
Imants Tillers gets metaphysical
In his latest exhibition, now showing at Bett Gallery, Postmodern painter and writer Imants Tillers is influenced by a variety of sources including the metaphysical style of Italian artist Georgio de Chirico.
Anna Davis. Photo by Anna Kurcera.
Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, Pretty Beach, 2019, installation view, The National 2019: New Australian Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, painted wood, silver plate ball chain, crystals, audio, image courtesy the artist and Museum of Contemporary Art Australia © the artist, photograph: Jacquie Manning.
Installation view, The National 2019: New Australian Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, image courtesy the artists and Museum of Contemporary Art Australia © the artists, photograph: Jacquie Manning.
Kunmanara (Mumu Mike) Williams,Kamantaku Tjukurpa wiya. (The Government doesn’t have Tjukurpa.), 2018, synthetic polymer, ink and acrylic marker pen on canvas mailbags and linen, with kulata (spear) made from kulata (spearbush) and mulga, malu pulyku (kangaroo tendon) and kiti (mulga leaf resin), image courtesy the artist and Mimili Maku Arts © the artist/Copyright Agency, 2019, photograph: Jacquie Manning.
Louise Hearman, Untitled #1294 2009, oil on masonite. Collection of the artist. Image courtesy and © the artist. Photograph: Mark Ashkanasy.
Louise Hearman, Untitled #1106 2004, oil on composition board, Museum of Contemporary Art, donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program by Michael Hawker, 2009. Image courtesy and © the artist.
Jenny Watson, installation view, Jenny Watson: The Fabric of Fantasy, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, 2017, image courtesy the artist and Museum of Contemporary Art Australia © the artist, photograph: Anna Kučera.
Jenny Watson, installation view, Jenny Watson: The Fabric of Fantasy, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, 2017, image courtesy the artist and Museum of Contemporary Art Australia © the artist, photograph: Anna Kučera.
Read a full transcript of the interview here.
When Anna Davis discusses being a curator, she talks about collaboration, conversation and experimentation. At one point, Davis sums up her curatorial practice like this: “It’s about working with artists and working with ideas.” Having held the position of Curator at Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) for the past decade, Davis has curated a vast array of contemporary exhibitions, which she discusses in a new four-part series Conversations with Curators.
Aiming to understand the processes and ideas behind curating, Conversations with Curators will feature four curators who talk about what curating means to them. For Davis, curating largely revolves around forging collaborative relationships. “I would describe myself as an artist-led curator,” she says during the podcast. “I am most interested in working collaboratively and closely with artists to develop their ideas and to give them a platform to experiment and create new works or new experiences through their work.”
In achieving these ends, Davis has worked with many prominent Australian and international artists including Hayden Fowler, Patricia Piccinini and Sun Xun, and has curated major solo survey exhibitions on Jenny Watson and Louise Hearman. Most recently, Davis co-curated The National 2019: New Australian Art, a three-part exhibition showing across MCA, Carriageworks and the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The MCA iteration of The National 2019: New Australian Art saw Davis collaborate with Cloathilde Bullen, Curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Exhibitions and Collections at MCA, to curate an exhibition that focussed on a fluid, non-unified sense of ‘national art’ and ‘national identity’.
During the podcast Davis discusses the process of working with well-known artists and curating large-scale shows like The National. She also talks about how she came to curating, what her past life as a “lapsed artist” offers her curatorial practice, why she doesn’t believe that curating is becoming more risk averse, and the ethical implications of her work.
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The National 2019: New Australian Art
Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA)
29 March – 23 June
Podcast produced and hosted by Tiarney Miekus. Engineered by Mino Peric. Music by Jesse Warren.