Karen Black in ‘About Face: Contemporary Portrait Painting in Australia and New Zealand’
Karen Black is featured in the new Thames & Hudson publication About Face: Contemporary Portrait Painting in Australia and New Zealand, edited by Amber Creswell Bell. Examining the practices of a diverse and dynamic nature of portraiture in Australia and New Zealand today, the book focuses on how artists mediate a classical genre to convey layered narratives, engage with social, political or environmental issues or evoke the complexity of the human experience.
Join Karen Black and curator Danielle Robson, principal and senior curator at Urban Art Projects, for an in-depth conversation on Black’s work at the Woollahra Gallery on Saturday 21st September.
Karen Black is a finalist in the recently opened Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize 2024. Her work Mountain Head (2024) continues Black’s exploration of the intersection between body and landscape, abstraction and figuration. The amorphous and corporeal sculpture denotes an array of bodily connotations: limbs intertwine like root systems, growing together, reaching for something to hold on to.
Please note registration is necessary as this is a ticketed event with limited capacity.
Karen Black and Danielle Robson In Conversation Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf Double Bay, NSW Saturday 21 September, 2–2:45 pm
Karen Black’s work I Will Shade You From The World (2024) is included in the group exhibition New South: Recent painting from Southern Australia at the Hazelhurst Arts Centre, NSW. Conceived as a biennial program celebrating excellence and diversity in Australian painting, New South showcases the work and stories of a diverse group of painters from Southern Australia. They represent varied artistic communities in this undefined region.
I Will Shade You From the World is a painting about the conditions of compassion, care and renewal. As the title suggests, it inhabits the instinctual desire to protect those we love from terror, both real and imagined. Like many of Black’s paintings, the work is set in an ambiguous landscape both inside and outside. A large tree takes up much of the canvas while the skirting board of a room appears on the right-hand side, creating tension between what we think we see and what the artist wants us to see. Ever mutable, boundaries are not only blurred but internationally transgressed.
New South: Recent painting from Southern Australia Hazelhurst Arts Centre, NSW 6 July – 8 September 2024
Ruth Hutchinson and Karen Black at the National Art School
Sculptures by Ruth Hutchinson and paintings by Karen Black are included in the group show undo the day, currently on show at the National Art School gallery in Sydney.
undo the day has been put together as way to reflect on the human response to move toward the light when one is in darkness. Curated by Gina Mobayed, the exhibition brings together ten artists who work in and around abstraction and figuration. Span generations and geographies, these artists explore the visceral ways we lose, search and discover ourselves in times of change.
undo the day National Art School, Sydney/Gadigal 14 June – 3 August 2024
Karen Black: Finalist in the Sulman and Archibald Prizes
Karen Black is a finalist in this year’s Sulman and Archibald Prizes.
Her work Both of us (2024) has been selected as a Sulman Prize finalist, an award given to a selected genre or subject painting. Black explained how the work explores the ways in which “energies and vibrations between two people sharing common life experiences can create a strong bond and sense of connection.” Concerning the coalescent forces invoked by the law of attraction, Black’s work aims to further an understanding of how individuals with similar energies, vibrations and mindsets tend to gravitate towards each other.
Additionally, Black’s portrait of arts professional Vivian Vidulich has been selected for the Archibald Prize. A three-time finalist in the prize, the work is an affectionate ode to a long-time friend of the artist. On the painterly and compositional rationale behind the work, Black explained how she “couldn’t have made this painting unless it showed her from head to toe. I [Black] wanted to portray the generous, gentle, kind person she is, but also show her strength and resilience.”
Karen Black’s paintings included the Archibald and Sulman Prize exhibitions will be on show at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, from 8 June – 8 September 2024. The winner of each prize will be announced on 7 June 2024.
Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes 2024 Art Gallery of New South Wales, Gadigal Country Naala Nura, Lower level 2 8 June – 8 September 2024; touring thereafter.
Gordon Bennett, Karen Black and Kate Smith in Thresholds at Murray Art Museum Albury
Artworks by Gordon Bennett, Karen Black and Kate Smith are included in the group exhibition Thresholds currently on show at the Murray Art Museum Albury (MAMA), NSW.
This exhibition showcases recent museum acquisitions, placing new works in dialogue with longstanding fixtures that represent the collection’s strengths. Thresholds considers to a process-led development of collecting and the variables of working with collections, contemplating where artworks can exist as portals to an ever-expanding world of unexpected sites and unanticipated tangents.
Thresholds Murray Art Museum Albury (MAMA), NSW 23 February – 10 June 2024
Once More With Feeling features new and existing works by Karen Black, Georgia Spain, Cybele Cox and Michelle Ussher.
The exhibition sets out to investigate the articulation of bodies, the relationship between the human form and culture, femininity, sexuality, theatre and ritual. Predominantly traversing sculpture, painting and sound, there is a quest to represent and challenge understandings of femininity – particularly the shapes, expressions and actions that are associated with female bodies.
Once More With Feeling 3 June – 13 August 2023 Karen Black, Georgia Spain, Cybele Cox and Michelle Ussher. Ngununggula, Retford Park, Southern Highlands Regional Gallery
Hosted by Res Artis and Gertrude Contemporary in celebration of the Stonehouse-Glasshouse Residency program, Karen Black launches her new publication with Virginia Leonard.⠀
Stonehouse-Glasshouse Residency is a program developed in collaboration between Antje and Andrew Géczy, and Res Artis benefactors Michael Schwarz and David Clouston. In 2019, Virginia Leonard and Karen Black undertook the residency.
Karen Black named as finalist in 2021 Archibald Prize
Karen Black has been announced as a finalist in the 2021 Archibald Prize. Black’s entry is a timely portrait of renowned epidemiologist and professor of global biosecurity at the UNSW’s Kirby Institute, Professor Chandini Raina Macintyre. Professor Macintyre emigrated to Australia with her Sri Lankan Tamil family when she was nine, and is now recognised as a world expert in emerging infectious diseases. Black’s forthcoming solo exhibition at Sutton Gallery, ‘Arepo’, opens in July.
Karen Black has been selected as a finalist in the prestigious Archibald Prize for her painting of fellow artist and poet, the late Madonna Staunton, whose practice spanned five decades and included writing, collage, assemblage and painting. ⠀ ⠀ She says, “I’d wanted to paint Madonna since 2014 after seeing her paintings at QAGOMA. I felt she’d been overlooked as one of our great women artists and wanted to put her in the spotlight. When I discovered she was the same age as my mother and also had dementia, it gave me a more personal reason to meet her. I visited her in the nursing home and was inspired to see her still working on various paintings. She was still outspoken, yet I could see a certain introspect in her manner, especially her eyes.⠀ ⠀ She sat on her bed talking, so I situated the painting in her room. When I mixed the paint on the canvas a blob of paint hung over her eye, giving the portrait that feeling of introspection I’d recognised. I used shapes, referencing her assemblages and collages and painted it in the pale colours she was wearing on the day. It reminded me of time fading away.⠀ ⠀ We lost Madonna on 16th December 2019.”⠀ ⠀
Karen Black and Virginia Leonard will present The Cook and Her Driver at Gertrude Glasshouse, opening Thursday 30 January at 6pm. The exhibition is an outcome from Black’s time at the Stonehouse / Glasshouse Residency, an invitational international residency opportunity in Chenaud, located in the south west of France.
Catherine Bell and Karen Black at Museum of Brisbane
Catherine Bell and Karen Black are included in New Woman, an exhibition celebrating Brisbane’s most significant and ground-breaking female artists over the past 100 years.
New Woman Museum of Brisbane 13 September, 2019 – 15 March, 2020
