Piercing the veil
A new exhibition at Buxton Contemporary finds a rich complexity in the shadowy terrain between life and death.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Helen Johnson, Barron Field, 2016, installation view. Courtesy the artist and Mary Mary, Glasgow.
Abdul Abdullah, Self Portrait as Ophelia, 2015, oil and resin on board, 180 x 110 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Fehily Contemporary.
Teresa Baker, Minyma Malilunya, 2015, synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 200 x 120 cm.
For the first major survey of contemporary Australian painting in a decade, the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art took an unexpected curatorial cue. While discussing the two-part exhibition, titled Painting. More Painting, ACCA curator Annika Kristensen mentions the phone book.
For the show, more than 60 Australian painters will have their works hung on a 90-metre-long wall mural by Sam Songailo in ACCA’s main gallery, with surnames starting with A to L arrayed in alphabetical order in the first chapter (29 July to 28 August), and M to Z in the second (1 to 25 September).
“We’re not really sure what kind of relationships will emerge until those paintings are hung next to one another,” says Kristensen, who developed the show with artistic director Max Delany and associate curator Hannah Mathews.
After all, there’s a lot of catching up to do. The last 10 years have seen a renewed interest in painting, a development Kristensen attributes in part to a backlash against the overwhelming immediacy of images offered by social media.
That said, Kristensen is quick to emphasise that the exhibition, unlike an encyclopedia, is not meant as an authoritative way to wrap up and close the book on the topic.
“It’s a starting point of a conversation, a leading point,” she says, “and we hope there’s much more discussion to be had both in and around the show and extending from the show as well.”
Painting. More Painting
Australian Centre for Contemporary Art
29 July – 25 September
A new exhibition at Buxton Contemporary finds a rich complexity in the shadowy terrain between life and death.
In Cézanne to Giacometti: Highlights from Museum Berggruen / Neue Nationalgalerie currently showing at the National Gallery of Australia, viewers are invited to share a journey through the history of modern art from across the globe.
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.
With an approach to artmaking drawn from the “fieldwork of life”, twin brothers and artistic collaborators Man&Wah, who are now showing at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, use plant migration to explore duality and movement.
Every two years, the Ramsay Art Prize opens to Australian artists under 40 working in any medium. Presented by the Art Gallery of South Australia and supported in perpetuity by the James & Diana Ramsay foundation, the prize seeks to spotlight contemporary artists at a formative moment in their careers.
Five Acts of Love, a new exhibition at ACCA, maps the space in which memory, intimacy and resistance intersect.
