Comprising 11 new linocut prints, along with their metal-framed set of blocks, Invisible Stories: Meditations on Port Essington is Benjamin Armstrong‘s most recent solo exhibition at Tolarno since Conjurers in 2012.
The linocut series relates to the Australian historian and multi-award winning author Mark McKenna’s book From the Edge: Australia’s Lost Histories (2016). McKenna’s book explores the central drama of Australian history: the encounter between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians. The exhibition is part of the Melbourne Art Fair’s Melbourne Art Week program from Tuesday 31 July – Sunday 5 August.
Benjamin Armstrong is on view until 18 August.
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Image: Courtesy Andrew Stephens and Imprint Magazine
Congratulations to Brook Andrew who has been appointed Artistic Director of the 22nd Biennale of Sydney to be held in 2020.
A participant in the 2018 and 2010 biennales of Sydney, Brook Andrew will draw on curatorial experiences including his groundbreaking TABOO exhibition at Museum of Contemporary Art in 2012.
His distinguished 25-year career was recognised with a large-scale exhibition The Right to Offend is Sacred at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2017 and he is currently concluding a three-year-long Australian Research Council grant, Representation, Remembrance and the Memorial. This project responds to calls for a national memorial to Aboriginal loss during the Frontier Wars, a series of conflicts between Indigenous Australians and European settlers from 1788 to the 1930s.
Speaking to The Australian, Brook Andrew said he “doesn’t plan to include his own art at the 2020 biennale, saying he would be making a statement of sorts as artistic director instead. He will seek out artists and collections both locally and abroad, looking to present an exhibition that offers a snapshot of the world from an Australian perspective. He’s particularly interested in peripheral perspectives, or ‘ideas on the edge’. ‘I’m going to move the edge to the centre,’ he said.”
Brook Andrew has been represented by Tolarno Galleries since 2007. Read more at the Biennale of Sydney.
Image: Brook Andrew. Photograph: Zan Wimberley. Courtesy Biennale of Sydney.
Congratulations to Andrew Browne on winning the Geelong Contemporary Art Prize for 2018 for his work, The awakening. A biennial acquisitive award for contemporary painting with a cash prize of $30,000, the judging panel comprised Justin Paton (Head Curator of International Art, Art Gallery of New South Wales), Rebecca Coates (Director, Shepparton Art Museum) and Lisa Sullivan (Senior Curator, Geelong Gallery).
The judges commented: “This was a work that drew us in immediately and kept drawing us back. The key to its power is the board at the centre with its staring black ‘eyes’, backlit by a haunting nocturnal glow. With its flicks, smudges and overruns of colour, the plywood board suggests a painted surface hidden to the viewer, sharpening our curiosity about what has been made – or is being made – on the other side. The object could be read in multiple ways: as a redundant protest placard tied against a tree, or an abstracted crucifix-like form with looming attendants on each side. Gothic and film-noir-esque, the painting’s moodiness and ambiguity are absolutely of our times. This may be an image of the fate of painting, or a broader evocation of a world where troubling events transpire on the edge of our awareness.” Read more at Art Guide.
Andrew Browne will present a floor talk at Geelong Art Gallery on Saturday 23 June at 11.30am.
Image: Photographer Hails & Shine. Courtesy Geelong Art Gallery.
