BETRA FRAVAL
"Betra Fraval achieves an atmospheric lightness, like the damp veil of early morning mist that shrouds Bundanon—deep valley in Dharawal language. The looseness of paint mirrors her new approach to materiality. Holding Things Lightly. Lightly holding. Holding on to something like air. This is painting for the love of painting, unconstrained by the need to define. Water melts into land and the sky dissolves into trees."
Anita King, 2025
BIOGRAPHY
Melbourne based painter Betra Fraval has a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) from the Victoria College of the Arts and has held solo exhibitions in Melbourne since 2008 at institutions including Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts, C3 Contemporary Art Space and Res Artists, Glasshouse Studios. Her work has been included in group exhibitions since 2007 in Victoria and New South Wales and internationally in Finland, Peru and France at institutions including Gippsland Art Gallery, The Dax Centre, Bayside Gallery, Bus Projects, Bundoora Homestead, Victorian College of the Arts and Seventh Gallery.
Betra has undertaken residencies at Bundanon, NSW (2025), Sanskriti Kendra in India (2009), Sachaqa Centro De Arte in the Amazon Rainforest, Peru (2018), Hôtel Sainte Valière in France (2019) and the Helsinki International Artist Programme in Finland (2019). She has been a finalist in the John Leslie Art Prize (2024, 2020, 2016), the Bayside Acquisitive Art Prize (2022) and the R&M McGivern Prize (2019). Betra's work is held in the collection of Artbank as well as private collections in Australia and internationally.
ARTIST CV
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PAST EXHIBITIONS
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TAI SNAITH EXHIBITED IN 2026 NGV TRIENNIAL
Tai Snaith will be exhibited in the forthcoming NGV Triennial from the 13th of December 2026 to 11 April 2027. Featuring more than eighty ambitious and thought-provoking projects, including major new commissions, the 2026 NGV Triennial offers a global journey through contemporary art and design. Unfolding across all four levels of NGV International, the fourth…
WENDY STAVRIANOS EXHIBITION REVIEWED IN THE AGE
Wendy Stavrianos’ exhibition ‘Early Works from The Gathering Series’ has been reviewed in The Age today, Sat 4 April 2026, by Tiarney Miekus ‘Wendy Stavrianos has been painting for nearly 60 years. She empathically yet acutely grasps landscapes and has captured the reality and mortality of climate change while rendering scenes that are natural, psychological…
BETRA FRAVAL FINALIST IN 2026 BAYSIDE PAINTING PRIZE
Betra Fraval is a finalist in the 2026 Bayside Painting Prize. Established in 2015, the Bayside Painting Prize is Melbourne’s premier annual painting prize. The finalist exhibition brings together a broad range of artists from across Australia, both established and lesser known, whose varied approaches to the painted medium conveys the breadth and diversity of…
WENDY STAVRIANOS EXHIBITION REVIEWED BY CHRISTOPHER HEATHCOTE
Wendy Stavrianos’s ‘Gathering’ series fills the exhibition space at Nicholas Thompson Gallery over in Collingwood. In recent years this gallery has been dipping into old canvases stored in her studio, then presenting shows which review aspects of this senior artist’s career. Stavrianos is known as a project based artist, each of her many shows amounting to an integrated body…
HEIDI YARDLEY EXHIBITED IN ‘NEW OLD SCHOOL’ AT MAITLAND REGIONAL ART GALLERY
Heidi Yardley is exhibited in ‘New Old School’ at Maitland Regional Art Gallery until 28 June. Curated by Chelsea Lehmann and Luke Thurgate, ‘New Old School’ brings together seven contemporary painters – Rob Cleworth, Nicholas Ives, Kate Kurucz, Chelsea Lehmann, Jordan Richardson, Luke Thurgate & Heidi Yardley – who treat art history as a…
ANTONIA SELLBACH SCHOOLHOUSE STUDIOS RESIDENCY EXHIBITION
Schoolhouse Studios is proud to present ‘Comet Logic: Pedagogical Trails’, a new body of work by Antonia Sellbach. The artworks in the exhibition ‘Comet Logic: Pedagogical Trails’ were developed during a three-month residency at Schoolhouse Studios, Coburg (January–March 2026). As I worked, emergent and recurring forms persisted: circular, globular shapes initially resembling rocks, stars, planets,…