Leeroy New, VAC resin sculpture workshop, 2009.
Leeroy New, Psychopomp installation, 2009.
Leeroy New, Psychopomp installation, 2009.
Leeroy New, Psychopomp installation, 2009.
Leeroy New, Psychopomp, 2009, installation progress.
Leeroy New, Psychopomp installation, 2009.
Driving Filipino artist Leeroy New from Melbourne Airport to Bendigo in 2008, La Trobe Art Institute’s managing curator Paul Northam had to break some bad news to his visiting artist in residence: there wasn’t much of a materials budget for the six-week project ahead of them. So they would have to visit the tip and scrounge. New, renowned for enormous public sculptures, did not flinch. “What’s the tip?” he asked.
That project was such a success and had such an impact on New that he is now well known for enthusiastic use of recycled materials, a direction sparked by his La Trobe residency. When the artiist visited to make work for the Castlemaine State Festival, he made many trips to the local recycling stations for a thorough fossick. The result is a massive faux entrance covering up the heritage-listed façade of the Castlemaine Art Museum.
No one could have predicted what emerged, though his previous works have intertwined the visual arts with fashion, film and theatre, and he takes inspiration from mythology, film and video games.
Invited jointly by La Trobe University and the 2017 Castlemaine State Festival, in conjunction with the Castlemaine Art Museum and Manila’s Ateneo Art Gallery, New was also commissioned to make a sculpture for the central courtyard at the La Trobe Art Institute for the Mutable Truths exhibition. He was astonishingly busy during his three-week visit. Northam, though, has seen the artist in action and says he delivers “extraordinary results within ridiculous timeframes”.
La Puerta Del Laberinto
Leeroy New
Castlemaine Art Museum
17 March – 26 March
Mutable Truths: Perspectives on Philippine Contemporary Art Practice
La Trobe Art Institute
15 March – 30 April
Steffie Yee spent many years gathering stories and images of her family’s history in the town of Branxton, NSW where her parents successfully ran a Chinese restaurant. Yee’s solo exhibition Chinese Restaurant Playground, which celebrates playfulness and joy, recently opened at the Maitland Regional Art Gallery.
In an era of information excess and manipulation, Wang Zhiyuan’s Dictator Training Centre exhibiting at Passage Gallery, reminds us of contemporary art’s potential as an open-ended platform for reflection, dialogue, and shared authorship.
In our ongoing series, Shelf Portraits, Art Guide writers recommend the books—recently published or deserving of more attention—that shed new light on an idea that has long simmered in the art world or has helped them see a familiar medium in a different light.
Revealed: New and Emerging WA Aboriginal Artists is an annual celebratory exhibition of Aboriginal artists from across Western Australia. Now showing at Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, the event has a community spirit and passion that grows each year.
Blak In-Justice, now showing at Heide Museum of Modern Art, challenges the brutal systems that shape Indigenous incarceration in Australia—while charting the healing power of ancestral knowledge in the process.
Taking an expanded approach to Indigenous curatorial practice, the ninth TarraWarra Biennial features work responding to themes of regeneration, restoring spirit, and disrupting colonial space. Three artists discuss their contributions.
