Briony Downes

Writer

Briony Downes is an arts writer based in Hobart. She has worked in the arts industry for over 20 years as a writer, actor, gallery assistant, art theory tutor and fine art framer. Most recently, she spent time studying Art History through Oxford University.

Interview

Frances Barrett on connecting through art and her new show Meatus

After being postponed for almost two years, Frances Barrett’s Meatus is now opening at ACCA. Our 2020 interview is essential reading ahead of the exhibition and performances.

Preview

Portraiture in Canberra captures Shakespeare to Winehouse

“It starts with Elizabethan and Tudor period portraits and goes right through to contemporary times.” The National Portrait Gallery in London has loaned 80 works to our National Portrait Gallery in Canberra, capturing portraiture through the ages.

Interview

Julie Rrap on women’s liberation, performance and being a trickster

A political protestor and art photographer in the 1970s, Julie Rrap talks about being a woman today and tells us about her new work rethinking historical and feminist representations of the female body, showing at ARC ONE Gallery.

Preview

Generations of female sculptors come together in Melbourne

Renowned sculptor Inge King AM once described her artform as “drawing from a thousand different angles.” Using this idea, McClelland Sculpture Park + Gallery is bringing together the work of 13 female-identifying artists to explore the impact of modernism on contemporary sculpture.

Feature

Artists explore how the earth shapes creativity

From climate change to geography to cattle farming, Gathering Geographies at Sydney’s Darren Knight Gallery speculates on how the earth, via weather, time and resources, shapes human movement and creativity.

Feature

Painter Jahnne Pasco-White is in a tangle of materials

Creating layers of artificial and natural dyes, Jahnne Pasco-White’s quietly mesmerising canvases speak to an entwined relationship between painting, bodies, materials and the world, with work currently showing at Town Hall Gallery and Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery.

Feature

Gabrielle Chanel comes to Melbourne

Trained as a milliner, Chanel rebelliously shunned the restrictive corsets and frills of the Belle Époque and Edwardian fashion in favour of garments focused on comfort, function and style. Gabrielle Chanel. Fashion Manifesto at the National Gallery of Victoria marks the first time a major retrospective of the designer’s work has been seen in Australia.

Feature

Hannah Gartside’s fabric of time

With textiles as her medium, Hannah Gartside engages with the histories and textures of material—and is creating new work for MCA’s Primavera, centred on five powerful women.

Feature

Great Wings Beating in Heather B. Swann

Compelled by Greek mythology, Heather B. Swann is reinterpreting the story of Leda and the Swan—and the story’s violence—through female strength, power and mystery. Obsessed with myths, museums and haberdashery, Swann is entwining these for a new show at TarraWarra Museum of Art.

Preview

Helga Groves’s exquisite earthly abstractions

Drawn to extreme locations where geological change is rendered upon the landscape in violent and unpredictable ways, Helga Groves translates earthly textures into an abstract visual language, with new work at Milani Gallery.

Preview

In the fibre of her being

“Textiles are a form of language, a dialect used to communicate,” says Sydney-based curator Sarah Rose.

Preview

Patrick Hall on creating an elegy to the World War II generation

The art of Patrick Hall is like a repository of memory that weaves together poetic narratives of world history and personal experience, in particular the history of World War II. His work is now showing at Despard Gallery.

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Briony Downes

Writer

Briony Downes's Articles

Frances Barrett on connecting through art and her new show Meatus

Portraiture in Canberra captures Shakespeare to Winehouse

Julie Rrap on women’s liberation, performance and being a trickster

Generations of female sculptors come together in Melbourne

Artists explore how the earth shapes creativity

Painter Jahnne Pasco-White is in a tangle of materials

Gabrielle Chanel comes to Melbourne

Hannah Gartside’s fabric of time

Great Wings Beating in Heather B. Swann

Helga Groves’s exquisite earthly abstractions

In the fibre of her being

Patrick Hall on creating an elegy to the World War II generation

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