The digital realm is filled with ways to enjoy art, from online exhibitions and videos to podcasts and lectures. Each week one of the Art Guide editors brings you a curated selection of art online.
Indigenous stories in art
To mark Reconciliation Week, QAGOMA have collated dozens of stories based on works by Indigenous artworks held in their collection; highlighting the diversity of contemporary practice. These short stories turn the spotlight on a wide range of artists including Shirley Macnamara, Danie Mellor, Wawiriya Burton, Nellie Ngampa Coulthard, Judy Watson, and Dale Harding.
QAGOMA’s stories also touch on the legacy of historical figures such as Albert Namatjira and Dick Roughsey.
Seeing all these stories together is a timely reminder of the strength and versatility of Indigenous artists.
Jumaadi invites children to think about special things
The Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) reopened to the public this week, but their online #Together in Art programs are still going strong.
In the second project for their Together in Art Kids program, Jumaadi has chosen the theme Special to me. Children between five and 12 years old are invited to use whatever materials they already have at hand to “make an artwork about or for someone, something or somewhere that is special to you”. Kids can make 2D or 3D artworks.
Artworks for Jumaadi’s Special to me project can be submitted until 5pm (AWST), 12 July. Selected entries will feature in an online exhibition which will open on 27 July.
You can see the online exhibition from Del Kathryn Barton’s earlier project here.
Watch Catherine Bell’s silent film The Artists
Artists Catherine Bell, who is also a curator and academic, and Cathy Staughton, who makes work at Arts Project Australia, have collaborated since 2009. In 2017 they undertook a residency together at Norma Redpath House, University of Melbourne.
Bell’s short silent film, The Artists, documents their time together there and records both their nonverbal communication and intimate friendship.
A touring exhibition curated by Bell, FEM-aFFINITY, which features Staughton and 13 other female artists, was unable to open at Benalla Art Gallery due to Covid-19. Instead, NETS Victoria and the gallery have made The Artists available to watch online until 28 June. You can also watch Bell talk about curating FEM-aFFINITYhere.
Craft Victoria explores The Meaning of Things
Craft Victoria also reopened on 1 June, but their exhibition The Meaning of Things continues in the virtual realm.
In this inclusive group show, lovers of things were invited to share the stories behind objects that have meaning for them. The result is an eclectic online cabinet of curiosities featuring everything from tools to family heirlooms.
The project is still ongoing and readers can submit their own treasured objects here.
360 view of Manta Nganampa Tjukurpa Pulkatjara: Stories from Our Land
OLSEN gallery in Sydney offers audiences everywhere a 360 degree virtual tour of their current group show, Manta Nganampa Tjukurpa Pulkatjara: Stories from Our Land, which features bright dynamic paintings by Indigenous artists Wawiriya Burton, Yaritji Young, Barbara Moore, and Sylvia Ken. A slideshow of the works is also available here.
In a new collaborative exhibition at PS Art Space, in partnership with Cool Change Contemporary, five artists with process-lead practices contemplate material ethics through actively engaging in slowness and reuse.
Isaac Julien’s 2022 video work Once Again…(Statues Never Die) exposes the unseen emotional registers inherent to the struggle for colonial repatriation by mapping the places where poetics and politics intersect.
A new exhibition at the Australian National Capital Artists Inc (ANCA) asks 12 artists—including Dan Powers, S.A.Adair, Emma Beer and Lisa Sammut—to explore scale: from the miniature to the monumental.
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.
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.
Even though women currently outnumber men in the arts by two-to-one, the industry remains rife with gender disparities from income to accommodating motherhood. So why, asks Neha Kale, is the growing visibility of female-identifying artists falling short of genuine, material change?
