June

Rosemary Laing at the 35th Higashikawa Awards in Hokkaido, Japan

Rosemary Laing will be honoured in August with the ‘Overseas Photographer Award’ at the 35^th Higashikawa Awards in Hokkaido, Japan, for photographic achievements including her series weather (2006), leak (2010) and Buddens (2017).

The 35th Higashikawa Award Winners’ Photo Exhibition opens 5 – 28 August at Higashikawa Bunka Gallery, showing works from weather and leak. Rosemary Laing said: “My projects are often created in meaningful places wherein I set up situations for the camera by either making a construction or working with a performer. In weather my performer is caught within a chaotic space of high wind and swirling shreds of newspaper. She appears to be tossed around by these metaphorical forces of climate and daily news events. For leak I built an oversized upside-down domestic timber house frame in a paddock, on a sheep farm in the Cooma-Monaro region of NSW. I wanted to make images about the tension between the idealised history of land occupation for farming by settlers, and the present day pressures of spreading urbanisation. In both bodies of work, I am interested in the elastic gravity between the sky, and the ground, and their connected conditions.”

Tolarno Galleries will exhibit a new Rosemary Laing photography series, skyground, 13 July – 17 August 2019. Image via Higashikawa International Photo Festival.

June

Elizabeth Willing ‘Through the Mother’ at UQ Art Museum

Congratulations to Elizabeth Willing whose window commission at University of Queensland Art Museum has just been unveiled. It’s a precursor to her forthcoming solo exhibition Through the Mother. The exhibition will be a multisensory exploration of the Brisbane-based artist’s memories and impressions of her mother, through her medium of performance and participatory explorations of food as art material. In this intimately conceived space, a comfortable familiarity is assumed through things we know and understand: a table, a chair, wallpaper, tea. These are subsequently distorted through taste and smell, evoking comfort, sedation, but also anxiety.

Willing is the first artist in UQ’s new annual Window Commission series, initiated to highlight and support local emerging contemporary artists.

Elizabeth Willing Through the Mother is on view at UQ Art Museum –
Window Commission: June 4 – December 14, 2019
Exhibition: September 10 – December 14, 2019

Image: Elizabeth Willing Through the Mother 2019
adhesive vinyl, five parts, each 8 x 4 m
UQ Art Museum Window Commission, supported by Mrs Jane Tynan and Mr Michael Tynan, 2019. Photo: Simon Woods.

May

Tim Maguire ‘To the Surface’ performance at Melbourne Recital Centre

Tim Maguire collaborates with London pianist Dorian Ford for To the Surface at Melbourne Recital Centre on 23 May. This performance in-the-round coincides with Maguire’s current exhibition, Dice Abstracts, on view now at Tolarno Galleries until 1 June.

Combining ambient, meditative moving image with improvised jazz for piano, Maguire’s video works Dice Abstracts and Kyoto-Tokyo Shinkansen from his current exhibition are included in the presentation.

To the Surface is part of the Jazz in the Salon series. Tickets are available from Melbourne Recital Centre.

To the Surface
Melbourne Recital Centre, Primrose Potter Salon
Thursday 23 May
8pm

Image: Tim Maguire Kyoto-Tokyo Shinkansen 2017, HD video, 23m 30s (loop)

April

Nicholas Folland at The National: New Australian Art 2019

Congratulations to Nicholas Folland who has just unveiled the installation Flirt at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, commissioned by curator Isobel Parker Philip as part of The National: New Australian Art 2019.

“This pile of discarded crystal and glassware coalesces into topographical peaks and troughs based on a map of Lord Howe Island – a small landmass located east of Port Macquarie – that has been mirrored, distorted and partially submerged. This semi-fictional geography forecasts the rise in sea levels right around the corner…

The glass objects that form Folland’s re-imagined island are castaways from a Western world steeped in class hierarchies. They are status symbols that recall a time and place where greed and entitlement made it permissible to possess the natural world as well as material goods… The landscape – like any – might be resplendent and overwhelming but it is not impervious to our actions. Its vulnerability hangs in the balance.” – courtesy AGNSW

The National: New Australian Art 2019
Art Gallery of New South Wales 29 March – 21 July 2019
Carriageworks 29 March – 23 June 2019
Museum of Contemporary Art 29 March – 23 June 2019

Installation view: Nicholas Folland Flirt 2019, domestic crystal and glassware, nylon coated stainless steel thread, 440 x 800 x 250 cm. Exhibited at Art Gallery of NSW as part of The National 2019: New Australian Art. Photo: AGNSW, Diana Panuccio.

March

Now representing: Justine Varga

Tolarno Galleries is pleased to announce representation of Justine Varga, who has just been declared the recipient of the esteemed 2019 Dobell Drawing Prize, now presented as a biennial by the National Art School in association with the Sir William Dobell Art Foundation.

Varga is known for her luminous photographs, some made with a camera and some without (and some made with a combination of the two). She has made a steady ascent since graduating with Honours from the National Art School, Sydney, in 2007. Accolades include the Olive Cotton Award for Photographic Portraiture (2017) for her work Maternal Line. Her work is in major collections including the National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery of South Australia, Monash Gallery of Art, Macquarie University, University of Queensland and Artbank, and in private collections in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland and France.

She is currently exhibiting as part of Defining Place/Space: Contemporary Photography from Australia at the Museum of Photographic Arts (MoPA) in San Diego, USA (pictured above).

Justine Varga will present her first exhibition at Tolarno Galleries in April 2020.

Image: Justine Varga with her winning 2019 Dobell Drawing Prize work Photogenic Drawing 2018, chromogenic photograph 151.5 x 120 cm, 154.5 x 124 cm (framed). Photo by Peter Morgan, courtesy National Art School.

March

Brook Andrew, Dan Moynihan and Patricia Piccinini – new commissions on view at Lyon Housemuseum Galleries

Congratulations to Lyon Housemuseum Galleries on the grand opening of this exciting new art and architecture museum in Melbourne, and inaugural exhibition, Enter.

An exhibition of newly commissioned works by sixteen leading Australian contemporary artists, Tolarno Galleries is pleased to support commissions for Brook Andrew, Dan Moynihan and Patricia Piccinini.

Enter is on view until 15 July 2019. Lyon Housemuseum Galleries is open Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 5pm.

Installation view: Dan Moynihan Public Display of Reflection 2019, aluminium #8 mirror polish stainless steel, acrylic spray 220 x 250 x 74 cm. Supported by Lyon Foundation and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne

March

Quilty opens at AGSA, new monograph

Congratulations to Ben Quilty on the opening of the first major survey exhibition of his work at the Art Gallery of South Australia.

The exhibition extends from Quilty’s early reflections on the initiation rituals performed by young Australian men, to his experience as an official war artist in Afghanistan and his campaign to save the lives of Bali Nine pair Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.

The exhibition also includes works inspired by Quilty’s visits with author Richard Flanagan to Lebanon, Lesbos and Serbia, his revisions of the Australian landscape, and raw, intimate portraits of himself, his family and his friends.

To mark this moment, a new monograph, Ben Quilty, has been published by Penguin.

Developed by the Art Gallery of South Australia and curated by Assistant Director, Artistic Programs Dr Lisa Slade, the Quilty exhibition is unveiled in Adelaide before a year of touring.

Art Gallery of South Australia | 2 March – 2 June 2019
Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art | 29 June – 13 October 2019
Art Gallery of New South Wales | 9 November 2019 – 2 February 2020

Image: Art Gallery of South Australia, photo: Grant Handcock

December

2019 program opens with Brook Andrew

 

Tolarno Galleries opens for 2019 with Brook Andrew La Razza: Quiet Noise.

 

Read an interview with Brook Andrew at The Age: ‘Should we cover it up?’ Brook Andrew dares us to confront a troubled past

 

Pictured: Brook Andrew Into the Fire 2019, oil pastel, acrylic paint, paper, glue, plywood and pencil on Dibond, 160 x 240 cm

December

Brendan Huntley

Published by Knowledge Editions, Wonders Never Crease is a Brendan Huntley’s first artist book.

A limited edition of 100 numbered copies, Wonders Never Crease includes all 24 small works on paper from the most recent exhibition Sky Light Mind.

The Wonders Never Crease series was created by Huntley while on residency in San Francisco with artist Barry McGee in 2017.

The book was launched at Tolarno Galleries on Saturday 1 December 2018. Contact the publisher to enquire about the last remaining copies.

Find out more about Brendan Huntley’s latest works from:
The Guardian
The Design Files
Take 5 by Double J (podcast)
Triple R – Maps (from 01:05:50)
The Art of Brendan Huntley at lnwy.co (video)

November

Patricia Piccinini and Joy Hester: Through Love…

Love and intimacy is the focus of a landmark exhibition at TarraWarra Museum of Art that for the first time pairs the work of Patricia Piccinini with that of important Australian modernist Joy Hester.

Patricia Piccinini and Joy Hester: Through love… is curated by Victoria Lynn and presents more than 50 works, including Sanctuary, a major new sculpture by Piccinini, and rarely-seen works by Hester. The exhibition explores the incredible spectrum of human and non-human relationships, from romantic love and maternal devotion through to the connections formed between humans and animals, and animate and inanimate objects.

Patricia Piccinini and Joy Hester: Through love…
24 November 2018 – 11 March 2019
Tarrawarra Museum of Art
313 Healesville-Yarra Glen Road, Healesville VIC 3777.

Read more about this exhibition in the Australian Financial Review.

Pictured: Patricia Piccinini Sanctuary 2018 (detail), silicone, fibreglass, hair, 146 x 68 x 72 cm. Photograph by Andrew Curtis.