Light Moves has suitably been itinerant since it set off for Darwin from the National Gallery of Australia at the end of 2015. The NGA travelling show is only now reaching its final venue, Wangaratta Art Gallery, recently added thanks to extra funds. Along the way, it has been to Cairns, Broken Hill, Melbourne, Launceston, Geraldton, Bunbury, Port Lincoln, and Mildura. Phew.
Shows on the hoof aren’t always easy to dispatch. Curator Anne O’Hehir says initial organisation of a travelling show can be complex as curators assess geographical spread, content, technical criteria, and demographics. More broadly, institutions consider such shows within an immense juggling act of potential incoming and outgoing exhibitions, and opportunities to engage new audiences.
Light Moves is fresh, accessible and lively, and it features some prime local proponents of the medium: Shaun Gladwell, Gabriella and Silvana Mangano, Julie Rrap, Daniel Crooks, David Rosetzky, Christian Thompson, and Hayden Fowler. O’Hehir says she always starts o gallery talks about Light Moves by acknowledging that some people avoid video art, even those who have been around the traps and have encountered “the interminable video that you feel compelled to sit through.”
For this show, she has selected work that is more gently and enticingly poetic, rather than narrative-based. Its connecting and democratic theme of the human body in space is something we might all relate to. ”All the artists in this show are engaging with some of the smaller moments in life.”
Light Moves: Contemporary Australian Video Art
Wangaratta Art Gallery
25 November – 4 February 2018
Developed in 2022 by Artback NT as part of Apmere Mparntwe—the Australian Ceramics Triennale— touring exhibition Clay on Country, showing now at New England Regional Art Museum, showcases the diversity of ceramics in the Central Desert.
About Face is a smart piece of marketing. The new book on portrait painting from Australia and New Zealand has a mission to change buyers’ minds about the field. But as Jane O’Sullivan discovers, any sales pitch wears thin if it’s repeated often enough, and the close attention to how portrait painting is received by the market means that other important conversations fade to the background.
In Anmatyerr artist Elizabeth Mbitjana Pitijana’s first solo exhibition in Melbourne—which focuses on the Central Desert food source Arnwekety (bush plum)—the influence and love of her Country and culture is palpable. Elizabeth Mbitjana Pitijana is now showing at Niagara Galleries.
Even though women currently outnumber men in the arts by two-to-one, the industry remains rife with gender disparities from income to accommodating motherhood. So why, asks Neha Kale, is the growing visibility of female-identifying artists falling short of genuine, material change?
Whether beloved pets or superstitious omens, animals have always existed in art. The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia’s latest exhibition is paying tribute to two of the most beloved animal figures: cats and dogs.
rhythm wRites, a new exhibition at QUT Art Museum, spans 30 years of Bigambul artist Leah King-Smith’s manifold art practice, covering painting, photography, sound and animation.
