In this exhibition, Bloombox, Natasha Bieniek has created 10 miniature paintings of public gardens around Melbourne.
“Like a painting, gardens are often composed… Fundamental elements like shape, colour, form, tone, texture, hierarchy and focal points are used to achieve aesthetic dexterity. But for me, gardens are more than mere decoration; they hold greater significance.”
As a place where city residents may interact with nature, gardens offer respite and succour. Bieniek’s tiny paintings are atmospheric vignettes within these places, a series of enigmatic opportunities for Lilliputian adventures that loom large in the imagination.
For these works, Bieniek has chosen an unusual support: a coated aluminium product called Dibond. Each measures 9 x 14 cm, and has a different finish. They share a sleek aesthetic, with rounded corners and a variable surface, but while some are like mirrors, others sparkle and still others mimic copper. In this high tech aesthetic, Bieniek found a counterpoint to the poetry of oil painting and her chosen organic subject matter. Her realist miniature garden paintings o er intimacy, and “connections to history and points in time. They also allow us to reflect on present-day culture and operate as an antidote to the stream of images to which people are subject.”
These paintings, which fit (like a phone) into the palm of your hand, take the viewer into Melbourne’s Treasury Gardens, the Japanese Garden at the Melbourne Zoo, Ripponlea Estate and the Botanical Gardens in Warrnambool. The manicured detail makes Bieniek’s point succinctly. “The natural world remains the most sensory-stimulating and information-rich environment that people ever encounter.”
Bloombox
Natasha Bieniek
Jan Murphy Gallery
1 November – 26 November
Watch a video of Natasha Bieniek speaking about her exhibition Bloombox here.
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.
Julie Mehretu’s first solo exhibition in the southern hemisphere, now showing at the Museum of Contemporary Art, attempts to harness the urgency and energy of the Ethiopian-born New Yorker’s multilayered painting practice.
Ahead of the National Gallery of Victoria’s major retrospective on singular Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, we invited four artists to respond to the influence of Kusama on their own practice—and meditate on what her work means to them.
Josina Pumani’s electric ceramic work Maralinga—recently recognised at the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards— deftly excavates a long-hidden past.
