October 2009 Issue

Shelter: On Kindness

RMIT Gallery
September 25 to October 25
Melbourne

Part of the 2009 Melbourne International Arts Festival. Shelter is an exploration, an exercise in inviting artists, architects, writers and thinkers to reflect on what qualities of environment and circumstance afford us shelter in a physical and metaphorical sense. Is shelter a sense of safe haven, a place to protect ourselves from the natural elements, from the unrelenting pressures of modern life or, perhaps, a place or space to reflect on our innermost thoughts?

Curated by Suzanne Davies, Vanessa Gerrans and Sarah Morris.

Terunobu Fujimori, Takasugi-an (Too-High Teahouse), 2004
Photo: Masuda Akihisa

Glen Clarke
Boy Bomb

Despard Gallery
October 16 to November 11
Tasmania

“The work is part of ongoing investigations into the changing nature of space. Previous works on paper have focused upon ‘spaces once occupied’, voids, bomb craters, locations of historical events and situations. Now, the gaze has shifted to a more specific frozen moment, such as the erasing of space via a scrutiny of matter itself. Many of these events and moments are simple representations of the demolition of UXO’s in the Indochina region.”
– Glen Clarke, April 2009

Glen Clarke, Boy Bomb, 2007, US currency, cotton string, 150 x 110 x 30cm

Thornton Walker
Recent Paintings

Heiser Gallery
To October 10
Queensland

“…The objects are selected as triggers for contemplation and then through a process of layering of surfaces, washes, drips and stains, they are allowed to embrace that quality of otherness. They appear as real and tangible, but always refer to a different and more spiritual reality.”
– from Sasha Grishin, Challenging path flows in rewards, The Canberra Times, May 12, 2009

Thornton Walker, The Way Back In, 2009, oil on canvas, 180 x 150cm

John Brack (1920-1999)

Art Gallery of South Australia
October 2 to January 26
South Australia

More than any other artist of his generation, Brack was a painter of modern Australian life. He has long been considered the quintessential Melbourne artist, a reputation which rests in no small part on the renown of his painting, Collins Street, 5pm, 1955. Today it seems more appropriate to view him as a distinctively Australian artist who, with a penetrating gaze and keen sense of irony, documented aspects of contemporary life in what have become some of the most iconic images of 20th Century Australian art. More than depictions of familiar subjects however, Brack’s paintings are cerebral exercises which slowly reveal references to sources as diverse as the history of art and literature within complex layers of meaning.

John Brack, The Hands and the Faces, 1987, oil on canvas, 213.1 x 167.5cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, 2009. © Helen Brack

Tony Albert
There’s no place like home

Gallerysmith
From October 15
Melbourne

Tony Albert’s masked warriors reference the struggle to keep Girramay culture alive in his far northern homeland. By donning Mexican wrestling masks in the tri-colours of the Aboriginal flag (also the colours applied to shields and boomerangs in the far northern rainforest), Albert’s protagonists are ready to fight for their traditions and land. This exhibition comments on the intrinsic value of family and rainforest customs for this city-living artist. Photography, painting and a pair of ruby-red slippers recall the Wizard of Oz and Dorothy’s return home from a busy and surreal world. The parallels drawn here are no less poignant.

Tony Albert, No Place, 2009, chromogenic print, 100 x 100cm

Maree Azzopardi
I walk the line

Smith & Hall Gallery
October 12 to 23
Sydney

I walk the line includes large oil and mixed media landscapes and a new photowork series entitled, After the storm. It explores the artist’s cathartic journey that began while the artist was based in Europe last year. Returning home, Azzopardi began using the Australian landscape as a metaphor for her own interior dialogues and emotional states. The somewhat dark images include text based on Johnny Cash’s album, I walk the line, symbolic of the artist’s past year in the studio.

Maree Azzopardi, I saw then what I had not seen before, 2009, oil and mixed media on Belgian linen, 200 x 250cm

Emily Kame Kngwarreye

Dacou Australia
October 29 to December 6
Melbourne

Combining gestural authority and fluid spontaneity, Emily used a wide brush and exuberant colours to create her extraordinary last series of 24 paintings, three weeks before she passed away in 1993.

Emily Kame Kngwarreye, My Country, 1993, 71 x 81cm

Melbourne Society of Women Painters & Sculptors

100th Annual Exhibition
Glen Eira City Council Gallery
October 22 to November 1
Melbourne

The Melbourne Society of Women Painters & Sculptors is the longest established women’s art group in Australia. Many well-known and highly respected Australian women artists such as Ethel Carrick Fox, Lina Bryans, Clarice Beckett and Clara Southern have been members. Today, membership stands at 115 and consists of painters, sculptors and printmakers. Many styles are covered including representational, imaginative and contemporary, resulting in exhibitions that are lively and dynamic.

Judith Perry has given unstinting service to the Society since 1961. The Toymakers was placed second in the 1947 Travelling Art Scholarship at the National Gallery Art School.

Judith Perry, The Toymakers, 1947, oil on canvas

Margarita Georgiadis
The Principle of Invisibility

Rex-Livingston Art Dealer
October 1 to 25
Sydney

“The Principle of Invisibility is the continuation of my research into painting the ‘presence of absence’. Each painting gives a fragment of visual information enabling the viewer to imagine the hidden narrative that exists beyond the frame. A road leads to a destination not pictured. A figure stands looking toward an absent piece of her story that only she can see… The paintings are therefore absolutely “present” in the moment, there is no end nor beginning, leaving us to imagine infinite possibility.”
– Margarita Georgiadis

Margarita Georgiadis, Into the Drained Pool, 2009, oil on canvas, 122 x 102cm

Paul Uhlmann
to hear the language of birds

Fremantle Arts Centre
September 26 to November 22
Western Australia

In this ambitious installation, Paul Uhlmann extends his enquiries into the interconnectedness of all living beings beyond the two-dimensional, and into the grounds of Fremantle Arts Centre. As an artist-inresidence over several seasons, Uhlmann’s painterly and sculptural response to the surrounding birdlife reflects his meditative sensibility.

Paul Uhlmann, become the sky, 2009, oil on canvas, 180 x 150cm. Photo: Justin Spiers 1009_back_0704 back 19/09/09 5:43 PM Page 196

John Ryrie
Celebrating John Ryrie

Chrysalis Gallery and Studio
October 27 to November 21
Melbourne

Born in Melbourne in 1961, John grew up in the rural Victorian town of Maffra. Over the years John’s works have included drypoints, etchings, lithographs, monoprints, screenprints, wood-engravings, linocuts, paintings, drawings, sculptures, artists’ books, poems and playing second guitar for Mandolins D’ Amor. John has just recently been awarded the Grand Prize in the 2009 Silk Cut Award.

John Ryrie, The Moon’s Reflection II, 2009, linocut, 70.5 x 99cm

Menagerie: Contemporary Indigenous Sculpture
Collaborative project between Object Gallery and the Australian Museum

Australian Museum
To November 15
Sydney

Gathered over nearly two years of curatorial research by co-curators Nicole Foreshew and Brian Parkes, this exhibition features animal sculpture by 33 established and emerging contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists. The artists have combined traditional object making skills with modern materials and methodologies to create outstanding examples of contemporary Australian art, craft and design.

Vicki West, Hella, 2009, mixed media, 26 x 19 x 58cm Courtesy the artist. Photo: Australian Museum

Rebecca Mayo
Family Mistletoe
Little Window of Opportunity

Port Jackson Press Print Room
To mid October
Melbourne

In this work Mayo is building ‘family mistletoes’ as an alternative model to the family tree. Informed by the work of ecologist David Watson, she is interested in Australian mistletoe and the pivotal role it plays in its natural habitats. With this in mind, Family Mistletoe explores how gender relations are reflected in historical knowledge. Like mistletoe, women are keystones, vital for the formation of the family tree, yet historically represented as incidental, perhaps even as parasites.

Rebecca Mayo, Family Mistletoe (installation detail), Henrietta’s shirt, silk, hemp, cotton dyed and screenprinted with mistletoe dye, buttons, lace, velvet, size 10

Tevita Havea

Glass Artist’s Gallery
September 18 to October 25
Sydney

Tongan born Tevita Havea’s works have been recognised internationally on many levels. His works are in major collections such as the Corning Museum of Glass, USA, and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. He was awarded the prestigious International New Talent, 2009, by Urban Glass New York. Tevita successfully combines the skills of his ancestors with a contemporary use of glass as a sculptural medium. He says, “I am part of an old culture full of myths but I live in a modern world full of contradictions.”

Tevita Havea, vaka ika, 2009, mixed media, 900 x 120cm

Zuza Zochowski
10,000 kms

ArtHouse Gallery
September 30 to October 17
Sydney

In August 2008, Zuza Zochowski and her partner set off in a pop-top 1974 VW Campervan to fulfill a dream of driving the 10,000 kilometres to Darwin from Sydney. This adventure inspired this new series and her paintings take us to the long, flat country with open skies, through the rocky country and never-ending dunes of the inland to reach the salt lakes. As she journeyed into the humid North, we see the more tropical landscape surrounding Darwin with the termite mounds growing progressively in size, and you sense the deafening insect calls and the abundant bird life of the region.

Zuza Zochowski, Alligator Gorge, oil on canvas on board, 130 x 130cm