Practice makes perfect, but that doesn’t make it any easier. Kate Rohde has spent the past 10 years or so honing what she has described as a “hyperactive” practice. But with time and with repetition, she hasn’t discovered any shortcuts, instead finding herself working even harder on her fantastical and colourful cast-resin creations.
I realised that that’s actually one of the really great qualities: the ability to be quite brutal with it.”
You needn’t worry about them, though. A selection of Rohde’s sculptures from the past decade, along with a smattering of new ones, will be safely ensconced at Craft Victoria for Luminous Realms, a solo exhibition. Keeping them company will be three new wallpaper designs, similar to those shortlisted for last year’s Rigg Design Prize and exhibited in this year’s Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art.
The exhibition is the first iteration of Craft’s new exhibition program Focus on Craft, which “recognises the career of an outstanding exhibiting artist whose work is embedded in craft materiality and technique”.
Rohde’s output, and the way it has developed over time, is a good place to start a study of craft materiality and technique, with Rohde stressing the work’s “hand-made quality” and the fact that it’s “very labour-intensive and time-consuming”.
“I used to think of myself as a very rough maker of things,” she says, “whereas now it’s much more polished – it’s a reflection of that development of finishing and technique.”
Luminous Realms
Kate Rohde
Craft Victoria
10 December – 11 February
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.
With a 50-year practice exploring her Chinese heritage, longing and belonging, Zen spiritualism and the endless nature of being, Lindy Lee is now unveiling the pinnacle of her art.
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.
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.
