Image above: Streeton, Land of the Golden Fleece, 1926
2021 gallery visits, summaries and images
Exhibitions list
Friday 3 December 2021 Matisse: Life & Spirit – Masterpieces from the Centre Pompidou, Paris, Art Gallery of NSW
Colour light, sheer joy to see paintings in the flesh after years of only seeing images in books and on screen. Includes some of his all-time classics from fauvism to figures and interiors, the Pacific, the cut-outs “over 100 works spanning six decades. Highlights include the especially important early work Le Luxe I 1907; the mid-career masterpiece Decorative figure on an ornamental ground 1925; and the majestic self-portrait The sorrow of the king 1952, one of the largest of the famous cut-outs that the artist created in his late career.”.
Review: Henri Matisse was an artist of colour and sensuous line; an unerring eye until the end, Joanna Mendelssohn, The Conversation, 23 November 2021
Matisse, Le Luxe I, 1907
Matisse, Still life with ivy, 1916
Matisse, The painter in his studio, late 1916-early 1917
Matisse, Lorette with coffee cup, 1917
Matisse, Decorative figure on an ornamental ground, 1925
Matisse, Still life with green buffet, 1928
Matisse, Two dancers, 1937-38
Matisse, Blue Nude II, 1952
Matisse, The sorrow of the king, 1952
Matisse’s final self portrait. This work refers to one of Rembrandt’s paintings, David Playing the Harp before Saul, in which the young biblical hero plays to distract the king from his melancholy, as well as to Rembrandt’s late self portraits. Here Matisse depicts the themes of old age, of looking back towards earlier life (La vie antérieure, the title of a poem by Baudelaire that Matisse had already illustrated) and of music soothing all cares. Matisse has represented himself by the central black form, like a silhouette of himself sitting in his armchair, surrounded by the pleasures that have enriched his life. He has combined a number of recurring themes from his life. The yellow petals fluttering away have the gaiety of musical notation while the green odalisque symbolizes the Orient and a dancer pays homage to the female body and sensuousness
Installation views
Friday 26 November 2021 Doug Aitken: New Era, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
Kinetic, light, land art, cityscapes, distorts an evolving world. A lot of mirrors, sound, but no smoke, hard to photograph epic proportions of the videos. Major issue though with using animals that belong in the wild in indoor settings to make art – bison and deer in a bedroom, beaver in a bath, really what’s the point except cruelty to animals? “Installations, objects, photographs, and vast immersive multi-screen environments envelops the viewer within a kaleidoscope of moving imagery and sound. His works lead us into a world where time, space, and memory are fluid concepts”.
Doug Aitken, Namib Desert Southwest Africa 75,000 Square Kilometres Restricted Access
Doug Aitken, Sonic Fountain II, 2013/2015
Doug Aitken, Sonic Fountain II, 2013/2015 (detail)
Doug Aitken, NOW (dark wood), 2016
Doug Aitken, Underwater Pavilions (detail)
Installation views
Friday 19 November 2021 Eucalyptusdom, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney
Wood and art – great survey and installation “reckons with our cultural history and ever-changing relationship with the gum tree, presenting over 400 objects from the Powerhouse Collection alongside 17 newly commissioned works by creative practitioners working across the fields of design, architecture, film, applied arts and performance. Taking its title from a 1930s text by Edward F Swain, one of Australia’s earliest conservationists, the exhibition reveals the Powerhouse Museum’s unique and longstanding relationship with the eucalypt. Drawing on the Museum’s comprehensive design and applied arts collection, ceramics, furniture and a sledge made of spotted gum that went with Sir Douglas Mawson to Antarctica, Eucalyptusdom also explores the eucalypt’s emergence as a symbol of Australian identity in post-federation Australia.”
Turned timber – pedestals made by teachers and students at the Sydney Technical College circa 1900-30. Made from various species of eucalypt, with label descriptions including ‘mountain ash yellow wood’, ‘Sydney blue gum’, ‘forest mahogany’
Timber Library – set of 95 timber samples of different varieties of Australian timbers. Wood and leather, embossed in gold with botanical names. Made by the Technological Museum, Sydney, 1920-40
Carving
Installation views
Thursday 28 October 2021 Manly Art Gallery & Museum, Sydney
Peter Sharp – Accidental Tourist and To the Edges: 60 Years of Sydney Printmakers
Peter Sharp – Accidental Tourist
Excellent exhibition of familiar landscapes, intense colours and sense of place in the works
“Forty ‘plein air’ paintings selected from Sharp’s practice over the past thirty years. These works reflect the artist’s travels around regional and remote Australia and have become part of his ‘toolkit’ for larger abstract works. Photographs of the painted view in situ illuminate the artist’s process of capturing the essence of the landscapes with which he engages. With subject locations as diverse as Fowlers Gap Broken Hill, Dog Fence near Tibooburra, Darling River Western NSW, Bay of Fires Tasmania, Royal National Park and Sydney’s Northern Beaches, Sharp hones in on the textures, objects and colours that make give these places unique character, and explores the very notion of landscape.”
Peter Sharp, Bay of Fires, 2009
Peter Sharp, Forster bush fire, 2019
Peter Sharp, Fowlers Gap, 2015 (detail)
Peter Sharp, Proposition for a Tree III, 2018
Installation views
To the Edges: 60 Years of Sydney Printmakers
“By considering the use of the printmaking media in innovative and unconventional ways, as well as co-opting new media in the development of their works, the artists of Sydney Printmakers have worked ‘to the edges’ physically and metaphorically pushing their materials, ideas and themselves to their limits. Sydney Printmakers is the longest-running independent printmaking membership organisation in Australia. It continues to demonstrate its currency in the quality and diversity of the work its artists create, and in the collegiate way its members work to share ideas and resources, and to support each other. As a group, it is thriving – and celebrates its sixty year milestone with this especially curated exhibition.”
Gary Shinfield, Dam 3: a surface of water, 2020
Gary Shinfield, Dam 3: a surface of water, 2020 (detail)
Evan Park, Keeping the bastards honest, 2020
Angela Hayson, The Shelter of Ourselves, 2021
Seong Cho, Windy Hill, 2020
Friday 22 October 2021 The Purple House, Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney
A celebration of leading Pintupi artists from the Western Desert. As a bonus spotted a Grey Butcherbird on the way to the gallery. “Alongside the major exhibition Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius in 2000, the Art Gallery of New South Wales worked with a number of organisations to realise the Western Desert Dialysis Appeal. Leading Pintupi artists were the driving force behind the appeal, creating and donating large-scale collaborative canvases to raise significant funds leading to the establishment of the Purple House. This exhibition celebrates these artists and their enduring legacy.”
Patrick Olodoodi Tjungurrayi, Untitled (Two goanna ancestors), 1999
depicts designs associated with the travels of two Goanna ancestors of the Tjapaltjarri and Tjampitjinpa kinship subsections. These two men travelled from the rockhole and soakage water site of Kalliangku, west of Jupiter Well. They travelled to Kiwirrkura and then returned to the Jupiter Well area. This forms part of the Tingari ceremonial cycle.
Helicopter Tjungurrayi, Wangkartu, 2001
depicts some of his traditional country which is located far to the south-west of Balgo in the Great Sandy Desert. This country is known as Wangkartu named for the tjurrnu, or soakwater featured in the centre of the painting. The majority of the painting represents the tali, or sand dunes which dominate the landscape of the area. In the centre is the inta, or living water, at Wangkartu around which people from many families would camp.
Bobby West Tjupurrula, Tingari sites around Kiwirrkura, 2015
depicts a series of important ceremonial sites in the area around Kiwirrkura and along the southern side of Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay). These sites include Ngamurru, Tingaritjarra, Tjutalpi, Wilkinkarra, Tarkul and Malparringya. All these sites have a water source either in the form of a rockhole or soakage. This painting is essentially a Tingari map of the mentioned sites and dominant land features in the area. All these sites were visited by the Tingari people who moved through the area after travelling from the west. Generally the Tingari are a group of mythical characters of the Dreaming who travelled over vast stretches of the country, performing rituals and creating and shaping particular sites.
Morris Gibson Tjapaltjarri, Untitled, 2010
Patrick Olodoodi Tjungurrayi, Untitled, 2004
Kintore men’s painting, 1999
Marrapinti, Umari, Tjintjintjin (Kintore women’s painting), 1999
Kiwirrkurra men’s painting, 2000
Installation views
Friday 15 October 2021 Richard Bell: You Can Go Now, Museum of Contemporary Art, SydneyHigh impact art not to be forgotten. “The largest Australian solo exhibition by artist and activist Richard Bell, bringing together over 30 years of the artist’s practice. One of Australia’s most important contemporary artists. A renowned activist, artist and political commentator, Bell uses humour, satire and word play to address issues around representation, place, identity politics, and the perceptions of Aboriginal art within a postcolonial history and framework.” (MCA exhibition page)
“If we are to ever move on from precious symbolic gestures there might be a starring role for an outspoken artist-activist-satirist who refuses to play by the rules” Provocative artist Richard Bell’s message rings like a clarion call, John McDonald, Sydney Morning Herald, 16 October 202
Richard Bell, Crisis What to Do About This Half Caste Thing, 1991
Richard Bell, Devine Inspiration, 1993
Richard Bell, Little Johnny, 2001
Richard Bell, Scientia E Metaphysica (Bell’s Theorem), 2003
Richard Bell, Walk On (Bell’s Theorem), 2007
Richard Bell, Vincent an’ Gough (From Little Things Good Things Grow), 2017
Installation views
Friday 18 June 2021 Leila Jeffreys, Shake the Dust Off Your Wings, The Galleries, George Street, Sydney
Excellent installation there should be more of this. “A public video artwork collaboration between artist Leila Jeffreys and filmmaker Melvin J. Montalban, as the first instalment of the Artist in Residence program. Part sculpture, part video art. The film, featuring Gouldian and Zebra finches, captures the arrival and playful bathing of the birds. The swift movement of the finches, no more than the height of a lemon, was captured on a high-speed camera at 1000 frames per second. The work’s sculptural form is a semi-circular pool atop a pedestal, evoking the shape of a birdbath. The matte black alupanel creates a misty watery reflection, mirroring the slow-motion imagery from the three displays mounted above.”
Tuesday 8 June 2021 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Always a revelation to see works from the collection in new configurations in different exhibition spaces in the gallery.
Towards Abstraction
“Towards Abstraction is inspired by the landscape and humans’ impact upon it. Works by some of the most celebrated artists of the 19th and 20th centuries, including Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Fred Williams, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Donald Judd, Jackson Pollock and Rosalie Gascoigne.”
Jackson Pollock, Blue Poles, 1952 (detail)
Lee Krasner, Cool White, 1959 (detail)
Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Seeds of Abundance, 1990
Emotional Body
“Emotional body spans more than 1000 years of art making, bringing together works that are carved, cast, assembled and adorned, painted with natural pigments, oils or synthetic paints. This display explores the human condition, and the ways devotion, spirituality and the powers of love or desire are all embedded in art. Works by Francis Bacon, René Magritte, Brett Whiteley, Patricia Piccinini, Fernand Léger and new acquisition, artist Huma Bhabha’s sculpture Waiting for another game, among others.”
Tjanpi Desert Weavers
“A new commission by the Tjanpi Desert Weavers. This large-scale installation tells the ancestral story of the Seven Sisters Dreaming, using sculptural forms woven from materials including tjanpi (the Pitjantjatjara word for grass) and raffia. In the Dreaming story, the seven sisters are pursued across the land by a man called Nyiru, or Nyirunya. He chases the sisters up into the sky and down to earth again, intent on marrying the eldest of the women. Eventually, the sisters are transformed into the constellation of Pleiades and Nyiru assumes the form of Orion.”
Monday 7 June 2021 Hills and Wings: A celebration of Guy Warren and his work, University of Wollongong Gallery, Wollongong
Great range of works spanning decades. “Guy Warren celebrates his 100th birthday this year – the exhibition drawn from the UOW Art Collection. It includes works by Guy Warren alongside a small selection of artworks that he acquired for UOW while he was Director of the Art Collection between 1992 and 2005”.
Guy Warren, Conference, 1998
Guy Warren, One Morning Early, 2000
Elizabeth Cummings, Bush rocks after the rain, 1998,
Installation views
Thursday 27 May 2021 Sculpture Rocks, Campbells Cove, Sydney
A perfect day and location to appreciate some inspired and refined sculptures. 17 works by 13 Japanese artists living in Japan and Australia, presented by Sculpture by the Sea, plus an indoors exhibition of small sculptures by the artists. Hope this becomes a regular event, the area a perfect backdrop, easy access for the masses to gain heightened appreciation of sculpture. “Many of the sculptures in the exhibition are made of stone, each of these artworks in thought and practice stems directly from the ancient rock gardens of Japan. This connection with the cultural traditions of Japan is a special feature of many Japanese sculptors.”
Keizo Ushio, Oushi Zokei, 2016
Hiroaki Nakayama, Blowing in the Wind, 2000
Hiroyuki Kita, A Guidepost for the Wind, 2010
Takeshi Tanabe, Locus of Time, 18-1, 2018
Koichi Ishino, Form of Scenery – Lat. 35006’23”N, Long. 135055’30”E, 1997
Koichi Ishino, Form of Scenery – Lat. 35006’23”N, Long. 135055’30”E, 1997
Koichi Ogino, Camel Country 14, 2014
Keizo Ushio, Oushi Zokei Hexagonal, 2014
Ayako Saito, Lunar Shadow, 2019
Ayako Saito, Step x step II, 2015
Small sculptures – inside
Friday 21 May 2021 World Press Photo Exhibition, State Library NSW, Sydney
The best in photojournalism, a thought provoking reality check on what has been happening around the world over the past year. This now annual exhibition at the State Library a must see fixture on the arts calendar. “Since 1955 the annual World Press Photo Contest has recognised professional photographers for the best pictures — presented in eight categories as single photos or stories — contributing to the past year of visual journalism. In an unprecedented year marked by the COVID-19 pandemic and social justice protests around the globe, the winners offer diverse perspectives on these and other urgent issues such as the climate crisis, transgender people’s rights, and territorial conflicts. ”
Ralph Pace, California Sea Lion Plays with Mask
Hkun Lat, Temple and Half-Mountain
K M Asad, Climate Crisis Solutions: Collecting Drinking Water in Kalabogi
Tomasz Markowski, Tour of Poland Cycling Crash
Lorenzo Tugnoli, Port Explosion in Beirut
Wednesday 12 May 2021 The National, Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney
To round off visits to MCA on 2 April and Carriageworks on 16 April (see below), looking again over the past few weeks at AGNSW exhibition, the works becoming more familiar and more interesting, takes time to appreciate the works. “Staged concurrently at three of Sydney’s premiere cultural institutions – the Art Gallery of NSW, Carriageworks and the Museum of Contemporary Art – The National 2021: New Australian Art presents 39 emerging, mid-career and established Australian artists, collectives and collaboratives working in a diverse range of media across the country and overseas. The exhibition at the AGNSW presents 14 artist projects that explore the potential of art to heal and care for fragile natural and social ecosystems. In considering our relationship to sentient Country, as both a concept and lived experience, these works engender an attentiveness in and about the world.”
Fiona Hall, Exodust, 2021
Betty Muffler & Maringka Burton, Ngangkari Ngura (Healing Country), 2020
Betty Muffler & Maringka Burton, Ngangkari Ngura (Healing Country), 2020 (detail)
Wona Bae & Charlie Lawler, Regenerator, 2021
Judy Watson, clouds and undercurrents, 2020-21
Lisa Sammut, A sellate habit, 2021
Justin Shoulder, AEONt:TITAN ARUM, 2021
Tuesday 11 May 2021 Tree of Life: a testament to endurance, S H Ervin Gallery, Sydney
Another great selection of works from a wide range of past and recent works by leading contemporary artists. “Following from the powerful 2019 exhibition River on the Brink: inside the Murray-Darling Basin, curator Gavin Wilson brings another thought provoking exhibition. What remains of the natural world is the one beacon in a perilous age of drought, fire, floods and plague, exacerbated by the constant reality of climate change. The recent horrific fire season experienced across the country will go down as the greatest extinction event for Australian wildlife and habitats since Colonisation.”
Nicholas Blowers, Savage Entropy in Paynes Grey, 2019
John R Walker, Hollow Tree, 2001
John R Walker, Memorial Grove: All That Fall, 2019
John R Walker, Fireground 1(for Bruce R), 2020
Nicholas Harding, Wilpena Pound and eucalyptus (sliding rock), 2019-20
Nicholas Harding, Wilpena Pound and eucalyptus (sliding rock), 2019-20 (detail)
Mary Tonkin, Madre, Kalorama, 2008
Mary Tonkin, Madre, Kalorama, 2008 (detail)
Joshua Yeldham, Angophora – Yeomans Bay, 2020
Euan Macleod, Roots, 1993
Nici Cumpston, Leopard Tree II, 2011
Friday 30 April 2021 Iranzamin (the land of the Persians) Powerhouse Museum, Sydney
Sublime – “the first survey exhibition of Persian arts and crafts acquired by the Powerhouse Museum since its founding in 1880. It explores the stories behind rarely seen artefacts from the middle of the 19th century to now, shedding light on the diverse social and cultural history of Persia – today’s Iran – and its people. Special attention is paid to the influence of Persian culture on non-Iranian craftsmen and artists such as Australian painter and textile designer Florence Broadhurst. This includes original Broadhurst wallpaper prints titled Persian Phoenix (Simorgh), Persian Birds, and Persian Pomegranates and Flowers. The exhibition examines how objects inspired by traditional arts and crafts were used in Persian society, focusing on seven themes: Joy and Happiness; Purification and Cleansing; Spirituality and Devotion; Poetry and Calligraphy; Rituals and Performance; Patronage and Craftsmanship; Nature and Design. Iranzamin encompasses a diversity of materials and techniques, including hand-woven crafts, carpets and rugs; arms and armour; glass, ceramics and tiles; textiles, embroidery and foundry.”
Wine jar, 1800s
Palampore, 1900s
Installation views
Friday 23 April 2021 Lumen, White Rabbit Gallery, Sydney
As always at this this gallery, challenging conceptual works. The exhibition “looks to the light to reveal the overlooked and intangible. With works by more than 25 artists from China and Taiwan, it traverses harsh fluorescents, digital realties and literal cracks of lightning to uncover the invisible architecture that shapes our world”.
Cong Lingqi, Dust 2, 2008
Shinji Ohmaki, Flotage – Tectonics, 2013-15
Wu Chi-Tsung, Crystal City, 2015
Lin Juin-Ting, Beyond the Frame, 2006
Installation views
Friday 16 April 2021 The National, Carriageworks, Sydney
Always impressed by large installations in this space. “Presents 13 artist projects that place an emphasis on collaboration, kinship and sociality, with artists navigating the measure and texture of our actions and engagement with the world around us.”
Lorraine Connelly-Northey, Narrbong Galang (string bags) “subverts both an iconic item and a technique most often associated with natural fibres and organic textures. The artist selects discarded scrap metal for her bags, producing dissident objects that are rigid and often precarious to hold or touch.”
Lorraine Connelly-Northey, Narrbong Galang (string bags) (detail)
Lorraine Connelly-Northey, Narrbong Galang (string bags) (detail)
Isadora Vaughan, Organs of Cognition, “referencing anthroposophy (the belief in an objective, humanly comprehensible and accessible spiritual world), permaculture and industrial design histories, ‘Organs of Cognition’ probes at the interdependence of human/non-human life – proposing knowledge as an active process of interaction with the phenomenal world.”
Mitch Cairns “three paintings and text works reflect uncertainty and anxiety in the face of a changing world. Domestic in setting and psychological and intuitive in context, the paintings utilise his now familiar layered and refracted style of painting.”
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, The Definition of Now “uses a conceptual and abstracted rendering of a climate change graph. A T-shirt clad mannequin leads the viewer into the pictorial space of the scaled-up graph.”
Darren Sylvester, Psychic’s House “Sylvester has made three sculptural interventions into the gallery. Recessed into the walls are windows with text and symbols advertising psychic services – stars, moon, crystal ball and candle burn bright like neon emojis. Sylvester sees the gallery as an oversized street, like a film set that a viewer will stroll.”
Installation views
Friday 2 April 2021 The National 2021, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
Impressive range of works. “The National: New Australian Art presents the latest ideas and forms in contemporary Australian art, curated across three institutions: the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Carriageworks and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia”. At the MCA “Thirteen artists consider diverse approaches to the environment, storytelling and inter-generational learning through their works”
John Wolseley, Termitaria – Indwelling I-IV, 2020-21
Mulkun Wirrpanda, Pardalotes (2020), Nadigga Gundirr (2019)
Betty Kuntiwa Pumani, Antara, 2020
Installation views
Deborah Kelly
Sally Smart
Tuesday 23 March 2021 Joan Mitchell Worlds of Colour, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Works on paper from the Kenneth Tyler Collection. The works produced during the final stage of her career. “Born in Chicago, Mitchell (1925 – 1992) emerged in the early 1950s as a leading figure in the New York School of Abstract Expressionism. The prints on display highlight Mitchell’s exploration of colour, shape and space, and consider how these elements contributed to her art. Inspired by the natural world, Mitchell’s work references flowers, trees, water and sky.” An early influence, in 1950 Joan saw de Kooning’s Attic, at the Whitney, referring back to Edmund Burke, “the property of great art – obscurity rather than clarity, starkness, depth and ambiguity – the colour defined nothing and everything.” (ref Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art)
Joan Mitchell, Brush State 1, 1981
Joan Mitchell, Trees II, 1992
Joan Mitchell, Sunflowers II, 1992
Joan Mitchell, Sunflowers IV, 1992
Tuesday 23 March 2021 Botticelli to Van Gogh – Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Stunning range of masterpieces. A walkthrough art history, an exceptional experience – a rare chance to see the works up close – with social distancing a bonus, not overcrowded and plenty of time to spend with as many works as possible. “Founded in 1824, the National Gallery holds just over 2300 paintings. It is one of the few major European art galleries whose collection was built through gifts and purchases, rather than based on a former royal collection. Its carefully curated collection has been a model for art galleries worldwide. The first time in its near 200-year history that the National Gallery, London has toured an exhibition of works internationally. A rare opportunity to see 61 paintings by some of Europe’s most revered artists, including Botticelli, Titian, Rembrandt, Vermeer, El Greco, Velázquez, Goya, Turner, Constable, Van Dyck, Gainsborough, Renoir, Cézanne, Monet, Gauguin and Van Gogh. Spanning 450 years, it provides an overview of Western European art history through seven defining periods: Italian Renaissance painting; Dutch painting of the Golden Age; Van Dyck and British portraiture; The Grand Tour; The discovery of Spain; Landscape and the picturesque; and France and the rise of modern art.”
ref: Botticelli to Van Gogh: from luminous, lyrical beauty to the spoils of empire, Joanna Mendelssohn, The Conversation, 9 March, 2021
Paolo Uccello, Saint George and the dragon, 1470
Sandro Botticelli, Four Scenes from the Early Life of Saint Zenobius. c1500
Titian, Noli me tangere c 1514
El Greco, Christ driving the traders from the temple, c 1600
Diego Velázquez, Kitchen scene with Christ in the house of Martha and Mary, c 1618
Francisco de Zurbarán, Saint Margaret of Antioch, 1630-34
Rembrandt, Self Portrait at the Age of 34, 1640
Nicolas Poussin, Landscape with a man washing his feet at a fountain, c 1648
JMW Turner, Ulysses deriding Polyphemus–Homer’s Odyssey, 1829
Vincent van Gogh, Sunflowers, 1888
Wednesday 10 March 2021 Longing for Home, Art Gallery NSW, Sydney
Compelling group of works by six Aboriginal artists from across mainland Australia – “artists who have documented their melancholic longing for Country, and how that emotion is characterised by both yearning and distance, time and space. Drawn from the Gallery’s collection, their works give voice to many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who desire to return to another time or location, when returning is often no longer possible”.
Carlene West, Tjitjiti, 2016
“her birthplace of Tjitjiti, the great salt lake in the Southern Desert region. It is Country that she was denied access to for decades, as a direct result of the British atomic weapon testing program undertaken at the Montebello Islands, Maralinga and Emu Field between 1953 and 1963. In the lore of the Spinifex people, Tjitjiti it is a highly sacred location. In the late 1990s, many Spinifex people began to paint evidence of their innate connection to their land to use in their Native Title claim. Working out of Spinifex Arts Project, West contributed to all of the women’s collaborative works that were used in the claim’s preamble, documenting her birthplace.”
Carlene West, Tjitjiti, 2016 (detail)
Peter Mungkuri, Ngayuku ngura (My country), 2018
“a deeply personal reflection that refers to Fregon Creek (Kaltjiti), where Mungkuri was born. It dwells on the experiences he has had with that place over the course of his life and the good memories he has of it. Mungkuri recalls how ‘this Country is my home. I know this land all over, this is strong Country. These things, everything, is my memory – my knowledge.”
Peter Mungkuri, Ngayuku ngura (My country), 2018 (detail)
Daniel Boyd, Untitled, 2012
“explores the connection he has to kin and place through his reclamation and appropriation of an archival image. The image is a depiction of Boyd’s Ni-Vanuatu Country, Pentecost Island. Boyd’s great, great paternal grandfather was ‘blackbirded’ from this place and brought to the sugarcane fields in Queensland to work as a slave. The work implicitly becomes a comment on the subjugation of First Nations people, exposing injustices of the past from Boyd’s viewpoint in the present.”
Thursday 4 March 2021 Papunya Tula: 50 years 1971-2021, S H Ervin Gallery, Sydney
This gallery is going from strength to strength in this a superb inspirational exhibition of the development of art from Papunya, Northern Territory. “A celebration of 50 years of painting with seminal works from every decade that document the changing times and artists who defined the era. The painters of the western desert had been painting for tens of thousands of years but it was only in 1971 that a band of men began making paintings, of their own design, that were destined to change the Australian art landscape forever.”
Reference: A catalyst for the Aboriginal art market, Papunya Tula turns 50, Gina Fairley, ArtsHub, 5 March 2021
Shorty Lungkala Tjungurrayi, Kangaroo Travelling Spirit Dreaming, 1972
Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula, Water dreaming with rain and lightning, 1972
Naata Nungurrayi, untitled, 2011
Mantua Nangala, Untitled, 2015
Yukultji Napangati, Untitled, 2016
Installation views
Thursday 4 March 2021 David Malin Awards – Astrophotography, Sydney Observatory, Observatory Hill, Sydney
“Spectacular, award-winning photographs of the night sky from the last 24 months as judged by world-renowned astrophotographer Dr David Malin. This competition encourages photographers to use their vision, imagination and skill to produce inspiring and beautiful images of the sky.”
ref: David Malin Awards see astrophotographers endure the elements with thrilling results, ABC Central West / By Luke Wong, Tuesday 21 July 2020
The Usual Suspect (Carina Nebula). Photo – Paul Haese
Jon Ground, a nebula in the constellation of Ara -won the Deep Sky category
Northern lights time lapse by Belinda Wickens
Mark Polsen’s image titled ‘Tranquility Base‘ has won the 2020 David Malin Awards for astrophotography
Friday 26 February 2021 MCA Collection: Perspectives on place, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
Works from the MCA Collection relating to land rights, mapping and environmental change “brings together artworks that explore the social and physical aspects of place. It has been imagined as an expanded map, which weaves together a picture of the world made from stories and rituals, indexical imprints, memories, metaphors and repurposed materials.”
Kumpaya Girgirba, Kanu Nancy Taylor, Ngalangka Nola Taylor, Ngamaru Bidu, Wokka Taylor, Muuki Taylor, Jakayu Biljabu, Bowja Patricia Butt, Noelene Girgirba, Kalyu, 2014, group work by artists from the Martu Aboriginal communities, painted by 9 artists, it represents the Martu Native Title determination area – a vast area of the Pilbara, Western Australia
David Malangi Daymirringu, The Gurrmirringu myth, circa 1965
David Malangi Daymirringu, Yathalamarra (the sacred waterhole), circa 1968 (l), The time of the dream, circa 1965(r)
Megan Cope, Foundations III, 2020
Mason Kimber, Rooftop/Sway, 2018
Friday 19 February 2021 Photos1440 – 10 years Sydney Morning Herald photographers, State Library NSW, Sydney
Compelling images capture moments in recent social and cultural history. Photojournalism at its best. In an instant the images a reminder of the magnitude of events, particularly the fires last Summer 2019-2020. “The exhibition features more than 200 images including award-winning photography from the Herald’s chief photographer Nick Moir and Gold Walkley winner Kate Geraghty. From the wreckage of the MH17 plane crash strewn amongst sunflowers to a poignant frame of Newmarch House resident Alice Bacon, who was the 100th COVID-19 victim in Australia, a tribute to photojournalism that has the power to inspire, to educate and to form opinion.”
Reference
ArtForum – editor Zack Hatfield revisits “On the Invention of Photographic Meaning” (January 1975) by Allan Sekula, who laid the groundwork for his radical practice as a critic, artist, and activist with a series of Artforum essays published that year.
“A photograph is worth a thousand questions,” Allan Sekula once wrote. What is the camera’s claim to truth? Can representation ever be revolutionary? What forces shape the photographic canon? These queries animate Sekula’s first published essay, in which he reads two images, both of which depict immigrants aboard transatlantic ships around the turn of the century: one by the towering aesthete Alfred Stieglitz, and the other by the social documentarian Lewis Hine. In his attempt to expose the medium’s founding myths and to rescue its emergent art-world discourse from the clutches of modernism, Sekula helped forge a new history of photography—one that makes meaning by looking at what happens outside of the frame.”
Kate Geraghty, Surviving IS: Stories of Mosul, 2017
Nick Moir, Orangeville 5/12/2019 (detail)
Nick Moir, Currawong 31/12/2019 (detail)
Friday 12 February 2021 Paradise on Earth, Museum of Sydney
A celebration of the career and legacy of Marion Mahony Griffin, the art of architecture. Only a small number of works on display, a glimpse of her vision and incredible achievements over fifty years. “The exhibition explores Mahony’s architectural beginnings and aesthetic sensibility; her collaboration with Walter Burley Griffin; and key projects in Australia, including Canberra, the Capitol Theatre and Café Australia, with a special focus on the life and community of Castlecrag”. The drawing and watercolours show the influence of Japanese prints and Chinese scrolls – she learnt pen and ink techniques early in her career
Reference: Paradise on Earth, film online – curator Dr Anne Watson is joined by other Griffin experts, architects, and current and former residents of Griffin-designed homes discuss the significance and enduring impact of Marion Mahony Griffin’s work in Australia.
Marion Mahony Griffin, Illawarra palms, New South Wales (Forest Portrait no 2; detail), c1925
Friday 5 February 2021 Chau Chak Wing Museum, University of Sydney
Wonderful addition to this city’s cultural life, includes the Macleay Collections (natural history, ethnography and science), Nicholson Collection (antiquities and archaeology), and the University Art Collection “The University of Sydney’s new museum of art, science, history and ancient cultures is now open to the public. Featuring 18 new exhibitions across four floors of galleries.” Only had time to view the Egyptian Galleries, Coastline (artworks from the collection), Ancient Cultures of the Middle East, Auspicious: motifs in Chinese art, Mediterranean Identities, Ambassadors – First Nations culture and heritage from eight regions of Aboriginal Australia. Many return visits in order.
Some of the works in the Ian Potter Gallery and the Egyptian room when I momentarily had the rooms to myself.
Wednesday 3 February 2021 Margel Hinder Modern in Motion, Art Gallery NSW, Sydney
Career spanning more than five decades. So many influences Rodin, Calder, Lipchitz, Hepworth, Moore, László Moholy-Nagy, Naum Gabo, Brancusi to name a few. A feast of sculpture in a broad range, has it all: form, light, space, time, movement, line, volume, rhythm, structure. Renewed recognition for such an important modern artist, “initially worked in woodcarving in the 1930s but by the early 1950s she shifted to an abstract sculptural language that explored form, space, light and movement. She also created some of Australia’s most enduring outdoor monuments, incorporating the movement of water into her sculptural forms.”
Margel Hinder, Model for ‘Wall design’, 1954
Margel Hinder, Man with Jackhammer, 1939
Margel Hinder, Green garden sculpture, 1972
Margel Hinder, Six-Day War II, 1973
Margel Hinder, Captain James Cook Memorial Fountain, 1966, Civic Park, Newcastle, NSW (video image)
Margel Hinder, Northpoint Fountain, 1975 (video image)
Friday 22 January 2021 Defying Empire: 3rd National Indigenous Art Triennial, Maritime Museum, Sydney
Exceptional conceptual and contemporary art. “Brings the works of 30 contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists from across the country into the national spotlight. Commemorates the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Referendum that recognised Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as Australians for the first time. It explores the ongoing resilience of Australia’s Indigenous people since first contact, through to the historical fight for recognition and ongoing activism in the present day.”
Karla Dickens, Assimilated Warriors, 2014
Ken Thaiday Sr, Headress, 2014
Lola Greeno, Shell necklaces, 2016
Mr Kunmunara (Ray) Ken, Kulata Tjuta, 2016
Pedro Wonaeamirri, Jilamara, 2014
Brook Andrew, Untitled (Yellow Stripes), 2017
Friday 15 January 2021 Streeton, Art Gallery NSW, Sydney
Return visit with small group early morning, best way to see the works up close before the crowds arrive. Incredible loose brushwork and vivid colour, some compositions surprisingly abstract compared to his earlier impressionist works
Streeton, Fire’s on, 1891
Streeton, Fire’s on, 1891 (detail)
Streeton, Coogee Bay, 1907
Streeton, Coogee Bay, 1907 (detail)
Streeton, Nocturne Amiens, 1918
Streeton, Nocturne Amiens, 1918 (detail)
Streeton, Damaged buildings, Peronne, 1918
Detail – other works
JTArtRave2 