George Egerton-Warburton, ‘Backwash’ at Drill Hall
George Egerton-Warburton is included in exhibition Backwash.
Contemporary artists have lived through an era of uncertainty and disillusionment. Floating along a current of late-capitalism, a self-perpetuating system of waste, they find themselves stuck in a cyclical deadlock, overloaded with images of humanity’s self-destruction. In creating art from the ‘backwash’ of contemporary life, this group of artists seek to grapple with a tide of excessive mass consumption and an ever intensifying globalisation by readdressing its residues.
Backwash includes works by Robert Bittenbender, Isabella Darcy, George Egerton-Warburton, Sarah Goffman, Spencer Lai, Marian Tubbs, and Philadelphia Wireman. Curated by Oscar Capezio and Tony Oates.
Backwash Drill Hall, Canberra 1 September–22 October 2023
Nick Selenitsch, ‘And, &, The Middle Playground’ at MADA Gallery
And, &, The Middle Playground at MADA Gallery is the practical component Nick Selenitsch’s PhD candidature, titled The Middle Playground.
The Middle Playground explores how play can be employed as a framework for understanding artistic experience: both in the reception of art and in its creation. It is an endeavour that embraces paradoxical mergers — minglings—exemplified by play, and culturally defined at its outer limits by sport and games.
This is an arena where the serious is also frivolous, the inconclusive becomes conclusive, and where there is an acute awareness that comes from being lost in the task — becoming “thoughtfully playful,” in other words.
And, &, The Middle Playground MADA Gallery, Building D, Monash Caulfield campus 6 September–23 September 2023
Helga Groves, ‘Lithic Elements (Pilbara Series)’ at STEAMM Studios
Presented as part of Big Questions Institute’s The Pilbara Series: A fusion of Art and Science, Helga Groves exhibits a new body of work Lithic Elements (Pilbara Series) at Steamm Studios in Wolloongabba, Queensland.
Invited to participate in the 2022 BQXpedition to explore the Pilbara’s origin of life stromatolite sites, Groves continues her investigations into geophysical processes and natural phenomena.
STEAMM Studios is a unique multi-disciplinary art studio, showcasing the intersection of Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Maths and Music (STEM + Art & Music).
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
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
Aleks Danko in ’40×40′ at Australian Print Workshop
‘APW 40×40’ is a monumental survey of contemporary Australian printmaking bringing together 40 leading contemporary Australian artists who share an important and long-standing creative relationship with Australian Print Workshop.
To mark APW’s 40th Anniversary (reached during COVID lockdown in 2021) each artist was invited to collaborate with APW Printers to create a new artwork in the print medium.
David Rosetzky, ‘Air to Atmosphere’ Website & Publication
David Rosetzky’s commission, Air to Atmosphere explores the diversity, trauma, resilience, and pride of the LGBTQIA+ community on Dja Dja Wurrung Country in Central Victoria. Presented throughout the Castlemaine Art Museum, commencing with the Terrace Projection screening every evening from dusk, Air to Atmosphere celebrates the LGBTQIA+ community through video, photography, publishing, performance and an extensive website.
Rosetzky turns his prodigious skill and deep intuition towards what might be considered a documentary enquiry with a creative outcome. And herein lies his remarkable achievement, to weaken the seemingly stark distinction between art and documentary.
A friendship born out of shared studio space at legendary art incubator Gertrude Contemporary in Melbourne, painter Mia Boe and dancer and choreographer Amrita Hepi became friends and peers. This is a conversation about their immersive art practices, battle with identity – as women, and as artists – and the dilemma of authenticity.
Hear Nusra Latif Qureshi speak about her Sharjah Biennial 15 presentation, a selection of mixed media works—four of which were commissioned by 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art—that explores critical displays of power and its incumbent historical misrepresentations.
Latif Qureshi’s works are on view at the Calligraphy Square in Sharjah from 7 February to 11 June 2023.
Review: Gerry Bell, ‘Stephen Bush, A Troubled Mind, Melbourne Art Scene.
May 2023
Read Gerry Bell’s review in Melbourne Art Scene.
“There are, to be sure, many familiar elements within the pictures, traditional Lowlands architecture, violet monochromes giving full rein to enamel marbling and phantasmagorical backgrounds, abundant small goods displayed before waterlogged landscapes, figures in period costume, abandoned and converted delivery vans, imposing Modernist office blocks and heavy industry.”
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
Review: Oscar Capezio, ‘(Un)tangling the threads that bind them: Judy Watson and Helen Johnson’,
May 2023
Read Oscar Capezio’s insightful review in Art Monthly Australia.
“Watson and Johnson have each developed new work that seeks to bind their individual and ancestral experiences to Australia’s colonial history. They have unearthed peripheral counter-narratives to past events, critiquing them by layering them with new meaning – letting the facts speak out and get tangled among other stories. Both these artists draw on imagery and source material from official public records and private correspondence, but also family memories, dreams and the many murky histories involving nation and Country. In looking at concealed histories we discover ‘what lies beneath the ground.’”
Review: ‘The ‘Two Cathies’ are centering care through life and robots’ by Duro Jovicic
April 2023
Read Duro Jovicic’s review in Art Guide.
What infuses the film, and Bell and Staughton’s collaboration, is care and ethics. It is not usual for a neurotypical and neurodivergent artist to collaborate so fruitfully, for so long. As Bell has written, the pair’s “collaborative model provides a valuable conceptual framework to think about neurodiverse interactions and how care ethics can reorientate practices, values and procedural standards in professional studios that support artists with disabilities”. It is about creating art in ways that are inclusive, ethical, and genuinely relational.
Hear Nusra Latif Qureshi speak about her practice for Art Forum, held at Federation Hall, Melbourne on May 11 at 12:15pm.
Art Forum is the Victorian College of the Arts’ series of weekly talks by leading artists and curators. Providing a rich insight into their work and its relationship with the world, each guest speaker shares the themes, processes and ideas that drive their practice.
Raafat Ishak in ‘The Night of Counting the Tears’, Islamic Museum of Australia
Raafat Ishak is exhibiting alongside Ezz Monem in ‘The Night of Counting the Tears’ at the Islamic Museum of Australia.
‘The Night of Counting the Tears’ combines Islamic traditions with Western art forms, both classical and contemporary, to explore representations of the Prophet Muhammad, the Kaaba, and everyday life.
The Night of Counting the Tears
28 April–15 July 2023
Islamic Museum of Australia
Nusra Latif Qureshi announced as a finalist in the 2023 Paul Selzer Prize
Congratulations to Nusra Latif Qureshi who is a finalist in the 2023 Paul Selzer Exhibition and Prize alongside Kay Abude, Trent Crawford and Lisa Waup.
The Paul Selzer Exhibition honours the memory of artist and entrepreneur Paul Selzer and is made possible thanks to the generosity of the Selzer family. The fellowship funds new commissions by contemporary artists who are alumni of the Victorian College of the Arts. As part of the exhibition, a prize of $25,000 will be awarded to one of the four finalists.
The works selected will be exhibited at the Fiona and Sidney Myer Gallery, Melbourne from 30 June – 22 July 2023.
Gian Manik is exhibiting in a group show at Chauffeur, Sydney. Titled The Profane Opening upon the Sacred, the exhibition runs from April 14 – May 27, 2023.
Artists include: Antoine Aguilar Gian Manik Luke Pither
Gian Manik announced as a finalist in the 2023 Ramsay Art Prize
Congratulations to Gian Manik, who is a 2023 finalist in the Ramsay Art Prize.
Presented by the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA) and supported in perpetuity by the James & Diana Ramsay Foundation, Gian Manik is one of twenty-seven finalists who have been selected for the Ramsay Art Prize 2023 – a $100,000 acquisitive prize for contemporary Australian artists under the age of forty.
The works selected will be exhibited in a major exhibition at AGSA from 27 May until 27 August 2023. The winning work will be acquired into AGSA’s collection, joining works by past prize winners Sarah Contos (2017), Vincent Namatjira (2019) and Kate Bohunnis (2021).
Laresa Kosloff awarded the 2023 Nillumbik Prize for Contemporary Art
Congratulations to Laresa Kosloff, who has been awarded the 2023 Nillumbik Prize for Contemporary Art (NPCA) with her work New Futures™. This Prize is awarded every two years and is open to emerging and established artists working in any medium across Australia.
New Futures™ is one of a trilogy of short films by Kosloff which are part sci-fi, tragedy and farce, reviews of the socio-political conditions and environmental consequences of late-stage capitalism. It is both a timely and sensitive representation of Laresa’s work.
New Futures™ is now on view at Montsalvat until 11 June 2023. The complete stock footage trilogy is on view as part of the ‘Melbourne Now’ exhibition at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia until 20 August 2023.
Raafat Ishak, ‘Eye Looking at Large Glass Broken’ at Heide Modern
We are pleased to announce that Raafat Ishak will present a new body of work in the modernist gallery at Heide Museum of Modern Art. Titled ‘Eye Looking at Large Glass Broken’, the major exhibition opens on Saturday 22 April 2023.
Consisting of enigmatic sculptural objects, a sound work and a series of vivid paintings, ‘Eye Looking at Large Glass Broken’ references Heide’s long-standing role as an incubator of modern and contemporary art and architecture, and brings together a number of key speculative threads in the artist’s practice.
Eye Looking at Large Glass Broken 22 April – 6 August 2023
Peter Robinson ‘Kā Kaihōpara’ at Dunedin Public Art Gallery
Peter Robinson’s major new exhibition ‘Kā Kaihōpara’ is open at Dunedin Public Art Gallery
Kā Kaihōpara is a journey of discovery – exploring concepts, materials, and ways of making and seeing. Taking the material language of modern building and construction, Peter Robinson (Kāi Tahu) creates a speculative and open-ended installation that navigates audiences through ideas that have been occupying him over a recent period of research.
<> explores creative reduction and expansion in abstraction by playfully presenting art that can be approached intellectually and experientially. Elizabeth Gower is among 12 international and local artists who continue in the century-long tradition of contesting assumptions that art need be restricted to rectangular pictorial planes, placed flat against the wall, featuring recognisable references to the known world. Indeed, the edges of a work are no longer a boundary but rather something continuous with the world, both materially and imaginatively.
Artists: Kjell Bjørgeengen, Irina Danilovah, Rachael Daisy Dodd, Jessie French, Elizabeth Gower, Ripley Kavara (aka Lakatoi), Carol Cheng Mastroianni, Salvatore Panatteri, Phebe Parisia, Layla Vardo, Oscar Yanez and Alan Zhao. Curated by Cūrā8.
Catherine Bell & Cathy Staughton present ‘Dog Robot Space Star’ at Gertrude Glasshouse
Catherine Bell and Cathy Staughton, aka The Two Cathies, have worked together on projects since The Portrait Exchange (2009), their first collaborative venture for Arts Project Australia. The creative partnership’s current project involves working exclusively with the infamous Boston Dynamics Robot ‘Spot’ during a six-month residency at RMIT Health Transformation Lab.
Dog Robot Space Star Catherine Bell & Cathy Staughton 21 April – 20 May 2023 Artist Talk: Catherine Bell in conversation with Amelia Winata, Saturday 20 May, 4pm
Eugene Carchesio in ‘The National 4: Australian Art Now’
The National is a biennial survey of contemporary Australian art. A partnership between four leading Sydney cultural institutions: the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Campbelltown Arts Centre (C-A-C), Carriageworks and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA Australia), it brings together 48 new artist projects involving more than 80 artists across the Country.
For Eugene Carchesio, art, life, and philosophy are inextricably linked. Carchesio’s works for The National 4 are a continued exploration of entangled forces, which he first began interrogating in the 1980s. While the Brisbane-based artist is best known for his diminutive matchbox constructions and his colourful watercolours, he is also an established musician. In his practice, audio and visual artistic dialogues seamlessly feed into one another, revealing an intuitive and improvisational approach to art-making. The resulting works, influenced by simple yet profound observations of the world around him, carry a sense of rhythm whereby each work acts as a part in the overall, connecting composition.
Titled after a term used in landscape architecture describing an improvised route or path made in defiance of an official roadway or designated direction, Desire Lines suggest a covert journey through the City of Melbourne’s collection of over eight thousand objects and artworks. In Lynch’s exhibition, the lived life of the city is far from a rational approach, rather it celebrates curious encounters and beguiling coincidences, from a forgotten handprint in Melbourne’s walk of fame, signage removed from unknown buildings in the city, and a seemingly-damaged architectural model.
Desire Lines Wednesday 15 March – Wednesday 26 July 2023
