The links between portraiture and national history are complex and entwined. The group exhibition So Fine: Contemporary women artists make Australian history is exploring this relationship by using portraiture to reconsider and reimagine Australia’s dominant historical narratives.
The pujiman, meaning bush or desert born, were the last Indigenous Australians to live entirely nomadically.
“Dooralong is just a valley populated by horses, cows and trees, but it’s very beautiful to me,” says Belynda Henry of her home in New South Wales.
Showing at Devonport Regional Gallery, the Burnie-based artist’s work explores his ancestors’ past, alongside the emotion and memory of living on an Aboriginal mission.
In Brooke Leigh’s video Searching For Alice, 2015-2017, scenes of a deciduous forest bereft of leaves are interspersed with close-up shots of a young woman’s mouth.
Brodie Ellis’s video work, A Crystal World, 2016, cuts together footage of Australian mining explosions, sourced online, into a slow motion sequence.
A collection of full-scale concrete barriers, painted in Yves Klein’s trademark blue, rest in an untidy pile on a gallery floor.
A unique and unprecedented collaboration between four galleries in the Hunter region, the Hunter Red suite of exhibitions aims to celebrate the Indigenous culture, social diversity, iconoclastic spirit and creative flamboyance of this growing area of NSW.
Albert began as a trainee at the Queensland Art Gallery 17 years ago. His success was propelled by membership of proppaNOW – a Brisbane-based art collective. And he is eager to reciprocate the favour.
“Art has always served as a record of our cultural lives,” says artist Jane James when explaining the larger ideals behind her work.
John Young has embraced the potential of technology, even while continuing to paint the old-fashioned way – very carefully.
Hayley Megan French paints landscapes that express, via abstraction and minimalism, a connection to place.
