NEWS
When John Bokor was preparing to take up an artist’s residency on the wild south coast near Bermagui, New South Wales, in May this year, he filled his car with enough art supplies for the two-week stay. As well as boxes of paint, Bokor packed three expansive canvases for working indoors and a bevy of small boards for painting in the dramatic landscape where the icy winter winds were just gathering pace. But the small boards remained untouched throughout Bokor’s stay at Umbi Gumbi Artist-In-Residence, located in the spotted gum forest bordering Cuttagee Beach. In the end, he didn’t do ‘a…
John Bokor’s recent still life paintings – shown alongside earlier interiors at Nicholas Thompson Gallery – sound out the shape of absence, even in their colourific and textural richness. In recent months, video footage of empty CBDs – especially Melbourne and Sydney – has been circulating through my varied social media feeds. Populating this footage are shopping strips empty of foot traffic, six-lane motorways with a solitary Uber delivery person being blown through on a bike, and huge multi-million dollar stadiums full of silence. These images – and they’re almost stills, really – have an eerie half-liveliness about them. The…
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This exhibition brings together the work of Amber Wallis and Kylie Banyard, highlighting their visions of painterly utopia. Their work pays homage to American Abstract Expressionism of the 1940s and 50s, which strove towards an alternative image for art and painting. Spontaneity stood at the centre of this, and a purist’s distillation of materials. The counter-culture of the 1960s and 70s, which held similar desires to collapse walls, is also present in both artists’ work. Despite intentions towards a new agenda that went with these aspirational movements, and increased freedoms for women post WWII, power remained largely patriarchal, and women…
Peter Wegner’s portrait of Guy Warren has been awarded the 2021 Archibald Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales . “Guy Warren turned 100 in April – he was born the same year the Archibald Prize was first awarded in 1921. This is not why I painted Guy, but the coincidence is nicely timed… I chose to paint Guy Warren because he is one of the most incredible centenarians l have ever met. This portrait honours Guy in the 101st year of his productive and meaningful life.” Peter Wegner
The Long Run #5: Suzanne Archer on responding to life https://art-guide-australia-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes/the-long-run-5-suzanne-archer-on-responding-to-life PODCAST 3 June 2021 “I guess that is the thread, that I am very open to influences that come into my life, you know, and I respond to them,” says Suzanne Archer in The Long Run, Art Guide’s latest podcast series featuring interviews with artists who have 60-year practices. Based just outside of Sydney in the bushy suburb of Wedderburn, Archer has long-created layered and dense drawings and paintings, alongside sculpture and installations. With a practice always slightly edging on the mysterious, Archer’s work looks at nature, mortality, disgust and…
HOTA Collects presents a snapshot of the 4,500 works in the City Collection, many of which have never been seen, and includes one of the largest collections of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art in regional Australia. Suzanne Archer ‘Toys and terrors’ 1986 oil, collage on canvas 172.7 x 275 cm Photograph Pete Waddington Collection HOTA, Qld
James Drinkwater’s painting, drawing and sculpture are fuelled by the theatre of his life. He finds the best material in the intimacy of family and the place he chooses to live, the industrial city of Newcastle. FEATURE by LOUISE MARTIN-CHEW There is a physicality in paintings by James Drinkwater also evident in footage of him at work in the studio. He attacks his surface with thrown paint, hits it with rags, slices with the palette knife and scrubs frenetically with fists. When he turns the painting upside down or on its side and declares it finished, there is a kind…
John Bokor is a finalist in the Sir John Sulman Prize 2021 at the Art Gallery of New South Wales . John Bokor Rosé and lemons oil on canvas 160 x 180.5 cm . “In Rosé and lemons, the casual clutter of domestic life takes centre stage. This painting is my way of showing beauty in the everyday world. I like the struggle between a realistic depiction and the abstract nature of paint. Painting, I believe, should always be a response primarily to the subject, not a photo-like rendering of it. This is not a glamorous scene, it’s about accessible…
Philjames is a finalist in the Wynne Prize 2021 at the Art Gallery of New South Wales . Philjames Spun idol machined polystyrene, polyurethane and automotive paint 110 x 65 x 65 cm . “Spun idol is inspired by Renato Bertelli’s 1933 ceramic bust of the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, Continuous profile (Head of Mussolini) Profilo continuo (Testa di Mussolini). It stands as a pop cultural sentinel, omnipresent and ever watching. Like the monuments to devotion unearthed from ages past, I imagine it to be a speculative future historical relic to be discovered, or a monolith yet to be erected;…
Suzanne Archer is a finalist in the Sir John Sulman Prize 2021 at the Art Gallery of New South Wales . Suzanne Archer Winterburn oil on canvas 210 x 361.3 cm . “The title of this painting is a play on the name Wedderburn, the bushland environment in NSW where I have lived and had my studio for over 33 years, and a reference to the season. The landscape plays a major part in setting the scene for the floating apparition, which is a direct reference to one of a series of mask sculptures made from repurposed bags that dealt…
