For Elisabeth Cummings – perhaps one of the most highly regarded artists of her generation – it would seem it was a long road towards recognition. According to Drill Hall Gallery curator of exhibitions, Tony Oates, while the artist was always admired among her peers, her more recent acclaim is perhaps a result of what he calls her “unflagging commitment”. He continues, “Cummings has been making fine paintings for many decades – after a while people have to take notice. Her paintings show an inventive intelligence – a vitality that reflects her vision of light, space and environment.”
The show will, as Oates explains, “represent her immense oeuvre and characterise the adventurous spirit of investigation and vitality that is inherent in her art practice.”
Cummings studied at the National Art School in the 1950s, an exciting period in Australian art when ideas of contemporary art were beginning to enter teaching. The artist’s practice walks a delicate line between figurative and abstraction, leaving the audience to question whether they are observing an interior scene or a landscape and maintaining connections with her revered forerunners such as Bonnard and Vuillard.
Oates believes Cummings’s work possesses a quintessential Australian character, explaining, “they evoke our ‘bush’ environ with great sophistication.” Describing Elisabeth Cummings: Interior Landscapes as a beautifully curated exhibition, the show promises to explore the “breadth of work of one of Australia’s most senior living artists.”
Interior Landscapes
Elisabeth Cummings
Orange Regional Gallery
18 November – 21 January
65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art is an extraordinary account of the unique art of this continent, published alongside a landmark exhibition at the Potter Museum of Art. Necessary and urgent, it tells the story of Indigenous Australian art; a new art history unlike anything we’ve seen. For Jane O’Sullivan, it’s a remarkable and must-read book.
In a new series of illustrated postcards available as a free gift with purchase only at the Art Guide Bookstore, Oslo Davis takes on classic and contemporary art terms and genres and reimagines what they could be referring to.
With so much to choose from, we’ve rounded up the major summer exhibitions in each capital city, open all summer long. Spanning Yayoi Kusama, Magritte, the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, and many more.
For Lardil and Yangkaal writer and curator Maya Hodge, Archie Moore’s presentation at this year’s Venice Biennale is a powerful symbol of reckoning—one that asks the world to bear witness to the long shadows of colonial violence and clears space for possibilities ahead.
The National Gallery of Victoria has announced the next instalment of the Winter Masterpieces series, coming in June 2025, will be a return to French Impressionism—an exhibition from 2021 that closed as soon as it opened due to the global pandemic.
Now showing at Home of the Arts (HOTA), the sophomore Gold Coast Triennial, Here and Now, brings together 42 contemporary artists to represent the depth and dynamism of the city’s artistic community.
