John Meade and Nusra Latif Qureshi: Recipients of the inaugural Lionel Gell Foundation Art in Science Initiative residency
Congratulations to Sutton Gallery artists John Meade and Nusra Latif Qureshi, who have each been awarded the inaugural ‘Lionel Gell Foundation Art in Science Initiative’ residency.
Launched in a collaboration between University of Melbourne’s Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) and the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity (Doherty Institute), the residency aims to foster creative, interdisciplinary exploration at the intersection of artistic expression and scientific endeavours.
The Lionel Gell Art in Science Initiative will support five residencies from 2025 to 2028, each awarded to an established, VCA-trained visual artist. Selected artists will receive $50,000 each to develop new works inspired by their immersive experience at the Doherty Institute. During their nine-month residencies, the artists will observe, respond to and draw inspiration from the Institute’s pioneering work in infectious diseases and immunology and its people.
Images: John Meade, Courtesy the Victorian College of the Arts, photo Giulia McGauran; Nusra Latif Qureshi, Courtesy the Art Gallery of New South Wales, photo Jenni Carter
Stephen Bush Awarded the Paul Guest Drawing Prize 2024
We are pleased to thrilled to announce that Stephen Bush has been awarded this year’s Paul Guest Drawing Prize for his work Warmgrau, I–III (2024).
Presented by the Bendigo Art Gallery, the non-acquisitive biennial prize highlights contemporary drawing practice in Australia. The each finalists’ work, including Bush’s winning entry, is on view until 27 January 2025 at the Bendigo Art Gallery.
Notes from the 2024 Judge, Chris McAuliffe (Emeritus Professor, School of Art and Design, Australian National University):
“The hours that I spent dwelling on the short-listed entries passed very quickly. It was a great workout, having to ask yourself ‘What does it mean to call this a drawing?’ over and over. In the end, I selected a winning work which I thought asked and answered that question in many different ways. Stephen Bush’s Warmgrau, I-III, 2024, pushes drawing to an ambitious physical size. That makes process critical: thousands of marks accumulate, each of them an exercise in pressure, density, hue and tone. For all that, it’s a seductive drawing. Delicate in colour, enigmatic in mood, inviting exploration. Maybe it’s the seaside setting but I felt the same curiosity and wonder you have peering into a rock pool. There’s a cunning bait-and-switch that toys with expectations about drawing: it seems closely observed but is utterly unreal, it maps a territory that can never be found, it delivers information that just won’t add up. It reminded me of Borges’ story about a mysterious encyclopedia entry documenting a non-existent world; unrelenting in its attention to detail but adding up to something fantastic.”
Paul Guest Drawing Prize 2024 30 November 2024 – 27 January 2025 Bendigo Art Gallery, Bendigo, VIC
Nicholas Mangan Panel Discussion and Artwork Screening at RMIT Blackbox Theatre
Join Nicholas Mangan alongside a panel of acclaimed writers, artists and historians for Artist Fieldworking: Locations, Methods and Responses, an afternoon salon at RMIT Blackbox that brings together screenings, presentations and listening sessions that engage with artist fieldwork.
Organised by RMIT, Melbourne and The Royal College of Art, London, the event celebrates the forthcoming release of the second print edition of Fieldwork for Future Ecologies: Radical Practice for Art and Art-based Research. Presenting works from some of the book’s original contributors paired with new collaborators, the salon aims to examine the subject of artist-based fieldwork as an unfolding assemblage of practices, conversations, and site-based responses to the ‘the field’ as an active (and at times difficult) site of research and production.
Artist Fieldworking: Locations, Methods and Responses RMIT Blackbox Theatre Wednesday, 4 December 2024
Please note this is a ticketed event and capacity is limited.
Announcement: Nusra Latif Qureshi Survey Exhibition at Monash University Museum of Art in 2025
We are thrilled to announce that Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA) will present Nusra Latif Qureshi’s first survey exhibition in Naarm/Melbourne in 2025. Organised in collaboration with the Art Gallery of New South Wales, where Nursa survey show Birds in Far Pavilions is currently on show until 15 June 2025, the major solo exhibition at MUMA will run from 22 July to 20 September 2025. Marking MUMA’s fiftieth anniversary year, their programme for 2025 celebrates five decades of presenting groundbreaking art, ideas and curatorial innovation within a university context.
Tracing the Naarm-based artist’s journey from early experimental pieces in Lahore to recent explorations into three-dimensional forms, the show at MUMA will address themes of colonialism, migration and cultural identity through painting, photography, textile and installation.
Nusra Latif Qureshi (solo exhibition) Monash University Museum of Art, Naarm/Melbourne 22 July – 20 September 2025
Anne Ferran in ‘Radical Textiles’ at the Art Gallery of South Australia
Anne Ferran is included in the major exhibition Radical Textiles opening at the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide. Featuring works from AGSA’s extensive international, Australian and First Nations collections of textiles and fashion, the exhibition celebrates the innovations, traditions and lore that has come to characterise working in fabric and cloth over the past 150 years.
On show in the exhibition is Ferran’s photogram work Untitled (blue wedding gown #1), 2003. Evoking a spectral yet bodily presence through this photographic technique, Ferran speculates on the history and life of the garment and its owner in this evocative work in the Art Gallery of South Australia’s collection.
Radical Textiles Art Gallery of South Australia, Tarndanya/Adelaide 23 November 2024 – 30 March 2025
Read: Nusra Latif Qureshi interviewed in Liminal Magazine
On the occasion of her survey exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, artist Nusra Latif Qureshi was interviewed by Liminal Magazine as a part of their 5 Questions series.
Expanding on the genesis of her show Birds in Far Pavilions, the role and burden of art history in her work and her materially extensive research process, the interview provides generous insight into the inner workings of Qureshi’s approach to painting and exhibition making.
Liminal Magazine, “5 Questions with Nusra Latif Qureshi,” 6 November 2024.
Mia Boe’s first institutional solo exhibition Guwinganj will take place at the Hervey Bay Regional Gallery, opening later this month. Developed in response to her time on Butchulla Country as the 2024 recipient of the Fiona Foley Residency, Guwinganj explores the role of Indigenous knowledge in addressing the challenges of the future.
‘Guwinganj’ is a Butchulla word for a benevolent spirit: a guiding force from the past that helps to navigate the present. The exhibition will bring together recent paintings, including Boe’s sci-fi influenced ‘The Aboriginal Robot’ series, and contemplative new video, photographic and installation based work. On view from Saturday 30 November, Hervey Bay Regional Gallery will hold opening celebrations on Friday 6 December.
Mia Boe Guwinganj 30 November 2024 – 16 February 2025 Hervey Bay Regional Gallery, Hervey Bay, QLD
David Rosetzky’s work Bentwood #1 (2017), recently acquired by the Darebin Council Art Collection, will be included in the forthcoming collection show Something like a dream at the Bundoora Homestead Arts Centre.
The exhibition brings together artists who’s work in photographic and sculptural media connotes ideas of the surreal and uncanny to playfully interrupt the continuity of time and place, address anxieties of the future and reimagine fixed notions of the past.
The opening event for the exhibition will take place Saturday, 7th December, 4–6pm.
Something like a dream Bundoora Homestead Arts Centre, Bundoora, VIC 30 November 2024–22 February 2025
Elizabeth Gower’s work Found Image Series 2 (1990) is included in the current exhibition at Artbank Sydney, (De)Nature Morte: Still Life from the Artbank Collection.
Interrogating the significance of still life as a persistent modality throughout art history, the exhibition explores the legacies of the genre for contemporary practitioners experiencing a post-digital, post-human age.
(De)Nature Morte: Still Life from the Artbank Collection Artbank Sydney, Waterloo, NSW 7 November 2024 – 7 February 2025
Dr Rosslynd Pigott Digital Story: The James C. Sourris AM Collection of Artist Interviews
Rosslynd Piggott’s interview with Jane Devery, Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, is now online as a part of The James C. Sourris AM Collection of Artist Interviews published through the State Library of Queensland.
Taking place in her Melbourne studio in 2023, the interview delves into Piggott’s childhood and family, her art school days and early career in the 1980s in St. Kilda, coursing through her time in Paris, Venice and Japan, and culminating in a rich discussion of the experiential drives and manifold references behind her most recent paintings.
Rosslynd Piggott in ‘Arriving Slowly’ at the Ipswich Art Gallery
Including works by Agnes Martin, Mark Rothko and Gwyn Hanssen-Pigott on loan from the National Gallery of Art, Canberra, the exhibition Arriving Slowly at the Ipswich Art Gallery gathers artists who invoke and play on notions of the sublime in abstraction.
Arriving Slowly Ipswich Art Gallery, Ipswich, QLD 17 November 2024 – 16 February 2025
Event: Masterclass with Nusra Latif Qureshi at the Art Gallery of New South Wales
On the occasion of Nusra Latif Qureshi’s major solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Nusra Latif Qureshi: Birds in Far Pavilions, the artist will host a masterclass to develop fantastical composite creatures inspired by historical Mughal painting and taking inspiration from the Art Gallery’s collection, accompanying gardens and wildlife around the campus.
By tracing and layering images of animals, birds, plants and insects, participants will create highly detailed and imaginative new works on paper as Qureshi leads the class through compositional and watercolour techniques. Please note all materials will be provided and all skill levels are welcome.
This is a ticketed event with limited capacity, as such booking is required.
Nicholas Mangan will feature in the landmark group exhibition Mutual Aid. Art in Collaboration with Nature opening 31 October at the Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea in Turin, Italy.
Curated by Francesco Manacorda and Marianna Vecellio, the major exhibition explores the creative collaboration between humans and the non-human world by gathering a selection of artists who have addressed the interdependence between humans and nature from the 1960s to today.
Profiling different phases of artistic reflection on ecology, the exhibition culminates concerns around the current climate crisis and its theoretical developments. The project focuses around the act of sharing the creative process between artists and natural elements (animal, vegetable and inorganic), interpreted by the works of artists such as Maria Thereza Alves, Michel Blazy, Bianca Bondi & Guillaume Bouisset, Caretto/Spagna, Agnes Denes, Hubert Duprat, Henrik Håkansson, Tamara Henderson, Aki Inomata, Renato Leotta, Nicholas Mangan, Yannis Maniatakos, Nour Mobarak, Precious Okoyomon, Giuseppe Penone, Tomás Saraceno, Robert Smithson, Vivian Suter and Natsuko Uchino.
Mutual Aid. Art in Collaboration with Nature 31 October 2024 – 23 March 2025 Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin, IT
Exhibition Catalogue, Nusra Latif Qureshi: Birds in Far Pavilions
The exhibition catalogue Nusra Latif Qureshi: Birds in Far Pavilions (2024) is now available to preorder in anticipation of Qureshi’s survey show opening 9 November at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.
Publishing on the occasion of the artist’s first major solo exhibition in Australia, the book traces Qureshi’s 30-year career, from her early paintings in Lahore, in which she began to reimagine traditional forms of representation, to their zenith beyond the page and into 3D sculpture with a new commissioned installation.
Richly illustrated with over 100 works and historic archival imagery/photography, the publication includes insightful accompanying essays by curator Matt Cox, Art Gallery of New South Wales director Michael Brand, academic Sugata Ray, arts writer Julie Ewington, curator Esa Epstein, and philosopher and psychoanalyst Robyn Adler.
Nusra Latif Qureshi: Birds in Far Pavillions Edited by Matt Cox Essays by Michael Brand, Julie Ewington, Sugata Ray, Esa Epstein and Robyn Adler Paperback 272 pages 27.5 x 19 cm
Stephen Bush and Helga Groves in the Paul Guest Drawing Prize
We are pleased to announce that Stephen Bush and Helga Groves are finalists in this year’s Paul Guest Drawing Prize. Presented by the Bendigo Art Gallery, the non-acquisitive biennial prize highlights contemporary drawing practice in Australia.
Paul Guest Drawing Prize 2024 30 November 2024 – 27 January 2025 Bendigo Art Gallery, Bendigo, VIC
Kate Beynon has been selected for the Portia Geach Memorial Award 2024, Australia’s most prestigious art prize for portraiture by women artists.
Beynon’s portrait, entitled Shapeshifters (Supernatural Self & Fam Spirits) (2024) depicts the artist alongside supernatural portrayals of her creative family. Imaged in a violet dreamscape surrounded by vibrant botanical motifs and guardian spirit, the portrait encapsulates the artist’s longstanding enquiry into the hybridity and latency of identity.
Portia Geach Memorial Award 25 October – 15 December, 2024 S.H Ervin Gallery Sydney, NSW 2000
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.
Vivienne Binns in ‘The Possibilities Are Immense: Fifty Years of the George Paton Gallery’
Vivienne Binns’ acclaimed video work Self-portrait, self-image (1980) will feature in the forthcoming exhibition The Possibilities are Immense, celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the George Paton Gallery, University of Melbourne. Produced during the seminal Mothers’ memories others’ memories project undertaken in various academic and community venues in Sydney between 1979 and 1981, the two-channel slide work with overlaid audio interview features images of Vivienne’s mother Joyce Binns alongside corresponding years in Vivienne’s life.
Renowned for as a genesis point for some of Australia’s most well-known artists, writers and curators, the George Paton Gallery has a rich history of fostering experimentation, new media, and innovative artistic practices. For over fifty years the gallery has played a crucial role in championing progressive art movements, encouraged new media such as video and performance art and provided a forum for ideas, debate and innovation.
The Possibilities Are Immense: Fifty Years of the George Paton Gallery George Paton Gallery, University of Melbourne, Naarm/Melbourne 24 October – 9 November 2024
Artist Talk: Catherine Bell at the Melbourne Sculpture Biennale
On the occasion of her inclusion in the first edition of the Melbourne Sculpture Biennale, The Burden of Objects, Catherine Bell will be in conversation with fellow artists Rob McLeish and Sean Meliak on Saturday 12 October at the Villa Alba Museum in Kew, VIC. The engaging talk will offer insight into the exhibiting artists’ respective practices and each sculpture included inaugural exhibition.
Attendance is free and booking is not required.
Artist Talk: Catherine Bell, Rob McLeish and Sean Meliak Melbourne Sculpture Biennale: The Burden of Objects Villa Alba Museum, Kew, VIC Saturday, 12th October, 1–2pm
Art Forum: Mia Boe (Artist Talk at the Victorian College of the Arts)
Mia Boe will present a talk at the Victorian College of the Arts on Thursday, 10th October as a part of their ongoing Art Forum series.
Proving a rich insight into her work and its relationship with the work, Boe will share the themes, processes and ideas that drive their practice.
This event will take place at Federation Hall at the Victorian College of the Arts’ Southbank campus, while simultaneously being streamed online as a live webinar. Please note that registration is not necessary to attend this in-person event.
Art Forum: Mia Boe Federation Hall, Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne Thursday 10 October, 12.15pm
Peter Robinson’s solo exhibition Charcoal Drawing has recently opened at the Whangārei Art Museum in Whangārei, Aoetearoa New Zealand.
Stretching across two spaces of the museum, the exhibition features an assembly of congruent quasi-sculptures. Posited here as line drawings conducted in space, Robinson’s liberal and malleable handling of the material gestures toward rudimentary or reduced forms such as spirals, ships or waves. Composed of a burnt-wood-veneer aluminium, Robinson’s installation makes reference to the longstanding Minimalist interest in a phenomenological experience of sculpture in the museum space with each outstretching yet recoiling sculpture indiscriminately plotting various lengths of the gallery.
Peter Robinson Charcoal Drawing Whangārei Art Museum 8 September – 8 December 2024
Catherine Bell in the Melbourne Sculpture Biennale
We are thrilled to announce that Catherine Bell is included in the inaugural Melbourne Sculpture Biennale, The Burden of Objects.
The exhibition will feature four sculptures from Bell’s acclaimed ‘Maker Unknown’ series, wherein the artist reuses the enduring Oasis floral foam from discarded or decayed bouquets. This is then carved and reshaped to resemble a botanical motif, functioning as a monument to a lost love one while shrinking the chasm between decay and vitality, ephemerality and permanence, nature and artifice.
The Burden of Objects is the first iteration of the newly established Melbourne Sculpture Biennale. The exhibition will be held form 9–13 October at the Villa Alba Museum, a heritage mansion in Kew. The exhibition features 19 artists based in greater Naarm/Melbourne who are making objects at scale or in costly or labour-intensive materials and traditional sculptural processes such as carving, moulding, casting, modelling, and assembling.
Melbourne Sculpture Biennale: The Burden of Objects Villa Alba Museum, Kew 9 – 13 October
Kate Beynon features in the exhibition The Mask Spirits Hour opening soon at Carlton Library as a part of the Yarra Public Art Light Box Program. Presented by the collective group TudoFAM (Kate Beynon, Rali Beynon & Michael Pablo), the exhibition features intricately drawn and painted ‘mask spirits’ that has been transformed and illuminated through the light boxes to create a dreamscape that explores ideas of storytelling, shapeshifting and hybridity.
The Mask Spirits Hour Carlton Library, Naarm/Melbourne 25 September 2024 – 24 March 2025
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
