QUICK NEWS BITES
Artists do their bit for the bushfires
The HOME Bushfire Relief Art Auction Fundraiser, held on 12 February at the National Art School, has raised over $220,000, with over 1,000 attending in support. The money will be donated to Climate Council, Firesticks Alliance and WWF-Australia. The event was produced by Sam Watson Wood (Director Partnerships, Programming and VIP, Sydney Contemporary) and Rae Begley (Little Hero, Producer and Artist).
Roady4Roadies
After the success of last year’s inaugural event, Roady4Roadies returns in 5 April, expanding from capital cities to regional centres with a total of 13 events taking place around the country.
Roadies are amongst the most essential figures in the entertainment world. Despite their hard work and dedication to the artists and events they work with and for, many roadies find themselves in precarious health and financial circumstances. Roady4Roadies shines a much-deserved light on live production crews while raising desperately needed funds to help those in crisis.
‘In its first year, Roady4Roadies raised $71,500 from being staged in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth,’ said CrewCare co-director and co-founder Howard Freeman.
Jon Stevens, of Noiseworks and INXS fame, explains why he is just one of the many in the music industry to put his hand up to help. ‘Road crew are the heart and soul of the Australian music industry. They are the first people at the venue and the very last to leave …They are the industry’s unsung heroes. But the life of a roadie can be tough and uncompromising.’
This year, events have been confirmed to take place in Adelaide, Brisbane, Darwin, Gold Coast, Hobart, Melbourne, Newcastle, Perth, Port Lincoln, Sunshine Coast, Sydney, The Entrance and Townsville – learn how you can participate.
TALKS and OPPORTUNITIES
Climate change a big focus for museums and galleries conference
Cultural leaders and practitioners will converge on Canberra between 18-21 May to focus on the big challenges facing museums and galleries at their annual national conference.
The theme for the Australian Museums and Galleries Association (AMaGA) National Conference is Creating the Future. Trust. Diversity. Imagination. The conference will tackle some of the hardest topics of our national conversation, and the important role of museums and galleries in shaping the future we want.
Early registration and bursary applications to attend close 24 February.
Among the keynote speakers is Joëlle Gergis, an award-winning climate scientist from ANU who is currently serving as a lead author for the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report; Armando Perla from the new Swedish Museum of Movements, who is currently developing a set of ethical guidelines for museum professionals working with stories of historically marginalised populations; and Director-General Sabyasachi Mukherjee, the driving force behind the transformation of Mumbai’s principal museum, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS). The new director of New Zealand’s Te Papa Tongarewa, Courtney Johnston, will also lead conversations on the role of artists, and leadership in the future. View the full program.
ArtPlay seeking artists to take climate action
ArtPlay is on the lookout for artists keen to tackle Australia’s climate crisis, as part of the next round of applications for the 2020 New Ideas Lab. Artists are being invited to pitch their ideas for projects to be created and developed with children and families at ArtPlay, with support of between $10,000 and $20,000 available.
Shortlisted artists will be invited to pitch their ideas in person to a panel of four children and four adults with equal voting rights. Applicants do not necessarily need experience working with children as long as they have a passion and enthusiasm for involving them in the creative process.
Applications for the 2020 New Ideas Lab will remain open until 5pm, Friday 27 March. To apply visit the City of Melbourne ArtPlay website.
Jonas Staal rethinks propaganda art
Internationally renowned Dutch artist, Jonas Staal, will present a lecture on the evening of 26 February, as part of the UNSW Art & Design Research Forum at UNSW Galleries to coincide with the release of his new book Propaganda Art in the 21st Century (The MIT Press, 2019).
For a long time, propaganda was considered a term only used in dictatorships. But with the advent of terms such as 'fake news', 'alternative facts' and the so-called 'post-truth' era, it becomes clear that in supposed democratic regimes the term remains applicable as well. In his book Propaganda Art in the 21st Century (The MIT Press, 2019), artist Jonas Staal traces the role of art in modern and contemporary democracy, from the use of modernist art by the CIA to propagate against the doctrine of socialist realism in the Soviet Union during the Cold War, to the work of filmmaker and Trump ideologue Steve Bannon in establishing alt-right biospheres in the present.
The UNSW Art & Design Research Forum is organised by Dr Verónica Tello, Julia Mendel and Jasmin Stephens. To book your ticket.
Opportunities for young writers
Whether you’re working on your very first piece or you’re ready to launch your career, Express Media are there for young writers with access to opportunities and creating a network. This week they launched their 2020 Program, which includes opportunities like their Toolkits program, Kat Muscat Fellowship, as well as running Making Tracks in Adelaide and Canberra.
In 2020, Express Media encourage you to get stuck into the poetry, fiction, nonfiction, comics and art found in each issue of Voiceworks, and challenge you to submit your own work for feedback and publication, in print and online. Voiceworks kicks off this year with the release of issue 118 As If, which will be launched at locations across Australia in early April.
Panel on simulation and emergent technologies
A panel discussion at UNSW Art & Design will explore how emergent technologies, methodologies and practices enable us to understand complex information, and harness new perspectives to help solve complex issues that we are facing right now. And how artists and designers play a major part in industry 4.0. Presented the afternoon of Saturday 22 February, visit Visualising the Future for details.
Simon McIntyre, Associate Dean Education at UNSW Art & Design says, ‘UNSW Art & Design is at the forefront of innovation in art, design and technology. As visualisation, simulation, and immersive technologies continue to be widely adopted, industries are identifying that they need people who understand how to use the technology to solve complex problems by creating design-led, human-centric solutions.’
girl friend, New Ghosts Theatre and Belvoir Street Theatre. Photo: Chantel Bann.
ON STAGE
World premiere of girl friend
New Ghosts Theatre Company & the IGNITE Collective will present the world premiere of girl friend, a new work by Green Room Award nominee and resident playwright Natesha Somasundaram, playing at Belvoir Street Theatre from 18 March - 4 April.
Inspired by the 1997 murder of university student Joe Cinque in Canberra, girl friend is a darkly hilarious traipse into what happens to the best of us, when we become the worst of us.
An intensely covered news story at the time, the bizarre circumstances surrounding the murder have inspired many artists in the form of books, theatrical plays and film. All of these works have been authored by Caucasian writers. ‘The public, creative and commercial response to the crime, more-so than the crime itself, certainly speaks worlds about the internal state of a community,’ said Somasundaram.
Anniversary season for Flinders Quartet
Flinders Quartet – one of Australia’s best-loved chamber music ensembles - celebrates its 20th birthday in 2020 with an outstanding series of concerts. Among the treats are new commissions by Australian composers Deborah Cheetham and Derek Brookes. Full details at www.flindersquartet.com
Opera Australia to present Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella
Continuing their successful collaboration of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musicals, Opera Australia and John Frost announced this week they will bring Cinderella for the first time in Australia.
Cinderella is the Tony Award-winning musical from the creators of The Sound of Music, Carousel and Oklahoma which has delighted audiences with its surprisingly contemporary take on the classic tale.
The stage version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella debuted on Broadway for the first time in January 2013, featuring a new book by Douglas Carter Beane and direction by Mark Brokaw, and ran for two years.
Dates, venues and casting for Cinderella, including the city in which the production will premiere, will be announced at a later time.
Artist Callum Preston at Wall to Wall, 2019. Photo: Nicole Reed.
WHAT’S HAPPENING AT FESTIVALS
Australia’s preeminent regional street art festival returns to Benalla
Victoria’s High Country comes alive when Australia’s preeminent regional street art festival Wall to Wall returns to the city of Benalla on 3-5 April. In its sixth year of live painting and showing no signs of slowing down, the three-day arts festival continues to foster a community of artists under the guidance of new festival producers The Social Crew in collaboration with festival curators and founders Juddy Roller.
Reused and new spaces around Benalla and its surrounds prove that no wall is off limits, with other highlight locations like the North East Silo Trail that traverses from Goorambat to the Winton Wetlands, returning to the festival map with new works.
The 2020 line-up features Australian talent in Adnate, Filthy RatBag, Elliot Routledge, Saltwater Dreamtime, Sarah McCloskey, Minna Leunig, plus international talent in Hayley Welsh (UK), Helen Bur (UK), Mysterious Al (UK), Smug (UK) and more, each making their mark – at least until the next coat.
In addition, internationally acclaimed street artist Sofles presents Compendium at the Benalla Art Gallery 6 March until 12 April, a survey of nearly two decades of work. The official line-up is now live on www.walltowallfestival.com/ with more program updates to come.
White Night returns to Bendigo in October
White Night Bendigo will return on Saturday, 10 October 2020, transforming the leading regional centre in a visual and cultural spectacular. The first White Night Bendigo in 2018 attracted a crowd of 60,000 people and generated $5.5 million for the local economy.
Bendigo is a leader in regional food and wine, and was recently awarded ‘City of Gastronomy’ status in the UNESCO Creative Cities network. White Night will continue to celebrate the creativity and beauty of Victoria’s regional cities in 2021, with Geelong taking over as host.
Justin Shoulder for Carrion; digital photograph by Tristan Jalleh. Part of Club Ate at NGA. Image supplied.
Club Ate takes on National Gallery’s facade
Performance artists and leaders of the Sydney queer art and club scene – Club Ate – will light up the iconic 60 metre façade of the National Gallery of Australia for Canberra’s 2020 Enlighten Festival from28 February - 9 March. This major new commission builds on the success of Tony Albert’s I AM VISIBLE, which illuminated the Gallery in 2019 and reaffirms the National Gallery’s commitment to support contemporary artists.
Over 11 nights, water and bodies will flow across the facade of the National Gallery in Club Ate’s monumental video projection In Muva We Trust (2020). In response to the illuminations, the collective, led by interdisciplinary artists Bhenji Ra and Justin Shoulder, will also host Club Muva, a one-night-only live event on 7 March, inspired by the collective’s decade-long practice of merging club and cultural traditions, as well as drawing from the many subcultural groups they support, including the Australian Ball and Voguing scene.
Club Ate draws on Bhenji Ra and Justin Shoulder’s shared Filipino-Australian heritage – using performance, costume and video to create work about personal discovery and stories of the queer Asia-Pacific diaspora.
Youth tackle dangerous ideas
An exclusive collaboration between young Australian leaders, activists and performers will take to the stage at the 10th Festival of Dangerous Ideas, to showcase the power of youth in an exclusive performance titled Unforgivable.
And in a true FODI-style twist, audience members are asked to pay what they believe listening to the leaders of tomorrow is worth by determining the ticket price themselves. Unforgivable aims to ignite change through a collective youth voice giving the audience an opportunity to listen to some of Australia’s most compelling young leaders. Held at Sydney Town Hall, 4 April, check out who is leading this inspiring program.
Festival Director and Co-curator Danielle Harvey said: ‘Across the globe, the burden of moral leadership is increasingly falling to our youth. This special event is an opportunity for audiences to truly engage, listen and support the next generation.’
Coffs to host Australian Festivals Industry Conference
Coffs Harbour has been chosen as the host destination for the 2020 Australian Festival Industry Conference (AFIC) – Australia’s only conference for festival management personnel.
The draft programme is nearing completion and will be unveiled 11 March, along with the launch of early bird tickets.
Japanese artist headlines Cottesloe sculpture festival
Sculpture by the Sea has announced award-winning Japanese artist Haruyuki Uchida, as the 2020 Tourism WA Invited International Artist at the upcoming Cottesloe exhibition.
Uchida is well known as a kinetic sculptor whose works startle and delight using magnets to create illusionary, gravity-defying effects. Since 2006, he has exhibited his work at Sculpture by the Sea exhibitions in Australia and Denmark. However, this year he is creating the largest gravity defying sculpture he has made outside of Japan.
The 16th edition of Sculpture by the Sea, Cottesloe will run from 6 – 23 March 2020.
Numbers in on Midsumma Festival 2020
Midsumma Festival 2020 wrapped up recording attendances exceeding 255,000 across a total of 194 events across more than 100 venues across Melbourne’s CBD and wider Victoria.
The Festival had a successful Festival kick off at Midsumma Carnival, which sawnattendances reach 117,000 the success was followed up with a record-breaking celebration of the 25th Anniversary of Pride March with total participants in Midsumma Pride March at 10,607 (2,177 more than 2019) and total attendances for the event of 55,607.
Midsumma Festival is Australia's premier queer arts and cultural festival, bringing together a diverse mix of LGBTQIA+ artists, performers, communities and audiences. Midsumma Festival will be back in 2021 on 17 Jan to 7 Feb.
Matthew Sleeth, A Drone Opera. Photo: Lucy Spartalis.
AROUND THE GALLERIES
A Drone Opera
Lyon Housemuseum Galleries in Kew (VIC) presents a cinematic installation of A Drone Opera by multi-disciplinary artist Matthew Sleeth. Two monumental 66-panel LED screens will be mounted on trusses and presented as sculptural objects in a dramatic evocation of a rock concert with four speaker stacks to amplify the sound. The multi-channel installation will occupy the entire central gallery of the Lyon Housemuseum Galleries – measuring 26m x 13m – and will be on show for a limited time, from 14 – 29 March.
The two week installation of A Drone Opera at Lyon Housemuseum Galleries will be accompanied by a diverse series of thought-provoking, multi-sensory and unique programs and events. Two panel discussions, titled: Surveillance Cities and Expanded Fields of View will explore our contemporary love affair with technology and the new reality of constant surveillance: how facial recognition, autonomous vehicles, and computer-aided design are changing our urban landscapes and the way we interact with one another.
A Drone Opera is a co-presentation with Experimenta.
Most comprehensive exhibition of Carol Jerrems’ work
Unveiled on the anniversary of her death, Smith & Singer – formerly Sotheby’s Australia –is presenting Carol Jerrems: Portrait of a Decade, the most substantial and fully documented commercial exhibition of her work.
In November 2019, Smith & Singer (then Sotheby’s Australia) achieved a world auction record for an Australian photograph when a version of Vale Street (1975) (cat. no. 5) sold at $122,000. This represented a significant milestone in the art market for Australian photography and also publicly recognised and acknowledged the enduring legacy of Carol Jerrems within the history and development of Australian art.
Geoffrey Smith, Chairman of Smith & Singer commented: ‘We gratefully acknowledge the existing and continued research undertaken by numerous individuals and organisations on Carol Jerrems, and in particular the assistance of Helen Ennis, Natalie King, and Gael Newton AM, in preparing this catalogue. Carol Jerrems: Portrait of a Decade honours and celebrates the 40th anniversary of Jerrems’ death on 21 February 1980, aged 30. We hope that this exhibition reaches new national and international audiences and ignites their interest and appreciation for this remarkable Australian artist.’
It opens in Melbourne 27 February – 20 March, before travelling to their Sydney galleries from 26 March – 17 April. The 26 works in the exhibition trace the extraordinary iconography of one of the most revered and rarest of all Australian photographers, who in her brief but intense career, produced gritty and luminous images that continue to challenge and inspire.
NGA billboard project, Chapman Sunflower. Digital impression. Image supplied.
Women artists hit the streets
This week the NGA hit Melbourne, with the help of oOh!media to unveiled three digital billboards in the CBD. Beginning 24 February, the six-week Know My Name national art event will feature images of 76 works of art by 45 women-identifying artists from the National Gallery of Australia’s collection on more than 1,500 oOh! digital and print signs and billboards at locations across metropolitan and regional Australia.
From large scale billboards, to bus shelters and shopping centres across the country, the project will encourage the community to learn the names and about the works of more Australian women artists, with a call to celebrate their work, know their names and know their art.
Keep an eye out in your town or city.
Jill Scott, Continental Drift 1989. Image supplied.
Retrospective of Australian video art
Griffith University Art Museum opened a new retrospective of Australian video art this week in Brisbane. Cognitive Dissidents: Reasons to be Cheerful (20 February - 9 Apri) charts the development of Australian video art from the 1970s to the 1990s. The show features more than 20 works by influential artists including Joan Brassil, Warren Burt, Peter Callas, Barbara Campbell, Francesca da Rimini, David Perry, Jill Scott, Warwick Thornton and Geoff Weary.
The exhibition was curated by Stephen Jones, who has worked with video since the early 1970s. The title of the show is a playful take on the 1979 song Reasons to Be Cheerful, Part 3 by Ian Dury and the Blockheads, which reflects the energy and optimism for change embodied in this selection of works.
Griffith University Art Museum Director Angela Goddard said the medium of video is always at the vanguard of change and transformation, whether in socio-political, personal, musical or technological realms. ‘Since their inception, film, video and moving image works have been at the forefront of culture, in the ways artists reflect ourselves back to us and explore urgent issues,’ Goddard said.
Major exhibition on Joy Hester for centenary
From 21 March – 14 June 2020, Heide Museum of Modern Art will celebrate the centenary of Australian modernist artist Joy Hester with a major survey of her distinctive oeuvre. Joy Hester: Remember Me is the first solo exhibition of Hester’s art in almost twenty years and brings together more than 130 significant works from public and private collections, including seldom-seen impromptu studies that shed light on Hester’s unique style and creative process.
This long-overdue survey traces Hester’s artistic trajectory from early naturalistic student drawings to her psychological portraits, her powerful responses to the oppressive climate of war, and later investigations into human intimacy and the theme of childhood.
Heide Artistic Director Lesley Harding said, 'One of the most striking aspects of Joy Hester’s relatively short but productive career is the way she managed to remain true to her own vision and interests and undeterred by the lack of recognition, sales and critical attention she experienced. She was avant-garde in the most literal sense of the term: experimental, unorthodox and original’.
Check out the galleries program of talks and workshops for this exhibition.
ADC announces Mavis Ganambarr as the next living treasure
Australia Design Centre (ADC) announced this week that leading fibre artist Mavis Warrngilna Ganambarr will be the tenth artist in the exhibition series Living Treasures: Masters of Australian Craft.
A generous grant from the Federal Government’s Visions of Australia program ($50,000) will support the research and development for this exhibition, celebrating new work by established craftspeople.
Samantha Moody (Arts Centre Manager at the Marthkala Homelands and Resource Centre Aboriginal Corporation), adjunct curator Sasha Titchkosky (Koskela) and acclaimed exhibition designer Stephen Goddard will deliver this exciting new project.
The exhibition is scheduled to launch in late 2021 with a multi-state tour to
A major survey of contemporary Indigenous Australian fashion
Created exclusively for and by Bendigo Art Gallery, Piinpi: Contemporary Indigenous Fashion will shine a light a light on Australia’s leading First Nations creatives, and a design movement that is fast becoming an internationally recognised fashion phenomenon.
The exhibition, scheduled to open in July 2020, is curated by Bendigo Art Gallery’s First Nations Curator, Shonae Hobson. Bendigo Art Gallery Director Jessica Bridgfoot said key works featured in the exhibition will be acquired by the gallery, and will form the beginnings of the Australian Fashion Collection.
Rite of Passage stirs up the Cook narrative
11 contemporary Aboriginal artists reflect on 250 years since Cook’s arrival in an exhibition curated by Shannon Brett and presented at QUT Art Museum. The exhibition posits 2020 as a key turning point – a transition from the past, towards a future that respects Aboriginality and validates the sovereignty of Aboriginal people.
Brett, is A descendant of the Wakka Wakka, Butchulla and Gurang Gurang clans, Brett said: ‘as explicit in their actions regarding their Aboriginal rites, the exhibition reveals how these artists define themselves as voices of their families and their ancestors in their quest to preserve their Aboriginality.’
Rite of Passage showcases the strength of autobiographical work by Aboriginal artists: Glennys Briggs, Megan Cope, Nici Cumpston, Karla Dickens, Julie Gough, Lola Greeno, Leah King- Smith, Jenna Lee, Carol McGregor, Mandy Quadrio, and Judy Watson. Rite of Passage will run from 7 March - 10 May.
More news you may have missed.