News 2021
August
Tolarno Galleries closure
Melbourne lockdown: Update 17 August 2021
Tolarno Galleries is closed during the extended Melbourne lockdown.
We look forward to reopening as soon as possible.
In the meantime, the current Ben Quilty exhibition The Beach is available to view online.
Contact us via mail@tolarnogalleries.com for enquiries while we are working from home.
Image: Ben Quilty Peanut Eaters no.2 2021 oil on linen 142.5 x 188 cm. Installation image by Andrew Curtis.
August
Announcing Kieren Karritpul
Tolarno Galleries is delighted to announce representation of Kieren Karritpul (b. 1994), a Ngen’giwumirri artist who lives in the small community of Nauiyu (Daly River) southwest of Darwin.
A 2021 Ramsay Art Prize finalist, Karritpul won the inaugural Youth Award at the 2014 Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Awards. In 2020 he won the National Indigenous Fashion Award for Textile Design, resulting in a collaboration with Country Road Homewares.
As a Ngen’giwumirri man, Karritpul is not permitted to weave, instead he paints magnified views of woven objects and fibres. Weaving Myself: the Landscape and the Land, on view until 22 August at @agsa.adelaide as part of the Ramsay Art Prize 2021 exhibition, was painted using two brushes, one made with his own hair. He uses the weaving process as a visual metaphor for land and landscape. The painting is a magnified view of the woven surface that stands for the breathing lands of his Country. Karritpul feels he was born woven into the land. Using repetition and line he creates a surface that moves like human breath.
Tolarno Galleries will present a Kieren Karritpul solo exhibition in 2022.
image: Kieren Karritpul with his paintingWeaving Myself: the Landscape and the Land. Photo by Saul Steed, courtesy Art Gallery of South Australia.
August
2021 William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize Finalists
Congratulations to Danie Mellor (artwork pictured) and Justine Varga on their selection as finalists in the 2021 William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize.
Visit the Monash Gallery of Art from Thursday 9 September – Sunday 7 November 2021 to view this year’s Bowness exhibition. Award announcement Thursday 16 September 2021.
The winning work will be awarded $30,000.00 and will be acquired into MGA’s nationally significant collection of Australian photographs.
Image: DANIE MELLOR Jindagaa [ancestor]: at the fall of night 2021, chromogenic print, 124 cm (diameter), edition of 3 + 2AP.
July
Ben Quilty ‘The Beach’
31 July – 28 August 2021.
Ben Quilty’s newest exhibition, The Beach, is a culmination of works made in the lead-up to the last American Presidential Election and then continued through recent pandemic times and lockdown.
During that time, he was given a book about the American Realist painter, George Bellows, and it has not left his studio since. Bellow’s paintings of men boxing illegally in early 20th century fight clubs was the starting point for this exhibition.
Taking multiple screen shots of UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) fighters locked in deadly and bloody combat, and hosting a team of local boxers, Quilty poses questions about contemporary humanity.
Named after famous beaches around Australia, the fighting men also evoke memories of the Cronulla Riots and continue Quilty’s exploration of Australian cultural identity and the darker sides of Island Life. “To make paintings of men punching the life out of each other feels like an apt response to being alive in 2021,” Quilty says.
Image: BEN QUILTY The Crowd, oil on linen, 180 x 202 cm
July
Bill Henson online
Although the gallery exhibition has closed, Bill Henson (24 June – 26 July 2021) is now available to visit online.
The online viewing space includes exclusive videos featuring Bill Henson sharing behind-the-scenes stories of creating the artworks, installation images and details of each of the 13 images in the show.
Image: BILL HENSON Untitled 1/5B B 1990-91. From the series Paris Opera Project. Archival inkjet pigment print, 127 x 127 cm (paper size)
June
Bill Henson: 26 June – 24 July 2021
Bill Henson‘s new exhibition is a glittering array of never-seen-before photographs. Some were commenced in the 1990s; all were completed during Melbourne’s long COVID lockdowns. The sense of deep time behind Henson’s images is a hallmark of his approach to photography – an attempt, as he puts it “to get closer to things.”
“It sometimes takes years for me to work out what I want to photograph, a rumination which gradually clarifies itself over a long period of time,“ he says. “I spend a lot of time thinking about things, daydreaming. It takes awhile for things to get to the point to say I know what I need. It’s a face, or a body or a landscape of a particular kind, or it’s the effects of the weather and how that changes the nature of the landscape.”
Bookings are not required, but please let us know in advance if you are bringing a group. Opening hours are 10am-5pm Tuesday – Friday and 1-4pm Saturdays.
If you can’t make it in person, visit the Bill Henson online viewing room.
Read more at The Age (26 June 2021) and Broadsheet (21 July 2021).
Image: Bill Henson Untitled 2016-17, CL SH816 N9, archival inkjet pigment print, 127 x 180 cm, edition of 5 + 2AP
Bill Henson‘s new exhibition is a glittering array of never-seen-before photographs. Some were commenced in the 1990s; all were completed during Melbourne’s long COVID lockdowns. The sense of deep time behind Henson’s images is a hallmark of his approach to photography – an attempt, as he puts it “to get closer to things.”
“It sometimes takes years for me to work out what I want to photograph, a rumination which gradually clarifies itself over a long period of time,“ he says. “I spend a lot of time thinking about things, daydreaming. It takes awhile for things to get to the point to say I know what I need. It’s a face, or a body or a landscape of a particular kind, or it’s the effects of the weather and how that changes the nature of the landscape.”
Bookings are not required, but please let us know in advance if you are bringing a group. Opening hours are 10am-5pm Tuesday – Friday and 1-4pm Saturdays.
If you can’t make it in person, visit the Bill Henson online viewing room.
Read more at The Age (26 June 2021) and Broadsheet (21 July 2021).
Image: Bill Henson Untitled 2016-17, CL SH816 N9, archival inkjet pigment print, 127 x 180 cm, edition of 5 + 2AP
May
Patricia Piccinini ‘A Miracle Constantly Repeated’ at Rising Festival
Congratulations to Patricia Piccinini who has just unveiled A Miracle Constantly Repeated, a world premiere commission for the inaugural Rising Festival. The multi-room installation takes over the mythical Flinders Street Station Ballroom and surrounding chambers in the heart of Melbourne.
Opening on 26 May 2021 and continuing for several months, this is Piccinini’s most extensive hometown exhibition in two decades. Described as “an eco-system of hyper-real silicone sculptures, video, sound and light… Australia’s foremost visual artist will augment the ballroom’s architecture with enormous dioramas, sentient saplings, nurturing marine mammals and enormous life-sustaining foliage.”
Read more at The Age and Broadsheet Melbourne.
Image: PATRICIA PICCININI La Brava 2021, silicone, fibreglass, hair, Ed 1 of 4 + 1 AP. Photograph by Tina Douglas.
May
Andrew Browne ‘Shoegazer 2.0’ exhibition
22 May – 19 June 2021
Meet the artist: Saturday 22 May, 1pm – 4pm
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in
– Leonard Cohen
In 2020, Melbourne artist Andrew Browne spent the long COVID-19 lockdown developing Shoegazer, a series of drawings premiering online in August 2020. A playful allusion to Shoegaze, a 1990s subgenre of indie rock, the title refers more to subjects and prompts found close at hand… almost underfoot.
These drawings of modest subjects, rich in association, serve as touchstones for Shoegazer 2.0, Andrew Browne’s new collection of paintings: the accidental abstractions of foot-path repairs; a tenacious dandelion emerging from a crevice; a spill of obscure yet florescent liquid; a crazy-patterned mural, or so much carelessly discarded detritus.
As paintings, these introspective images now loom large and take on a heightened significance. Browne highlights uncanny juxtapositions, flashes of colour and discovers secret portals. In these fleeting street scenes, moments of humour, joy and reverie are captured.
Continuing Andrew Browne’s longheld interest in landscape and surreal natural phenomena, Shoegazer 2.0 shines a light on visions that reflect and connect us all.
Click here to view Shoegazer 2.0 online.
Image: Andrew Browne Rockaway 2021, oil & aluminium pigment on linen, 191 x 132 cm
May
Caroline Rothwell: Winner 2021 Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize
Congratulations to Caroline Rothwell who was awarded the 2021 Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize on Friday 14 May 2021 for her painting, Vault.
The annual acquisitive prize that was launched in 2017 to advance art and opportunity for emerging and established women artists in Australia. It is the highest value professional artist prize for women in Australia.
Image: Caroline Rothwell pictured with her winning artwork Vault, and Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize Patron, Jennifer Turpin. Image via Instagram. Artwork details: Caroline Rothwell Vault, acrylic on linen, 163 x 183 cm
April
Brendan Huntley ‘Without Within’
17 April – 15 May 2021
Meet the artist: 1pm – 4pm, Saturday 17 April 2021
A new collection of paintings and sculptures. Read an interview with Brendan Huntley at Artist Profile. Listen to an interview on 3RRR.
In early April 2020 I found myself searching for some peace of mind amongst the chaos of the pandemic. One day, I heard someone on a podcast describe how a moth or butterfly doesn’t simply grow wings on its already fully formed caterpillar body, but breaks itself down into a kind of soup and slowly reforms itself in the cocoon, reusing its body parts to come out at the other end as a completely new creature…
During Melbourne’s long lockdown my studio and home became my cocoon, a place to grow and experiment. Usually, I spread my practice out between two studios – my home studio for painting and my sculpture workshop in Frankston. When the threat of limited movement loomed, I filled my car with bags of clay and adapted my home studio. With the paintings pinned to the wall, a conversation could take place between the two mediums – patterns, colours and forms flitting across the space.
This series depicts a spectrum of transformations, a diversity of personalities, patterns and forms, and a propensity for movement and flight within the immovable solidity of clay, plinth and frames.
They sprung from a year of isolation, as I slowly built my own community of butterfly and moth people to celebrate the hope of emerging transformed.
– Brendan Huntley, excerpt from the exhibition text
Image: Brendan Huntley Untitled (moth) 2020, oil pastel, dry pastel, oil and graphite on archival paper, 61.5 x 42 cm (framed)
Brendan Huntley online viewing space:
Click to view the Without Within exhibition online – sculpture and painting
