium and of any scale. Supported in perpetuity by the James & Diana Ramsay Foundation, finalist works are selected by a panel of judges and shown at the Art Gallery of South Australia in a major exhibition opening 31 May, 2025.

IMAGE:

Bridie Gillman
Pink room, pink womb 2024
oil on canvas, timber, tufted wool, audio soundscape
202 x 190 x 162cm

We are delighted to share that Miranda Skoczek has been profiled in Marie Claire Australia. The feature offers a glimpse into her Camberwell apartment, where living space and studio merge to reflect her layered artistic vision.

“I’m a colourist, first and foremost. Colour is my main compositional language,” Skoczek notes, describing the vibrant and expressive world that informs her practice. She adds, “Every object tells a story … my paintings are also very much about places experienced and imagined.”

The article celebrates Skoczek’s distinctive use of colour, her love of collecting, and the intimate connection between her art and her surroundings.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:

Marie-Claire article featuring Miranda Skoczek

We are delighted to announce Sally Anderson’s inclusion in TENDER at Ngununggula in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales.

TENDER is an annual exhibition committed to showcasing the work of Australian women artists.

'Tender' within this exhibition refers to the body, our gestures, and the way we feel or express ourselves. We impart the term on places, objects or surfaces to describe how they arouse our senses or how an object yields under pressure; it softens, loses shape, and gives way. This term has rich and varied meanings, and the aim of this exhibition is to explore its significance beyond a gender lens.

Sally Anderson’s work asks how one can hold households, partners, children, paintings, parents, and the self all at once. It reflects the ways motherhood, domesticity, and creative practice become reciprocal and inevitably entangled, each influencing and permeating the other. The work deliberately moves between abstraction and representation, using still-life and landscape motifs as symbols of containment and care.

The exhibition is current at Ngununggula 12 April - 15 June 2025

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
SALLY ANDERSON
Self and Still life (shared garden future nurture) 2024
acrylic on polycotton
183 x 165 cm

Congratulations to Belem Lett who has been selected for the 2025 Omni Art Prize exhibition. This art prize and exhibition celebrate contemporary artists, promoting and selling their works. In 2022 Belem Lett won the Omnia Major Prize for Most Outstanding Work.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
Building Blocks 2024
oil, gesso, marble dust on aluminium composite panel
150 x 122cm

Bundit Puangthong has been working on multiple murals for Soi38's new location. Soi38 brings authentic Thai food to Melbourne, with distinct street food style architecture and seating. The restaurant thrived and became an institution. And its fiery salads, raw seafood and moo kata (Thai barbeque) helped kick off a new wave of Thai dining in Melbourne.

The mural has Bundit's distinct mix of bold street art and traditional Thai drawing on a monumental scale, featuring imagery of the monkey god 'Hanuman'.

"The walls are covered in swirling, star-studded murals by Melbourne-based Thai artist Bundit Puangthong, and a stainless steel bar anchors the room, allowing for an expanded drinks menu that includes Thai beers on tap, natural wines by the bottle, and a signature cocktail menu that features gin infused in-house with Thai ingredients like lemongrass, chilli and makrut lime."

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:

Installation view, Bundit's Soi38 mural, courtesy Chege Mbuthi

We are delighted to share that Belem Lett’s paintings are currently on display in ‘The Pursuit of Happiness’ at Ngununggula, alongside works by Rebecca Bauman, Christopher Langton, and Brendan Van Hek.

Using reflective surfaces, sources of light, and sculptural forms, the four artists in ‘The Pursuit of Happiness’ share an interest in the properties of colour, and the emotive and visceral reactions that it can evoke. Belem Lett’s joyful paintings have been beautifully curated against mirrored walls, allowing the works to converse across opposite sides of the room.

‘The Pursuit of Happiness’ is current at Ngununggula until 30 March.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:

Installation view ‘The Pursuit of Happiness’, Ngununggula, 2025, image courtesy Mim Sterling

"For Bridie Gillman’s latest exhibition Sight Lines at Edwina Corlette, Brisbane, the paintings invite a moment of pause. A moment to be in the landscape. Hear the wind and rain. Watch the shadows dance in the foliage. Gillman invited this energy in the repetition of line, form, and colour—translated from the rural typology. Engaging not only the senses we resonate with on an immediate basis (like smell, sight, touch, taste, hear), but also the ones we don’t—memory and emotion—for a tapping into the subconscious.

In her large-scale abstract paintings, Gillman presents her recollections of Bundjalung Country in Northern NSW. The landscape through the Tweed Valley—Brays Creek and Murwillumbah—and her observations of the winding 33km road between the two. One the artist comments is full of lines: ridge lines, fence lines, tree lines, shadow lines, sight lines, tyre lines, dotted lines, and solid lines. These are translated into fresh gestures, textured surfaces, and expressive mark making.

Vast in size at 168 x 213cm, Breathing in a cloud (2024) was one of the first artworks the usually based in Brisbane artist created on her residency in the country. After a time when she was struggling to create in her home studio in the city. Painting in a horse shed in Brays Creek, Gillman observed a sense of working in a micro-climate specific to her location up the mountain. The feeling of being in a cloud with the weather rolling through. The artwork, full of varying shades of grey, buzzing on the canvas, replicates the sense of drizzle and immersion in the elements.

With Gillman’s studio in the heart of Murwillumbah town, she builds on the canvases first worked on in the farm. In Between the lines (2025), 153 x 122cm, the artist has used old pieces of canvas, stitched together for a geometric abstract, in varying shades of green, thick with paint. The viewer may view the artworks as the artist views this rural landscape. Divided, gridded, agricultural, with light peeking through the composition. She comments that each painting starts with a specific memory or observation — holding an initial reference point and isolating the colours. Perhaps the ridge lines or the blues and purples of the eucalyptus mountains.

Paintings like Listening to the grass (2024) and Shifting shapes (2024) are full of dark and textured mark making, quickly worked and full of energy. More so than the artist’s other series of works. Here, the artist reveals her interest in exploring new methodologies of mark-making. What before would be painted out, are now held onto. The artworks reveal the action, the moment of life they are created within, and the moment they set out to capture. Painting, sewing, drawing, and sanding back are all used on the surface. Colour pulled forwards and pulled back, adding depth and that sense of looking through the landscape at the light and shadow that form.

Completely green with darkly worked lines, Listening to the grass evokes being in the landscape during the day. But Shifting shapes represents the isolation of the country at night and the sense you get from being the only person around. Gillman says this work is like night vision; your eyes adjust to the light and the dark. Where things move and push in and out, a vibration. Shapes becoming other. In particular as she notes her isolation in these new places. Away from people. Immersed in the landscape.

Here is where the magic of Sight Lines is revealed as Gillman captures her sense of being light and unburdened, and completely alone, in awe of the environment with time to reflect. We are witness to how art allows for a tapping, an entering, of another realm, where reality and fiction intermingle with memory and emotion."

Written by Emma-Kate Wilson for Art Almanac

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:

BRIDIE GILLMAN
That Purple Storm Approaching 2025
oil on linen
61 x 51cm

"10 of the hottest Australian artists to have on your radar"

Written by Yeong Sassall, January 2025

"Dan's work captures the beauty and mystique of the Australian bush, blending figuration and abstraction through layered marks and tones that mimic the natural movement around him. His attention to light and shadow is personally my favourite part of his work.”

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:

Dan Kyle

Devils Creek Track 2024

oil and mixed media on canvas

85.5 x 127.5 cm

Bundit Puangthong has been teaching crowds of visitors this week in the National Gallery of Victoria's 'Drop By Drawing' sessions. Occurring every Saturday during their summer program, the drawing sessions encourage members of the public to learn new tips, tricks, and drawing techniques from renowned artists, taking inspiration from the Gallery's collection.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:

Drop By Drawing session at NGV, 2025, courtesy Michael Pham

In a new book dedicated to the creative environments of Sunshine Coast Artists, Stefan Dunlop has been featured. The book includes a stunning collection of photographs from each artists studios, taken by Christine Hall, as well as audio from the artists. Stefan Dunlop's bright, airy workspace as seen in Hall's photographs is in harmony with his bold, colourful, and confident canvases.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:

1/ Cover of 'The Studio Project', courtesy Christine Hall

2/ Stefan Dunlop in his studio, courtesy Christine Hall

Congratulations to Vipoo Srivilasa for his exhibition ‘re/JOY’, which is currently at the Australian Design Centre and touring across five states over the next three years. These statues, standing 1.5 metres tall, centre a collection of broken ceramic pieces that were personally significant to a range of families and their experiences of migration. Fragments of teapots, tiles, and bowls from across the world are included in this reimagining of strength, community, and healing. The creation of these figures was inspired by a previous project of Srivilasa’s (of the same name - re/JOY) in Warrnambool, repairing people's broken ceramics that were too sentimental to be thrown away. Srivilasa continuously brings new life and joy to old pottery.

The exhibition is currently on at the Australian Design Centre, Sydney until 19 February 2025. The exhibition will tour Australia from 2025 to 2027.

READ MORE HERE

Congratulations to Ari Athans whose work ‘A ripple and a rock’, made in collaboration with Urban Art Projects is now installed at Wentworth Point in Sydney.

This work is inspired by sedimentary rocks such as sandstone and shale which make up the ripple valley of Sydney Harbour.

Seeking to re-invoke the soft and natural elements of the area, ‘A ripple and a rock’ signals a place and a point of arrival along the urban coastline. The forms appear to have tumbled together and washed ashore, their shape framing the bay and supporting view lines across the water.

- Ari Athans


IMAGE:

Ari Athans

A ripple and a rock 2024

sandstone, cast aluminium, fabricated steel

dimensions variable

The Desert Mob exhibition by Desart showcases works from 35 art centres across Mparntwe/Alice Springs. Among the artworks, were a series of ink paintings and soft sculptures by Yarrenyty Arletere Artists.

READ MORE HERE

Congratulations to Belem Lett who is a finalist in the 2024 Redland Art Awards with his work 'Flight Path'.

The Redland Art Awards is a biennial contemporary painting competition open to all Australian artists, presented by Redland Art Gallery.

The finalists exhibition will be held at the Redland Art Gallery, opening Friday 6 December 2024.

IMAGE:

Belem Lett
‘Flight Path’ 2024
oil, clear primer on brushed aluminium
122 x 94 cm

READ MORE HERE

Congratulations to Bridie Gillman who is a finalist in the 2024 Redland Art Awards with her work 'See from sky'.

The Redland Art Awards is a biennial contemporary painting competition open to all Australian artists, presented by Redland Art Gallery.

The finalists exhibition will be held at the Redland Art Gallery, opening Friday 6 December 2024.

IMAGE:

Bridie Gillman

See from sky 2024

oil on canvas

153 x 137 cm

READ MORE HERE

We are delighted to share the recent publication of ‘Vipoo Srivilasa: Positive Art Work’. This comprehensive monograph celebrates over 25 years of Vipoo Srivilasa’s influential career in ceramics.

Known for his accessible, positive, and beautiful work, Vipoo’s art reflects his life in both Australia and Thailand, using clay to tell stories and bring people together.

The essays have been contributed by:
Alice Pung: Writer and editor
Glenn Barkley: Artist, writer, and curator
Samantha Littley: Curator, Australian Art, QAGOMA
Lisa Cahill: CEO and Artistic Director, Australian Design Centre
Tiffany Johnson: Publisher and author

Published by Paper Boat Press Edition and The Australia Design Center

READ MORE HERE

IMAGES:

1/ Front cover of 'Vipoo Srivilasa: Positive Artwork'

2/ Example Spread of 'Vipoo Srivilasa: Positive Artwork'

We are thrilled to share that John Bokor is a finalist in the 2024 Kedumba Drawing Prize with his work 'After the Feast'.

The Kedumba Drawing Award is a $20,000 acquisitive award open to resident Australian artists working in the broad sphere of drawing. The winning work will become a permanent part of The Kedumba Collection, which is considered to be the most important collection of Australian drawings outside the National Gallery.

The finalists exhibition will be held from 17 November - 15 December, Kedumba Gallery, NSW

IMAGE:

John Bokor

After the Feast 2024

charcoal, wash and collage

71 x 90cm

READ MORE HERE

Congratulations to Sally Anderson who is a finalists in the 2024 Portia Geach Memorial Award with her work ‘Self and still life (shared garden, future nurture)'.

The Portia Geach Memorial Award was established in 1965 to be annually presented to an Australian female artist. Portia Geach was an iconic figure in the Australian arts community, acclaimed for her art and media presence, and as such the award was created in her honour. The award is specifically for the best portrait painted from the life of someone well renowned in art, academia, or science.

Finalists exhibition will be held at the S.H Ervin Gallery, 25 October – 15 December 2024, Sydney

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
Sally Anderson
Self and still life (shared garden, future nurture) 2024
acrylic on polycotton
183 x 198cm

We are excited to share that Belem Lett is a finalist in two categories of the 2024 Fisher’s Ghost Art Award. Belem is a finalist in both the open and contemporary sections of this annual award with his works 'The Foot Of The Mountain' and 'Light Speed'.

The annual Fisher’s Ghost Art Award is now in its 62nd year, and there is over $60,000 in prize money to be won across the categories. The Fisher’s Ghost Art Award coincides with Campbelltown’s annual Festival of Fisher’s Ghost. Held over ten days, the Festival dates back to 1956 and celebrates Australia’s most famous ghost – Frederick Fisher.

You can see Belem’s works in the finalists exhibition which will be held at the Campbelltown Arts Centre from Saturday 26 October – Friday 6 December, 2024

IMAGES

'The Foot Of The Mountain’ 2023
oil, gesso, marble dust on aluminium composite panel
150 x 122cm

• 'Light Speed' 2023
• clear coat, acrylic, gesso, wood putty, screws, wood glue, pine
• 73 x 57 x 53cm

READ MORE HERE

We are thrilled to share that Christopher Zanko is a finalist in the 2024 Fisher’s Ghost Art Award with his work ‘The Laundry’.

The annual Fisher’s Ghost Art Award is now in its 62nd year, and there is over $60,000 in prize money to be won across the categories. The Fisher’s Ghost Art Award coincides with Campbelltown’s annual Festival of Fisher’s Ghost. Held over ten days, the Festival dates back to 1956 and celebrates Australia’s most famous ghost – Frederick Fisher.

The finalists exhibition will be held at the Campbelltown Arts Centre from Saturday 26 October – Friday 6 December, 2024

IMAGE

‘The Laundry’ 2023
acrylic on wood relief carving
59 x 54 cm

READ MORE HERE

Congratulations to Belem Lett who is a finalist in this year’s Hornsby Art Prize with his 2022 work ‘Look At Yourself’.

Established in 2009, the Hornsby Art Prize is organised and sponsored by Hornsby Shire Council and delivered in partnership with the Hornsby Art Society. The non-acquisitive prize celebrates Australian Contemporary Art and has an overall prize pool value of $23,000, with the major prize being $10,000.

The Hornsby Art Prize Finalists’ Exhibition will be held at Wallarobba Arts and Cultural Centre, Hornsby, 25 October - 10 November 2024

IMAGE

‘Look At Yourself’ 2022
oil, gesso, marble dust on aluminium composite panel
90 x 74cm

READ MORE HERE

We are delighted to share that Paul Ryan is a finalist in the 2024 Paddington Art Prize with his work ‘Landscape. Unidentified floating object’.

‘The indigenous people of the Illawarra when they first saw the tall ships of the British floating past thought it was their ancestors’ ghosts returning.’

The Paddington Art Prize is a $30,000 National acquisitive prize, awarded annually for a painting inspired by the Australian landscape. The exhibition of finalists will be held at the Art Leven Gallery from 10 - 20 October 2024.

IMAGE:

‘Landscape. Unidentified floating object’ 2024
oil on linen
123 x 122 cm

READ MORE HERE

We are thrilled to congratulate Bridie Gillman on being selected as a finalist in the 2024 John Leslie Art Prize with her painting ‘Hanging, holding.’

The $20,000 Acquisitive Prize is named after John Leslie OBE (1919—2016), Patron of the Gippsland Art Gallery and celebrates landscape painting by Australian artists.

Bridie’s work will be on exhibition amongst the other finalists from 7 September to 24 November at the Gippsland Art Gallery, in Sale, Victoria.

Image courtesy Louis Lim

IMAGE:

Bridie Gillman

Hanging, holding 2024

oil on canvas

137 x 198cm

READ MORE HERE

Curated by Vipoo Srivilasa, ‘Generation Clay: Reimagined Asian Heritage’, opens on Saturday 3 August at Bunjil Place, Victoria.

‘Generation Clay: Reimagining Asian Heritage’ is an exhibition celebrating the vibrant versatility of clay, presented by a new generation of Asian-Australian contemporary artists. Together, these artists are reimagining traditional and ceramic forms in ways that resonate with our current moment.

This exhibition will engage with a multiplicity of concepts – from personal histories and memories, cultural heritage and family ties to mythological and popular culture narratives. Curated by Vipoo Srivilasa, a recognised leader in the field of ceramics, ‘Generation Clay’ started with fourteen artists from across Australia being invited to create a new work using a palette of predominantly blue and white. The colour blue is also a unifying feature of the exhibition’s design, alluding to the wider discourses of blue and white patterning, it’s connections to global movement and its reinterpretation and translation through form and motif over time.

Nestled in the heart of the exhibition is ‘The Bloom Room’ a special making area where exhibition visitors can participate in a range of changing monthly activities, from hand-crafting origami flowers and tiny clay objects, to sharing secret powers and stories, ‘The Bloom Room’ is your space to create, connect and collaborate with the artworks and artists featured in ‘Generation Clay’.

3 August - 24 November 2024
Bunjil Place Gallery, Narre Warren, Victoria

READ MORE HERE

We are thrilled to announce that Vipoo Srivilasa’s interactive exhibition, “Marvellous Mythical Mates,” opens at Counihan Gallery in Melbourne this Saturday 3 August, 2024.

The exhibition explores the theme of belonging. Inspired by the sights, sounds, smells, and textures of Merri-bek, attendees are encouraged to create their own mythical dream pets from clay. Whether your pet dings like the Number 19 tram or gurgles like the Merri Creek, the possibilities are endless.

Contribute to a growing menagerie of Merri-bek creatures by proudly displaying your dream pet in the gallery. With every passing day, new creations will emerge, transforming the exhibition into a living habitat for fantastical companions!

Join the opening ceremony on Saturday, August 10 from 2 – 4pm.

The exhibition is current until October 27, 2024

READ MORE HERE

Congratulations to Judith Sinnamon who is not only a finalist in the Brisbane Portrait Prize for 2024 but has also been selected for the partnered Salon de Refuses for her portrait of Spencer, the protector of Wallum.

From the age of 6 Spencer Hitchen, now 13, has worked tirelessly to try to save the fragile coastal Wallum woodlands and heathlands of the Noosa Shire, that are so important for the survival of the black glossy cockatoo, from clearing and development.

The Salon des Refusés will be held at the Royal Queensland Art Society, Petrie Terrace running in parallel to the Brisbane Portrait Prize, 3 August – 10 November.

IMAGE:

Judith Sinnamon

Spencer - Child Protector of Wallum 2024

oil on linen

80 x 80 cm

READ MORE HERE

Congratulations to Vipoo Srivilasa who has been invited to present his interactive art exhibition ‘Flower Bear Deity’ at the Fremantle Arts Centre as the lead artist for the 2024 Indian Ocean Craft Triennial (IOTA). The exhibition will run from 16 August - 20 October 2024.

The Indian Ocean Triennial Australia (IOTA) is a not-for-profit arts organisation based in Perth, Western Australia. IOTA presents the extraordinary work of contemporary artists and artisans from around the region; particularly those who build on the traditional skills and mediums of craft practices.

READ MORE HERE

Curated by Vipoo Srivilasa, ‘Generation Clay: Reimagined Asian Heritage’, opens on Saturday 3 August at Bunjil Place, Victoria.

‘Generation Clay: Reimagining Asian Heritage’ is an exhibition celebrating the vibrant versatility of clay, presented by a new generation of Asian-Australian contemporary artists. Together, these artists are reimagining traditional and ceramic forms in ways that resonate with our current moment.

This exhibition will engage with a multiplicity of concepts – from personal histories and memories, cultural heritage and family ties to mythological and popular culture narratives. Curated by Vipoo Srivilasa, a recognised leader in the field of ceramics, ‘Generation Clay’ started with fourteen artists from across Australia being invited to create a new work using a palette of predominantly blue and white. The colour blue is also a unifying feature of the exhibition’s design, alluding to the wider discourses of blue and white patterning, it’s connections to global movement and its reinterpretation and translation through form and motif over time.

Nestled in the heart of the exhibition is ‘The Bloom Room’ a special making area where exhibition visitors can participate in a range of changing monthly activities, from hand-crafting origami flowers and tiny clay objects, to sharing secret powers and stories, ‘The Bloom Room’ is your space to create, connect and collaborate with the artworks and artists featured in ‘Generation Clay’.

“I have brought together some of the most exciting ceramic talent and together we are creating, what I believe, is a first-of-its-kind exhibition – Asian Australian ceramicists interpreting the blue and white palette in new ways,” said Vipoo Srivilasa.

“I have also worked with the Asian diaspora on the exhibition design, construction, writing and photography of the show. The works, along with the participatory nature of the exhibition is something that I’m very proud of.’’

Bunjil Place Gallery, Narre Warren, Victoria, 3 August - 24 November 2024

Image courtesy Jessica Tremp

READ MORE HERE

Congratulations to Judith Sinnamon who is a 2024 finalist in the Brisbane Portrait Prize for her portrait of Hannah Moloney from South of Timtumili Minanya, Tasmania.

Judith Sinnamon chose to paint Hannah because she helps people do something practical and hopeful regardless of what happens in the world. “The small act of hope by planting a seed and tending to it can be transformative in creating connection with nature, with each other and with the possibilities of a sustainable future.”

The finalists of the Brisbane Portrait Prize will be showcased at the State Library of Queensland from 3 August – 10 November.

IMAGE:

Judith Sinnamon

Little Big Acts of Hope 2024

Oil on linen

103 x 200 cm

READ MORE HERE

It is with great delight to share that Belem Lett is a finalist in the 2024 Deakin University Contemporary Small Sculpture Award for his work ‘Wormhole’.

The Deakin University Contemporary Small Sculpture Award was established in 2009 and is organised by the Art Collection and Galleries Unit at Deakin University, Victoria. The award celebrates contemporary sculptures from artists around Australia.

The finalist exhibition will be held at at the Deakin University Art Gallery from 29 August – 11 October, 2024.

IMAGE:

'Wormhole' 2023
clear top coat, acrylic, gesso, wood putty, screws, wood glue, polyurethane glue, pine
53 x 66 x 52cm

READ MORE HERE

Congratulations to Belem Lett who has been selected as a finalist in this year's Gosford Art Prize for his work 'Snorkel'.

The Gosford Art Prize is a significant facet of the Gosford Regional Gallery’s annual exhibition program. The prize was initially organised by the community in the early 1970s. When the Gosford Regional Gallery opened in 2000, it became the new permanent home of the Gosford Art Prize. Both the main prize and the Ceramics Prize have grown in popularity and strength over the past 23 years, celebrating the diversity of practices from artists both on the Central Coast and from beyond our region.

Finalists are exhibited in all galleries, 24 August 2024 - 20 October 2024

IMAGE

'Snorkel' 2024

oil, clear primer on brushed aluminium composite panel

150 x 122cm

READ MORE HERE

Exciting news for Belem Lett who is a finalist in this year's Mosman Art Prize for his work 'Fire Walk With Me'.

The Mosman Art Prize is the longest running and most prestigious municipal art prize in Australia. Winning entries form the basis of the Mosman Art Collection, a valuable and historic collection that surveys Australian painting since 1947. The Mosman Art Prize is an acquisitive award of $50,000 sponsored by Mosman Council.

The annual exhibition will take place 10 August - 6 October.

IMAGE:

'Fire Walk With Me' 2024
oil, clear primer on brushed aluminium composite panel
150 x 122cm

READ MORE HERE

It is with great pleasure that we share the news that Belem Lett is a finalist in the 2024 Sunshine Coast National Art Prize for his work ‘A Love Song’.

The acquisitive Sunshine Coast National Art Prize is a dynamic visual arts award reflecting outstanding contemporary 2D and new media arts practice in Australia. The finalists exhibition will be held at the Caloundra Regional Gallery from 24 August - 13 October 2024.

Belem Lett’s work transcend representation and instead embraces gestural abstraction, delving into the interplay of light and colour. Lett transforms the canvas into a dynamic arena where paint and surface coalesce. Each stroke is laden with vibrant hues, embodying physical momentum that echoes the artist’s gestures and movements.

IMAGE

‘A Love Song’ 2024

oil, clear primer on brushed aluminium composite panel

150 x 122 cm
⁠

READ MORE HERE

We are pleased to share that Chris Zanko is a finalist in this year’s Sunshine Coast National Art Prize for his work ‘The Bathroom’.

The national acquisitive Sunshine Coast National Art Prize is a dynamic visual arts award reflecting outstanding contemporary 2D and new media arts practice in Australia. The finalists exhibiton will be exhibited at the Caloundra Regional Gallery from 24 August - 13 October 2024.

‘From the house I grew up in to the share houses and rentals I've lived in since, there has always been a variation of this tile in the bathroom, laundry, or kitchen. In recent years, I've begun to collect different colour variations of it. Sometimes I feel as though I've seen them all, then I incidentally come across a new colour motif. Synonymous with the mid-century red brick and fibro houses in my local area of Wollongong, many of the houses and buildings with these tiles are disappearing. Carving this design into wood is a way of enacting a sense of permanence, as the marks cannot be undone.’

Chris Zanko, 2024

READ MORE HERE

Image:

‘The Bathroom’ 2023

acrylic on wood relief carving

59 x 54 cm

Congratulations Vipoo Srivilasa whose work ‘Memory’ (2018) forms part of the Namedropping exhibition at the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Hobart. This expansive exhibition presents around 200 artworks and objects, examining the realm of status, influence and the power we place in a name.

‘Memory’ (2018) consists of five porcelain and cobalt pigment figures with gold lustre details, housed in wooden structures. Each figure relates to a childhood sporting memory from the artist and features different sporting equipment or uniforms to reflect this. The porcelain statues are each mounted in uniform L-shaped wooden blocks, inspired by an old trophy from the Australian Sport Museum collection.

On now and current until 21 April 2025.

IMAGE:

‘Memory’ (2018)

porcelain and cobalt pigment figures with gold lustre details

READ MORE HERE

Exciting news for Christopher Zanko who is a finalists in the 2024 Waverley Art Prize for his work 'Midday brick house'.

The Waverley Art Prize finalist exhibition is on from 6 July - 18 August at the Bondi Pavilion Gallery, Sydney.

READ MORE HERE

Image:

'Midday brick house' 2023

Flashè on Wood relief carving

122 x 99 cm

Image courtesy Jessica Maurer

Congratulations to Belem Lett who has been chosen as a finalist in the 2024 Waverley Art Prize for his work 'Body Language'. The Waverley Art Prize finalist exhibition is on from 6 July - 18 August at the Bondi Pavilion Gallery, Sydney.

READ MORE HERE

Image:B

'Body Language', 2024

Oil, clear primer on brushed aluminium composite panel

150 x 122cm

image courtesy Jessica Maurer

Congratulations to Belem Lett for his selection as a 2024 finalist for the The Vincent prize. Belem was selected for his work 'Pollinate' and can be seen at the finalists exhibition which opens this Friday 14 June 6-9pm at Scratch Art Space, Marrickville.

The Vincent Prize was established by art courier service Art Van Go for their customers that missed out on selection for The Archibald, Wynne, Sulman & the Salon des Refuses.

READ MORE HERE

Image:

Pollinate, 2024

Oil, clear primer on brushed aluminium composite panel

56 x 48 cm

Congratulations Vipoo Srivilasa whose work is featured in the Australian Design Centre On Tour exhibition SIXTY: The Journal of Australian Ceramics 60th Anniversary 1962–2022. Vipoo's 2019 ceramic 'Dvarapala (Ta-waa-ra-baan), Door Guardian Porter' is currently on show at Design Tasmania in Launceston until 21 July 2024.

The exhibition is presented by Australian Design Centre in partnership with The Australian Ceramics Association (TACA) to acknowledge this significant anniversary for the ceramics community in Australia.

"For this show, I created a pair of friendly Dvarapala. They do not only ward off evil spirits but also welcome visitors. Instead of holding a club, they offer flowers and leave to visitors. Both of my Davrapala come with their own “vahana “ or animal- vehicle which they travel on and keep their company. Both animals, cat and dog are the most popular pets in the world. They are not only our great companion but also a guard for our house and a therapy to heal our spirit."

READ MORE HERE

Image:
VIPOO SRIVILASA
Dvarapala (Ta-waa-ra-baan), Door Guardian Porter series 2019
stoneware, underglaze, gold lustre, acrylic, mixed media

Miranda Skoczek has been a guest on ABC Radio National, delving into the new direction of her current exhibition at Post Space in Exeter, England. In a vibrant conversation with Kimberly Price, Miranda explains the deeply personal body of work, and her distinctive abstract painting.

LISTEN HERE

IMAGE:

Miranda Skoczek with her exhibition 'Red Ribbons', Post Space, Exeter, courtesy the artist

Thrilled to share the news that Chris Zanko is a finalist in the 2024 Wynne Prize with his work ‘Personal plethoras’.

Growing up, Christopher Zanko formed impressions of local architecture that helped him build a ‘cognitive map’. Particular houses and streets in the Wollongong suburbs of his childhood, on Dharawal land, became markers for him in a place now undergoing development and gentrification.

Zanko, a two-time Wynne finalist, noticed this house while walking to his daughter’s preschool in 2023. ‘The arrangement of shadows cast by the eaves and the glimpse into the backyard gave a sense of familiarity,’ he says. Rendered large, with confident lines, the house’s textures of red brick, speckled concrete, pruned bushes and drawn blinds have been lovingly depicted. Zanko carves into the wooden surface with small hand chisels before adding colour, then accentuates the work’s graphic details and deep shadows by applying black paint with a roller.

While the changing nature of our environment can be challenging, Zanko notes, it ‘is arguably necessary, especially considering Australia’s current housing crisis’. ‘Through my process I seek to give a sense of permanency to the narratives and experiences of suburban Australia.’

READ MORE HERE


Artwork:

‘Personal plethoras’ 2024

synthetic polymer paint on hand-carved wood

180.1 x 150 cm

Delighted to announce that Sally Anderson has been selected as a finalist in the Sir John Sulman Prize with her work ‘Holding a hurricane, quilt curtain carrying the sea’.

How do you hold a hurricane? How do you hold close things that are spiralling out of your control? Can you contain the sea in a quilt? How do we measure domestic, creative and maternal labour? With time? How does one get more time in a day? How do we hold households, partners, children, paintings, parents and ourselves simultaneously? This painting speaks to the ways motherhood, domesticity and creative practice are, for me, reciprocal and ultimately entangled. Each informs and infects the other. This work deliberately dances between abstraction and representation and employs still-life and landscape motifs as symbols of containment and care.

- Sally Anderson, 2024

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
SALLY ANDERSON
Holding a hurricane, quilt curtain carrying the sea 2024
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
182.5 x 198.2 cm

Congratulations Sally Anderson who is a finalist in the 2024 Bayside Painting Prize for her 2024 work ‘Placenta banksia, Bridal Veil Falls view, the sea in me, PB nude quilt tablecloth’. Established in 2015, the Bayside Painting Prize is one of the most generous non-acquisitive painting prizes in Australia. The exhibition draws together a breadth of artists with varied approaches to painting. This allows the Bayside City Council to further develop its collection and promote artists to the Bayside community.

The finalist exhibition will be held at Bayside Gallery from 3 May to 23 June 2024.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
SALLY ANDERSON
Placenta banksia, Bridal Veil Falls view, the sea in me, PB nude quilt tablecloth 2024
acrylic on polycotton
168 x 137 cm

Image courtesy the artist and Jessica Maurer

It is with great joy that we announce the selection of Belem Lett as a finalist in the 2024 Muswellbrook Art Prize for his work 'The Mountains Await Your Return'

Since 1958, the Muswellbrook Art Prize has grown and evolved and is today one of the richest prizes for painting in regional Australia. Astute adjudication of the Prize over the years has yielded an excellent collection of modern and contemporary Australian paintings, works on paper and ceramics from the Post War period of the 20th Century and into the 21st Century, with the winning acquisitive works forming the nucleus of what is now known as the Muswellbrook Shire Art Collection.

READ MORE HERE

Finalists will be exhibited at the Muswellbrook Art Gallery from 2 April - 25 May 2024

Belem's next solo exhibition at the gallery is from 1 - 21 May 2024

Artwork:

'The Mountains Await Your Return' 2022

Oil, gesso, marble dust on aluminum composite panel

150 x 122 cm

At the time they both connected over their love for nature and now, roughly 10 years later Miranda has collaborated with Katie [Kolodinski] to curate The Protection Collection. Centred around symbolism and the rituals of self-protection including the iconic Aster flower, central to Katie’s upbringing, this was a harmonious alignment given Miranda’s style of art which is deeply influenced by historical references and ancient cultures.

For Miranda, her art allows people to explore other worlds and she hopes that placing her designs on clothing encourages people to have those conspectus conversations as well.

In line with this creative endeavour, she shared insights on her practices, creating the collection and her relationship with symbolism.

- Silk Laundry

IMAGE:

Courtesy Silk Laundry

READ MORE HERE

Congratulations to Bridie Gillman who is a finalist for the The Elaine Bermingham National Watercolour Prize for her work 'Night Lines'.

Celebrating excellence and innovation in the watercolour medium, this non-acquisitive prize offers a winning of $20,000 generously donated by Elaine Bermingham.

Selected finalists will be exhibited at QCA Galleries, located within Griffith University’s Queensland College of Art and Design at South Bank, Brisbane from 30 November 2023 - 11 January 2024.

IMAGE

Bridie Gillman

Night Lines 2023

watercolour and ink on linen

102 x 115cm

READ MORE HERE

Vipoo Srivilasa has won the Civic Choice Award as part of the 2023 Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture.

The annual Melbourne Prize, now in its 19th year, continues its objective to provide opportunities to Victorian writers, musicians and for 2023, sculptors, demonstrating the importance of recognising and rewarding creative talent.

Artists practicing in expanded fields of sculpture, including public installation, new media, performance, sound-based and socially engaged practice were encouraged to apply, plus entries from artists at all stages of their practice, including First Nations people and artists from all genders and cultural, linguistic and diverse backgrounds.

READ MORE HERE

Congratulations to Sally Anderson, who has been announced as a finalist in the Grace Cossington Smith Art Award for her painting 'Nat Silk’s Seatown Still Life, PB Nude Quilt, Bromeliad Washdown'.

The biennial Grace Cossington Smith Art Award is a $20,000 National acquisitive award. The award theme is 'Making Connections' inspired by the work of Abbotsleigh graduate and artist Grace Cossington Smith - renowned for her Modern abstraction paintings of Australia. The finalist exhibition opens 27 January 2024 at the Grace Cossington Smith Gallery, Wahroonga, Sydney.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
SALLY ANDERSON
Nat Silk's Seatown Still Life, PB Nude Quilt, Bromeliad Washdown 2023
acrylic on polycotton
153 x 137 cm

BELEM LETT is featured in the latest edition of Art Edit.

Issue 36 draws on Belem Lett's exploration of preconceptions and how his manipulation of colour creates pieces of harmony.

Text by editor Rose of Sharon Leake and images from past exhibitions with Edwina Corlette Gallery, edition out now.

READ MORE HERE

Image detail;

'Limbo' 2022
oil, gesso, marble dust on aluminium composite panel
56 x 48 cm

We are delighted to announce that JUDITH SINNAMON is a finalist in the 2023 Brisbane Portrait Prize for her portrait of Nathan Appo.

Judith sought to capture Nathan's incredible warmth and generosity and a wisdom that comes from 65,000 years of continuous sustainable culture and land management with a deep love for country and humanity at its core.

The Brisbane Portrait Prize is all about celebrating Brisbane portrait artists and their sitters, while encouraging public engagement with the arts.

Judith is having a solo exhibition with us October 25.

IMAGE:

Judith Sinnamon

Nathan Appo 2023

Oil on linen

134 x 104 cm

READ MORE HERE

It is with great pleasure that we announce Belem Lett has been selected as a finalist in the 2023 Paddington Art Prize for his work 'This Land Is Slippery'

The Paddington Art Prize is a $30,000 National acquisitive prize, awarded annually for a painting inspired by the Australian landscape.

Image:

'This Land Is Slippery' 2022
Oil, gesso, marble dust on aluminium composite panel
150 x 180 cm

READ MORE HERE

Bridie Gillman is a finalist in the 2023 Girra: Fraser Coast National Art Prize for her work 'Quiet, after the storm' (2023).

The inaugural Girra: Fraser Coast National Art Prize is a major acquisitive prize of $25,000, that seeks to explore our reciprocal and inextricable relationship with the environment through contemporary art.

Selected artworks provide unique perspectives on industrialised landscapes, the forces of extreme weather events, our relationship to domestic gardens, ecological concerns and speculative solutions, ruminations on the beauty and power of nature, and much more.

The finalists’ exhibition, is held at the Hervey Bay Regional Gallery 23 September to 12 November 2023

IMAGE:

Bridie Gillman

Quiet, after the storm 2022

Oil on linen, glazed ceramics and soundscape

various dimensions

READ MORE HERE

VIPOO SRIVILASA has been selected as one of the four finalists in the $60,000 Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture 2023.

READ MORE HERE

Congratulations to our artist Paul Ryan who is a finalists in this year's Mosman Art Prize for his work 'The King'. Exhibition open 23 September in Mosman, Sydney.

READ MORE HERE

Image:

PAUL RYAN
'The King' 2023
oil on linen
138 x 122 cm

Congratulations to our artist John Bokor who is a finalists in this year's Mosman Art Prize for his work 'The Flowering Plant'. Exhibition open 23 September in Mosman, Sydney.

IMAGE:
John Bokor
The Flowering Plant 2023
oil on board
140 x 120 cm

READ MORE HERE

Bridie Gillman completed a residency at Córtex Frontal, for a 6 week placement in an 18^th century building located in Arraiolos, Alentejo, Southern Portugal, in April 2023.

Córtex Frontal is a multidisciplinary cultural project created in 2016 by the Cultural Association Córtexcult, in Arraiolos, Évora, Alentejo. The artists in residence program aims to provide the time and space to develop a project, fostering the sharing of experiences between artists and the community.

Bridie's new body of work directly inspired by her time spent at Córtex Frontal will be exhibited in her upcoming show, Watching Walls at Edwina Corlette Gallery 4 October - 24 October 2023.

Córtex Frontal is part of the Portuguese Contemporary Art Networks RPAC.

READ MORE HERE

On Sunday the 30th of July, PAUL RYAN featured in the ABC Art Works episode focusing on album cover art. Hosted by Namila Benson, this episode of ABC Art Works allows Paul to tell us his story as an Australian painter and about his collaborations with American musician Bill Callahan.

Even though they've never met, Paul Ryan and Bill Callahan share a mutually beneficial friendship. Paul has painted several of Bill's album covers and Bill's music has inspired Paul's paintings.

Paul shows us his process and eclectic studio, personifying his practice and shining light on his emotive connection to the landscape so often seen in his pieces.

You can watch Paul Ryan's feature on the ABC iView website HERE

Congratulations to Belem Lett who is a finalist in this year's Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award for his work 'You Are The Centre Of The Universe'.

The biennial Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award is a significant national exhibition that aims to elevate the status of work on paper while supporting and promoting artists working with this medium.

Finalists will be exhibited in the Main Gallery at Hazelhurst Arts Centre in Sydney from 16 September to 12 November 2023.

Belem's next solo exhibition at the gallery is from 2 – 16 December 2023

Artwork:

You Are The Centre Of The Universe

Oil, gesso on Stonehenge paper 245gsm

228 x 168 cm

2023

Congratulations VIPOO SRIVILASA who has been shortlisted for the prestigious Deakin University Contemporary Small Sculpture Award for his work The Kiln God Altar. Vipoo has been selected as one of the 40 finalists out of 422 entries.

The selection process was led by a panel of judges, including the renowned Australian artist Lisa Roet, the esteemed Curator Antony Fitzpatrick from TarraWarra Museum of Art, and the representative from Deakin University, Leanne Willis.

The finalist’s exhibition will open to the public on Wednesday 23 August at the Deakin University Art Gallery and the launch and announcement of winners will take place on Thursday 31 August.

Vipoo Srivilasa

'Kiln God Altar' 2023

A collection of Kiln Gods, created with various clay types, techniques, firing range and artistic style, symbolises the diversity within the clay community.

Displayed together on one stand, they represent unity, interconnection and shared spiritual traditions among clay workers worldwide.

READ MORE HERE

Tim McMonagle's painting 'Plaza' is currently on view at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in the 'brick vase clay cup jug' exhibition.

Guest curator Glenn Barkley selected the artworks in 'brick vase clay cup jug' by typing the words of the exhibition title into the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ online collection database, retrieving objects linked only by a word or medium. Unlike the typical approach to making an exhibition, where works are grouped conceptually according to meanings or historical associations, this selection process is non-hierarchical and echoes the random groupings seen in gallery storage. Usually guided by pragmatic considerations – maximising space and access or caring for the collection – these incidental groupings can create inspiring and surprising links between disparate objects, art-handling equipment and exhibition furniture.

Barkley has then taken cues from these search results, either aesthetic or conceptual, to cast a wider net through the collection, creating new connections – many of which are personal, visual, intuitive and emotional – between artworks.

- Art Gallery New South Wales

The exhibition is open until January 2024

IMAGE:

Tim McMonagle

Plaza (installation view) 2005

oil on linen

180 x 180 cm

READ MORE HERE

Sally Anderson is featured in the July/August edition of Art Guide Australia.

Motherhood, domesticity, landscape, memory—these are just some of the experiences and memories Sally Anderson has captured in her two-decade painting practice, underpinned by a persistent blue.

The outer edges of Sally Anderson’s paintings reveal multiple layers of canvas, the evidence of past works painted over yet still present deep within. Integral to how Anderson works, this layering connects to ideas of containment and the action of being physically held. “This could refer to a mother carrying her baby, being restricted to the home, a vessel holding flowers, frames, windows or pools,” she says.

- Briony Downes, Art Guide, 2023

IMAGE:

Sally Anderson in her Studio, courtesy Jessica Mauer

READ MORE HERE

Congratulations to Belem Lett who is a finalist in this year's Waverley Art Prize for his work 'Smile'.

Belem is one of the 38 finalists chosen from over 700 entries. Recognising his striking choice of colour and form, Waverley Woollahra Art School credits his signature technique of forcing the eye to follow the shifting stark palettes.

The Waverley Art Prize celebrates excellence across the local arts community and greater Australian contemporary Visual Arts sector, ultimately showcasing the brilliance of early to mid-career Australian artists.

The Finalist Exhibition for this Waverley Art Prize is held in Sydney at the Bondi Pavilion until August 13, 2023.

Artwork:

Smile

oil, gesso and marble dust on aluminium composite panel

150 x 122 cm

2023

Grace Ebert featured Vipoo Srivilasa's exhibition 'Solitude and Connection' in the article 'Exquisite Porcelain Figures by Vipoo Srivilasa Express the Ineffable Nature of Beauty and Connection'.

"Flowers in gold lustre and cobalt, small portraits of mythical creatures with feathers and polka dots, and various geometric motifs embellish Vipoo Srivilasa’s porcelain figures, which celebrate abundance and joy through opulent details. On view now at Edwina Corlette in the artist’s solo show Solitude and Connection, the sculptures are otherworldly in form as they meld human anatomy with flora and fauna, exploring 'the diverse ways in which love takes shape.'"

READ MORE HERE

Arrernte and Southern Luritja artist Sally M Nangala Mulda alongside Arrernte and Western Arrarnta artist Marlene Rubuntja have developed their practice to be completely recognisable and representative of the place in which they live, Mparntwe/Alice Springs. Working from Tangentyere Artists and Yarrenyty Arltere Artists (art centres), these senior women have established themselves as two of Australia’s leading visual artists.

The third Artbank + ACMI Commission, Two Girls From Amoonguna, encompasses video, soft sculpture and paintings, with the centerpiece the animated work titled Arrkutja Tharra, Kungka Kutjara, Two Girls.

Arrkutja Tharra, Kungka Kutjara, Two Girls delves into the reality of First Peoples’ experiences in Central Australia by chronicling the artists’ successes and struggles. The work centres Sally and Marlene’s voices, as well as the voices of their younger family members, who can be heard in the animation. It was made in collaboration with Ludo Studio, the Emmy-award winning production company behind Bluey, Robbie Hood and The Strange Chores, along with script writer Courtney Collins, Left of Elephant Sound and Tangentyere Artists producer Ellanor Webb.

Figures from Marlene’s soft sculptures and Sally’s acrylic on linen paintings star in the animation, embedded on top of Marlene’s ink on paper works of the Central Australian landscape. Bringing together both artists’ practice, Sally’s iconic cursive painted lettering produce the subtitles.

Having grown up at the Amoonguna Settlement outside of Mparntwe/Alice Springs in the early 1960s, the two friends wouldn’t reconnect until much later in life, after both of them had seen their fair amount of hardships; now having achieved so much, they are immensely proud of one another.

Two Girls from Amoonguna is an exhibition about two of Australia’s leading artists and their journey to get there.

IMAGES:

1/ Sally M Nangala Mulda at Tarnanthi, 2019

2/ Marlene Rubuntja holding a soft echidna sculpture

WATCH HERE

READ MORE HERE

Congratulations to Sally Anderson who is a finalist in this year's Ravenswood Australian Women's Art Prize with her work ‘Sea Town Lawn Roof Song with NO’s Vessel.’

The Ravenswood Australian Women's Art Prize is an annual prize that was launched in 2017 to advance art and opportunity for emerging and established female artists in Australia. It is the highest value professional artist prize for women in Australia.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:

SALLY ANDERSON
Sea Town Lawn Roof Song with NO’s Vessel 2023
acrylic on canvas
115 x 97 cm

Judith Sinnamon is a finalist in the 2023 Archibald Prize.

‘Katharine often appears on the Insiders panel, where she brings a refreshing, cut-through perspective to the fug of Australian politics,’ says Sinnamon. ‘I feel tremendous gratitude towards Katharine and all journalists of strong conviction and integrity, who speak truth to power at a time of rampant misinformation and media mogul influence.’

Murphy has worked in the parliamentary press gallery in Kamberri/Canberra since 1996. She is currently political editor of Guardian Australia and the host of a weekly podcast, Australian politics. She is the author of On disruption, an analysis of the impact of the internet on journalism.

Sinnamon captures the award-winning journalist, with her colourful clothing and animated face, listening to the podcast Pod save America in her light-filled home.

‘During our sitting, I drew loose charcoal sketches and took numerous photos,’ says Sinnamon. ‘I then returned to my [Sunshine Coast] Hinterland studio and began the month-long process of rendering Katharine’s portrait – my first in the Archibald Prize.’

- Art Gallery New South Wales

IMAGE:

Judith Sinnamon

Katharine Murphy 2023

oil on linen

104.2 x 134 cm

READ MORE HERE.

Belem Lett is a finalist in the 2023 Omnia Art Prize with his works 'These Peaks Watch Over You' and 'Eclipse'. The Omnia Art Prize is one of Australia’s premier art awards and exhibitions for contemporary art. Read more here.

Artworks:

These Peaks Watch Over You

oil, clear primer on brushed aluminium composite panel

150 x 120 cm

2022

Eclipse

clear coat, acrylic, gesso, wood putty, screws, wood glue, pine

82 x 42 x 28 cm

2023

Congratulations to Belem Lett who is a finalist in this year's Bayside Acquisitive Art Prize with his work 'Vertical Horizon'.

The Bayside Painting Prize is the only annual painting prize held in Melbourne, with specific focus on artists with a variety of approaches to the painted medium. The Bayside Painting Prize is one of the most generous non-acquisitive painting prizes in Australia. This allows the Bayside City Council to continue to promote artists to the Bayside community and support painters across Australia.

IMAGE:
Belem Lett
Vertical Horizon 2023
Oil, gesso, marble dust on aluminium composite panel
122 x 94 cm

READ MORE HERE

Congratulations to Vipoo Srivilasa who has been awarded the Visual Arts and Crafts Strategy (VACS) Major Commissioning Projects grant. Vipoo is a recipient of $100,000 to realise a major project 'Re/JOY' in collaboration with the Australian Design Centre. 'Re/JOY' is a collaborative, community-driven project designed to engage with overseas-born Australians.

'Re/JOY' will examine the emotional connection we form with objects by retelling migration stories and experiences. The project aims to provoke the complex feelings associated with overseas relocation and the difficult process of gaining Australian permanent residency.

READ MORE HERE

Image: Vipoo Srivilasa and the Happy Australian Sculptures at the National Portrait Gallery. Photo by Liv Cameron 2023.

Ari Athans was featured recently in the Qantas In-Flight magazine in an article written by Noelle Faulkner.

Vipoo Srivilasa's work 'Happy Australian' will form part of the National Portrait Gallery's exhibition 'Portrait23: Identity'.

'Portrait23: Identity' is a major exhibition of new work from multi-award-winning contemporary Australian artists and collectives working across every state and territory. Street art, textiles, performance, photography, ceramics, painting, drawing, soft sculpture and bronze challenge the boundaries of portraiture. Many of the works move eloquently between installation, video, and animation, inviting you, the viewer, inside the portrait.

Twenty-three artists and collectives present dramatic, ambitious and thrilling work about who they are and what it means to represent themselves, their communities, their histories and contemporary society. They break open the genre with deeply personal evocations of themes that resonate collectively, such as cultural knowledge, feminism, visibility/invisibility, activism and journeys of migration.

10 March – 18 June 2023.

READ MORE HERE.

Image details;

Four works from Happy Australian, 2022 Vipoo Srivilasa. © Vipoo Srivilasa. Photograph by Simon Strong

Miranda Skoczek is featured in ‘Artists at Home’ a new book about Australian female artists by Karina Dias Pires, published by Thames and Hudson, out now.

IMAGE:

Miranda Skoczek, courtesy Karina Dias Pires

READ MORE HERE

Congratulations to Sally Anderson who is a finalist in this year's Muswellbrook Art Prize with her work ‘Lismore Island Roof Song with a Screenshot of Nat Silk’s Seatown’.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
Sally Anderson
Lismore Island Roof Song with a Screenshot of Nat Silk’s Seatown 2022
acrylic on polycotton

Ari Athan's work 'Strata Sample One' is featured in the current issue of Belle Magazine inside Anna Spiro's home.

IMAGE:

Ari Athans

Strata Sample One 2022

ceramic, wood and acrylic paint

57 x 20 x 20 cm

Noelle Faulkner from QANTAS Travel Insider Magazine spoke with Vipoo Srivilasa about his art practice. "With a playful approach that marries European-Australian and Thai motifs, this Bangkok-born artist’s figurines are full of charm."

READ MORE HERE.

Image details;

Pieces from Vipoo Srivilasa’s Always Better Together series (2022)

Belem Lett's bold artwork 'Move Me' (2022) is featured on the recent cover of Belle Magazine. Belem's piece celebrates the power of colour and is shown in an exclusive look inside interiors star Anna Spiro's home.

BELEM LETT
Move Me 2022
Oil, gesso, marble dust on aluminium composite panel
122 x 94cm

Marisa Purcell is a finalist in the 2022 Fisher's Ghost Art Award with her work 'Yesterday's Song' (image below).

The Award is an annual art prize inviting artists to submit works in a variety of artistic categories and mediums. Now in its 60th year, there is $72,000 in prize money to be won. The Open Award is acquisitive to the Campbelltown City Council collection and in 2022, in celebration of the 60th Anniversary; the award is valued at $60,000.

READ MORE HERE

Marisa Purcell is a finalist in the 2022 Mosman Art prize with her work 'Hovering Overhead' (image below).

Established in 1947, the Mosman Art Prize is Australia's oldest and most prestigious local government art award. It was founded by the artist, architect and arts advocate, Alderman Allan Gamble, at a time when only a small handful of art prizes were in existence in Australia and the community had very little support and few opportunities to exhibit their work.

As an acquisitive art award for painting, the winning artworks collected form a splendid collection of modern and contemporary Australian art, reflecting all the developments in Australian art practice since 1947. Artists who have won the Mosman Art Prize include Margaret Olley, Guy Warren, Grace Cossington Smith, Weaver Hawkins, Nancy Borlase, Lloyd Rees, Elisabeth Cummings, Adam Cullen, Michael Zavros, Natasha Walsh and Salote Tawale.

The 2022 judge of the Mosman Art Prize is Rhana Devenport ONZM.

READ MORE HERE

Sally Anderson has received a glowing review in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Sally Anderson’s Guido 'Holding Folding Moulding' is another stand-out. Ostensibly a portrait of her artist husband holding their child, there’s a metaphysical dimension to the work, with a sculpture on a pedestal, a jug with flowers and a red, flag-like curtain taking up significant space in the composition. The play of curves and fractured planes adds to the mystery of the picture, as we feel we are looking through multiple doorways or windows, projecting a dream-like atmosphere.

- John McDonald, Sydney Morning Herald, 2022.

READ MORE HERE

Congratulations to Sally Anderson who is a finalist in the Portia Geach Award at SH Ervin Gallery in Sydney.

The Portia Geach Memorial Award was established in 1965 to be annually presented to an Australian female artist. Portia Geach was an iconic figure in the Australian arts community, acclaimed for her art and media presence, and as such the award was created in her honour. The award is specifically for the best portrait painted from the life of someone well renowned in art, academia, or science.

The exhibition is open 16 September – 6 November 2022

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
SALLY ANDERSON
Guido holding, folding, moulding 2022
acrylic on polycotton
198 x 153 cm

Blue Island investigates the interplay of colour and memory in relation to individual experience. Paintings draw on hydrangea related respective experience to demonstrate the capacity for colour and object to hold and trigger memory and association. The exhibition seeks to question the reliability of memory and offers a way to authenticate experience through colour. In attempting to realise something perhaps visually impossible to verify within their paintings; mixing colour truthfully and straightforwardly from memory, the artists are challenged to settle on feeling and intuitive correctness rather than absolute truth and certainty.

Using a uniform size canvas, the 14 invited artists were instructed to translate, from their ‘mind’s eye’, the colour they most strongly associate with their experience of hydrangeas. The result is a collection of essentially monochrome surfaces steeped with hidden and concealed recollections of mothers and mother’s mothers, former neighbours and neighbourhoods, marriage, childbirth city front-yards, suburban backyards, households and broken family homes. More visually evident (than the personal histories imbued in the paintings) is the materiality and individually distinctive application of paint to surface. These largely monochrome works give a condensed, and detail like insight into each artist’s painterly signature, almost all of which are instantly recognisable.

- Sally Anderson, 2022

READ MORE HERE

Congratulations to Belem Lett who has won the 2022 Omnia Art Prize for the most outstanding work in any medium.

The prize was judged by Charlotte Day, Director of Monash University Museum of Art. The exhibition is open until 30th May at St. Kevins College, Toorak.

READ MORE HERE

This Sun Burns For Us 2022
oil, gesso, marble dust on aluminum composite panel
152 x 150cm

Hosted by Namila Benson, Art Works is the ABC's weekly half-hour arts show sharing the most inspiring, surprising, and formative ways that Australian creatives are telling our stories today.

Namila talks to artist Christopher Zanko who shares how he combines woodcarving and painting.

Episode 10 Venice Biennale, Deborah Kelly

Duration: 27 minutes 10 seconds27m

Congratulations to Christopher Zanko and Paul Ryan who are finalists with a collaborative work in the 2022 Sulman Art Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The Sulman Prize is awarded for the best subject painting, genre painting or mural project by an Australian artist.

Christopher Zanko and Paul Ryan's work is set against the backdrop of Wollongong in NSW. This painting is concerned with the vulnerability of the changing demographics of an area once defined by coal mining, steelmaking and allied industries.

READ MORE HERE

PAUL RYAN + CHRISTOPHER ZANKO
Bulli, Rock Steady 2022
oil and acrylic on wood relief carving
120 x 100 cm

Congratulations to Belem Lett who is a finalist in the 2022 Sulman Art Prize.

The Sulman Prize is awarded for the best subject painting, genre painting or mural project by an Australian artist. Established within the terms of Sir John Sulman’s bequest, the prize was first awarded in 1936. Each year the trustees of the Art Gallery of NSW invite a guest artist to judge this open competition. Finalists are displayed in an exhibition at the Gallery opening on the 14th of May.

READ MORE HERE

Bending Over Backwards 2022
oil, gesso, marble dust on aluminium composite panel
150 x 125 cm

‘Expanded Canvas’ is a major exhibition at Town Hall Gallery exploring the dynamic and innovative nature of contemporary painting. The traditional grid and 2D picture plane are replaced by modern surfaces, including drop sheets, sign vinyl, virtual space, and the gallery wall itself.

Bundit’s mural painting will be exhibited in the major exhibition ‘Expanded Canvas’, showing at Hawthorn Arts Centre, Victoria - 23 April to Saturday 2 July 2022.

READ MORE HERE

The disparate textural layers of Aggregates in Construct blend the myriad forms and patterns of nature marked by the boundaries of human action. Ari Athans’ stacked, sculptural arrangements flow between the handmade, organic and industrial, marking the liminal points where the landscape rests upon and collides with the built world.

- Art Almanac, 2022

IMAGE:

Ari Athans

Ultra Surface 2022

ceramic, wood, vesicular basalt, acrylic paint

36 x 22 x 20 cm

READ MORE HERE

For more than twenty years ceramic artist Vipoo Srivilasa has created intricate and elaborate artworks that reflect his bicultural experience living between Australia and Thailand. He celebrates the intersections and overlaps between cultural, social, philosophical and environmental contemplations on life in a pandemic. VAULT asked Srivilasa to share some of his most beloved artefacts.

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

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

IMAGE:

Tara Marynowsky, image courtesy National Sound and Film Archive

READ MORE HERE

There is more to Miranda Skoczek’s paintings than immediately meets the eye. They are built intuitively and in layers, from colours, patterns and objects that she absorbs in her immediate home environment – and all over the world. They are often abstract, sometimes with figurative elements; they focus on paint and colour, process and time, to create a space that takes us somewhere other, outside the material world. Inspiration comes from art and antiquities, folk art and contemporary design – and through obsessive consumption of images. Skoczek describes herself as “a sponge,” confessing to VAULT: “I have 95,000 photographs on my phone.”

The mystical is evident in Skoczek’s hope that her paintings work like amulets for those who acquire them. Protective elements aside, in their sensual textures and influences, so powerfully evoked, these paintings emerge as poignant and poetic visual essays written to the past and the present."\

- Louise Martin-Chew, Vault Magazine

IMAGE:

Front Cover of Vault Magazine, Issue 37, 2022, featuring Miranda Skoczek's Dreaming of Betty (Woodman), 2018

READ MORE HERE

The main idea of this show is to speculate if Sydney, Australia, a sprawling conurbation of coastal and landlocked suburbs, has anything artistically in common with the metropolis of Los Angeles. I am also speculating that there is such a thing as Australian cool, which might reflect or correspond with a perception held that LA art is definitely cool. LA’s emergence as an important art city has been an ongoing matter for debate but has recently become cemented by the by appearance in LA of some major new art museums and international galleries.

Artists: Ron Adams, Polly Borland, Chris Dolman, Belem Lett, Adam Norton, Philjames, Genevieve Felix Reynolds

Durden & Ray, Los Angeles
19 March - 9 April 2022

Title: The River, 2022
Medium: oil, gesso, marble dust on aluminium composite panel
Size: 81 x 61 cm

READ MORE HERE

The Blake Prize is one of Australia's longest standing and most prestigious prizes which encourages conversation about religion and spirituality through art and poetry.

Belem Lett has been named as a finalist for the 67^th Blake Prize, 2022.

Title: Electric Dreams, 2021
Medium: oil on aluminium composite panel
Size: 152 x 150 cm

READ MORE HERE

David Roach, co-curator of the Clifton Contemporary Art Fair, talked to one of the high-profile participating artists, Paul Ryan.

Paul Ryan’s striking, often provocative paintings are sort by collectors both in Australia and internationally. Many feature the Northern Illawarra coast and escarpment as seen from the ocean.

READ MORE HERE

Paul Ryan is a finalist in Newcastle Art Gallery's Kilgour Art Prize 2021.

The Kilgour Prize is Newcastle's annual art prize for figurative and portrait painting. It awards $50,000 for the most outstanding work of art and a People’s Choice of $5000 to the painting voted most popular by the general public. Each year the Gallery receives hundreds of applications from across Australia.

'Three Imaginary Boys' 2021
oil on linen
138 x 153 cm

The Grace Cossington Smith Art Prize is inspired by the work of Abbotsleigh Old Girl and artist Grace Cossington Smith who made connections with her changing world through her drawing and painting.

Congratulations to Belem Lett for being finalist in three Grace Cossington Smith Art Prize awards for 2022.

Title: Wave Racer, 2021
Medium: oil on aluminium composite panel
Size: 110 x 80 cm

READ MORE HERE

The Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award is a significant national biennial exhibition that promotes excellence and innovation in the field of art on paper. This year, Hazelhurst received over 700 entries from artists throughout Australia.

Belem Lett has been selected to exhibit for the Art on Paper award 2022.

Title: Sunflower, 2021
Medium: oil, gesso on 12 sheets stonehenge paper
Size: 228 x 228cm

READ MORE HERE

Vipoo Srivilasa’s immersive, participatory installation Shrine of Life/ Benjapakee Shrine 2021, featuring five hand-crafted ceramic deities representing attributes important to the artist: identity, love equality, creativity, security and spirituality has been acquired by Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art. The work, finished with gold lustre and floral embellishments, reflects Srivilasa’s holistic approach to life, and encourages audiences to appreciate the things that unite us.

His artwork for APT10 expands his practice, building on its audience-oriented qualities. The artist has created a reflective, shrine-like space that houses five secular deities representing attributes important to him — love equality, spirituality, security, identity, and creativity — and asks visitors to join him in celebrating them. Through the work, Srivilasa venerates memories of his Thai homeland, acknowledges what his relocation to Australia has meant to him, and encourages viewers to appreciate both our differences and our commonalities.

QUEENSLAND ART GALLERY 'ASIA PACIFIC TRIENNIAL'

4 December 2021 - 25 April 2022

READ MORE HERE

Garland Magazine
WILL MY HEART REMEMBER?
By Aaron Bradbrook

Aaron Bradbrook presents, re/JOY, a project by Vipoo Srivilasa to reincarnate objects relinquished by residents of Warrnambool.

READ MORE HERE

The Art Gallery of Ballarat has acquired two Vipoo Srivilasa works for their permanent collection. The works are 'Aqium' and 'Lori the Healthcare Hero' from the COVID SUPERHERO EXHIBITION 2020.

What does a COVID-19 superhero look like? Ceramicist Vipoo Srivilasa has created a collection of superheroes inspired by the dreams of people in the Ballarat community. Each superhero has a special power to fight off COVID-19.

This project is a collaboration between the Art Gallery of Ballarat and the City of Ballarat’s Creative City team.

READ MORE HERE

NGV is committed to providing creative experiences for young people and their families and sharing new ways to be creative. The gallery invited Bundit Puangthong to conduct a series of online workshops for their NGV Kids programme, during the 2021 Melbourne lockdown.

With a background in puppeteering, Bundit created a range of workshops with an introduction to making paper puppets.

READ MORE HERE

This year Bundit Puangthong was a finalist with his work 'Riding Stars' 2021 in the Sunshine Coast Art Prize - a visual arts award reflecting outstanding contemporary 2D arts practice in Australia. 16 years into this annual award, it has become the pinnacle event for the Sunshine Coast’s Regional Gallery in Caloundra, attracting entries from emerging and established artists across the nation.

READ MORE HERE

Bundit Puangthong is a finalist in the 2021 Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize, with his work 'The Living Room' 2021. Occurring biennially, the 'Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize' attracts Australian artists and awards an acquisitive prize of $50,000. The Prize provides Bendigo Art Gallery with the opportunity to survey contemporary painting by established and emerging artists from across Australia.

READ MORE HERE

SDFSDF

Arts Hub
Exhibition Review: Vipoo Srivilasa: Wellness Deity, Linden New Art by Celina Lei
22 May 2021- 22 August 2021

Wellness Deity
The Wellness Deity Project, which Srivilasa undertook in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This collaborative, community-driven project encouraged people to reflect on their experience of the pandemic. The artist invited people to submit a drawing of their Wellness Deity, a being that has a special empowering or protective power. Srivilasa selected 19 of these drawings to provide inspiration for a series of ceramic sculptures. Each deity has its own unique characteristics based on the personal stories submitted. Each work is also accompanied by a piece of commissioned creative writing.

READ MORE HERE

Flash Forward is a Melbourne based project that aims to reinvigorate some lesser-known laneways with visual and acoustic designs from local creatives. The project has invited more than 80 artists to work on commissions of art installations, albums, and stage gigs across the city.

As part of the project Bundit was commissioned to make a large-scale work in Rose Lane.

READ MORE HERE

The 2021 Geelong contemporary art prize is a signature event that assists with the development of the Geelong Gallery’s collection while fostering Australian artists and contemporary painting practice in general.

Bundit Puangthong’s work ‘Skull splitter’ takes inspiration from a famous Buddhist story where a prince’s ship sinks, and he has to swim all the way back to shore. The story represents the challenges we all face, despite our social status, and the lessons we learn from them. ⁠

⁠
IMAGE:

Bundit Puangthong

Skull splitter 2020

synthetic polymer paint and spray paint

READ MORE HERE

Spanning over a career of 20 years, Thai-Australian artist Vipoo Srivilasa has harnessed art’s ability to connect creatives, organisations and the broader community.

Wellness Deity captured this collaborative energy in the light-filled room of Linden’s ground floor gallery. The 19 drawing submissions and accompanying writing surround the walls while Srivilasa’s ceramic iterations sit across two tables at the centre of the space. The hand-selected drawings from a total of 63 submissions from Australia and overseas showcase stories rooted in reflections, experiences, and hopes emerging out of the pandemic. Words Celina Lei

READ MORE HERE

Art, Activism And The Archibald

CREATIVE PEOPLE

Art has always been a vehicle for social dialogue, and a window into current political issues. When Sydney artist Julian Meagher met former professional soccer player, commentator and human rights advocate Craig ‘Fozzy’ Foster AM, he was inspired.

READ MORE ON THE DESIGN FILES HERE

Marisa Purcell is a finalist in the 2021 Sulman Prize with her work 'That Time of Day'. Administered by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the prize was first awarded in 1936. Each year the trustees invite a guest artist to judge the competition.

Marisa's work 'That time of day' considers those moments between day and night, where the last burst of blue lets itself dissipate into the darkness. These transitory spaces are intrinsic to human experience everywhere.

The painting contemplates layers of light and colour and the affect it can have when you are surrounded by it. Supported by a warm ground of raw linen and pink, veils of transparent colour shift in and out of perceptibility, activating an awareness of looking. This is a human-scaled painting, intended as an opportunity to feel and connect with this shared human experience.

Stefan Dunlop's work 'Splash II' has been donated to the Sunshine Coast Art Collection through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, 2021.

The Sunshine Coast Art Collection now numbers over 800 works, including winning works of the inaugural Sunshine Coast Art Prize in 2006 by one of the foremost Nyoongar artists, Shane Pickett (1957 – 2010).

"The prize’s main impetus is to build the Collection, but it’s also a great device for visibility of the vibrancy of the Sunshine Coast arts and culture."
- Collection Curator Nina Shadforth, 2021

IMAGES:

1/ Philanthropist Ferre De Deyne, Collection Curator Nina Shadforth and artist Stefan Dunlop

2/ Stefan Dunlop
Splash II 2017
oil on canvas
200 × 240.5 cm

VIPOO SRIVILASA

Wellness Deity 22 May 2021 > 22 August 2021

This exhibition will present the Wellness Deity Project, which Vipoo Srivilasa undertook in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This collaborative, community-driven project encouraged people to reflect on their experience of the pandemic. The artist invited people to submit a drawing of their Wellness Deity, a being that has a special empowering or protective power. Srivilasa selected 19 of these drawings to provide inspiration for a series of ceramic sculptures. Each deity has its own unique characteristics based on the personal stories submitted. Each work is also accompanied by a piece of commissioned creative writing.

READ MORE HERE

E-CATALOGUE

Established in 2015, the Bayside Painting Prize is one of the most generous non-acquisitive painting prizes in Australia. The exhibition draws together a breadth of artists with varied approaches to painting. This allows the Bayside City Council to futher promote artists to the Bayside community from across Australia, providing painters with support to continue their practice.

Tim McMonagle's work 'Put Upon' 2020 is a finalist in this year's prize.

IMAGE:

Tim McMonagle

Put upon 2020

oil on linen

138 x 138 cm

READ MORE HERE

Established in 2015, the Bayside Painting Prize is one of the most generous non-acquisitive painting prizes in Australia. The exhibition draws together a breadth of artists with varied approaches to painting. This allows the Bayside City Council to further develop its collection and promote artists to the Bayside community.

Belem Lett's work 'Pineapples' 2019 is a finalist in this year's prize.

READ MORE HERE

WORDS EMMA-KATE WILSON

A few years ago, Sydney-based artist Julian Meagher welcomed the birth of his son and found himself working more instinctively. ‘I think I’m making better works because I am taking a lot more risks, I make so many more bad paintings that end up in the bin now than I used to,’ he comments.

When his daughter was born eight months ago, he went through a whole new level of sleep deprivation and heartbreak, with their little girl suffering reflux for six months. ‘Sleepwalking’ channels this energy, exploring the space between altered states, the subconscious and dreaming.

Alongside ultra-romantic pink and blue landscapes, complete with rainbows, built through active painting, raw brushstrokes and delicate fades, Meagher presents his sleeping family. The small and intimate portraits connect with the large glitchy, idyllic landscapes. ‘I’m trying to make sense of the complex human existence through the power and beauty of nature,’ he adds, ‘I feel like a rainbow next to a little sleeping baby is what we need right now … A hope that things will get better on both a personal and collective level.’

Meagher’s palette is deliberately muted, soft, subtle. He says, ‘I think painting is only good if you’re true to yourself. Painting is a kind of meditation for me in a way; I want the end result to slow down my breath rate.’

To construct his portraits and colour fields – which can be read as landscapes, abstracted, or the sky out of his studio window – Meagher applies thin layers and begins to remove the colour as it starts to dry. Working against the drying time of the paint stops the artist from ‘overcooking’ them. By revealing the linen below, the canvases hold luminosity, adding a watercolour effect evocative of the ocean-inspired landscapes. ‘We’ve all seen those storms out to sea; it’s in our collective consciousness,’ he explains, ‘most can associate strong memories and rites of passage with these coastline images.’

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE

How Vipoo Srivilasa is repairing happiness

STUDIO

19 May 2021

Ceramicist Vipoo Srivilasa has a penchant for intricate and layered decoration that, he explains, is influenced by the ornate Buddhist temples he encountered growing up in Thailand. With an aesthetic he cheerfully describes as “more is more,” Srivilasa’s distinctive work also draws on European historical figurines and “a healthy dose of contemporary culture”. We chatted over cups of sencha tea in Srivilasa’s clean, bright warehouse studio in the suburb of Cheltenham, in Melbourne’s south-east.

Place
I’ve made this space really comfortable because I spend most of my time here, almost seven days a week. I come here about 7:30 in the morning and leave at 3:30 in the afternoon, go home, and do some shopping. Then I work on the computer, like writing or administration, in the evenings. Most of the time I’m just here; I live 10 minutes from here, so it’s really easy. Sometimes I go home for lunch—but I’ve found it kind of distracting, like you go home and it’s hard to come back again. So I bring my own lunch, or I’ll walk around the corner for a Vietnamese lunch.

READ MORE HERE

Dan Kyle's work is part of Wangaratta Art Gallery's exhibition 'Contemporary Landscape Perspectives: A Group Show' from 13 March – 30 May 2021.

This dynamic exhibition of five contemporary landscape Australian painters, Max Berry, Holly Greenwood, Dan Kyle, Bronte Leighton-Dore and Andrew Pye explores individual perspectives of elements of the Australian bush, the terrain, landscape and key symbolism of trees and flora in their immediate environment.

All five artists are emerging as contemporary painters in the Australian art scene. Berry, Greenwood, Kyle and Leighton-Dore are New South Wales based (Sydney and Blue Mountains), the four have partnered with local artist Andy Pye, the group have connections both through friendship but also their oeuvre, their painting practice and style. Each artists surrounding environments are re-interpreted in large scale paintings and works on paper.

This collection of artists and their work presents a diversity of expression and contemporary representation of the Australian Bush.

READ MORE HERE

Sally Anderson has been included in an exhibition and article by The Australian which highlight new Australian art on the market.

It’s this moment of evolution that has inspired The Australian’s Summer Exhibition — a showcase of sculptures, paintings, photographs and works on paper. Beautiful to look at, it’s a celebration of some of the best and brightest artists working today. All 50 pieces have been selected because they signify what’s happening in Australian art and culture right now.

So, what is happening right now? The primary art market in Australia is experiencing a small boom. For obvious reasons, flying to international art fairs is off the cards, and this has led Australian collectors to rediscover a local market packed full of prodigious works by tomorrow’s household names.

It means there’s a renewed focus on Australian stories and more opportunities for emerging artists to have their work seen, as gallerists and buyers look toward home. It’s this time of risk-taking and yes, even optimism that our summer exhibition represents.

- Amy Campbell, The Australian, 2021

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Copywriter and content specialist Elle McClure was asked by the team at Medium Rare Content agency to help produce content for the autumn 2021 issue of the David Jones magazine, JONES HOME. As well as compiling trend pages and writing copy across the issue, Elle interviewed Otis Hope Carey, Louise Olsen and Miranda Skoczek as part of profiles on the artists.

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John Bokor is a finalist in the Dobell Drawing Prize with this work titled Lounge Room in Spring 2020, charcoal, wash and collage, 84 x 100 cm.

The Dobell Drawing Prize is the leading drawing exhibition in Australia and an unparalleled celebration of drawing innovation. Presented in partnership with the Sir William Dobell Art Foundation (SWDAF), the biennial prize explores the enduring importance of drawing within contemporary art practice.

William Dobell’s love of drawing was recognised in 1993 when the Art Gallery of New South Wales established an annual drawing prize in his name, initiated by the trustees of the SWDAF. For twenty years, the annual Dobell Prize for Drawing encouraged excellence in drawing and draughtsmanship among Australian artists.

IMAGE:
John Bokor
Lounge Room in Spring 2020
charcoal, wash, and collage
84 x 100 cm

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Yarrenyty Arltere Artists and Tangentyere Artists, Blak Parliament House, 2021, commissioned by the National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra for the 4th National Indigenous Art Triennial: Ceremony.

Blak Parliament House is a 2021 installation of soft sculptures and paintings created collaboratively by members of Yarrenyty Altere Artists and Tangentyere Artists, Aboriginal-run art centres located in Mpwarnte/Alice Springs, Northern Territory. The structure is surrounded by people, animals, meetings and debates, as well as placards protesting the treatment of Aboriginal people.

The soft sculptures, created by members of Yarrenyty Altere Artists, are made from reclaimed woollen blankets, carefully dyed with pigments sourced from local plants, tea, and corroding metal, embellished with brightly coloured woollen thread and feathers. Alongside this is a series of paintings taking the form of placards created by artists from Tangentyere Artists, they bear slogans such as ‘SAFE WATER FOR EVERYONE’ and ‘OUR KIDS BELONG WITH US’.

For many First Nations peoples, especially those living in remote and regional areas, Kamberri/Canberra is seen as a distant place where decisions are made that affect their everyday lives. This interpretation of Parliament House shows Aboriginal people and others meeting, debating, and taking an active role in the political process.

IMAGE

Yarrenyty Arltere Artists and Tangentyere Artists

Blak Parliament House 2021

National Gallery of Australia

LISTEN TO MARLENE RUBUNJA AND READ MORE HERE

'Lovelock' is the presentation of a new suite of paintings by Tim McMonagle that have been directly informed by a new suite of sound works, produced for this project by Paul Knight, who is resident in Berlin.

Transference. The change of elemental states. The search for a place not here nor there.

These were our early concepts for the exhibition. Be careful what you wish for. Despite an unpredictable year in all corners of the globe, the original framework for the project is in place: to commission work from one artist to inform the work of the other. The idea & process is elliptical and is revealed over a period of time in three sections.

The fulcrum is a set of paintings by Tim McMonagle. They will be made using source imagery around the idea of “A Place Between / Not here nor there”. We approached Paul Knight in Berlin to create source images generated by this diaristic photographic practice. Then the pandemic happened, and nothing was the same.

In isolation in Berlin, Paul had immersed himself in his music practice, making soundscapes without traditional song structures, using sources completely derived from synthetic sounds: purely electronic space. The fit with the original concept was perfect. We devised a limit of the 12” LP to set the duration of the material. The square of the LP cover echoes Tim’s exclusive canvas ratio, the square.

The six tracks are to be issued as source material to McMonagle for his body of paintings. Tim has always hankered to work with a non-visual source for a group of paintings & this serendipitous outcome has both artists exhilarated by the possibility of extending their practice.

- Greenwood Street Project

The final part of this work is the unification of the germinal sound work by Paul Knight. Tim McMonagle’s paintings, and documentation of the exhibition to be presented at Greenwood Street Project in early 2021 in an LP/catalogue.

LISTEN HERE

Stefan Dunlop's 2020 work 'Composition #1 with Bust' has recently been acquired by Artbank, Australia.

Artbank is part of the Australian Government Office for the Arts, in the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts. For 40 years Artbank has supported Australia’s contemporary art sector.

Established in 1980 by the Australian Government, Artbank’s two core objectives are to provide direct support to Australian contemporary artists through the acquisition of their work and to promote the value of Australian contemporary art to the broader public.

The Artbank collection was founded with an endowment of 600 artworks from the National Collection (now the National Gallery of Australia) and has since grown to include more than 10,000 works spanning media including painting, sculpture, video and photography. Through leasing works to individuals, companies and governments (at all levels), Artbank lives up to its policy principle of promoting broad access to Australian contemporary art. Through our leasing of artworks to Australian embassies and other overseas posts, we provide access to Australian contemporary art in approximately 70 countries across the globe.

IMAGE:

Stefan Dunlop

Composition #1 with Bust 2020

oil on linen

150 x 170cm

SHOWCASE

One in three American museums have not re-opened after lockdowns in March. But art continues to be bought, lent, and displayed by private banks. Dieter Buchhart, Art Critic

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N\H artist Paul Ryan is a finalist in Australia's most anticipated art prize, the 2020 Archibald, Wynne and Sulman. The exhibition is on show at the Art Gallery of New South Wales until January 10th 2021.

Paul Ryan's painting "Three Imaginary Boys" is the artist's sixth finalist selection in the Sulman Prize. He is a 13-time Archibald finalist and five-time Wynne Prize finalist. Paul has won the Paddington Art Prize (2007 & 2010), Geelong Contemporary Art Prize (2012) and has been a finalist numerous times in the Mosman Prize, Moran Prize, Fishers Ghost, Kilgour, Tattersals and other major awards.

'Three Imaginary Boys' 2020
oil on linen
138 x 153 cm

In his podcast Alan Kohler tells the world that his three best non-share investments (that he actually owns) are:

1. A house in Richmond, Melbourne
2. A painting by Stefan Dunlop
3. A longines watch

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Vipoo Srivilasa has been awarded The 2021 Ceramic Artist of the Year by the editorial staff of Ceramics Monthly and Pottery Making Illustrated (USA).

The annual Ceramic Artist of the Year award is presented to an artist whose work reflects current aesthetics and sets an example for ceramic artists by embracing current trends, technology, studio, marketing, and/or community-focused practices.

“Over the course of your career, you’ve been very active with exhibitions, winning numerous awards, public art projects, teaching, mentoring, and community outreach. In addition, you have helped to support and advance the global clay community through innovative social media fundraising campaigns, among other projects.

You have also been very active in engaging with the field of ceramics and expanding creative connections with other creative fields and the wider community.

The fact that you can consistently create work as a self-employed artist in addition to having a busy international workshop, lecture, and exhibition schedule is impressive. In short due to all of your personal creative achievements, as well as your dedication to the field, we feel that you are more than deserving of the Ceramic Artist of the Year award.”

Jessica Knapp

Editor, Ceramics Monthly Magazine, Associate Editor, Pottery Making Illustrated, at The American Ceramic Society

In addition to the monetary award, The Artist of the Year feature will be in the 2021 Ceramic Arts Yearbook.

For the first time in its 22 year history, the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship has been awarded to five artists, one of whom is Dan Kyle.

Congratulations Charlie Ingemar Harding (Victoria), Emily Grace Imeson (NSW), Dan Kyle (NSW), Lily Platts (NSW) and Georgia Spain (Tasmania).

Art Gallery of New South Wales Director, Michael Brand, said that in one of the most challenging years the arts community has ever experienced he’s delighted that the Scholarship could be awarded, albeit in a different format.

‘That the Scholarship this year is shared between five artists instead of a single artist speaks to the moment we’re in, where we all need to work together and find new ways of thinking for the benefit of our community.

‘The Scholarship remains a prestigious, national painting award and I welcome all five recipients to the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship alumni who have, like Brett Whiteley before them, had their worlds open up as a result of being offered this opportunity to spend time creating work in a new location,’ Brand said.

Emmanuel College within the University of Queensland commissioned a portrait of immediate past principal Dr Jane Thomson by artist Judith Sinnamon.

Congratulations to Sally Anderson whose upcoming exhibition has been featured in Brisbane Art Guide.

To coincide with her exhibition at Tweed Regional Gallery, Edwina Corlette Gallery is delighted to present a series of new paintings by Sally Anderson. Sally is a past winner of the prestigious Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship and a finalist in this year’s Portia Geach Award for female portraiture, with her painting of Claudia Karvan (below).

Born in Lismore, Anderson began her undergraduate studies in Visual Art at Southern Cross University before transferring to the College of Fine Art in Sydney. A past finalist in the Sunshine Coast Art Prize and the Paddington Art Prize, Anderson was invited to participate in the Association of Icelandic Visual Artists Residency in Reykjavik in 2014. Her work has been acquired by Artbank, the Australian Catholic University and corporate and private clients in Australia and Europe.

- Brisbane Art Guide, 2020

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The concept of home has changed in 2020. For a lot of people, home has never been just one static place, and yet in the last few months that stasis has been forced upon us. In the midst of shelter-in-place orders, we’ve been directed to decide on a single location that represents our place in the world and stay there, hoping it keeps us safe.

Reframing the domestic space as a new landscape intrigues artist and new mother Sally Anderson. Her new body of work is entitled Bridal Veil Falls, the Window and the Piano Lesson, and was created almost entirely in lockdown. The pieces will be on display at Edwina Corlette gallery in Brisbane from tomorrow, in an exhibition that explores the fusion between Sally’s subjective experience of parenthood, and the collective endurance of pandemic paralysis.

- Sasha Gattermayr, The Design Files, 2020

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To help my son sleep we put on white noise of a small river in Scotland and Llyn Gwynant waves in Wales. The toponomy of Lismore indicates it was named after Isle of Lismore which lies in Loch Linnhe, an arm of the sea, on the West Coast of Scotland. I was born in Lismore early 1990, an experience I hadn’t intimately considered until the birth of my son a couple of years ago. My son was conceived in the Nancy Fairfax Artist in Residence Studio at Tweed Regional Gallery. There’s a pair of hoop pines (aka Richmond River Pines) that dominate the side view from the residency verandah. I often use these trees, along with banksias, within my work to represent the Northern Rivers region, my transition to motherhood and European exploration/invasion of Australia.

The works in 'Arm of the Sea and the Fertile Tree' use landscape metaphor rather than subject. Intimate personal experience and collective experience are translated into paintings, bedspreads, windows, still lifes and stages.

- Sally Anderson, 2020

The exhibition is open from 3 July — 29 November 2020

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IMAGE:
Installation image of Sally Anderson's exhibition at Tweed Regional Gallery

Sally Anderson's work 'Claude Swimming' has been selected as a finalist in the Portia Geach Prize for 2020. The painting of Claudia Karvan, actress, producer and writer will be exhibited at the National Trust's S.H. Ervin Gallery.

The Portia Geach Memorial Award was established in 1965 to be annually presented to an Australian female artist. Portia Geach was an iconic figure in the Australian arts community, acclaimed for her art and media presence, and as such the award was created in her honour. The award is specifically for the best portrait painted from the life of someone well renowned in art, academia, or science.

The exhibition will be open in Sydney from 14 August – 20 September 2020.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
Sally Anderson
Claude Swimming, 2020
acrylic on linen
168 x 137cm

Paul Ryan is a finalist in the Mosman Art Prize.

Established in 1947, the Mosman Art Prize is Australia's oldest and most prestigious local government art award. It was founded by the artist, architect and arts advocate, Alderman Allan Gamble. In it's seventieth year, the Mosman Art Prize has developed in stature to become Australia’s most prestigious municipally funded art prize with a national profile. It regularly attracts over 900 entries annually and currently offers over $60,000 in prizes.

The 2020 Mosman Art Prize was judged by Alexie Glass-Kantor, Executive Director of Artspace, Sydney.

Congratulations to Stefan Dunlop who is a finalist in the 2020 Sunshine Coast National Art Prize with his 2018 work 'Pink, Green, Blue'.

The acquisitive Sunshine Coast National Art Prize is a dynamic visual arts award reflecting outstanding contemporary 2D and new media arts practice in Australia.

IMAGE

Stefan Dunlop

Pink, Green, Blue 2018

oil on linen

164 x 122cm

Vipoo Srivilasa’s interactive 'Love Lab' performance offers participants the chance to reflect on the ingredients that make up their love language and in turn, to finally find out how good or bad love tastes.

Love Lab will be performed on the opening night of Objects of Love Exhibition, 12 March - 13 May 2020. The show presents artworks which symbolise and reflect love of all kinds across cultures. Working from different cultural perspectives, the artists each explore themes of contemporary and traditional exchanges of love, connection to loved ones, and the strength and fragility of bonds of love.

Artists include Vipoo Srivilasa, Cyrus Tang, Kate Just, Zaiba Khan and Varuni Kanagasundaram.

https://www.craft.org.au/craft-whats-on-events/lovelabperformance

Image: Love Lab performance 2019

The Korea-Australia Arts Foundation Prize is run annually in cooperation with the Korean Cultural Centre.

Srivilasa's work 'The Course of True Love' is about the same-sex marriage journey. The series is realised in five bronze vignettes representing moments in world history that have contributed directly or indirectly to the acceptance of same-sex partnerships, and led Australia to pass the same sex marriage law in 2018. The moments including the Stoneware riots, Thailand decriminalising homosexuality, the establishment of Society Five, the first homosexual rights organisation in Melbourne, the Simpsons dedicating an entire episode to the same-sex marriage topic and the Yes campaign.

“I work predominantly with ceramics but for this series I chose to work with bronze. I use bronze, a robust and permanent medium to symbolise the strong concept of marriage and a solid commitment a couple makes to each other. Bronze is also a medium for religion statues. It would represent the sacred concept of marriage in my work.” …Vipoo Srivilasa

The Course of True Love will be part of Objects of Loves exhibition at Craft Victoria, Melbourne. 12 March - 13 May 2020

Image: The Course of True Love 2019

Suburbia

Rob Howe, Kevin McKay, Lucy O’Doherty, Zuza Zochowski

In this exhibition four artists come together to explore what the Great Australian Dream looks like through different eyes. From urban scapes with industrial and commercial buildings, to idiosyncratic depictions of post war architecture and suburban streetscapes that could be anywhere. As they reflect on their own experience of home, community and place, the artists create their own nostalgia, formed through popular culture and personal experience.

15 February — 7 March 2020

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Roopanakar Museum of Fine Arts, Bhopal, India

13 February - 30 March 2020

Inaugurated by the then Prime Minister of India, Mrs. Indira Gandhi on 13th February 1982, Bharat Bhavan is a multi art centre, set up to create an interactive proximity between the verbal, visual and performing arts. Bharat Bhavan provides space for contemporary expression, thought, quest and innovation. Bharat Bhavan seeks to provide a creative and thought provoking milieu to those who wish to contribute something new and meaningful, in contemporary scene in the fine arts, literature, theatre, cinema, dance and music.

Bharat Bhavan International Ceramic Exhibition is a feature part of the 38th anniversary celebrations. It is the first time an international exhibition of ceramic art has been organized in the state. Eminent ceramic artists from India, US, Australia, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Germany, Ireland, Italy, China and France are attending the exhibition.

Vipoo Srivilasa is representing Australia.

Image: vipoo at the opening

The Glover Prize has announced its 42 finalists for 2020. These finalists represent the Judges’ selection of the best artworks of the Tasmanian landscape, chosen from the entrants coming from every Australian state and territory. These 42 artworks will be on display at the Glover Prize Exhibition at Falls Park Pavilion in Evandale, Tasmania during March this year.

The judges for the Glover Prize 2020 are Queensland Art Gallery | Museum of Modern Art (QAGOMA) director, Chris Saines; Sydney artist, Fiona Lowry; Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) Senior Curator and Dark Mofo Associate Artistic Director, Jarrod Rawlins. The judges next task is to carefully narrow down the 42 finalists to choose the winner of the $50,000 cash prize. After its display at the exhibition, the John Glover Society Inc. will acquire the winning artwork for its collection.

Belem Lett's work Burn Baby Burn 2020 has been selected as one of the finalists. The exhibition commences on 6 March, running from Saturday the 7th of March, 2020 and continuing until the end of the following weekend on Sunday the 15th of March, 2020, at the historic Falls Park Pavilion in Evandale.

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'Artefacts', Alison Kubler, Vault Magazine, Issue 23, 104-105pp.

The Museum of Brisbane has acquired Judith Sinnamon's portrait of Pamela Easton, one half of renowned fashion label duo Easton Pearson. This has been acquired in alignment with the museum's existing collection of garments, accessories, and ephemera from Easton Pearson. The Museum of Brisbane's collection is the largest collection from a single Australian fashion house held by a museum - as such, Judith Sinnamon's work is a wonderful addition to the collection.

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Bridie Gillman has been been selected as one of six finalists in the prestigious Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship, administered by the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

The annual Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship is now in its 21st year and is open to Australian painters aged between 20 and 30 years. It was created from an endowment by Mrs Beryl Whiteley in 1999. The inspiration was the profound effect international travel and study had on her son, the artist Brett Whiteley, as a result of winning the Italian Government Travelling Art Scholarship in 1959 at the age of 20.

The Gosford Art Prize is the premier art prize of the Central Coast region, with local and national artists engaged in friendly competition for over $25,000 in total prizes.

My paintings talk of relationship, context and metaphor. They are loaded with autobiographical content, draw on past and present experiences and often arrive in pairs. Recent paintings use abstraction, still life and borrowed landscapes to reference everyday intimate experience held in object and place. They explore the self and use abstraction, landscape and still life as devices to do so.

- Sally Anderson, The Design Files, 2019.

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Dan Kyle's work 'Caught in a Haze' has been selected as a finalist in the Mosman Art Prize

Established in 1947, the Mosman Art Prize is Australia's oldest and most prestigious local government art award. As an acquisitive art award for painting, the winning artworks collected form a splendid collection of modern and contemporary Australian art, reflecting developments in Australian art practice since 1947. Artists who have won the Mosman Art Prize include Margaret Olley, Guy Warren, Grace Cossington Smith, Weaver Hawkins, Nancy Borlase, Lloyd Rees, Elisabeth Cummings, Adam Cullen, Michael Zavros and Natasha Walsh.

Until 27 October 2019, Mosman Art Gallery

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Sally Anderson's work 'Side of the Road River with Rousseau's Bluebells' has been selected as a finalist in the Mosman Art Prize

Mosman Art Prize was established in 1947, and is Australia's oldest and most prestigious local government art award. The winning artworks join a collection of modern and contemporary Australian art, reflecting developments in Australian art practice since 1947. Artists who have won the Mosman Art Prize include Margaret Olley, Guy Warren, Grace Cossington Smith, Weaver Hawkins, Nancy Borlase, Lloyd Rees, Elisabeth Cummings, Adam Cullen, Michael Zavros and Natasha Walsh.

The exhibition is open until 27 October 2019 at Mosman Art Gallery.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
SALLY ANDERSON
Side of the Road River with Rousseau's Bluebells 2019
acrylic on linen

Still is a biennial, acquisitive award for artworks in the genre of still life, in all mediums. The award is open to artists at all stages of their careers. Still: National Still Life Award seeks to highlight the diversity and vitality of still life in Australian contemporary art practice, broadening the interpretation and meaning of this enduring genre.

The Still exhibition opens at Coffs Harbour Regional Gallery on Friday 20th September 2019, with the official opening on Saturday 21st September, and runs until Saturday 30th November 2019.

Christopher Zanko is a finalist in the 2019 award.

Image: CHRISTOPHER ZANKO 'Sundial' 2019

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Since 2001 The Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award has been a significant national biennial exhibition that aims to elevate the status of works on paper while supporting and promoting artists working with this medium.

With prize money totalling $26,000, the Award showcases outstanding art created with, on or about paper. Artists compete for the $15,000 major award; the Young & Early Career Artist and the Friends of Hazelhurst Local Artist Awards ($5,000 each); and the People’s Choice Award ($1,000), plus the Hazelhurst Preparator’s choice Residency Award.

Image below: BELEM LETT 'Mountains of Madness' 2019, mixed media on paper, 148 x 110 cm

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Administered by Bendigo Art Gallery and held every two years, the Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize is designed to attract some of Australia’s finest contemporary artists, awarding a generous acquisitive cash prize of $50,000.

Belem Lett is a finalist in the 2019 award.

Image below: BELEM LETT 'Dip Me in the Water' 2019, oil on aluminium composite panel 163 x 122cm

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Through the Margaret Olley Art Centre, the Tweed Regional Gallery offers a unique experience of Margaret Olley’s home studio, provide insight into Australian art history and practice, and honor the artist’s legacy of mentorship and patronage. The Nancy Fairfax Artist-In-Residence (AIR) studio program encourages arts practice and creative engagement between artist, community and place.

The AIR studio will extend and complete the re-creation of Margaret Olley’s home studio at Tweed Regional Gallery. Throughout her professional life, Margaret Olley supported many artists through mentorship and financial assistance. To Margaret, the most productive ways of supporting artists were to encourage the public exhibition of an artist’s practice and to encourage sales. It is widely known that Olley mentored a number of younger artists and encouraged their representation in public and private collections. She actively supported artists and advanced their careers through purchasing works for collections or offering artists the opportunity to further their development through fellowship programs.

The AIR studio program will offer artists an opportunity to stimulate their practice in a creative environment. The Gallery will administer and promote a program which will see at least two invited artists participate in funded residency programs at TRG annually. The artwork resulting from these residences will be included in the Gallery’s exhibition program and displayed in the Friends of the Gallery.

Marisa Purcell will take up the Residency in 2020.

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Marisa Purcell has been awarded a Kedewatan Residency in Ubud which she will take up later in 2019.

The Kedewatan Residency Program was established by artists as a space for professional contemporary artists, writers, curators, dancers to make work, while providing the opportunity to immerse themselves in the vibrant community of Ubud. The studio residency offers a private residence for both the research and creation of new work.

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John Bokor's work 'Spring' has been selected as a finalist in the National Still Life Award at Coffs Harbour Regional Gallery.

Still is a biennial, acquisitive award for artworks in the genre of still life, in all mediums. The award is open to artists at all stages of their careers. Still: National Still Life Award seeks to highlight the diversity and vitality of still life in Australian contemporary art practice, broadening the interpretation and meaning of this enduring genre. The judge is Rebecca Coates, Director of the Shepparton Art Museum.

The Still exhibition official opening is on Saturday 21st September and is open until Saturday 16th November 2019.

IMAGE:
John Bokor
Spring 2019
oil on board
120 x 120 cm

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Un/Thaid, curated by Vipoo Srivilasa and featuring Bundit Puangthong has been reviewed in the Sydney Morning Herald:

A new exhibition showcases the work of five Thai-born artists now living and working in Australia, the first of its kind in Melbourne. Curated by Vipoo Srivilasa, the show was designed to provide a platform, "for [the artists] to have a voice in Australia". An artist who moved to Australia 22 years ago, Srivilasa says when you emigrate, your cultural identity changes.

"All of them have a very strong sense of Thai culture in their work, yet it’s not traditional. It blends with Australian culture and becomes something new, something exciting."

- Kerrie O'Brien, Sydney Morning Herald

Un/Thaid runs until July 27 at Grau Projekt.

READ MORE HERE

UN/THAID Curated by Vipoo Srivilasa

This exhibition brings together the work of five contemporary artists from Thailand who now live and work in Australia. Arriving in Australia independently of one another across the 1990s and 2000s, these five artists are based in the urban centres of Melbourne and Sydney and have continued their distinct individual practices since arriving in this country. The work on display in this exhibition is a diverse offering, including performance, painting, ceramics, sculpture, video and installation. Articulating multi-dimensional and layered histories, all of these artists are emboldened in their shared cultural experience of growing up in Thailand and then relocating to Australia while continuing to develop and refine their artistic practices. This exhibition features the work of Phaptawan Suwannakudt, Nakarin Aaron Jaikla, Bundit Puangthong, Pimpisa Tinpalit and Somchai Charoen. A Thai born Melbourne based artist, Vipoo Srivilasa has initiated and organised this exhibition because of his desire to provide visibility and voice for Thai Contemporary artists who have been working and living in Australia.

The exhibition is open 13 June – 27 July, 2019

Grau Projekt, Melbourne

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Sarah Cox previews Stefan Dunlop's painting practice in the latest issue of Artist Profile magazine.

Dunlop contextualises his work in today’s world of ‘fake news’ and post-internet art by addressing the Western art tradition with irony. He adheres to a critical approach based on an aesthetic discourse that employs abstract art as a response to digital technology. His response to the chaos confronting us today is to go back to the old-school order of paint on canvas, using collage and fragmentation to evoke the digital milieu’s oversaturation of images.

Dunlop’s oeuvre has evolved from creating observational-based work and still lifes to figures in landscape. Early on, his work comprised monumental heroic figures painted in warm colours and bold gestural strokes. His recent work, in contrast, uses less structured, looser forms.

- Sarah Cox, Artist Profile, 2019

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The Muswellbrook Art Prize began in 1958 as the Festival of the Valley Art Prize and has grown to acquire an excellent collection of Australian artworks. These include modern and contemporary painting, works on paper, and ceramics from the Post War period and now the first two decades of the 21st Century. The Muswellbrook Shire Art Collection was created as a direct result of this ongoing acquisitive art competition.

John Bokor is a finalist in the 2019 prize.

IMAGE:
John Bokor
The Red Velvet Lounge 2018
oil on linen
68 x 91cm

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Christopher Zanko is a finalist in the 2019 Wynne Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales with his work 'Bulli: bricks and black diamonds' 2019.

The Wynne Prize is awarded annually for 'the best landscape painting of Australian scenery in oils or watercolours or for the best example of figure sculpture by Australian artists’.

This open competition is judged by the trustees of the Art Gallery of NSW. Finalists are displayed in an exhibition at the Gallery (although in the early years all entrants were hung). Many winning paintings have become icons in Australian landscape art, entering the collections of public galleries, including our own.

The prize was established following a bequest by Richard Wynne, who died in 1895, and first awarded in 1897, in honour of the official opening of the Gallery at its present site.

READ MORE HERE

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.

READ MORE HERE

Brisbane Art Design festival is a 17-day festival of exhibitions, performances, talks, art tours, workshops and open studios of artists and designers in Brisbane. BAD showcases more than 150 Brisbane artists across all career stages.

Bridie Gillman collaborated with Brisbane designer Alexander Loterztain to make the work Breath as part of the festival held at Museum of Brisbane.

IMAGE:

Jono Searle courtesy Museum of Brisbane.

Tim McMonagle intimately confronts both the fragile and robust nature of life. With an obsession for mark-making and the act of painting, he depicts humanised landscapes with whimsical contradictions of impasto and swathing washes. His paintings require a closer inspection, as dangling branches and wailing trees act like entwined torsos to question humanity’s relationship to the environment. Artist Profile spoke to McMonagle in his Melbourne studio for Issue 46.

- Ellinor Pelz, Artist Profile

IMAGE:

Tim McMonagle

Magnificent Pavlova With Bananas 2019

oil on linen

77 x 77 cm

READ MORE HERE

The Moreton Bay Regional Art Award is an annual acquisitive exhibition proudly sponsored by the Moreton Bay Council. This year the Art Award offered an acquisitive prize of $8000, four category prizes of $2000 each, and two supplementary $1000 prizes for a Local Artist and a People's Choice Award.

Judged by Megan Williams, Manager of the University of the Sunshine Coast Art Gallery, Bridie Gillman was awarded the overall winner with her work 'Some sort of growth' 2018.

Megan Williams commented: 'The artist's sense of the materiality of paint, the play of colour, darkness and light make it a very strong and visually arresting painting. The colours reference the natural environment and you get a sense of the artists awe and love of nature, however, its abstract quality resists clear and direct communication. It is a work to become immersed in, to sit with, and to contemplate.'

READ MORE HERE

John Bokor is a finalist in the 2019 Sulman Prize, administered by the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

The Sulman Prize is awarded in the terms of the gift of the family of the late Sir John Sulman, to the best genre painting and/or mural project done by an artist resident in Australia during the five years preceding the date fixed by the Trustees for sending in entries.

'Four thirty pm' s from a group of works I started making in 2017 depicting interior spaces. They are hybrid paintings of real and imagined scenes made using an airbrush and traditional painting tools. This painting took a very long time to resolve. I thought at one point in 2018 that it was finished and had it framed, only to realise early this year that it needed more work. I treated it as badly as it had me and sanded the surface down and reworked the whole painting, destroying most of what was underneath. When it was finally finished the light in the studio resembled the light in the painting. I checked my clock and it was 4.30pm.

- John Bokor, 2019

IMAGE:
John Bokor
Four thirty pm 2019
oil on board
125 x 147 cm

READ MORE HERE

RocoColonial

4 May 2019 - 30 Jun 2019

RocoColonial is a major artist-initiated project by Gary Carsley and presented by Hazelhurst Arts Centre in partnership with Bathurst Regional Art Gallery.

ARTISTS: Brook Andrew | Tony Clark | Peter Cooley | Deborah Kelly | Belem Lett | Jennifer Leahy | Danie Mellor | Marc Newson | Técha Noble & Romance Was Born | Joan Ross | Justin Shoulder | Esme Timbery | Jenny Watson | Louise Zhang

CARTOUCHES: Renjie Teoh

Rococo and Colonial are often considered to be disparate, undisputable categories that neatly divide periods of time. This separation offers little opportunity to consider parallel histories - how similar or different things might be happening elsewhere or at the same time. RocoColonial is an exhibition that examines the overlap between Rococo and Colonial and begins by acknowledging that both can be intrinsically related and link Australia to a wider, speculative world of multiple, concurrent histories.

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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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Deakin University Contemporary Small Sculpture Award 2019

When: 29 May–12 July 2019
Tuesday to Friday 10am–4pm, Open only during exhibitions
Where: Deakin University Art Gallery, Melbourne Burwood Campus
Building FA, 221 Burwood Hwy, Burwood, VIC 3125

In its tenth anniversary year this annual acquisitive award and exhibition is organised by the Art Collection and Galleries Unit displaying the work of the 2019 finalists.

Image: VIPOO SRIVILASA Protection 2018, 66
 x 37
 x 23 cm, ceramic, acrylic paint, glaze ceramic flowers and mix media.

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In 2015 Owen Craven wrote about Dan Kyle, his studio and life in the bush near the Blue Mountains —

Soon after graduating from the National Art School, Dan Kyle set up home deep within the Australian bush at the foot of the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. His paintings are translations of what he sees – the beauty, the unique forms, the colours – but also his way of reducing the density of the bush to a more approachable landscape for him to keep exploring. Back in Issue 32, 2015, Artist Profile chatted to Dan about the formal and conceptual nuances of his landscapes.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

Christopher Zanko’s depictions of classic Australian suburbia and architecture – created through carving and painting – feel happy and nostalgic, as though cementing a time in local history, while also celebrating the beauty of an everyday normal.

“These days a lot of homes and buildings are being knocked down, so the area is not going to look like this for much longer,” Chris says. “It's great to be able to capture these beautiful buildings while they’re still here.”

READ MORE HERE

Tara Marynowsky has been glowingly reviewed in Broadsheet as one of Five artists to watch, in wake of her exhibit at 'The National':

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.

- Will Cox, Broadsheet

IMAGE:

Tara Marynowsky

Pretty Woman 2019

hand scratched 35mm film trailer

dimensions variable

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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.

- Anna Dunnill, Art Guide

IMAGE:

Tara Marynowsky

Coming Attractions 2019

hand scratched 35mm film trailer

dimensions variable

READ MORE HERE

We are delighted to see works by Sally Anderson, Belem Lett, Lucy O'Doherty, and Amber Wallis in the new exhibition 'The Whiteley at 20: Twenty Years of the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship', as previous finalists of the award.

Established by Ms Beryl Whiteley in 1999 in memory of her son, the 'Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship' provides young painters with the opportunity to travel through Europe to develop their artistic practice. Since its inception, 20 young painters have followed in the titular artist's footsteps.

The exhibition features works by Sally Anderson, Alice Byrne, Mitch Cairns, James Drinkwater, Petrea Fellow, Becky Gibson, Nathan Hawkes, Alan Jones, Nicole Kelly, Belem Lett, Lucy O’Doherty, Wayde Owen, Timothy Phillips, Tom Polo, Ben Quilty, Karlee Rawkins, Samuel Wade, Amber Wallis, Natasha Walsh, and Marcus Wills, alongside the four paintings that won Brett Whiteley the Italian Government Travelling Scholarship.

The exhibition presents not only the works that won the scholarship, but features works from each artist's residency at the Cite Internationale des Art, Paris and recent work.

The exhibition is open from 22 March - 5 May 2019 at the S.H. Ervin Gallery in Sydney.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGES:
1/ Previous winners of the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship attending the opening of 'The Whiteley at 20: Twenty Years of the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship'
2/ Brett Whiteley

Founded by Doug & Greta Moran and family in 1988, the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize is an annual Australian portrait prize supporting Australian artists. The prize has encouraged both excellence and creativity in contemporary Australian portraiture by asking artists to interpret the look and personality of a chosen sitter, either unknown or well known. With a first prize of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars ($150,000) it is Australia’s richest art prize.

Tara Marynowsky's video work in 'The National' has been included in a review by The Guardian.

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.

- Andrew Frost, The Guardian

IMAGE:

Tara Marynowsky

Indecent Proposal (Demi) (still) 2019

hand scratched 35mm film trailer

dimensions variable

READ MORE HERE

In celebration of Gorman’s decade-long collaboration with visual artists, Heide is presenting a two-week pop-up exhibition in the iconic modernist building, Heide II.

The exhibition will feature garments from a new range by Gorman created in collaboration with ten artists who have worked with the Australian clothing label since 2009, including Miranda Skoczek. The garments will be displayed alongside the artworks which inspired them.

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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.

After receiving a record-breaking 482 entries this year and careful deliberation from the judges, the Glover Prize has announced its 42 finalists for 2019. These finalists represent the Judges’ selection of the best artworks of the Tasmanian landscape, chosen from the 482 entrants coming from every Australian state and territory, as well as a number of submissions from New Zealand, Italy, and the United Kingdom. These 42 artworks will be on display at the Glover Prize Exhibition at Falls Park Pavilion in Evandale, Tasmania during March this year.

The judges for the Glover Prize 2019 are Art Fairs Australia CEO and director, Barry Keldoulis; Sydney artist Joan Ross; and Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG) director, Janet Carding. The judges next task is to carefully narrow down the 42 finalists to choose the winner of the $50,000 cash prize. After its display at the exhibition, the John Glover Society Inc. will acquire the winning artwork for its collection.

Belem Lett's work The River Runs/The People Come has been selected as one of the finalists. The exhibition commences on the March long-weekend, running from Saturday the 9th of March, 2019 and continuing until the end of the following weekend on Sunday the 17th of March, 2019, at the historic Falls Park Pavilion in Evandale.

READ MORE HERE

After receiving a record-breaking 482 entries this year and careful deliberation from the judges, the Glover Prize has announced its 42 finalists for 2019. These finalists represent the Judges’ selection of the best artworks of the Tasmanian landscape, chosen from the 482 entrants coming from every Australian state and territory, as well as a number of submissions from New Zealand, Italy, and the United Kingdom. These 42 artworks will be on display at the Glover Prize Exhibition at Falls Park Pavilion in Evandale, Tasmania during March this year.

The judges for the Glover Prize 2019 are Art Fairs Australia CEO and director, Barry Keldoulis; Sydney artist Joan Ross; and Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG) director, Janet Carding. The judges next task is to carefully narrow down the 42 finalists to choose the winner of the $50,000 cash prize. After its display at the exhibition, the John Glover Society Inc. will acquire the winning artwork for its collection.

Julian Meagher's work Democratic Mountain has been selected as one of the finalists. The exhibition commences on the March long-weekend, running from Saturday the 9th of March, 2019 and continuing until the end of the following weekend on Sunday the 17th of March, 2019, at the historic Falls Park Pavilion in Evandale.

READ MORE HERE

Ari Athans is interviewed in the latest issue of Vault Magazine about the breadth of her creative practice - between sculpture, painting, and jewellery.

READ MORE HERE & PDF

Thirroul artists Chris Zanko and Paul Ryan are featured in the current issue of Country Style Magazine. The article looks at the richness of creative talent on the Coal Coast in the Illawarra region of New South Wales and their deep connection to the area.

Sydney based Art and Music publication Happy Mag recently caught up with artist and musician Chris Zanko to discuss his life down south, what inspires his works and the creative process from the start of a piece to its final product.

READ THE ARTICLE HERE

Bridie Gillman's work as featured in Woven Kolektif's looking here, looking north exhibition at Casula Powerhouse has been reviewed in Art Asia Pacific Magazine.

At the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre in Sydney, a video portrays the interior of a restaurant, its walls decorated with Australian-flag bunting, and kitsch Australiana tea towels and posters, positioning us inside an ostensibly Australian establishment. It is revealed in subsequent shots of the staff, clientele, and the beach outside, however, that this is in fact a tourist spot in Bali. Bridie Gillman’s video work Bali State of Mind (2017–18) ruminates on the unequal power dynamic between Australia and Indonesia, the latter being economically reliant on tourism and subject to the objectifying tourist gaze that comes with over one million Australians visiting annually.

Gillman is one of seven artists included in the exhibition 'looking here looking north' by members of Woven, a collective with “continuing personal connections to Indonesia.” While Gillman’s work is subtly political, the exhibition holistically was striking in its ability to reach beyond essentialist identity politics, reconfiguring what it means to be part of the Indonesian diaspora by speaking to universal themes of memory, place and belonging.

- Soo-Min Shim, Art Asia Pacific Magazine

looking here looking north is on view at the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Sydney, 12 January - March 17, 2019

IMAGE:

Bridie Gillman

Bali state of mind (still) 2017–18

two-channel video installation

17 min 40 sec

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John McDonald highlights Clara Adolphs practice in the Good Weekend Magazine:

'Clara Adolphs is not the first artist to be fascinated by the old photographs one finds in flea markets and junk shops. These faded snapshots, intended to immortalise loved ones and special events, have become mysteries, as we cannot identify people and places. Nevertheless it's easy to recall similar holidays and family outings, and enjoy a sense of familiarity.

It's in the nature of snapshots to concentrate on moments of leisure, and this is reflected in paintings such as Sunbather, where a woman relaxes in a deck chair, or Daylight Hours (pictured), in which three figures lie stretched out on the grass.'

READ MORE HERE

looking here looking north is an exhibition by Woven, a collective of artists who each have continuing personal connections to Indonesia. Themes of identity, memory and cross-cultural experience are explored through performance, painting, installation, photography, video and sculpture.

Featuring work by: Kartika Suharto-Martin, Ida Lawrence, Mashara Wachjudy, Bridie Gillman, Sofiyah Ruqayah, Alfira O’Sullivan and Leyla Stevens.

looking here looking north is presented alongside an exhibition by artist Frances Larder and an exhibition of video works by Jumaadi as part of a suite of exhibitions showcasing perspectives on Indonesia.

The exhibition is on view at the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Sydney, 12 January - March 17, 2019

READ MORE HERE

Obsession: Devil in the detail examines our fascination with the meticulous and micro, the real and the hyperreal and brings together a range of historical and contemporary works under three broad themes of still life, portraiture and landscape. Featuring artworks that seduce us with the power of their realism and intricate detail, the devil in the detail becomes the ideas and concepts that exist beneath the surface.

Featuring work by local and international artists including Natasha Bieniek, Chris Bond, Erin Coates, Audrey Flack, Juan Ford, James Gleeson, Sam Jinks, Jess Johnson, Anna Kristensen, eX de Medici, Tully Moore, Callum Morton, Jan Nelson, Sandra Selig, Vipoo Srivilasa, Ricky Swallow, teamLab, Eugene von Guerard and more.

30 November 2018 - 17 February 2019

READ MORE HERE

Vipoo Srivilasa has been commissioned to design seven large sculptures for ICONSIAM, a mixed-use development on the banks of the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok Thailand, opening on 9 November 2018.

ICONSIAM is the ultimate shopping destination. The all-in-one complex, located on 750,000 square metres of the land on the banks of Chao Phraya River is a wonder to behold for those passionate about retail and development. It is divided into three main sections: the main ICONSIAM, the glamorous riverside ICONLUXE, and street facing side Siam Takashimaya.

READ MORE HERE

Sally Anderson's work ‘Guy’s Painting of Wollumbin on my Wollumbin’ has been acquired by Tweed Regional Gallery. In 2017 Sally was an artist in residence at the Nancy Fairfax Artist Residency through the Tweed Regional Gallery and throughout her life, has had strong connections to the region.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
SALLY ANDERSON
Guy's Painting of Wollumbin on my Wollumbin 2018
acrylic on linen
140 x 122 cm

Congratulations to John Bokor who has been awarded a highly commended in the 2018 EMSLA prize.

Now in its twelfth year, the Eutick Memorial Still Life Award comes to Wollongong to coincide with the city’s signature festival, Viva La Gong. Judged annually by critic and art historian John McDonald, the EMSLA has added prestige to the festival and increased still life’s importance as a genre in art.

9 November - 1 December 2018

IMAGE:
John Bokor
Aperol and Oranges 2018
oil on canvas
61x76cm

READ MORE HERE

Chris Zanko's work is included in Hazelhurst's Regional Gallery's exhibition Life in Working Art, an exhibition presenting a diverse selection of works from the Gallery's installation team.

3 November - 13 November 2018

Stefan Dunlop's work was featured on the highly regarded Design Files blog.

'The 45-year-old came to his practice ‘in a round about way’. He tried out a range of jobs and a degrees not associated with art, before landing in New York for six months, where he enrolled in the New York Studio School. ‘This is what really kick started my painting career,’ he recalls. ‘Now I work in splendid isolation on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland.’

- Elle Murrell, Design Files, 2018

IMAGE:

Stefan Dunlop in his studio, courtesy the artist

READ MORE HERE

Paul Ryan is a finalist in this year's Mosman Art Prize with her work 'Yeah The Boys' 2018.

Established in 1947, the Mosman Art Prize is Australia's oldest and most prestigious local government art award. It was founded by the artist, architect and arts advocate, Alderman Allan Gamble, at a time when only a small handful of art prizes were in existence in Australia and the community had very little support and few opportunities to exhibit their work.

As an acquisitive art award for painting, the winning artworks collected since 1947 form a splendid collection of modern and contemporary Australian art, reflecting all the developments in Australian art practice since 1947.

READ MORE HERE

John Bokor is a finalist in the Kedumba Drawing Award at Orange Regional Gallery. Now in its 29th year, the Award plays a vital role in fostering the production and appreciation of drawing in Australia. Initiated by Jeffrey and Marlene Plummer in 1989, the Kedumba Drawing Award has grown steadily. Each year, the Judge is an established artist whose only guideline is “to enrich and enhance the Collection”

The Kedumba Collection of Australian Drawings, with over 230 works, is currently on long term loan to Orange Regional Gallery. It is an Orange Regional Gallery and Kedumba Trust partnership exhibition.

The award is open 20 October - 2 December, 2018.

IMAGE:
John Bokor
Weekend Away 2018
charcoal, wash and collage
56x76cm

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John Bokor's artwork, 'Collection Day' 2011 is now on permanent display at the State Library of New South Wales. The new gallery space opens 6th October 2018.

'Collection Day' shows Organs Road, Bulli, looking east, the morning after garbage collection day. The bins, with lids flung open, capture the everyday aspect of suburban recycling practice. This loose and lively suburban street scene celebrates the commonplace.

IMAGES:

1/
John Bokor
Collection Day 2011
oil on board
90 x 120cm

2/
Installation view of State Library of New South Wales with John Bokor and his painting Collection Day, 2011

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Miranda Skoczek, Julian Meagher and John Aslanidis are finalists in The Kings School Art Prize 2018.

The King’s Art Prize is a $20,000 acquisitive award presented to the best contemporary artwork created by an artist resident in Australia and represented by a commercial gallery, supporting both the artists and the fine arts industry. Entry is by invitation only and the finalists are selected by an appointed Art Prize panel.

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John Aslanidis, Belem Lett and Bridie Gillman are finalists in the 2018 Fisher's Ghost Award through Campbelltown Arts Centre.

The Fisher’s Ghost Art Award is part of Campbelltown’s annual Festival of Fisher’s Ghost. Held over 10 days, the Festival dates back to 1956 and celebrates Australia’s most famous ghost – Frederick Fisher.

The Open section of the Art Award is acquisitive to the Campbelltown Art Centre permanent collection and the artist is awarded prize-money of $20,000. Over the years, the prize has been won by some of Australia's most well respected contemporary artists.

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John Bokor is a finalist in the 2018 Tattersall's Art Prize with his work A Walk in the Park 2018, oil on canvas, 108x122cm.

A total of 93 artists across Australia accepted the invitation to participate in the 2018 Tattersall's Club and Mercedes-Benz Toowong Landscape Art Prize Award. The prize is acquistive and the winning painting is added to the Club's art collection. The judging panel for 2018 includes Dr David Middlebrook, former Tattersall's Art Prize winner and senior painting lecturer, Mrs Bettina MacAuley, Gallery and Museum Consultant Antiques and Fine Art Valuer, Ms Angela Goddard, Director of Griffith University Art Gallery and Mr Stuart Waddington, Committee Member of Tattersall's Club.

- Stuart Fraser, Tattersall's Club 2018

IMAGE:
John Bokor
A Walk in the Park 2018
oil on canvas
108 x 122 cm

READ MORE HERE

Belem Lett has won the UNSW Print Prize as part of the 2018 Paddington Art Prize with his work River Reflection (After Boyd) (pictured).

The Paddington Art Prize is a $30,000 national acquisitive prize for a painting inspired by the Australian landscape, now in it’s 15th year. In addition, UNSW Art & Design offers a selected artist the opportunity to create a limited edition print and a $3,000 prize.

Congratulations to Julian Meagher who is a finalist in the Paddington Art Prize 2018.

The Paddington Art Prize is a $30,000 National acquisitive prize, awarded annually for a painting inspired by the Australian landscape. The prize encourages the interpretation of the landscape as a significant contemporary genre, its long tradition in Australian painting as a key contributor to our national ethos, and is a positive initiative in private patronage of the arts in Australia.

Of his entry 'Wapengo Lake Tideline', Julian says

I wanted this work to chase the spontaneity and freedom of a watercolour. It was painted at a time of great change just before my son was born. A time of giving in to forces far greater than me, of tides, cycles and connection to country.

READ MORE HERE

Congratulations to Sally Anderson who is a finalist in the Paddington Art Prize 2018.

The Paddington Art Prize is a $30,000 National acquisitive prize, awarded annually. The prize is specific to paintings inspired by the Australian landscape, as the imagery is integral to the tradition of Australia painting and is an enduring motif within contemporary art, shaping national identity.

This work uses ‘borrowed landscapes’ to look at ways we experience the Australian landscape from the comfort of our homes. It uses landscape as a device to demonstrate a shift in the way we experience landscape.

- Sally Anderson


IMAGE:

Sally Anderson
Sharing Thirroul (Paul Ryan's Post Of Thirroul With Curtain) 2017
acrylic on linen
140 x 124 cm

READ MORE HERE

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

IMAGE:

Installation view of 'The National 2019: New Australian Art', image courtesy Carriageworks

READ MORE HERE

Christopher Zanko's wood relief carved work 'Redman Ave Reflections' is included in Wollongong Art Gallery's exhibition Here + Now.

Co-curated by Wollongong Art Gallery and Aaron Fell-Fracasso, Here + Now celebrates the diverse and unique creative energy of the Wollongong region and includes works by Jessica Cochrane, Tex Crick, Ebony Eden, Misha Harrison, India Mark, Paige Northwood, Nick Santoro and Chris Zanko.

1 September - 25 November 2018

READ MORE HERE

Now in its 15th year, the annual Paddington Art Prize is a national acquisitive award for a painting inspired by the Australian landscape – a significant contemporary genre with a long tradition in Australian painting and a key contributor to our national ethos.

The Paddington Art Prize offers $30,000 to the overall winner. Louisa Antico from Sofala Cottage will offer a selected artist a one week retreat at her historic miner’s cottage in Sofala in the Turon Valley, 40km north of Bathurst on the road to Hill End; and Defiance Gallery Directors, Campbell Robertson-Swann and Lauren Harvey will select two artists to have an exhibition with Defiance Gallery at Mary Place Gallery in Sydney. Winners of the Defiance Gallery Prize will also receive an invitation to the Nock Art Foundation Residency, Queenstown, New Zealand during 2019 including three weeks accommodation at ‘Giverny’ with studio facilities.

Charmaine Pike is a finalist in 2018.

Image: Charmaine Pike The Soft Pink Truth 2018, 120 x 150cm, acrylic on canvas

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The Paddington Art Prize is a $30,000 National acquisitive prize, awarded annually. The prize is specific to paintings inspired by the Australian landscape, as the imagery is integral to the tradition of Australia painting and is an enduring motif within contemporary art, shaping national identity.

Bundit Puangthong is a 2018 Finalist with his painting 'Green Fields'.

IMAGE:

Bundit Puangthong

Green Fields 2018

150 x 135cm

acrylic & pastel on paper

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Marisa Purcell's work Tesselate has been selected as a finalist in the Redland Art Awards.

This is a biennial contemporary painting competition open to all Australian artists. Redland Art Awards 2018 features four prizes, totalling over $20,000.

Now celebrating its 31st year, the competition is presented at the Redland Art Gallery in Brisbane. Opened in 2003, Redland Art Gallery is a vibrant cultural destination with a varied exhibition program of innovative and traditional works.

Sunday 2 September - Sunday 14 October 2018. Read more HERE.

Designed as an invitational award, The Gold Award aims to acquire contemporary Australian painting to Rockhampton Art Gallery’s collection by means of the most outstanding work or works by an artist awarded a cash prize of $50,000 and acquired by Rockhampton Art Gallery. The Award was conceived in 2010 when the then Rockhampton Art Gallery Trust received a substantial bequest from the Estate of Moya Gold for the acquisition of Australian paintings. With industry review and guidance, the Trustees advised to expend the interest accumulated by the Gold Trust to fund a new painting award. Now in its fourth iteration The Gold Award has become a premier biennial event of national significance. Presented by Rockhampton Art Gallery, The Gold Award is a joint initiative of Rockhampton Art Gallery Philanthropy Board and Rockhampton Regional Council.

The Gold Award 2018 has been judged by Simon Elliott, Deputy Director, Collection and Exhibitions, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art.

Bundit Puangthong was selected for the Gold Award in 2018.

IMAGE:

Bundit Puangthong

Sharp Knife 2018

acrylic, spray paint and soft pastel on linen

168 x 168 cm

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doingbird is an independently published fashion/art publication celebrating creative freedom. It recently featured Lucy O'Doherty who talked about growing up in an artistic family.

READ MORE HERE

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.

READ MORE HERE

Vipoo Srivilasa's work forms part of a touring exhibition through the Australian Design Centre titled 'Obsessed: Compelled to Make' which is on now at Cairns Regional Gallery.

Obsessed: Compelled to make presents the work of 14 artists from across Australia, delving beyond the finished object, beyond the personality of the maker, into the fundamental conceptual framework of their creations. We look at the complexities of their materials and processes, the realities of their day-to-day studio routine and unravel what compels each maker to create over the course of their personal career – Why this technique or material? Why that concept? How does the mind of a maker work?

This exhibition explores the act of making through the framework of obsession – how it consumes us, carrying
 us along in its wake, colouring every aspect of our lives.
 With these professional artists, it is their obsessions, and all the associated angst, failures, breakthroughs and milestones, that feeds their productivity and to deliver exceptional outcomes. 

Artists: Gabriella Bisetto | Lorraine Connelly-Northey |  Honor Freeman, | Jon Goulder | 
Kath Inglis |
 Laura McCusker |
 Elliat Rich and James B Young (Elbowrkshp) | 
Kate Rohde |
 Oliver Smith | Vipoo Srivilasa | Tjunkaya Tapaya | Louise Weaver | Liz Williamson. 

Obsessed: Compelled to makeis an Australian Design Centre of ADC on Tour exhibition touring to 12 venues across Australia, accompanied by a series of films and a full-length catalogue.

READ MORE HERE

Vipoo Srivilasa's work #happy_together VI 2017, acquired by Wollongong Art Gallery, is currently being exhibited in 'East Meets West' until 11 November 2018.

The Mann-Tatlow collection of Asian Art, gifted in 2003 and the Nancye Dryden Collection of South East Asian Textiles bequeathed to the Gallery in 2012, have formed the Gallery’s newest collecting area. This exhibition relates collection works by contemporary Asian artists and Australian artists who have responded to Asian culture within their practice and to the Mann-Tatlow Collection of Asian Art including works by Julie Bartholomew, Lionel Bawden, Kirsten Coelho, Tom Dion, Dongwang Fan, Sarah Goffman, Tie Hua Huang, Shotei Ibata, Lindy Lee, Joanne Saad, Shigeo Shiga, Vipoo Srivilasa, Laurens Tan, Andy Warhol and Gerry Wedd.

READ MORE HERE

The Salon des Refusés was initiated by the S.H.Ervin Gallery in 1992 in response to the large number of works entered into the Archibald Prize which were not selected for display in the official exhibition. The Archibald Prize is one of Australia’s most high profile and respected awards which attracts hundreds of entries each year and the S.H. Ervin Gallery’s ‘alternative’ selection has become a much anticipated feature of the Sydney art scene.

Julian Meagher's work 'Wapengo #1' was selected in 2018.  Wapengo #1 is from a series painted after a recent residency on the Sapphire Coast where Meagher spent a month with his pregnant wife Beejal in Mimosa Rocks National Park. He says:

‘I wanted these oil paintings to chase the spontaneity and freedom of a watercolour. They are unashamedly romantic, painted at a time of great change just before my son was born. A time of giving in to forces far greater than me, of tides, cycles and connection to country.’

READ MORE HERE

Julian Meagher is a finalist in the Art Gallery of New South Wales' Archibald prize, the most prestigious portrait prize in Australia. His work is of Man Booker prize recipient Richard Flanagan.  Meagher says:

'Richard Flanagan’s novels are published in 42 countries and have received numerous honours and awards, including the 2002 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the 2014 Man Booker Prize and the 2016 Athens Prize for Literature.

‘He is one of my favourite novelists but it is his writing and interviews on literature, the environment, art and politics that particularly make him one of Australia’s most important voices,’ says Julian Meagher. ‘Herb, Richard’s writing partner, was pretty insistent that he be included in the painting.’

Born in 1978 in Sydney, Meagher still lives and works there. This is his third time in the Archibald Prize. He has also been a Wynne finalist.

READ MORE HERE

Paul Ryan was awarded Highly Commended in the Winner Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales with his work 'Kembla, Mount Kembla".  Ryan says:

In 1922, DH Lawrence and his wife Frieda came to Thirroul, about an hour south of Sydney, by train. It was here that he wrote the novel Kangaroo, in which he described ‘the town that slid down at the bush-covered foot of the dark tor’. I have lived beneath this dark tor for most of my life. It is omnipresent, it shields us and acts as a gilded cage. In summer, spring and early morning, it captures the sun and glows. But in winter, it stands against the western sky as a dark fortress, blocking our escape and most of the afternoon sun. This a painting of a deep love of place. Paul Ryan, 2018

READ MORE HERE

Tim McMonagle is a finalist in the 2018 Wynne Prize for landscape painting at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

In my painting 'Shadow captain' I was interested in capturing an imagined anthropomorphic nature. In the changing low light of dawn or dusk the large eucalyptus seems to twist and contort, fastened to the ground where it is anchored.'

- Tim McMonagle, 2018

IMAGE:

Tim McMonagle

Shadow Captain 2018

oil on linen

50.5 x 50.5 cm

READ MORE HERE

Marisa Purcell is a finalist in the 2018 Ravenswood Art Prize with her work 'Cage'. More than just an art prize, The Ravenswood is a visual art movement championed by women. 

Approximately 70% of art school graduates nationally are female. However, female artists are significantly underrepresented in gallery exhibitions and prize recipients. ‘The numbers just don’t add up for women in the visual arts world,’ said Edwina Palmer, Head of Visual Arts at Ravenswood School for Girls. 

The prize is designed to promote and connect Australia’s female artists. It consists of two categories; the Professional Artists’ prize valued at $35,000, and an Emerging Artist prize valued at $5,000, making the Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize the richest professional art prize for women in Australia.

‘I see it very much as a space for women, and we hope we can do a lot for them. The Art Prize gives women another opportunity to build their careers, and to put the spotlight on women in art,’ said Palmer.  

Established in 2017, the inaugural Art Prize was an extraordinary success with over 780 entrants. Palmer was stunned with the reception the Prize received. 

Julian Meagher is featured in the May/June edition of Vogue Living magazine.

The Gallery is delighted to announce we now represent Charmaine Pike.

The paintings of Charmaine Pike allude to the remote landscape, its geographical features and natural formations, embedded or rather personified with human emotion. Her use of bold lines, form and colour probe deep into the human condition, dealing with psychological tensions within the self and the environment we inhabit.

Melissa Pesa, Artist Profile November 2017

Charmaine was selected as a finalist in The Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing in 2010, The Mosman Art Prize 2013, The Paddington Art Prize 2015 and 2016. In 2012, her solo exhibition at Tamworth Regional Gallery was met with great acclaim. In 2014 she was selected by Angus Nivison for ‘Place and Practice’ the Regional Arts Australia National Visual Arts Showcase in Parliament House, Canberra. 

Read More HERE

Yarrenyty Arltere Artists 'In Our Hands' are soft sculptures made with bush dyed woollen blankets, embellished with wool and feathers for the 21st Biennale of Sydney.

Participating Artists:

Cornelius Ebatarinja (Western Arrernte/Arrernte), Trudy Inkamala (Western Arrernte/Luritja), Roxanne Petrick (Alyawarre), Sonya Petrick (Eastern Arrernte/Alyawarre), Dulcie Raggett (Luritja), Marlene Rubuntja (Arrernte), Katherine Ryder (Eastern Arrernte), Rosabella Ryder (Arrernte), Dulcie Sharpe (Luritja/Arrernte), Rhonda Sharpe (Luritja)

Yarrenyty Arltere Artists is a not-for-profit Aboriginal owned and run art centre located in the Larapinta Valley Town Camp, Alice Springs, one of the oldest Town Camp communities on Arrernte country.

Yarrenyty Arltere Artists present a series of the whimsical soft sculptures that demonstrate the unique style for which they are renowned. Representing the past, present and future, the pieces reflect memory and traditional stories as well as exploring contemporary issues and challenges faced by the community. Embodying local flora and fauna, stories of family and country, or scenes from everyday life in the Town Camp, the sculptures are made from recycled woollen blankets which are dyed using local plants, tea and corroded metal. Embroidered with brightly coloured wool thread and embellished with feathers, the soft sculptures are filled with character and humour. They are emblematic of the vitality of the Town Camp and its people, and the ingenuity of the Yarrenyty Arltere Artists who, through creativity and perseverance, have reignited the confidence and spirit of their community.

- Museum of Contemporary Art, 2018

IMAGE:

Installation view 'SUPERPOSITION: Equilibrium & Engagement', Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, 2018. Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney with generous assistance from Georgie and Alastair Taylor.

READ MORE HERE

Congratulations to the Yarrenyty Arltere Artists for their work now on show in the National Gallery of Victoria triennial.

Victoria Amazonica 2017, was created by Brazilian designers Fernando and Humberto Campana in collaboration with Yarrenyty Arltere Artists, designers Elliat Rich and James Young and the Centre for Appropriate Technology – all based in Alice Springs in the Northern Territory.

Based initially on a sketch Humberto Campana made in Alice Springs of a giant South American lily, this exuberant, large-scale soft domed structure features intricate embroidery by the Yarrenyty Arltere Artists that tells stories of rain, rivers and water.

The Gallery is delighted to be exhibiting work by the Yarrenyty Arltere Artists from the Larapinta Town Camp in Alice Springs. This exhibition coincides with the Artists inclusion in the 2018 Sydney Biennale with a series of works at the Museum of Contemporary Art, and in collaboration with Brazil's Campana Brothers for the National Gallery of Victoria's Triennial.

Originally established in 2000 as a response to the chronic social issues faced by the town camp, Yarrenyty Arltere Town Camp Artists started as an arts training project. In 2002 the community identified the enterprise as a goal and in 2008 the enterprise was established. Now a vibrant and dynamic hub, Yarrenyty Arltere Artists is seen as an important part in rebuilding strength in the community and creating economic access for people, many of whom had not been engaged previously in the workforce. Now people are participating in regular work, there is a vehicle for social inclusiveness and the activities in the art centre have provided real and engaging pathways into the wider society.

10 — 28 April 2018 at Edwina Corlette Gallery

Barnaby Smith has reviewed Vipoo Srivilasa's exhibition Everyday Shrines at Gippsland Art Gallery:

'The experience of belonging to two or more countries is an increasingly universal one, especially for Australians. An affiliation with multiple cultures and an identity formed by multiple traditions is, after all, the migrant experience. It is a theme that has been widely explored across the arts spectrum, yet rarely with as much playfulness as in the work of Thai-Australian ceramicist Vipoo Srivilasa. His new exhibition Everyday Shrines, shown at Gippsland Art Gallery as part of Craft Victoria’s Craft Forward series, takes an impish yet thoughtful approach to fusing the imagery and iconography of Australian and Thai societies.'

The exhibition is current until 17 June 2018 at Gippsland Art Gallery.

Read full article HERE

5 x 5 – the Artist and the Patron

24 March 2018 – 20 May 2018

The artist-collector relationship has existed for millennia, manifesting in multiple forms with varying outcomes. During the Renaissance, the patronage of the Medici family enabled Raphael and Leonardo DaVinci to focus solely on art. Just outside Melbourne, during the mid twentieth century, at their home Heidi, John and Sunday Reed invited a young Sidney Nolan inside their world, creating a consummate creative union. In Sydney, Judith Nielsen has helped usher contemporary Chinese artists from emerging to legendary status. Each partnership has yielded significant outputs reverberating throughout different cultures.

5X5 recognizes the cultural significance of these types of pairings by exploring the trajectories of five artists and their parallel collector relationships:

• Amanda Love / Tracey Emin
• Dr. Dick Quan / Uji ‘Hahan’ Handoko Eko Saputro
• Lisa Paulsen / Patrick Hartigan
• James Emmett / Julian Meagher
• The Private Collector / Nigel Milsom

Marking a twenty-five-year relationship, artist Julian Meagher and collector James Emmett have the longest standing association of all the collector-artist pairings showcased in 5X5. Their journey begins when they went to high school together. The pair would become closer friends when Emmett’s partner, Peter Wilson commissioned Meagher to paint Emmett’s portrait during their university years (included in this exhibition).

The works included in this exhibition span the entire period of the Emmett and Meagher’s art collecting/ art making histories. Interestingly, Meagher admits that some of these earlier works are no longer representative of his current practice, revealing the temporal nature of collecting. Often new acquisitions redefine the collection or an artist’s output as a whole by casting new light on past works or acquisitions and suggesting possible directions for the future. Nevertheless, this relationship timestamps their shared experiences as they developed into their adult selves.

Click here to view the Catalogue

Jo Hoban from the Design Files recently caught up with Bridie Gillman in her Brisbane studio.

Brisbane-based artist Bridie Gillman is inspired by cross-cultural experiences – from a childhood growing up in Indonesia, to residencies abroad and trips across Australia. Her bold, striking compositions convey moody landscapes, exploring both emotional and physical terrain.

- Jo Hoban, the Design Files

READ MORE HERE

Tides and cycles

By Christopher Barker, Tuesday February 13, 2018

For Sydney artist Julian Meagher, 'Inlet/Outlet' is a new type of beast.

Not so much in its challenge to Australia’s contemporary cultural identity (something he is largely known and regarded for), but for translating those ideals to landscape works inspired by the far South Coast of New South Wales Australia. The result, a 21-piece exhibition at the Bega Valley Regional Gallery, chases freedom, the tide and slow looking. The effect on him, profound as it may be, is outlined in our interview below. 

READ THE ARTICLE HERE

Dan Kyle has been featured on the Planthunter, who visited Dan at his spectacular home and studio in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney.

The Planthunter is an online magazine devoted to celebrating plants and the varied ways humans interact with them. Plants have been inspiring, feeding, sustaining and soothing humans for aeons. The Planthunter documents and celebrates these connections. 

'The rusted metal entrance gate rolls open revealing a four-meter-tall man with a gas mask staring at us from amongst the trees. A collection of huge sculptures lay scattered around him – the scene creates quite an entry statement, heightening my curiosity about the man we’ve headed up to the mountains to meet, artist Dan Kyle.'

READ THE ARTICLE HERE

Julian Meagher's three week residency at the Myer House at Blithry Inlet on the south coast of New South Wales and the resultant solo exhibition at Bega Regional Gallery is profiled on the Artist Profile blog.

'Sydney artist Julian Meagher's latest exhibition 'Inlet Outlet' is the fruit of a 2017 residency with Bega Valley Regional Gallery (BVRG). A pilot project for a long-term partnership between the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) and BVRG, the inaugural residency signals 'another key step in the development of the arts in the region and provides the opportunity for visual artists to draw from the unique natural environment of the local region, connect with regional communities and expand their practice outside of metropolitan studios', says BVRG Director Iain Dawson.'

VIEW THE ARTICLE HERE

The Gallery is delighted to announce we now represent Illawarra based artist Chris Zanko.

The streets of Australian suburbia with their red brick houses, electricity pole-lined streets and rusty Hills Hoist-filled backyards provide endless inspiration for Chris Zanko's work.  His carved wooden surfaces depicting iconic mid-century architecture capture a nostalgic view of the vernacular architecture of our suburbs. 

Zanko graduated with a Bachelor of Creative Arts at Wollongong University with Distinction in Painting. He was a winner of the 2016 Gosford and Gongcrete Art Prizes and a finalist in the 2015 Lloyd Rees Memorial Youth Art Award. He has exhibited in group exhibitions including at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Project Contemporary Art Space in Wollongong. 

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.

- Goulburn Regional Art Gallery

The exhibition is open from 2 March - 14 April 2018

READ MORE HERE

In April 2017 Bega Valley Regional Gallery welcomed prominent Sydney artist Julian Meagher as inaugural artist in residence. A pilot project for a long term partnership between the National Parks and Wildlife Service and the BVRG, the residency offered the opportunity for visual artists to draw from the unique natural environment of the local region, whilst connecting with regional communities and expanding their practice outside of metropolitan studios.

Meagher spent time at the beautiful Sir Roy Grounds-designed Myer House set on Bithry Inlet in the pristine Mimosa Rocks National Park and Inlet Outlet showcases the artistic fruits of that stay.

Exhibition on until 10 march 2018

READ MORE HERE

Vipoo Srivilasa's solo exhibition 'Everyday Shrines' will open at the newly refurbished Gippsland Art Gallery on 31 March 2018 and run until 17 June.  The exhibition which has been developed jointly with Craft Victoria, looks at similarities between Srivilasa's Thai heritage and his adopted home in Australia.

READ MORE HERE

Lyndal Hargrave's works 'Emerald Alchemy' 2015 and 'Cloud Poetry' 2015 has been included in the inaugural exhibition of the new Gippsland Art Gallery title 'imagine' which celebrates the imagination in all its wild and wonderful forms.

Curated by Simon Gregg, 'imagine' is about beginnings — the beginning of the world, the birth of consciousness, an awakening to the possibilities before us.

READ MORE HERE

The Gallery is delighted to now represent Dan Kyle.  

Owen Craven profiled Dan and his practice in a recent online article for Artist Profile magazine.

'Soon after graduating from the National Art School, Dan Kyle set up home deep in the Australian bush at the foot of the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney.  His paintings are translations of what he sees - the beauty, the unique forms, the colours - but also his way of reducing the density of the bush to a more approachable landscape for him to keep exploring.'

READ THE ARTICLE HERE

Vipoo Srivilasa's work 'Deity of Immortal' has been selected as a finalist in the Tom Bass Prize for Figurative Sculpture Exhibition at Juniper hall in Sydney from 2 - 25 March.

READ MORE HERE

Marisa Purcell's work 'Conceal' 2016 has been included in the inaugural exhibition of the new Gippsland Art Gallery title 'imagine' which celebrates the imagination in all its wild and wonderful forms.

Curated by Simon Gregg, 'imagine' is about beginnings — the beginning of the world, the birth of consciousness, an awakening to the possibilities before us.

READ MORE HERE

Vipoo Srivilasa's work 'Sang Thong' has been acquired by the Whitehorse City Council in Victoria.  

The City of Whitehorse is located just 15 kilometres east of Melbourne and covers an area of 64 square kilometres.

Srivilasa's work 'Sang Thong' is based on a well-known Thai folk tale, centred on a marriage between a man and a woman of different social status.

READ MORE HERE

Sally Anderson's recent exhibition 'Self Storage and the Really Real' is featured in the January edition of the Art Almanac.

'Self Storage and the Really Real’ looks at ways we authenticate experience and store memory in object and place’, says artist Sally Anderson whose abstract compositions brim with clear references to past experiences; from the hydrangeas at her childhood home to shells from the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, and Norfolk Pines from recent Instagram posts to landscapes from past and present relationships. These works are a visual archive giving permanence to intangible memories and making them, as the title implies, ‘really real’.

- Art Almanac

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
SALLY ANDERSON
Tosha Falls as Curtains with Deegan Drive or LJs Mums Hydrangeas 2018
acrylic on linen
122 x 122 cm

Byron Bay's Byron at Byron Hotel recently completed a renovation which included a suite of works by Julian Meagher.

Designed by well known interior designer Luchetti Krelle, art takes pride of place within the newly renovated walls, with finalist of the 2015 Archibald Prize, Julian Meagher commissioned to paint a series of still life paintings featuring Australian natives for the hotel. 

READ MORE HERE

Paul Ryan features in an ABC podcast on Books and Arts. 

In her introduction Sarah Kanowski says:

'Paul Ryan lives and surfs on the south coast of New South Wales, and the beautiful landscape of the Illawarra features in many of his paintings.

He's also an accomplished portraitist (and many time Archibald Prize finalist) and has an abiding interest in depicting figures from colonial Australia.

Paul Ryan listens to music while he paints and has collaborated with American musician Bill Callahan.'

Paul discusses the methodologies of his practice and the prominent themes in his work surrounding colonial Australia. 

Download and listen to the full podcast here.

Work from Judith Sinnamon's Coastal Banksia series has been recently featured in a Frank Vedelago designed Queensland renovation in Paddington.

READ MORE HERE

Melissa Pesa interviews Charmaine Pike in the November edition of Artist profile magazine. She writes:

The paintings of Charmaine Pike allude to the remote landscape, its geographical features and natural formations, embedded or rather personified with human emotion. Her use of bold lines, form and colour probe deep into the human condition, dealing with psychological tensions within the self and the environment we inhabit.

READ MORE HERE

Miranda Skoczek's exhibition 'Rag Rugs and Lion Heads' is featured on the Art Guide website. Miranda spoke with Louise Martin-Chew about her latest exhibition 'Rag Rugs and Lion Heads', her inspiration and the shift in her practice to looser, more expressive works:

Miranda Skoczek’s abstract paintings evoke old walls with layers of forms and shapes that emerge over time. In her studio, she might work simultaneously on nine canvases. Transferring from one to the other, she allows each oil layer to dry before repeatedly painting over it until jewel-like colours resonate and a spatial sensibility has been established within which the viewer may dwell. Skoczek told Art Guide Australia, “I don’t paint about social concerns. I create wholly immersive, beautiful pictures. They are places for escape and restoration: harmonious, calming pictures.”

- Louise Martin Chew

Miranda's exhibition is at the gallery from 14 November until 5 December 2017.

READ MORE HERE

Australian fashion label Lee Mathews featured Lucy O'Doherty in Paris for their LM Woman fashion shoot....

We met Australian artist Lucy O’Doherty on her last evening in Paris. After winning the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship, Lucy has just spent her summer working and living from a small studio in the Cité Internationale des Arts, an artist residency along the Seine that feels like a United Nations for young artists. The building is impressive; a maze of over 300 studios allowing musicians, performers and artists from over 50 countries to develop their practice.

For Lucy, her work mostly revolves around the home; she paints places that are always empty and suburban, with a soft fuzziness that makes each work glow with a mysterious sadness. They may be sad but they are far from bleak, the 1950's colour schemes Lucy uses of seafoam green, flesh pink and butter are oddly cheery -reminiscent of the wacky homes of Peg Boggs and her neighbours in Edward Scissorhands.

We talked to Lucy about her paintings, where she finds inspiration, her personal style (she has great taste!) and the female artists she admires (get ready to right click and google).'

READ MORE HERE

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

Read more here

Belem Lett has been selected as one of five finalists in the Glenfiddich Artists in Residence Prize for 2017.

The Glenfiddich Artist in Residence Prize is now celebrating its fifteenth year. This program invites Australian artists to work and live for three months at the Glenfiddich Distillery in Dufftown, Scotland. The program offers the artist a residency prize valued at $21,000 as well as the opportunity to collaborate with other international artists in the historic and scenic Scottish highlands. 

The finalists exhibition was held at the Sydney Contemporary Art Fair 2017.

Image: 'Jenny I'll Meet You At The Grocery Store'  2017, oil on aluminium composite panel, 165 x 244 cm

Read more here

Miranda Skoczek was a featured artist in the international group exhibition, The human experience, we are the ones doing works on canvas/Paintings XXXX at the Carlsberg Byens Galleri & Kunstsalon in Denmark. The exhibition was curated by Galina Munroe (Great Britain), Simon Ganshorn (Denmark) and Jordan Kerwick (Australia). The show featured 116 artists each working with abstraction through painting in their own distinct manner to promote diversity and highlight the possibility of medium and painting theory.

READ MORE HERE.

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.

Congratulations to Belem Lett who has been names as a finalist in the Salon des Refusés 2017.

The Salon des Refusés was initiated by the S.H.Ervin Gallery in 1992 in response to the large number of works entered into the Archibald Prize which were not selected for the final exhibition.   

The 2017 selection panel comprised James Dorahy art advisor, Michael Reid Galleries; Elisabeth Hastings curator & author, ‘Kevin Connor’ monograph; and Jane Watters, Director, S.H. Ervin Gallery.

The exhibition is at the S.H. Ervin Gallery, housed in the historic National Trust Centre on Observatory Hill, The Rocks in Sydney.

Read more here

Sally Anderson has been awarded the Brett Whiteley Travelling Arts Scholarship for 2017.

The prize is $40,000 and a three month residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, administered by the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

The annual Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship is open to Australian artists aged between 20 and 30. It was created from an endowment left by Beryl Whiteley, who witnessed the profound effect that international travel had on her son Brett Whiteley, as a result of him winning the Italian Government Travelling Art Scholarship at the age of 20.

The exhibition will open 13 October – 19 November 2017 at Brett Whiteley Studio, 2 Raper Street, Surry Hills NSW 2010.

READ MORE HERE

Clara Adolphs has won the Mosman Art Prize Emerging Artist Award for her portrait Sal, 2017 for her portrait of artist and friend Sally Anderson. This is the second time Clara has been awarded the prize.

Established in 1947, the Mosman Art Prize is Australia's oldest and most prestigious local government art award. It was founded by the artist, architect and arts advocate, Alderman Allan Gamble, at a time when only a small handful of art prizes were in existence in Australia and the community had very little support and few opportunities to exhibit their work.

IMAGE:

Clara Adolphs

Sal 2017

oil on linen

83 x 67cm

Congratulations to Julian Meagher and Vipoo Srivilasa for being finalists of the 2017 National Still Life Award at Coffs Harbour Regional Gallery.

The acquisitive Award offers a major award of $20,000 as well as a People’s Choice Award of $5,000. This years' judge is Lisa Slade, Assistant Director of Artistic Programs at Art Gallery of South Australia. 

Finalist works exhibited Friday 24th November 2017 to Saturday 20th of January 2018 at Coffs Harbour Regional Gallery.

In conjunction with National Clay Week, Artaxis presents 12 hours of live-streaming conversations with 24 Artaxis members from 16 countries.

Vipoo Srivilasa is scheduled to talk between 12:00pm - 1:00pm, 11 October 2017. Questions may be submitted here. 

Vipoo’s work explores similarities between the cultures of his native home, Thailand and his adoptive home, Australia. His work is a playful blend of historical, figurative and decorative art practices whilst engaging with contemporary culture.

Using blue and white colour, he creates complex narratives through highly decorated images on ceramic forms. His work requires an intimacy in which the key elements of the drama are often found in unusual places within the forms themselves.

Collaboration has been an important part of Vipoo's creative practice. He has been using clay to engage communities into his creating process in the past 10 years. In addition to exhibiting his work, Vipoo actively initiates and organises cultural exchange projects between national and internationally artists.

Get your questions ready and join Vipoo and others for a Q&A. To watch click here.

Vipoo Srivilasa is the recipient of the general skills and arts development grant from the Australian Council for the Arts to work with Sakarin Krue-On, a multi-disciplinary Thai artist, and Marije Vogelzang, the world's first eating designer from the Netherland, in order to develop and create new interactive ceramic work for an exhibition at Edwina Corlette Gallery in 2019 and the S.A.C. Subhashok The Arts Centre in Bangkok. 

Keep up to date here.

Paul Ryan is a finalist in this years Mosman Art Prize.

Established in 1947, the Mosman Art Prize is Australia's oldest and most prestigious local government art award.  It was founded by the artist, architect and arts advocate, Alderman Allan Gamble. In it's seventieth year, the Mosman Art Prize has developed in stature to become Australia’s most prestigious municipally funded art prize with a national profile. It regularly attracts over 900 entries annually and currently offers over $60,000 in prizes.

The prize will be judged by Kristen Paisley, Deputy Director of the National Gallery of Australia.

The Mosman Art Prize exhibition will be open to the public for viewing from Saturday 23 September until Sunday 29 October 2017. Details here.

IMAGE: Cook and Hounds, 2017, oil on canvas

Congratulations to artist Marisa Purcell for being a finalist in this years Paddington Art Prize 2017.

The Paddington Art Prize is a $25,000 National acquisitive prize, awarded annually for a painting inspired by the Australian landscape. Established in 2004 by Arts Patron, Marlene Antico OAM, this National prize takes its place among the country’s most lucrative and highly coveted painting prizes.

The prize encourages the interpretation of the landscape as a significant contemporary genre, its long tradition in Australian painting as a key contributor to our national ethos, and is a positive initiative in private patronage of the arts in Australia.

This year welcomes the People's Choice award. Details here.

Exhibition current until Sunday 22nd October.

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

Lyndal Hargarve was a finalist in the 2016 Clayton Utz Art Award which is now being exhibited at Lethbridge Gallery by appointment. The Award is open to Queensland-based artists offering a $10,000 winner’s prize. Congratulations Lyndal Hargrave.

Hosted by the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) in Sydney on 18 August, you now have the chance to learn life drawing from some of the best in the business, with a one-off class led by Archibald Prize finalists. 

Supporting NAVA, the 15-person only event will see past Archibald finalists Jasper Knight, Julian Meagher, Dean Brown and Oliver Watts give out tips via way of a life drawing class, discuss their work and also tour their Darlinghurst studio. 

“One of the things I like most about life drawing is the communal nature of it. Oliver, Jasper and I spent many of our teenage years together at life drawing classes. I'm looking forward to getting the band back together! Art can be a lonely pursuit so it is magical when you can bounce ideas and create work alongside your peers. NAVA plays a key role in our community and I think it is fitting to be able to support it in this way,” says Julian Meagher, who was selected as a 2015 Archibald finalist for his Daniel Johns portrait. 

Visit NAVA to book. 

Lucy O'Doherty's exhibition 'Shelter' has been featured on The Design Files blog. Lucy spoke to Elle Murrell about her latest exhibition 'Shelter', her inspiration and winning the 2016 Brett Whiteley Scholarship:

Artist Lucy O’Doherty first found inspiration in cherished childhood doll houses built by her Grandpa. Later, it was vintage advertisements or postcards from the 1950s and 1960s. Her more recent suburban-focused scenes, however, are fictional composites, imagined in tribute. ‘I really can’t remember being interested in depicting anything other than domestic settings,’ reminisces the graduate of Sydney’s National Art School. ‘Except, maybe, when I went through a phase of drawing fairy villages at five! I guess they were still forms of habitations in a way.’

Lucy's exhibition is at the gallery from 20 June until 11 July 2017.

Read the full interview here

Carla Hananiah has collaborated with Australian children's wear label Mad About Mini for their 2017 Winter Collection.  Of the collection Mad About Mini says:

We had the privilege of collaborating with one of Australia’s up-and-coming artists, Carla Hananiah, whose painting “Mountains” is featured for the 2017 Winter Collection. Carla has been the recipient of several prestigious awards and has showcased her work in regular exhibitions since 2009. Carla has an incredible talent for capturing all that is breathtaking and majestic about nature. This particular watercolour is a scene from one of her favourite spots in the south island of New Zealand, a place she refers to as ‘paradise’. For Carla, this immense beauty takes her beyond her ‘everyday’ and awakens her imagination to new discoveries and new adventures! 

View more here.

Ari Athans' work has been selected for Redcliffe Gallery's 15 Artists Exhibition 2017.

This annual award plays a pivotal role in the growth of the Moreton Bay Regional Council Art Collection. The $8000 acquisitive prize exhibits 15 Artists that reflect the collection’s focus of culture, identity, spirit and sense of place.

Artists selected for 2017 are Ari Athans, Glenn Barkley, Sue Beyer, Megan Cope, Hannah Cutts, Jeremy Eden, Martin Edge, Ian Friend, Stephen Hart, Barbara Heath, Abbey McCulloch, Kate McKay, Stephen Nothling, Graeme Peebles and Nan Dingle.

The exhibition runs from 1 September - 28 October 2017.

READ MORE HERE

Paul Ryan is a finalist in Newcastle Art Gallery's Kilgour Art Prize 2017. 

The Kilgour Prize is Newcastle's annual art prize for figurative and portrait painting. It awards $50,000 for the most outstanding work of art and a People’s Choice of $5000 to the painting voted most popular by the general public. Each year the Gallery receives hundreds of applications from across Australia.

The Kilgour Prize will be on display 5 August - 15 October 2017. For further information, please click here.