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.
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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
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