October

Douglas Lance Gibson

Douglas Lance Gibson (b. 1984) is a Sydney-based artist.

Previously he has worked as a demolition and construction labourer, gallery assistant, chef, ski lift operator, door-to-door salesman, cotton entomological scout, and once spent 3 months working on a pheasant farm in Wiltshire, England.

October

Danie Mellor

Danie Mellor’s work is at once beautiful and a calling to account. Finely crafted, embellished and framed, with images and devices that disarm with humour, narrative and a play on the ‘exotic’, the work nonetheless confronts and confounds our understanding of the past. Mellor tells stories that are neither simple nor complete. Instead, the view is presented with multiple layers that challenge assumptions. Stories collide and metaphors reach further than expected.

Dr Campbell Gray, Danie Mellor: Exotic Lies Sacred Ties, The University of Queensland Art Museum, 2014, page 11.

Listen to Danie Mellor interview on ABC RN The Drawing Room (11 May 2022)

Read an interview with Danie Mellor in The Age (28 April 2022)

February

Nicholas Folland

Nicholas Folland’s realm poses speculations for ratbag scientists, fringe dwellers, explorers and dreamers. – Alexie Glass 2008

Nicholas Folland transforms the everyday, the overlooked and the no longer fashionable.  Using domestic crystalware, repurposed taxidermy, ice and other wonders, he makes material metaphors that speak to our history and identity. – Lisa Slade, The Extreme Climate of Nicholas Folland, Art Gallery of South Australia, July 2014 – January 2015

December

Dan Moynihan

Dan Moynihan has an acute interest in cinema. He often makes objects that are a response from seeing something in a movie that has caught his eye, something specific. It’s not something that I might pay attention to, it could be some kind of booth (personalised spaces where labour takes place is a recurring motif) or a line someone says. Sometimes the reference might be obvious to the viewer, but often it’s not. I think the way Dan looks at cinema has affected the way he looks at the world because he also makes things from real life that I suspect stir a similar kind of feeling in him. These objects might look like something inspired from a movie, but they are not. I don’t think it matters that much to Dan where it comes from, or that it’s necessary for you to get the reference. I just think he is trying to communicate the feeling he gets from these objects through making the work.

– Simon Zoric, 2022, Out of Interest (Dan Moynihan’s Suspension of Disbelief)

August

Martin Bell

Martin Bell works across various mediums including collage, photography and sculpture. His work has been exhibited at Hell Gallery, Melbourne, the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales and in association with the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.

Like a Piranesi prison, there is no escaping from Bell’s drawings. There is nowhere to rest the eye, with chaos filling every space. Homes appear as castles in a feudal society. Woven within that society are Bell’s characters, trapped within the drawing’s sprawling architecture. Rarely are Bell’s characters at rest, but even when they appear motionless, there persists a futile struggle for space and harmony.

Peter Drew, Catalogue essay, 2014 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Dark Heart

April

Ben Quilty

What, in the end, are these paintings? What are they attempting to achieve? My best but wholly provisional answer is that theyʼre experiments in the transfer of feeling…

The painter who stood where we stand now is proffering a model of feeling – they are saying that, on this day and under these circumstances, this is how they wrangled the world. And as fellow ʼfeelersʼ approaching the work, we get to measure ourselves against that model. Is it useful? Can we see what they mean? And if not, is the difference illuminating? It is not about ʼlikingʼ or feeling liked back. It is about being compelled. Quilty compels through paintings that are, as we are, alive and conflicted.

– Justin Paton, Head curator international, Art Gallery NSW, essay quote from the book Ben Quilty (2019).

Download the Ben Quilty The Beach (2021) essay.

Download the Ben Quilty 150 Years (2020) essay.

Read more at The Age (February 2020) and an interview with Ben Quilty from the National Gallery of Victoria magazine (July 2020) on the 150 year, Rorschach painting.

Watch Ben Quilty in the studio talking about the painting, 2020.

Read Ben Quilty ‘SHADOWED’ (2023) essay by Milena Stojanovska.

Read War artist Ben Quilty on painting children, ‘the victims of our collective adult insanity’, The Age  (February 2024) by Kerry O’Brien

April

Judy Watson

Australian indigenous art has a broad reputation as being innovative; but few artists are as intriguing as Judy Watson. While her work takes its inspiration from the land and traditions of the Waanyi culture, Watson distils her distinctive stained canvases into poetic abstractions that have the power to speak to all.

Margie West comments: “Even though the messages in her work are often tough, they are conveyed in an almost subliminal and subtle way, to be discovered in the layering of the surface and the imagery that floats mirage-like on it.”

Download the memory scars, dreams and gardens catalogue essay (13 November to 12 December 2020) by Katina Davidson or the roomsheet.

April

Caroline Rothwell

Caroline Rothwell’s practice engages with the politics of place, migration, conflict and mortality through the lens of the environment. Her work often draws on the anatomy of endangered or extinct species, though she is equally known for creating mutant and hybrid forms that explore the impacts of biotechnology and environmental contamination. What may at first appear playful or innocent in Rothwell’s work – shiny surfaces, toy-like contours, the allure of a flower or animal – are typically decoys for more ominous or unsettling subjects. – Art Gallery of New South Wales

April

Patricia Piccinini

Exploring concepts of what is “natural” in the digital age, Patricia Piccinini brings a deeply personal perspective to her work.

Curator Rachel Kent notes: “Since the early 1990s, Piccinini has pursued an interest in the human form and its potential for manipulation and enhancement through bio-technical intervention.  From the mapping of the human genome to the growth of human tissue and organs from stem cells, Piccinini’s art charts a terrain in which scientific progress and ethical questions are intertwined.”

Download the 2019 Chromatic Balance exhibition essay, written by Patricia Piccinini.

April

Tim Maguire

“Tim Maguire’s paintings and prints are cinematic in scale and distinctive for their rich colouration and technical skill.  Giant flowers and golden fruit resonate from ambiguous backgrounds.  The work is sumptuous, romantic. Dr Shaune Lakin, Head Curator – International Art at National Gallery of Australia argues that Maguire’s painting is “both historical and contemporary”. But these modes “do not exactly co-exist… they rub up against each other.”

Maguire uses digital photographs as source material for his oil paintings. He applies colour separation techniques – not unlike those used in commercial printing – which blur the distinction between the digital and the handcrafted.

Hi-Fi, Lo-Fi – 8th July – 5th August 2023

Listen to Talking with Painters podcast (1hr 6min.)

Watch Talking with Painters Youtube interview (3min. 26sec.)

Watch NGV New Australian Printmaking – Tim Maguire (1min. 15sec.)