Anne Ferran’s iconic photographic series Scenes on the death of nature (1986) is included in the major exhibition Namedropping, recently opened at the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Nipaluna/Hobart.
Bringing together over 200 artworks and objects, the sprawling exhibition emerges out of an interest in the nature of status and its preoccupations.
Namedropping
Museum of New and Old Art (MONA), Nipaluna/Hobart
15 June 2024 – 21 April 2025
On the occasion of her inclusion in the group exhibition undo the day at the National Art School (NAS), Karen Black will be in conversation with curator Gina Mobayed and artist Jodie Whalen. Brought together to discuss and reflect on the ‘undo the day’ exhibition rationale, the trio will explore the driving themes behind the show such as human instinct, liminality, the blurred lines between darkness and light, and sitting with ambiguity while reaching for hope.
In Conversation: Karen Black, Gina Mobayed and Jodie Whalen
National Art School, Sydney
Saturday 20th July, 3 – 4pm
Please note this is a ticketed event and booking is essential (Admission $10.00, NAS students free).
Please join us for the finissage event to mark the closing of Nick Selenitsch’s exhibition Pool Noodle on Saturday 20th July, 3–5pm. The artist will be in attendance.
Closing event
Nick Selenitsch
Pool Noodle
Sutton Gallery
Saturday 20th July, 3–5 PM
John Meade is in conversation at the Heide Museum of Modern Art on the occasion of his inclusion in the group show Hair Pieces. Together with collaborative duo Charlie Sofo and Debris Facility, Meade will discuss his works included in the show stories behind them. Drawn to the shape-shifting qualities of hair and its substitutes, John Meade sculptural practice has included elements of hair, locks and braids for more than thirty years.
Art Talk: John Meade, Charlie Sofo and Debris Facility
Heide Museum of Modern Art
Saturday 13 July 2024, 11:00 AM
This event is included in the admission ticket to Heide. Registration is not required.
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
“The current exhibition of Nicholas Mangan’s work at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (closing this weekend) offers, in a modest way, a series of alternatives to this historically evacuated present. It suggests that art is today a crucial site for analysing the past and future, and offers the gallery as a place where history’s various forms—its loops, eddies and arcs of progress—might be presented for our consideration” – Nick Croggon, 2024
Nicholas Mangan’s exhibition A World Undone at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) in Sydney has been reviewed in this week’s Memo Review.
Helga Groves’ painting Colours of the Arctic Fells (2003) is currently on view at the Macquarie University Art Gallery, featured in the collection group exhibition Australian Abstraction in Context.
Curated by Rhonda Davis and Kon Gouriotis, Australian Abstraction in Context reflects upon the legacies of the varietal imports, indices and counterparts of abstraction. The exhibition highlights Australia-based artists’ practices that challenge the aesthetic orthodoxies of abstraction, particularly the idea of shape as content, while revealing new ways of thinking and talking about Australian abstraction.
Australian Abstraction in Context
Macquarie University Art Gallery, Gadigal/Sydney
20 June – 5 August 2024
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
Gian Manik will be in conversation with curator Annika Kristensen at Lawson Flats, Perth/Boorloo, discussing his practice, recent projects.
With several of Manik’s works in their collection, the talk at Lawson Flats will additionally outline the forthcoming project which Manik is undertaking in collaboration with the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA). Raised in Boorloo/Perth, Manik will be producing thirty new paintings for PICA’s new annual fundraising event, PICA Editions.
Please note that registration is required for this event. It is free to attend for all Lawson Flats members, and costs $15 for non-members (ticket includes a free drink).
Curator Conversation with Gian Manik and Annika Kristensen
19 June 2024, 6–7pm (AWST)
Lawson Flats, Boorloo/Perth
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.
Mia Boe’s portrait of Tony Armstrong has been awarded as a finalist of the Archibald Prize 2024 at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.
Keen to paint Armstrong because he is ‘so likeable and joyful’, Mia Boe remarked on how her sitter was ‘hard-working and committed to sharing stories. He is an amazing example not only for First Nations people, but for all people.’
Armstrong, a former AFL player and current television presenter and producer, visited Boe’s Melbourne studio for the sitting. Boe explain how the two ‘talked about life, pressure in the public eye, and connection with mob. We also discussed portraits we liked. I showed him William Dargie’s portrait of Albert Namatjira [which won the 1956 Archibald Prize], as I wanted to convey that same sense of complicated emotions in the eyes that Dargie was able to portray’.
A first-time Archibald finalist, Boe decided on Armstrong as a fitting subject for her first entry into the acclaimed prize, explaining how ‘[she] wanted to show that, despite Tony’s new fame, he has an inner world of doubts and turmoil that he doesn’t share with the country. I [Boe] wanted to juxtapose reality and myth, joy and tribulation, and create a sense of your surroundings not feeling real.’
The Archibald Prize 2024 will be on show at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, from 8 June – 8 September 2024. The winner of the 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.
David Rosetzky’s work How To Feel (2010) will be on view within the collection group exhibition, Working Title: Studio Practice in the RMIT Art Collection at the RMIT Gallery in Melbourne.
This exhibition aims to unearth a rich history of studio practice at RMIT, revealing notable academics, alumni, methods and collaborations across collecting legacies over the past century.
Rosetzky’s film work reflects on shifts in social relations between public and private life, both on and away from the screen. In a highly individualised society where self-determination and self-improvement are taken as a given, How To Feel provides an intimate portrait of a fractured and proliferating self, acutely affected by our environment and reflective of the people that surround us.
Working Title: Studio Practice in the RMIT Art Collection
RMIT Gallery, Naarm/Melbourne
30 May – 27 July 2024
Opening event: Thursday, 6th June (6–8pm)
On the occasion of the artist’s mid-career survey at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, Nicholas Mangan will be in conversation with Katerina Teaiwa, Professor of Pacific Studies at the Australian National University (ANU), on Saturday, 25th May.
Hosted by MCA Senior Curator Anneke Jaspers, this ‘Artist Plus One’ event unpacks environmental and historical impacts of phosphate mining in the central Pacific, drawing on Professor Teaiwa’s extensive research in the area, and Mangan’s artwork Nauru – Notes from a Cretaceous World.
Artist Plus One: Nicolas Mangan and Professor Katerina Teaiwa (talk)
Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA), Tallawoladah, Gadigal Country
Saturday 25th May, 2–3pm
Please note that this event is ticketed and has limited capacity.
Conners Conners is presenting a solo exhibition of enamels by Vivienne Binns. The exhibition at Fitzroy Town Hall, Naarm/Melbourne will bring together a varied array of enamelled works from throughout Binns’s career, revealing the breadth of her experimentation and approach.
Showcasing iconic two-dimensional works alongside rarely exhibited enamelled goblets and copper-based sculpture from archives and private collections across Australia, the exhibition highlights the ways in which process and relationships have remained consistent, animating currents underscoring the artist’s manifold career.
Vivienne Binns: Enamels
Conners Conners (Fitzroy Town Hall, Naarm/Melbourne)
16 May – 15 June, 2024
An in-depth editorial feature in Art Review delves into Nicholas Mangan’s practice on the occasion of the artist’s solo survey exhibition, A World Undone, on show at the MCA, Sydney.
Featured on the cover of the May edition, Naomi Riddle’s article fleshes out the aesthetics and drives behind the ‘material storytelling’ in Nicholas Mangan’s films and sculptures.
David Rosetzky’s video work Gaps (2014) will be presented alongside Aleks Danko’s sculptural installation Incident – Ambivalence (1991-92) in the forthcoming travelling group show Interfacial Intimacies.
Curated by Caine Chennatt, the exhibition brings together artists who hold and express tenderly multiple aspects of their selves through a series of portraiture and anti-portraiture. Through photography, film, installations, sculpture, textile, and performance, this exhibition explores the tensions of our networked personalities – our shadows, our masks, our shame.
Organised by the Plimsoll Gallery at the University of Tasmania, the exhibition’s touring schedule is as follows:
Redcliffe Art Gallery, Moreton Bay, QLD: 18 May 2024 – 27 July 2024
Museum of Art and Culture | Yapping, Lake Macquarie, NSW: 12 Dec 2024 – 8 Feb 2025
Latrobe Regional Gallery, Morwell, VIC: 25 March 2025 – 25 June 2025.
SECCA (South East Centre for Contemporary Art), Bega, NSW: 19 Sept 2025 – 28 Nov 2025
Academy Gallery, Launceston, TAS: 6 Feb 2026 – 26 April 2026
Fiona Kelly McGregor has reviewed Nicholas Mangan’s survey exhibition A World Undone in this week’s The Saturday Paper.
Outlining the curatorial themes and aesthetic drives behind the various bodies of work featured in the exhibition–currently on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in Sydney–the article attends to the prescience of Mangan’s exhibition in our current times and conditions.
Fiona Kelly McGregor
“Nicholas Mangan’s A World Undone at the Museum of Contemporary Art”
The Saturday Paper, 4 May 2024
Produced in collaboration with artist Alexis Kanatsios, John Meade will be presenting new work in a forthcoming two-person exhibition Neuro, taking place at the artist-run space Cathedral Cabinet.
An opening event for the exhibition will take place at the Nicholas Building from 6–8pm.
Neuro
Cathedral Cabinet, Nicholas Building, Naarm/Melbourne
6 May – 1 June 2024
Mia Boe is presenting a immersive installation entitled Was Satellite Progressive at the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane (IMA). Responding to the poetry of Murri activist, artist and writer Lionel Fogarty, the painting consists of six panels and is embedded within the space by a wall drawing that traces the circumference of the gallery hall. The installation has been commissioned for the inaugural Platform group show at the IMA, a new exhibition series that showcases commissioned work by emerging artists under forty, who were born, live, or lived in Queensland.
Platform
Institute of Modern Art Brisbane
20 April – 16 June 2024
A series of Laresa Kosloff’s Super 8 film works will be on show as a part of the Buxton Contemporary group exhibition, Crowd Theory. Spanning over a decade, this presentation will feature Office skate (2011), St Kilda Rd (2010), Trapeze (2009), Jogathon (2006) and Fountain (1998).
Spanning moving image, sound, sculptural intervention and performance, The same crowd never gathers twice tests the limits of the arena, highlighting artists’ practices which consider the social and structural architectures that bind these spaces, and by extension, the elastic relationship between performance and reality, audience and participant, public and private. The exhibition invites visitors to consider their presence and agency inside this space, and the potential for more active forms of engagement. Throughout the exhibition, the physical gallery is offered as a site for critical discussion and performance responses.
The same crowd never gathers twice
Buxton Contemporary, Naarm/Melbourne
10 May – 13 October 2024
John Meade’s sculpture Self Portrait as Mary Magdalene (2003-2009) will be featured alongside Nusra Latif Qureshi’s painting Medusa’s Respite Room (2017, on loan from the Art Gallery of Western Australia) and Rosslynd Piggott’s Unknown Woman – From China to Brixton and Elsewhere in the new group exhibition Hair Pieces.
Curated by Melissa Keys, the exhibition at Heide explores the evocative and complex significance of hair in contemporary culture through a selection of recent Australian and international works of art. The show will further examine the myriad ways in which artists utilise hair to investigate and conjure generative and even magical possibilities encompassing growth, empowerment and transformation.
Hair Pieces
Heide Museum of Modern Art, Bulleen
4 May – 6 October 2024
The forthcoming exhibition Local Remix: Still Life will feature significant still life works from the Nillumbik Shire Art Collection at Montsalvat Barn Gallery. Elizabeth Gower’s Cycles (2015) series from the Nillumbik Shire Art Collection will be on show, in addition to a newly commissioned installation by Nillumbik artist Nusra Latif Qureshi.
Complementing the exhibition, Nusra Latif Qureshi will present free workshops at Montsalvat, wherein children and adults will be able to produce their own still life artworks in response to the exhibition’s offerings. Qureshi was awarded the Nillumbik Local Prize for Contemporary Art in 2019.
Local Remix: Still Life
Montsalvat Barn Gallery, Eltham
3 May – 23 June 2024
A series of new drawings by Matt Hinkley are currently on show in the group exhibition Always Thinking Like A Scrim at SHIMMER in Rotterdam, NL.
Taking it’s title from a text written by artists Etel Adnan and Lynn Marie Kirby in 2020, Always Thinking Like A Scrim explores the life cycle of textiles, considering them as a means to speak a language that crosses cultures, but also goes underneath them. Providing opportunities to talk about things that you can not say in any other medium, textiles are envisioned here as barometers of our lives.
Working on the minute scale, Hinkley’s works are made slowly and need to be met with equal attention. The drawings’ movement ripples like lace, or turns like a thermohygrograph, changing with each work. This particular series has been made with the Rotterdam port’s view in mind, given it’s visual position of primacy being seen from the exhibition space’s windows.
Always Thinking Like A Scrim
SHIMMER, Rotterdam, NL
3 March – 26 May 2024
Nicholas Mangan is participating in the group exhibition entitled underfoot, currently on show at Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery as a part of the Auckland Arts Festival 2024.
The exhibition features work by artists from Aotearoa and Australia for which whenua (organic earth matter) is utilised in a range of poetic ways to quite literally give body and voice to the land. Connecting recent material enquiries by contemporary artists from the region, the exhibition emphasises a sentient, inextricable relation to earth through a spectrum of geological conditions and potentialities. underfoot draws on precolonial and speculative modes to engage a more reciprocal dialogue between us and the subterranean make-up of our home planet.
underfoot
Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery, Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland
9 March – 12 May 2024
