Kate Vassallo draws the line
Kate Vassallo’s Ripple marks the conclusion of Artereal Gallery’s exhibition program, as the Sydney gallery is closing its doors after nearly two decades.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Carol McGregor, black seeds, 2016, 93 x 187 cm, possum skins, cotton, ochre, ash and resin. Redland Art Gallery Collection. Acquired in 2017 with Redland. Art Gallery Acquisition Funds.
Nicola Dickson, Presenting Jean Piron, 1793 -, Femme du Cap de Diemen, 2018, 91.4 x 76.2 cm, oil on linen. Courtesy of the artist and Beaver Galleries.
Nicola Dickson, Presenting Jean Piron, 1793 – Femme de la Nouvelle, Calédonie 2018, 91.4 x 76.2 cm, oil on linen. Courtesy of the artist and Beaver Galleries.
Linde Ivimey, The Girls, Zoe Davis and Linde Ivimey 2018, 210 x 63 x 28 cm. Steel armatures, acrylic resin, cast and natural human, sheep, turkey, fox, chicken and snake bones, earth, paper, natural, fibre, dyed cotton, dyed and sewn viscera. Courtesy of the artist.
Valerie Kirk, Ayrshire Slates, 2018, 23 x 11.4 cm, gouache on slate. Courtesy of the artist
Shirley Purdie, Gooral Gooral (storm bird and Willy wagtail), 2018, natural ochre and pigments, on canvas, 45 x 45.5 cm. Courtesy of the artist (Nangari) and Warmun Art Centre.
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.
Showing at the National Portrait Gallery, So Fine brings together 10 women artists who each investigate the possibilities of portraiture. In doing so they reflect on forgotten and unacknowledged narratives and perspectives, looking beyond a predominantly male-centred history.
“We’ve always been somewhere between a social history museum and an art gallery,” says exhibition co-curator Sarah Engledow. “This show is about encouraging new forms of portraiture and new ways of telling stories about Australia.”
The impetus for So Fine came about when Engledow was in Melbourne. “I saw works by Bern Emmerichs at Scott Livesey Galleries, and Bern has built her practice making these incredibly detailed paintings on fired ceramics that show scenes of convict life, colonial life and first encounters,” explains the curator.
Moving away from more confrontational works, Engledow notes that many of the chosen artists produced works based on feeling and discursive narratives. “For example Pamela See is Australian born and of Chinese heritage, and she is one of a new group of artists that is reconsidering their family history and their culture origins through expanding portraiture,” she says.
Meanwhile Linde Ivimey has created anthropomorphic figures by uniting various natural materials and fibres. As the curator explains, “Linde’s creative figures reflect Australian scientists’ biological investigations at Macquarie Island and in the Antarctic and even though they’re part-animal, they all gesture towards real people.”
Instead the show looks at who has been silenced, and how ambivalent and fragmentary narratives can bring forth different experiences and perspectives. “It seemed to be time for more quiet and personal perspectives from artists who weren’t necessarily working in fields of portraiture, but who worked in a very womanly way,” says Engledow. “We wanted to expand portraiture, but we also wanted to reflect on the tradition of women’s work, so there’s a lot of stitching, weaving, china painting and botanical illustrations, but it’s created in a contemporary way.”
So Fine: Contemporary women artists make Australian history
National Portrait Gallery
29 June – 1 October
Kate Vassallo’s Ripple marks the conclusion of Artereal Gallery’s exhibition program, as the Sydney gallery is closing its doors after nearly two decades.
A new exhibition at Bendigo Art Gallery takes us deeper into the life of the often-mythologised artist Frida Kahlo, through her personal photographs, clothing and objects, borrowed from Casa Azul, Kahlo’s house museum in Mexico.
Using a hand coil pinch technique, the pots created by the Hermannsburg Potters of Western Arrarnta in Central Australia illustrate the lived histories of the artists and their surrounding Country. Their latest creations are now showing at Bett Gallery in Hobart.
Shaped by the movement between histories and cultures, the work of Thai-born, Aotearoa-raised artist Sorawit Songsataya draws on mystery and plurality as a means of knowing the world. The artist is now showing at Australian Centre for Contemporary Art and Monash University Museum of Art.
Luise Guest speaks with internationally acclaimed multimedia artist Cao Fei—whose work is on show at the Art Gallery of New South Wales—about why the city is a repository of memory and the power of the places we forget or overlook.
A touring exhibition based on a publication of the same title, Bulaan Buruugaa Ngali celebrates Bundjalung artists revitalising the practice of basket weaving, as well as the Bundjalung language—two forms of knowledge that are deeply connected. The exhibition is now showing at Tweed Regional Gallery & Margaret Olley Art Centre.
