Gordon Bennett and Mia Boe in ‘Blak In-Justice: Incarceration and Resilience’ at Heide Museum of Modern Art
Works by Gordon Bennett and Mia Boe are included in the group exhibition Blak In-Justice: Incarceration and Resilience at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne.
Prominent works by both artists, including Bennett’s Freedom Fighters (1989, courtesy of the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth) and Bloodlines (1993, courtesy of the Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane) and Boe’s Boundary Street and Mandatory Health Assessment from the series For the Angels in Paradise (2023), are included in this prescient show. Aiming to make an important and engaging contribution to the public discourse about First Nations injustice and the power of cultural practices, the exhibition additionally highlights the vital role of art in First Nations communities and broader Australian society as a catalyst of raising awareness, sharing stories and creating change.
Curated by Kent Morris (Barkindji artist, curator and Creative Director of The Torch), the exhibition presents works by leading First Nations artists including Vernon Ah Kee, Destiny Deacon, Julie Dowling, Jimmy Pike and Judy Watson that address the overrepresentation of Indigenous Australians in the criminal justice system and the crisis of deaths in custody. Their powerful responses are shown alongside the remarkable creative achievements of former and current prison inmates, many of whom have connected with their culture and Country through The Torch program, such as Thelma Beeton, Stacey Edwards, Robby Wirramanda and Sean Miller.
Blak In-Justice: Incarceration and Resilience Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne 5 April – 20 July 2025
Rosslynd Piggott will be in conversation with curators Sue Cramer and Emma Nixon at Gertrude Contemporary on Sunday 23 March alongside fellow artists Jon Campbell, Sandra Bridie and former Gertrude director Rose Lang.
Marking the conclusion of the group exhibition A Fictional Retrospective: Gertrude’s First Decade 1985-1995, the artists and curators will discuss the exhibition’s formation and the lasting impact of Gertrude Contemporary’s studio and exhibition programme over the past four decades.
Please note this artist talk is free and does not require booking.
In Conversation: Sue Cramer and Emma Nixon with Sandra Bridie, Jon Campbell, Rose Lang and Rosslynd Piggott Sunday 23 March 2025, 3:00pm Gertrude Contemporary, Preston South, VIC
Rosslynd Piggott and Doug Hall at Sarah Scout Presents
We are excited to announce Rosslynd Piggott and Doug Hall’s two-person exhibition nothing — a drift taking place at Sarah Scout Presents gallery in Melbourne from 28 March – 10 May 2025.
Evolved from conversations in and around their studios, the exhibition takes its starting point in the artists shared interests and entanglements with Japanese culture. nothing — a drift comprises a suite of collage paintings by Hall and Piggott’s expansive painting Long flower light and cumulonimbus edge (2022).
Gesturing toward the fleeting and impermanent, the exhibition represents a meeting point of two deeply personal and contemplative practices. Hall and Piggott have known each other for more than 30 years and their deep interest in Japanese art and culture remains inseparable in their friendship.
The opening celebration will take place at Sarah Scout Presents on Saturday 29th March from 3–5pm.
nothing – a drift: Doug Hall & Rosslynd Piggott 28 March – 10 May 2025 Sarah Scout Presents 47 Easy Street, Collingwood, VIC
Mia Boe will present a series of new paintings in the forthcoming group exhibition Metropolis, curated by Amelia Winata, at Arts Project Australia’s gallery in the Collingwood Yards.
Responding to the fantasy modernist city as a multifaceted site upon which various narratives and emotions have been projected, the exhibition explores the relationship of these historical models to the present day.
Among the artists included are Michael Camakaris, Samraing Chea, Diena Georgetti, Jordan Halsall, Matthew Harris, Lei Lei Kung, Sammi-Jo Matta, Steven Perrette, Gavin Porter, Cathy Staughton, Darren Sylvester, and Terry Williams.
Metropolis 22 March – 26 April 2025 Arts Project Australia gallery Collingwood Yards, Collingwood, VIC
Nicholas Mangan and collaborator Cameron Allan McKean will be in discussion with the curators of the current exhibition Deep Time Real Time at the RMIT Design Hub gallery in Melbourne on Saturday 29 March.
The artists will explore the various stages of research and development that led to the production of their collaborative work Death Assemblage (The blade that makes coral time is shaped like a mushroom cloud), 2025, currently on view in the exhibition.
The event is free to attend, and RSVP is required.
Artist Talk: Nicholas Mangan and Cameron Allan McKean Saturday 29 March, 1–2pm. RMIT Design Hub Gallery 150 Victoria St, Carlton VIC 3000
Kate Beynon and Elizabeth Gower at Deakin University Art Gallery
Works by Kate Beynon and Elizabeth Gower will be on show at the Deakin University Art Gallery’s celebratory exhibition 50 Years of Collecting. Surveying significant works alongside new acquisitions, the exhibition aims to explore not only the collection’s origins but also its ongoing development as a reflection on the shifting trends in contemporary Australian art. Newly acquired Dragon Goddess Guardian Spirits for Earth (2024) by Kate Beynon will feature alongside Elizabeth Gower’s Savings #9 (2010).
In conjunction with the exhibition the University Art Gallery will launch an updated publication about the collection, in addition to a publicly accessible, searchable art collection database.
50 Years of Collecting Deakin University Art Gallery, Burwood, VIC 12 February – 4 April 2025
Gian Manik’s monumental painting Tabernacle (2025) is currently on show in After Ruins, a group exhibition at Non Frasa, Bali, Indonesia.
Co-presented with DESA, the exhibition at Nonfrasa reflects on how artists approach cultural memory. Drawing from the symbolism and framework of ruination, the exhibition seeks to articulate the ways in which artists to trace the remnants of past cultures to make meaning of the present. The group presentation of new sculpture and painting from artists throughout Australia and Southeast Asia, After Ruins crystallises shared efforts to grapple with memory, both fragmented and symbolic. In yoking these connections between the memorial and ruinous, artists are inviting viewers to reconstruct collective past, fashioned as monuments of shared experiences.
After Ruins Nonfrasa, Bali, Indonesia 22 February – 22 April 2025
Anne-Marie May and John Meade in ‘Strata: Lorne Sculpture Biennale 2025’
Sutton Gallery artists Anne-Marie May and John Meade are both featured in the 2025 edition of the Lorne Sculpture Biennale. Entitled Strata, this year’s edition, curated by Simon Lawrie, derives it’s focus from the iconic geology of Gadubanud Country, whereby the stratified landscape of the Great Ocean Road serves as an analogy for the fact that one place is many places, layered both physically and experientially through time, culture, and species.
Featured prominently on Lorne beach is John Meade’s monumental sculpture Giulia (2025). Using Federico Fellini’s 1965 film Juliet of the Spirits as a keystone, the work’s simple abstract form is based on the extraordinary hats worn by Fellini’s characters and designed by Piero Gheradi. The faceted geometry of Giulia’s structural hemisphere is inspired in part by a marbled dome ceiling at the Red Fort in Agra, India. It’s hexagonal design also reveals subtle references to occult spiritualism as seen in Fellini’s film. On the Lorne beach, Meade’s choice of lightweight materials such as the fabric webbing utilise the sun and the wind to evoke a relaxed, yet elegant, disposition (the etymology of resolve is solvere, Latin for loosen or release).
Located on an old timber pier along the Lorne promenade, Anne-Marie May’s work Horizon portal (2025) is a prismatic viewing structure where the internal walls haven been highly polished to capture and deflect an image of the sea, sky and horizon line. Producing an optical effect similar to a kaleidoscope, this interactive work fragments the viewer’s perspective of the horizon line to encourage new experiences of place.
Strata: Lorne Sculpture Biennale 2025 Various locations, Lorne, VIC 1 – 30 March 2025
Elizabeth Gower, Raafat Ishak and Nicholas Mangan at Linden New Art
New and existing works by Elizabeth Gower, Raafat Ishak and Nicholas Mangan are included in the Bernhard Sachs (1954-2022) retrospective exhibition Bernhard Sachs: After History, currently on show at Linden New Art.
Posthumously acknowledging the expansive practice and formative influence of the Melbourne artist and academic, the exhibition features a selection of work by thirty artists either mentored, taught by or concurrently practicing within Sachs’ significant artistic and academic milieu.
Bernhard Sachs: After History Linden New Art, St Kilda, Melbourne 15 February – 18 May 2025
Karen Black in ‘The Intelligence of Painting’ at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia
The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia’s recently opened group exhibition The Intelligence of Painting features a new work by Karen Black, Mountain High (2024).
Curated by director Suzanne Cotter and curator Manya Sellers, the exhibition highlights the energy of contemporary painting in Australia today through the work of 14 Australian women artists, including Angela Brennan, Eleanor Louise Butt, Prudence Flint, Maria Madeira, Thea Anamara Perkins, Kerrie Poliness, Jude Rae, Jessica Rankin, Julie Nangala Robertson, Gemma Smith, Jelena Telecki, Jenny Watson and Nyapanyapa Yunupingu.
The Intelligence of Painting 28 February – 20 July 2024 Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA), Sydney
Gordon Bennett at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia
A presentation of significant Gordon Bennett works will be on show at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA), Sydney, as a part of their ‘Artists in Focus’ series. Showcasing MCA collection highlights alongside major works from private collections and the artist’s estate, the presentation curated by Tim Riley Walsh consolidates the continued importance and poignance of Bennett’s oeuvre within contemporary art today.
Joining the presentation of Bennett’s work is a communal presentation by Tiwi artists that includes pieces by Timothy Cook, Raelene Kerinauia Lampuwatu, Nina Puruntatameri, Cornelia Tipuamantumirri, Bede Tungutalum and Pedro Wonaeamirri.
MCA Collection: Artists in Focus Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA), Sydney 8 February 2025 – 4 May 2025
Nicholas Mangan in ‘Deep Time Real Time’ at RMIT Design Hub Gallery
Nicholas Mangan is presenting a newly commissioned work (in collaboration with Cameron Allan McKean) in the exhibition Deep Time Real Time at the RMIT Design Hub Gallery.
The exhibition explores design’s relationship to planetary systems through two opposing time scales – ‘deep time’ and ‘real-time’. Described as a call-to-action for the agency of citizen-led ‘time literacy’, the exhibition aims to show artists working in idioms that develop new collective societal and design methodologies to respond to the complex challenges of our planet.
Deep Time Real Time: The 2025 Alastair Swayn Legacy Exhibition RMIT Design Hub Gallery, Naarm/Melbourne 28 February – 11 April 2025
Brett Colquhoun, Raafat Ishak, Anne-Marie May and Rosslynd Piggott at Gertrude Contemporary
Seminal works by Brett Colquhoun, Raafat Ishak, Anne-Marie May and Rosslynd Piggott are now on show at Gertrude Contemporary as a part their landmark anniversary exhibition, A Fictional Retrospective: Gertrude’s First Decade 1985–1995. Curated by Sue Cramer and Emma Nixon, the group exhibition takes a speculative look at the span of more than thirty artists’ works shown during Gertrude’s formative years, shaping a fresh and vital interpretation of this era.
Including artworks rarely seen in almost 40 years, the ‘fictional retrospective’ explores how works from this era have retained a timeliness and contemporary relevance through their diverse explorations of cultural and artistic identities; painting both figurative and abstract; the staged and cinematic.
A Fictional Retrospective: Gertrude’s First Decade 1985–1995 Gertrude Contemporary, Naarm/Melbourne 8 February – 23 March 2025
To celebrate her first major survey show at an Australian institution, artist and author Cherine Fahd sat down with Nusra Latif Qureshi at her exhibition Birds in Far Pavilions at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Discussing depictions of women, the self and broader themes of identity in her work, the interview explores the “tradition-interrupting” show through a deep dive into the artist’s methodologies, conceptual rationale and historical approach.
Ann Debono’s work Starview II has been chosen as the frontispiece for HEAT Magazine’s latest edition (Series 3 Number 7). Published since 1996, the magazine (Giramondo Press) is a distinguished Australian literary journal renowned for its dedication to literary quality, and its commitment to publishing innovative and imaginative poetry, fiction, essays and the hybrid forms.
Ann Debono’s Starview was on show at Sutton Gallery in October 2024, wherein the artist produced a suite of five monochrome paintings citing her extensive photographic study of the construction of the Westgate Bypass Flyover in Naarm/Melbourne.
Elizabeth Gower in ‘Shape Shifters: A Retrospective of Australian Collage’ at the Wollongong Art Gallery
Elizabeth Gower’s work Monochrome Series (2015) is included in the exhibition Shape Shifters recently opened at the Wollongong Art Gallery. Curated by Angie Cass, the exhibition examines how re-purposed materials, concepts and subjects have evolved within an Australian context. Works in fabric, paper, moving images, and found or domestic objects will be exhibited in a celebration of this innovation yet accessible art form.
Shape Shifters: A Retrospective of Australian Collage Wollongong Art Gallery, Wollongong, NSW 7 December 2024 – 2 March 2025
Nicholas Mangan in ‘The Ecologies Project’ at the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery
Works from Nicholas Mangan’s celebrated Core-Coralations (2023) series are currently on view at the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery as a part of the newly opened group exhibition The Ecologies Project: How climate changes culture. The Ecologies Project looks at the effects climate change has had on deep time of human culture. Considering generational conversations about climate, the exhibition postulates what seismic shifts to the stability of our climate might look and feel like, and thinks about what artists are creating now that will make it into a future cultural milieu. Featuring over 60 works spanning photography, painting, printmaking, installation, video and sound work, the exhibition includes work by Maree Clarke, Aunty Netty Shaw, Megan Cope, Sue Ford, Jill Orr, Rosemary Laing, Linda Tegg, Joseph Beuys, Jacobus Capone, Nicholas Mangan, Yandell Walton, among other artists.
The Ecologies Project 8 December 2024 – 16 March 2025 Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Mornington, VIC
We are pleased to share that the digital publication Mirror, mirror, published by Sonntag Press with artists Rosslynd Piggott and Rudi Williams, is now live.
Expanding on Piggott and Williams’ collaborative exhibition at Sutton Gallery earlier this year through insightful scholarship and archival documentation, the publication will feature a newly published interview with curator and writer Sue Cramer delving deeper into the formative influences, material preoccupations and ongoing intersections of the artists’ respective practices.
Mirror, mirror (2024) Digital publication Artists: Rosslynd Piggott, Rudi Williams Interview by Sue Cramer Edited by Brigid Moriarty Design by Alex Ward/Sonntag Press
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.
