Tag: Art blog

Am I art? I don’t know: see inside the latest works by Queensland artist Michael Zavros

Sydney art gallery, Sullivan+Strumpf in Zetland have partnered with Michael Zavros to present something truly unique. A  Guy Like Me is the latest body of work by Zavros, opening Thursday 15 October until 14 November.  Best known for his beautifully realised award-winning paintings, this upcoming exhibition marks a detour into new and exciting territory, in which Michael introduces us to his avatar: a plastic mannequin modelled on himself but better –  6 foot 3, broader, more cut, a bit younger and a whole lot smoother.  This fascinating creature, which Zavros refers to as “Dad” may also be a better human being, as the artist ponders the improvements that are possible in constructing art to imitate (and enhance) his very life itself.   Captured in a series of sumptuously styled large-scale magazine-style photographs, Dad is perfectly at home stepping into Michael’s designer shoes. Head to the Sullivan+Strumpf website for more.

LONDON: Immigration and Modern Britain – The Kaleidoscope exhibition at Somerset House

Somerset House Kaleidoscope

There’s a new exhibition that puts Britain’s relationship with the rest of the world and its nationalities on the map, so to speak. It’s going down at Somerset House, right in the heart of London and it’s called Kaleidoscope; exploring the identity of immigration in modern Britain. The exhibition will contain stills and video, showcasing the works of ten photographers born or based in Britain, many with family origins abroad including Hong Kong, India, Jamaica and Russia. It’ll explore what it means and how it feels to live as an immigrant, or a descendent of immigrants, in Britain today. It all stems from personal experiences to evoke some sort of emotion in visitors to the exhibition and tell the story of a nation’s wide and varied multiculturalism. Think stories of the struggles of asylum seekers and stories of second and third generation immigrants in forms that are as moving as they are engaging, all presented in the striking environs of Somerset House. See the Kaleidoscope exhibition from 12 June to 8 September 2019 on Sat – Tues, 10.00 – 18.00, Wed – Fri, 11.00 – 20.00, except for 11 – 21 July and 8 – 21 August, when daily opening hours are 10.00 – 18.00. Get tickets from the Somerset House website.

Life behind the palace walls: New exhibition tells the story of Queen Victoria

Queens Gallery

Queen Victoria was a boss. She took the throne at age 18 and made it hers from the get-go. A lot of that revolved around her moving into Buckingham Palace right in the middle of London. Three weeks into her reign, she moved into Buckingham Palace, despite the building being incomplete and many of the rooms undecorated and unfurnished. The Palace had been empty for seven years following the death of Victoria’s uncle, George IV, who had commissioned at great expense the conversion of Buckingham House into a Palace to the designs of John Nash. The King never occupied the Palace, and his successor, William IV, preferred to live at Clarence House during his short reign. The Queen’s ministers advised her to stay at Kensington Palace, her childhood home, until Buckingham Palace could be brought up to a suitable standard, but Victoria wanted to move immediately and begin her new life. Artist Thomas Sully then painted Victoria shortly after she moved in. Then after that, a whole bunch of other works were created, items and changes made that typified her reign. To celebrate, Buckingham Palace is putting on an exhibition, Queen Victoria’s Palace, curated by the historian and biographer Dr Amanda Foreman and Lucy Peter, Assistant Curator of Paintings, Royal Collection Trust. It’s all part of a visit to the Summer Opening of the State Rooms at Buckingham Palace, 20 July – 29 September 2019. The exhibition is accompanied by the publication Inside Queen Victoria’s Buckingham Palace by Dr Amanda Foreman and Lucy Peter. It… Read More

Mine: Mona’s new exhibition explores extraction

Mona Mine

Until 13 April next year, Mona will explore the concept of mining and its varying forms. Super topical with conversations around the Adani Mine in Queensland circulating and the constant mining of individuals’ data for commercial use, it’s a range of work that is sure to stir-up excitement for the Hobart gallery. From 8 June 2019, Simon Denny’s deep dig into the topic of extraction will star sculpture, a giant board game and augmented reality in a series of works that that draw inextricable links between resource and data mining. It’ll mark the largest exhibition by the New Zealand artist to date. Exploring themes of work and automation, the exhibition takes the Australian mining industry as a case study to interrogate the effects of technology on human labour. In Mine, Denny—whose previous work has examined cryptocurrency, capitalism and surveillance—connects mineral and resource mining with the more opaque world of data collection. Setting these extractive practices against a backdrop of colonisation, ethics and economics, Mine reflects on them in terms of both hope and anxiety about the environment, technology, and development. See more and make your next trip to mona a reality at the Mona website. Mine will open on 8 June 2019 and runs until 12 April 2020. The exhibition is curated by Jarrod Rawlins with Emma Pike from Mona.

Bill Henson’s first solo exhibition in seven years in Sydney at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery

Bill Henson

On Friday 17 May, Sydney’s Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery will present a solo exhibition of new works by Bill Henson marking the first exhibition of Henson’s first in Sydney in seven years. Henson had his first solo exhibition, at the age of 19, at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1975. The gallery now has over 100 Henson works and his work is held in every major public collection in Australia and many overseas collections including Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R Guggenheim Museum and so many more. Reviewing the Bill Henson exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2017, the critic John McDonald wrote: “…Entering the transformed gallery from a room of French 19th century art, the impact is stunning…. Ineffability is the keynote of Henson’s work. Even the most detailed description would not prepare viewers for the experience of standing in front of these images in a darkened room…. The landscapes are deceptively straightforward at first glance….Yet the complexity of taking the picture from exactly the right position with the right quality of light is immense. It’s one of the miracles of art that the most difficult and complicated processes result in works of pristine simplicity…” Exhibition opens Friday 17 May 6-8pm and continues until Saturday 8 June 2019.

Eat The Problem: MONA’s Kirsha Kaechele opens the new exhibiton

Mona Eat The Problem Kirsh Kaechele dining table

Everything you’d be loathed to see in your kitchen, presented in a striking contemporary compendium of graphic imagery, inspiring recipes, underpinned by social-political commentary: this is Eat The Problem. A book and exhibition by Kirsha Kaechele from MONA in Hobart – read more about the gallery here – Eat The Problem is a sensory experience of overloaded proportions, forcing its viewers to see, feel, smell and taste like never before. Or at least, insanely rarely. Fuelled by the reality that faces the Australian ecological system, that is invasive species, creatures and experiences, the Eat The problem exhibition startles visitors through dazzling light, permitting them to taste colour, feel sound vibrations and participate in movement and music. In a nutshell, Eat the Problem lets visitors engage in various acts of transformation as part of Kaechele’s surrealist exploration of turning flaw into feature using invasive species—including humans—in food and art. Heralded by a gigantic glockenspiel (like a xylophone), that assumes the role of a dining table that’s been illuminated in the full colour spectrum, MONA’s executive chef Vince Trim has designed a menu that uses invasive species such as deer, sea urchin and thistle and transforms them into sumptuous monochromatic dishes for visitors to eat. And if you’re not hungry or would like the full experience, the exhibition allows you to book a session to undergo a range of transformative healing sessions in the gallery, including sound baths, reflexology, massage and hot and cold treatments. “Eat the Problem brings to life the practice of transforming shit into… Read More

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

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