Kenny Pittock’s arresting sculptures of melting icecreams are especially evocative of Australia’s extreme hot weather. With ‘punny’ titles like It’s way too sunny, boy, the realist but slightly off-kilter works might make us think of the instant, but temporary, relief an ice-cold treat can offer. Pittock is not alone: curator Hannah Williamson, who sought out existing works for Swelter, as well as commissioning fresh pieces, says her aim is to canvas experiences of summer from a physiological point of view.
She continues, “It is also about climate change, and about the experience in this region—the way Queenslanders seek respite, and work with their existence in this environment.” Swelter is part of an overarching summer theme in South East Queensland’s Moreton Bay region, alongside Sunburnt in the Suburbs at Pine Rivers Art Gallery and Like Yesterday at Redcliffe Art Gallery, the latter looking at beach culture with a nostalgic lens.
While Pittock has created an activity-based installation about sun hats in one of Caboolture’s three exhibition rooms, Abigail Varney is presenting a series of prints that centre on the intense build-up season in Darwin, when humidity soars before the monsoon hits. Another artist, Amelia Hine, is taking over a second gallery room to have its heating dial turned up. A worker in the mining industry, as well as an artist, Hine’s sound-based piece focuses on research into mining communities— people whose existences are often centred in extreme hot climates. Visitors will get to feel this.
Other new works are more cooling: Katharine Parker’s series of swimming pool paintings; Hailey Atkins’s sculptures of frozen tea-towels (she used to resort to them during her air-conditioning-free childhood); and Salote Tawale’s Pocari Sweat video work, shot in a pool of cool water.
Swelter
Caboolture Regional Art Gallery
Until 4 March
This article was originally published in the January/February 2023 print edition of Art Guide Australia.
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.
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.
The growing cultural interest in art books reflects the enduring power of the printed word. Jane O’Sullivan takes a closer look.
In Anmatyerr artist Elizabeth Mbitjana Pitijana’s first solo exhibition in Melbourne—which focuses on the Central Desert food source Arnwekety (bush plum)—the influence and love of her Country and culture is palpable. Elizabeth Mbitjana Pitijana is now showing at Niagara Galleries.
