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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

IMAGE:

Sally Anderson

Guido holding, folding, moulding 2022

acrylic on polycotton

198 x 153 cm

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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

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Dan Kyle reflects on his time spent visiting Candy Nelson Nakamarra's studio with Edwina Corlette and Miranda Skoczek in preparation for 'On Common Ground' Exhibition. The show is current at Edwina Corlette Gallery 28 June – 16 July, 2022.

Candy’s style is completely unique within her community of artists in Papunya. You can see links with her fellow artists and definitely some direct influence from her father, the renowned Papunya Tula artist Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula, but she has created her own visual language. She’s doing something I haven’t seen before, and everyone in the group acknowledges it. “No one is painting like this!” we say, like five times each.

If you look closely at the work, through the layers of intricate motifs, you can see the initial process that Candy uses to start each painting. This is actually what excited me about her in the first place, as this part of her process really sets her apart. Candy starts each work by splashing and pouring watered-down paint over the canvases. She turns them around and around, forcing the drips to run freely. They crisscross and intersect each other over the surface. It’s the landscape from above: watercourses, waterholes, sand dunes.

Dan Kyle, June 2022

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IMAGE:

Candy Nelson Nakamarra at Papunya Tjupi Arts, 2022, photographed by Charlie Perry

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.

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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

The Dobell Drawing Prize is an unparalleled celebration of drawing technique and innovation. Presented by the National Art School in partnership with the Sir William Dobell Art Foundation, the biennial prize explores the enduring importance of drawing within contemporary art practice. The 2021 exhibition showcased work by 64 finalists from around the country, demonstrating the vitality and scope of current Australian drawing.

Minnici's drawing are formed intuitively using a gradual technique of mark making, creating a blurring of focus and a slowing of viewing time; emphasising the tonal structure of each image through the loss of edges and turning the photographic image into a series of atmospheric sensations reminiscent of a memory.

IMAGE:

Peta Minnici

Looking into Bundanon 2019

ink in saunders paper

83.5 x 66.4 cm

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Peta Minnici has been featured in the book 'Still Life' written by Amber Creswell Bell, published by Thames & Hudson.

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.

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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.

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

Congratulations to Sally M Nangala Mulda 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.

Sally Mulda's painting 'Old Days at Amoonguna' depicts the art centre's toyota picking up all the woman for painting. That kungka Nadine driving. Long time ago I use to get picked up at Little Sisters. Now Abbott’s Camp. Every day. We listen to CAAMA radio. Good ways. Everybody talkin’ talkin’. This one [middle] – three woman, they on the hospital lawn, playing card for money. Pay day. Night time [right panel] four woman by the fire at town camp. They sitting round the fire at night time. Keeping warm, talking story. Maybe they by the fire because no power card? This is town camp life. Every day.

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Old Days at Amoonguna 2021
acrylic on linen
66 x 122.5 cm