Visual arts and crafts - News and events

Events | Featured projects | Announcements

See the Call for entries news page for visual arts competitions and prizes.

Events

Doppelganger - online

23 October 2009 – 23 March 2010

Doppelganger is the second in a series of virtual exhibitions held by the National Portrait Gallery that explore contemporary notions of portraiture in the online environment. Based in Second Life the exhibition features the work of five artists interested in exploring the concepts of constructed self, identity, truth and illusion in the digital realm. At the heart of the exhibition is the, often fearful, societal fascination with the ideas of twinning, cloning and the concept of the other self. The participating artists from Australia, Italy, USA and China have analysed notions of portraiture and identity in their works that exploit the unique qualities presented by the Second Life environment.

Step Right Up! The Circus in Australian Art - Sydney

20 February – 26 March 2010

Step Right Up! The Circus in Australian Art looks at circus from a fine arts perspective. The exhibition explores the many mythologies surrounding the circus tradition. Artworks are drawn from state, regional, commercial and private collections and from the Albury City collection. Artists include John Olsen, Jeffrey Smart, Anne Zahalka, Ken Whisson, Ponch Hawkes, John Brack, Fred Williams, Petrina Hicks, George Baldessin and Margaret Cliento. Mosman Art Gallery.

Tim Miller, Sundown - Sydney

11–29 March 2010

On 31st December 2009 Tim Miller finished a vast artwork consisting of 365 single images, one for every day of the year. Each image is a small pastel or occasionally, oil, of the evening sky. Every day—rain, hail or snow, whether near his studio or from the window of a plane at 30,000ft—he responded to the light and colour of the sun as it disappeared. This work uses rhythmic repetition to explore a single subject of infinite possibility and a year-long observation of the poignancy and transient beauty of last light. Charles Hewitt Gallery.

Art Month Sydney

1–30 March 2010

Art Month Sydney is an initiative to celebrate the importance and diversity of the Sydney art world. Commercial art galleries, auction houses, public museums and institutions will unite to stage free artists' talks, lectures, exhibitions, social events and tours, raising the profile of Sydney as a centre of fine, visual and contemporary art.

Sculpture exhibition by Antone Bruinsma - North Tambourine, Queensland

28 November 2009 – end March 2010

24 contemporary stone sculptures are on display. Antone Bruinsma is a professional sculptor who has been creating meaningful sculptures for landscapes, urban spaces and private homes for over 25 years. His signature sculptures for small and large residential and commercial developments landmark various projects. He creates pieces individually for spaces. Songbirds Rainforest Retreat.

Queensland Festival of Photography 3 - Brisbane, Cairns to Toowoomba, Queensland

April 2010

A month long festival presenting the finest photography Queensland has to offer, the festival has expanded to include 20 participating institutions to present an exciting program of events showcasing contemporary photographic practice across Australia. Artists talks and exhibitions will present the work of luminaries such as AES+F from Russia, Tracey Moffatt, Patricia Piccinini, Bill Henson, Marian Drew and Ray Cook from Australia. Various locations.

The 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art - Brisbane

5 December 2009 – 5 April 2010

The sixth exhibition in the gallery's Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art will include the work of more than 100 artists from 25 countries, including collaborations and collectives, which reflect the diversity of practices across Asia, the Pacific and Australia including works by artists from Tibet, North Korea (DPRK), Turkey and Iran, and from countries of the Mekong region such as Cambodia and Myanmar (Burma). Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art.

2010 Sculpture Biennial (North East Sculpture Event) - Wangaratta, Victoria

2–5 April 2010

The North East Sculpture Event has been hosted by the Wangaratta Rural City Council's Cultural Services Unit since 2003. Artists invited by the Rural City of Wangaratta will exhibit at this event. The CURRENT Acquisitive Sculpture Award is a $12,000 prize for sculptural work developed for permanent outdoor installation. The CURRENT Ephemeral Sculpture Award, a $3,000 non-acquisitive prize, is for sculptural work suitable for installation at Merriwa Park, Wangaratta.

The Wilderness Gallery International Mural Fest - Sheffield, Tasmania

4–10 April 2010

Sheffield's 2010 Wilderness Gallery International Mural Fest is an art competition that sees nine artists engaged in a public paint-off over six and a half days. Each artist must complete a 2100mm x 4800mm mural, using the same poem as their mural's central theme and inspiration.

Avoiding the Void - Parkville, Melbourne

3 February – 10 April 2010

This exhibition features works from the Cunningham Dax Collection which engage with existential ideas and concerns. It invites viewers to contemplate the ways in which the creators have grappled with difficult questions: Who am I? Do I belong? Why am I suffering? What is the purpose? This exhibition includes paintings, drawings, sculpture and multimedia by a range of artists including Graeme Doyle, Richard McLean, David Rellim and Joan Rodriquez. Works made by inpatients of psychiatric hospitals also feature. Location: The Cunningham Dax Collection.

Ron Mueck Exhibition of Sculpture - Melbourne

22 January – 18 April 2010

This exhibition presents the work of sculptor Ron Mueck, who is known for very lifelike creations. It is the largest and most comprehensive Mueck exhibition so far held in Australia, and features twelve sculptures. Highlights are 'Mask II 2001/02', 'Man in a boat 2002', 'Old woman in bed 2000/02', 'Wild man 2005', 'Two women 2005', 'In bed 2005', and 'Dead Dad 1996/97'. Four new works, created specifically for this exhibition, will be unveiled for the first time in Melbourne. National Gallery of Victoria.

The City of Fremantle Festival of Photography: Fotofreo 2010 - Fremantle and Perth

20 March – 18 April 2010

In FotoFreo 2010 over 40 of Australia's and the world's leading photographers and photography commentators gather for an event that provides a chance to look at work, debate the issues and learn from the photographers. There will be three five-day workshops and four major forums looking at the changing ways that photographers are distributing their bodies of work.

CarriageARTworks - Sydney

25 March – 24 April 2010

CarriageARTworks is a free annual event which celebrates artwork and art culture from Sydney's south west city fringe area. The exhibition will feature work on canvas, sculpture, photography, mixed media, video art, performance art and textiles. Entries are sought from galleries and artist run initiatives from the locale. Over a month, the exhibition will unfold into a public showcase. A program of artist talks, tours and themed forums will initiate conversation around making art, making a living from art, and art from the consumers' point of view. CarriageWorks.

Australian of the Year exhibition - Canberra

Until 26 April 2010

The exhibition Australian of the Year: Inspiring a Nation celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Australian of the Year Awards. A selection of portraits from the collection is on display throughout the gallery. Included in the exhibition is a photographic portrait of the 2010 award recipient, Professor Patrick McGorry. The exhibition is held in partnership with the National Australia Day Council. National Portrait Gallery.

Sari Harris, Imagining Darwin - Darwin

26 March – 1 May 2010

Inspired by the unique land and seascape of Australia and the Galapagos Islands, Melbourne artist Sari Harris creates small objects using skin-like silicone, smooth porcelain, silver and timber to encourage human compulsion to touch and create order. It's a colourful, tactile feast. 24HR Art.

Head On Photo Festival 2010 - A Month of Photography Events - Sydney

April–May 2010

Head On is a non-profit organisation which aims to promote photography through an annual photography festival, a portrait competition (offering the Head On portrait prize) and related activities. The Festival brings together photography exhibitions and multi media events across Sydney. It has over 30 participating galleries and a diversity of shows. The 2010 seminar will run over two days during the festival.

ArtExpress - Albury, New South Wales

12 March – 2 May 2010

ArtExpress is an annual exhibition of artworks created by New South Wales students from government and non-government schools for the Higher School Certificate Examination in Visual Arts. The exhibition includes works by 2008 and 2009 graduates, including James Fallon High School's Marnie Teal. A range of media including painting, photography, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, textiles and fibre, ceramics, digital animation, film and video will be included in the exhibition. Albury Art Gallery.

National Photographic Portraiture Prize - Canberra

5 March – 2 May 2010

Andrew Sayers, Director, National Portrait Gallery announced the winner of the National Photographic Portrait Prize 2010: Scott Bycroft, for the work titled Zareth which will receive a prize of $25,000. The winning work is featured in an exhibition of forty-three portraits from the finalists' and is on display at the National Portrait Gallery.

Clay energy, Gulgong Ceramics Conference - Gulgong, New South Wales

28 April – 2 May 2010

In 2010, hundreds of ceramic artists will again converge in the picturesque historic town of Gulgong, 290 km west of Sydney for a triennial with international ceramics. Energy in all its forms will be the focus of discussion and events. Whether artistic or physical, various types of energy are vital for producing ceramics. In Gulgong there's an energy that keeps delegates returning year after year. It's a buzz that stems from the cross-pollination of conversations about clay, glaze, inspirations, making and firing. Cudgegong Gallery.

Mind And Matter: Meditations On Immateriality - Adelaide

10 April – 16 May 2010

Curated by Margot Osborne, Mind and Matter: Meditations on Immateriality brings together eight innovative and exciting Australian glass artists: Masahiro Asaka, Gabriella Bisetto, Brian Corr, Mel Douglas, Deb Jones, Jessica Loughlin, Janice Vitkovsky, Richard Whiteley. The approach of these artists is to tone down its colour saturation, emphasize its quieter dimensions of transparency, surface and depth to draw attention inwards, to concentrate the gaze on the evocative presence of these quiet and meditative forms. Jam Factory.

Salon des Refusés - Sydney

27 March 2010 – 23 May 2010

2010 is the 19th annual Salon des Refusés: the alternative Archibald & Wynne Prize selection. The Salon is selected from the official entries to the annual Archibald Prize (for portraiture) and Wynne Prize (for landscape painting and figure sculpture) at the Art Gallery of NSW. A guest panel is invited to go behind the scenes of the judging process, to select an exhibition from the overwhelming number of art works submitted to both prizes, yet not chosen as finalists. Visitors to the Gallery can vote for their favourite artwork in the Holding Redlich People's Choice Award. S H Ervin Gallery.

Wilderness: Balnaves contemporary painting - Sydney

5 March – 23 May 2010

Wilderness will bring together fourteen Australian contemporary painters, to consider how nature and landscape are entwined in our minds, memories and imaginations. This exhibition is is not about observed landscape, but about imagined regions, psychological landscapes, creatures both natural and unnatural, the importance of ideas of the 'wild', and how we inscribe nature with memory and meaning. The artists are Del Kathryn Barton, Andrew Browne, Daniel Boyd, Stephen Bush, Tony Clark, Julie Fragar, Louise Hearman, Fiona Lowry, Nigel Milsom, James Morrison, Alex Pittendrigh, Mary Scott, Megan Walch and Michael Zavros. Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Rupert Bunny: Artist in Paris - Melbourne

26 March – 4 July 2010

This, the first major retrospective exhibition of the work of Rupert Bunny (1864–1947) since 1991 will open at the National Gallery of Victoria. Melbourne-born Bunny was one of the most successful artists of his generation. Living most of his life in France, no other Australian artist achieved the accolades Bunny received in Paris in the 1890s and early 1900s. The exhibition includes over 100 works—from his late nineteenth century symbolist inspired mythologies to his elegant Belle Époque paintings of fashionable Parisian leisure. Several of the works in the exhibition have never been seen in Australia, including paintings from the Musée d'Orsay and private collections in Europe. Location: The Ian Potter Centre.

Fibre Textile Biennial Momentum - national tour

March 2009 – July 2010

'Textile artists work inventively because of the rapidly changing context of their world, pushing the boundaries and communicating through their original expressive forms. They challenge our preconceptions and move forward into unknown territories. The strength of this work comes from the artists' ability to respect their tradition and history while engaging with the momentum of progress.' The 18th Tamworth  Fibre Textile  Biennial is curated by Valerie Kirk. National tour includes Canberra, Wagga Wagga, Mornington Peninsular, Geraldton, Dubbo, Windsor, Mount Gambier.

McCubbin: Last Impressions 1907–17 - Bendigo, Victoria

24 April – 25 July 2010

This is a National Gallery of Australia travelling exhibition, the first comprehensive Frederick McCubbin exhibition in 18 years, and the first to focus on his later works. It concentrates on the last 11 years of his life when he produced his most vibrant works, which express his sense of delight in, and comfort within, the Australian landscape. It features 72 works from all the major galleries in Australia, and 25 rarely publicly displayed works from private collections. With the exception of three works all were painted in Victoria, and the majority painted in key sites around Melbourne, 14 in Mount Macedon, where McCubbin lived in his home Fountainbleu. Bendigo Art Gallery.

Stick it! Collage in Australian Art - Melbourne

19 March – 29 August 2010

Featuring over forty works primarily drawn from the National Gallery of Victoria's Collection, together with a small number of loans, Stick it! explores graphic and eye-catching works created by pasting and applying paper, ephemera and other materials to a base. This exhibition will feature a selection of collages made in the past seventy years by some of Australia’s leading practitioners of this technique, including Sidney Nolan, James Gleeson, Robert Klippel, Mike Brown, Elizabeth Gower, Mandy Martin, Nick Mangan and Brook Andrew, among others. The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Federation Square.

Zhongjian: Midway - national tour

2010–11 tour: Albury; Broken Hill; Bundaberg; Cairns; Caloundra; Latrobe; Mornington Peninsula; Mosman; Newcastle Region; Perc Tucker; Port Pirie; Shepparton; Tamworth and Tweed River regional art galleries

Curated by Jin Sha, this exhibition features works investigating notions of identity, tradition and globalisation by fifteen contemporary artists with varying connections to China: Ah Xian, Julie Bartholomew, Lionel Bawden, Kate Beynon, Guan Wei, Guo Jian, Jin Sha, Liu Qinghe, Liu Xiao Xian, Lü Peng, Shen Shaomin, Sally Smart, Laurens Tan, Yang Xifa, and Zhang Qing. Various locations.

Hans Heysen - national tour

[30 April – 4 July 2010 Canberra; 31 July – 24 October 2010 Brisbane; 19 November 2010 – 30 January 2011 Newcastle]

Hans Heysen (1877–1968) is celebrated with the first major retrospective of his work in three decades by the Art Gallery of South Australia's touring exhibition. The exhibition features more than a hundred works created over the artist's seventy year career, and marks the 40th anniversary of Heysen's death. Ballarat Fine Art Gallery.

Featured projects

The Design Centre - Launceston, Tasmania

March 2010

The internationally outstanding Design Centre, a cascade of five galleries, listed in 2004 as one of the top 1000 contemporary buildings in the world, hosts the Wood Design Collection. The Design Centre has Australia's only museum collection of contemporary wood design. The Design Centre runs exhibitions and tours of crafts, design and art, both nationally and internationally.

Craig Walsh: Artefact H10515 - Sydney

2 September 2009 – August 2010

Created with 3-D animator Steven Thomasson and composer Lawrence English, this abstract installation within a large museum-like showcase disrupts expectations of museum collections. It feeds on digital sources from a website: images, videos and sound files from public and private collections. Its form evolves randomly; its appearance changes in scale, colour and movement in response to the content. Powerhouse Museum.

Australian collection - Victoria

Permanent exhibition

Comprising more than 20,000 works, the NGV's collection of Australian art is one of the oldest in the country. Browse highlights from the Australian painting collection by artist name. It now includes the Victorian Foundation for Living Australian Artists (VFLAA). VFLAA purchases significant contemporary visual artworks by Australian artists for the NGV collection and for touring and lending to the network of regional and metropolitan galleries of Victoria. National Gallery of Victoria.

Announcements

John Glover Prize Winner

5 March 2010

Ian Waldron of Cairns has won the $35,000 Glover Prize, for Walach Dhaarr (Cockle Creek). Waldron is the first Indigenous Australian to win the prize. The work was described as having some historical depth and goes back to early colonial contacts between Tasmanian Aborigines and Europeans. It depicts a positive encounter between the French explorers and the Aboriginal tribes at Cockle Creek. There were 43 finalists and a record 272 entries.

Vale Nick Waterlow

November 2009

Nick Waterlow was a leading member of Australia's arts community, having curated three Sydney Biennales in 1979, 1986 and 2000. He was Director of the Ivan Dougherty Gallery from 1991 and was a senior lecturer in COFA's School of Art History and Art Education. His curatorial, research and writing projects included a book exploring the place of Australian art internationally and The Australian Presence in 1960s London.

Key online resources

• Arts OutWest
• artsource - The Artists Foundation of WA
• Living Treasures Online Resource
• WEB-ARTS
• Artistcareer

Collection resources and online publications

• Collections Australia Network
• RedBubble
• Artists of Australia
• Arts Northern Rivers - Visual Arts Network

Institutions and government organisations

• Artbank

Peak bodies and associations

• National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA)
• Craft Australia - Australian guilds, societies and associations
• National Exhibition Touring Support Australia
• Viscopy
• Photography Australia Group
• The association of Western Australian art galleries

People

• Brett Whiteley
• Fiona Hall
• Grace Cossington-Smith
• Harold Cazneaux
• Margaret Olley
• Margaret Preston
• Dictionary of Australian Artists Online

Featured websites/projects

• Major visual arts prizes