‘SUMMER SHOW’ featuring Sally Anderson, Eliza Gosse, Jane Guthleben, John Bokor, Dan Kyle, Bridie Gillman, Rhys Lee, Sally Nangala Mulda, Candy Nelson Nakamarra, Miranda Skoczek, James Drinkwater, Pia Murphy

Pia Murphy features in the new exhibition ‘Objective’ at Town Hall Gallery, Boroondara with a monumental mural work.

The exhibition reconsiders the still life genre through contemporary approaches to painting, video, sculpture and installation. Through her work, Pia Murphy elevates everyday objects into refined and unexpected visual experiences. Her works navigate the space between representation and abstraction, drawing on personal narratives to reframe familiar forms.

Through thoughtful experimentation, the artists within this exhibition contribute to a dynamic and expanded understanding of still life today.

Objective is open until 24 January 2026 at Town Hall Gallery, Boroondara.

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IMAGES:
Installation shot of Pia Murphy's mural in the exhibition OBJECTIVE at Town Hall Gallery, courtesy Boroondara Arts, and Image Play

Sally Anderson presents works in Town Hall Gallery’s latest exhibition, ‘OBJECTIVE’, which brings together a group of seven contemporary Australian artists to reimagine the boundaries of the still life genre. Artists in the exhibition include Pia Murphy, Tony Albert, Nadine Christensen, Adam John Cullen, James McGrath and Louise Paramor.

This ambitious exhibition challenges traditional expectations of the still life genre, presenting painting, video, sculpture and installation works that transform everyday objects into unique experiences. The participating artists each bring a distinctive conceptual and aesthetic approach: familiar items are abstracted, recontextualised and elevated, while subtle narratives encourage viewers to connect personally with the inanimate.

Several artists explore the interplay between the natural and the artificial, using form, colour and humour to reframe how ordinary scenes are perceived. Others embrace bold experimentation, offering playful and sometimes whimsical reinterpretations that refresh the still life tradition for contemporary audiences.

Within this diverse group, Sally contributes works that balance representation and abstraction, adding intimate reflections on memory and lived experience. Collectively, the exhibition presents a vibrant cross-section of current artistic practice, demonstrating how the still life genre continues to evolve.

‘OBJECTIVE’ is on view at Town Hall Gallery, Boroondara, until 24 January 2026.

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IMAGES:
Installation images of 'OBJECTIVE' at Town Hall Gallery, courtesy Boroondara and Christian Capurro.

Congratulations John Bokor who is a finalist in this year’s Kedumba Drawing Award, with his work ’Studio Table’.

The Kedumba Drawing Award is one of the longest running Australian drawing prizes, now in its 35th year. The winning drawing is acquired by the Kedumba Collection, housed in a gallery space provided by Blue Mountains Grammar School at Wentworth Falls in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. This extensive collection of works are on display to the public throughout the year in curated exhibitions.

The exhibition of finalists will be at the Kedumba Gallery in Wentworth Falls from 15 November to 28 January.

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IMAGE:
JOHN BOKOR
‘Studio Table’ 2025
charcoal, wash and collage
90 x 70 cm

Miranda Skoczek has collaborated with Australian jewellery brand Pandora, to create a signature charm collection, featuring in Cosmopolitan.

“Collaborating with Pandora has allowed me to transform my symbolic language and designs into meaningful, wearable jewellery,” Skoczek says. “From my charm edit, in store artwork, packaging and engravable designs, there’s a natural alignment in how we both value storytelling, symbolism and self-expression which has made this partnership so special.”

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IMAGE:
Miranda Skoczek modelling her Pandora jewellery collection.

Jane Guthleben has been announced as a finalist in the inaugural Pymble Values Art Prize. Her work 'It takes a Village' depicts eleven species of Australian native birds and their nests, exploring diversity and home making.

Each year the prize will be awarded to an Australian female artist, presenting an original two dimensional artwork that resonates with one of the Pymble's Ladies College values. This year the theme was Respect - 'I value diversity, my worth and the worth of others.'

The winner of the prize is announced 11 November, and the finalists exhibition will be open 12 - 14 November at Pymble Ladies College, Sydney.

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IMAGE:
JANE GUTHLEBEN
It takes a Village 2025
oil on linen
183 x 122 cm

Ode: Margaret Olley and Sally Anderson is a celebration of important still life paintings by Margaret Olley (1923–2011) together with new work by Gadigal/Sydney-based artist Sally Anderson.

During her 2025 residency at the Nancy Fairfax Artist in Residence Studio, Sally embarked on a new body of work that responds not only to Margaret Olley’s remarkable still life paintings featured in Ode: Margaret Olley and Sally Anderson, but also to selected objects from the re-creation of Olley’s home studio. Interweaving deeply personal experiences and themes of domesticity, care, maternity, and mortality within her work, Anderson invites us to reconsider Olley’s still life paintings in a new light.

A Tweed Regional Gallery initiative. The Nancy Fairfax Artist in Residence Studio is supported by benefactor Mr. Tim Fairfax AC via the Tweed Regional Gallery Foundation Ltd.

“Olley’s still life paintings feature and appear as postcards or portals within mine, just as Cézanne, Matisse, and Manet (to name a few) appear within hers. I’ve deliberately arranged objects borrowed from Olley’s reconstructed home–studio alongside personally significant items within my compositions to give them new context and meaning. I think a lot about arranging—how we arrange thoughts, words, time, memories, clothes, households, feelings, gardens, furniture, objects, colour—and how rearranging the order of things ultimately shifts meaning, revealing new truths, narratives, and histories.”

The Nancy Fairfax Artist in Residence Studio is a live-in studio supporting artists from across Australia, encouraging connection between artist, community, and place.

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IMAGE:

SALLY ANDERSON
Study of MO’s still life in green 1947 with a banksia for dad, GM orchid and PP Bathers postcard 2025
acrylic on polycotton
137 × 153 cm

We’re excited to share that Eliza Gosse has collaborated with ROMY on their latest collection, Romy Athletic Society. Gosse brings her bold, rhythmic figures into a limited-edition nine-piece collection of wearable art. Channelling the spirit of the 1980s beachside, the collaboration celebrates movement, femininity, and individuality through retro-inspired athleisure.

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IMAGE:

ROMY x Eliza Gosse collaboration

We are delighted to share that James Drinkwater is featured in the newly published Artists by Artists (Thames & Hudson), an ambitious project by Michelle Grey and Susan Armstrong. The book brings together fifty of Australia’s leading artists, thoughtfully paired to create portraits of one another.

Drinkwater was partnered with celebrated artist Ken Done, offering a unique exchange of perspectives and practices. The publication provides a rare insight into the creative processes, inspirations, and personal reflections that shape each artist’s work, while also highlighting the connections that emerge when artists turn their gaze towards each other.

Through striking imagery and candid storytelling, Artists by Artists presents an intimate and dynamic portrait of Australia’s contemporary art community, with Drinkwater’s contribution a highlight of this landmark project.

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IMAGE:
James Drinkwater and Ken Done, courtesy Thames and Hudson

Congratulations to Jane Guthleben who is a finalist in the 2025 Portia Geach Memorial Award with her self-portrait ‘I see myself in you’.

Her seventh recognition in this award speaks to her remarkable talent and strength of her ongoing practice.

Her 2025 finalist work is a self-portrait inspired by the fantastical still-life portraits of 16th-century artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo, whose works she saw for the first time during a visit to Vienna earlier this year.

First awarded in 1965, the $30,000 non-acquisitive Portia Geach Memorial Award is Australia’s most significant portrait prize for women artists, established by Florence Kate Geach in memory of her sister, Portia Geach. The prize is awarded annually for the best portrait painted from life of a man or woman distinguished in art, letters, or the sciences.

The 2025 finalists’ exhibition will be on view at S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney until 2 November 2025.

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IMAGE:
JANE GUTHLEBEN
‘I See Myself in You’ 2025
oil on linen
50 x 50cm

Australian artist Eliza Gosse is unveiling a new series of paintings at the Sydney Contemporary Art Fair 2025, presented by Edwina Corlette Gallery. Known for her exploration of mid-century modernism and architectural themes, Gosse’s latest works continue to investigate the relationship between space, structure, and emotion. Her precise compositions and distinctive use of color reflect her ongoing evolution as an artist.

The Sydney Contemporary Art Fair, one of the leading contemporary art events in Australia, provides an ideal platform for Gosse’s new collection. The fair, held at Carriageworks in Sydney, brings together over 90 galleries from around the world, offering a dynamic array of contemporary art from both emerging and established artists.

Gosse’s participation underscores her growing reputation in the Australian art scene, reinforcing the fair’s role in fostering critical engagement and dialogue within the global art community.

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IMAGE:
ELIZA GOSSE
Kookaburra III 2025
oil on board cutout
35 x 24 cm

We are delighted to share that Sally Anderson's painting ‘Middle Brother Mother Mountain Fountain (PP Nude in a Garden, BT Mother and Child)’ is a finalist in the Calleen Art Award.

The Calleen Art Award is an annual acquisitive painting prize and exhibition. It presents the best of contemporary Australian painting in any style, theme or subject. Since its inception in 1977 by Cowra Art Patron Mrs Patricia Fagan OAM the Calleen Art Award has celebrated contemporary art practices and fostered originality, creativity and excellence in the visual arts.The winning artwork will join the Calleen Collection at Cowra Regional Art Gallery collection.

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IMAGE:
SALLY ANDERSON
‘Middle Brother Mother Mountain Fountain (PP Nude in a Garden, BT Mother and Child)’ 2024
acrylic on polycotton
183 x 197cm

We are thrilled to announce that Sally Anderson’s work is a finalists in the Gosford Art Prize, with her work ‘November bells, BT mother, birth banksias, PP nude in a garden’.

The Gosford Art Prize will be presented at Gosford Regional Gallery and is open to all artists across Australia. It attracts entries in all mediums from traditional forms to new media artworks. The 2025 iteration is the 26th time the prize will be presented at Gosford Regional Gallery, and it continues to grow in size and popularity every year.

The finalists exhibition is on until 9 November, 2025 at Gosford Regional Gallery.

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IMAGE:
SALLY ANDERSON
‘November bells, BT mother, birth banksias, PP nude in a garden’ 2024
acrylic on polycotton,
183 x 198 cm

James Drinkwater stands out as a promising talent within the Australian art scene. Known for his dynamic paintings, Drinkwater brings an energetic approach to contemporary art that is both refreshing and impactful. His works are recognised for their vibrant colours and distinctive textures, adding layers of emotional depth and inviting viewers to explore their own responses to each piece. As a significant figure among emerging Australian artists, Drinkwater's art evokes curiosity and conversation.

In presenting his unique style, Drinkwater combines a rich palette with expressive brushwork. This combination results in paintings that feel alive with emotion, capturing stories and experiences through abstraction. His art reflects an innovative vision, turning everyday moments into powerful visual narratives. What makes his paintings especially accessible is how deeply personal yet relatable they are. He doesn’t complicate his art with technical distance. Instead, each piece draws people in, inviting interpretation and emotional response.

The Role of Colour in James Drinkwater's Work

Colour plays a central role in James Drinkwater’s artistic language. He uses it not just to fill space but to stir emotion, set the tone and ask questions. Rather than relying on defined forms, Drinkwater lets colour drive the response. His palette often feels spontaneous but is deeply considered. The placement and intensity of each hue are deliberate, sometimes loud and other times subtle, depending on the emotional pull of the piece.

Two of his paintings that showcase this are:

- A Burst of Joy: Bursting with oranges and yellows set against dusky blues, this painting conveys both high energy and quiet reflection. It feels like capturing a memory that’s bright but tinged with nostalgia.

- Melancholic Reflections: Muted greys and pale greens dominate here, creating a mood that’s softer and more introspective. It doesn’t try to explain itself but feels open to personal interpretation.

Through these works and others, Drinkwater demonstrates a strong belief in colour as emotion. He has a way of using hue and saturation to shape the mood without ever needing to define a subject clearly. That opens the door for the viewer to connect more freely. How they see the painting may depend on how they’re feeling in the moment, which is part of what gives his art depth and staying power.

Exploring Texture in Drinkwater's Paintings

James Drinkwater is known for the physicality in his work, and nothing captures that better than the textures he creates on canvas. Texture isn’t just a feature — it’s part of the emotion. His approach is tactile and highly instinctive, where movement in the application becomes part of the story. There’s no effort to hide brushstrokes, tool marks or layering. Instead, they’re central to the overall effect.

Drinkwater works quickly and with purpose, using a variety of tools like palette knives, brushes, rags and sometimes even his hands. He scrapes, builds, removes and re-applies. Paint goes on thick in one place, thin in another. And he often leaves parts of previous gestures visible under the new ones, like memories pushing up through the surface.

Here are five common ways texture shows up in his work:

1. Heavy build-ups of paint that rise off the canvas

2. Bold brushstrokes that carry the rhythm of his movement

3. Scraped-back sections that reveal earlier versions underneath

4. Contrasting materials such as charcoal or pencil for added grit

5. Abrupt changes in surface treatment to create tension

These textures do more than add visual interest. They give each work a kind of weight and presence that’s hard to ignore. It feels like you’re seeing the process as much as the result. That sense of honesty cuts through and helps viewers feel connected to the painting in a physical, hands-on way.

Influences and Inspirations

Behind Drinkwater’s creative style is a mix of personal history, Australian heritage and influences from other artists. He has spoken openly about the impact that growing up near the coast has had on his work. There’s an organic, weathered quality to many of his paintings that hints at salt air, open space and the passing of time. These aren’t literal landscapes, but the energy of place is there in the layered, shifting colours and rough surfaces.

He’s also been shaped by conversations with Australian modernists such as Albert Tucker or Sidney Nolan, whose work broke away from detailed representation to embrace mood, suggestion and national identity. Drinkwater builds on these ideas in his own way, adding intensity and immediacy through texture and scale.

Music and family life also play a role. Many of his works are inspired by moments of personal meaning — a memory, an emotion, or a fleeting idea. One painting combines aggressive reds and muted blacks to reflect what he once described as a “moment of deep personal conflict.” The raw arrangement of colours and textures creates a clash that’s hard to turn away from. You might not know exactly what it’s about, but you can feel the tension.

This blending of outside influence and internal experience makes his work feel grounded, but always driven by emotion. It reflects an artist who is willing to absorb and respond to the world around him without mimicking it.

The Impact of James Drinkwater on Contemporary Australian Art

James Drinkwater is a vital voice in contemporary Australian art. He's part of a growing group of artists who are rejecting polished realism in favour of expression, gesture and process. Rather than telling viewers what to see, he encourages them to explore what they feel.

His ability to fuse bold emotion with the memory of place gives his work an edge — something uniquely Australian, yet open to global conversations. Drinkwater’s paintings have featured alongside works by respected peers such as Sally Anderson, Vipoo Srivilasa, Miranda Skoczek, Jake Walker, Joanna Logue and Ross Laurie. Together, they represent a rich thread in modern Australian painting that values experimentation and emotional honesty.

Beyond his art, Drinkwater’s influence is felt in how he talks about making art. He’s open about the mess, the doubt, the breakthroughs — and that’s inspiring to emerging artists who might feel pressure to always be polished or conceptual. His approach suggests that real meaning can come from process, from risk, from pushing material around until it says something back to you.

In interviews and exhibitions alike, it becomes clear that he's not trying to build an image — he's trying to build a connection. That’s helped reshape how contemporary painting is seen in Australia today.

Experience James Drinkwater at Edwina Corlette Gallery

If you really want to understand James Drinkwater's work, it’s worth seeing it in person. Photos don’t do justice to the layers, the texture and the energy that comes through when you're standing in front of one of his paintings. The surfaces tell as much of a story as the image itself.

At Edwina Corlette Gallery in Brisbane, visitors have the chance to engage with Drinkwater’s art up close. Regular exhibitions feature his latest pieces either solo or alongside other contemporary Australian artists. These shows create a curated conversation between artists, allowing differences and similarities to play off each other and giving audiences a richer understanding of the broader art scene.

Whether an exhibition is focused solely on his work or thematic across multiple artists, Drinkwater’s paintings tend to stand out. Not because they’re louder, but because they feel true. They invite a longer look, or maybe even a second visit.

His paintings don’t just hang on the wall. They hold attention. They ask to be considered, not explained. And they offer something different each time you return to them. That’s part of what makes the experience so engaging for visitors and collectors alike. James Drinkwater’s work doesn’t fade into the background — it stays with you.

To explore more work that captures raw emotion through movement, colour and layered form, take a closer look at how James Drinkwater brings his creative process to life at Edwina Corlette.

We are delighted to share that Jane Guthleben has been named a finalist in the prestigious 2025 Calleen Art Award. Presented by Cowra Regional Art Gallery, the award encourages originality, creativity and excellence in the visual arts and has been a key cultural event in regional NSW since its founding in 1977.

Guthleben’s finalist work, ‘Semi-Arid Bouquet, after the Goats’, was inspired by a recent trip through Western NSW. “We soon noticed a thriving feral goat population, and the damage they cause. They vastly outnumber wildlife and decimate native vegetation. My large-scale floral arrangements tap into the symbolism of Dutch Golden Age painting, where flora symbolises morality and the brevity of life. I imagined a large bouquet of outback flora set upon by goats – perched on every limb, consuming every petal, leaf and stem – with bare hills in the background hinting at their devastation.”

The finalists’ exhibition will be on view at Cowra Regional Art Gallery from 31 August – 5 October 2025.

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IMAGE:
Jane Guthleben at the Calleen Art Award with her painting 'Semi-Arid Bouquet, after the Goats' 2025

We are delighted to share that James Drinkwater has been named a finalist in the 2025 Mosman Art Prize with his work Piano Nobile (reprise 1).

Now in its 78th year, the Mossman Art Prize is Australia’s longest running and most prestigious municipal painting award, providing a defining platform for contemporary Australian painting. The finalists’ exhibition is on view until 2 November.

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IMAGE:
Piano Nobile (reprise 1) 2025
oil on linen

Congratulations to Bridie Gillman whose work 'Pink room, pink womb' has been selected as a finalist in the 2025 Ramsay Art Prize at the Art Gallery of South Australia.

The Ramsay Art Prize supports contemporary Australian artists under 40 to make their best work in any medium and of any scale. Supported in perpetuity by the James & Diana Ramsay Foundation, finalist works are selected by a panel of judges and shown at the Art Gallery of South Australia in a major exhibition opening 31 May, 2025.

IMAGE:

Bridie Gillman
Pink room, pink womb 2024
oil on canvas, timber, tufted wool, audio soundscape
202 x 190 x 162cm

We are delighted to share that Miranda Skoczek has been profiled in Marie Claire Australia. The feature offers a glimpse into her Camberwell apartment, where living space and studio merge to reflect her layered artistic vision.

“I’m a colourist, first and foremost. Colour is my main compositional language,” Skoczek notes, describing the vibrant and expressive world that informs her practice. She adds, “Every object tells a story … my paintings are also very much about places experienced and imagined.”

The article celebrates Skoczek’s distinctive use of colour, her love of collecting, and the intimate connection between her art and her surroundings.

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IMAGE:

Marie-Claire article featuring Miranda Skoczek

Congratulations to Eliza Gosse, whose painting Flannel Flowers Under the Wattle Tree has been selected as a finalist in the 2025 Wynne Prize, on view at the Art Gallery of New South Wales from 10 May to 17 August.

In this evocative work, Gosse reimagines her grandparents’ Central Coast garden as a dreamlike landscape filled with native flora and the echoes of childhood memories. Drawing on imagery from mid-century design and magazines such as Australian House & Garden, she combines stylised architectural forms with the abundant textures of the bush – flannel flowers, grevilleas, kangaroo paws and towering gums. The result is a tender homage to the creativity and care of cultivated backyards, and a reflection on how these spaces shape both memory and identity.

This marks Gosse’s second time as a Wynne finalist, affirming her distinctive contribution to the depiction of Australian landscapes.

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IMAGE:

ELIZA GOSSE
Flannel flowers under the wattle tree 2025
synthetic polymer paint on canvas, oil on birch plywood
183.4 x 152.7 cm

We are delighted to announce Sally Anderson’s inclusion in TENDER at Ngununggula in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales.

TENDER is an annual exhibition committed to showcasing the work of Australian women artists.

'Tender' within this exhibition refers to the body, our gestures, and the way we feel or express ourselves. We impart the term on places, objects or surfaces to describe how they arouse our senses or how an object yields under pressure; it softens, loses shape, and gives way. This term has rich and varied meanings, and the aim of this exhibition is to explore its significance beyond a gender lens.

Sally Anderson’s work asks how one can hold households, partners, children, paintings, parents, and the self all at once. It reflects the ways motherhood, domesticity, and creative practice become reciprocal and inevitably entangled, each influencing and permeating the other. The work deliberately moves between abstraction and representation, using still-life and landscape motifs as symbols of containment and care.

The exhibition is current at Ngununggula 12 April - 15 June 2025

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IMAGE:
SALLY ANDERSON
Self and Still life (shared garden future nurture) 2024
acrylic on polycotton
183 x 165 cm

"For Bridie Gillman’s latest exhibition Sight Lines at Edwina Corlette, Brisbane, the paintings invite a moment of pause. A moment to be in the landscape. Hear the wind and rain. Watch the shadows dance in the foliage. Gillman invited this energy in the repetition of line, form, and colour—translated from the rural typology. Engaging not only the senses we resonate with on an immediate basis (like smell, sight, touch, taste, hear), but also the ones we don’t—memory and emotion—for a tapping into the subconscious.

In her large-scale abstract paintings, Gillman presents her recollections of Bundjalung Country in Northern NSW. The landscape through the Tweed Valley—Brays Creek and Murwillumbah—and her observations of the winding 33km road between the two. One the artist comments is full of lines: ridge lines, fence lines, tree lines, shadow lines, sight lines, tyre lines, dotted lines, and solid lines. These are translated into fresh gestures, textured surfaces, and expressive mark making.

Vast in size at 168 x 213cm, Breathing in a cloud (2024) was one of the first artworks the usually based in Brisbane artist created on her residency in the country. After a time when she was struggling to create in her home studio in the city. Painting in a horse shed in Brays Creek, Gillman observed a sense of working in a micro-climate specific to her location up the mountain. The feeling of being in a cloud with the weather rolling through. The artwork, full of varying shades of grey, buzzing on the canvas, replicates the sense of drizzle and immersion in the elements.

With Gillman’s studio in the heart of Murwillumbah town, she builds on the canvases first worked on in the farm. In Between the lines (2025), 153 x 122cm, the artist has used old pieces of canvas, stitched together for a geometric abstract, in varying shades of green, thick with paint. The viewer may view the artworks as the artist views this rural landscape. Divided, gridded, agricultural, with light peeking through the composition. She comments that each painting starts with a specific memory or observation — holding an initial reference point and isolating the colours. Perhaps the ridge lines or the blues and purples of the eucalyptus mountains.

Paintings like Listening to the grass (2024) and Shifting shapes (2024) are full of dark and textured mark making, quickly worked and full of energy. More so than the artist’s other series of works. Here, the artist reveals her interest in exploring new methodologies of mark-making. What before would be painted out, are now held onto. The artworks reveal the action, the moment of life they are created within, and the moment they set out to capture. Painting, sewing, drawing, and sanding back are all used on the surface. Colour pulled forwards and pulled back, adding depth and that sense of looking through the landscape at the light and shadow that form.

Completely green with darkly worked lines, Listening to the grass evokes being in the landscape during the day. But Shifting shapes represents the isolation of the country at night and the sense you get from being the only person around. Gillman says this work is like night vision; your eyes adjust to the light and the dark. Where things move and push in and out, a vibration. Shapes becoming other. In particular as she notes her isolation in these new places. Away from people. Immersed in the landscape.

Here is where the magic of Sight Lines is revealed as Gillman captures her sense of being light and unburdened, and completely alone, in awe of the environment with time to reflect. We are witness to how art allows for a tapping, an entering, of another realm, where reality and fiction intermingle with memory and emotion."

Written by Emma-Kate Wilson for Art Almanac

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IMAGE:

BRIDIE GILLMAN
That Purple Storm Approaching 2025
oil on linen
61 x 51cm

"10 of the hottest Australian artists to have on your radar"

Written by Yeong Sassall, January 2025

"Dan's work captures the beauty and mystique of the Australian bush, blending figuration and abstraction through layered marks and tones that mimic the natural movement around him. His attention to light and shadow is personally my favourite part of his work.”

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IMAGE:

Dan Kyle

Devils Creek Track 2024

oil and mixed media on canvas

85.5 x 127.5 cm

We are thrilled to congratulate Pia Murphy on being awarded the 2025 Visual Arts Fellowship through the Edward F. Albee Foundation, granting her a month-long residency at The Barn in Montauk, New York. Founded in 1967 by Edward Albee, the foundation supports artists bi-annually, providing time, space, and resources to foster creative development.

For her residency in April, Murphy made the move from her home studio in Birregurra, Victoria to the Montauk studio whereby she explored her abstracted, layered approach to painting in a new and illuminating landscape. Her practice evolves through playful exploration and discovery, reflecting a deep curiosity and delight in unexpected moments. Influenced by the colours and textures of her surrounding landscapes, Murphy’s current focus is painting, building on her background in printmaking and ceramics.

The works produced during this residency will feature in her upcoming solo exhibition, Omnivorous Cast, at Edwina Corlette Gallery from 8–28 October.

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IMAGE:

Pia Murphy in her studio, courtesy Rhys Lee

Eliza Gosse is exhibiting in Seoul this month, alongside three other international artists in an exhibition titled 'Naive Realism'. The show reinterprets still life painting through architectural scenes from the everyday. The four artists aim to remove meaning from historical objects in order to provoke personal memories and reflections from the viewer.

Eliza Gosse's contribution is two acrylic paintings on canvas, and two gouache paintings on paper, each titled in response to moments of solitude in her home.

The exhibition is open 27 December, 2024 until 2 February, 2025.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:

Eliza Gosse

'Kumquats in the Courtyard' 2024

acrylic on canvas

137 x 112 cm

Image Courtesy the artist and Art Space Howha

Congratulations to Bridie Gillman who is a finalist in the 2024 Redland Art Awards with her work 'See from sky'.

The Redland Art Awards is a biennial contemporary painting competition open to all Australian artists, presented by Redland Art Gallery.

The finalists exhibition will be held at the Redland Art Gallery, opening Friday 6 December 2024.

IMAGE:

Bridie Gillman

See from sky 2024

oil on canvas

153 x 137 cm

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Eliza Gosse recently completed a week as artist in residence at Bundanon

‘I spent the week painting on ceramics taking inspiration from this landscape. The Boyd family have such a rich history with pottery so was an inspiring place to do so.’

The Artist in Residence program is a pillar of Bundanon, an organisation created to support creativity and learning in a unique cultural and natural landscape.

‘A place for the community to enjoy the bush and the river, and a place to be used as a forum where those from every facet from the arts and sciences could get together.’ - Arthur Boyd

This competitive residency program is made possible by the generous contribution of Arthur and Yvonne Boyd to the Australian public. Established in 1997, it has grown to become the largest program of its kind in Australia, hosting over 250 artists annually.

IMAGE:

Eliza painting ceramics at Bundanon

We are thrilled to share that John Bokor is a finalist in the 2024 Kedumba Drawing Prize with his work 'After the Feast'.

The Kedumba Drawing Award is a $20,000 acquisitive award open to resident Australian artists working in the broad sphere of drawing. The winning work will become a permanent part of The Kedumba Collection, which is considered to be the most important collection of Australian drawings outside the National Gallery.

The finalists exhibition will be held from 17 November - 15 December, Kedumba Gallery, NSW

IMAGE:

John Bokor

After the Feast 2024

charcoal, wash and collage

71 x 90cm

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Four of Sally M Nangala Mulda's paintings are the focal point of the current exhibition at the University of Queensland Art Museum 'Dusk of Nations'. The exhibition featured works from Australian-based artists exploring the resistance, subversion, and defence of nationhood. The selected works survey varying perspectives of national identity and highlight the importance of recognising these differences of experience.

“Scenes of communal joy and peace are hung alongside scenes of housing insecurities, domestic violence and police brutality. Through her paintings, Mulda generously offers us a glimpse of her community – a place of both injustice and hope.”

It was wonderful to see Sally’s paintings of her life in Mpwetyerre represented in this thought-provoking exhibition.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGES:
Installation views of ‘Dusk of Nations’, UQ Art Museum 2024. Image courtesy Joe Ruckli

Congratulations to Jane Guthleben who is a finalists in the 2024 Portia Geach Memorial Award with her self portrait 'The Female Artist'.

This painting is part of an ongoing series of portraits of women that I call ornament-portraits; small in size and designed to be the opposite of monuments, which have historically been mostly of men. I stand the subject on a little plinth so that she appears rather like an ornament on a shelf. I usually choose women I admire in the Arts, Politics or the Media. This series is not to diminish the achievements of these women, but rather to draw attention to the fact that women’s appearance continues to be a subject of discussion – that women continue to be “ornamental” - despite their work and stature.

Inspired by Wendy Sharpe’s Self Portrait as Circus Banner 2019, I decided to paint a self-portrait. In her portrait, Wendy pointed to the continuing pitfalls of being a female artist, including being known as a “woman artist” rather than just an artist, having no visible means of support, and wearing a cloak of invisibility.

Female Artist is a nod to this and is painted in the style of a still life, which is often seen as female subject matter. I have imagined myself as a porcelain ornament, standing in front of an easel with a flower painting. The apron and the pastel colours add to the domesticity of the subject matter.

Jane Guthleben, 2024

Finalists exhibition will be held at the S.H Ervin Gallery, 25 October – 15 December 2024, Sydney

IMAGE:

JANE GUTHLEBEN
‘The Female Artist (self-portrait)’ 2024
oil on marine ply
40 x 20cm

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Congratulations to Sally Anderson who is a finalists in the 2024 Portia Geach Memorial Award with her work ‘Self and still life (shared garden, future nurture)'.

The Portia Geach Memorial Award was established in 1965 to be annually presented to an Australian female artist. Portia Geach was an iconic figure in the Australian arts community, acclaimed for her art and media presence, and as such the award was created in her honour. The award is specifically for the best portrait painted from the life of someone well renowned in art, academia, or science.

Finalists exhibition will be held at the S.H Ervin Gallery, 25 October – 15 December 2024, Sydney

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
Sally Anderson
Self and still life (shared garden, future nurture) 2024
acrylic on polycotton
183 x 198cm

ELIZA GOSSE features in the Spring issue of STYLE. Eliza is included in a portfolio of Sydney’s most inspiring talent, a portfolio ranging from restauranteurs to textile makers. Read about Eliza’s practice in the most recent issue of STYLE, available now.

Eliza Gosse is a finalist in the Fisher Ghost Award with her work They Held Their Pose Longer After What Was Necessary.

IMAGE:

They Held Their Pose Longer After What Was Necessary 2024
oil on birchply cutout
167 x 100 cm

Aligned with his recent show at Edwina Corlette Gallery, Rhys Lee opens up to Tom Gerrard about his painting practice, upbringing, and the behind the scenes of his exhibitions.

LISTEN HERE

IMAGE:

Rhys Lee
Big Fight (Undefeated) 2024
oil on canvas
205 x 156 cm

Image used on the cover of this Bench Talk podcast episode.

We are thrilled to congratulate Bridie Gillman on being selected as a finalist in the 2024 John Leslie Art Prize with her painting ‘Hanging, holding.’

The $20,000 Acquisitive Prize is named after John Leslie OBE (1919—2016), Patron of the Gippsland Art Gallery and celebrates landscape painting by Australian artists.

Bridie’s work will be on exhibition amongst the other finalists from 7 September to 24 November at the Gippsland Art Gallery, in Sale, Victoria.

Image courtesy Louis Lim

IMAGE:

Bridie Gillman

Hanging, holding 2024

oil on canvas

137 x 198cm

READ MORE HERE

Jane Guthleben has been participating in an Artist in Residence program at Tanks Arts Centre in Cairns. The residency is designed to support a diverse range of arts practitioners from visual arts and music to writing, performance, multimedia and community cultural development, with projects that connect to the Tanks’ vibrant community and landscape.

During her residency, Guthleben collaborated with fellow artists Joanne Sisson and Carole Wilson to present Latitude 16.9013° south. This exhibition brought together three distinct artistic voices, each exploring botanical specimens from locations across Australia. Guthleben’s own practice reimagines Dutch still-life traditions by inserting endangered Australian flora into neo-Baroque compositions, referencing Vanitas symbolism to reflect on habitat loss and climate change.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
Jane Guthleben's exhibition 'Latitude 16.9013° south' at Tanks Art Centre.

James Drinkwater has featured in ART-CLE Issue 02, 2024:

Known for his raucous yet meticulously composed paintings, James Drinkwater is one of Australia’s most celebrated contemporary artists. Yet, the words ‘contemporary’ and ‘artist’ are not necessarily ones Drinkwater would use to describe himself. He prefers the term ‘painter’, and he is a gestural one at that, drawing on influences from the vast legacy of Australian, British, American and French modern art he became obsessed with as a child growing up in Newcastle, New South Wales. Drinkwater says he started drawing and painting incessantly from the age of five, after becoming taken with the small landscape paintings his aunt would work on at her kitchen table.

Drinkwater’s talent was recognised and nurtured early on, not just by his parents and those around him but also by the art world itself. During our conversation, he fields a call from his dad, who wants to come around and see his recent paintings. “It’s never ideal, the time he wants to come,” Drinkwater says after hanging up. “But I’m never going to say no to that, it’s fuel. You talk about fathers not approving of their kids doing art… artists like Clarice Beckett, you know. My dad was there in the garage with me, standing with a ciggy and a chardonnay just going, ‘Oh, bloody brilliant James. Brilliant. Michelle, come look!’

Between the ages of eight and eighteen, he attended Ron Hartree’s now-closed art school in Newcastle and visited exhibitions whenever his parents could take him. He later attended the National Art School in Sydney—only for one year, before getting restless—and then moved to Melbourne, where he met his now-wife, the painter and performance artist Lottie Consalvo. The pair soon moved to Berlin, where they lived for three years before relocating back to Newcastle in search of cheaper studio space and a quieter life.

In 2014, aged thirty, he won the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship, which took his family— then-newly expanded to three with the arrival of his first child, Vincenzo—to the Cité des Arts in Paris for three months and a further three travelling. Fast forward to June 2023, almost a decade on, and a survey exhibition at Canberra’s Drill Hall Gallery—James Drinkwater: at mid-career, curated by Terence Maloon—announced without hesitation Drinkwater’s arrival at that often tenuous artistic milestone.

Drinkwater’s paintings are defined by their expressive use of colour. They are rich in matter, working texture and colour into abstract yet familiar figures, landscapes and interiors that speak of his experiences both real and imagined. In subject, his work draws heavily on the intimacy of his family life, the oceanic environment in which he lives, the broader Australian landscape and the people and places with which he interacts in his movements and travels. As was the case for the 20th century painters Drinkwater has so admired, his own exploration of this personal iconography at once allows insight into his subjective experience and offers something of our shared world to dive into.

- Emma Pegrum, ART-CLE

IMAGE:

James Drinkwater, courtesy Nic Gossage

READ MORE HERE

James Drinkwater's new publication 'I Love You More Than Paintings. Works 2008-2024' has been released. Containing a comprehensive survey of James Drinkwater's artworks to date, as well as writings from Louise Martin-Chew, Ineke Dane, and Nicholas Thompson.

“James Drinkwater paintings are physical, muscular, messy - articulating something that Picasso started - blending nameable and unnameable or recognisable imagery with nondescript painted signs, dancing in a frenetic ballet of attack after attack, sometimes confounding sometimes parting the seas of expression to a clear cohesive rhythm where painted cacophony reigns, not over matter but out of matter. Personal, familial, local of somewhere faraway and right around the corner.”

Julian Schnabel

IMAGE:

Cover of 'I Love You More Than Paintings. Works 2008-2024' by James Drinkwater

READ MORE HERE

Congratulations Eliza Gosse whose portrait of Australian designer Emma Mulholland is a finalist in this year's Salon des Refusés. 'Emma and Norby on holiday' is now hanging at S.H. Ervin Gallery until 25 August, 2024.


The Salon des Refusés was initiated by the S.H. Ervin Gallery in 1992 in response to the large number of works entered into the Archibald Prize which were not selected for display in the official exhibition.

Each year the Salon des Refusés panel is invited to go behind the scenes of the judging process for the annual Archibald Prize for portraiture and Wynne Prize for landscape painting and figure sculpture at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, to select an exhibition from the many hundreds of works entered in both prizes but not chosen for the official award exhibition. The Salon des Refusés exhibition has established an excellent reputation that rivals the selections in the ‘official’ exhibition, with works selected for quality, diversity, humour and experimentation, and which examine contemporary art practices, different approaches to portraiture and responses to the landscape.

- S. H Erving Gallery

IMAGE:

Eliza Gosse

'Emma and Norby on holiday' 2024

oil on birch plywood

180 x 115 cm

READ MORE HERE

Miranda Skoczek has been a guest on ABC Radio National, delving into the new direction of her current exhibition at Post Space in Exeter, England. In a vibrant conversation with Kimberly Price, Miranda explains the deeply personal body of work, and her distinctive abstract painting.

LISTEN HERE

IMAGE:

Miranda Skoczek with her exhibition 'Red Ribbons', Post Space, Exeter, courtesy the artist

We are thrilled to announce that Sally M Nangala Mulda has been selected as a finalist in the Sir John Sulman Prize with her work 'Amoonguna long time ago'.

We stay at Amoonguna long time ago. We went on the train to Maryvale.

Sally M Nangala Mulda, 2024

Sally M Nangala Mulda’s work is a form of documentary storytelling. In this painting, she references a time in the 1960s when her family moved to Amoonguna Aboriginal Reserve about 15 kilometres east-south-east of Mparntwe/Alice Springs, so the children could attend school. Sally was born in the camp of Aboriginal stock and station homestead workers on Maryvale cattle station. That camp was recognised as Aboriginal Land in 1978, and the residents have transformed it into the idyllic Titjikala community within easy walking distance of the old homestead.

Tangentyere Artists, 2024

READ MORE HERE

Artwork:

'Amoonguna long time ago' 2024

acrylic on linen

51 x 122 cm

Delighted to announce that Sally Anderson has been selected as a finalist in the Sir John Sulman Prize with her work ‘Holding a hurricane, quilt curtain carrying the sea’.

How do you hold a hurricane? How do you hold close things that are spiralling out of your control? Can you contain the sea in a quilt? How do we measure domestic, creative and maternal labour? With time? How does one get more time in a day? How do we hold households, partners, children, paintings, parents and ourselves simultaneously? This painting speaks to the ways motherhood, domesticity and creative practice are, for me, reciprocal and ultimately entangled. Each informs and infects the other. This work deliberately dances between abstraction and representation and employs still-life and landscape motifs as symbols of containment and care.

- Sally Anderson, 2024

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
SALLY ANDERSON
Holding a hurricane, quilt curtain carrying the sea 2024
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
182.5 x 198.2 cm

Congratulations Sally Anderson who is a finalist in the 2024 Bayside Painting Prize for her 2024 work ‘Placenta banksia, Bridal Veil Falls view, the sea in me, PB nude quilt tablecloth’. Established in 2015, the Bayside Painting Prize is one of the most generous non-acquisitive painting prizes in Australia. The exhibition draws together a breadth of artists with varied approaches to painting. This allows the Bayside City Council to further develop its collection and promote artists to the Bayside community.

The finalist exhibition will be held at Bayside Gallery from 3 May to 23 June 2024.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
SALLY ANDERSON
Placenta banksia, Bridal Veil Falls view, the sea in me, PB nude quilt tablecloth 2024
acrylic on polycotton
168 x 137 cm

Image courtesy the artist and Jessica Maurer

At the time they both connected over their love for nature and now, roughly 10 years later Miranda has collaborated with Katie [Kolodinski] to curate The Protection Collection. Centred around symbolism and the rituals of self-protection including the iconic Aster flower, central to Katie’s upbringing, this was a harmonious alignment given Miranda’s style of art which is deeply influenced by historical references and ancient cultures.

For Miranda, her art allows people to explore other worlds and she hopes that placing her designs on clothing encourages people to have those conspectus conversations as well.

In line with this creative endeavour, she shared insights on her practices, creating the collection and her relationship with symbolism.

- Silk Laundry

IMAGE:

Courtesy Silk Laundry

READ MORE HERE

James Drinkwater is included in the 2023 Salon des Refusés with his painting 'Your world is ever new' (2022).

On view at the S. H. Ervin Gallery, Millers Point, Sydney

IMAGE:
James Drinkwater
'Your world is ever new' 2022
oil on linen
138 x 168 cm

Congratulations to Bridie Gillman who is a finalist for the The Elaine Bermingham National Watercolour Prize for her work 'Night Lines'.

Celebrating excellence and innovation in the watercolour medium, this non-acquisitive prize offers a winning of $20,000 generously donated by Elaine Bermingham.

Selected finalists will be exhibited at QCA Galleries, located within Griffith University’s Queensland College of Art and Design at South Bank, Brisbane from 30 November 2023 - 11 January 2024.

IMAGE

Bridie Gillman

Night Lines 2023

watercolour and ink on linen

102 x 115cm

READ MORE HERE

Congratulations to Sally Anderson, who has been announced as a finalist in the Grace Cossington Smith Art Award for her painting 'Nat Silk’s Seatown Still Life, PB Nude Quilt, Bromeliad Washdown'.

The biennial Grace Cossington Smith Art Award is a $20,000 National acquisitive award. The award theme is 'Making Connections' inspired by the work of Abbotsleigh graduate and artist Grace Cossington Smith - renowned for her Modern abstraction paintings of Australia. The finalist exhibition opens 27 January 2024 at the Grace Cossington Smith Gallery, Wahroonga, Sydney.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
SALLY ANDERSON
Nat Silk's Seatown Still Life, PB Nude Quilt, Bromeliad Washdown 2023
acrylic on polycotton
153 x 137 cm

Jane Guthleben has been selected for the Portia Geach Memorial Award, for her painting of the bird photographer, Leila Jeffreys.

Renowned photographic artist Leila Jeffreys is internationally recognised for her bird portraiture, video installations, books, films and her contribution to bird conservation. Recently she undertook an assignment in sub-Antarctic Macquarie Island, where she observed penguin populations. She sent me pictures from the trip of penguin parents doting on their fluffy brown babies. With recent news that shrinking ice has had a devastating impact on penguin populations in Antarctica this year, her trip and research couldn’t have been timelier.

For our Portia Geach sitting we went to Sydney Aquarium where we spent a few hours looking at penguins. Leila is a bird whisperer, and the penguins there climbed all over her and were fascinated by her camera equipment. It seemed right that a portrait of Leila would include a bird.

This painting is part of an ongoing series of portraits of women I admire that I call ornament-portraits; small in size and designed to be the opposite of monuments (which have historically been mostly of men). The subject stands on a little plinth, rather like an ornament on a shelf. In this case the plinth can also be read as a shrinking iceberg floating in Antarctic waters.

Image:

'Leila and the Baby King' 2023
oil on marine ply
40.2cm x 22.6cm

READ MORE HERE

We are thrilled to announce that ELIZA GOSSE has been selected as a finalist in the 2023 Paddington Art Prize for her work 'Greenwell Point'

The Paddington Art Prize is a $30,000 National acquisitive prize, awarded annually for a painting inspired by the Australian landscape.

IMAGE:

Eliza Gosse

Greenwell Point 2023

Gouache on paper

28 x 28 cm

READ MORE HERE

Bridie Gillman is a finalist in the 2023 Girra: Fraser Coast National Art Prize for her work 'Quiet, after the storm' (2023).

The inaugural Girra: Fraser Coast National Art Prize is a major acquisitive prize of $25,000, that seeks to explore our reciprocal and inextricable relationship with the environment through contemporary art.

Selected artworks provide unique perspectives on industrialised landscapes, the forces of extreme weather events, our relationship to domestic gardens, ecological concerns and speculative solutions, ruminations on the beauty and power of nature, and much more.

The finalists’ exhibition, is held at the Hervey Bay Regional Gallery 23 September to 12 November 2023

IMAGE:

Bridie Gillman

Quiet, after the storm 2022

Oil on linen, glazed ceramics and soundscape

various dimensions

READ MORE HERE

Rhys Lee is featured in Issue 42 of Beautiful Bizarre.

Leesa Hickey, Director of Side Gallery in Australia, has selected 8 works in the market that she wishes to add to her personal collection. Amongst these 8 works is Rhys Lee's 2021 Polkadot Robe.

IMAGE:

Rhys Lee

Polkadot Robe 2021

oil on canvas

95 x 78 cm

READ MORE HERE

Congratulations to our artist John Bokor who is a finalists in this year's Mosman Art Prize for his work 'The Flowering Plant'. Exhibition open 23 September in Mosman, Sydney.

IMAGE:
John Bokor
The Flowering Plant 2023
oil on board
140 x 120 cm

READ MORE HERE

Congratulations to our artist Eliza Gosse who is a finalists in this year's Mosman Art Prize for her work 'We Climbed the Fence and Swam in Their Pool'. Exhibition open 23 September in Mosman, Sydney.

IMAGE:

Eliza Gosse

We Climbed the Fence and Swam in Their Pool 2023

gouache on paper

39 x 39 cm

READ MORE HERE

Bridie Gillman completed a residency at Córtex Frontal, for a 6 week placement in an 18^th century building located in Arraiolos, Alentejo, Southern Portugal, in April 2023.

Córtex Frontal is a multidisciplinary cultural project created in 2016 by the Cultural Association Córtexcult, in Arraiolos, Évora, Alentejo. The artists in residence program aims to provide the time and space to develop a project, fostering the sharing of experiences between artists and the community.

Bridie's new body of work directly inspired by her time spent at Córtex Frontal will be exhibited in her upcoming show, Watching Walls at Edwina Corlette Gallery 4 October - 24 October 2023.

Córtex Frontal is part of the Portuguese Contemporary Art Networks RPAC.

READ MORE HERE

Sally Anderson is featured in the July/August edition of Art Guide Australia.

Motherhood, domesticity, landscape, memory—these are just some of the experiences and memories Sally Anderson has captured in her two-decade painting practice, underpinned by a persistent blue.

The outer edges of Sally Anderson’s paintings reveal multiple layers of canvas, the evidence of past works painted over yet still present deep within. Integral to how Anderson works, this layering connects to ideas of containment and the action of being physically held. “This could refer to a mother carrying her baby, being restricted to the home, a vessel holding flowers, frames, windows or pools,” she says.

- Briony Downes, Art Guide, 2023

IMAGE:

Sally Anderson in her Studio, courtesy Jessica Mauer

READ MORE HERE

James Drinkwater At Mid Career curated by Terence Maloon, Drill Hall Gallery, ANU Canberra

'Early recognised as an exceptional talent, James Drinkwater has never toned-down the intensity and bravura of his approach to painting. His work has mined a vast legacy of modern art – Australian, British, American, French – as if all of it remains relevant, fresh and available to him. Now, on the brink of turning 40, this is the first survey of his prodigious past. While his paintings evoke figures, landscapes and interiors, they are also meticulously composed abstractions, distinctive for their complex and opulent fusion of texture, colour and spatial intrigue.'

Exhibition current from 24 June - 20 August, 2023

IMAGE:

Installation view James Drinkwater 'At Mid Career' curated by Terence Maloon.

We are clumsy now on this southern beach 2016

mixed media on board

140 x 120 cm

READ MORE HERE

Arrernte and Southern Luritja artist Sally M Nangala Mulda alongside Arrernte and Western Arrarnta artist Marlene Rubuntja have developed their practice to be completely recognisable and representative of the place in which they live, Mparntwe/Alice Springs. Working from Tangentyere Artists and Yarrenyty Arltere Artists (art centres), these senior women have established themselves as two of Australia’s leading visual artists.

The third Artbank + ACMI Commission, Two Girls From Amoonguna, encompasses video, soft sculpture and paintings, with the centerpiece the animated work titled Arrkutja Tharra, Kungka Kutjara, Two Girls.

Arrkutja Tharra, Kungka Kutjara, Two Girls delves into the reality of First Peoples’ experiences in Central Australia by chronicling the artists’ successes and struggles. The work centres Sally and Marlene’s voices, as well as the voices of their younger family members, who can be heard in the animation. It was made in collaboration with Ludo Studio, the Emmy-award winning production company behind Bluey, Robbie Hood and The Strange Chores, along with script writer Courtney Collins, Left of Elephant Sound and Tangentyere Artists producer Ellanor Webb.

Figures from Marlene’s soft sculptures and Sally’s acrylic on linen paintings star in the animation, embedded on top of Marlene’s ink on paper works of the Central Australian landscape. Bringing together both artists’ practice, Sally’s iconic cursive painted lettering produce the subtitles.

Having grown up at the Amoonguna Settlement outside of Mparntwe/Alice Springs in the early 1960s, the two friends wouldn’t reconnect until much later in life, after both of them had seen their fair amount of hardships; now having achieved so much, they are immensely proud of one another.

Two Girls from Amoonguna is an exhibition about two of Australia’s leading artists and their journey to get there.

IMAGES:

1/ Sally M Nangala Mulda at Tarnanthi, 2019

2/ Marlene Rubuntja holding a soft echidna sculpture

WATCH HERE

READ MORE HERE

Congratulations to Sally Anderson who is a finalist in this year's Ravenswood Australian Women's Art Prize with her work ‘Sea Town Lawn Roof Song with NO’s Vessel.’

The Ravenswood Australian Women's Art Prize is an annual prize that was launched in 2017 to advance art and opportunity for emerging and established female artists in Australia. It is the highest value professional artist prize for women in Australia.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:

SALLY ANDERSON
Sea Town Lawn Roof Song with NO’s Vessel 2023
acrylic on canvas
115 x 97 cm

Sally M Nangala Mulda is a finalist in the 2023 Sulman Prize.

Old man pay day

Daughter and father drinking beer. Down the creek one woman got two tail. Two man coming with the beer two rum with the bag

Two rum and two coca cola in the bag

Woman taking tail

Man taking rum and coca cola with the bag

Man taking beer at the creek

Sally M Nangala Mulda, 2023

Sally M Nangala Mulda’s work is a form of documentary storytelling. She started painting in 2008 and has frequently portrayed town camp life since the 2007 Northern Territory intervention: people camping in the riverbed in swags, council rangers moving people on, people cooking kangaroo tail down the creek. Her practice represents an important catalogue of lived experience of town camp life and colonisation.

Read more here.

Sally M Nangala Mulda

Old man pay day

acrylic on linen

59.5 x 91.5 cm

Eliza Gosse is a finalist in the 2023 Archibald Prize.

This dual portrait features Eliza Gosse and her husband, architect and designer Benjamin Jay Shand, who was the subject of her portrait 'somewhere near home' in the Archibald Prize 2022.

Gosse describes this 2023 work – one of several recent portraits, all painted on board – as: 'a cut-out of our weekend at sunrise – just us and our fluffy robes.'

Robes are mandatory if you come to breakfast at ours. The coffee percolates as the muesli is garnished and the CD is chosen. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every morning could be spent lazing over several cups of coffee with a dash of honey and a side of strawberries?

While painting these portraits in my studio, I indulged in a few afternoons on the floor – tea and biscuits included – with the works propped up against the wall, as a sort of tea party with my wooden friends.

My studio mates will be glad to see these cut-outs gone; they say they came to life at night.

- Eliza Gosse

IMAGE:

Eliza Gosse

Breakfast At Ours

oil on board

two panels: 137.5 x 86.5 cm (left); 145.5 x 97 cm (right)

READ MORE HERE

Eliza Gosse was featured in The Design Files article 'Eliza Gosse's Paintings Capture the Nostalgia of Retro Architecture' by Christina Karras.

There’s a magical attention to detail within Eliza Gosse's architectural paintings.

She expertly captures the light-filled interiors and magical Modernist facades of homes inspired by designs of the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s with a dreamy pastel palette that makes you want to leap right into them. All the while maintaining a beautiful ‘flatness’ about her work.

- Christina Karras, The Design Files

READ MORE HERE.

Jane Guthelben was featured in the Sydney Morning Herald article 'How does it feel to be painted for the Archibald Prize? Terrifying' by Helen Pitt.

You can read the article here.

Miranda Skoczek is featured in ‘Artists at Home’ a new book about Australian female artists by Karina Dias Pires, published by Thames and Hudson, out now.

IMAGE:

Miranda Skoczek, courtesy Karina Dias Pires

READ MORE HERE

Congratulations to Sally Anderson who is a finalist in this year's Muswellbrook Art Prize with her work ‘Lismore Island Roof Song with a Screenshot of Nat Silk’s Seatown’.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
Sally Anderson
Lismore Island Roof Song with a Screenshot of Nat Silk’s Seatown 2022
acrylic on polycotton

Sally Anderson has received a glowing review in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Sally Anderson’s Guido 'Holding Folding Moulding' is another stand-out. Ostensibly a portrait of her artist husband holding their child, there’s a metaphysical dimension to the work, with a sculpture on a pedestal, a jug with flowers and a red, flag-like curtain taking up significant space in the composition. The play of curves and fractured planes adds to the mystery of the picture, as we feel we are looking through multiple doorways or windows, projecting a dream-like atmosphere.

- John McDonald, Sydney Morning Herald, 2022.

READ MORE HERE

Congratulations to Sally Anderson who is a finalist in the Portia Geach Award at SH Ervin Gallery in Sydney.

The Portia Geach Memorial Award was established in 1965 to be annually presented to an Australian female artist. Portia Geach was an iconic figure in the Australian arts community, acclaimed for her art and media presence, and as such the award was created in her honour. The award is specifically for the best portrait painted from the life of someone well renowned in art, academia, or science.

The exhibition is open 16 September – 6 November 2022

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
SALLY ANDERSON
Guido holding, folding, moulding 2022
acrylic on polycotton
198 x 153 cm

Blue Island investigates the interplay of colour and memory in relation to individual experience. Paintings draw on hydrangea related respective experience to demonstrate the capacity for colour and object to hold and trigger memory and association. The exhibition seeks to question the reliability of memory and offers a way to authenticate experience through colour. In attempting to realise something perhaps visually impossible to verify within their paintings; mixing colour truthfully and straightforwardly from memory, the artists are challenged to settle on feeling and intuitive correctness rather than absolute truth and certainty.

Using a uniform size canvas, the 14 invited artists were instructed to translate, from their ‘mind’s eye’, the colour they most strongly associate with their experience of hydrangeas. The result is a collection of essentially monochrome surfaces steeped with hidden and concealed recollections of mothers and mother’s mothers, former neighbours and neighbourhoods, marriage, childbirth city front-yards, suburban backyards, households and broken family homes. More visually evident (than the personal histories imbued in the paintings) is the materiality and individually distinctive application of paint to surface. These largely monochrome works give a condensed, and detail like insight into each artist’s painterly signature, almost all of which are instantly recognisable.

- Sally Anderson, 2022

READ MORE HERE

Dan Kyle reflects on his time spent visiting Candy Nelson Nakamarra's studio with Edwina Corlette and Miranda Skoczek in preparation for 'On Common Ground' Exhibition. The show is current at Edwina Corlette Gallery 28 June – 16 July, 2022.

Candy’s style is completely unique within her community of artists in Papunya. You can see links with her fellow artists and definitely some direct influence from her father, the renowned Papunya Tula artist Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula, but she has created her own visual language. She’s doing something I haven’t seen before, and everyone in the group acknowledges it. “No one is painting like this!” we say, like five times each.

If you look closely at the work, through the layers of intricate motifs, you can see the initial process that Candy uses to start each painting. This is actually what excited me about her in the first place, as this part of her process really sets her apart. Candy starts each work by splashing and pouring watered-down paint over the canvases. She turns them around and around, forcing the drips to run freely. They crisscross and intersect each other over the surface. It’s the landscape from above: watercourses, waterholes, sand dunes.

Dan Kyle, June 2022

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:

Candy Nelson Nakamarra at Papunya Tjupi Arts, 2022, photographed by Charlie Perry

Congratulations to Sally M Nangala Mulda who is a finalist in the 2022 Sulman Art Prize.

The Sulman Prize is awarded for the best subject painting, genre painting or mural project by an Australian artist.

Sally Mulda's painting 'Old Days at Amoonguna' depicts the art centre's toyota picking up all the woman for painting. That kungka Nadine driving. Long time ago I use to get picked up at Little Sisters. Now Abbott’s Camp. Every day. We listen to CAAMA radio. Good ways. Everybody talkin’ talkin’. This one [middle] – three woman, they on the hospital lawn, playing card for money. Pay day. Night time [right panel] four woman by the fire at town camp. They sitting round the fire at night time. Keeping warm, talking story. Maybe they by the fire because no power card? This is town camp life. Every day.

READ MORE HERE

Old Days at Amoonguna 2021
acrylic on linen
66 x 122.5 cm

The Archibald Prize is a prestigious Australian portraiture art prize that has been running since 1921. The national portrait prize is entering a new century with 816 submissions entered this year, of which 52 finalists were announced on Thursday 5th of May. It is with great pleasure to congratulate Eliza Gosse who was selected as a finalist in the 2022 Archibald Art Prize.

Gosse depicts in her painting an architect and designer Benjamin Jay Shand.

He sees beauty in the most peculiar places, has great hair and likes to wear sunglasses more than is usual. I can say that because he is my husband. I don’t often paint people; however, Benj finds himself the constant muse for my sketchbook scribbles. And as this is my first large-scale portrait, it felt natural for him to be the subject...

- Eliza Gosse

IMAGE:

Eliza Gosse

Somewhere Near Home (Painting of Benjamin Jay Shand) 2022

oil on canvas

122 x 152 cm

READ MORE HERE

Lottie Consalvo and James Drinkwater have created a big-hearted, art-filled home in their terrace house by the sea. James’ art practice incorporates painting, sculpture, drawings and wearable textiles. "Since I was a child, making art was the clearest way I could express myself,” he says. His creativity is nourished by “generosity of any kind, whether it be the human spirit or nature itself".

- Elizabeth Wilson, House & Garden Magazine

IMAGE:

James Drinkwater, courtesy Alana Landsberry

READ MORE HERE

Congratulations to Eliza Gosse whose work has been included in a new exhibition at New South Wales parliament house 'National Art School in the NSW Landscape'.

The exhibit explores the relationship between people, land and culture across the state through artworks by 21 significant Australian artists who studied at the National Art School (NAS), which this year celebrates 100 years since moving into the former Darlinghurst Gaol site in inner-city Sydney. Featuring 27 major artworks in various media including tapestry, collage and ceramics, this show represents the enormous diversity of NSW’s landscape, environment and culture.

The exhibition is open at NSW Parliament House from 9 – 31 March 2022.

READ MORE HERE

There is more to Miranda Skoczek’s paintings than immediately meets the eye. They are built intuitively and in layers, from colours, patterns and objects that she absorbs in her immediate home environment – and all over the world. They are often abstract, sometimes with figurative elements; they focus on paint and colour, process and time, to create a space that takes us somewhere other, outside the material world. Inspiration comes from art and antiquities, folk art and contemporary design – and through obsessive consumption of images. Skoczek describes herself as “a sponge,” confessing to VAULT: “I have 95,000 photographs on my phone.”

The mystical is evident in Skoczek’s hope that her paintings work like amulets for those who acquire them. Protective elements aside, in their sensual textures and influences, so powerfully evoked, these paintings emerge as poignant and poetic visual essays written to the past and the present."\

- Louise Martin-Chew, Vault Magazine

IMAGE:

Front Cover of Vault Magazine, Issue 37, 2022, featuring Miranda Skoczek's Dreaming of Betty (Woodman), 2018

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The alternative Archibald and Wynne Prize selection

5th June – 26 September 2021

The Salon des Refusés was initiated by the S.H. Ervin Gallery in 1992 in response to the large number of works entered into the Archibald Prize which were not selected for display in the official exhibition. The Archibald Prize is one of Australia’s most high profile and respected awards which attracts hundreds of entries each year and the S.H. Ervin Gallery’s ‘alternative’ selection has become a much anticipated feature of the Sydney scene.

Each year our panel is invited to go behind the scenes of the judging process for the annual Archibald Prize for portraiture and Wynne Prize for landscape painting and figure sculpture at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, to select an exhibition from the many hundreds of works entered in both prizes but not chosen for the official award exhibition.

The Salon des Refusés exhibition at the S.H. Ervin Gallery has established an excellent reputation that rivals the selections in the ‘official’ exhibition, with works selected for quality, diversity, humour and experimentation, and which examine contemporary art practices, different approaches to portraiture and responses to the landscape.

JANE GUTHLEBEN Greetings from Bibbenluke (Lucy Culliton, artist)

This open competition is judged by the trustees of the Art Gallery of NSW. Finalists are displayed in an exhibition at the Gallery (although in the early years all entrants were hung). Although it is a non-acquisitive prize, several of the entries are now part of the Gallery’s collection.

Born in Titjikala in 1957, Mulda experienced a childhood accident that left her with impaired vision, but surgery has improved her sight. Exhibiting since 2008, she creates bright canvases with distinctive cursive text, depicting scenes of everyday life within Abbott’s Camp and drawing attention to social and political issues with emotional honesty.

In this portrait, the artist is wearing the stripey top and sits with her daughter, Louise Abbott. The other two people cooking roo tails on the fire represent all town camp women. As Mulda puts it: they are ‘maybe me and Louise, maybe any womans. This is town camp life. Every day.’

Mulda is also a finalist in this year’s Sulman Prize.

READ MORE HERE

Established in 2015, the Bayside Acquisitive Art Prize is a celebration of contemporary Australian painting. The finalist exhibition brings together a broad range of artists, both established and lesser known, whose varied approaches to the painted medium conveys the breadth and diversity of painting in Australia today.

The annual prize is an important opportunity for Bayside City Council to add exceptional works of art to its collection and to promote art and artists as a valuable part of the Bayside community.

Sally Mulda's work 'Town Camp Stories' 2020 is a finalist in this year's prize.

READ MORE HERE

Written by Louise Martin-Chew

Dan Kyle's work is part of Wangaratta Art Gallery's exhibition 'Contemporary Landscape Perspectives: A Group Show' from 13 March – 30 May 2021.

This dynamic exhibition of five contemporary landscape Australian painters, Max Berry, Holly Greenwood, Dan Kyle, Bronte Leighton-Dore and Andrew Pye explores individual perspectives of elements of the Australian bush, the terrain, landscape and key symbolism of trees and flora in their immediate environment.

All five artists are emerging as contemporary painters in the Australian art scene. Berry, Greenwood, Kyle and Leighton-Dore are New South Wales based (Sydney and Blue Mountains), the four have partnered with local artist Andy Pye, the group have connections both through friendship but also their oeuvre, their painting practice and style. Each artists surrounding environments are re-interpreted in large scale paintings and works on paper.

This collection of artists and their work presents a diversity of expression and contemporary representation of the Australian Bush.

READ MORE HERE

Sally Anderson has been included in an exhibition and article by The Australian which highlight new Australian art on the market.

It’s this moment of evolution that has inspired The Australian’s Summer Exhibition — a showcase of sculptures, paintings, photographs and works on paper. Beautiful to look at, it’s a celebration of some of the best and brightest artists working today. All 50 pieces have been selected because they signify what’s happening in Australian art and culture right now.

So, what is happening right now? The primary art market in Australia is experiencing a small boom. For obvious reasons, flying to international art fairs is off the cards, and this has led Australian collectors to rediscover a local market packed full of prodigious works by tomorrow’s household names.

It means there’s a renewed focus on Australian stories and more opportunities for emerging artists to have their work seen, as gallerists and buyers look toward home. It’s this time of risk-taking and yes, even optimism that our summer exhibition represents.

- Amy Campbell, The Australian, 2021

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Copywriter and content specialist Elle McClure was asked by the team at Medium Rare Content agency to help produce content for the autumn 2021 issue of the David Jones magazine, JONES HOME. As well as compiling trend pages and writing copy across the issue, Elle interviewed Otis Hope Carey, Louise Olsen and Miranda Skoczek as part of profiles on the artists.

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John Bokor is a finalist in the Dobell Drawing Prize with this work titled Lounge Room in Spring 2020, charcoal, wash and collage, 84 x 100 cm.

The Dobell Drawing Prize is the leading drawing exhibition in Australia and an unparalleled celebration of drawing innovation. Presented in partnership with the Sir William Dobell Art Foundation (SWDAF), the biennial prize explores the enduring importance of drawing within contemporary art practice.

William Dobell’s love of drawing was recognised in 1993 when the Art Gallery of New South Wales established an annual drawing prize in his name, initiated by the trustees of the SWDAF. For twenty years, the annual Dobell Prize for Drawing encouraged excellence in drawing and draughtsmanship among Australian artists.

IMAGE:
John Bokor
Lounge Room in Spring 2020
charcoal, wash, and collage
84 x 100 cm

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For the first time in its 22 year history, the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship has been awarded to five artists, one of whom is Dan Kyle.

Congratulations Charlie Ingemar Harding (Victoria), Emily Grace Imeson (NSW), Dan Kyle (NSW), Lily Platts (NSW) and Georgia Spain (Tasmania).

Art Gallery of New South Wales Director, Michael Brand, said that in one of the most challenging years the arts community has ever experienced he’s delighted that the Scholarship could be awarded, albeit in a different format.

‘That the Scholarship this year is shared between five artists instead of a single artist speaks to the moment we’re in, where we all need to work together and find new ways of thinking for the benefit of our community.

‘The Scholarship remains a prestigious, national painting award and I welcome all five recipients to the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship alumni who have, like Brett Whiteley before them, had their worlds open up as a result of being offered this opportunity to spend time creating work in a new location,’ Brand said.

Congratulations to Sally Anderson whose upcoming exhibition has been featured in Brisbane Art Guide.

To coincide with her exhibition at Tweed Regional Gallery, Edwina Corlette Gallery is delighted to present a series of new paintings by Sally Anderson. Sally is a past winner of the prestigious Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship and a finalist in this year’s Portia Geach Award for female portraiture, with her painting of Claudia Karvan (below).

Born in Lismore, Anderson began her undergraduate studies in Visual Art at Southern Cross University before transferring to the College of Fine Art in Sydney. A past finalist in the Sunshine Coast Art Prize and the Paddington Art Prize, Anderson was invited to participate in the Association of Icelandic Visual Artists Residency in Reykjavik in 2014. Her work has been acquired by Artbank, the Australian Catholic University and corporate and private clients in Australia and Europe.

- Brisbane Art Guide, 2020

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Eliza Gosse's work 'Spoonfuls of Milo at Kosciuszko' is a finalist in the 2020 Wynne Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

The Wynne Prize is awarded annually for 'the best landscape painting of Australian scenery in oils or watercolours or for the best example of figure sculpture by Australian artists'. This open competition is judged by the trustees of the Art Gallery of NSW.

IMAGE:

Eliza Gosse

Spoonfuls of Milo at Kosciuszko 2020

oil on canvas

150 x 120 cm

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Eliza Gosse's work 'A Triangle of Vegemite Toast Lay Forgotten Under the Mustard Chair' is a finalist in the 2020 Mosman Art Prize.

Established in 1947, the Mosman Art Prize is Australia's oldest and most prestigious local government art award. It was founded by the artist, architect and arts advocate, Alderman Allan Gamble, at a time when only a small handful of art prizes were in existence in Australia and the community had very little support and few opportunities to exhibit their work.

IMAGE:

Eliza Gosse

A Triangle of Vegemite Toast Lay Forgotten Under the Mustard Chair 2020

acrylic on canvas

The concept of home has changed in 2020. For a lot of people, home has never been just one static place, and yet in the last few months that stasis has been forced upon us. In the midst of shelter-in-place orders, we’ve been directed to decide on a single location that represents our place in the world and stay there, hoping it keeps us safe.

Reframing the domestic space as a new landscape intrigues artist and new mother Sally Anderson. Her new body of work is entitled Bridal Veil Falls, the Window and the Piano Lesson, and was created almost entirely in lockdown. The pieces will be on display at Edwina Corlette gallery in Brisbane from tomorrow, in an exhibition that explores the fusion between Sally’s subjective experience of parenthood, and the collective endurance of pandemic paralysis.

- Sasha Gattermayr, The Design Files, 2020

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To help my son sleep we put on white noise of a small river in Scotland and Llyn Gwynant waves in Wales. The toponomy of Lismore indicates it was named after Isle of Lismore which lies in Loch Linnhe, an arm of the sea, on the West Coast of Scotland. I was born in Lismore early 1990, an experience I hadn’t intimately considered until the birth of my son a couple of years ago. My son was conceived in the Nancy Fairfax Artist in Residence Studio at Tweed Regional Gallery. There’s a pair of hoop pines (aka Richmond River Pines) that dominate the side view from the residency verandah. I often use these trees, along with banksias, within my work to represent the Northern Rivers region, my transition to motherhood and European exploration/invasion of Australia.

The works in 'Arm of the Sea and the Fertile Tree' use landscape metaphor rather than subject. Intimate personal experience and collective experience are translated into paintings, bedspreads, windows, still lifes and stages.

- Sally Anderson, 2020

The exhibition is open from 3 July — 29 November 2020

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IMAGE:
Installation image of Sally Anderson's exhibition at Tweed Regional Gallery

Sally Anderson's work 'Claude Swimming' has been selected as a finalist in the Portia Geach Prize for 2020. The painting of Claudia Karvan, actress, producer and writer will be exhibited at the National Trust's S.H. Ervin Gallery.

The Portia Geach Memorial Award was established in 1965 to be annually presented to an Australian female artist. Portia Geach was an iconic figure in the Australian arts community, acclaimed for her art and media presence, and as such the award was created in her honour. The award is specifically for the best portrait painted from the life of someone well renowned in art, academia, or science.

The exhibition will be open in Sydney from 14 August – 20 September 2020.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
Sally Anderson
Claude Swimming, 2020
acrylic on linen
168 x 137cm

ART GALLERY OF NEW SOUTH WALES

Jane Guthleben’s subject is author and journalist Annabel Crabb, who is also known for her cookbooks and TV shows about cooking, Australian politics and history. The pair met some years ago when Annabel bought one of Guthleben’s paintings.

‘I admire Annabel because she energetically juggles full-time work and excellent cooking and has written about the pressures of modern domesticity in The wife drought,’ says Guthleben. ‘The painting aims to portray the public persona of Annabel as a baker, while celebrating the domesticity she writes and podcasts about.

‘I’ve painted her as an ornament on a small pedestal, wearing an apron and holding a wooden spoon – part of a series of ornament-portraits where the subject is transformed into a shelf ornament in a mundane pose. The work is deliberately small in scale to be the opposite of monumental, and pastel colours play upon the stereotype of woman as homemaker, which Annabel somehow manages to transcend.’

A former journalist herself, Guthleben was born in 1966 in Bairnsdale, Victoria. This is her first time in the Archibald Prize.

Rhys Lee has been featured in an article by Juxtapoz on his experience as a practicing artist in Australia during the covid pandemic.

Continuing our mission to check with friends and favorite artists around the globe, we virtually traveled all the way to Victoria, Australia, to check on what's happening with Rhys Lee. Based in a small coastal town located southwest of Melbourne, the artist is a whirl of activity as he intensively works on new paintings.

- Juxtapoz

READ MORE HERE

Congratulations to Eliza Gosse who is a finalist in the 2020 with her work 'He Watched Cars Passing By Beyond The Cracks In The Curtains', 2020, oil on canvas, 120x150cm.

The Ravenswood Australian Women's Art Prize is an annual prize that was launched in 2017 to advance art and opportunity for emerging and established female artists in Australia. It is the highest value professional artist prize for women in Australia.

Artwork judging is overseen by Ravenswood Australian Women's Art Prize Patron and acclaimed artist, Jennifer Turpin and the winners will be announced 26 May 2020.

IMAGE:

Eliza Gosse in her studio, courtesy the artist

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To coincide with her exhibition 'Mini Mokes and Mini Skirts', Eliza Gosse is featured in the April edition of Harpers Bazaar magazine

'Artefacts', Alison Kubler, Vault Magazine, Issue 23, 104-105pp.

Jane Guthleben was the recipient of the international NG Art Creative Residency which is a two week placement at the 15th century Provincial homestead in Eygalières, Provence, Southern France in November 2019.

Directed and founded by Nicky Ginsberg, the NG Art Creative Residency is a prize that aims to provide creatives an opportunity to embark on imaginative endeavours and immerse themselves in an environment of reflection and creative freedom in the studio and en plein air.

Jane's new body of work from Eygalières will be exhibited in her upcoming show, Grandiflora at Edwina Corlette Gallery 17 March - 9 April 2020.

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Bridie Gillman has been been selected as one of six finalists in the prestigious Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship, administered by the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

The annual Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship is now in its 21st year and is open to Australian painters aged between 20 and 30 years. It was created from an endowment by Mrs Beryl Whiteley in 1999. The inspiration was the profound effect international travel and study had on her son, the artist Brett Whiteley, as a result of winning the Italian Government Travelling Art Scholarship in 1959 at the age of 20.

My paintings talk of relationship, context and metaphor. They are loaded with autobiographical content, draw on past and present experiences and often arrive in pairs. Recent paintings use abstraction, still life and borrowed landscapes to reference everyday intimate experience held in object and place. They explore the self and use abstraction, landscape and still life as devices to do so.

- Sally Anderson, The Design Files, 2019.

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As an acquisitive art award for painting, the winning artworks in the Mosman Art prize form a splendid collection of modern and contemporary Australian art, reflecting all the developments in Australian art practice since 1947. Artists who have won the Mosman Art Prize include Margaret Olley, Guy Warren, Grace Cossington Smith, Weaver Hawkins, Nancy Borlase, Lloyd Rees, Elisabeth Cummings, Adam Cullen, Michael Zavros and Natasha Walsh.

In 2019 Jane Guthleben is a finalist with her work 'North Shore arrangement with superb fruit doves'. She says of the painting:

This work is based on the 17 century Dutch still life floral works by Rachel Ruysch, which have inspired my large floral compositions. For this work I have researched indigenous flora and birds from the Mosman Municipal area that are under pressure from urban encroachment and weeds.

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Dan Kyle's work 'Caught in a Haze' has been selected as a finalist in the Mosman Art Prize

Established in 1947, the Mosman Art Prize is Australia's oldest and most prestigious local government art award. As an acquisitive art award for painting, the winning artworks collected form a splendid collection of modern and contemporary Australian art, reflecting developments in Australian art practice since 1947. Artists who have won the Mosman Art Prize include Margaret Olley, Guy Warren, Grace Cossington Smith, Weaver Hawkins, Nancy Borlase, Lloyd Rees, Elisabeth Cummings, Adam Cullen, Michael Zavros and Natasha Walsh.

Until 27 October 2019, Mosman Art Gallery

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Sally Anderson's work 'Side of the Road River with Rousseau's Bluebells' has been selected as a finalist in the Mosman Art Prize

Mosman Art Prize was established in 1947, and is Australia's oldest and most prestigious local government art award. The winning artworks join a collection of modern and contemporary Australian art, reflecting developments in Australian art practice since 1947. Artists who have won the Mosman Art Prize include Margaret Olley, Guy Warren, Grace Cossington Smith, Weaver Hawkins, Nancy Borlase, Lloyd Rees, Elisabeth Cummings, Adam Cullen, Michael Zavros and Natasha Walsh.

The exhibition is open until 27 October 2019 at Mosman Art Gallery.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
SALLY ANDERSON
Side of the Road River with Rousseau's Bluebells 2019
acrylic on linen

John Bokor's work 'Spring' has been selected as a finalist in the National Still Life Award at Coffs Harbour Regional Gallery.

Still is a biennial, acquisitive award for artworks in the genre of still life, in all mediums. The award is open to artists at all stages of their careers. Still: National Still Life Award seeks to highlight the diversity and vitality of still life in Australian contemporary art practice, broadening the interpretation and meaning of this enduring genre. The judge is Rebecca Coates, Director of the Shepparton Art Museum.

The Still exhibition official opening is on Saturday 21st September and is open until Saturday 16th November 2019.

IMAGE:
John Bokor
Spring 2019
oil on board
120 x 120 cm

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Jane Guthleben is a finalist in 2019 with her work The scratching post (self, artist).

The Award was established by the will of the late Florence Kate Geach in memory of her sister, Portia Geach. The non-acquisitive prize is awarded by the Trustee for the entry which is of the highest artistic merit, ‘…for the best portrait painted from life of some man or woman distinguished in Art, Letters, or the Sciences by any female artist resident in Australia during the twelve months preceding the close date for entries.’

The 2019 exhibition will run from August 2 to September 15, 2019 at Sydney's S.H. Ervin Gallery.

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The Muswellbrook Art Prize began in 1958 as the Festival of the Valley Art Prize and has grown to acquire an excellent collection of Australian artworks. These include modern and contemporary painting, works on paper, and ceramics from the Post War period and now the first two decades of the 21st Century. The Muswellbrook Shire Art Collection was created as a direct result of this ongoing acquisitive art competition.

John Bokor is a finalist in the 2019 prize.

IMAGE:
John Bokor
The Red Velvet Lounge 2018
oil on linen
68 x 91cm

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Brisbane Art Design festival is a 17-day festival of exhibitions, performances, talks, art tours, workshops and open studios of artists and designers in Brisbane. BAD showcases more than 150 Brisbane artists across all career stages.

Bridie Gillman collaborated with Brisbane designer Alexander Loterztain to make the work Breath as part of the festival held at Museum of Brisbane.

IMAGE:

Jono Searle courtesy Museum of Brisbane.

The Ravenswood Australian Women's Art Prize is an annual prize that was launched in 2017 to advance art and opportunity for emerging and established female artists in Australia. There are two prize categories, including a $35,000 prize — the richest professional art prize for women in Australia. Artwork judging will be overseen by Ravenswood Australian Women's Art Prize Patron and acclaimed artist, Jennifer Turpin, and announced at the exhibition opening on 31 May, 2019.

Eliza Gosse is a finalist with her work 'Your Yellow Brick Holding Up the Sky' 2019, oil on canvas 50 x 40cm

READ MORE HERE

The alternative Archibald and Wynne Prize selection

11 May – 28 July 2019

The Salon des Refusés was initiated by the S.H. Ervin Gallery in 1992 in response to the large number of works entered into the Archibald Prize which were not selected for display in the official exhibition. The Archibald Prize is one of Australia’s most high profile and respected awards which attracts hundreds of entries each year and the S.H. Ervin Gallery’s ‘alternative’ selection has become a much anticipated feature of the Sydney scene.

Each year our panel is invited to go behind the scenes of the judging process for the annual Archibald Prize for portraiture and Wynne Prize for landscape painting and figure sculpture at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, to select an exhibition from the many hundreds of works entered in both prizes but not chosen for the official award exhibition. Of the 978 entries to the Archibald Prize the AGNSW Trustees selected 52 works, and from 734 entries to the Wynne Prize the Trustees selected 29 works.

From the remaining submission our selectors have chosen 30 works from the Archibald Prize entries and 23 works from the Wynne Prize entries for this alternative exhibition. The 2019 selectors were Brian Langer, director, Cowra Regional Art Gallery and Jane Watters, director, S.H. Ervin Gallery

The Salon des Refusés exhibition at the S.H. Ervin Gallery has established an excellent reputation that rivals the selections in the ‘official’ exhibition, with works selected for quality, diversity, humour and experimentation, and which examine contemporary art practices, different approaches to portraiture and responses to the landscape.

The Moreton Bay Regional Art Award is an annual acquisitive exhibition proudly sponsored by the Moreton Bay Council. This year the Art Award offered an acquisitive prize of $8000, four category prizes of $2000 each, and two supplementary $1000 prizes for a Local Artist and a People's Choice Award.

Judged by Megan Williams, Manager of the University of the Sunshine Coast Art Gallery, Bridie Gillman was awarded the overall winner with her work 'Some sort of growth' 2018.

Megan Williams commented: 'The artist's sense of the materiality of paint, the play of colour, darkness and light make it a very strong and visually arresting painting. The colours reference the natural environment and you get a sense of the artists awe and love of nature, however, its abstract quality resists clear and direct communication. It is a work to become immersed in, to sit with, and to contemplate.'

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Sally Nangala Mulda has been selected as a finalist in the 2019 Sulman Prize, administered by the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The Sulman Prize is awarded for the best subject painting, genre painting or mural project by an Australian artist.

Sally says of her working this years prize:

This is me outside my home at Abbott’s Town Camp in Alice Springs feeding my cats. Little cat, mother cat. One woman, my family, playing cards. Nobody bothering anybody. No papa bothering the cats! We are just sitting quietly. I like quiet. Nobody talking.

Sally M Nagala Mulda, 2019

Image: Sally feeding little cat, mother cat, acrylic on linen, 76 x 92 cm

John Bokor is a finalist in the 2019 Sulman Prize, administered by the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

The Sulman Prize is awarded in the terms of the gift of the family of the late Sir John Sulman, to the best genre painting and/or mural project done by an artist resident in Australia during the five years preceding the date fixed by the Trustees for sending in entries.

'Four thirty pm' s from a group of works I started making in 2017 depicting interior spaces. They are hybrid paintings of real and imagined scenes made using an airbrush and traditional painting tools. This painting took a very long time to resolve. I thought at one point in 2018 that it was finished and had it framed, only to realise early this year that it needed more work. I treated it as badly as it had me and sanded the surface down and reworked the whole painting, destroying most of what was underneath. When it was finally finished the light in the studio resembled the light in the painting. I checked my clock and it was 4.30pm.

- John Bokor, 2019

IMAGE:
John Bokor
Four thirty pm 2019
oil on board
125 x 147 cm

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In 2015 Owen Craven wrote about Dan Kyle, his studio and life in the bush near the Blue Mountains —

Soon after graduating from the National Art School, Dan Kyle set up home deep within the Australian bush at the foot of the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. His paintings are translations of what he sees – the beauty, the unique forms, the colours – but also his way of reducing the density of the bush to a more approachable landscape for him to keep exploring. Back in Issue 32, 2015, Artist Profile chatted to Dan about the formal and conceptual nuances of his landscapes.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

Louise Martin-Chew writes about Sally Nangala Mulda's life and painting for Art/Edit magazine. She says:

'WHAT IS MOST DISTINCTIVE about the paintings of Sally M. Nangala Mulda is that they tell us just how it is to live in Abbott’s Town Camp, not far from the mostly dry Todd River bed in Alice Springs (Mparntwe). Many of the paintings produced by Indigenous artists working out of the region use colour and pattern to evoke the romance of their connections to Country. However, Sally’s approach delivers the gritty reality of the place in which she lives, the interactions between police and Aboriginal people, the supermarket as the source of “a feed”, the tension around alcohol consumption and people sleeping rough, all set amongst saltbush, waterholes, homes and shops.'

READ MORE HERE

On Sally Nangala Mulda's work for 'The National' at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Snack Syndicate for Running Dog writes:

'Sally Mulda’s narrative style mimics the pedantic, forensic language of the state while at the same time showing that such language tends to obfuscate its subjects—people who live and die. Mulda’s frank descriptions of the Town Camp index the countless different ways that black life is both constrained by, and always in excess of, white law.

Together, the paintings in the exhibition are quietly unsettling, staging a series of encounters that produce both minor affects (annoyance, confusion, amusement, affection) and their major implications. Engaging with the paintings, we feel the enormity of living under occupation, as well as the conviction that such enormity can never be total.'

READ MORE HERE

https://www.the-national.com.a...

Curator Isobel Parker Philip talks about Sally Mulda's work for 'The National' at the Art Gallery of New South Wales:

'Sally Nangala Mulda is an artist who lives in Abbott's Town Camp in Alice Springs in the Northern Territory.

She paints scenes from her daily life. She paints people having breakfast. She paints going to the football. She paints people going to sleep. She also paints the routine and intrusive presence of the police amongst the indigenous communities in the Northern Territory.

All of these scenes are painted with the same frank and stark honesty. There is a normalisation of the police presence amongst the Indigenous community that is shocking to see at first and is amplified by the regularity with which Sally paints it and that we see it again and again across the installation.

This reminds us about what life looks like for a huge portion of our Indigenous people. In this work we see the lived effects of the 2007 Northern Territory intervention. It's a brutal reminder about what reality can really look like.

Sally paints her figurative scenes and then applies text on top of them to tether each work to a particular time and place. These are diaristic documents. They're paintings that do the job of photographs or snapshots. There's a kind of direct relationship between these scenes and the real world. We read them as snapshots. We read them as kind of episodes from life as it is lived.'

READ MORE HERE

We are delighted to see works by Sally Anderson, Belem Lett, Lucy O'Doherty, and Amber Wallis in the new exhibition 'The Whiteley at 20: Twenty Years of the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship', as previous finalists of the award.

Established by Ms Beryl Whiteley in 1999 in memory of her son, the 'Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship' provides young painters with the opportunity to travel through Europe to develop their artistic practice. Since its inception, 20 young painters have followed in the titular artist's footsteps.

The exhibition features works by Sally Anderson, Alice Byrne, Mitch Cairns, James Drinkwater, Petrea Fellow, Becky Gibson, Nathan Hawkes, Alan Jones, Nicole Kelly, Belem Lett, Lucy O’Doherty, Wayde Owen, Timothy Phillips, Tom Polo, Ben Quilty, Karlee Rawkins, Samuel Wade, Amber Wallis, Natasha Walsh, and Marcus Wills, alongside the four paintings that won Brett Whiteley the Italian Government Travelling Scholarship.

The exhibition presents not only the works that won the scholarship, but features works from each artist's residency at the Cite Internationale des Art, Paris and recent work.

The exhibition is open from 22 March - 5 May 2019 at the S.H. Ervin Gallery in Sydney.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGES:
1/ Previous winners of the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship attending the opening of 'The Whiteley at 20: Twenty Years of the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship'
2/ Brett Whiteley

In celebration of Gorman’s decade-long collaboration with visual artists, Heide is presenting a two-week pop-up exhibition in the iconic modernist building, Heide II.

The exhibition will feature garments from a new range by Gorman created in collaboration with ten artists who have worked with the Australian clothing label since 2009, including Miranda Skoczek. The garments will be displayed alongside the artworks which inspired them.

READ MORE HERE

Bridie Gillman's work as featured in Woven Kolektif's looking here, looking north exhibition at Casula Powerhouse has been reviewed in Art Asia Pacific Magazine.

At the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre in Sydney, a video portrays the interior of a restaurant, its walls decorated with Australian-flag bunting, and kitsch Australiana tea towels and posters, positioning us inside an ostensibly Australian establishment. It is revealed in subsequent shots of the staff, clientele, and the beach outside, however, that this is in fact a tourist spot in Bali. Bridie Gillman’s video work Bali State of Mind (2017–18) ruminates on the unequal power dynamic between Australia and Indonesia, the latter being economically reliant on tourism and subject to the objectifying tourist gaze that comes with over one million Australians visiting annually.

Gillman is one of seven artists included in the exhibition 'looking here looking north' by members of Woven, a collective with “continuing personal connections to Indonesia.” While Gillman’s work is subtly political, the exhibition holistically was striking in its ability to reach beyond essentialist identity politics, reconfiguring what it means to be part of the Indonesian diaspora by speaking to universal themes of memory, place and belonging.

- Soo-Min Shim, Art Asia Pacific Magazine

looking here looking north is on view at the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Sydney, 12 January - March 17, 2019

IMAGE:

Bridie Gillman

Bali state of mind (still) 2017–18

two-channel video installation

17 min 40 sec

READ MORE HERE

Toby Orton from Plain Magazine features Eliza Gosse's work. He writes:

Delving into social issues of national identity and immigration, artist Eliza Gosse focuses on the post-war houses built for European migrants in her home country of Australia in the 50s, 60s and 70s. In her striking oil paintings, Gosse’s style combines clean, color blocked geometric forms that call to mind the utopian ideals of suburban planning with a ‘nostalgic
inflection’. The ‘Suburban Modernism’ that she has created is a response to her interests in design history, the initial impact of inexpensive post-war architecture on communities and the way that the design’s influence and meaning is viewed over time. In her paintings of the Australian (and to a lesser extent, American) suburbs she celebrates an era of design that mocks the unflattering stereotype of bland suburbia and celebrates the unabashed invention of the time.

READ MORE HERE

looking here looking north is an exhibition by Woven, a collective of artists who each have continuing personal connections to Indonesia. Themes of identity, memory and cross-cultural experience are explored through performance, painting, installation, photography, video and sculpture.

Featuring work by: Kartika Suharto-Martin, Ida Lawrence, Mashara Wachjudy, Bridie Gillman, Sofiyah Ruqayah, Alfira O’Sullivan and Leyla Stevens.

looking here looking north is presented alongside an exhibition by artist Frances Larder and an exhibition of video works by Jumaadi as part of a suite of exhibitions showcasing perspectives on Indonesia.

The exhibition is on view at the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Sydney, 12 January - March 17, 2019

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The Ideal Home presents a history of the 20th century Australian home told through household objects, furniture and design classics from the MAAS Collection.

For much of the 20th century Australia enjoyed one of the highest rates of home ownership in the world. This situation emerged following the landmark ‘Harvester Judgement’ of 1907, which enshrined a ‘living wage’, and enabled ordinary workers to purchase a home and support a family.

Post war affluence, technology, mass manufacturing and the ready availability of goods, created both a consumer base and desire. In this setting, suburbs grew and homes became our castles. Australians enthusiastically adopted international trends in architecture, interior furnishings and design. Labour saving devices liberated us from domestic drudgery and increased the time available for leisure. Indoors and outdoors Australians aspired to a lifestyle centred upon the comfort, style, amenity and function of the home.

The Ideal Home presents a history of the 20th century Australian home told through household objects, furniture and design classics from the MAAS Collection. See more of The Ideal Home including modernist design and artworks at MAAS Powerhouse, Ultimo.

The Ideal Home is a partnership between the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences and Penrith Regional Gallery & The Lewers Bequest.

The exhibition suite features works across the site from the following Australian artists:

• Cope Street Collective: Mathew Cooper and Colin Kinchela
• Karla Dickens
• Victoria Garcia
• Richard Goodwin
• Blake Griffiths
• eX de Medici
• Catherine O’Donnell
• Eliza Gosse

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Sally Anderson's work ‘Guy’s Painting of Wollumbin on my Wollumbin’ has been acquired by Tweed Regional Gallery. In 2017 Sally was an artist in residence at the Nancy Fairfax Artist Residency through the Tweed Regional Gallery and throughout her life, has had strong connections to the region.

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IMAGE:
SALLY ANDERSON
Guy's Painting of Wollumbin on my Wollumbin 2018
acrylic on linen
140 x 122 cm

Congratulations to John Bokor who has been awarded a highly commended in the 2018 EMSLA prize.

Now in its twelfth year, the Eutick Memorial Still Life Award comes to Wollongong to coincide with the city’s signature festival, Viva La Gong. Judged annually by critic and art historian John McDonald, the EMSLA has added prestige to the festival and increased still life’s importance as a genre in art.

9 November - 1 December 2018

IMAGE:
John Bokor
Aperol and Oranges 2018
oil on canvas
61x76cm

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The William Fletcher Trust (now the William Fletcher Foundation) was established in 1985 to celebrate the life and to commemorate the work of William Fletcher whose straitened circumstances, ill health and early death cut short his developing talents. In 1988, the Trust awarded its first grants for study to tertiary students of the visual arts. The William Fletcher Trust was incorporated in 2006 as William Fletcher Foundation following a generous bequest. Since 1988, grants totalling over $400,000 have been distributed to over 500 highly talented students of the visual arts, to assist them to continue their studies.

In 2018 the grant was awarded to Eliza Gosse.

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John Bokor is a finalist in the Kedumba Drawing Award at Orange Regional Gallery. Now in its 29th year, the Award plays a vital role in fostering the production and appreciation of drawing in Australia. Initiated by Jeffrey and Marlene Plummer in 1989, the Kedumba Drawing Award has grown steadily. Each year, the Judge is an established artist whose only guideline is “to enrich and enhance the Collection”

The Kedumba Collection of Australian Drawings, with over 230 works, is currently on long term loan to Orange Regional Gallery. It is an Orange Regional Gallery and Kedumba Trust partnership exhibition.

The award is open 20 October - 2 December, 2018.

IMAGE:
John Bokor
Weekend Away 2018
charcoal, wash and collage
56x76cm

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John Bokor's artwork, 'Collection Day' 2011 is now on permanent display at the State Library of New South Wales. The new gallery space opens 6th October 2018.

'Collection Day' shows Organs Road, Bulli, looking east, the morning after garbage collection day. The bins, with lids flung open, capture the everyday aspect of suburban recycling practice. This loose and lively suburban street scene celebrates the commonplace.

IMAGES:

1/
John Bokor
Collection Day 2011
oil on board
90 x 120cm

2/
Installation view of State Library of New South Wales with John Bokor and his painting Collection Day, 2011

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Miranda Skoczek, Julian Meagher and John Aslanidis are finalists in The Kings School Art Prize 2018.

The King’s Art Prize is a $20,000 acquisitive award presented to the best contemporary artwork created by an artist resident in Australia and represented by a commercial gallery, supporting both the artists and the fine arts industry. Entry is by invitation only and the finalists are selected by an appointed Art Prize panel.

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John Aslanidis, Belem Lett and Bridie Gillman are finalists in the 2018 Fisher's Ghost Award through Campbelltown Arts Centre.

The Fisher’s Ghost Art Award is part of Campbelltown’s annual Festival of Fisher’s Ghost. Held over 10 days, the Festival dates back to 1956 and celebrates Australia’s most famous ghost – Frederick Fisher.

The Open section of the Art Award is acquisitive to the Campbelltown Art Centre permanent collection and the artist is awarded prize-money of $20,000. Over the years, the prize has been won by some of Australia's most well respected contemporary artists.

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John Bokor is a finalist in the 2018 Tattersall's Art Prize with his work A Walk in the Park 2018, oil on canvas, 108x122cm.

A total of 93 artists across Australia accepted the invitation to participate in the 2018 Tattersall's Club and Mercedes-Benz Toowong Landscape Art Prize Award. The prize is acquistive and the winning painting is added to the Club's art collection. The judging panel for 2018 includes Dr David Middlebrook, former Tattersall's Art Prize winner and senior painting lecturer, Mrs Bettina MacAuley, Gallery and Museum Consultant Antiques and Fine Art Valuer, Ms Angela Goddard, Director of Griffith University Art Gallery and Mr Stuart Waddington, Committee Member of Tattersall's Club.

- Stuart Fraser, Tattersall's Club 2018

IMAGE:
John Bokor
A Walk in the Park 2018
oil on canvas
108 x 122 cm

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Congratulations to Sally Anderson who is a finalist in the Paddington Art Prize 2018.

The Paddington Art Prize is a $30,000 National acquisitive prize, awarded annually. The prize is specific to paintings inspired by the Australian landscape, as the imagery is integral to the tradition of Australia painting and is an enduring motif within contemporary art, shaping national identity.

This work uses ‘borrowed landscapes’ to look at ways we experience the Australian landscape from the comfort of our homes. It uses landscape as a device to demonstrate a shift in the way we experience landscape.

- Sally Anderson


IMAGE:

Sally Anderson
Sharing Thirroul (Paul Ryan's Post Of Thirroul With Curtain) 2017
acrylic on linen
140 x 124 cm

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With an annual prize pool worth $12,000, the Waverley Art Prize is open to painting, drawing print & mixed media.

Eliza Gosse's work "Lone Ficus on New South Head Road is a finalist in the 2018 Prize.

Eliza Gosse's work is included in the 2018 Ravenswood Australian Women's Art Prize. The theme of the prize is resilience. Gosse's work depicts a house in the suburbs of Melbourne designed by Russian architect Antol Kagan and is part of a larger series that investigates the architecture of post WWII refugees in Australia.

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This is us, this is the way it is – that’s what Sally Mulda’s paintings of life seem to say.  Paddy wagons in the river, policemen pouring out grog, an assortment of bottles and cans lying on the ground; four disconsolate people, probably men, walking away.  Dogs, children sleeping and everything in between that makes up life in the Alice Springs Town Camps, are depicted in her paintings, raw and free.

Jo Hoban from the Design Files recently caught up with Bridie Gillman in her Brisbane studio.

Brisbane-based artist Bridie Gillman is inspired by cross-cultural experiences – from a childhood growing up in Indonesia, to residencies abroad and trips across Australia. Her bold, striking compositions convey moody landscapes, exploring both emotional and physical terrain.

- Jo Hoban, the Design Files

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Dan Kyle has been featured on the Planthunter, who visited Dan at his spectacular home and studio in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney.

The Planthunter is an online magazine devoted to celebrating plants and the varied ways humans interact with them. Plants have been inspiring, feeding, sustaining and soothing humans for aeons. The Planthunter documents and celebrates these connections. 

'The rusted metal entrance gate rolls open revealing a four-meter-tall man with a gas mask staring at us from amongst the trees. A collection of huge sculptures lay scattered around him – the scene creates quite an entry statement, heightening my curiosity about the man we’ve headed up to the mountains to meet, artist Dan Kyle.'

READ THE ARTICLE HERE

The Gallery is delighted to now represent Dan Kyle.  

Owen Craven profiled Dan and his practice in a recent online article for Artist Profile magazine.

'Soon after graduating from the National Art School, Dan Kyle set up home deep in the Australian bush at the foot of the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney.  His paintings are translations of what he sees - the beauty, the unique forms, the colours - but also his way of reducing the density of the bush to a more approachable landscape for him to keep exploring.'

READ THE ARTICLE HERE

Sally Anderson's recent exhibition 'Self Storage and the Really Real' is featured in the January edition of the Art Almanac.

'Self Storage and the Really Real’ looks at ways we authenticate experience and store memory in object and place’, says artist Sally Anderson whose abstract compositions brim with clear references to past experiences; from the hydrangeas at her childhood home to shells from the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, and Norfolk Pines from recent Instagram posts to landscapes from past and present relationships. These works are a visual archive giving permanence to intangible memories and making them, as the title implies, ‘really real’.

- Art Almanac

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IMAGE:
SALLY ANDERSON
Tosha Falls as Curtains with Deegan Drive or LJs Mums Hydrangeas 2018
acrylic on linen
122 x 122 cm

Miranda Skoczek's exhibition 'Rag Rugs and Lion Heads' is featured on the Art Guide website. Miranda spoke with Louise Martin-Chew about her latest exhibition 'Rag Rugs and Lion Heads', her inspiration and the shift in her practice to looser, more expressive works:

Miranda Skoczek’s abstract paintings evoke old walls with layers of forms and shapes that emerge over time. In her studio, she might work simultaneously on nine canvases. Transferring from one to the other, she allows each oil layer to dry before repeatedly painting over it until jewel-like colours resonate and a spatial sensibility has been established within which the viewer may dwell. Skoczek told Art Guide Australia, “I don’t paint about social concerns. I create wholly immersive, beautiful pictures. They are places for escape and restoration: harmonious, calming pictures.”

- Louise Martin Chew

Miranda's exhibition is at the gallery from 14 November until 5 December 2017.

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Miranda Skoczek was a featured artist in the international group exhibition, The human experience, we are the ones doing works on canvas/Paintings XXXX at the Carlsberg Byens Galleri & Kunstsalon in Denmark. The exhibition was curated by Galina Munroe (Great Britain), Simon Ganshorn (Denmark) and Jordan Kerwick (Australia). The show featured 116 artists each working with abstraction through painting in their own distinct manner to promote diversity and highlight the possibility of medium and painting theory.

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Sally Anderson has been awarded the Brett Whiteley Travelling Arts Scholarship for 2017.

The prize is $40,000 and a three month residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, administered by the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

The annual Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship is open to Australian artists aged between 20 and 30. It was created from an endowment left by Beryl Whiteley, who witnessed the profound effect that international travel had on her son Brett Whiteley, as a result of him winning the Italian Government Travelling Art Scholarship at the age of 20.

The exhibition will open 13 October – 19 November 2017 at Brett Whiteley Studio, 2 Raper Street, Surry Hills NSW 2010.

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Sally Anderson has been selected as a finalist in Newcastle Art Gallery's Kilgour Prize.

In 1987 artist Jack Kilgour bequeathed funds for the creation of a figurative and portrait art competition to be run in perpetuity at Newcastle Art Gallery. Today the Kilgour Prize is one of Australia's major art prizes and awards $50,000 for the most outstanding work of art as determined by a panel of three judges, and $5,000 for the People's Choice Award, as determined by votes from the public.

The Kilgour Prize will be on display 5 August - 15 October 2017.

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Miranda Skoczek presents her first collection of jewellery works at Pieces of Eight Gallery in Melbourne as part of the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2017.

In DESHILADO, Miranda pays homage to the samplers created by stitchers in the early 16th Century. The collection is a three dimensional gathering of a myriad of interests and influences remixing materials and techniques, blurring the boundaries between objects, jewellery and art.

With a desire to connect ancient traditions with fashion, while acknowledging the archaeological importance of jewellery as artefact, Skoczek takes the opportunity to bring permanency to ornaments that have up to this point existed as abstract fragments in her paintings.

The exhibition is current until 25 March 2017.

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Miranda Skoczek is featured on The Design Files blog with a look at her move from an inner city two bedroom apartment, to a bucolic retreat set amongst the verdant landscape of the Dandenong Ranges. Miranda and her seven year old son Harper speak about the influence of nature on their lives and the impact a move to the country will have on her painting practice.

IMAGE:

Miranda Skoczek and her son, courtesy Caitlin Mills

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Iconic Australian blog The Design Files visited Sally Anderson in her studio recently, to see how things were progressing in the lead up to her first solo exhibition.

Working predominantly with a muted colour palette, the artist will often add an unexpected contrast, like a brush of bright magenta. ‘For me, working with colour is very intuitive; I might spend weeks working with dusky colours, only to come in one day needing to mix a cyan blue,

The paintings are an ongoing process of adding layers and marks. Sometimes Sally will paint over a work in her studio that she’d thought she was long done with. ‘My partner once said that my pieces are a bit like découpage… with individual snippets and cut-outs layered heavily onto a surface,’ she says. ‘My mum has always loved crafts and used to actually découpage the furniture in our house… maybe that’s unknowingly made an impression on me!’

- Sally Tabart, The Design Files, 2021

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Miranda Skoczek is renowned for her engaging, energetic works and her spectacular use of colour. A fixture on the Australian art scene, her work is instantly recognisable for its layers of intuitive colour, pattern and motifs. Iconic Australian label Country Road thought her work was perfect for a collaboration with charity RedKite. Miranda has designed two tote bags and a t-shirt, with all proceeds from each sale going towards providing essential support to children and their families who are facing cancer.

IMAGE:

Miranda Skoczek in her home, courtesy Country Road

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Miranda Skoczek has collaborated with Gorman Clothing for their 2015 winter collection. In sync with the label’s aesthetic, Miranda’s artwork blends seamlessly into signature Gorman textures and styles. Her work is featured across all 53 pieces in the collection, with every print originating from five of her artworks.

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Dr Ashley Crawford - a freelance cultural critic based in Melbourne - has written a glowing essay on the progression of Rhys Lee's art practice.

Lee’s passport is stamped with a variety of exotic locales; he has been to Anger, he has stopped over in Love, he has traversed the landscape of Fear and, jet-lagged, he has experienced the Delirium of insomnia.

Like all adventurous travellers, Lee is a voyeur of the unknown. As this book opens we see him astride in alien locales, sheltering in a snow-capped tent in Scandinavia, peering over a swimming pool in a sweltering Havana. And there, early in his travels, are the first tentative sketches, faces – whether faces in the street or self-portraits is nary an issue; in many ways all of Lee’s work are self-portrayal. In 1999, the eyes stare out, Klimt-like, a mixture of defiance and trepidation. That same year, Lee discovers his trademark harshly-cropped skull in Haircut (1999). By 2000 the die is cast in a more assured self-portrait complete with sketchbook, a portrait of the artist as a young man.

IMAGE:

courtesy NBB Gallery, Berlin

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