Shirley Purdie’s newest paintings at Olsen Gallery are ancestral stories of Country and Ngarranggarni (Dreaming), but also sites and moments that resonate with Purdie, from her birthplace of Mabel Downs Station to her family history.
The practice and philosophy of journaling is at the heart of Alexander Okenyo’s Amor Fati at Bett Gallery: the show can be read as a series of time capsules from Okenyo’s life as he negotiates the art world, family, the pandemic, and his community in the Derwent Valley of Tasmania.
“It starts with Elizabethan and Tudor period portraits and goes right through to contemporary times.” The National Portrait Gallery in London has loaned 80 works to our National Portrait Gallery in Canberra, capturing portraiture through the ages.
Djirrirra Wunuŋmurra’s three-metre tall larrakitj (memorial poles) are perfect for the soaring interiors of Michael Reid’s new Chippendale gallery, where fifteen of the impressively patterned larrakitj showcase Wunuŋmurra’s spiralling floral motifs and her rigorous geometry.
Renowned sculptor Inge King AM once described her artform as “drawing from a thousand different angles.” Using this idea, McClelland Sculpture Park + Gallery is bringing together the work of 13 female-identifying artists to explore the impact of modernism on contemporary sculpture.
For over four decades Ken Knight has painted en plein air, capturing landscapes in his impressionist style.
In Your choc-mint pelvik floor is so boring at Linden New Art, Anna Hoyle’s witty, colourful gouache paintings skewer advertising, self-help and consumer trends and culture.
The history of toys can tell us much about the history of people and culture. And by this logic, Toy Stories at Midland Junction Arts Centre reveals a pattern of improvisation, experimentation and ingenuity in Western Australia over the last century.
Kate Bohunnis works both with and against what she calls the “tired traditions” of gender stereotypes, creating steel and textile sculptures that inhabit a liminal zone between artificially imposed binaries, now showing at COMA gallery.
With its lens aimed at the complexities of how we inhabit and perceive public space, ACCA’s new offering stretches from the gallery to the Melbourne suburbs, with a truly incredible program spanning exhibitions, performances, talks, meeting spaces and installations.
Contemplating First Nations art as a tool of resistance and as offering alternative versions of Australian history, Ever Present: First Peoples Art of Australia at AGWA covers enormous cultural territory, with more than 80 artists.
In Sydney, Manly Art Gallery & Museum, S.H. Ervin Gallery and Mosman Art Gallery have come together to explore how nine female artists reflect on and represent the natural world, from Robyn Stacey’s inversion of Brett Whiteley, to Joan Ross’s clever subversion of Sydney Harbour.
