It takes a skilled eye for composition to recast a plastic bag as a thing of beauty. Inspired by Vermeer’s mastery of light and shadow, Dutch photographer Hendrik Kerstens mimics the medieval costumes worn by Vermeer’s subjects and replaces their angular headwear with the similarly shaped modern props of plastic buckets, tea towels and bags. Using his daughter Paula as his subject, Kerstens is known for creating photographic portraits combining a historical aesthetic with a strikingly modern sensibility.
Coinciding with QUT Art Museum’s inaugural holiday portraiture program, Draw It. Code It., Kerstens’ work is part of Portray and Play, an exhibition of diverse figurative work focused on people and faces.
In a rare departure from his botanically themed works, Dunlop’s sunset-hued sketches softly contrast with the stark lighting of Kerstens’ photography.
Also showing are works by fellow Dutch photographer, Erwin Olaf. His meticulous images recall the pages of fashion magazines with a hint of David Lynch’s dark surrealism. “The opportunity to showcase the portraits by major Dutch photographers Hendrik Kerstens and Erwin Olaf came through a connection with the Kingdom of the Netherlands.” says QUT’s Sarah Barron. “They are touring these works and loaning them to QUT Art Museum especially for this exhibition.”
In response to the portraits by Kerstens and Olaf, QUT Curator Kevin Wilson has selected a number of portrait-based works sourced directly from QUT’s permanent collection. Works by Sidney Nolan, Chuck Close, Julie Dowling, Albert Tucker, Barbara Hanrahan, Adam Cullen and John Olsen are also part of the exhibition alongside the large-scale drawing, A Room of Facial De-Construction 2018, created during a performance in the gallery space by artist-in-residence Gosia Wlodarczak.
Portray and Play
QUT Art Museum
6 January – 4 February
Past meets present in Leyla Steven’s latest exhibition, now showing at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and co-curated by Artspace. The Australian-Balinese artists adopts a collaborative approach to restitution, scrutinising the systems of conservation and documentation we have inherited.
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.
Emma Phillips has a knack for catching moments of unbridled humanity. In her latest exhibition at ReadingRoom, she shines a light on the breadth of her practice, amalgamating several projects from the last decade.
Anador Walsh reviews Ivan Cheng’s performance exhibition NP at Monash University Museum of Art—a three-day project, made in collaboration with a group of Year 11 students, that explores the loss of childhood innocence and role of documentation in performance.
In GHOSTLAND, her new exhibition at the ANU Art & Design Gallery, Julie Gough continues her lifelong inquiry into gaps and silences—while conjuring the apparitions that haunt Tasmania’s colonial past.
