The Art Gallery of South Australia acquired Sue Kneebone’s works Neat Drop and Angel Inn, both 2014, from an exhibition she held at Fontanelle Gallery in 2014, Deadpan. The works are being exhibited in the AGSA atrium in June.
“It goes back to my ancestors of the mid-1850s,” Kneebone explains. “I was trying to capture a feeling of a time in Adelaide when there was some sort of sense of colonial brutality and gentrification rubbing up against each other. That’s the aesthetic I’m trying to create.”
Neat Drop focuses on the story of her ancestor John Mansforth who was brutally murdered at Skillogalee Creek, north of Adelaide. A lot of Kneebone’s work involves field trips and, in this case, she travelled to where the crime scene was thought to be. There she found signs like Hellfire Creek and Devil’s Garden. “These colonial, gothic names inspired my work and the sensibility in my work,” says Kneebone.
To add authenticity, Kneebone included items such as a rock from the site of the murder, combined with domestic furniture including colonial chairs or chandeliers. “It’s about taking nature and the domestic environment and mashing them together,” she says.
Kneebone is trying to piece together her own family history and its place in the context of colonial history. “I’m trying to get a feel for that time through my work. I’m looking for anecdotes and trying to get an understanding of those colonial times.”
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.
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.
Bringing together 70 artists from 30 countries, the 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art fosters connections across cultures and borders, and translates cultural knowledge for the present day.
