Kate Beynon Painting Workshop at the National Portrait Gallery
Kate Beynon will lead a portrait painting workshop at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra/Ngambri on Saturday 20th January.
Inspired by her Archie100 work ‘Self-portrait with Guardian Spirits’ (2010), in addition to the artist’s additional Archibald Prize selected portraits, Kate Beynon will share her ‘Archie’ insights and guide participants through a painting workshop to depict one’s family (and furry friends). Through the use of watercolour, gouache and metallic pigments, attendees will create their own mini portraits by exploring supernatural elements such as guardian spirits, shapeshifting and talismans.
Kate Beynon Workshop: Supernatural Fam Faces National Portrait Gallery (Canberra/Ngambri) 20 January 2024 11:00 – 14:00 AEDT
Please note this event is ticketed and has a limited capacity.
The inaugural Yarra Arts Fellowship has been awarded to artist Kate Beynon by the City of Yarra. This new award provides a $10,000 grant to artists working in the City of Yarra, Melbourne, in order for them to focus more intently on their practice by reducing the financial burden associated with a sustained creative practice.
With support from the fellowship, Beynon will create a body of new works that explore an interest in socially engaged space- both through her studio at Collingwood Yards and other interactive spaces in Yarra- using colour, imagination, and shared experiences.
Kate Beynon in ‘Das Kapital’, NotFair Art Foundation
The animated video work Spirits Summoning (2023), produced by Kate Beynon, Rali Beynon and Michael Pablo (aka TudoFam) is on show at the group exhibition ‘Das Kapital’. Organised by NotFair Art Foundation, the exhibition centres around the theme of value and commerce, presenting works by over 50 artists within the vaults and halls of the former union bank in Prahran. Curated by Amanda Morgan, Kieran Boland and Brie Trenerry, this exhibition of film, video art, and new media within a physical space characterised by decay and transition draws our attention to mediums affiliated with the “immaterial” in order to question the value of cultural capital.
Combining experimental watercolour and digital techniques, Spirits Summoning features a cast of supernatural characters (adapted from the KB X RB—Mask Spirits collaborative series) brought to life as unconventional protective figures appearing amidst aquatic backdrops, kaleidoscopic serpentine patterns and botanical forms. Accompanied by an atmospheric soundtrack, the work aims to create an otherworldly dreamscape to counteract troubled times.
Das Kapital 236 Chapel Street, Prahran, VIC (Former Union Bank) 30 November – 2 December 2023
Kate Beynon, ‘Explore a Re-Imagined Natural World’ at Glen Eira City Council Gallery
Kate Beynon joins leading contemporary artists Kate Rohde, Valerie Sparks, and Vipoo Srivilasa in an exhibition at Glen Eira City Council Gallery that journies through an immersive environment brimming with colour and luminosity and discover the interconnectedness of nature, storytelling, and cultural themes.
Explore a Re-Imagined Natural World 7 July – 13 August 2023 Curator: Diane Soumilas
Kate Beynon: Artist Floor talks Friday 4 August, 1pm
Portraiture. Not as you know it. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Mia Boe and Kate Beynon both feature in ‘Portrait23: Identity’ at the National Portrait Gallery until 18 June 2023. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ‘Portrait23: Identity’ is a major exhibition of new work from multi-award-winning contemporary Australian artists and collectives working across every state and territory. Twenty-three artists and collectives present work about who they are and what it means to represent themselves, their communities, histories and contemporary society. They break open the genre with deeply personal evocations of themes that resonate collectively, such as cultural knowledge, feminism, visibility/invisibility, activism and journeys of migration.
You can now view Kate Beynon’s site-specific installation at the 2023 Enlighten Festival.
Enlighten Illuminations, Canberra
3-13 March 2023
Commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery, ‘Spirits Shapeshifting’ blends watercolour and digital animation to bring vibrant beings to life amid botanical dreamscapes, atmospheric skies, and kaleidoscopic visions. This collaborative work by between family collective Kate Beynon, Rali Beynon and Michael Pablo draws inspiration from their blend of diverse cultural backgrounds, including Cantonese Malaysian, Afro-Caribbean, First Nations Pima-Mexican, Welsh/Celtic and Nordic ancestries.
Kate Beynon features in the Archie 100: A Century of the Archibald Prize.
This touring exhibition presents a selection from some of the 6000-plus portraits and more than 1500 artists from Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand that have been in the prize so far. Arranged thematically, these works have been chosen not as ‘the best of the best’ but because of the stories they tell about the prize, the changing face of our society, and the power of portraiture to illuminate our collective humanity
Established in 2002, the Gertrude Editions are an annual series of specially commissioned limited-edition works of art by former studio artists and exhibitors.
‘The Gertrude Editions’ includes works by Sutton artists Kate Beynon (2003), Nicholas Mangan (2007), David Rosetzky (2008) and John Mead (2010).
The Gertrude Editions
15 October 2022 – 13 March 2023
Geelong Gallery | 55 Little Malop St, Geelong
Image: John Meade, ‘Screw Babs’, 2010, hydrostone, polyethylene and steel, 55cm, ed/50. Photo credit: Andrew Curtis.
Li Ji: Warrior girl, 2000, is screening at the National Gallery of Victoria in WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture. WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture is one of the most comprehensive explorations of portraiture ever mounted in Australia and the first exhibition to bring together the collections of the National Gallery of Victoria and the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra.
The exhibition will be on display in Melbourne from 25 March to 21 August 2022, and Canberra from 1 October 2022 to 29 January 2023.
‘Doing Feminism: Women’s Art and Feminist Criticism in Australia’ by Anne Marsh
Doing Feminism represents over 220 artists and groups including Catherine Bell, Kate Beynon, Vivienne Binns, Anne Ferran, Elizabeth Gower, Sara Hughes, Helen Johnson, Laresa Kosloff, Lindy Lee, Rosslynd Piggott, Nusra Latif Qureshi and Jane Trengove, with 370 colour illustrations punctuated by extracts from artists’ statements, curatorial writing and critique.
Tracking networks of art practice, exhibitions, protest and critical thought over several generations, Marsh demonstrates the innovation and power of women’s art and the ways in which it has influenced and changed the contemporary art landscape in Australia and internationally.
Kate Beynon is included in the ‘Archie 100: A Century of the Archibald Prize’. Geelong Gallery Saturday 6 November 2021, to Sunday 20 February 2022.
In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Archibald Prize, ‘Archie 100’ explores the history of Australia’s most prestigious portrait award. The exhibition presents a diverse selection of Archibald portraits from the last century—the triumphant and the thwarted—and honours the artists who have made the prize the most sought-after accolade in Australian art today.
Kate Beynon announced as 2021 Collingwood Yards Resident
Bank of Melbourne and Collingwood Yards have today announced the recipient of the second Bank of Melbourne Collingwood Residency, a program created in partnership between the two organisations. A $30,000 package of support for a start-up creative enterprise consisting of a large studio space in the refurbished Johnston Street building, a $10,000 Bank of Melbourne bank account and professional development opportunities has been awarded to artist and educator, Kate Beynon.
Sophie Travers, Director of Collingwood Yards said “Kate is an artist with so much to offer the Collingwood Yards community. We are delighted to welcome her and support her beautiful work and connections to our creative tenants and Collingwood neighbours.”
Kate Beynon named as finalist in 2021 Archibald Prize
Kate Beynon has been announced as a finalist in the 2021 Archibald Prize. ‘Collaborative Spirits’ is a striking self portrait of the artist, alongside her 22-year-old son Rali, an emerging artist and animator, and their beloved rescue dog, Tudo. The sitters wear futuristic/talismanic outfits that were adapted from a series of collaborative mask paintings made by Kate and Rali that draw on their mixed cultural backgrounds including Cantonese–Malaysian, Welsh/Celtic and Nordic, with Afro-Caribbean and Native American Pima ancestries from Kate’s husband and Rali’s father, Mike. These paintings will form the basis of a two-person exhibition at the gallery in late 2021. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
7 Sutton Gallery artists featured in landmark National Gallery of Australia initiative ‘Know My Name’
Kate Beynon, Vivienne Binns, Anne Ferran, Elizabeth Gower, Helen Johnson, Lindy Lee and Rosslynd Piggott are included in Know My Name: Australia Women Artists 1900 to Now. A gender equity initiative of the NGA, Know My Name features a program of exhibitions, events, commissions, creative collaborations, publications and partnerships that highlight the diversity and creativity of women artist throughout history and to the present day.
Kate Beynon selected as Archibald Prize finalist
Kate Beynon has been selected as a finalist in the Archibald Prize with her painting, With Tudo and the robe, 2020. ⠀ Kindred spirits, protective guardians and shaman figures often feature in Beynon’s work. In this self-portrait, the artist appears with her family’s 13-year old rescue staffy-cross, Tudo. The garment she wears is a painted, soft-sculptural costume work made earlier in 2020 titled ‘Robe for the Blue Shaman Guardian’. Beynon drew inspiration from a range of sources including the botanical and anatomical imagery of 17th century artist Yun Bing from the Qing Dynasty, the surrealist painter Remedios Varo Uranga, as well as the stories and symbols from her Malaysian-Chinese/Welsh ancestry.⠀
Kate Beynon Portia Geach Memorial Award & Darling Portrait Prize Finalist
Kate Beynon is a finalist in both the 2020 Portia Geach Memorial Award with her self portrait The Robe, 2020 (pictured). And the 2020 Darling Portait prize withher work Self-portrait with studio spirits, 2019.
The Portia Geach Memorial Award is an annual prize for Australian female portraitists. The non-acquisitive award established in 1961 with first place valued at $30,000. The exhibition is on show from 14 August – 20 September 2020 at S. H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney.
The Darling Portrait Prize is Australia’s grand new annual prize for painted portraits, joining the iconic National Photographic Portrait Prize at Australia’s National Portrait Gallery. The finalist exhibition continues until Sunday 27 September 2020
Collection leads – Kate Beynon is a solo presentation of the artist’s work currently on display at Geelong Gallery. The exhibition includes watercolours, paintings and soft sculptures that expand on the story of An-Li and provide greater insights to Beynon’s practice in which she merges diverse pictorial traditions with personal histories to address issues of hybridity, cultural identity and feminism.
Kate Beynon in the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize
Kate Beynon is a finalist in the 2019 Doug Moran National Portrait Prize with her work Hybrid-self with kindred spirits, 2019. Founded by Doug & Greta Moran and family in 1988, the DMNPP is an annual portrait painting prize supporting Australian artists. With a first prize of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars ($150,000) it is Australia’s richest art prize.
Kate Beynon is a finalist in the Rick Amor Self Portrait Prize with her work Artist-self with Tudo and the studio spirits, 2019. An exhibition of finalists’ work will be held at Montsalvat from 14 November 2019 – 26 January, 2020.
Rick Amor Self Portrait Prize Barn Gallery, Montsalvat 14 November – 26 January, 2019
Kate Beynon and Helga Groves in the R & M McGivern Prize
Both Kate Beynon and Helga Groves have been selected as finalists in the 2019 R & M McGivern Prize. This year, the theme for the $25,000 acquisitive prize is ‘Anthropocene’, calling for artists across Australia to consider the impact of human habitation on the environment. An exhibition of finalists work will be held across Maroondah City Council’s arts spaces from late November.
R & M McGivern Prize 2019 ArtSpace at Realm/Maroondah Federation Estate Gallery 23 November, 2019 – 1 February, 2020
Kate Beynon’s seminal video animation Li Ji: Warrior Girl, 2000 is screening on the Buxton Big Screen until 13 April, accompanying their current exhibitions A New Order and National Anthem.
