Category: ART

What to see at the NGV: Summer exhibitions of Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat

From 1 December, the National Gallery of Victoria will have two of the most influential artists of the 20th century on show. Until 13 April 2020 and exclusive to Melbourne, the NGV will present more than 300 works in an exhibition that will offer new insights into Haring and Basquiat’s unique visual languages and the many intersections between their lives, practices and ideas.         This of course off the back of the NGV’s winter Friday Night Series, which in 2019 stars a tonne of leading and emerging singers and performers, really rounding out what the Gallery has to offer. Oh, and plenty of dumplings, courtesy of Hutong Dumpling Bar. “We felt there’s been enough time to pause and reflect on just how powerful their (Haring and Basquiat’s) aesthetic has become worldwide, particularly in Melbourne, which is famed for its street art scene,” said Tony Elwood, director of the NGV. The Gallery is known for their leading and renowned exhibits, which this year and to round-out summer, will highlight the artists’ idiosyncratic imagery, radical ideas and complex socio-political commentary that changed the art world of the 1980s.      See more about the exhibitions on now and in summer at the NGV at the Gallery’s website.

Dumplings and art: Melbourne’s National Gallery of Victoria joins with Hutong Dumpling Bar for winter Friday Nights series

NGAIIRE Photo by Emele Ugavule

The NGV’s Friday Night Series is back again and this time; they’re doing dumplings. Appropriate for a city like Melbourne to shine a light on its awesome cuisine and art, coming together in one culmination of sensational experience for locals and visitors alike. And only ’til 12 October. As part of the new collaboration, Melbourne’s Hutong Dumpling Bar takes over NGV’s Gallery Kitchen for the 2019 Melbourne Winter Masterpieces NGV Friday Nights series, transforming it into a Shanghai-inspired dumpling bar. It’ll all involve a Friday night feature headline act, showcasing the best of Australia’s vibrant and diverse musical talent.  This season’s headliners include performers such as self-made Melbourne performer Maribelle, soulful Sydney vocalist Thandi Phoenix, Brisbane’s Young Franco, Sydney’s NGAIIRE and songwriter and producer GRAACE. Here’s what’s on… NGV Friday Nights full line-up: Friday 31 May – Husky Friday 7 June – Amaya Laucirica Friday 14 June – NGAIIRE Friday 21 June – Approachable Members Of Your Local Community Friday 28 June – Sloan Peterson Friday 5 July – I Know Leopard Friday 12 July – Sui Zhen Friday 19 July – Adrian Eagle Friday 26 July – Rainbow Chan Friday 2 August – Kira Puru Friday 9 August – Hobsons Bay Coast Guard Friday 16 August – CLYPSO Friday 30 August – Slum Sociable Friday 6 September – The Audreys Friday 13 September – Maribelle Friday 20 September – LÂLKA Friday 27 September – GRAACE Friday 4 October – Thandi Phoenix Friday 11 October – Yumi Zouma Saturday 12 October – Young Franco Head to the NGV on any Friday of choice… Read More

Kids’ passion for art: National Gallery London puts on Take One Picture

An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump

What happens when you put kids in front of artwork? Well… generally nothing, but as it happens, not if they visit the National Gallery right in the middle of London. They’re putting on Take One Picture, a unique program to get kids into artwork in a particularly contemporary way: with their phones! Kids from around the ages of 1-6 are invited to focus on one of the paintings in the gallery and respond creatively to its themes and subject matter, historical context, or composition. Purposed to promote the visual arts across the curriculum and inspiring a lifelong love of art, this year the National Gallery chose An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump (1768) by Joseph Wright ‘of Derby’ as the kids’ inspiration and it’s easy to see why. The work An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump depicts a travelling scientist demonstrating the formation of a vacuum by withdrawing air from a flask containing a white cockatoo. Air pumps were developed in the 17th century and were relatively familiar by Wright’s day. It was chosen for the wide range of subjects that are explored: the depiction of a scientific invention and its entertainment value, the human drama happening in a night-time domestic setting, and the references to the Age of Enlightenment. The bird will die if the demonstrator continues to deprive it of oxygen, and Wright (1734–1797) leaves us in doubt as to whether or not the cockatoo will be reprieved. The painting reveals a wide range of individual reactions,… Read More

See Spain, eat Spain: National Gallery London celebrates Spanish art in more ways than one

National Gallery London fountain

For the Sorolla: Spanish Master of Light exhibition, the National Gallery has introduced some new menus to what’s on offer – read more about that here – but it’s the art on-show by Bermejo alongside it that’s one of the real drawcards. Dubbed the Master of the Spanish Renaissance, Bartolome Bermejo’s exhibition will star at the Gallery until 19 September 2019. On show, pieces of work by the master from the period of about 1440-1501 will be displayed, including six loans that have never been seen outside of Spain, including two of Bermejo’s masterpieces: Triptych of the Virgin of Montserrat and Desple Pieta. The latter was named after Lluis Despla, the archdeacon of the Barcelona Cathedral, where the painting has been since the 15th century. Also right at the centre of the exhibition, the National Gallery will have what’s widely considered the most important Spanish renaissance painting in Britain on display: Saint Michael triumphant over the Devil. Director of the National Gallery, Dr. Gabriele Finaldi said, “The National Gallery’s Saint Michael Triumphant is a supreme work of European 15th-century painting. The exhibition introduces the public to Bermejo, a great Spanish renaissance master with exceptional loans never before seen in Britain.” See more about exhibition, alongside the rest of the summertime exhibitions at the National Gallery at the Gallery’s website.

What to see at the National Gallery of London this English summer

National Gallery London

If there’s one place you visit in London for any injection of art, timeless history and culture that has influence so much of what we around the world consider influential art, then the National Gallery in London is it. And this summer the gallery that sits at the pinnacle of art in the English capital is putting on exhibitions that celebrate the life, time and work or artists Gaugin in The Credit Suisse Exhibition: Gaugin and Bartolome Bermejo in Master of the Spanish Renaissance. Until 26 January 2020 for Gaugin (which opens in October!) and 29 September 2019 for Bermejo, the Gallery is celebrating the life and times of both artists through their works, a testament to post-impressionist and Flemish renaissance art respectively. The Gaugin exhibition makes the first ever exhibition for the gallery, devoted to the portraits of Paul Gaugin spanning a whopping period from the mid-1880s to 1903, when he died. The exhibition features a collection of portraits of a sitter, which Gaugin had placed into suggestive contexts to help express meaning beyond their personalities. By bringing together a number of works of the same sitter for different collections, the exhibition lets you see how Gaugin interpreted a specific model in different media over time. Meanwhile for a shorter period, The National Gallery London will show works by Bermejo, the man hailed as the greatest Spanish artist of the second half of the fifteenth century. It’ll include some of his works like Madonna of Montserrat and Pieded Despla from the Barcelona Cathedral. They’ve… Read More

MONA museum in Hobart: Why you need to go right fucking now

MONA Hobart

When it comes to MONA – the Museum of Old and New Art – in Hobart, there’s one thing it has plenty of: stories. Sure, there are the tales of the debaucherous parties that went on in the gallery’s earlier hey-days. The fact it’s privately owned and how and why that came to be. The stories of its political disdain; the owner’s penchant for personal gratification through a gallery hacked into the side of a mountain; it goes on. One thing is for certain, though; there’s only one story that matters, and that’s that it’s a damn good time. There’s nothing but one hell of a cultural awakening that is a far cry from what you’d expect to come out of Hobart, but 8 years prior. MONA is the art gallery that put Hobart on the map, turned up the city’s tourism quota and sits at the pinnacle of wholesome Australian experiences that can only really be found in our southernmost city. The city itself is known – if anything, for its work over the past few years alone – for quality. Quality food, wine, art, experiences, hotels, road trips, scenery, oxygen. Much like the rumours of the existence of MONA, what you can take away from a trip to Tasmania is as wide and varied, but one thing is constant: quality, stories and the whole array of it all. The gallery almost sits atop it all. Though it’s about a 20 minute trip from the centre of town – a journey easily embarked on… Read More

Burger wrappers in the NGV: Celebrate life’s banality with artist Darren Sylvester

Darren Sylvester NGV 2

The dude known for his consumption by consumerism who then turned it into art, Darren Sylvester, has an exhibition on at the National Gallery of Victoria from 1 March to 30 June 2019. From a pulsating coloured dance floor based on an Yves Saint Laurent makeup range, to a chaise lounge upholstered in cheeseburger wrapping, more than 70 of Darren Sylvester’s works – known for their pop culture and multinational brand references – will be on display at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV. The exhibition is called Darren Sylvester: Carve A Future, Devour Everything, Become Something and reveals the artist’s ongoing fascination with consumerism, the banality of everyday life, love and mortality, which he presents in a playful way. On show will be 43 of Sylvester’s hyper-colourful photographs, all an homage and commentary on pop culture, music and advertising as a way of exploring the ways in which everyday life is shaped by branding. Also, a gigantic YSL make up compact lit-up dancefloor interpretation will be one o the stars of the show, thanks to its colour scheme that is ‘proven’ by market research to appear flattering. Darren is a Melbourne man now, having made the move from Sydney in ’74. See his exhibition at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia at Federation Square, Melbourne from 1 March 2019 – 30 June 2019. Entry is free at NGV.MELBOURNE.