June

Elizabeth Willing – MAVA Pathfinders recipient 2022

Congratulations to Elizabeth Willing who has just been announced as the recipient of the Metro Arts Brisbane MAVA Pathfinders, a 12 month paid residency, including studio space, materials, workshop and professional development

The residency supports three Queensland mid-career artists to explore entrepreneurial opportunities. Elizabeth will be developing ideas and prototypes for sculptural and large public artworks with accompanying audience participation and performance elements.

ON VIEW: Elizabeth Willing Forced Rhubarb exhibition featuring handprinted and embroidered linens and a major floorwork installation continues at Tolarno Galleries until 18 June 2022.

Images: Portrait of Elizabeth Willing, courtesy University of Queensland, photo by Simon Woods.
Detail from Flower of Beer 2021 linen, cotton, thread, acrylic paint 108 x 106 cm. This linen features a pressing of St Johns Wort, a deep purple antidepressant – the oils leech from yellow flowers and buds. Flower of beer is a term for the yeast interaction, or the foam of beer. The work considers the blending drugs and alcohol as an anxiolytic.

May

Opening Saturday 28 May: Elizabeth Willing – Forced Rhubarb

28 May – 18 June 2022

Forced Rhubarb is a new body of work from Elizabeth Willing, an installation of hand-printed and embroidered linens, accompanied by a floorwork made from sherbert-filled straws. Food is the catalyst Elizabeth Willing uses to reflect on the performance of eating, and facilitate multi-sensory experiences. 

Willing made a statement at the 2018 Melbourne Art Fair with the installation Strawberry Thief featuring a William Morris-inspired wallpaper print using native Brisbane ingredients, hand-carved wooden sculptures, the Anxiolytic cocktail performance and collages of fruit cakes accompanied by a bright pink carpet. Since then, Willing has since held solo exhibitions at University of Queensland Art Museum, Caloundra Regional Gallery, Kuiper Artspace Brisbane (all 2019) and Museum of Brisbane (2020). She was included in the group show Amuse Bouche: The Taste of Art at Tinguely Museum, Basel (2020). 

From October 2022 she will take up a four month Open Studio residency and exhibition at Queensland Art Gallery & Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA).

The linens present an inventory of symbols from Willing’s own performative and multi-sensory lexicon such as sedatives, yeasts, medicinal plants, and digestive processes. Implicated in the logic of hospitality, the compositions of the Linens speak of the labour embedded in needlework and the service of hosting. 

The floor installation Moviprep (pictured below) stretches across the gallery in huge loops, one continuous tube made from over one thousand individual sherbet filled straws. The sculpture hosts the colour inside its intestinal-like body, and it spills them too, creating an expressive platform, accompanied by an overwhelming aroma.

Read more in 20 Questions with Elizabeth Willing in Art Guide Australia (May/June 2022)

May

Tim Maguire and Patricia Piccinini at NGV Australia

NEW AUSTRALIAN PRINTMAKING featuring TIM MAGUIRE and PATRICIA PICCININI
The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Fed Square
13 May 22 – 11 Sep 22
Open 10am–5pm daily

Featuring groundbreaking prints by Megan Cope, Shaun Gladwell, Tim Maguire and Patricia Piccinini, New Australian Printmaking at NGV Australia launches the work created by these artists during the Australian Print Workshop Artist Fellowship program.

Established by the Australian Print Workshop (APW), this major fellowship program is the most significant of its kind in Australia and was awarded annually between 2017 and 2021. The Fellowship enabled these leading Australian artists to research, develop and create a new body of work in the print medium.

In a series of vibrant colour intaglio prints produced during his fellowship in 2020–21, Tim Maguire has taken his recent body of work Dice Abstracts to new ground. Deriving from six simple charcoal drawings and using only the three primary colours cyan, magenta and yellow, the composition of each print was determined by the roll of dice – resulting in an extraordinary and unexpected range of colour combinations.

Patricia Piccinini, who had never engaged with printmaking before, completed the Fellowship in 2018–19. In collaboration with APW printers she created two suites of colour prints. The first, titled the Weavers’ Suite, used etching and lithography to bring a new inflection to her long-standing investigation of nature, the body and the uncanny. Her second series features her provocative Skywhale family hovering over a variety of brightly coloured landscapes and combines hand-drawn and computer-generated images to create a suite of lithographs.

This exhibition has been organised by the National Gallery of Victoria and the Australian Print Workshop.

Contact Tolarno Galleries for enquiries about available works from Tim Maguire and Patricia Piccinini: mail@tolarnogalleries.com

Images: Portrait of Tim Maguire with his work CMY Dice Abstract 2021 at the Australian Print Workshop. Portrait of Patricia Piccinini and her work Skywhale Suite 2019 at the Australian Print Workshop. Photos by Eugene Hyland.

May

Finalists in the 2022 Telstra NATSIAAs, Wynne, Sulman, Geelong and National Works on Paper prizes

Congratulations to Tolarno Galleries’ artists who have recently been announced as finalists in several major awards.

Kieren Karritpul and Wanapati Yunupiŋu are finalists in the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAA) 2022 at the Museum and Art Gallery Northern Territory. 

Danie Mellor is a finalist in both the Sir John Sulman Prize and the Wynne Prize, while Patricia Piccinini is the subject of Natasha Bieniek’s portrait which is an Archibald Prize finalist at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Peter Atkins and Justine Varga are finalists in the 2022 National Works on Paper at the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery.

Benjamin Armstrong and Georgia Spain are finalists in the 2022 Geelong Contemporary Art Prize.

Image: Danie Mellor After the end of the world, acrylic and gesso on linen, 152 x 213.4 cm. Sir John Sulman Prize 2022 finalist.

April

Danie Mellor – PHOTO 2022 International Festival of Photography

29 April – 21 May 2022

Danie Mellor’s latest exhibition redux is on view now and presented as part of the PHOTO 2022 festival.

Listen back to Danie Mellor interviewed on ABC RN The Drawing Room (11 May 2022).

Read more about Danie Mellor’s photography in the article More than meets the eye: Danie Mellor captures the things we cannot see | Using infra-red photography, the artist uncovers a haunting spectrum of people and stories from another time, published in The Age (28 April 2022).

Image: DANIE MELLOR The persistent light (bala yubanday) 2022. Chromogenic print on metallic photographic paper 188 x 116 cm. Edition of 3 + 2AP

April

Danie Mellor at PHOTO 2022

Tolarno Galleries will premiere redux, a new photography series by Danie Mellor as part of the PHOTO 2022 International Festival of Photography, 29 April – 21 May 2022.

redux reveals connections between disparate histories and experiences. The works are an uncanny reminder of environmental impacts, and contrast acutely with images of intact rainforest ecologies. It is also a reminder of the often-violent displacement of Aboriginal people and knowledge systems, with civilising enterprise failing to acknowledge the value of cultural systems embedded in story, Dreaming and Country. Featuring selected images printed on highly polished surfaces, the viewer is reflected and brought into the work as witness to changes that unfolded in and on our landscapes.

We invite you to join us for the up late opening from 5pm – 8pm on Friday 29 April. Danie Mellor will be in conversation with Tyson Yunkaporta between 6pm-7pm. Bookings not required, all welcome.

Tyson Yunkaporta is an academic, arts critic and researcher who belongs to the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland. He is the author of Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World (Text Publishing, 2019) and a senior research fellow and founder of the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab at Deakin University in Melbourne.

Image: Danie Mellor The far country 2022, chromogenic print on metallic photographic paper face-mounted to clear acrylic 180 x 240 cm overall, two panels each 180 x 120 cm.

April

Announcing representation: Hannah Gartside

Tolarno Galleries is delighted to announce representation of Hannah Gartside (born 1987, London, UK; lives and works in Naarm/Melbourne).

Gartside is currently on view at Primavera 2021: Young Australian Artists, the annual Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney showcase of Australian artists aged 35 years and under.

Her installation of five kinetic textile sculptures each represent an iconic female figure of the past – dancer Loïe Fuller (1862-1928), painter Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-c.1654), Tarot card illustrator Pamela ‘Pixie’ Colman Smith (1878-1951), Biblical ur-woman Lilith, and actor Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923).

Made from 19th and 20th century clothes and fabric, the works were designed with their subjects’ personal histories in mind – splays of red velvet evoke the violent scenes of Artemisia Gentileschi’s renowned 17th century paintings, a sail of pink silk crêpe honours Loïe Fuller’s pioneering stage lighting designs and moving fabric costuming.

The suspended forms assert their bodily presence, choreographically revolving and whirring. These works highlight the erasure of women from the canon of art history, and ongoing gender inequality more broadly.

Embedded in feminism and material culture, Gartside uses vintage and found textiles to create installations, sculptures and costumes. Skills of dress-making, patchwork quilting and fabric dyeing accrued during her former career as a theatre costumier at Queensland Ballet are elevated to the conceptually rigorous. Both deeply personal and fiercely communal, Gartside’s works engage fundamental experiences and emotions of our human condition: longing, tenderness, connection, desire and wonderment.

Hannah Gartside is a finalist in the upcoming Ellen José Art Award at Bayside Gallery, Victoria, a $15,000 non-acquisitive award to a female visual artist aged 18-35 years, on view from July 2022. She will next exhibit in the June 2022 group show Text Tile, a showcase of textile based practices of over 50 artists within Australia and New Zealand, at Caves Gallery in Melbourne.

Tolarno Galleries will present a solo exhibition by Hannah Gartside in 2023. Visit her artist page for more information and images of her work.

Image: Hannah Gartside with her sculptures Lilith, Pixie and Artemisia at Primavera 2021: Young Australian Artists at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. Photography by Louis Lim.

March

A & A at Melbourne Design Week

A & A
Mother and Child exhibition
17 Mar – 9 Apr 2022

Tolarno Galleries is delighted to announce participation in Melbourne Design Week 2022, premiering another breathtaking, innovative new work by A & A, the collaboration between industrial designer Adam Goodrum and straw marquetry superstar Arthur Seigneur. 

The exhibition is part of Melbourne Design Week 2022, an initiative of the Victorian Government in collaboration with the NGV. Join Adam and Arthur in conversation 1.30pm on Saturday 19 March at Tolarno Galleries.

Explore more than 350 events including talks, tours, films, exhibitions and workshops that celebrate the diverse ways design can help create a better future. Visit designweek.melbourne to view the full program. 

Image: Arthur Seigneur and Adam Goodrum with the Mother and Child cabinet 2021-22, custom dyed rye straw, birch ply, 200h x 140w x 35d cm. Photography by Andrew Curtis

March

Now representing Wanapati Yunupiŋu

Tolarno Galleries is thrilled to announce representation of Wanapati Yunupiŋu(born 1989, homeland Biranybirany; clan Gumatj, Rrakpala group; moiety Yirritja). Wanapati recently presented his debut solo exhibition at the 2022 Melbourne Art Fair.

Wanapati works on found and discarded street signs and metal forms, etching his sacred Gumatj clan designs and narratives into their surface using a rotary tool. In 2021 Wanapati was included in the ground-breaking and sell out exhibition Murrŋiny – a story of metal from the east at the Northern Centre of Contemporary Art (NCCA) in partnership with Salon Art Projects.

Wanapati was a finalist in the 2021 NATSIAA award with his works on discarded baking trays. He was selected to hold a solo exhibition as part of the 2022 Melbourne Art Fair Indigenous Art Centre Program, a new initiative supporting the participation of Indigenous-owned contemporary art centres at Melbourne Art Fair.

Wanapati was awarded the $10,000 First Nations Commission Supported by Bennelong Funds Management for Gurtha. The artwork will be gifted to Shepparton Art Museum.

Tolarno Galleries will present a solo exhibition by Wanapati Yunupiŋu in February 2023, in partnership with the Indigenous art centre Buku Larrŋgay Mulka located in Yirrkala, North East Arnhemland, NT.

Image: Wanapati Yunupiŋu with recent artworks. Photograph courtesy Buku Larrŋgay Mulka.

March

Amos Gebhardt – finalist, National Photography Prize 2022

Congratulations to Amos Gebhardt, a finalist in the National Photography Prize 2022 on view at Murray Art Museum Albury (MAMA) 26 February – 5 June 2022.

Inaugurated in 1983, the National Photography Prize brings together twelve artists from across Australia who are challenging and extending photographic language and techniques. Three of Amos Gebhardt’s triptychs are on display: House of Slé (2021), Eric (2020) and Family Portrait (2020).

The National Photography Prize 2022 forms part of PHOTO 2022 international festival of photography, activating sites across Melbourne and Regional Victoria, including Albury-Wodonga, with the most inspiring photography from Australia and around the world.

Image: Amos Gebhardt Eric archival inkjet pigment print, trifold hinged triptych. Overall 94 x 246 cm framed, edition of 6 + 2 AP