News

Freelance arts writer, Louise Martin-Chew, covers Marisa Purcell's 2015 solo exhibition Unbounded in a preview article for Art Guide Australia. Louise writes:

"In Unbounded, Marisa Purcell explores the natural, the sacred and the spirit through a series of abstract paintings. At turns poignant, moving and arresting in their capture of space, time and memory, they direct the viewer to an ephemeral moment just below the conscious."

Read the full article here.

Congratulations to Vipoo Srivilasa whose work Bleach IV (2012) was acquired by the Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art.

Image: Bleach IV (2012), pocelain and cobalt pigment

Congratulations to Marisa Purcell who is a finalist in the 2014 Blake Prize with her beautiful work Quiver. Judges of the Blake Prize, Anne Ferran (artist), Alexie Glass-Kantor (curator), and Alex Norman (religion academic), said submissions had ‘cast aside the leaden notion of religions as simply collections of statements about the nature of things. Here instead we see the religious and the spiritual as diverse, contradictory, uplifting, and mundane, all at once. Some of the works are playful and wry. Equally, we also see darkness, fear, and lamentation. Taken together, a distinctly optimistic and positive sentiment is palpable.’

Jacqui Stockdale is a finalist for The Paul Guest Prize hosted by The Bendigo Art Gallery with her work ‘El Labrinto’, a new work fresh from Spain. The prize will be judged by Kelly Gellatly, Director of the Ian Potter Museum and the winner announced on 14 November. The finalist’s works will be exhibited from 15 November 2014 – 26 January 2015.

Congratulations to Jacqui Stockdale whose works Luchadora Botanica and Jaguar Hombre from the series “The Quiet Wild” will be showing in the international exhibition “All Masquerade” at Museum Villa Rot and MEWO Kunsthalle, Germany from 16 November 2014 – 22 February 2015.

Image: Jaguar Hombre (2012), c type print

Hannah Cutts' work Deeper Longer Harder Stronger features in Artbank’s exhibition ‘Sealed Section’ curated by Miriam Kelly, showing from 28 November, 2014 until 7 February, 2015.

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

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

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

- Miriam Kelly, Artbank

IMAGE:

Installation view of 'Sealed Section', courtesy Artbank and the artist

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John Aslanidis recently exhibited his work ’Sonic Network no.13’ 2013 in the group exhibition ‘Colour Music’ at the Drill Hall Gallery, at the Australian National University. The exhibition sought to “bring together the work of visual artists who speculate on connections between pictorial form and pitch, harmony, movement and musical notation.” Curated by Tony Oates the works in the exhibition ranged from painting using light, performance, kinetics and musical collaborations. All of which embody a “preoccupation with synaesthesia that haunted the modernist project.” Other artists included Roy de Maistre, Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack, Jozef Stanislaus Ostoja-Kotkowski and Frank Hinder.
For Aslanidis his paintings “occupy a space which exists between vision and sound, a perceptual approach to abstraction with conceptual underpinnings.”

Julian Meagher has been commissioned by Belvoir St Theatre in Sydney to bring the Company’s actors to life with a suite of drawings for their 2015 catalogue. Belvoir’s position as one of Australia’s most innovative and acclaimed theatre companies has been determined by such landmark productions as The Wild Duck, The Diary of a Madman, The Blind Giant is Dancing, The Book of Everything, Cloudstreet, Measure for Measure, Keating!, Parramatta Girls, Exit the King, The Alchemist, Hamlet, Waiting for Godot, The Sapphires, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Stuff Happens and Medea.

When Julian Meagher first met John Waters ‘He was rehearsing Looking Through A Glass Onion with Stewart, my girlfriend’s father, in his lounge room. They were making a lot of noise, laughing and playing Norwegian Wood. It was great to meet the man I had watched on Play School, now far removed from Big Ted’.

John Waters is an English film, theatre and television actor best known in Australia, which he’s called home since 1968.  Meagher says ‘I wanted to paint John in a puffy shirt, both as a nod to his theatrical profession and to re-imagine him as a kind of colonial character. ‘He has such a strong face, which really suited my painting style. It was my hope to capture a complex expression. Rather than looking back at the viewer, he is engaged with something outside our understanding’.

Born in Sydney in 1978, Meagher left work as a medical doctor nine years ago to paint full time and has exhibited regularly since then both locally and internationally. He studied the Atelier method in Florence, Italy. He has been a finalist five times in the Salon Des Refuses. He was a finalist in the Doug Moran Portrait Prize in 2009 and 2012, as well as in the Metro Art Prize and Blake Prize for Religious Art.