Raymond Zada

Barkandji people, New South Wales

This work represents a direct line of Ancestors. Put simply, it is your parents and their parents and their parents and their parents . . . for ten generations.

Each of the 2,046 figures has been hand-drawn to pay homage to every Ancestor who contributed to my DNA over the past ten generations.

It doesn’t matter if you have ten siblings and each of your parents had ten siblings, or if you’re an only child and each of your parents was an only child. For all of us, the same number of Ancestors contributed to …

Adrianne Semmens

Barkandji people, New South Wales

My work embodies stories of connection — to Country, to water, to kin.

I have been interested in the use of shadow and reflection, as a marker of time passed, of those before us, and of Country holding our stories and knowledge.

kuntyiri honours and reflects upon returning visits to Wilyakali and Barkandji/Barkindji Country. From childhood memories with family, to recent journeys together as a collective. My gestures speak softly, filmed against the incredible visions of Country.

Dance has always been a way of sharing our knowledge and understanding, a cultural practice entwined with story …

Kent Morris

Barkindji people, New South Wales

karta-kartaka (pink cockatoo) was recently added to the national threatened species list. Ongoing threats to their existence include the loss of existing and future hollow-bearing trees for nesting due to land clearing, and a lack of feeding areas and regeneration as a result of heavy grazing by invasive species on Country. 

A pink cockatoo in a hollow tree is part of the two Ngatyi (Rainbow Serpents) creation story as told by senior storyteller, Alf Barlow (c. 1888–1961). This story recounts how our Country was formed by two rainbow serpents travelling, which is deeply significant to …

David Doyle

Barkindji/Malyangapa people, New South Wales

Within this body of work I share with you our deep knowledge of the abundance of our Country and many aspects of our ancient foodways.

kamuru or river red gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis), was chosen as Australia’s favourite tree in 2022, but has been a favourite of the Barkindji for many more years. Standing stoic, kamuru watches over our mother Baaka, protecting and supporting her as she meanders through Barkindji Country. But to us Barkindji, kamuru is more than a protector, more than a prone sentinel and more than a tree. I have tried to capture …

Zena Cumpston

Barkandji people, New South Wales

For several years I have researched and written about the plant knowledge and foodways of our people. Each of the artworks I have made explore the interrelationships of people, plants and animals on our Barkandji Country.

I see my developing art practice as an exciting new way to explore my research, to map my learning, to share far and wide.

I have included kopi, which is gypsum from our Country that is processed to make a white pigment utilised in traditional mourning practices but also, importantly, for joyous occasions such as painting our bodies for …

What is Hidden

Dominique Chen is a Gamilaroi woman, and interdisciplinary artist and researcher, living on Jinibara Country in South East Queensland. She lectures within the Batchelor of Contemporary Australian Indigenous Art, Griffith University, and is undertaking PhD research at the University of Technology Sydney, in the area of relational creative practice and urban-based Aboriginal food and medicine growing. 

Dom is mother, artist, writer, maker and avid gardener, and is passionate about the role of creative practice in making positive contributions to community, culture and Country. She is a co-founder of Aboriginal-run not-for-profit, Yuruwan, which supports learning opportunities …

Millu Wudungi Thangurra Pingathurra (Murray River Man Our Country Our Art)

Tati Tati Latji Latji Mutti Mutti Wadi Wadi Weki Weki Yita Yita Nari Nari

My Irish name is Brendan Kennedy, but I refer to myself as Millu Wudungi (Murray River man). My background has involved asserting our rights and responsibilities to our country and culture, advocating for the existence and conservation of our Ancestral cultural heritage sites and places, and my strong opposition to the Native Title system that further dispossesses us of our lands, waters, cultural heritage and connection to our animals and natural …

I called and the ocean heard

Rebecca Ray is a mainland Torres Strait Islander woman, connected to Mer and Mabuiag Island and is the First Nations Curator at the National Portrait Gallery, Australia. She holds a Bachelor of Arts (History and Sociology) from Griffith University, Queensland. Rebecca has a research background in cultural heritage, identity politics and intersectionality as well as a strong understanding of the current trends of contemporary and traditional art making happening across Australia.

Rebecca is passionate about Indigenisation and the reclamation of autonomous and sovereign spaces with an interest in global First Nations relationality …

Ngaratya

Badger Bates was born on the Baaka (Darling River) at Wilcannia in 1947. He was brought up by his extended family and his grandmother Granny Moysey, learning from them the language, history and culture of the Barkandji people. He continues travelling the country looking after important places and teaching young people about their culture and their country. Badger is an artist, cultural heritage consultant and environmental activist. His art shows his connection to Country and the complex relationships between people, country and water. Recent exhibitions include Art Gallery of South Australia’s Tarnanthi festival 2019, …

Jessica Row joins our Reconciliation Action Plan Working Group

Jessica Row has recently joined our Reconciliation Action Plan Working Group. Jessica was previously an Exhibitions Coordinator at NETS Victoria and we welcome her allyship and expertise. Jessica has over ten years’ experience working for public, university and not-for-profit galleries in Narrm/Melbourne and Meanjin/Brisbane. She is currently a Curator at Koorie Heritage Trust, and prior to NETS Victoria, held curatorial roles for regional and metropolitan council galleries. She has worked at the Venice Biennale with Creative Australia to help present Tracey Moffatt’s (2017) and Angelica Mesiti’s (2019) exhibitions at the Australia Pavilion. Separate to curatorial projects for current and past …

Now touring: ngaratya (together, us group, all in it together)

Barkandji/Barkindji artists share travels together on Country—

ngaratya (together, us group, all in it together) brings together six Barkandji/Barkindji artists: Nici Cumpston, Zena Cumpston, David Doyle, Kent Morris, Adrianne Semmens and Raymond Zada. Featuring soundscape, moving image, screendance, carving, weaving, printmaking and photography, this exhibition offers a warm invitation into Barkandji/Barkindji Country and belonging. ngaratya (together, us group, all in it together) is a Bunjil Place Gallery exhibition, curated by Nici Cumpston and Zena Cumpston, touring with NETS Victoria.

The exhibition opens on 3rd of May at Broken Hill City Art Gallery.

This project has been assisted by the Australian …

Sherryn Vardy

Sherryn Vardy is a dedicated conservator and arts administrator who has held various roles including at Latrobe Regional Gallery, Cowwarr Art Space, Gippsland Art Gallery and McClelland Sculpture Park+Gallery. In a previous position at NETS Victoria she curated and developed the touring exhibition Made to last: The conservation of art. During her time at ACMI she was Exhibition Project Coordinator and Assistant Registrar in the national and international touring team and travelled with major exhibitions. At AMaGA Victoria Sherryn was both a Museum Accreditation Program Manager and Regional Digitisation Officer – Bushfire Recovery Project where she worked with small museums …

‘These are the stories that stay with you’ ArtsHub feature article

Thank you to Monique Grbec for their excellent feature on NETS Victoria. Monique says: “Life-affirming and transformative, the exhibitions supported by NETS Victoria’s touring program are having a powerful effect on viewers.” They also state that: “There is no greater place in the world to explore the breadth and depth of human experience than in an art gallery. A visionary force in contemporary Australian visual arts culture, NETS Victoria ensures that some of this country’s most important exhibitions are accessible across Australia.” Read the full feature article here.

Installation view: Bunjil Place Gallery 2023; ‘ngaratya (together, us group, all in …

ngaratya (together, us group, all in it together)

Barkandji/Barkindji artists share travels together on Country.

ngaratya (together, us group, all in it together) brings together six Barkandji/Barkindji artists: Nici Cumpston, Zena Cumpston, David Doyle, Kent Morris, Adrianne Semmens, and Raymond Zada.

Several trips together on Country provided a rich foundation for the collective to create newly …

Between Waves touring soon

We are thrilled to announce the tour of Between Waves curated by Jessica Clark. The exhibition amplifies concepts related to light, time and vision – and the idea of shining a light on our times – expressed by the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung word ‘Yalingwa’. The exhibition presents the work of ten First Nations artists and collectives who variously explore the visible and invisible energy fields set in motion by these ideas, to illuminate interconnected shapeshifting ecologies within, beyond and between what can be seen.  Between Waves  is an exhibition developed by the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) touring nationally …

Exhibition Development Fund Grant awarded to Warrnambool Art Gallery

We are thrilled to announce Warrnambool Art Gallery as a recipient of the NETS Victoria Exhibition Development Fund for a forthcoming solo exhibition by Kait James. The Gallery has been awarded $15,000.

Kait is a proud Wadawurrung woman and has recently exhibited in NGV’s ‘Melbourne Now’ and is represented by Neon Parc.

The NETS Victoria Exhibition Development Fund is assessed by NETS Victoria’s Artistic Program Advisory Committee, chaired by David Sequeira, and is supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria.

Steven Rhall

Steven Rhall’s art practice finds expression in institutional critique, interrogating modes of representation, classification and hierarchy within the art world and otherwise. His projects often explore the exchange of economic and cultural capital in the matrix of relations and intersections of First Nation art production, presentation and encounter. As a Taungurung person, this positionality further informs his output, including various forms and interventions, including installation, performance, process-led methods, curatorial projects, sculpture and art within the public realm. Steven is a studio artist at Gertrude Contemporary and is represented by Mars Gallery.…

Steven Rhall joins Reconciliation Action Plan Working Group

We’re delighted that Steven Rhall has joined our Reconciliation Action Plan Working Group. Steven Rhall’s art practice finds expression in institutional critique, interrogating modes of representation, classification and hierarchy within the art world and otherwise. His projects often explore the exchange of economic and cultural capital in the matrix of relations and intersections of First Nation art production, presentation and encounter. As a Taungurung person, this positionality further informs his output, including various forms and interventions, including installation, performance, process-led methods, curatorial projects, sculpture and art within the public realm. Steven is a studio artist at Gertrude Contemporary and is …

Cassie Sullivan

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Mandy Quadrio

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Jazz Money

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James Howard

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Brad Darkson

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Maree Clarke

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Hayley Millar Baker

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Between Waves

Between Waves continues the Yalingwa exhibition series devoted to highlighting the significance of First Nations contemporary art practice of the Southeast within a …

NETS Victoria welcomes Rachel Arndt to the Board

Chair of NETS Victoria, Bec Cole is delighted to announce the appointment of Rachel Arndt to the Board. Rachel Arndt is currently the Director of Wangaratta Art Gallery in Northeast Victoria. Rachel has over two decades of experience in the visual arts in Australia and internationally. Her commitment to regional gallery practice was cemented through a decade with Museums and Galleries of NSW, leading a comprehensive range of programs, strategic initiatives, funding opportunities, and professional development events for the gallery sector, including one of the largest regional touring exhibition programs of contemporary art in Australia.

In early 2021, she moved …

Acknowledgements

I am grateful for the opportunity to curate Looking Glass on the lands of the Wurundjeri people and, along with the artists Judy Watson and Yhonnie Scarce, respectfully acknowledge their ongoing custodianship of their country. We also wish to acknowledge and pay our respects to the custodians of the lands to which this exhibition will travel.

I would particularly like to thank the artists, Judy and Yhonnie, whose passion and commitment to telling the stories of our people has shone brightly throughout the difficulties of working amidst a global pandemic.

I would like to thank Victoria Lynn, Anthony …

Venues

Essays

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Artists

Rachel Arndt

Rachel Arndt is currently the Director of Wangaratta Art Gallery in Northeast Victoria. Rachel has over two decades of experience in the visual arts in Australia and internationally. Her commitment to regional gallery practice was cemented through a decade with Museums and Galleries of NSW, leading a comprehensive range of programs, strategic initiatives, funding opportunities, and professional development events for the gallery sector, including one of the largest regional touring exhibition programs of contemporary art in Australia.

In early 2021, she moved to Queensland to lead The Condensery in Toogoolawah, where she implemented the gallery’s inaugural strategic vision and artistic …

Essays

THE TREATERS’ DEAD

It’s Not Just What We Learn, It’s About How We Learn It

It wasn’t that Lin was selfish about the techniques …

ILBIJERRI Theatre Company: Reflections

This piece is an edited excerpt from the ILBIJERRI Theatre Company’s upcoming 30th anniversary book. It details, in part, the collaborative working process that eventuated in the production of the cooperative’s first production Up the Road in 1990, written by John Harding, followed by its second major work, Stolen, which was developed over seven years by Jane Harrison in consultation with many community members who were impacted by child removal policies. Stolen went on to do multiple regional, national, and international tours. Founding member of ILBIJERRI, Kylie Belling, played one of its …

Growing up Yorta Yorta, Spaces for Community and the Story of Kaiela Arts

BRYAN ANDY:Just to make those reading this yarn aware: you and I go back many years to when we were kids. My family lived down in Melbourne, on Boonwurrung Country, and for many a school holiday my family would load-up the car and drive up to Cummeragunja, to my Mother May’s Country—Yorta Yorta Country. We would be with my Grandparents Colin and Faye Walker, who lived next to our cousin Janelle Atkinson—or Dort as she’s known. Often, you’d be …

Ghost Weaving Unconditional Love into Our Futures: Collective Movements of Sovereign Art

‘Just doing and being’: Collective Movements and the Everyday Life of Indigenous Futurity

In the forthcoming 30th anniversary publication for ILBIJERRI Theatre Company, Narrunga dancer and playwright Jacob Boehme recounts the pivotal moment when he told a story to his friend Isaac on the dancefloor at a club night in Sydney in 2012. Hearing what Jacob had been turning in his brain that day, Isaac broke down. That idea would eventually grow to become Jacob’s well known work Blood on the Dance Floor.

There was blue, and red, and purple lights flashing. We were dancing, holding drinks, and …

We Iri, We Homeborn Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Festival

1996, 1997 and 1999

In NAIDOC Week 1996, the Koori Arts Project Team at the City of Port Phillip led by Maree Clarke, Kimba Thompson, Len Tregonning, Lee Clarke, Sonja Hodge and Maree Moffatt coordinated the We Iri, We Homeborn Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Festival. Consisting of a series of exhibitions across five venues in Melbourne, the festival was the largest display of Victorian-based emerging and established Indigenous artists’ works at that time.

In the lead up to the festival, Maree Clarke and Jacqui Geia travelled across the state, dropping off arts supplies to Indigenous artists and returning …

this mob

Since 2016

this mob is an arts collective for emerging creatives based on Boonwurrung and Wurundjeri lands. As the next generation of influential Blak creatives, this mob believes that young Blakfullas have an integral voice in shaping our collective future.

this mob formed in 2016 to address the lack of safe spaces for Victorian-based Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to come together and create. Since then, this mob has forged spaces for young people to learn, make and present their art and voices across a number of different curatorial projects, workshops, public interventions, performances, discussions and publications.

Operating out …

The Torch

Since 2011

Since 2011, The Torch has been providing art, cultural and arts industry support to Victorian-based Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are currently or have previously been incarcerated. The organisation assists artists to reconnect with culture, earn income from art sales (with 100% of the sale price going directly to the artist), foster new networks and to pursue educational and creative industry avenues upon their release.

The Torch is represented in Collective Movements’ tour by Yorta Yorta and Wiradjuri artist and Ash Thomas’ mural The Hunters, 2022. This mural is a travelling public artwork, accompanying Collective Movements …

Possum Skin Cloak Story

Since 1999

The Possum Skin Cloak Story told in Collective Movements traces the beginnings of one of the most significant cultural renaissances of south-east Australia, the widespread return of possum skin cloak making, which began with four Koorie women answering the calls of their Ancestors.

During a printmaking workshop visit to the Melbourne Museum in 1999, Gunditjmara Keerray Woorroong woman Vicki Couzens and Yorta Yorta, Mutti Mutti and Boonwurrung woman Lee Darroch encountered the Gunditjmara Lake Condah Cloak, one of six known surviving possum skin cloaks from the nineteenth century. During this experience, the Ancestors of the cloak gifted Vicki …

Pitcha Makin Fellas

Since 2013

The Pitcha Makin Fellas are an arts collective based in Ballarat on Wadawurrung land who are passionate about their culture and community, and share their pride through their art. The group formed in 2013 at the Ballarat and District Aboriginal Cooperative from a meeting to develop a children’s book. At the end of this meeting, seven artists and writers came together to form the collective.

Over the past nine years, the Pitcha Makin Fellas have been through many evolutions and they currently have three members, Gimuy Walubarra Yidinji woman Trudy Edgeley; Dja Dja Wurrung, Gunditjmara and Yorta Yorta …

Latje Latje Dance Group Mildura

1978–2005

Latje Latje Dance Group Mildura was one of the earliest and longest-running organised traditional and contemporary dance groups in Victoria. They formed in 1978 after local Koorie children attended a cultural camp at Camp Jungai and were taught dances by notable Aboriginal leaders, Yamatji man Ernie Dingo and Senior Elder and artist of the Maḏarrpa clan, Yolŋu people, Donald Nuwandjali Marawili. Both men gave permission for the children to continue practicing the dances and to teach them to other young Koorie students.

The group connected with other dance groups such as the Mornington Island Dancers and Bangarra Dance Theatre. …

Koorroyarr

Since 2018

In 2018, Kelsey and Tarryn Love began Koorroyarr, a creative platform that honours their positionality as Gunditjmara women, sisters and granddaughters continually learning and seeking knowledge of their culture. Kelsey and Tarryn are Gunditjmara Keerray Woorroong sisters from south-west Victoria, born and raised on Wadawurrung country in Geelong.

‘Koorroyarr’ means ‘granddaughter’in their mother tongue KeerrayWoorroong, which captures thesignificant presence, impactand vital role that family and kinship plays in their arts practice.

By centring Keerray Woorroong language and ways of being, the sisters aim to carry on the work of those before them in reclaiming, reviving and reinvigorating culture …

Kaiela Arts

Since 2006

Kaiela Arts has a long story, rooted in the journey of Yorta Yorta People and their Woka, and pre-dating its formalisation in 2006 as an arts and cultural organisation known as Gallery Kaiela.

Gallery Kaiela’s purpose was to bring art out of individuals’ homes, publicly display and sell works made around kitchen tables or home studios and celebrate the ongoing creative and cultural practices of the community.

Gallery Kaiela evolved into Kaiela Arts, changing location twice and formalising as an arts centre that included studio spaces. It is now a thriving arts centre; a hub for conversation and …

ILBIJERRI Theatre Company

Since 1990

ILBIJERRI Theatre Company is the longest running Indigenous theatre company in Australia, created in 1990 by a group of artists, writers, community members and activists.

In 1989, Yorta Yorta, Wiradjuri and South Sea Islander actor Kylie Belling and Kuku Yulangi and Peidu clan of Erub writer John Harding attended the Second National Black Playwrights Conference in Sydney. This ignited their drive to form a theatre company that could build upon the legacy of storytelling and theatre that existed in Victoria.

Together with Lisa Bellear, Destiny Deacon, Eleanor Harding, Janina Harding, Kim Kruger, Bev Murray, Clinton Naina, Maryanne Sam …

Ensemble Dutala

Since 2020

Ensemble Dutala is Australia’s first Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander chamber ensemble, currently consisting of nine musicians from Perth, Sydney, Moree, Mildura and Melbourne representing Yorta Yorta, Noongar, Kala Kawa Ya, Kiwai, Motu, Lardil and Yangkaal language groups. The ensemble formed in 2020 as an initiative of Short Black Opera (SBO), the national not-for-profit opera company founded ten years prior by Yorta Yorta woman, soprano, composer, educator and performing arts leader Deborah Cheetham AO.

Dutala (meaning star-filled sky in Yorta Yorta, Deborah’s grandmother’s language) grew out of SBO’s One Day in January program: an ongoing initiative bringing artists …

Collective Movements on tour now

Collective Movements is on now at Latrobe Regional Gallery. Collective Movements: First Nations Collectives, Collaborations and Creative Practices from across Victoria is a wide-ranging project focusing on the work of historic and contemporary First Nations creative practitioners and community groups from across Victoria that recognises collectivity as integral to Indigenous knowledges and ways of being. An exhibition, publishing project, conversation and workshop platform, the project begins with the desire to make more visible a language and terminology beyond Western art concepts of ‘collaboration’ and ‘collectivism’—one that better describes and acknowledges the way Indigenous creatives work within a broader community and …

Preface

NETS Victoria is proud to support the regional Victorian tour of Collective Movements. First presented at Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA), this expansive project has been co-curated by Taungurung artist and curator Kate ten Buuren, Lardil and Yangkaal artist and curator Maya Hodge and N’Arweet Professor Carolyn Briggs AM PhD, with support from Bundjalung, Muruwari and Kamilaroi artist and senior academic Professor Brian Martin, Director of the Wominjeka Djeembana Indigenous Research Lab, Monash University.  

Collective Movements is a celebration of First Nations collectives, collaborations and creative practices from across Victoria. Featuring the …

Introduction

We sit on a continuum—within a larger ecosystem of cultural creation that spans thousands of generations and that will continue on into the future. Collective Movements traces the ripple-effects of creative practices from the past, reflecting on creators today and looking locally at groups from across Victoria. It highlights collectives and collaborative actions born out of a community need—an ethos of care for our people and the survival and evolution of our culture through creative means. Each group featured works in different ways and across many mediums, but their core ways of being and …

Collective Movements

Collective Movements: First Nations Collectives, Collaborations and Creative Practices from across Victoria is a wide-ranging project focusing on the work of historic and contemporary First Nations creative practitioners and community groups from across Victoria that recognises collectivity as integral to Indigenous knowledges and ways of being. An exhibition, publishing project, conversation and workshop platform, the project begins with the desire to make more …

Foreword

Collective Movements is a wide-ranging project focusing on First Nations creative practitioners and community groups from across Victoria, recognising collectivity as integral to Indigenous knowledges and ways of being. An exhibition, publication and series of conversations and workshops, it began with the desire to make more visible a language and terminology beyond Western concepts of ‘collaboration’, ‘collectivism’ and ‘art’ itself— one that better describes and acknowledges the way Indigenous creatives work within a broader community and its inheritances.

This ambitious project has been conceived by a cross-generational curatorium—Taungurung curator, artist and writer Kate ten Buuren; Lardil …

David Cross

David Cross is an artist, writer and curator based in Melbourne. Working across performance, installation, video and photography, Cross explores the relationship between pleasure, intimacy and the phobic in his works, and often incorporates participation by linking performance art with object-based environments. The monograph of his practice Air Supplied was published by Punctum books Los Angeles in 2018. As a curator Cross has produced a number of temporary public projects, including One Day Sculpture (with Claire Doherty) across New Zealand in 2008-09, and Iteration: Again in Tasmania in 2011.He recently co-founded the research initiative Public Art Commission (PAC) at Deakin …

Chantelle Mitchell

Chantelle Mitchell is a researcher, arts administrator and curator with experience across public, university and artist run organisations. Her research interests across the arts and humanities include extraction, temporality, and affect. Chantelle’s experience across the contemporary arts sphere extends to positions with Bundoora Homestead Art Centre, SEVENTH Gallery and the University of Melbourne. She has also held roles on the boards of SEVENTH Gallery and BLINDSIDE ARI. She was previously a predoctoral researcher with the University of Vienna, during which she presented and published new research considering entanglements of air, crisis and contemporary philosophy.

Chantelle maintains an ongoing artistic and …

NETS Victoria welcomes David Cross to the Board

NETS Victoria’s Chair of the Board Bec Cole is delighted to announce the appointment of David Cross to the Board.

David Cross is an artist, writer and curator based in Melbourne. Working across performance, installation, video and photography, Cross explores the relationship between pleasure, intimacy and the phobic in his works, and often incorporates participation by linking performance art with object-based environments. The monograph of his practice Air Supplied was published by Punctum books Los Angeles in 2018. As a curator Cross has produced a number of temporary public projects, including One Day Sculpture (with Claire Doherty) across New Zealand in 2008-09, …

NETS Victoria welcomes new Artistic Program Advisory Committee Member Eugenia Lim

NETS Victoria’s Board and Chair of our Artistic Program Advisory Committee, Dr David Sequeira are delighted to announce that Eugenia Lim has joined their Committee. The Artistic Program Advisory Committee guides the development of the organisation’s Artistic Program and audience engagement strategies.

Eugenia Lim is a Naarm/Melbourne-based artist of Chinese-Singaporean heritage who works across body, lens, social and spatial practice to explore how migration, capital and encounter cut, divide and bond our interdependent world. Based on unceded lands in the Kulin Nation, Lim has shown at the Tate Modern (London), LOOP (Barcelona), Recontemporary (Turin), Kassel Dokfest, Museum of Contemporary Art …

Eugenia Lim

Eugenia Lim is a Naarm/Melbourne-based artist of Chinese-Singaporean heritage who works across body, lens, social and spatial practice to explore how migration, capital and encounter cut, divide and bond our interdependent world. Based on unceded lands in the Kulin Nation, Lim has shown at the Tate Modern (London), LOOP (Barcelona), Recontemporary (Turin), Kassel Dokfest, Museum of Contemporary Art (Syd), ACCA, Next Wave, FACT (Liverpool), and EXiS (Seoul). She co-founded CHANNELS Festival, co-wrote and hosted Video Becomes Us on ABC iView and is a former co-director at APHIDS. Lim has been artist-in-residence with the Experimental Television Centre (NY), Bundanon Trust, …

NETS Victoria welcomes new Artistic Program Advisory Committee Member David Fitzsimmons

NETS Victoria’s Board and Chair of our Artistic Program Advisory Committee, Dr David Sequeira are delighted to announce that David Fitzsimmons has joined their Committee. The Artistic Program Advisory Committee guides the development of the organisation’s Artistic Program and audience engagement strategies. They provide recommendations for the Exhibition Development Fund (EDF) grant applications and are active in knowing current trends and discourse in relation to visual contemporary art.

David Fitzsimmons is a senior program lead and producer of collaborative public art projects with over 30 years’ experience in arts practice and cultural industries. His experience spans local and state government, …

Eric Nash

Eric Nash is an arts professional with qualifications in Visual Art, Arts Administration, and Management, and a wealth of experience in the gallery sector. Eric was appointed in 2019 to lead the Benalla Art Gallery – a cultural and architectural icon of northeast Victoria since it opened in 1975, with a significant Collection spanning three centuries of Australian art. Eric was previously the General Manager for the country’s leading lens-based media gallery, the Centre for Contemporary Photography. Eric has also developed training programs for Victorian galleries’ peak body, the Public Galleries Association of Victoria. He is experienced in working in …

David Fitzsimmons

David Fitzsimmons is a senior program lead and producer of collaborative public art projects with over 30 years’ experience in arts practice and cultural industries. His experience spans local and state government, private art consultancies, commercial and public galleries, art and architectural practice.

His experience includes team leadership, strategy and cultural policy development, arts program and collections management. In his current role in the Creative Urban Places team at the City of Melbourne, David produced comprehensive developer guidelines for art project commissioning and street art. His current focus is leading a number of significant collaborations with Naarm’s Aboriginal communities including …

NETS Victoria welcomes new Artistic Program Advisory Committee Member Eric Nash

NETS Victoria’s Board and Chair of our Artistic Program Advisory Committee, Dr David Sequeira are delighted to advise that Eric Nash has joined their Committee. The Artistic Program Advisory Committee guides the development of the organisation’s Artistic Program and audience engagement strategies. They provide recommendations for the Exhibition Development Fund (EDF) grant applications and are active in knowing current trends and discourse in relation to visual contemporary art.

Eric Nash is an arts professional with qualifications in Visual Art, Arts Administration, and Management, and a wealth of experience in the gallery sector. Eric was appointed in 2019 to lead the Benalla Art …

NETS Victoria welcomes Amy Cao as new Treasurer

NETS Victoria is delighted to welcome Amy Cao as our new Treasurer.

Amy Cao is an analytical and purpose-driven Certified Practicing Accountant with over 15 years of experience in financial accounting and statutory reporting, tax reporting and compliance, budgeting, forecasting and financial analysis. Her experience includes project management, finance policy design and implementation, as well as continuous process improvement for various sectors, including higher education, financial services, and public accounting services.

We thank Michael Fox for his contribution as Treasurer from 2021-2023.

Photograph: Nick Owen…

JOIN THE TEAM AT NETS VICTORIA!

We are looking for an Exhibitions Coordinator to join the team at NETS Victoria. 

EXHIBITIONS COORDINATOR 

CONDITIONS: Part Time 0.8 (4 days per week)

This position may require travel to regional centres both within Victoria and interstate at various times and reports to the Director, NETS Victoria. 

SALARY: $63,000 pro rata ($50,400) + 11% superannuation 

NETS Victoria is an equal opportunity employer. We encourage people from different backgrounds to apply, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and people with a disability. Reasonable adjustments can be negotiated.

Office Location: Office is at Federation …

Amy Cao

Amy Cao is an analytical and purpose-driven Certified Practicing Accountant with over 15 years of experience in financial accounting and statutory reporting, tax reporting and compliance, budgeting, forecasting and financial analysis. Her experience includes project management, finance policy design and implementation, as well as continuous process improvement for various sectors, including higher education, financial services, and public accounting services.

Photograph: Nick Owen…

Co-curators

B. 1992, Melbourne/Naarm, AustraliaLives and works in Melbourne/Naarm, AustraliaPronouns: she/her

Zoë Bastin is an artist. Her expanded choreographic practice considers exhibition, installation, publication and performance as part of the same political project – the reorganisation of societal structures that limit bodies.

Zoë considers situations, movements and objects as connected in artistic production, her projects operate within academic, gallery, theatre and public art realms traversing artistic modes. This practice emerged during visual art studies (BFA, Hons) considering the sculptural potential of the physical body. She studied, then later taught, at Mangala Studios in Carlton, an important site in the …

Artists

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Venues

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the artists for their dedication to the project – their extraordinary works continue to inspire and evoke new possibilities.

Thanks also to Bronwyn Hack for loaning an additional sculptural work, so that visitors to the exhibition can enjoy a tactile experience.

Immense gratitude to the artists’ representatives, in particular Arts Project Australia’s Sim Luttin and Jodie Kipps were fantastic champions for Bronwyn Hack’s vision during the development of her work.

Sincere gratitude to Professor David Cross who worked as a consultant to support the artists, and us as co-curators, learn more about the opportunities and limitations presented …

Curators’ Introduction

When we inhale and exhale, our bodies transform through the process of inflation and deflation. Drawing on the inflatable form as both material and metaphor, Conflated brings disparate artists together to explore bodies, environments and cultures through contemporary art. Here, the cycle of breathing serves as a framework through which a wide array of experiences, behaviours and expressions are examined.

The artists featured in Conflated investigate the possibilities of the inflatable – through participatory works that entice audiences into finding new forms of Covid-safe intimacy, to …

Foreword

NETS Victoria is delighted to present Conflated as part of our 2022 artistic program. Featuring the work of nine Australian artists/collectives, the exhibition will be touring to regional and urban communities across Australia.

Focusing on notions of inflatability, this project was conceived in late 2019 when collaborating curators Zoë Bastin and Claire Watson began brainstorming ways that NETS Victoria could develop a touring exhibition with reduced environmental impact. This led to a conversation about artworks that …

Conflated Exhibition Catalogue

To accompany the exhibition Conflated, 2022-2024. A NETS Victoria touring exhibition, curated by Zoë Bastin and Claire Watson. This project has been assisted by the Australian Government’s Visions of Australia program and the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria.…

Conflatables

What are the main themes and intentions being explored in Conflated?

ZB: As a curatorial premise, Conflated explores the materiality of inflatables through the artistic practices of contemporary artists. Although inflatables’ ability to be blown up and to deflate – as well as their likeness to breathing – evokes the body and the implicit atmospheric factors of living on earth, each artist approached this concept through their own lens. Amrita Hepi, for example, was very interested in monstrosity and …

Contested Air

In 2019, co-curators Zoë Bastin and Claire Watson had a spark of an idea. Born from a desire to imagine alternate ways to embed sustainable practices into the logistical and curatorial framework of exhibition making, Zoë and Claire imagined a …

NETS Victoria launches an Innovate Reconciliation Action Plan 2023-2025

NETS Victoria is delighted to share our Innovate Reconciliation Action Plan 2023-2025. NETS Victoria is deeply committed to reconciliation within our organisation. We’d like to thank Isobel Morphy-Walsh and Terri Janke and Company for their support in developing our RAP and NETS Victoria’s Board and Artistic Program Advisory Committee for their commitment to supporting and honoring Australia’s oldest living culture. 

NETS Victoria has the opportunity to work with many First Nations artists, curators, professionals and communities. NETS Victoria thanks them for sharing their knowledge, cultural expressions and stories. Director of NETS Victoria Claire Watson says “NETS Victoria’s vision for reconciliation is …

NETS Victoria’s Exhibition Development Fund is now open! 

NETS Victoria’s Exhibition Development Fund (EDF) provides seed funding to research and develop new, curated exhibitions of contemporary visual arts, craft and design. 

Projects may be entirely research and development and/or include a public outcome (such as staging the exhibition in a single venue or online, and/or producing an exhibition catalogue). The program aims to increase representation of First Nations artists and curators, showcase new and diverse voices, and build capacity of artists, curators, applicants and audiences. 

All projects must be developed with the intention to tour the exhibition in partnership with NETS Victoria. NETS Victoria is the peak body …

JOIN THE TEAM! 

JOIN THE TEAM AT NETS VICTORIA!

We are looking for a First Nations Engagement Coordinator to join the team at NETS Victoria. 

The successful applicant will work collaboratively with the NETS Victoria team. This role is only open to Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.

FIRST NATIONS ENGAGEMENT COORDINATOR 

CONTRACT: Part Time 0.4-0.6 FTE – 12 months fixed term

(2-3 days, 15.2 – 22.8 hours per week) 

The First Nations Engagement Coordinator supports the development and presentation of an outstanding program of First Nations content. This position is responsible for liaising with First Nations artists and supporting the …

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Introduction

The exhibition One foot on the ground, one foot in the water and the accompanying catalogue offer an opportunity to consider artists’ perspectives on experiences that are both commonplace and unknowable.

In conceptualising and developing the project, La Trobe Art Institute Curator Travis Curtin tests what art and writing can do to illuminate our understanding of mourning, grief and loss. At a time when many of us are experiencing complex feelings about the fragility of life, Travis asks how an art exhibition can offer new insights into death and dying. A key curatorial …

Foreword

NETS Victoria is extremely honored to support a national tour of La Trobe Art Institute’s unique exhibition One foot on the ground, one foot in the water, curated by Travis Curtin.

The first iteration of the exhibition received assistance fromNETS Victoria’s Exhibition Development Fund 2020, supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria. We are proud to further this relationship as a touring body with support from the Australia Council for the Arts.

In its careful consideration of the ways we mourn, we celebrate life and all of its associated changes, this exhibition is a poignant …

Art Guide Podcast with Polly Stanton out now

NETS Victoria is partnering with Art Guide Australia for a series of three podcasts connected to the Notions of Care exhibition.

In the final podcast episode of the ‘Notions of Care’ series, hear from Polly Stanton on how culture and nature reflect one another. Stanton takes us through her process of working in the landscape, and how it’s not about romanticising the environment but about understanding the world in non-didactic ways. And for someone whose work deals directly with human effects on the environment, and with ever-growing climate change threat, Stanton tells us how she feels about the future.

Listen to this …

Art Guide Podcast with Katie West out now

NETS Victoria is partnering with Art Guide Australia for a series of three podcasts connected to the Notions of Care exhibition.

In the second episode Katie West talks about dyeing textiles, creating spaces of meditation, and facing experiences of racism—all in a conversation centered on care and creating.

Listen to this episode here. …

NETS Victoria welcomes new board member: Rhynah Subrun

NETS Victoria is delighted to welcome new board member Rhynah Subrun.

Rhynah Subrun is an environmental sustainability professional with experience across a range of areas: policy development, program management, governance and reporting, legislative reform, planning and impact assessment, funding and sustainable procurement. She has worked for government, private and international organisations both in Australia and Mauritius.

Rhynah spent her childhood in Zimbabwe and teenage years in Mauritius. She completed her undergraduate and postgraduate studies at the Australian National University in Canberra, specialising in environmental law, management and business.

Rhynah is passionate about multiculturalism and promotion of intercultural competency, particularly in …

Art Guide Podcast with Kate Tucker out now

NETS Victoria is partnering with Art Guide Australia for a series of three podcasts connected to the Notions of Care exhibition.

In the first episode, hear from artist Kate Tucker on creating to explain these times, in conversation with Tiarney Miekus. Tucker talks about what care means to her, and what it means to approach an art practice with care. Together with Miekus, she also talks about detaching from external notions of success, how and why she creates her works, and the importance of having aesthetic experiences.

Listen to this episode here. …

Rhynah Subrun

Rhynah Subrun is an environmental sustainability professional with experience across a range of areas: policy development, program management, governance and reporting, legislative reform, planning and impact assessment, funding and sustainable procurement. She has worked for government, private and international organisations both in Australia and Mauritius.

Rhynah spent her childhood in Zimbabwe and teenage years in Mauritius. She completed her undergraduate and postgraduate studies at the Australian National University in Canberra, specialising in environmental law, management and business.

Rhynah is passionate about multiculturalism and promotion of intercultural competency, particularly in the workplace and as part of organisational service delivery.…

Art Guide Podcast with Eugenia Lim out now

NETS Victoria is partnering with Art Guide for a series of three podcasts around the Conflated exhibition.

The third and final episode features Eugenia Lim in discussion with Tiarney Miekus on togetherness in divisive times. At a moment where politics and individuals feel increasingly divided, Eugenia Lim creates videos, film and installations that look beyond divisiveness, capitalism and exploitation, to forefront the power of collectivity.

Listen Here…

Congratulations to ACCA

Congratulations to ACCA for the successful submission for NETS Victoria’s Exhibition Development Fund Grant to tour the Yalingwa Exhibition. We had a very successful and strong round in 2021 (including this project which was rolled into 2022) and we thank all applicants for their hard work.

Yalingwa is visual arts initiative designed to support the development of outstanding contemporary First Peoples art and curatorial practice, with a primary focus on South East Australian First Peoples artists within a national context.

ACCA and NETS are excited to work with Jessica Clark, the curator of Yalingwa 2023 – an independent …

NETS Victoria welcomes new board member: Nicole Monteiro

NETS Victoria is delighted to welcome new board member Nicole Monteiro.

Nicole is an arts management professional, with over 22 years’ experience in Exhibitions Management. She joined the National Gallery of Victoria in 2000 and has overseen the delivery of hundreds of exhibitions, including the NGV Triennial and Melbourne Winter Masterpiece exhibitions, as well as the annual Architecture Commissions. Nicole manages the exhibitions program at both NGV Australia, NGV International and the NGV touring program. She oversees the Exhibitions Management and Exhibition & Collections Operations departments and is on the NGV Environmental Committee, and the Disability Access Committee. She has …

NETS Victoria welcomes new board member: Joshua White

NETS Victoria is delighted to welcome new board member Joshua White.

Joshua White is the Gallery Director of Hamilton Gallery. He has more than 13 years’ experience working within the cultural sector as a curator, strategic lead, registrar, and conservator. Recent cultural projects include hosting the National Gallery of Australia’s touring exhibition, Skywhales: Every Heart Sings by Patricia Piccinini and developing Hamilton Gallery’s 60th anniversary publication and exhibition in collaboration with leading industry scholars and curators.

Prior to taking up the role at Hamilton Gallery in 2020, Joshua was an Urban and Public Art Project Leader at Lake Macquarie City …

Art Guide Podcast with David Cross out now

NETS Victoria is partnering with Art Guide for a series of three podcasts around the Conflated exhibition.

The second episode with David Cross discusses inflatables, experiment and precarity. Cross talks with Tiarney Miekus about how he became interested in inflatables, what he’s showing for Conflated, and his aspiration to create works that are at once playful without being contrived. As an academic and professor in art schools, Cross also talks about art school models and the push and pull between experimentation and precarity, as well as the professionalism of the art world.

Listen Here…

Notions of Care

Art Guide Podcast with Zoë Bastin out now

NETS Victoria is partnering with Art Guide for a series of three podcasts around the Conflated exhibition.

The first episode with exhibition co-curator Zoë Bastin is available to listen now. Bastin talks with Tiarney Miekus about the ideas behind Conflated—both as an exhibition and a concept—as well as how she began dancing at an incredibly young age, how dance can be a gendered form, and what transformative possibilities Bastin looks to beyond this. They also talk about queer politics, shame, how bodies are objectified in art and life, and Bastin’s advice to younger artists.

Listen Here…

Conflated now on tour

When we inhale and exhale, our bodies transform through the process of inflation and deflation. Drawing on the inflatable form as both material and metaphor, Conflated brings disparate artists together to explore bodies, environments and cultures through contemporary art. Here, the cycle of breathing serves as a framework through which a wide array of experiences, behaviours and expressions are examined. The artists featured investigate the possibilities of the inflatable through …

CONTESTED AIR

Three years ago, co-curators Zoë Bastin and Claire Watson had a spark of an idea. Born from a desire to imagine alternate ways to embed sustainable practices into the logistical and curatorial framework of exhibition making, Zoë and Claire imagined a group exhibition based on the theme and processes of inflation. If artworks could literally be inflated and deflated for each showing, one could save packing space and thus the prohibitive freighting costs that typically accompany major touring exhibition. Moreover, for the team at NETS Victoria, who handle major logistical challenges of …

Essay

Nicole Monteiro

Nicole is an arts management professional, with over 22 years’ experience in Exhibitions Management. She joined the National Gallery of Victoria in 2000 and has overseen the delivery of hundreds of exhibitions, including the NGV Triennial and Melbourne Winter Masterpiece exhibitions, as well as the annual Architecture Commissions. Nicole manages the exhibitions program at both NGV Australia, NGV International and the NGV touring program. She oversees the Exhibitions Management and Exhibition & Collections Operations departments and is on the NGV Environmental Committee, and the Disability Access Committee. She has previously served as the NGV representative on the Board of the …

Conflated

When we inhale and exhale, our bodies transform through the process of inflation and deflation. Drawing on the inflatable form as both material and metaphor, Conflated brings disparate artists together to explore bodies, environments and cultures through contemporary art. Here, …

Introduction

NETS Victoria is pleased to partner with TarraWarra Museum of Art to support the tour of WILAM BIIK across Victoria.  Curated by Wurundjeri, Dja Dja  Wurrung and Ngurai illum-Wurrung woman Stacie Piper, WILAM BIIK celebrates the continuous connection between the First Peoples of South East Australia, their Country and their Ancestors.  

First shown at TarraWarra Museum of Art in 2021, WILAM BIIK explores the artists nuanced perceptions of ‘Home Country’ through ten new commissions.

Showcasing new works by Dr Paola Balla (Wemba Wemba & Gunditjmara), Dr Deane Gilson (Waddawurrung), Kent Morris (Barkinji), master weaver Glenda …

Risk Assessment and Management—for Exhibition Content

The resource will assist you in developing a plan for identifying risk, put in place strategies to mitigate potential offence and provide advice on how to manage situations that may arise.

This resource deals exclusively with developing a risk management plan for the …

Curatorial Resources

NETS Victoria has supported a range of professional development seminars including The Curatorial Intensive in collaboration with PGAV. Below is a link to the 2020 iteration which was held online.

Together with M&GNSW we have produced the Risk Assessment and Management for Exhibition Content. The link below will lead you to resources that will assist you in developing a risk management strategy for exhibitions.

We also support the development and publication of tools and resources including the book Travelling Exhibitions: A …

Share the love and donate to NETS Victoria ?

In 2022 we seek your support to enable us to continue to deliver diverse exhibitions to the regional sector and to ensure we provide a culturally safe environment for the independent artists and curators we work with.  

Within an environment of decreasing public funding to our organisation, we are seeking your help to continue providing high quality exhibitions to regional gallery spaces. As an organisation of 2.4 equivalent full-time staff, in 2021 we toured 13 exhibitions which included 216 artists to 15 destinations across Australia. This included prioritising First Nations artists as well as artists who identify as culturally and linguistically …

James Nguyen

B. 1982, Bảo Lộc, Việt NamLives and works in Melbourne/Naarm, AustraliaPronouns: he/him

James Nguyen works with short-form documentaries, sculpture and experimental collaborations. Together with friends, colleagues and family, he creates conversations around representational refusal, the diasporic absurd and risk. Nguyen also has a PhD in broken languages, an MFA in the cinematic body, a Bachelor of Pharmacy and was a collaborative fellow at UnionDocs, Centre for Documentary Art. He has exhibited his works in many exhibitions both nationally and internationally.…

David Cross

B. 1968, Melbourne/Naarm, AustraliaLives and works in Melbourne/Naarm, AustraliaPronouns: he/him

David Cross is an artist, curator and writer. His practice extends across performance, installation, sculpture, public art and video. Known for his examination of risk, pleasure and participation, Cross often utilises inflatable structures to negotiate inter-personal exchange. He has performed at numerous international live art festivals, and has developed multiple large-scale public art commissions. As a curator and public art facilitator, Cross has worked with a broad range of artists and writes regularly on contemporary art for international publications. With Alison Currie he was a finalist in the 2020 Keir …

Andy Butler

B. 1987, Kalgoorlie/Karlkurla, Western AustraliaLives and works in Melbourne/Naarm, AustraliaPronouns: he/him

Andy Butler is an artist, writer and curator. He makes performances, paintings, installations and videos that reflect on the ways we navigate inherited structures of power, with an especially keen interest in the dynamics of white saviourism in the West and its links to legacies of colonialism. He has exhibited work at Bus Projects, Firstdraft, The Substation and Footscray Community Arts Centre. In 2019 he undertook an Asialink residency to Manila, Philippines. Recent independent curatorial projects include Always there and all a part (2017) through BLINDSIDE’s inaugural Emerging Curator …

Eugenia Lim

B. 1981, Melbourne/Naarm, AustraliaLives and works in Melbourne/Naarm, AustraliaPronouns: she/her

Eugenia Lim is an Australian artist of Chinese-Singaporean descent who works across body, lens, social and spatial practice to explore how national identities, migration and capital cut, divide and bond our interdependent world. Often a performer within her own works, Lim invents personas to explore the tensions of the individual within society. Lim has exhibited, screened or performed at exhibitions and festivals all around the world, and has been artist-in-residence with the Experimental Television Centre in New York, Bundanon Trust, 4A Beijing Studio and Gertrude Contemporary. She was the recent winner …

Zoë Bastin

B. 1992, Melbourne/Naarm, AustraliaLives and works in Melbourne/Naarm, AustraliaPronouns: she/her

Zoë Bastin is an artist. Her expanded choreographic practice considers exhibition, installation, publication and performance as part of the same political project – the reorganisation of societal structures that limit bodies.

Zoë considers situations, movements and objects as connected in artistic production, her projects operate within academic, gallery, theatre and public art realms traversing artistic modes. This practice emerged during visual art studies (BFA, Hons) considering the sculptural potential of the physical body. She studied, then later taught, at Mangala Studios in Carlton, an important site in the lineage of …

Christopher Langton

B. 1954, Johannesburg, South AfricaArrived Australia 1973Lives and works in Melbourne/Naarm, AustraliaPronouns: he/him

Christopher Langton is a Melbourne based sculptor who graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts in 1993. His large-scale forms and installations are constructed using a variety of mediums including hard and soft plastics, polyurethanes, polyesters and silicone. He also incorporates found objects into the forms that he meticulously shapes and paints by hand. A major part of his oeuvre has been the creation of large-scale inflatable and rigid plastic sculptures. Using toys for inspiration, he changes the scale and by doing so subverts the object’s …

Amrita Hepi with Honey Long and Prue Stent 

Bundjulung and Ngapuhi PeoplesB. 1989, Townsville, Bundjulung/Ngapuhi territories, Queensland, AustraliaLives and works in Melbourne/Naarm, AustraliaPronouns: she/her

Amrita Hepi is an award-winning artist working with dance and choreography through performance, photography, video, installation and objects. Utilising hybridity and the extension of choreographic or performative practices, Hepi creates work that considers the body’s relationship to personal histories, site and the archive, actively using participation. 

Amrita Hepi is represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne.

B. 1993, Sydney/Eora Nation, AustraliaLives and works in Melbourne/Naarm, AustraliaPronouns: she/her

B. 1993, Sydney/Eora Nation, AustraliaLives and works in Melbourne/Naarm, AustraliaPronouns: she/her

Honey …

A new billboard in Horsham provides a moment of rest between a jump – or is it a fall? 

A new billboard featuring the work of First Nations artist Amrita Hepi is being installed at 66 McPherson St, Horsham, on display from 9 May to 31 July 2022. 

First Nations artist Amrita Hepi, in partnership with Horsham Regional Art Gallery, presents a dynamic roadside encounter titled Aint no body. Featuring tiled images of her body in motion, the work responds to the “commercial idealisation of the black body” by appropriating …

Amrita Hepi

Amrita Hepi (b. 1989, Townsville of Bundjulung/Ngapuhi territories) is an award winning artist. Her practice is concerned with dance as a social function performed within galleries, performance spaces, video art and digital technologies. She engages in forms of historical fiction and hybridity —especially those that arise under empire— to investigate the bodies’ relationship to personal histories and archive.

She was on the forbes list of 30 under 30, has won the people’s choice award twice as part of the prestigious for Keir Choreographic award, and her favourite: FBi radio’s Artist of the year in 2019.

Amrita is represented by Anna …

Amrita Hepi — Ain’t no body

First Nations artist Amrita Hepi, in partnership with Horsham Regional Art Gallery, presents a dynamic roadside encounter titled Aint no body. Featuring tiled images of her body in motion, the work responds to the “commercial idealisation of the black body” by appropriating the aesthetics of a typical sports or dance advertisement. The promises that such advertisements sell – promises of perfectionism and success as liberation – are, as Hepi puts it, ultimately a …

Acknowledgements

WILAM BIIK is a TarraWarra Museum of Art exhibition touring with NETS Victoria, curated by Stacie Piper.The exhibition is supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria.TarraWarra Museum of Art, NETS Victoria, and the artists and curators in Wilam Biik respectfully acknowledge and celebrate the continuing culture of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders across Australia.

TOURING PARTNER

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Preface

As a Wurundjeri, Dja Dja Wurrung and Ngurai Illum Wurrung curator, I see my key role as being a storyteller and a story facilitator, connecting past and present, and allowing the continuity between them to show through. This is the story of how WILAM BIIK came to be.

When I was appointed by TarraWarra Museum of Art as the First Nations Curator for the second iteration of Yalingwa back in May 2019, I knew the next two years were going to be a journey of growth and challenges. I was already in a role at Bunjilaka …

Foreword

WILAM BIIK is the second exhibition to be presented as part of Yalingwa, a Victorian Government initiative. Yalingwa is a partnership between the Victorian Government, the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) and TarraWarra Museum of Art, designed to support the development of outstanding contemporary Indigenous art and curatorial practice. It includes three new curatorial positions and three major exhibitions alternating between ACCA and TarraWarra Museum of Art, focused on new commissions by contemporary Indigenous artists.

This exhibition is part of our Museum’s long-term commitment to exhibit and commission work by First Peoples artists …

Welcome to Country

I begin by paying respect to all Ancestors, Elders and communities across this great continent and indeed our neighbouring islands. Each of our communities have their own way of welcoming people to Country. The Wurundjeri are known as the Manna Gum people and for us it is about the beautiful eucalypt leaf that was used in traditional ceremony. But it’s important to say, that right now there’s not enough moisture in those leaves and we’re losing the beautiful koala. What have we done to this Earth? What are we going to continue to do to …

HEALING COUNTRY

Uncle Dave Wandin is a Director of Wandoon Estate Aboriginal Station, the Wurundjeri Corporations Manager of Cultural Practices (Fire & Water) and a recognised leader in both the promotion and execution of cultural burns in Victoria. In 2018, he was instrumental in the award- winning Firestick Project, a Wurundjeri-led program, supported by Yarra Ranges Council and the State Government. Working with Dixons Creek Primary School in the Yarra Ranges, the project provided an opportunity for students to learn about traditional fire-practices …

WILAM BIIK

WILAM BIIK is an exhibition arising from the unsevered connection between First Peoples of South East Australia, their Country, and their Ancestors. In the Woiwurrung language of the Wurundjeri people, Wilam Biik means ‘Home Country’. Wilam Biik is the Soil, the Land, the Water, the Air, the Sky and the Animals that reside within. It is the only home we know, and we revere it for its sacred exchange. A home where custodial rights and responsibilities have never been ceded. The First Nations people of the South East Australian region are a part of Communities and …

CROSSING COUNTRY WHILE STANDING STILL — OUR BELONGINGS

On an average day in my work in collections at Melbourne Museum I travel across the state of Victoria. I weave from the Wurundjeri Country of Healesville, to my own Yorta Yorta Country of Echuca. I cross rivers and mountains to the high Country of the Taungurung and cross the bay to the beaches of Wathaurong/Waddawurrung Country. I traverse the peninsular of Boonwurrung and Bunurong Country and sit amongst the rolling hills of Dja …

Lewis Wandin-Bursill

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Rhiannon Williams

…

One foot on the ground, one foot in the water

140 page colour catalogue to accompany touring exhibition for ‘One foot on the ground, one foot in the water’. Featuring Foreword/Introduction by NETS Victoria and Latrobe Art Institute, Essay by Curator Travis Curtin, stories and interviews in Gija & English with Mabel Juli, Tiwi & English with Pedro Wonaeamirri, Yolŋu & English with Wukun Wanambi and Yinimala Gumana, Catalogue of works in the exhibition, artists’ biographies and detailed photos.

…

Videos

Curator’s Introduction

Home is more than a place pairs artworks from the collection of Hamilton Gallery with works by contemporary Australian artists to broadly consider the meaning of home as both an external and internal experience.

The exhibition was borne out of the collective experience of lockdown during 2020 (‘stay at home’), but is also inspired by the history of Hamilton Gallery which began as a private collection in the homestead of Herbert and May Shaw. Together, the 15 pairings of artworks reflect everyday comforts and joys, but also comments on broader questions about belonging, migration, and the precariousness …

CLOUD CHAMBER

HP Your ongoing project in collaboration with Lisa Radford, The Image is Not Nothing (Concrete Archives) (2019–ongoing), aims to ‘experience the physicality of loss and how it has been built into brutalist monuments that commemorate genocide and/or nuclear destruction,’ and asks: is the representation of large-scale and unacknowledged violence too large to depict?2 I don’t know if you have an answer to that, or if you ever will, or even intend to.

YS I’ve been researching memorials since I started my practice as an …

HEARTSTRING

HP String is a recurring motif or reference in your works and, as Geraldine Barlow observes, when ‘one fibre joins another; fragile threads are made stronger when entwined. Women are traditionally the string-makers. Fibres are rolled up and down the leg to bind them together, with the small hairs being picked up and becoming a part of the string.’1 It seems that this is also a way of understanding your artistic practice, and how your own personal story becomes part of your family’s history.

JW String is not just vegetable fibre, it …

LOOKING GLASS: JUDY WATSON AND YHONNIE SCARCE

At its heart, this exhibition of …

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Foreword

NETS Victoria is delighted to partner with Bus Projects to present Notions of Care.

Notions of Care explores the myriad ways in which art and nurture are connected. The exhibition invites audience to rest their bodies and their minds, to pause, and to contemplate the unique works created by Arini Byng, Renae Coles & Anna Dunnill (Snapcat), Polly Stanton, Kate Tucker and Katie West.

The concept of care is one that is especially pertinent today. Exploring the ways in which we show care as well as who and what we care for, provides the very basis for considering …

Introduction

From climate emergencies to novel viruses, to carefully respond to the many multiple and overlapping crises occurring at this moment is a weighted undertaking that we as creative practitioners continue to grapple with.

In Notions of Care works by artists Arini Byng, Renae Coles and Anna Dunnill (Snapcat), Polly Stanton, Kate Tucker and Katie West ask us to consider not only how to care at this moment. They also invite us to pay attention to care and its contours, its messiness and its hierarchies, its priorities and marginalisations — and, as First Nations people have long recognised and …

Foreword

Looking Glass: Judy Watson and Yhonnie Scarce has arisen from an invitation to TarraWarra Museum of Art from Jonathan Watkins, Director, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, to collaborate on an exhibition of leading contemporary Aboriginal artists. We invited Arrernte and Kalkadoon curator Hetti Perkins to be the curatorial advisor for the project and she proposed Waanyi artist Judy Watson and Yhonnie Scarce from the Kokatha and Nukunu peoples, two of Australia’s most lyrical, poignant and innovative artists. While the global pandemic has caused all manner of disruptions, this exhibition has evolved …

Never; a little of the time; some of the time; most of the time; always

Beth’s favourite colour is Torrit Grey. Torrit Grey is a paint colour made by Gamblin, a paint manufacturer. It is a combination of all their other pigments. Every spring, according to Gamblin’s website, the air filtration system is cleaned and pigment dust harvested. The resulting colour is released in celebration of Earth Day.

On Earth Day we all make garlands for our hair and decorate the house with flowers and spring produce. Here is a basket of broccoli! Here is a bunch of …

The Spectral Field

It’s early evening and the summer sun still burns the ground below. The hard pink surface of the lake gleams and the air is dry and warm. This is Maligundidj country, the unceded land of the Wergaia peoples. A country now situated within the so-called Murray Sunset National Park in Victoria’s distant northwest; an expansive region formed in 1979 that covers over half a million hectares of earth, salt, scrub and sky. The wind has dropped, and the surrounding countryside has fallen quiet; only the persistent sound of flies punctuates the stillness. The shoreline of the …

Pockets to hold things we’ve been holding

In 17th- and 18th-century Europe, pockets weren’t incor- porated into women’s clothes. Instead, women would wear a pair of pockets—a separate garment that tied on under the dress and petticoat. These were usually tear- drop-shaped with a slit down the middle, and were often intricately embroidered, despite being hidden by outer clothes. The historical pockets exist in a liminal space between clothing and underclothing, between practical container and intimate performance object.

Each of the artists in the exhibition entrusted us with a precious object—something they had held on to and that in …

Practicing Care /Making Art

Can I still care and practice art? Or should I stop art and practice care?

Care

Noun

1. the provision of what is necessary for the health, welfare, maintenance, and protection of someone or something: “the care of the elderly”

Synonyms:

Trust, parenting, mothering, fathering, concern, consideration, attention, attentiveness, thought, regard, mind, notice, heed, solicitude, interest, caringness, sympathy, respect, looking after

Antonyms:

Neglect, disregard

Verb

1. feel concern or interest; attach importance to something: “they don’t care about human life”

2. look after and provide for the needs of: “he has numerous animals to …

Steven Rhall

Taungurung PeopleB. 1974, Waddawurrung Country, AustraliaLives and works on Wadawurrung Country, AustraliaPronouns: he/him

T

Steven Rhall is a post-conceptual artist operating from a First Nations, white-passing, cis male positionality. Rhall’s interdisciplinary practice responds to the intersectionality of First Nations art practice and the Western art canon. He interrogates modes of representation, classification and hierarchy using installation, performance, process-led methodologies, ‘curatorial’ projects, sculpture, and via public and private interventions. He is a PhD candidate at Monash University on Birrarung-ga land, Melbourne, Australia.

Steven Rhall is represented by MARS Gallery.…

Provoking questions: Artist Steven Rhall’s Billboard 

Mildura Arts Centre is pleased to support First Nations artist Steven Rhall’s public artwork at 52 Seventh Street, Mildura. His billboard Ideas of First Nations art practice and late capitalism is on display from 19 March until 5 June 2022. 

Featured artist: Steven Rhall 

Curated by Jenna Rain Warwick, Ideas of First Nations art practice and late capitalism, a public roadside artwork by Steven Rhall draws on both its …

Preface

NETS Victoria, in partnership with Benalla Art Gallery, are pleased to present In and of this place, an online catalogue exhibition curated by interdependent curator Jessica Clark (palawa) as part of the 50/50 exhibition series.

Instigated as an online exhibition with the physical and travel limitations that COVID-19 brought, 50/50 is an innovative exhibition series that sees curators partnered with a regional gallery to explore their existing collection. Jessica Clark’s exploration of Benalla Art Gallery’s Collection demonstrates fresh perspectives on their large Australian landscape collection.

In and of this place features …

In and of this place

Every work of art painted in response to Country signifies at least two things, human presence and perception. As a particular convention in Western art history, the term landscape is typically defined as a representation of scenery in the ‘scope or range of vision 2’ of an artist’s point of view. In reality however, an artist’s work in response to their surroundings, is so much more than a mere representation of the landforms and features that cover the earth’s surface.

The history …

Acknowledgements

This exhibition project has been planned, researched, and developed on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation. As the curator, I acknowledge and pay my respect to their Elders past, present and emerging, and extend that respect to the wide-ranging traditional lands on which the included artists live, work and create.

I encourage you to take a moment to also acknowledge the Country on which you are currently viewing this exhibition from today.

Curated by Jessica Clark

Benalla Art Gallery, NETS Victoria, and the artists and curator of ‘In and of this place’ …

Essays

Artists

Foreword

With works spanning three centuries, the Benalla Art Gallery Collection invites consideration and appreciation of both the natural and cultivated Australian landscape.

The Collection provides an insight into the infinite potential of the landscape. From the sparing and ominous rural setting depicted in Charles Blackman’s Landscape, Avonsleigh; to Lorna Chick’s Wooleen from a helicopter – inviting our bodies and spirits to soar; to William Robinson’s enveloping, shifting, mesmerising depiction of the untouched Mount Tamborine; we begin to understand the limitless diversity of the landscape itself, of how we may connect and engage with it, …

Lisa Waup — Journeyed

By taking the gallery to the roadside, Billboards responds to the new ways audiences experience art in the public space. Mixed-cultural First Peoples multidisciplinary artist Lisa Waup’s work Journeyed presents a detailed and visual account of a journey. Using large scale screen-prints of disassembled road signs, the artwork considers the motifs of travel, and questions government jurisdiction on the unceded land of this country. Journeyed spans space and time, navigating the dead ends, closed roads and prohibited zones …

WILAM BIIK to tour throughout Victoria

We’re excited to announce that WILAM BIIK will tour to four venues throughout Victoria.

In the Woiwurrung language of the Wurundjeri people, Wilam Biik means Home Country. 

How do we see Country?  How do we listen to Country? How do we connect to Country? 

You are called to listen deeply with your ears, eyes and hearts– to understand how First …

Paola Balla

Wemba Wemba & GunditijmaraBorn 1974, Narrm/MelbourneLives and works in Narrm/Melbourne

Dr Paola Balla is a Wemba-Wemba & Gunditjmara artist, curator, writer & academic who focuses on Aboriginal women’s resistance, art & stories. Her work is published in Freize (UK), Oceania, Etchings Indigenous, Writers Victoria, SBS, NITV, Metro Magazine & Cordite Poetry. In 2018, she co-edited Blak Brow, Blak women’s edition, The Lifted Brow & in 2021 co-edited Artlink Indigenous; Visualising Sovereignty with Dr Ali Gumillya Baker. Paola co-curated Sovereignty (2016) & Unfinished Business, perspectives on art and feminism, (2017) ACCA. Most recently her art was shown in Wilam Biik, (2021), …

Kim Wandin

Wurundjeri/Woi-wurrungBorn 1958Lives and works on Wurundjeri Country, Yarra Valley, Victoria

Kim Wandin is a Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung woman living in Healesville in the Yarra Valley. Her traditional name is Wandoon’ which means ‘spirits of the water’. Wandin is a basket and eel trap maker collecting reeds and other fibre plants on Country. The art of using reeds to make eel traps and baskets is a tradition handed down to Wandin by her Nana Ollie who was taught by Granny Jemima at Coranderrk Aboriginal Station.Wandin plays an important role in conserving the traditions, lores, language and stories of her Ancestors. She is …

Djirri Djirri Wurundjeri Woman’s Dance Group

Dancers include Wurundjeri, Dja Dja wurrung, Ngurai illum-wurrungFormed in 2013

The Djirri Djirri Wurundjeri Women’s Dance Group is the only female dance group entirely made up of Wurundjeri descendants. Djirri Djirri means Willy Wagtail in Woiwurrung, the language of Wurundjeri people, who are the Traditional Owners of Greater Melbourne and surrounds. The Djirri Djirri dancers are all related by blood through one Wurundjeri descendant, Annie Borate, the sister of Aboriginal leader, artist and activist William Barak.

The Djirri Djirri Wurundjeri Women’s Dance Group was officially formed in 2013 by founding member Mandy Nicholson who has continued as the lead singer …

Arika Waulu

Koolyn, Gunnai, Djap Wurrung, Peek Wurrung, Dhauwurd Wurrung Born 1985, Narrm/MelbourneLives and works in Narrm/Melbourne

Arika Waulu’s body of work (in WILAM BIIK) upholds the social practice of the Blak Matriarchal laws, connections with their grandmothers, mothers, aunties and siblings. Expressing contemporary interpretations of design and art, Waulu works predominantly with digital media, photography, object design, community activation and indigenising spaces. Their formations honour the continuation of their Ancestral methods of creating design to honour landscapes and waterways for their sustenance. The backbone of their practice has been the re-establishment of the Kanak/digging stick and the ongoing development of their …

Nannette Shaw

Tyereelore, Trawoolway and Boonwurrung/BunurongBorn 1953, Launceston, TasmaniaLives and works in Tasmania

Nannette Shaw is a Tyereelore Elder from Tasmania, who also has ties to the Boonwurrung/Bunurong people of southern Victoria. Shaw is a traditional kelp worker, basket weaver and shell stringer following the traditions of her ancestors. From the age of three, Shaw lived on Flinders Island in the Bass Strait with her immediate and extended family. After living away for 30 years, Shaw returned to Tasmania and has reconnected with her people and heritage while learning many cultural practices from Elders in her community.Shaw has developed her skills and …

Glenda Nicholls

Ngarrindjeri and Yorta YortaBorn 1954, Wemba Wemba and Waddi Waddi Country, north-western VictoriaLives and works in Swan Hill region, Victoria

Glenda Nicholls is a multi-clanned Ngarrindjeri and Yorta Yorta artist who makes net sculptures using weaving techniques passed on from her ancestors. Her cultural name is Jule Yarra Minj (‘little river girl’) and her maternal totem is the Writcharuki (willy-willy wagtail), a totem of the great Ngarrindjeri nation. Nicholls’ elaborate sculptural works reflect her family storyline, connecting the present with her ancestral past, embedded with her knowledge of the waterways, plants and grasses on her Country. Nicholl’s work acknowledges the …

Kent Morris

BarkindjiBorn: 1964, Bindal and Wulgurukaba Country, TownsvilleLives and works on Yauk-ut Weelam Country, Melbourne

Kent Morris is an artist of Barkindji and Irish heritage living on Yauk-ut Weelam Country in Melbourne. 

Central themes in his art practice are the connections between contemporary Indigenous experience and contemporary cultural practices and their continuation and evolution. His photography practice reveals the continued presence and patterns of Aboriginal history, knowledge and culture in the contemporary Australian landscape. Through digital photographic processes, Morris engages audiences by manipulating technological structures and nature into new forms that reflect Indigenous knowledge systems and cultural continuity since time immemorial.

The intertwining of …

Deanne Gilson

WadawurrungBorn 1967, Melbourne, VictoriaLives and works in Ballarat, Victoria

Dr Deanne Gilson is a proud Wadawurrung emerging Elder and a multi-media visual artist. The Wadawurrung Creation Story is the beginning point for all of her cultural artworks. The Creation narrative extends to the elements of Earth, Air, Fire and Water as well as portraying the six Kulin seasons, the sky Country, and under Country. In her paintings, time is traversed through multiple layers of cultural memory, incorporating experiences from both before and after colonisation.

Gilson uses the process of artmaking as an extension of Ancestral ceremony, allowing her to draw …

Artist Lisa Waup’s Billboard: a sign to question 

Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery is pleased to support mixed-cultural First Peoples multidisciplinary artist Lisa Waup. Her billboard Journeyed is on display at 2061 Frankston-Flinders Road Hastings VIC 3915 until 8 May 2022. 

Curated by Jenna Rain Warwick, Journeyed, a public roadside artwork by Lisa Waup, considers the significance of the ubiquitous roadside sign. As these signs direct movement on the unceded sovereign lands of First Peoples, whose authority do they rely upon?  

Journeyed is the first of three regional Victorian public art billboards, …

Bäpurru

Yinimala Gumana When someone has passed away, family or relatives participate in Yolŋu ceremonial way, the deceased person goes back to where they come from or where they are coming from and that’s why Yolŋu, every family or relative goes and participates in ceremony.

Kade McDonald So when you say ‘where they come from’ do you mean their ceremonial place?

YG Yes ceremonial place, like from every significant place where they have promised land.

KM When you are talking about the family and the community response, are we talking about the fact …

Manikay: the song knows the destination

Death is related to life, life is related to death. The manikay (sacred song) is related to the Country. It doesn’t matter if you are gapu (water) Country or land Country, the manikay belongs to that place. If we sing about water, we can connect the people to that place.

We can know where it [manikay] comes from.

We can complete the whole manikay cycle with the Bäpurru (funeral). How do we know the story? Through the songline.

We can say: this song is about the wind and this …

Pukumani

When a Tiwi person dies, a time called Pukumani begins. At the start there is a smoking ceremony to cleanse areas where the person lived and worked; the funeral when the body is buried; then after some time a small ceremony to start …

Purukuparli story

A long time ago before there were many people on earth, there was a place called Yimpinari, on the eastern side of Melville Island. On this place there lived a small family: Purukuparli, Waiyai and Jinani. Purukuparli’s brother Japarra was staying not …

Garn’giny Ngarranggarni

Well this the Dreamtime story about Wardal and Garn’giny (star and moon). That’s what my mother and dad told me about that Dreamtime thing.

“Garn’giny ngelmang roord-ngarri nginji.The moon sits in the east.

Wardal dal gerloorr ngarrgalen.The star sits on top of the hills.

Laarne berdij nginiyi danyi garn’giny.The moon went and climbed that hill.

Wijige-ngarri ngoorramangbe-ngiyiwa thamboorroo-gal.They made him run away because he loved his mother-in-law.(That moon loved his mother in-law, but they told him he couldn’t love her and to go away.)

Ganybelgbe nginini.…

Garn’giny, death and rebirth

Mabel Juli Jarrag-jarrag ngenarn-noo garn’giny ngarranggarniny. Nginyjiny garn’giny jarrag ngenarn-noo ngarranggarniny. Ngagenyji ngajiny, ngarranggarniny. He Joowoorroo, I call em brother.

I am talking about the Dreamtime moon story. I am talking about this Dreamtime moon. I say for him, ‘This moon is a Dreamtime, and I’m talking for him.’ My brother, a Dreamtime thing. He is Joowoorroo skin, I call him ‘brother’.

Garlmi nginini goorndarrim. Nginyjiny, goorndarrim garlmi wanemayinde, yilag, Garn’gin ngenengga yilag Darrajayin, yilag. Place called Garn’gi again.

He was catching fish by …

Steven Rhall — Ideas of First Nations art practice and late capitalism

Steven Rhall’s billboard, titled Ideas of First Nation art practice and late capitalism and delivered in partnership with Mildura Arts Centre, draws on both its location and the socio-political context of roadside adverts. Indicative of his practice at large, Rhall’s reinterpretation of the roadside advertisement aesthetic questions the commodification of art and the way it can both appropriate and legitimise First Nations practice. A Taungurung artist and …

Wilam Biik

In the Woiwurrung language of the Wurundjeri people, Wilam Biik means Home Country. 

How do we see Country?  How do we listen to Country? How do we connect to …

Dying, a conversation worth living

We discovered that grief was much more than just despair. We found grief contained many things – happiness, empathy, commonality, sorrow, fury, joy, forgiveness, combativeness, gratitude, awe, and even a certain peace. For us, grief became an attitude, a belief system, a doctrine – a conscious inhabiting of our vulnerable selves, protected and enriched by the absence of the one we loved and that we lost.

[. . .] in time, there is a way, not out of grief, but deep within it.

Nick Cave, The red hand files 95 (May 2020),http://www.theredhandfiles.com/create-meaning-through-devastation

The …

One Foot On The Ground, One Foot In The Water

At a time when many are experiencing complex feelings about the frailty of life and future uncertainty, this exhibition explores the subject of mortality and the inseparable link between life and death. 

 One foot on the …

Nawurapu Wunuŋmurra

Born Miwatj, Northeast Arnhem Land, NT, 1952Died Nhulunbuy, NT, 2018Yolŋu Clan: Dhalwaŋu, Narrkala group  Moiety: YirritjaHomeland: Gurrumuru

Nawurapu Wunuŋmurra was the eldest son of the late Yaŋgarriny Wunuŋmurra, the first Aboriginal artist to have his copyright recognised in an Australian court and the recipient of the prestigious Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award (NATSIAA) first prize in 1997. From an early age Nawurapu assisted his father. As his own spiritual authority increased, he produced works in his own right.

Following his father’s passing, Wunuŋmurra stepped into a senior role with his brothers. His ceremonial responsibilities required him …

Patrick Freddy Puruntatameri

Born Darwin, NT, 1973Lives and works Milikapiti, Melville Island, NTTiwi Skin group: Miyatini (pandanus)Dance: Jurrukukini (owl)Country: Munupi

Patrick Freddy Puruntatameri has contributed to the development of Jilamara Arts and Crafts Association since the late 1980s. Puruntatameri learnt to carve from his father, Paddy Freddy Puruntatameri, a highly respected and renowned carver. His father taught him which timber to use, how to make spears and how to source ochre and make red pigment by heating yellow ochre.  

Puruntatameri is well known for his skilful carvings of his totemJurrukukuni (owl). His works are held in many major collections throughout Australia, including the …

Nell

B. 1975, Maitland / Wonnarua CountryLives and works in Sydney / Eora Nation

Nell’s practice traverses performance, installation, public art, video, painting and sculpture. Her art probes apparent binary oppositions: light and dark, life and death, happiness and sadness, popular culture and the sacred. Nell has developed a distinctive aesthetic and body of iconography over the past two decades. Key themes of her practice include religion, spirituality, philosophy, sex, rebirth, mortality and rock ‘n’ roll, her first and enduring passion. While the extremes of human existence are immediately perceptible in her works, often communicated through a black and white palette, …

Michael Needham

B. 1977, Victor Harbour / Ngarrindjeri CountryLives and works in Kyneton / Taungurung Country

Michael Needham’s practice fuses drawing, object-making and sculptural installation that responds to specific sites and cultural contexts. His work explores myth, belief and residual melancholia in the contemporary psyche, focussing on uncanny sensibilities around mimicry and memorialisation. Needham’s works are often remnants of a corporeality no longer present, mimicking historical forms in unfamiliar contexts as a form of reflective critique.  

Needham’s new work, Monument to Muther [sic] (2020), developed for this exhibition, indicates a critical shift in his methodology. It offers humour as a counterpoint, capable …

Sara Morawetz

B. 1982, Newcastle / MulubinbaLives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

Sara Morawetz is a conceptual artist who uses a range of media to examine the systems and structures that measure experience. Morawetz investigates concepts such as time and distance to explore their physical and emotional potential.

Recent projects involve collaborations with scientists from institutions including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the USA National Institute of Standards and Technology. Her work has been exhibited in Australia and internationally, including at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris; Australian Consulate-General in …

Mabel Juli

GijaSkin group: Nyawurru Ngarranggarni: Emu and EchidnaB. circa 1932, Five Mile, near Moola Boola StationLives and works in Warmun

Mabel Juli is a Gija Elder and senior artist currently working at Warmun Art Centre in the East Kimberley region of Western Australia. Juli is a strong Law and Culture woman and an important ceremonial singer and dancer. 

Juli started painting in the 1980s with the encouragement of celebrated Warmun artists Queenie McKenzie, Madigan Thomas and Rover Thomas. She has created a body of work characterised by bold, minimalist compositions in natural earth pigments and charcoal, depicting subject matter informed by …

French & Mottershead

Rebecca FrenchB. 1973, London, England

Andrew Mottershead B. 1968, Manchester, England 

Live and work in London, England

French & Mottershead are a collaborative artist duo comprising Rebecca French and Andrew Mottershead. Over the past 20 years French & Mottershead have developed a substantial body of site-specific, socially engaged, participatory projects. They create multi-artform experiences that are as playful and poetic as they are subversive, inviting participants to think again about who they are, their ties to place and one another.

French & Mottershead redefine how we relate to familiar locations, making use of detailed social and forensic investigations into the …

Looking Glass Exhibition Catalogue

This richly illustrated 104-page hardback catalogue has been co-published by TarraWarra Museum of Art and NETS Victoria to accompany the exhibition Looking Glass: Judy Watson and Yhonnie Scarce.

As the exhibition curator Hetti Perkins writes in her introductory essay in the catalogue: ‘At its heart, this exhibition of works by Waanyi artist Judy Watson and Yhonnie Scarce from the Kokatha and Nukunu peoples, is simultaneously a love song and a lament for Country; a fantastical alchemy of elemental materiality: of earth, water, fire and air. Watson’s ochres, charcoal and pigments, pooled and washed upon flayed linens, have a natural affinity …

FEM-aFFINITY exhibition catalogue

An 84 page, A4 size, exhibition catalogue accompanying recent national tour FEM-aFFINITY, featuring;

Three First Nations artists commissioned for ‘Billboards’ on tour

We’re excited to announce that three First Nations artists, Amrita Hepi, Steven Rhall and Lisa Waup, are being commissioned to create new work for Billboards in regional Victoria in partnership galleries soon to be announced. Curated by Jenna Rain Warwick, Billboards is born from the emergent ways in which audiences experience art as well as the need to ensure contemporary art continues to …

Notions of Care

Notions of Care explores the ways in which art and nurture are interlinked, through the works of Arini Byng, Snapcat, Polly Stanton, Kate Tucker and Katie West. The exhibition asks questions about the ways that art can care for both viewers and artists. Notions of care are unfolded, cultivated, and enforced.  

Notions of Care is …

NETS Victoria to nationally tour ‘One foot on the ground, one foot in the water’

At a time when many are experiencing complex feelings about the frailty of life and future uncertainty, we are pleased to announce the national tour of the La Trobe Art Institute exhibition One foot on the ground, one foot in the water which turns to the subject of our own mortality.Curated by Travis Curtin, eleven contemporary artists present paintings, sculptures, installations and sound works that invoke experiences of loss, …

Snapcat (Anna Dunnill and Renae Coles)

Snapcat: Anna Dunnill is an artist and writer living in Naarm/Melbourne, and Renae Coles is a Sydney-based artist and arts communicator. Since 2014 Anna and Renae have collaborated as Snapcat, using craft practice and performance to investigate bravery, feminism, collective action and physical endurance. Snapcat projects have taken place on the river (in hand-built boats), on bikes, in football fields, in the form of protests and parades, and most recently via the post. Snapcat has presented performances and exhibitions in Perth, Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbaneand Newcastle. The performance work The Lightning Furies, presented at Newcastle’s This Is Not Art (TINA) …

Polly Stanton

Polly Stanton is an artist and filmmaker. Her films and installations focus on contested sites and extraction zones, presenting landscape as a politically charged field of negotiation, entangled with history, technology and capital. Polly’s mode of working is expansive and site based, with her practice intersecting across a range of disciplines from film production, sound design, writing and publication. She has exhibited widely in both Australia and overseas, and has been the recipient of numerous grants and Artist-in-Residence programs. Recent screenings andexhibitions include Metro Arts (Brisbane), City Gallery Wellington (NZ), RMIT DesignHub (Melbourne), Alchemy Festival (UK), Mildura Art Centre (Vic) …

Arini Byng

Arini Byng is an artist who makes bodybased work. Born on Gadigal land, she is of Lenape, African American and Anglo-Celtic descent. Arini works with the affective qualities of materials, gestures and settings — undertaking exercises in image, movement and form to negotiate political scenes. Arini’s performances and videos are complex, intimate studies in gesture and action. Her work has been exhibited nationally including Blak Dot Gallery, Watch This Space, Neon Parc project space, MPavilion, c3 Contemporary Art Space, Blindside, Bus Projects, Margaret Lawrence Gallery, The Australian Centre For Contemporary Art, and The Centre for Contemporary Photography; selected works published …

Kate Tucker

Kate Tucker works across painting and sculpture, combining various media in a manner that subverts expected order. Materials are manipulated so as to maintain a rawness and familiarity whilst taking on foreign characteristics. Tucker’s recent painting and sculpting process has shifted towards building slab-like substrates through repetitive layering of materials. Based in Melbourne, her recent projects include solo exhibitions at Daine Singer, Galerie Pompom and Chapter House Lane and group exhibitions at NADA New York, Sutton Projects, Dutton Gallery and Caves. Tucker has been a finalist in the Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize, Geelong Contemporary Art Prize, The Substation Prize, …

Announcing the 2021 Exhibition Development Fund (EDF) recipients

NETS Victoria’s Artistic Program Advisory Committee are delighted to announce three new projects will be supported with EDF grants, awarded on behalf of Creative Victoria. We can’t wait to see the following projects come into fruition:

Bunjil Place Gallery

Bunjil Place will host a group of southeastern Aboriginal artists who share deeply layered cultural ties, joining together to make new work to illuminate the powerful narratives of their Country. This exhibition will explore connection to Country, connection to each other and to Ancestors, through shared and individual storytelling. The works will be made through journeys together, both physically over Country …

Welcome Isobel Morphy-Walsh to Board of Management

We’re thrilled to announce that Isobel Morphy-Walsh has joined our Board of Management. Isobel Morphy-Walsh is a proud Nirim Baluk Woman from the Taun Wurrung (Taungurung) people. She is a lover of anecdote, an artist, activist, educator, curator, storyteller and weaver.

Isobel’s creative practice is wide ranging and includes: weaving, lino printing, painting, fabric creation, woodwork, cultural objects and adornments, and more recently metals.

Isobel’s curatorial practice extends to education and has a strong and deliberate focus on First Nations narratives. She supports the need to decolonize, particularly through the treatment and interpretation of artworks, objects and images, with a …

Curating Safe Practices – Curatorial Intensive

NETS Victoria was delighted to collaborate once again with the Public Galleries Association of Victoria (PGAV) to present the 2020 Curatorial Intensive, continuing to reach curators across Victoria and beyond. Unlike previous iterations, the 2020 program adopted a new format comprising of a free series of one-hour webinars.

The program was multi-faceted and provided a platform for curators, artists and writers to share their experiences and knowledge with one another through a live Q+A forum.

Responding to the themes which have shaped 2020, the Curatorial Intensive included sessions on: managing curatorial risk; First Nations cultural …

Sustaining Creative Workers Initiative

We are pleased to announce the launch of the Sustaining Creative Workers initiative today.

The Sustaining Creative Workers initiative seeks to support the continued work of Victoria’s independent creative practitioners who have been impacted by coronavirus (COVID-19) in 2021. This is the second stream of the program, following an initial round of support offered in 2020.

Sustaining Creative Workers will deliver quick-response funding of:

· Up to $5,000 for individuals, sole traders and freelancers; and,

· Up to $10,000 for collectives, groups and micro-organisations/businesses (micro organisations/businesses are those that employ less than 5 Full Time Equivalent staff).

· Plus, up …

Isobel Morphy-Walsh

Isobel Morphy-Walsh is a proud Nirim Baluk Woman from the Taun Wurrung (Taungurung) people. She is a lover of anecdote, an artist, activist, educator, curator, storyteller and weaver.

Isobel’s creative practice is wide ranging and includes: weaving, lino printing, painting, fabric creation, woodwork, cultural objects and adornments, and more recently metals.

Isobel’s curatorial practice extends to education and has a strong and deliberate focus on First Nations narratives. She supports the need to decolonize, particularly through the treatment and interpretation of artworks, objects and images, with a focus on the communities they come from and approaches taken in development. Isobel …

Cynthia Ward

Ky Warner

Catherine Webb

Gail Wilson

Puna Yamina

Charlotte Lindenmayer

Tash Newman

Britney Noonan

Donna O’Callaghan

Harry O’Callaghan-Graham

Danielle Pumani

Michelle Prezioso

PollyannaR

Beth Sometimes

Simon Spain

Edward Timmins

Janice Timmins

Esther Touber

Esther Touber and Simon Spain

Bec Vandyk

Claude Walter

Trent Walter

Deborah Walsh

Pauline Minmila Wangin

Sheila Wangin

Lizzie Boon

Belinda Briggs

Harriette Bryant

Maddison Chisholm

Joel Crosswell

Selena de Carvalho

Margaret Ngilan Dodd

Sheena Dodd

Quinn Edwards

Robert Edwards

Robert Fielding

MJ Flamiano

Jacqui Gordon

Jan Hogan

Dianne Kiddell

Vivien

Georgina Glanville and Jethro Harcourt

Taylah Kilpatrick

Kelsey Latham

Rosaline La Vie

Bryan Andy

…

Mabi Jack Andrew

…

Alison Alder

…

The Artist and The Mermaid

“The Artist and The Mermaid” (2020) is a silent film that documents the shared artist residency undertaken by “The Two Cathies” at  Venus Bay 2020. Cathy Staughton and Catherine Bell are artist collaborators and have been each other’s muse since 2009 when they met at Arts Project Australia. The silent film genre has been selected because for a brief time in history, it provided an inclusive experience for the hearing impaired who could fully …

Dean Cross

Dean Cross was born and raised on Ngunnawal/Ngambri Country and is of Worimi descent. He is a paratactical artist interested in collisions of materials, ideas and histories. He is motivated by the understanding that his practice sits within a continuum of the oldest living culture on Earth – and enacts First Nations sovereignty through expanded contemporary art methodologies. He hopes to traverse the poetic and the political in a nuanced choreography of form and ideas. Dean has exhibited widely across the Australian continent and beyond and his work is held by major institutions including The Art Gallery of South Australia …

Matthew Harris

Anglo Celtic / Yorta Yorta  

B. 1991, Wangaratta, Pangerang Country, Australia 

Matthew Harris is of Anglo Celtic and Yorta Yorta heritage. Recent solo exhibitions include Goo at Futures, Melbourne, 2021; The Simple Life at Galerie Pompom, Sydney, 2021; Secrets don’t make friends at TCB Art Inc, Melbourne, 2021; Hell at Neon Parc, Melbourne, 2018; Cream Dream at Alaska Projects, Sydney, 2017. Recent group exhibitions include Choose Happiness at Murray Art Museum Albury, Albury, 2021; No Exit at Ashes/Ashes, New York City, 2020; 1991 at Hayden’s, Melbourne 2020; Haunted Penthouse at Spring 1883 with Neon Parc, Sydney, 2019; Without Fail at …

Angelina Pwerle

…

Albert Namatjira

…

Grace Cossington Smith

Grace Cossington Smith (b. 1892-1984) was born on Cammeraygal Country in New South Wales – growing up in her family’s home at Neutral Bay in Sydney on Gadigal Country before moving to Turramurra on Darug Country where she lived for most of her life. Cossington-Smith was a brilliant colourist and an important figure in the early Modernist art movement in Australia1. Cossington-Smith drew inspiration from her surrounds, painting her home, the landscape, and Sydney city-life. Her works can be characterised by the use of bright expressive colour applied in broad brushstrokes.

Cossington-Smith’s After the fire exists as a first-hand response …

Gloria Petyarre

Gloria Petyarre (b.1945) was born in the region of Utopia that is located 270km northeast from Mparntwe (Alice Springs). Her language is Anmatyerre and her Country is Aknangkere. Petyarre is well-known for her vibrant Bush Medicine Dreaming paintings that capturing the colourful seasonal changes of the leaves of a particular type of shrub that has powerful medicinal qualities1 – her vibrant and varied brushstrokes filling each of her canvases with brightly coloured and highly gestural stippling to represent the plants growth, and seasonal change.

Petyarre’s Anangkere Growth embraces a similar colour palette and subject to Roberts, though from a much …

Tom Roberts

Tom Roberts (b.1856-1931) was born in Dorchester, England – immigrating to Australia with his family in 1869, and settling in Collingwood on Wurundjeri Country, in Naarm (Melbourne). He is most notably remembered for his instigation of the Heidelberg School of Australian landscape painting that prioritised painting outside (en plein air)1. He enjoyed the quietude and the natural beauty of the Australian environment, and its unique character – his astute visual observations of its atmosphere, colour, and light translating moments of the rapidly changing landscape of his home and aboard.

Roberts’ Kalorama in the Dandenongs depicts a light-filled landscape of tall …

William Robinson

William Robinson (b.1936) was born in Meanjin (Brisbane)in Queensland. He began painting in the 1960’s whileworking full-time as a school teacher. Inspired by hishomelife, love of music, and the immensity of Australia’sancient landscape, Robinson’s stylistic shifts throughouthis career run parallel to changes in his location; the farmscapesof his home in Birkdale on Quandamooka Country,epic multi-perspective landscapes of and within the GoldCoast Hinterland on Yugambeh/ Kombumerri Country,his beachscapes at Kingscliff on Bundjalung Country, andmore recently, still-life works that he now paints living inhis suburban home in Meanjin.1

Robinson’s Towards Tamborine features a multi-perspectiveand panoramic view of the Gold Coast Hinterland, andits …

Danie Mellor

Danie Mellor (b.1971) was born in Mackay on Yuwibara Country in North Queensland. He is of Ngadjon and Mamu heritage and currently lives and works on Tharawal Country in Bowral, New South Wales. Mellor’s multidisciplinary practice explores intersections between contemporary and historic culture while considering legacies of cultural memory and knowledge. His practice focuses on the historical intersections of people, ideas and culture – creating works that draw upon multiple traditions and perspectives to explore changing conceptions of the landscape,1 and also its deep memory, spirituality, and mystery.

Mellor’s Symphony (romance) immerses the viewer deep within North Queensland’s rainforests, surrounded …

Arthur Boyd

Arthur Boyd (b.1920-1999) was born on Boon Wurrung Country in Murrumbeena, Victoria. He was a painter, potter, and printmaker who grew-up within a family of artists. His works drew great inspiration from the Australian landscape, seeing Boyd experiment with a range of styles and techniques throughout his career to create emotive and deeply personal responses to particular places. After travelling Australia and abroad, and serving in the army, Boyd eventually found home at Bundanon on Wodi Wodi Country in New South Wales – an estate located along the Shoalhaven River where he continued to paint up until his death in …

Charles Blackman

Charles Blackman (b.1928-2018) was born in Harbord on Dharawal County in Sydney, New South Wales, though he grew-up in Queensland before returning to Sydney to work as an illustrator. Blackman was a self-taught painter, dedicated reader, and excellent draughtsman, creating imagery – often in series – that reflected personal, literary, and musical themes1. His works often embodied notions of urban loneliness and alienation, depicting dark, eerie and empty landscapes that are at once provocative and psychological. In 1951 he moved to Naarm (Melbourne), joining-up with a group of artists, the Antipodeans who engaged the conflicting social and political realities of …

Lloyd Rees

Lloyd Rees (b.1895-1988) was born in Yeronga on Jagera Country in Meanjin (Brisbane), Queensland – mainly living in Sydney on Gadigal Country before spending his later life in nipaluna (Hobart) with his son and family. He was a skilled painter, draughtsman, and printmaker dedicated to depicting the effects of light on the landscape1. His works were not limited to a particular style of place, though the changes in his approach throughout his lifetime can be attributed to his gradually deteriorating eyesight. He lovingly represented the Australian landscape, focussing his works on exploring the relationship between man and nature, and forever …

Beaver Lennon

Beaver Lennon (b.1988) was born on Kaurna Country inAdelaide, South Australia. He is a Mirning and Antikirinjaraman who has lived most of his life in Ceduna on WiranguCountry in South Australia. Story-telling is central toLennon’s practice that ranges from portrait to landscapepainting, pottery and sculpture. His earlier works wereinspired by his grandmother’s Dreaming stories of theBunda Cliffs, though is now influenced by his grandfather’sDreaming – Malu Tjuta (many kangaroos)1. Lennon’slandscapes capture the distinctive open skies and vastexpanses of Country with an extraordinary depth anddetail, and attesting to his connection to Country.

Lennon’s Beginning of the Bunda Cliff captures an almostaerial …

Lorna Chick

Lorna Chick (b.1922-2007) was born on Yorta Yorta Country in Wangandary, Victoria. She spent her entire life living on a farm in Victoria’s Northeast, not far from Wangaratta. Chick was a self-taught artist who began painting in her forties, developing her own unique style and colour palette through her love of painting her surrounds1. Her work is often framed within the naive school of painting due to her flat panoramic vistas and almost topographical aerial perspective. She was extremely passionate about the environment, capturing her beloved surrounds with extraordinary and minute detail.

Wooleen from a helicopter by Chick presents a …

Anne Ovi

Anne Ovi (b.1966) was born in Derby in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. She currently lives and works on her traditional Walmajarri Country around Mulan Community. Ovi has been painting since 2015, developing a recognisable style that is intricate, organic, and highly detailed. She typically paints the story for bush medicines and bush foods that can be found on Walmajarri Country – representing the plants that grow here, their growth cycles, and related cultural knowledges. Ovi is currently working as part of a team of women artworkers assisting with the re-opening of the Mulan Arts Centre. She is also …

Hans Heysen

Hans Heysen (b.1877-1968) was born in Hamburg in Germany, and immigrated to Tartanya (Adelaide), South Australia with his family in 1884. He married and settled in Peramangk Country in Hahndorf – the landscape of which was the focus of his work for many years. Heysen was a master water-colourist who portrayed the South Australian landscape in all its different seasons. A conservationist at heart, his highly-detailed and light-driven works humanised the great gums of the Adelaide Hills – his highly skilled watercolour application, imbuing them with distinct qualities of endurance, resilience, and grandeur.1

Heysen’s Spring in the bush, Hahndorf depicts …

Maggie Nakamarra Corby

Maggie Nakamarra Corby (b.1951) was born at Ikuntji (Haasts Bluff) in Central Australia. She is the eldest daughter of renowned Papunya Tula artist Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula. After shifting between Mt Liebig, Papunya, Kintore and Kiwirrkurra, Corby – now in her senior years – has moved to Mparntwe (Alice Springs), and paints at Tangentyere Artists daily. Her father was a senior Law man, Rainmaker, and Custodian of the Water Dreaming, an important site of Kalipinypa – this season of abundance caused the song cycles of the Water Dreaming performed in ritual to resonate in her imagination and paintings of Country.1

Corby’s …

Emanuel Phillips Fox

Emanuel Phillips Fox (b. 1865-1915) was born in Fitzroy on Wurindjeri Country in Naarm (Melbourne). He was an artist and an art teacher – teaching at a number of suburban design schools while painting landscapes around Melbourne and in Gippsland1. In 1887 he travelled to Pairs for further study, settling in St Ives in Cornwall which was one of the key centres of plein air (outside) painting in England. He returned to Naarm in 1892, and in 1893 he established the Melbourne School of Art with fellow painted Albert Tucker2. In Australia and Europe Fox painted landscapes, genre scenes and …

Alison Murray

Alison Murray (b. 1967) was born in Tully on Gulngay Country. She is a Girramay and Jirrbal woman and Traditional Owner of the Murray Upper area near Cardwell in North Queensland. Murray is a painter and potter with an eye for detail and a good understanding for composition, colour and pattern making1. Her strong connection to family, place and heritage is her creative inspiration – drawing from her traditional stories, and the places where she lives, works and camps for her inspiration. She has devoted her practice to landscape painting and her life to farming – having grown-up and worked …

Robert Juniper

Robert Juniper (b.1929-2012) was born in Merredin on Njaki Njaki Nyoongar Country in Western Australia. He studied in England before returning to Australia to begin his career as an art teacher and landscape artist. Juniper’s creative practice spanned painting, printmaking, illustration, and sculpture, and he is best known for his evocative and expansive depictions of the West Australian landscape. Juniper’s works often take an aerial perspective of place, and introduce figurative and decorative elements – his sprawling compositions embrace the enormity of the West Australian landscape, depicting its layers, rhythms, contrasting colours, and the harmony he felt working within it.1…

Roy McIvor

Roy McIvor (b.1934-2018) was born at the Hope Valley Mission on Thubi Warra Country in Cape Bedford on the Cape York Peninsula in far North Queensland. He was a senior Guugu Yimithirr man of the Binthi clan who dedicated his life to the promotion of Indigenous art and culture. McIvor has produced a body of work that is colourful, experimental, and illustrated his love and respect for nature1. He drew his inspiration from his traditional lands, creating works that are underpinned by the traditional art and culture of his ancestors, while exploring the contemporary social landscape of his community in …

Janet Dawson

Janet Dawson (b.1935) was born in Sydney on Gadigal Country, spending her early childhood on Wiradjuri Country in Forbes, New South Wales before moving to Wurundjeri Country in Naarm (Melbourne) in 1941. Dawson is wellknown as a finely trained tonal realist and a pioneer of abstract painting in Australia.

She found inspiration in her surrounding landscape and its changing seasons after her move to Binalong on Ngunnawal Country in rural New South Wales in 1974. Dawson is an avid cloud-watcher known for her soft palette, and works often depicting shifting skyscapes1. She currently lives with her family in Wallington on …

Keith Stevens

Keith Stevens (b. 1940) is a Pitjantjatjara artist born in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands in the far north of South Australia at Granite Downs cattle station. He is a respected senior man in traditional law and a strong community leader who comes from a strong artistic family. Following in his parents’ footsteps he was mustering at an early age and had no schooling until moving to Pukatja (Ernabella) as a young boy where he attended the mission school1. Stevens’ family would travel for weekends to their traditional homelands of Piltati and Iwarrawarra, eventually moving to Piltati Creek at …

Richard Larter

Richard Larter (b.1929-2014) was born in Essex, England – immigrating to Australia, and settling in Yass on Ngunnawal and Country in south-eastern New South Wales in 1962 to take up a teaching position. Larter’s creative practice was diverse, including painting, printmaking, photography, performance, and film. His work was inspired by popular culture, music, politics and society, the natural environment and his personal relationships. He was a remarkable colourist and a technical innovator who was also influenced by developments in mathematics and physics1, and by the landscape near his home in Yass.

Larter’s Slips & Slides with Cycloidal Shifts, exists as …

In and of this place

Curated by …

Video Now

NETS Victoria has a rich history of supporting video artists, touring their work to galleries throughout Australia, often with guest curators, in a variety of contexts. This showcase explores a selection of these artists and more. Video Now presents a wide array of video-based practices, from explorations of bodily …

Exhibitions Coordinator – Position Available

Position Title: Exhibitions Coordinator 

Salary: $63,000 pro rata ($50,400) + 10% superannuation 

Contract: Part-time Fixed Term Contract until 30 June 2022 

0.8 (4 days per week) 

NETS Victoria seeks a passionate arts professional for the role of Exhibitions Coordinator. 

The Exhibitions Coordinator is responsible for the coordination, logistics and presentation of NETS Victoria touring exhibitions and public programs.   

This position is required to travel to regional centres both within Victoria and interstate at various times and reports to the Director of NETS Victoria. 

NETS Victoria is an equal opportunity employer. We encourage …

Ken Unsworth

Ken Unsworth was born in Melbourne in 1931. He studied at the University of Melbourne, Melbourne Teachers College, and the National Art School, Sydney. He has held several teaching positions, including Lecturer in Sculpture, Sydney College of Advanced Education. Unsworth has had numerous solo exhibitions, in Australia and overseas, including a major survey exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1998.

His works have been included in the Mildura Sculpture Triennial, 1973 and 1978; the Australian Sculpture Triennial, Melbourne, 1981, 1984 and 1993; Australian Perspecta, Sydney, 1981, 1985, 1987 and 1988; and the Biennale of Sydney, 1976, …

Vivienne Shark LeWitt

Born Sale, Vic­to­ria Aus­tralia 1956

Lives and works in Daylesford

Vivi­enne Shark Lewitt is a painter and car­toon­ist whose astute wit and sub­ver­sive humour have under­pinned her dis­cur­sive and alle­gor­i­cal paint­ings which point­ed­ly, and at times poignant­ly, reveal the pecu­liar­i­ty, com­plex­i­ty and absur­di­ty of the human condition.

Draw­ing upon both art his­tor­i­cal and lit­er­ary sources, the artist sub­tly inter­ro­gates past tra­di­tions, quot­ing dif­fer­ent ele­ments in iron­ic com­bi­na­tions which con­front and con­found the view­er with their ambigu­ous and enig­mat­ic narratives.…

Mike Parr

Born Syd­ney, Aus­tralia 1945

Lives and works in Sydney

Inter­ro­gat­ing for­mal and cul­tur­al ortho­dox­ies, the vast and uncom­pro­mis­ing prac­tice of Mike Parr assumes mul­ti­ple forms through a con­fla­tion of draw­ing, print­mak­ing, sculp­ture and per­for­mance. Explor­ing the lim­its of his phys­i­cal and men­tal capac­i­ty, Parr’s high­ly influ­en­tial per­for­mance prac­tice employs his own body as a means to exam­ine iden­ti­ty and polit­i­cal con­ven­tions of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. His decades-long ​‘Self Por­trait Project’ also draws upon his own sub­jec­tiv­i­ty, unfold­ing as a cathar­tic reflec­tion on self­hood and the pro­lif­er­a­tion of perspective.

Through­out his career Parr has con­tin­u­al­ly ques­tioned the pos­si­bil­i­ties and crit­i­cal recep­tion of con­tem­po­rary art. …

John Nixon

Born Syd­ney, Aus­tralia 1949

Died Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia 2020

John Nixon was a sem­i­nal fig­ure in con­tem­po­rary Aus­tralian abstrac­tion. From 1968, his work was ded­i­cat­ed to the on-going exper­i­men­ta­tion, analy­sis and devel­op­ment of rad­i­cal mod­ernism, min­i­mal­ism, the mono­chrome, con­struc­tivism, non-objec­tive art and the ready­made; which were key ref­er­ence points in his work. Exper­i­men­tal Paint­ing Work­shop (EPW), which the artist named in 1990, but which cov­ers works dat­ing back to 1968, formed the basis of Nixon’s rig­or­ous and long-stand­ing intel­lec­tu­al inves­ti­ga­tion into the mak­ing of art, which over time expand­ed to encom­pass not only paint­ing, but col­lage, pho­tog­ra­phy, video, dance and exper­i­men­tal music …

Chips Mackinolty

Chips Mackinolty is a Darwin-based (Australia) artist and writer who has worked for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal organisations over four decades as an advocate, researcher, journalist, artist and graphic designer.

He has worked as a printmaker since 1969, and was a member of the Earthworks Poster Collective (1973-1980). After a stint in Townsville as a community arts officer (1980-81), he worked in the Northern Territory as an Aboriginal Arts advisor in Katherine and Uluru (1981-85); Northern Land Council field officer, researcher, graphic artist and journalist (1985-1990); as a journalist with Fairfax, Murdoch and others (1990-2001).

A collectively-run graphic arts and research …

John Lethbridge

Born 1948, John Lethbridge studied at the Wellington Design School and the Elam School of Fine Arts in Auckland, New Zealand / Aotearoa, before moving to Australia in 1975, where he has since established a successful career as an artist.

Well-regarded for his sculpture, photographs and drawings, Lethbridge has also held an interest in printmaking since his early period in New Zealand.

The subconscious, dreamlike imagery of Lethbridge’s Ring Cycle series centres around a floating ring with bizarre pipes protruding from the sides while various surreal dramas alluding to sexuality take place in each work.

…

Richard Dunn

Richard Dunn was born at Sydney, Australia and studied architecture at the University of New South Wales, sculpture at the National Art School, Sydney, and painting at the Royal College of Art, London, M.Art(RCA).

Richard Dunn lived for ten years in London and Paris, and in New York, 1984-1985, P.S.1 International Studio Program Fellow, PS1 MOMA, New York. He was Director of Sydney College of the Arts 1988-2001, and Professor of Contemporary Visual Art and University Artist-in-Residence, the University of Sydney, until the end of 2010.

Richard Dunn lived for extended periods in Düsseldorf and Edinburgh. He has been a Visiting Professor, National Academy of Fine Art, …

Artists

Essays

Close the gate behind you

Kent Morris’ photographic series Cultural Reflections – Up Above combines elements of urban architecture with depictions of native birds to comment on the continuing presence of …

Local landscapes

The Hamilton Gallery collection contains a number of notable artworks that are connected closely to local landscapes and landmarks. Nicholas Chevalier’s chromolithograph of Mt Sturgeon/Wurgarri shows the façade of the mountainin transcendent lighting, evocative of the brief moment before the sun sets over the horizon. Chloe Caday’s paintingAt Golden Hour similarly evokes this quality of light, and was painted …

Who belongs here?

The town of Hamilton has a strong history of sheep grazing and wool production, and has been referred to as the ‘wool capital of the world.’ The Hamilton Wool tapestry, based on a design by artist Les Kossatz and woven by Cheryl Thornton, …

Over a shared table

Hamilton Gallery’s Collection is rich in European decorative arts, and includes a number of Davenport tea sets. While this porcelain tea set is quintessentially British, the history of tea is one that spans across multiple cultures …

Idle time, passing time

Brian Dunlop’s lithograph captures a familiar sight, a curtain billowing in the breeze through an open window. The closely cropped framing of the work focuses our attention on …

Home is where the heart is

This portrait of May Shaw was painted posthumously and is based on photographs of the sitter in her evening gown. The Shaws had no children, and following his wife’s death, Mr Shaw’s interest in art collecting continued to grow. It is clear that Mrs Shaw played a major part in shaping the collection, …

Entering the house

Howard Arkley’s vivid paintings of houses, imagined through a vibrant Pop-art palette and sensibility, are compelling landscapes of suburbia and emblems of the ‘Great Australian Dream’ …

Foreword

NETS Victoria is delighted to present the digital exhibition Home is more than a place, curated by Sophia Cai and developed as part of our digital exhibition series 50/50.

Presented in partnership between NETS Victoria and Hamilton Gallery, the exhibition provides a remarkable opportunity to explore the Hamilton Gallery Collection and its resonance with contemporary stories.

Conceived by NETS Victoria, 50/50 has provided research grants to three independent curators. Each curator selected a regional Victorian gallery to research their collection and develop an exhibition of up …

Preface

Hamilton Gallery is thrilled to be a part of this fantastic project initiated by the National Exhibitions Touring Support, Victoria, which has enabled Hamilton Gallery to engage with talented contemporary curator, Sophia Cai.

Every collection is unique and Hamilton Gallery’s collection has a fascinating 60-year history. Like many art galleries across Australia, the impetus for building Hamilton Gallery was due to a major donation by a generous benefactor, and in our case the benefactors were Herbert and May Shaw. The 781 works donated in 1958 remain the foundation of the collection, a collection which …

Venues

…

Acknowledgements

Thank you to all the artists who are part of Home is more than a place, and for sharing your work with us. Our lives are richer because of the continued contributions by artists, and art that comforts, challenges, and holds a mirror to the issues of the world, now more so than ever.

Thank you to Claire Watson and the team at NETS Victoria for inviting me to participate in the 50/50 project, and your continued support for independent curators and artists.

Thank you to Joshua White and Ian Brilley at Hamilton Gallery for enthusiastically supporting the project from …

Home is more than a place

A Hamilton Gallery and NETS Victoria digital exhibition for the 50/50 series

Katie West

Katie West belongs to the Yindjibarndi people of the Pilbara tablelands in Western Australia. The process and notion of naturally dyeing fabric underpin her practice – the rhythm of walking, gathering, bundling, boiling up water and infusing materials with plant matter. Katie creates objects, installations and happenings, that invite attention to the ways we weave our stories, places, histories and futures.

Katie’s first significant commission Decolonist, for Next Wave Festival 2016, explored how meditation is a way to decolonise the self. In 2017 Katie completed a Master of Contemporary Art at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, …

Ishikawa Toraji

Suwa Sozan

Ceramic artist; born in Kanazawa in Kaga (today Ishikawa prefecture) in 1851. From 1900, he worked for Kinkozan Sobei’s workshop in Kyoto after his careers at numerous institutions in Ishikawa, Tokyo and Fukui in 1871-1889. In 1907, he opened his studio in Gojozaka, Kyoto. He studied ceramic techniques from Japan, Korea, China and modern Europe. For his outstanding technique of celadon production, he was appointed as an Imperial Household Artist (Teishitsu Gigeiin) in 1917.

https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/AUTH226355…

Elvis Richardson

Absence, ambition and abandonment, the cornerstones of Elvis Richardson’s art practice build emotional and politically charged narratives that scrutinise the inequities around issues such as housing, diversity, aging, identity and recognition. Treasuring the intimacies of ordinary lives, Richardson collects, and curates personalised objects and imagery she extracts from public sources and re-constructs them as the raw materials of her studio practice. Her works employ kitsch and formalist approaches and mediums to comment on taste, class, the sublime and her own agency as an artist when also trapped in an aspirational exposure-based system of certain economic precarity.

Richardson’s objects and images …

James Quinn

NC Qin

NC Qin

NC Quin  grew up in Sydney with what she describes as a a typical Asian family (you know what I’m talking about; where A is for average, and B is for bad – thank you Kevjumba for this lasting quote), her parents like many others wanted her to be one of the trio of career prestige: a lawyer, doctor or accountant. And why not? Her maths was good. If she had been thinking entirely objectively at the time she would have realized they would have afforded me a modest and stable wealth.

But Qin’s heart was seized by …

Margaret Olley

Margaret Olley is one of Australia’s most significant still-life and interior painters. She drew inspiration from her home and studio and the beauty of the everyday objects she gathered around her. Many of her paintings feature arrangements of fruits and flowers, set amid the pottery, art and exotica of her travels. A widely-recognised figure in Australian art, she was a major benefactor to public institutions, and the subject of two Archibald Prize winning portraits. 

Born in Lismore in northern New South Wales, Olley studied art at Brisbane Technical College then at East Sydney Technical College (later the National Art School), …

Chris O’Brien

Chris O’Brien is a multi-disciplinary artist who works in painting, printmaking, and sculpture.

Utilising a myriad of mediums, he is predominantly concerned with representing domestic dwellings with personal, domestic narratives. He crafts houses in varying states of decrepitude, anthropomorphising them with names such as ‘Edmund’, and populating them with stories involving thieves, ghosts and animals. His source material includes real estate brochures, photos, Google Earth maps, architectural plans as well as pure conjecture.

Chris O’Brien (born 1981) has been a studio artist at Arts Project Australia since 2002 and presented his solo exhibition ‘Marjorie Street’ at Arts Project Australia in …

Kent Morris

A Barkindji man living on Yaluk-ut Weelam Country in Melbourne, Kent Morris graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts and is an alumnus of the National Gallery of Australia’s Wesfarmers Indigenous Leadership Program. Central themes in his art practice are the connections between contemporary Indigenous experience and contemporary cultural practices and their continuation and evolution.

By reconstructing the built environment through a First Nations lens, Morris reveals the continuing presence and patterns of Aboriginal history, culture and knowledge in the contemporary Australian landscape, despite ongoing colonial interventions in the physical and political environments.

The interaction of native birds with …

Holly Macdonald

Holly Macdonald is a maker of objects and material observations. Her art practice is founded in ceramics and combines painting, drawing, installation and hand building in clay to explore notions of memory and the uncertain nature of perception. Using the handmade ceramic object as an agent, she interrogates the relationship between process and product, touch and vision, object and image.

Holly graduated from NAS with a BFA (ceramics) in 2014. For her graduate body of work she was awarded the Sabbia Gallery Exhibition Prize and the Mansfield Ceramic Prize. Since graduating she has presented work in a number of exhibitions …

Les Kossatz

The late Les Kossatz was a well known Melbourne-based artist and academic whose work is represented in many regional and state galleries and the National Gallery of Australia. He studied art at the Melbourne Teachers’ College and the RMIT, and went on to teach at the RMIT and Monash University. Kossatz’s first significant commission was for the stained glass windows at the Monash University Chapel in Melbourne. Later commissions included works for the Australian War Memorial, the High Court, the Ian Potter Foundation at the National Gallery of Victoria and the Darling Harbour Authority, Sydney. His sculpture, ‘Ainslie’s Sheep’, commissioned …

Kait James

As a proud Wadawurrung woman, Kait’s work explores her identity as an Australian with both Anglo and Indigenous heritage. Her work asks questions relating to identity, perception and our knowledge of Australia’s Indigenous communities.

Utilising Punch Needling techniques, she embroiders kitsch found materials, such as souvenir tea towels, that reference colonial settlements and histories, and subverts them with Indigenous imagery and familiar references. 

Through the use of humour and vivid colours, Kait addresses the way white western culture has dominated Australia’s history, and her personal reflections on her Indigenous heritage.

https://kaitjames.com/about.html…

Maggie Hensel-Brown

For the last five years, needle lace has been my way of making sense of life. 

Maggie Hensel-Brown started lacemaking in 2015, at the annual conference of the Australian Lace Guild. For as long as she can remember, she’s been a craft obsessive, the more intricate and detailed it was, the more she’d love it. Here, it seemed, was the pinnacle of the obsessive and detailed crafts. The first class she took was in Reticella. Developed originally in Italy in the 15th century, the technique first involves taking apart a piece of linen, thread by thread, then painstakingly knotting and …

Gwyn Hanssen Pigott

Gwyn Hanssen Pigott is internationally acclaimed as one of Australia’s most significant and influential artists. Featured in numerous international surveys of contemporary crafts practices, her work is admired by curators and collectors.

Pigott’s attention to tonal graduation and her signature still life groupings of ceramic vessels into families, clusters and trails reflect her concerns of formal purity and beauty, as well as her profound relationship with pots – ‘useful, everyday, ordinary pots’ – that she says were her ‘daily pleasure mines’.

Pigott completed a Bachelor of Fine Art at the University of Melbourne in 1954, before training with leading potters …

Hannah Gartside

Hannah Gartside (b. 1987, London UK) completed a Bachelor of Fine Art (Sculpture) at Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne (2014-2016; Honours, 2019) preceded by a BFA (Fashion Design) at Queensland University of Technology (2005-2007; Honours, 2010). Solo exhibitions include: Ararat Gallery TAMA, 2019; Metro Arts Gallery, 2018; and George Paton Gallery, 2016. Group exhibitions include: Institute of Modern Art, 2020; Wangaratta Art Gallery, 2020; Ian Potter Museum, 2019; Artbank, 2019; Museum of Brisbane, 2018; QUT Art Museum, 2007, 2018; Blindside ARI, 2018; Bayside Arts and Cultural Centre, 2018; Town Hall Gallery, 2020 and 2018; The Johnston Collection, …

Makeda Duong

Makeda Duong graduated from the South Australian School of Art in 2013 with a Bachelor of Visual Arts Specialising in textiles. Following on from her degree, in 2014 she was able to participate in a Helpmann Academy emerging artist’s mentorship with Adelaide artist Sera Waters. Since 2013 she has participated in several group exhibitions, locally and interstate. In her first solo exhibition The Cursed Boyfriend Sweater in 2015, she explored the parallels between craft labour and emotional labour as feminine burdens in contemporary domestic relationships.

In 2020, she undertook a Studio Residency at Nexus Arts as part of the SALA …

Brian Dunlop

Nicholas Chevalier

Born in St Petersburg of a Swiss father and Russian mother, Chevalier moved to Switzerland in 1845 where he studied at the drawing academy affiliated with the Musée Arlaud in Lausanne. In 1848 he studied architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. He travelled to London in 1851 to see the Great Exhibition, where he also undertook training as a lithographer and exhibited watercolours at the Royal Academy.

Chevalier arrived in Melbourne in 1854 and found employment on the magazine Melbourne Punch. Alongside his work as a commercial illustrator he also published in 1865 a portfolio of 12 …

Chloe Caday

Chloe Caday is an emerging painter currently based in She Oaks, Victoria. Drawing inspiration from her Filipino roots, her practice explores the importance of travel and connection to the land as it signifies the historical, cultural and spiritual connections within place. Working primarily outdoors allows her to utilise her immediate surroundings to inform her work and using oil to create gestural markings to capture her presence in the paintings. Movement and sound are an important focal point throughout her work as it highlights the presence of the landscape and the people that tell stories of forgotten histories and culture.

Caday …

John Bulunbulun

Born in 1946, near the Arafura swamp in central Arnhem Land, Johnny Bulunbulun’s country was Ngaliyindi and his clan was Gurrambakurramba.  Bulunbulun was a ceremonial leader and one of the most eminent singers and ceremonial men in North-Central Arnhem Land, he was the ‘boss’ for Marradjiri (birth of a child), Djapi(young boy’s initiation) and Murrkundjeh (mortuary/funeral) ceremonies.

Bulunbulun was trained in ceremony by his second father acclaimed bark painter George Milpurru (b.1934 d.1998) and  he apprenticed under his father Ngarritj and his uncle Peter Bandjurldjurl in the creation of painting and carving.  When Bulunbulun was a young man, after his …

Jess Bradford

Jess Bradford is a Singaporean-born and Sydney-based artist, working across painting, ceramics, video and installation. Bradford’s work explores her mixed race heritage by questioning representations of cultural or national identity. She destabilizes concepts of an original, authentic cultural identity by working with reproductions, copies and self-reflexive forms.

Bradford holds an MFA by Research from Sydney College of the Arts, and was a recipient of the Australian Postgraduate Award.  She has been a finalist in the Ramsay Art Prize, John Fries Memorial Prize, the Tim Olsen Drawing Prize, and the Jenny Birt Award.  Bradford has participated in solo and group exhibitions …

Anney Bounpraseuth

Anney Bounpraseuth is an Australian-born artist of Laotian heritage who reinterprets matriarchal traditions through painting, textiles, and sculpture to assert self-determined identity. Bounpraseuth is a ‘third culture kid’, who grew up somewhat removed from her Australian and Laotian identities as a Jehovah’s Witness until her departure from the faith at the age of 30.

Bounpraseuth describes her kitsch, vivid and intensely patterned aesthetic as Cabracadabra or ‘South East Asian mum-style’ in honour of her mother Chockeo who came from Laos to Australia as a refugee migrant, raising her family in Cabramatta, a suburb of South West Sydney. Bounpraseuth cites her …

Paul Baxter

http://www.hamiltongallery.org/whats-on/2014/baxter.html…

Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon was born in Dublin on 28 October 1909, and moved to London in 1925. After a few years travelling on the Continent he returned to London in 1929 and in his Queensberry Mews studio held an exhibition of rugs and furniture that he had designed. In the following year he held a joint exhibition there, with Roy de Maistre, of furniture and paintings. In 1933 Bacon contributed to two group exhibitions at Mayor Gallery, London, and in 1934 held a solo exhibition at Transition Gallery, created for the purpose by Bacon himself in the basement of Sunderland House, …

Karima Baadilla

Karima is a painter, she lives in the west of Melbourne with her partner and her two dogs.

Karima has been selected as finalists in numerous painting prizes including the prestigious Bayside Acquisitive 2020 prize, and most recently the Heysen Landscape Prize 2020.

https://bluethumb.com.au/karima-baadilla/bio

…

Atong Atem

Atong Atem is an Ethiopian born, South Sudanese artist and writer living in Narrm/ Melbourne.

Atem’s work explores the inherent intimacy of portraiture and photography as well as the role photographers take as storytellers. Atem interrogates photography as a framework for looking at the world and positioning people in it. She takes framing into a fantastical direction with the small portals over the subjects’ faces, inviting the viewer to look at them through a surreal and constructed lens.

Atem references the works of photographers Malick Sidibe, Philip Kwame Apagya and Seydou Keita to create a visual representation of a relationship …

Howard Arkley

Born 1951, Melbourne, Victoria. Lived and worked in Melbourne. Died 1999.

Howard Arkley’s upbringing in suburban Melbourne, alongside exhibitions such as a Sidney Nolan retrospective (1986-1987) and The Field (1968) at the National Gallery of Victoria, informed Arkley’s first forays into artmaking and had a direct impact on the development of his signature style. Arkely’s dynamic and stylised use of colour and line, along with his use of an airbrush to apply paint, created images intentionally devoid of the artist’s hand. Through this aesthetic, Arkley’s work maintained a consistent exploration of both the suburban sphere and popular culture within Australia.…

Abdul-Rahman Abdullah

Abdul-Rahman Abdullah (b.1977) is an Australian artist whose practice explores the different ways that memory can inhabit and emerge from familial spaces. Drawing on the narrative capacity of animal archetypes, crafted objects and the human presence, Abdul-Rahman aims to articulate physical dialogues between the natural world, identity and the agency of culture. Working primarily in sculpture and installation, his work has been described as magic realism, creating poetic interventions with the built environment. Living and working in rural Western Australia, he provides unique perspectives across intersecting communities, foregrounding shared understandings of individual identity and new mythologies in a cross-cultural context.…

Jenny Watson

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Robert Fielding

Robert Fielding is a contemporary artist of Pakistani, Afghan, Western Arrente and Yankunytjatjara descent, who lives in Mimili Community in the remote Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands. Fielding combines strong cultural roots with contemporary views on the tensions between community life and global concerns. He confidently moves across different mediums, whilst pushing aesthetic and conceptual boundaries in central desert art.

Beside his art practice, Robert has developed skills across curating, writing and exhibition install. He has worked as a studio assistant at his art centre Mimili Maku Arts, participated in the Wesfarmers Indigenous Leaders program in 2013, and was a …

The EDF is now open

NETS Victoria’s Exhibition Development Fund (EDF) provides seed funding to research and develop new, curated exhibitions of contemporary visual arts, craft and design. 

Projects may be entirely research and development and/or include a public outcome. All projects must be developed with the intention to tour the exhibition in partnership with NETS Victoria. 

Applications between $5,000 and $30,000 will be considered (from a total funding pool of $30,000).  

NETS Victoria’s Exhibition Development Fund is supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria. 

Due: 5pm Thursday 22 July 2021. See here for more details

Meet our new Chair and Board members/Advisors

NETS Victoria is delighted to welcome incoming Chair, Bec Cole, a palawa woman who has served on the Board for over a year. We’re thrilled to welcome new members to our Board and Advisory Committees and thank all departing members and express gratitude for the tireless work of outgoing Chair, Penny Teale, who supported our significant organisational changes at NETS Victoria during 2020.

Bec Cole is thrilled to be leading through our new values: collaborative leadership, empowerment, radical transparency, integrity and diversity.

A huge welcome to incoming Board Members Dr David Sequeira, Dr Tammy Wong Hulbert, Nasalifya Namugala Namwinga and …

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Australian Melting Pot

Moorina Bonini explains Australian Melting Pot (2018) demonstrates an intentional action undertaken to understand the construct of the Australian identity. Through uncovering, re-learning and mixing together, the perfect identity stew is presented. Simmering idealistic fantasies rise to the top of the pot and the fire that burns under Nonna’s gnocchi pot in addition to cooking the stew, stains the outside surface with black. The same tone that remained after the intentional burning for the desire of regrowth and gain. 

The construction of the Other through the colonial practice has shaped our collective perceptions and fuelled stereotypes of Aboriginal …

From Australia: An Accumulation

Looking Glass: Judy Watson and Yhonnie Scarce

Curated by Hetti Perkins, Looking Glass is an important and timely exhibition which brings together two of Australia’s most acclaimed contemporary artists—Waanyi artist, Judy Watson and Kokatha and Nukunu artist, Yhonnie Scarce.At its heart, the exhibition is both a love song and a lament for Country; a fantastical alchemy of the elemental forces of earth, water, fire and air. Watson’s ochres, charcoal and pigments, pooled and washed upon flayed canvases, have a natural affinity and synergy with Scarce’s fusion of fire, earth and air. Watson and Scarce express the inseparable oneness …

NETS Victoria to nationally tour ‘Looking Glass: Judy Watson and Yhonnie Scarce’

NETS Victoria is so excited to announce our new touring exhibition, ‘Looking Glass: Judy Watson and Yhonnie Scarce’. Developed by TarraWarra Museum of Art and curated by Hetti Perkins, it is an important and timely exhibition which brings together two of Australia’s most acclaimed contemporary artists—Waanyi artist, Judy Watson and Kokatha and Nukunu artist, Yhonnie Scarce.

At its heart, the exhibition is both a love song and a lament for Country; a fantastical alchemy of the elemental forces of earth, water, fire and air.

‘Looking Glass’ will be touring nationally over the next three years, visiting venues across Victoria, Tasmania, …

Hester Lyon

Hester Lyon is an arts worker, writer and curator. Recent appointments include Gallery & Museum Program Officer at the Broken Hill Regional Art Gallery and GeoCentre, and Board of Directors at SEVENTH Gallery. Hester has previously worked at a number of public and commercial organisations including LON Gallery, VAULT Magazine, Monash University Museum of Art, ARC ONE Gallery and the Ballarat International Foto Biennale. Her writing has appeared in Memo Review, Fine Print Magazine and VAULT Magazine. Hester holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) and Master of Art Curatorship from the University of Melbourne.

Photograph: Samantha Lynch

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Yhonnie Scarce

Yhonnie Scarce was born in Woomera, South Australia, and belongs to the Kokatha and Nukunu peoples. Her interdisciplinary practice explores the political nature and aesthetic qualities of glass and photography. Scarce’s work often references the ongoing effects of colonisation on Aboriginal people; in particular her research has explored the impact of the removal and relocation of Aboriginal people from their homelands and the forcible removal of Aboriginal children from their families. Family history is central to Scarce’s work, drawing on the strength of her ancestors, she offers herself as a conduit, sharing their significant stories from the past.

Scarce was …

Judy Watson

Judy Watson was born in Mundubbera, Queensland and lives and works in Brisbane. Watson’s Aboriginal matrilineal family are Waanyi, whose Country is located in north-west Queensland. Watson works from site, archives and collective memory to reveal the fault lines of history within place and Country, lays bare the impact of colonial history and the institutional discrimination of Aboriginal people, celebrates Aboriginal cultural practice, and registers our precarious relationship with the environment. Her works comprise painting, printmaking, drawing, video, sculpture and public art.

Watson has exhibited extensively in Australia and overseas. Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK presented Judy Watson in 2020, a version to …

Moorina Bonini

Moorina Bonini is a proud descendant of the Yorta Yorta Dhulunyagen family clan of Ulupna and the Yorta Yorta and Wurundjeri-Woiwurrung Briggs/McCrae family. Moorina is an artist whose works are informed by her experiences as an Aboriginal and Italian woman. Her practice is driven by a self-reflexive methodology that enables the re-examination of lived experiences that have influenced the construction of her cultural identity. By unsettling the narrative placed upon Aboriginal people as a result of the colonisation of Aboriginal Australia, Bonini’s practice is based within Indigenous Knowledge systems and brings this to the fore. 

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Nasalifya Namugala Namwinga

Nasalifya Namugala Namwinga is a Zambian, Naarm (Melbourne)-based clinical psychologist. She is passionate about working from an inter-sectional perspective to support clients, with a particular interest in culturally responsive practice. She trained as a clinical psychologist in Aotearoa (New Zealand) before moving to Melbourne and founding Pola Practice.

Photograph (detail): Wani Toa…

David Sequeira

Born New Delhi, India

Artist, curator and academic Dr David Sequeira’s studio practice focusses on the use of colour and geometry in the creation of contemplative experiences. Working across media, David explores issues around high and low art, personal and shared histories, banality and profundity and the reverberations of colonization. Major solo exhibitions of his work have been shown at the Art Gallery of NSW, John Curtin Gallery, Perth; University of Queensland Art Museum and Nature Morte Gallery New Delhi. David’s residencies and awards include the Australia Council for the Arts studio Paris, Artist in residence University of Texas, Dallas …

Preface

Collaboration is something we celebrate at NETS Victoria. As an organisation that centres on working closely with galleries, curators and artists to create Preface touring exhibitions, we see collaboration as one of our defining traits. What better way to reveal our passion for collaboration than to present an exhibition that asks artists to work together, ‘riff’ off each other and consider old works in a new light? FEM-aFFINITY achieves just that.

NETS Victoria is delighted to work with Arts Project Australia to present FEM-aFFINITY, an exhibition that explores the female psyche …

Tammy Wong Hulbert

Dr Tammy Wong Hulbert is an artist, curator and academic in the RMIT University School of Art, lecturing in the Master of Arts (Arts Management) program specialising in curating. She is also the International and Art: History + Theory + Cultures Coordinator. Tammy’s research focuses on curating inclusive cities, enacted through collaborations with marginalised urban communities, to care for and represent their perspectives in globalising cities. Tammy’s art practice stems from her interest in expressing the multi-layered and fragmented space between cultures, due to living in a super-diverse, postcolonial society. As a curator, she has worked with a wide range …

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Contested Territories, Borders and Barriers

Creative Acts in an Epoch of Environmental Change

There are fewer more sobering images than that of a bleached coral reef or the ‘Bermuda Triangle’ of plastic in the Atlantic Ocean. The state of the planet has led to the suggestion of a new geological period entitled the Anthropocene,1 a period that defines human activity as the dominant influence on the Earth’s ecosystems. Beginning in the 1950s with the ‘great acceleration’ – an era of nuclear bomb tests, population boom and disposable plastics – the Anthropocene is an epoch characterised by climate change, mass production and resource wars.…

The Social Spaces of Craft

Although there is a solitary dimension to crafting practices, whether it be in the pleasure of quiet knitting, or working in the studio with only the whirl of the sewing machine for company, craft has always at the same time been an avowedly social practice. Across the broad spectrum of crafts, from needlepoint and weaving to the bespoke production of jewellery, the activity of making is often not an end in itself, but an organisational structure around which generous and convivial social relations can be formed and nurtured. Indeed, of the myriad qualities …

Subversive Craft as a Contemporary Art Strategy: Rethinking the Histories of Gender and Representation

Previously subordinated within art world hierarchies, craft has been a trending topic …

Craftivism. Dissident Objects and Subversive Forms

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Welcome

This exhibition brings together works by contemporary artists and groups who explore the capacity of craft to address the world in which we live. Through a diverse range of techniques, these artists engage with ideas around shifting borders and mass migration, environmental sustainability and climate change, gender and representation, and democracy and sovereignty.

Arts and culture play a vital role in our community. They bring people together, forging strong community connections and offering different ways to view …

Curators

Anna Briers has curated in both an institutional and freelance capacity for over a decade in various contexts ranging from art museums, commercial galleries and arts festivals, through to underground tunnels and golden canola fields. She holds a Masters of Art Curatorship from the University of Melbourne, a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) and a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Elam) from the University of Auckland.

Anna Briers has produced ambitious large scale group exhibitions featuring Australian and international contemporary artists. Key exhibitions include: Cover Versions: Mimicry and Resistance (2017-18); Cornucopia (2016); and in depth survey exhibitions with mid career …

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Acknowledgements

Craftivism. Dissident Objects and Subversive Forms is a Shepparton Art Museum exhibition, curated by Anna Briers and Rebecca Coates, touring nationally by NETS Victoria.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body, as well as receiving development assistance from NETS Victoria’s Exhibition Development Fund, supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria.

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I’M WORRIED THIS WILL BECOME A MEMORY: ART AND ACTIVISM IN THE WORK OF RAQUEL ORMELLA

Raquel Ormella’s best known bodies of work are arguably those that most immediately engage the language and aesthetics of activism. Emblematic of Ormella’s critical consideration of the role of the artist in relation to broader social questions are the two- sided banners of I’m worried this will become a slogan 1999–2009 and the artist’s trilogy of permanent marker on whiteboard installations (2005–08), which developed out of long-term engagement with Wilderness

Society campaigns. Both series have found prominent exhibition platforms and substantial …

I HOPE: INSTAGRAM AND THE POLITICAL STITCH

As Raquel Ormella started to prepare for her major survey show at Shepparton Art Museum, small intimate embroideries began to appear on the artist’s social media platform of preference, Instagram. These images of new embroideries and skeins of coloured threads for embroidery palettes were accompanied by a series of biographical commentaries and hashtags about hoarding and unfinished objects (or UFO’s as they are called by some people I know with similar habits). I was in Shepparton, Ormella in New South Wales; but Instagram shared the intimate and the professional with instantaneous …

A ROBUST VULNERABILITY

In Raquel Ormella’s Return to the beginning 2013, an array of blue and white stars cascades down the wall. This little constellation of falling stars is held together by blue ladders that hang from the bottom of a thinly edged rectangular space. Looking closely, in the top left corner of the border surrounding

this hollowed-out space, we see blue, then white, then red – traces of a Union Jack. We know it well, and the particular shade of blue that surrounds it. Then, in the white stars below, we might recognise the seven-pointed Commonwealth star, …

Welcome

This exhibition brings together a selection of new and recent works by one of Australia’s leading contemporary artists. It includes a wide variety of media and draws in particular on Ormella’s experimental textile works, exploring key themes that the artist has consistently developed in her work: social and environmental activism, human and animal relationships, nationalism and national identity.

Arts and culture play a vital role in our community. They bring …

Foreword

I hope you get this conjures up memories of postcards sent from faraway places. The title of this wonderful exhibition by Raquel Ormella is also a little bit tongue- in-cheek. The phrase plays on notions around the relationship between artist and viewer, particularly in regard to contemporary art. In the past, regional towns and galleries were seen as cultural wastelands and exciting and fresh art was believed to only come out of the cities. Shepparton Art Museum (SAM) proves this to be wrong through its unrelenting commitment to audience engagement and its challenging of …

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Acknowledgement

I hope you get this: Raquel Ormella was developed with the assistance of NETS Victoria’s Exhibition Development Fund, supported by Creative Victoria. The tour received funding from the Australian Government’s Visions of Australia program.

The accompanying catalogue was generously supported by the Gordon Darling Foundation.

NETS Victoria and Shepparton Art Museum would like to thank Raquel Ormella for her enthusiasm and commitment to the project.

We thank Josh Milani, Milani Gallery, Brisbane, for his support of the project; the birdwatchers of Shepparton; and to all those who follow Raquel so assiduously on social media. We would also like to thank …

Acknowledgements

This project has been made possible through the assistance of the Australian Government’s Visions of Australia regional touring program.

The curators, Jacqueline Doughty, Samantha Comte and Alyce Neal, warmly thank Basil Sellers AM for his wonderful generosity and commitment to all aspects of this project. We extend our grateful thanks to the following institutions that have lent their works

to the exhibition and tour: Parliament House, Canberra; QUT Art Museum, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane; and Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Victoria.

Our sincere appreciation also to Kelly Gellatly, Director, Ian Potter Museumof Art, and the entire team at NETS Victoria, …

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Playing On

Sport was far more visible and immediate than art where I grew up in the Queensland bush. The two were thought of separately, and they were separate. How that has changed. Both have something to tell us.

My home town had a rugby league team: the Oakey Bears. On Sundays I was one of hundreds of people to make their way through the Anzac memorial gates, the entry to the sporting precinct, which included a rugby league field, a training field, the …

No Longer Rivals. Art and Sport and the Basil Sellers Art Prize

It’s fair to say that, prior to the launch of the inaugural Basil Sellers Art Prize at the Ian Potter Museum of Art in 2008,the idea of a new ‘art and sport’ prize was treated in the Australian art world with some scepticism, if not, more generously, with a ‘let’s wait and see’ approach. Aware of the general perceptions that would inevitably arise around such an initiative – which conversely highlighted the very chasm between art …

Foreword

Ten years ago when we launched the Basil Sellers Art Prize, a project that brought together two great passions ofmine, art and sport, we could never have anticipated how enthusiastically it would be embraced by Australia’s most talented artists, as well as by an audience that continuedto grow in size and diversity with each iteration of thePrize. Looking back on the five exhibitions, I marvel at the exceptional work that has been presented by artists from around the country; it is testament to the strong connections between art and sport.

From its inception, the Prize aimed to …

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Great Movements of Feeling

Emotion is a force, both cognitive and sensory, that occurs between things: people, concepts, and objects. It circulates, drives and sticks. With discursive and centrifugal ambitions, Great Movements of Feeling explores how select contemporary art practitioners observe emotion through personal and historic lenses. The title of this exhibition is lifted from the sociologist Emile Durkheim who ruminates on emotion that arises in

a crowd, acknowledging it originates from no particular consciousness. It speaks to emotions nebulous nature asit circulates in the world. The feminist scholar Sara Ahmed argues that …

Acknowledgements

NETS Victoria acknowledges the traditional custodians of the land this catalogue was produced on, the Wurundjeri and the Boon Wurrung of the Kulin Nation. As this exhibition travels across Country, we pay respect to each of the traditional custodians of these lands and their Elders, past and present and emerging.

A NETS Victoria touring exhibition, curated by Zara Sigglekow.

This project has been supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria.

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Foreword

NETS Victoria is excited to partner with independent curator Zara Sigglekow to present Great Movements of Feeling, an exhibition considering the complexity of emotion and how it is experienced in the world. Art and emotion have continuously gone hand in hand and this exhibition exposes ways in which art and emotion manifest for both the contemporary and not- so-contemporary artist.

Theory of emotion is a delightful hole of psychology, philosophy and poetry to be sucked into. As Sigglekow aptly discusses, there are two historical discourses surroundingthe theory of emotion: emotion as subject to bodilysensations and …

Acknowledgements

This project is supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria, and received assistance from NETS Victoria’s Exhibition Development Fund 2018.

A NETS Victoria and Horsham Regional Art Gallery touring exhibition.

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Through Her Lens: Women in the Horsham Regional Art Gallery Collection

The Horsham Regional Art Gallery Collection was founded in 1967 with the acquisition of its first work, a portrait by Margaret Gill. The gallery was subsequently establishedin 1973 and two years later, on the advice of the Regional Galleries Association, Director Jean Davidson elected to specialise the collection in Australian photography. While this was not entirely a popular decision with the trustees or public, it established the collection at a time when photography was starting to gain recognition in Australia’s public galleries. By 1976, Max Dupain’s Meat Queue 1946 and Carol Jerrems’ …

In Her Words: The Power of Women’s Self-Representation and Storytelling

Being able to control your own story – how it is represented, how it is told, and what images it is associated with – is a source of power. For many women artists, this process often involves reclaiming their narratives, bodies, and personal and collective histories from a determining patriarchal lens. In her work on the female gaze and selfie culture, Mary McGill writes that ‘[w]ithout the ability to look, and to have that look acknowledged, expressed, represented, women in culture can never be subjects, only objects.’1 …

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Tashara Roberts

Aunty Marlene Gilson

Deanne Gilson

Deanne is a proud Wadawurrung woman and an award-winning multimedia visual artist. Her work focuses on reclaiming traditional knowledge by reflecting the colonial gaze back and challenging Western portrayals of Aboriginal people. Deanne has completed numerous courses at Federation University Australia: Certificate IV in Contemporary Aboriginal Art, Bachelor of Visual Art (Hons), and a Diploma of Secondary Art Education.

Currently undertaking a PhD looking at the objectification of Aboriginal women by the male colonial gaze and how this has affected Aboriginal women and what was known as traditional women’s business.…

Sue Williamson

Sue Williamson (b. 1941, Lichfield, UK) emigrated with her family to South Africa in 1948. Trained as a printmaker, Williamson also works in installation, photography and video. In the 1970s, she started to make work which addressed social change during apartheid and by the 1980s Williamson was well known for her series of portraits of women involved in the country’s political struggle. A Few South Africans is one such a series where she celebrates women who had played roles in the fight for freedom.

In 2018, Williamson was Goodman Gallery’s featured artist at the FNB Joburg Art Fair, where she exhibited her work Messages from …

Sriwhana Spong

Sriwhana Spong is an artist of New Zealand and Indonesian descent currently living and working in London. She is interested in the fertile margins and the rich edges where things meet, working across various mediums such as sculpture, film, writing, performance, dance, and sound.

Her materials are often inspired by the everyday materials used in Balinese offerings—assemblages that are not made to last and that incorporate formal patterns with informal additions of what is close at hand. Her large silk banners dyed in Fanta, Coca-cola, and tea function more than unalloyed reproaches of global homogeneity through colonisation and capitalism, but also consider the …

Nik Pantazopolous

Helen Grogan

Informed by studies in philosophy and choreography, Helen Grogan uses sculptural, photographic, and filmic means to approach space and observation as material(s). Her works directly engage exhibition sites as situations to be expanded and opened in material, ontological, and political ways.

With a particular interest in framing what is already occurring, Grogan works from the perspective that the gallery exhibition is itself performative and viewers are implicated through the physical act of observation. Grogan practice operates critically and dynamically with exhibition formats and institutional conditions.

Works often incorporate explicit processes of flux, drift, layering, and reconfiguration as means to push …

Megan Cope

Megan Cope is a Quandamooka woman (North Stradbroke Island) in South East Queensland. Her site-specific sculptural installations, video work and paintings investigate issues relating to identity, the environment and mapping practices. 

Cope’s work often resists prescribed notions of Aboriginality and become psychogeographies across various material outcomes that challenge the grand narrative of  ‘Australia’ as well as our sense of time and ownership in a settler colonial state.

Most recently Cope was a finalist for the Redlands Konica Minolta Art Prize and also undertook a residency in Paris with the Australian Print Workshop for an upcoming project titled “French Connections”. Her …

Zoë Croggon

Melbourne-based artist Zoë Croggon works with sculpture, video, drawing and primarily, collage.  Her practice considers the relationship between the kinetic body and its surroundings, contemplating the role we play in our environment and how deeply our surroundings inform the cadence of our lives. The body has long been the focus of Croggon’s work, presenting the trained body and modern architecture as fascinating counterparts; each unyielding, severe, and rigorously functional in form. Created primarily from found photographs, her works study texture, light, and form, examining the possibilities and limits of pictorial abstraction and metamorphosis.

Zoë Croggon has a Bachelor of Fine …

Simone Slee

Simone Slee makes work that has its origins in sculpture, producing installations, photographs, videos and objects that have a performative outcome or potential. Failure, humour and vulnerability continue to emerge as key concerns in her practice; her sculptures fail and fall over, others exist for just a moment as sculptural-thought-bubbles in space. Indeed, space—private, public and institutional—provides the context in which her sculptural gestures are performed. Through this practice she has invented a neologism ‘abfunction ‘to describe the unexpected or surprising functions and effects of objects or actions in art (in contrast to concepts of multifunction or dysfunction).

While earlier …

Polly Borland

Polly Borland (b. 1959) established her practice in the late 1980s through major portrait commissions and extraordinary reportage. Since 2000 the photographer’s art projects, exhibitions and publications have recorded documentary, collaborative and created subjects. Borland explores the possibilities of abstraction and the surreal through her photographs, at once tender and troubling, they are poignantly human and pointedly not; an amalgam of humour, the uncanny and a disquieting uneasiness.…

Leah King Smith

Leah King Smith (b. 1956) is a Bigambul descendant and a visual artist and lecturer in Brisbane. Her focus is particularly driven by change for equity and cultural competence in teaching and learning, as well as the encouragement of cultural perspectives in practice-led research. King Smith has an extensive career as a photo and digital media artist, encompassing solo, collaborative and group exhibitions, community engagement, dance performances, theatre productions, international cultural exchanges, book covers, story illustration and experimental film and video work.…

Karla Dickens

Karla Dickens (b. 1967) is a Wiradjuri artist known for poetic assemblages that voice personal and shared experiences of dispossession, misogyny, sex and mental health. Following the death of a close friend in 1997, crosses began appearing as motifs within her paintings and in 2000 Dickens began incorporating text into her work.…

Joyce Evans

Joyce Evans (b. 1929) works as a documentary photographer. Major areas of investigation include the edge of the road, road kills and fatalities, the land, and many other bodies of focused photo essays and photographic work. Evans’ portrait photographs are insightful character studies, taken mainly in black and white, at close range, with the underlying emphasis on the psychological connexion between the sitter and his or her own space.

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Fiona Foley

Dr Fiona Foley is a founding member of Boomalli Aboriginal Artist Co-operative. She exhibits regularly in Australia and internationally. Her recent solo exhibitions were held at Andrew Baker Art Dealer, Brisbane in 2017 and Niagara Galleries, Melbourne in 2012.

Foley completed her PhD with Griffith University in 2017. The thesis examined Queensland’s legislation, “The Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act”, 1897. Her new work on this subject was received with significant interest and is currently the subject of a proposal for a national tour under the auspices of Museums and Galleries Queensland.

In 2017 Foley was appointed …

Deborah Paauwe

Deborah Paauwe (b. 1972) investigates identity and gender roles and the blurred boundary between being a girl and being a woman. Often it takes a moment to decipher the age of her subject because the usual clues lie hidden behind a confection of brightly coloured vintage dresses, bows, feathers and sequins. Paauwe’s models’ faces are never seen, they can stand for anyone’s wife, mother, sister or daughter.…

Linsey Gosper

Linsey Gosper is an artist, curator and art educator based in Naarm / Melbourne.

Linsey’s art practice investigates the construction and performativity of gender, identity and sexuality from a feminist perspective.

Working predominantly with photography and installation, she is continuing her experimentation with the materiality of the photographic medium through darkroom processes.

Linsey’s other interests lie in the Occult – she has an active ritual practice. This informs her work as an area of research, experimentation and documentation, as she incorporates various magickal techniques in the making of her artwork.…

Simon Terrill

Jane Trengove

Jane Trengove has worked across a range of visual art media including painting, installation, collaborative works and the coordination/curation of visual arts projects since the 1980s. Trengove’s practice articulates the relevance of contemporary art in wider social political debates and power relationships, such as gender, sexuality, race and disability. Trengove is also concerned with the vexed issue of painting in contemporary practice. She deploys painting in a dialogue of abstraction/representation in order to tie it to current streams of thought. Trengove engages ideas of perception and the primacy of sight, with an interest in the way cultural meanings are affected …

Helga Groves

Helga Groves’ sensitive and meticulous practice encompasses painting, three dimensional forms, drawing and animation. Her works embody a rigorous but personal investigation of geological sites, geophysical processes and natural phenomena. Carefully balancing topographical patterns, colour and tonal layers to create compositions rich with movement and luminosity, which capture the energy and light of her subject matter. The underlying power of Groves’ work lies in its ability to permeate the senses and minds of the viewer, conjuring vivid memories of the physical experience of place. Helga Groves studied at Sydney College of the Arts. She completed a Bachelor of Arts and …

Eden Menta

Eden Menta works predominantly in the mediums of ink on paper and digital art. Her work is influenced by pop-culture references from television, magazines and her own life experiences. Edgy and instilled with a wry humour, Menta’s work is often motivated by social and political beliefs, resulting in a street-art, sub-culture feel. Eden Menta is an emerging artist and has been attending the studio program at Arts Project Australia since 2013. Since this time she has exhibited annually at the Arts Project Australia gallery. She has also exhibited in group exhibitions at Brunswick Street Gallery, Melbourne (2015 and 2014), No …

Ruth Maddison

Tracey Moffatt

Tracey Moffatt (b. 1960) is one of Australia’s most internationally recognised photographers and film-makers. Moffatt has held around 100 solo exhibitions of her work in Europe, the United States and Australia. She began her career as an experimental filmmaker and producer of music videos, and continued making films after establishing herself as a photographer.…

Pat Brassington

Pat Brassington (b. 1942) is one of Australia’s most significant and influential artists working in photo-media. With a career spanning four decades, Brassington has become well known for her incisive ability to infuse the familiar with the fantastic. Her practice is informed by an interest in surrealism, feminism and psychoanalysis. Seemingly innocent, her enigmatic photomontages open up like a flower, gorgeous and suggestive, then morph into a psychological Rorschach.…

Janina Green

Janina Green (b. 1944) has established an experimental photographic practice over 30 years, making observations about domesticity, motherhood, reading, teaching, sexual politics, theory and psychology. Green’s early life as a working class migrant growing up in an industrial town in rural Victoria made her understand identity as a fluid and dynamic concept, which is powerfully conveyed in her work.…

Joyce Edwards

Sandy Edwards

Sandy Edwards (b. 1948) is a key figure in Australian photography, known widely for a deeply personal approach to documentary image making that focuses on the portrayal of women and Aboriginal communities. Her sensitive and evocative photographs are taken with an intuitive response to feelings, people and place. By considering the intersection of human lives she broadens the genre of portraiture to explore inter-relational themes such as trust, love and community.

Edwards’ work was included in the original iteration of In Her Words at Horsham Regional Gallery.…

Carol Jerrems

Carol Jerrems (b.1949, d.1980) was the first contemporary Australian woman photographer to have work acquired by a number of museums including the National Gallery of Australia in 1976. Jerrems put her camera where counter culture suggested; women’s liberation, social inclusiveness for street youths and Indigenous people in the cities who were campaigning for justice and land rights. Her poetic and elusive images show people trying to find a new way of life in the 1970s.…

Honey Long and Prue Stent

Honey Long (b.1993) and Prue Stent (b.1993) are multidisciplinary artists whose work is a commingling of photography, performance, installation and sculpture. Their practice centres on their conflicted relationship to femininity and its passive associations. Often their process is spontaneous and playful with the result being unexpected and accidental. Along with many shared interests and fascinations they have a perverse curiosity to interact with alluring materials and objects, incorporating them into costumes or disguises which distort and fragment the bodily form.…

Kirsten Lyttle

Kirsten Lyttle (b. 1972) a Melbourne based multi-media artist who is of Māori descent. Her Iwi (tribe) is Waikato, tribal affiliation is Ngāti Tahinga, Tainui A Whiro. Her arts practise explores issues of post-colonialism, identity and the expression of Māori customary art (in particular, weaving) through digital technologies, such as photography and scanning.…

Hoda Afshar

Hoda Afshar (b. 1983) explores the nature and possibilities of documentary image-making. Working across photography and moving-image, she considers the representation of gender, marginality and displacement. In her work, Afshar employs processes that disrupt traditional image-making practices, play with the presentation of imagery, or merge aspects of conceptual, staged and documentary photography.…

Kawita Vatanajyankur

Kawita Vatanajyankur (b. 1987) uses her dynamic video art as a springboard to explore the value and understanding of women’s labour and manual work. In her staged performances, Vatanajyankur undertakes physical experiments that playfully, often painfully, test her body’s limits – a challenge that is both unavoidably compelling and uncomfortable to watch.

Kawita Vatanajyankur is represented by Nova Contemporary, Bangkok and Antidote Organisation, Australia

Kawita Vatanajyankur has exhibited widely across Australia, as well as Asia, USA and Europe. Vatanajyankur’s work is held at the National Collection of Thailand and in Museum collections including Singapore Art Museum, Dunedin Public Art Gallery …

Foreword

In Her Words is an exhibition that celebrates image making dictated by women, both behind and in front of the camera. It brings together Horsham Regional Art Gallery Collection works, that range from the 1970s to current day, and exhibits them alongside a number of key practitioners in the contemporary field. The exhibition features the works of 27 artists who use the lens as a tool to record the personal and universal world around us.

Polixeni Papapetrou’s images in this exhibition continue to reflect on the relationship between herself and her daughter. Exploring motherhood, childhood and also, …

Lisa Reid

Lisa Reid is an established artist working across ceramics, painting, drawing, printmaking and digital media. Old family photographs and popular culture inspire her works, which she meticulously constructs from preliminary workings derived from images as blueprints. In particular, her portraits of popular icons reflect a unique perspective on personalities that dominate our culture. Her oeuvre reveals a rich and highly detailed viewpoint on everyday life, which is observational as well as self- reflective in nature.

Reid has worked in the Arts Project Australia studio since 2002 and held her first solo exhibition there in 2015. She has exhibited in many …

Yvette Coppersmith

Yvette Coppersmith is a Melbourne-based artist. She graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2001, and became known for her realist portrait paintings. Since her first portrait using oils, her visual language has expanded to include still life, abstraction and an interplay of these genres combined with the figure. Her self- portraiture explores representations of the feminine, as she depicts psychological shifts that impact on self-image.

Coppersmith exhibits nationally and internationally and has been commissioned to paint portraits for public and private collections. She won the Archibald Prize in 2018, the fifth year of being included as a …

Janelle Low

Janelle Low was the first in her family to be born outside of Asia. utilising photographyas her primary medium, Low explores the internal and external conflicts that arise from growing up in multicultural Australia and navigating its shifting and evolving cultural landscape. Her work explores the sense of displacement and ‘otherness’ felt between her heritage and cultural upbringing, which leads to questions about identity and acceptance.

In 2013 Low became the second female,and youngest, winner of the National Photographic Portrait Prize presented bythe National Portrait Gallery, Canberra,and in 2017 was selected as a finalist in the William and Winifred Bowness …

Heather Shimmen

Heather Shimmen’s work overlaps the historical and the imaginative within printed surfaces of dense imagery. using obsessively hoarded images, stories, memories and objects, Shimmen weaves fantasy narratives that evoke other worlds. Her works cleverly evade dominant historical narratives by creating new relationships between seemingly distant ideas and concepts.

Shimmen has held solo exhibitions in Melbourne, Canberra and Adelaide. Her work has been included in numerous group shows, including exhibitions at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, and the Print Council of Australia, Melbourne. Shimmen was awarded Victorian Arts Board grants in 1983 and 1989, Print Council of Australia patron and …

Bronwyn Hack

B. 1979, Melbourne/Naarm, AustraliaLives and works in Melbourne/Naarm, AustraliaPronouns: she/her

Bronwyn Hack is known for her multi-faceted practice spanning sculpture, painting, printmaking and ceramics. Her 2D works are composed so as to merge subject and background, forming a consolidated linear perspective. Throughout her career, she has maintained an interest in animals, particularly dogs, as well as the body and bones. Hack has worked at Arts Project Australia since 2011. She had a solo show in 2016 and has exhibited in numerous national group exhibitions. In 2018, she undertook an artist residency at the Australian Tapestry Workshop. Hack’s work is held …

FEM-aFFINITY Podcast #1

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What are the links between feminism, contemporary art and disability? ‘FEM-aFFINITY’, a new three-part podcast series by Art Guide Australia, delves into this question by focusing on the exhibition of the same title.

This first episode features artist, curator and academic Catherine Bell who not only curated the exhibition, but made the collaborations happen.

Thanks to Art Guide Australia, you can listen here

FEM-aFFINITY is a NETS Victoria and Arts Project Australia touring exhibition, curated by Dr Catherine Bell.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia …

Jessica Row

Jessica Row has over ten years’ experience working for public, university and not-for-profit galleries in Narrm/Melbourne and Meanjin/Brisbane. She is currently a Curator at Koorie Heritage Trust, and previously Exhibitions Coordinator for NETS Victoria. Prior to this she held curatorial roles for regional and metropolitan council galleries. She has worked at the Venice Biennale with Creative Australia to help present Tracey Moffatt’s (2017) and Angelica Mesiti’s (2019) solo exhibitions at the Australia Pavilion. Separate to curatorial projects for current and past roles, Jessica has also curated ‘Rewriting the score’ for Climarte Festival (2019) and ‘Archives in Motion’ at TarraWarra Museum …

Claire Watson

Claire Watson is a passionate contributor to the arts community through her role on boards and advisory committees, as a judge for industry prizes, a writer, and lecturer. Her professional experience includes serving as an advisor on the Touring Panel for Creative Victoria (2014-2016), board member of the Public Galleries Association of Victoria (2017-2019) chairing their Advocacy and Research Committee; and a range of senior roles at arts organisations including BLINDSIDE, Asialink, Gippsland Art Gallery, and Bundoora Homestead Art Centre. Claire has curated over 100 exhibitions including the Artspace Mackay touring exhibition Violent Salt co-curated with Yhonnie Scarce; NETS Victoria/BLINDSIDE …

Myles Russell-Cook

Myles Russell-Cook is the Senior Curator, Australian and First Nations Art at the National Gallery of Victoria. He is jointly responsible for the National Gallery of Victoria’s collections of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art and the Art of Oceania, Pre-hispanic America and Africa. Myles passion is for First Nations contemporary art, and much of his influence and inspiration comes from his own maternal Aboriginal heritage in Western Victoria with connections into Tasmania and the Bass Strait islands. Myles has lectured in Art History, Design Anthropology and Indigenous Studies at Swinburne University, and he is currently editor of the NGV’s …

Yhonnie Scarce

Yhonnie Scarce was born in Woomera, South Australia, and belongs to the Kokatha and Nukunu Peoples. A master contemporary glass blower, her practice explores the political nature and aesthetic qualities of glass. Scarce’s work often references the on-going effects of colonisation on Aboriginal people. Family history is central to Scarce’s work, drawing on the strength of her ancestors, she offers herself as a conduit, sharing their significant stories from the past. Scarce was the winner of the prestigious NGV Architecture Commission 2019. In 2018 Scarce was the recipient of the Kate Challis RAKA award, for her contribution to the visual …

Bec Cole

Bec Cole is the Chair of NETS Victoria, and the Executive Director and Co-CEO of Footscray Community Arts. She has previously worked extensively in local government spanning leadership, strategic and creative programming roles across public art, galleries, performing arts, major event and activity centre settings. Bec is a former Director of Latrobe Regional Gallery, led the establishment of Gippsland Performing Arts Centre and is a champion of creating access to contemporary art for everyone. Previously, Bec led the Arts & Culture program at Wyndham City Council. Here she implemented a bold exhibition program at Wyndham Art Gallery, establishing a curatorial …

The Art of Attentive Love

If Collaboration Is the Method, Activism Is the Intention

FEM-aFFINITY is an exploration of the synergies between the works of selected women artists and speculates on multiple interpretations of female identity. FEM-aFFINITY is a way of referring to all things ‘FEM’: it signposts how feminism underpins the curatorial premise and reinforces ways intersectional feminism can integrate disability voices, concerns and experiences into the broader art-world conversation. Here the emphasis centres on inclusion, and facilitating collaborations between the artists is integral to this project, especially as collaborative practices have …

Let Go of That Fear, and Just Do It

Acknowledgements

NETS Victoria and Arts Project Australia would like to thank all those who made this exhibition and subsequent tour possible. We would like to acknowledge the funding bodies for their assistance: the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its funding and advisory body; the Limb Family Foundation; and NETS Victoria’s 2018 Exhibition Development Fund, supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria. We would also like to recognise Leonard Joel for its support with printing this catalogue and Art Guide Australia for its advertising assistance.

This exhibition would not have been conceivable without the wonderful artists and …

Venues

Videos

Essays

Wendy Dawson

Wendy Dawson is a painter whose art practice is one of repetition and structure. She produces her work by applying hundreds of linear marks to the paper using paint pens and permanent markers. Employing onlytwo or three colours in each work, Dawson gradually builds layers using repeated parallel lines, creating a knitted quality on the paper and the illusion that the picture is somehow electrically charged.

Dawson has been a regular studio artist at Arts Project Australia since 2008. She has been included in group exhibitions, including Melbourne Art Fair, and has been featured

in each Annual Gala at Arts …

Dorothy Berry

Dorothy Berry is an established artist who approaches her practice with great passion, which is evident in the energy and vibrancy of her extensive output of paintings and drawings. Her work demonstrates a keen interest in people, animals and birds, which she often represents in a symbolic sense. She has developed a complex set of signifiers to construct personal narratives, and her work often recounts experiences, events, beliefs or opinions relating to her life. Her densely packed compositions regularly consist of a combination of these symbols, instilling the works with personal significance and poignancy.

Berry has worked in the Arts …

Cathy Staughton

An accomplished artist, Cathy Staughton’s distinctive personal style speaks volumes through her vibrant and direct way of working. Her paintings and drawings act as barometers of her moods, dreams and desires. Symbolic characters, such as robots and saintly figures embellished with Staughton’s vivid and idiosyncratic imagination, appear time and again, often reflecting a distinct good–bad dichotomy. Staughton also maintains a lifelong fascination with Luna Park due to family connections and endless childhood memories. Overtones of humour, pathos and nostalgia endow her work with gravitas.

Staughton has worked in the Arts Project Australia studio since 1989. She has presented four solo …

Fulli Andrinopoulos

Fulli Andrinopoulos is an established artist. Her work is characterised by soft, floating circular forms and saturated colours that exude intensity through the build-up of dense layers of rich pigment. Her small- scale paintings and drawings are tactile and ethereal while embodying an emotive quality akin to that of artist Mark Rothko. Her collections – often presented en masse in grids or floating across a wall – are intimate, with a sense of transcendence and the unknown.

Andrinopoulos has worked in the Arts Project Australia studio since 1991 and held her first solo exhibition there in 2012. She has exhibited …

Artists

Foreword

Arts Project Australia is a creative social enterprise that supports artists with intellectual disabilities, promotes their work and advocates their inclusion in contemporary art practice. Since its inception in 1974, Arts ProjectAustralia has aimed high and has built a reputation both in Australia and internationally for its philosophy of supporting many highly talented, skilled and passionate artists and raising the visibility of the outstanding work that they produce in Melbourne. The proof of our endeavours lies in the consistency and quality of the exhibitions and programs we deliver …

Artists

Xanthe Dobbie

Boon Wurrung)

Yorta Yorta

Lee Darroch (Mutti Mutti

Tunnorung)

Trina Dalton Ooogjes

Elizabeth Liddle (Wathaurung)

Trina Dalton-Oogjes is a Wathaurung Woman. Born on Gunditjmara Country (Warrnambool) and now living on Dja Dja Wrung country who feels a deep connection to community and shown through her paintings. Trina Dalton-Oogjes’ paintings have a story and a spiritual connection expressing a connection to heritage, community and country. Inspired by animals and the Australian landscape Dalton-Oogjes has a diverse colour palette using contemporary Aboriginal art techniques with a combination of crosshatch and dot work. Preferring to work with acrylic on canvas or ceramic, but at times basket weaving and wood burning.Trina Dalton-Oogjes is a Wathaurung Woman. Born on Gunditjmara …

The Torch Artists

Sandra Kropinyeri

Bek Saltmarsh

Bek is a non-binary artist of Aboriginal, Romani and Sephardic descent, who lives on Djaara Country, who works mostly in ceramics and weaving but who is not shy about dabbling in other mediums. They study Spanish and ATSI Cultural Arts in order to know their many ancestral facets better. Bek currently lives on Jaara country with Bizbiz, a most handsome tabby. If Bek were an animal, they would be a leopard, a magpie or a fusion of both; which would be rather fitting, really. Regardless, there would be plentiful amounts of singing and sleep.Bek is a non-binary artist of Aboriginal, …

Jenny Murray Jones

Shepparton TAFE artists

Shepparton TAFE artists are a collection of emerging young Aboriginal women who’s work Auntie Girl recently won the Koorie Heritage Trust Highly Commended Award.Shepparton TAFE artists are a collection of emerging young Aboriginal women who’s work Auntie Girl recently won the Koorie Heritage Trust Highly Commended Award.…

Janet Bromley

Janet is a Yorta Yorta woman. Her art work explores her cultural heritage, displacement, past life experiences, vulnerable people and our management of waste materials. A weaver and maker using non-traditional materials to produce art work influenced by her heritage and the modern world. She works with; re-cycled clothing, plastic, found objects and natural elements from the bush.…

Lorraine Brigdale

Lisa Waup

Born 1971, Melbourne, Victoria; lives and works in Melbourne. Lisa Waup was separated from her Gunditjmara and Torres Strait Islander family at a young age. She received a Bachelor of Arts from RMIT University, and developed an affinity with Melanesian culture through her marriage to artist Naup Waup and experience of living in Papua New Guinea. In 2012 she exhibited A Journey’s Edge at Koorie Heritage Trust, Melbourne. She subsequently joined Baluk Arts, Mornington, and has developed a distinctive weaving practice.…

Cassie Leatham (Taungurung / Wurundjeri)

Cassie Leatham is from the Taungurung / Wurundjeri people from the Kulin Nation. She is an Indigenous artist, master weaver, traditional dancer, bushtukka woman and educator.

She is extremely passionate about teaching her skills to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous students of all ages. Her aim is to give participants the opportunity to learn and understand Aboriginal culture and develop knowledge of both historical and contemporary Aboriginal history.…

Bronwyn Razem (Gunditjmara)

Bronwyn was born in Gunditjmara Country, Warrnambool and comes from a long lineage of Traditional weavers. Bronwyn learned from her grandmother Georgina and mother Zelda Couzens.

Bronwyn has played a vital role in the revival of the Traditional eel trap. In 2013, her eel trap with emu feathers granted her the Acquisitive Award in the Victorian Indigenous Arts Awards. Bronwyn Razem’s work is held in private and public collections in Australia including the National Museum Australia and the Art Gallery of Ballarat.

As a representative of Ngardang Girri Kalat Mimini’s—four of Victoria’s most prominent Indigenous female artists—Bronwyn was selected to …

Brandi Salmon (Wiradjuri)

Brandi Salmon is a young Indigenous artist from Mildura, north west of Melbourne, Australia. Brandi has just completed a screen printing residency with Mesh Mash (a social enterprise screen printing project) and Woods Street Arts Space in Laverton, west of Melbourne, as part of a creative partnership between Hobsons Bay Council and Deakin University’s Institute of Koorie Education. This Aboriginal artist residency program engaged Brandi (and an older Indigenous artist Paula Reeves) in designing and screen printing traditional artworks onto tote bags, tea towels and T shirts to help engage the local community in Indigenous histories and cultural experiences. Brandi’s …

Glennys Briggs (Yorta Yorta, Tunnorung)

Lee Darroch (Mutti Mutti, Yorta Yorta, Boon Wurrung)

Lee Darroch is a proud Yorta Yorta, Mutti, Boon Wurrong woman who has lived for the past 30 years with her partner, David and two children, Ben and Zenzi on Raymond Island. She is a renowned visual artist and leader of the cultural revival of traditional cultural practices across South-eastern Australia in particular possum skin cloak making, sculpture, public art, feather work and coiled basketry.…

Julie Rrap

Julie Rrap’s involvement with body art and performance in the mid-70s in Australia continued to influence her practice as it expanded into photography, painting, sculpture and video in an on-going project concerned with representations of the body. Between 1986 and 1994 Rrap lived and worked in France and Belgium where she exhibited widely. This opportunity to broaden her horizons grounded her work in a more international context and she exhibited in Belgium, Switzerland, France, Holland, Germany and Italy.

Rrap returned to Australia in 1994. In 1995, she held a survey of her work at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, …

Prudence Flint

Prudence Flint paints figures in psychologically charged environments. The viewer is invited into an intimate world where the figure’s pose, each articulated detail, and the flat expanses of colour create an interplay of tensions.

Flint is a Melbourne-based artist. She has held solo exhibitions in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and Hobart and has exhibited in major state and regional galleries. She is a seventh-time finalist in the Archibald Prize. She won the Len Fox Painting Award (2016), the Portia Geach Memorial Award (2010) and the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize (2004). Her work is held in numerous public and private collections. …

Jill Orr

Jill Orr is a contemporary artist based in Melbourne. She is best known for her works in performance, photography, video and installation, which often explore the body and its positioning within social, political and environmental contexts. Her work explores the psycho-social, drawing on land and identities as they are shaped in, on and with the environment, be it country or urban locales.

Over the past 40 years, Orr has presented works in Australia and internationally. Her works are held in major collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, and Griffith, RMIT and Monash university collections. Her …

Anne Ferran

Anne Ferran has been exhibiting since the 1980s. Her landmark series Scenes on the Death of Nature, presented at Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, in 1987, established her as one of Australia’s leading photographic artists. In the mid 1990s she began working with the meagre residues of Australian colonial past, paying particular attention to the lives of women and children. Intellectually and emotionally engaging, her photographs have explored histories of incarceration in prisons, asylums, hospitals and nurseries. They play with invisibility and anonymity, and are often haunted by things unseen.

Select solo exhibitions: Flying Colour, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2016; Shadow …

Polixeni Papapetrou

Polixeni Papapetrou (b.1960, d.2018) is a photographic artist who explores the relationship between history, contemporaryculture, identity and being. Her subject matter has included Elvis Presley fans, Marilyn Monroe impersonators, circus performers and body builders and the cultural positioning ofchildhood. Her work has featured in over 50 solo exhibitions, and over 100 group exhibitions in Australia, the UnitedStates, Asia and Europe.…

Clare Rae

Clare Rae (b. 1981) explores ideas of performance and gesture to interrogate and subvert dominant modes of representation. Her work is informed by feminist theory, and presents an alternate and often awkward experience of subjectivity and the female body, usually the artists’ own.…

Cherine Fahd

Cherine Fahd (b. 1974) has worked for two decades with documentary modes of image making. Much of her early works presented a surrealist engagement with spontaneous actions that involved hiding herself and her subjects from view, as well as the documentation of peculiar gestures. Currently, she continues to test the distinctions between the staged and unstaged image, while asking questions of the ways we perform for the camera.

…

Troy Innocent

Lantern Studio

Triple Tree Studio

Ojiro Fumoto

IP Yuk-Yiu

Mojiken Studio

Spotlighter

Dong Nguyen

Sun Yu

DreamTree

Grace Wood

Grace Wood is an artist from Melbourne, Australia. In 2014, she graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours). She has exhibited extensively in Australia. Recent exhibitions include There is a pain – so utter, Gertrude Glasshouse, 2018; Last Drinks, LON Gallery, 2018; SATURATED : SATURATION, Sister Gallery, SA, 2017; Is this necessary? Cut Thumb Laundry QLD, 2017; Like a Hasselblad on the moon, West Space, 2017; Feigned Indifference, Sutton Project Space 2016; Is/Is Not, West Space, 2016; Moving On/Up, Bus Projects, 2015; Some of them got the first look, Kings ARI, 2015; …

Eliza Hutchison

Eliza Hutchison was born in Johannesburg, South Africa and currently lives and works in Melbourne. Hutchison was educated at RMIT Melbourne where she studied film, sculpture and photography. Hutchison has exhibited widely in Australia and Asia with recent exhibitions including; Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography and Asian Biennale, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne; National Gallery of Victoria, the Museum of Modern Art Heide, Balnaves Contemporary, Art Gallery of NSW. Hutchison is represented by Murray White Room, Melbourne.…

Jacqui Ball

Jacqui Ball is based in Perth, Western Australia. Jacqui’s work has been included in group exhibitions at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Museum of Contemporary Art, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, Queensland Centre for Photography, John Curtin Gallery and Javis Dooney Galerie in Berlin. She has held solo shows at Turner Galleries Perth, Edmund Pearce in Melbourne and the Perth Centre for Photography. Jacqui’s work is held in the collections of Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Artbank, Kerry Stokes, Wesfarmers and the University of Western Australia. In 2015 …

Kiron Robinson

Kiron Robinson is based in Melbourne, Victoria. Recent solo exhibitions include: Yours internally, Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Melbourne, 2018; What happens now?, Melbourne Biennial Lab curated by Natalie King, Queen Victoria Market, Melbourne, 2017; Um…no, Sarah scout Presents, Melbourne, 2017; We told ourselves we needed separate beds to sleep, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, 2015, Vertigo, Galeri Soemardja, Indonesia, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tapei, POSCO Art Gallery Seoul, 2014 Robinson has been awarded a number of grants including: Creative Victoria Presentation Grant, 2018, NETS Victoria Research and Development Grant, Arts Victoria Cultural Exchange, 2012; Arts Victoria Presentation Grant, 2011; City of …

Nikos Pantazopoulos

Nik Pantazopoulos is based in Melbourne, Victoria. Recent exhibitions include Great Movements of Feeling curated by Zara Sigglekow, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne 2018; DISMANTLE, Gertrude Contemporary, Glasshouse, Melbourne, 2017; Like a clap of thunder, Centre of Contemporary Photography, Melbourne 2017, The Nude Show, LON Gallery, Melbourne, 2016; These Economies, Sydney Contemporary, Sydney 2015; Boutique Politics, Bus Projects, Melbourne, 2015; Wearing, Westspace, Melbourne, 2014; The Purple Onion, TCB art inc, Melbourne, 2014; Rebuilding, The Substation, Melbourne, 2014; Private View and Occasional Performance, Dudspace, Melbourne, 2014; Decisions, RMIT Project Space, Melbourne, 2013; Dark Rooms RMIT Project Space Melbourne, 2013; Octopus 10, Gertrude Contemporary, …

Will Nolan

Will Nolan is a photographic and installation artist based in Adelaide, South Australia. He completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts with Honours in the Department of Art, Architecture and Design at the University of South Australia in 2008. Nolan has exhibited in a variety of spaces including solo exhibitions at Helen Gory Gallerie (VIC), CACSA (SA), FELT Space (SA) alongside group exhibitions at SASA Gallery (SA), MOP Projects (NSW), Brenda May Gallery (NSW), Sawtooth ARI (TAS), Light Square Gallery (SA), and Queensland Centre for Photography (QLD). Nolan has also received funding from Arts SA, Helpmann Academy and has been short-listed …

Vivian cooper smith

Born in New Zealand, Vivian Cooper Smith lived in Bangladesh, India and Perth before moving to Melbourne in 1999. Recent exhibitions include Interference Pattern, Perth Centre for Photography, Perth (2018), A Light Without Stars, Galerie pompom, Sydney (2018), The Insufficient Photograph, Bus Projects, Melbourne (2017) and Apparition Apparatus, Galerie pompom, Sydney (2016). In 2017 Vivian received the NGV Women’s Association Award and previously has been a finalist in the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Award, the Darebin Art Prize and the Bowness Photography Prize. He has exhibited extensively across Australia and his work is held in public and private …

Xanthe Waite

Waite graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Art: Honours (Photography) in 2014. Recent and upcoming exhibitions include: 2018 –Untitled at/on Recess, 2018 — What to do with the visitors? at Seventh Gallery, Melbourne, 2016 – SOAP at Kings ARI, Melbourne, 2016 – Is/Is Not at Westspace, Melbourne, 2016 – Ground(s) at c3 gallery, Melbourne, 2015 – Some of them got the first look at Kings ARI, Melbourne 2015 – SOAP at Fort Delta at Fort Delta, Melbourne. She is also a musician, having released 4 albums to date with her bands Terry and …

Nina Gilbert

Based in Melbourne, Victoria, Nina Gilbert studied Fine Art at the Victorian College of the Arts graduating in 2014. She has exhibited her work in Melbourne, Brisbane, Hobart, Torino and Berlin. Recent exhibitions include, Several beautiful angles at KINGS ARI (2018), **Crybaby Screening** at Outer Space, Brisbane (2018), Versions at Sutton Projects (2017), The image shadow… at Bus Projects (2016), Archiving and Fragmentation in the Digital Age with SOAP at Fort Delta (2015). She is a co-organiser of ‘recess’, an online platform for video and moving image works with Olivia Koh and Kate Meakin.Based in Melbourne, Victoria, Nina Gilbert studied …

Marian Tubbs

Based in Sydney, New South Wales, Marian Tubbs exhibits widely nationally and internationally. Recent exhibitions include Quiet revolutions and enfant terribles, STATION GALLERY, Melbourne, (2017), In Practice, Sculpture Centre, New York (2017), Abstract Sex*, Bard CCS Hassel Museum, Annandale- On-Hudson, USA (2016); Zona Maco Sur, ltd Los Angeles, Mexico City (2017); Contemporary Monsters, Minerva, Sydney (2016); Pleasure and Reality, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, (2016); transmissiondetox.com, Inaugural Online Commission, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney.

Tubbs has received multiple awards including the Marten Bequest Scholarship for Sculpture, 2017, Australia Council Arts Projects for Individuals, 2016 and Australia Council New Work …

Darren Sylvester

Based in Melbourne, Victoria, Sylvester has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally and also released his third studio album, Touch a Tombstone in March this year. Selected solo shows include Céline, Bus Projects Melbourne (2017); Darren Sylvester, Neon Parc, Melbourne (2017); Broken Model, Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney (2016); Darren Sylvester, VOLTA NY, Soho, New York (2013); Darren Sylvester – Take Me To You, Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA), Singapore (2010); and the major survey exhibition Our Future Was Ours, Australia Centre for Photography, Sydney (2008). Recent group exhibitions include Midwinter Masters: Percy Grainger: In the Company of Strangers, The Gallery, Bayside …

Starlie Geikie

Starlie Geikie’s practice archives the past and ruminates on the future. Her work often comprises myriad references to areas including utopian architecture, pagan iconography, feminism and images associated with the 1970s generating both visual and historic dialogues. Most frequently, these references are mediated by the artist’s methodology of reinterpreting craft techniques, such as quilt-making and stitching. Her work questions the implied passivity of such craft associated practices and employs unexpected materials, such as timber, woodstain and leather – often at an ambitious scale – to upend these associations. Geikie’s work explores the psychology embedded in decoration via the opposing constructs …

Karen Black

Karen Black’s painting practice explores time and space within global social, economic and political situations. With an interest in architecture, culture and history, the work tells the human stories within these environments, blending the historical with the mythical and traversing the complex interchange between the personal and the political.

Karen completed a Bachelor of Fine Art at Griffith University in 2011. She is the recipient of the 2019 Glasshouse Stonehouse residency in France and the 2019 Artbank/QPAC Commission. She was a finalist in the Sir John Sulman Prize at the AGNSW in 2019, 2018 and 2017, and in 2019, a …

Tai Snaith

Tai’s work often marries the act of making with the telling of stories or connecting and creating meaning through verbal exchange and dialogue.

Tai’s practice employs many different forms of research and materials and presents them via widely varying outcomes and contexts. Her work is often personal, collaborative and experimental.

In addition to making, a large part of Tai’s practice is involved in the discourse and community surrounding art. Tai hosts a regular review of visual art …

Catherine Bell

Catherine Bell is a multi-disciplinary artist and Associate Professor teaching visual art in the Faculty of Education and Arts, Australian Catholic University. She holds a BA (Art History & English Literature) from the University of Queensland, Bachelor of Visual Arts (Sculpture) from Queensland University of Technology, MFA (Sculpture) from RMIT University, DPhil (Fine Art) from Monash University, and was a research fellow at the Ruskin School of Fine Art, Oxford University (2001-02). Her creative-led research is focused on the role of the artist in the archive and healthcare setting, art on the margins, socially-engaged art practices, and redefining and repositioning …

Erub Arts

Erub Erwer Meta (Darnley Island Arts Centre) works to revitalise traditional Erubam le and share it with the world. Erub, also known as Darnley Island, is one of the most remote communities in Australia, located 160km north east of Queensland’s Cape York Peninsula. This beautiful volcanic island situated in deep turquoise waters, on the edge of the Great Barrier Reef is home to approximately 400 Erubam people.

The Centre specialises in hand-built, wood fired ceramics, printmaking, works on paper as well as creating jewellery, textiles, weaving and handcrafted dance ornaments. Erub Erwer Meta is a unique art centre bringing community …

Hiromi Tango

Hiromi Tango is a Japanese-Australian artist whose work spans sculpture, photography, installation and performance. Hiromi is dedicated to generate healing conversations through arts engagement. Reacting to an age in which human relationships are being eclipsed by the globalisation and virtualisation of communication, the artist’s practice is often collaborative, performative and site-specific. Her immersive installations comprise vibrant sculptural accumulations of donated objects, materials and stories. They become mnemonic traces of feelings and interactions, and the ensuing catalysis of emotion and recognition forms the affective crux of her art. In this way, although Tango’s works are highly personal and autobiographical, they can …

Michelle Hamer

Michelle Hamer maps contemporary social beliefs, ideals, fears and aspirations through text and urban environments. Familiar and often ironic, the works capture in-between moments that characterise everyday life. The boundaries and barriers that Hamer explores oscillate between fast and slow; past and present and become markers of rarely captured but revealing moments in time. Her hand-stitched and drawn works occupy a space between 2D and 3D and are based on both ‘found’ text and her own photographs – predominantly by eye.…

Kate Rohde

Kate Rohde born 1980, Melbourne. Lives and works in Melbourne. Selected solo exhibitions include Striking a Rich Vein, ArtSpace at Realm, Melbourne (2017); Luminous Realms, Craft, Melbourne (2016); Flourish, TarraWarra Museum of Art, Vic (2008); Some Kind of Empire, Gertrude Contemporary Art Space, Melbourne (2006); Vicious Precious, Latrobe Regional Gallery, Vic (2006). Selected group exhibitions include Chaos and Order: 120 Years of Collecting at RMIT, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne (2018); Collective Vision: 130 Years, Bendigo Art Gallery, Vic (2017); 2016 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Magic Object, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide (2016); Rigg Design Prize, National Gallery of Victoria, …

Jemima Wyman

Jemima Wyman’s practice encompasses performance, video, installation, photography and painting. Her most recent work focuses on patterns and masking used by marginalised groups to gain power (aka counterpower). Through this work she investigates visual resistance: specifically camouflage as a formal, social and political strategy in negotiating identity.

Wyman has exhibited widely in Australia and internationally since 1998. Her work was included in Conflict: Contemporary Responses to War, University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane (2014); Direct Democracy, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne (2013); The Unexpected Guest, Liverpool Biennial, UK (2012); Panorama, Casula Powerhouse, Sydney (2012); Inner Voices, 21st Century Museum …

James Tylor

James Tylor is an Australian multi-disciplinary contemporary visual artist. He was born in Mildura, Victoria. He spent his childhood in Menindee in far west New South Wales, and then moved to Kununurra and Derby in the Kimberley region of Western Australia in his adolescent years. From 2003 to 2008, James trained and worked as a carpenter in Australia and Denmark. In 2011 he completed a bachelor of Visual Arts (Photography) at the South Australian School of Art in Adelaide and in 2012 he completed Honours in Fine Arts (Photography) at the Tasmanian School of Art in Hobart. He returned to …

Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran

Sri Lankan-born, Sydney-based artist Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran creates rough-edged, vibrant, new-age idols. He experiments with form and scale in the context of figurative sculpture to explore politics of sex, the monument, gender and religion. Formally trained in painting and drawing his practice has a sculptural emphasis which champions the physicality of art making. While proceeding from a confident atheist perspective, Nithiyendran draws upon his Hindu and Christian heritage as reference points as well as a large range of sources including the internet, pornography, fashion and art history. Self-portraits make frequent appearances and the dual presence of male and female organs …

Kate Just

Kate Just is an established artist who works with sculpture, installation, neon, textiles and photography to produce contemporary art works that promote feminist representations of the body and experience. Specific to Just’s practice is the use of knitting as engaging sculptural medium and an unwitting political tool. In addition to her highly crafted solo artworks, Just often works socially and collaboratively within the community to create large scale, public projects that tackle significant social issues including sexual harassment and violence against women.

Kate Just holds a PhD in Sculpture from Monash University, a Master of Arts from RMIT University, and a …

Debris Facility Pty Ltd

Debris Facility Pty Ltd is a queer Corporate Entity which entangles itself with Bodies, Complicating their Borders with Haptic Interfaces. Wearables act as Extensions to broader installation practices, and move Parasitically with their Hosts through Differing Terrains. The Transmutation of Industrial Materials into Situations, Installations and jewellery Implicates our Consumption within global Supply Chains, highlighting Transitory processes and Exchanges.…

Slow Art Collective

Slow Art Collective  is an artistic collective that focuses on creative practices relating to environmental sustainability, material ethics, DIY culture and collaboration. As an interdisciplinary group of artists, Slow Art Collective is interested in process-driven practices where the focus is on the act of making.

‘Slow art’ is about slow exchanges of value rather than the fast, monetary exchange of value. It is about the slow absorption of culture through community links by creating something together and blurring the boundary between the artists and viewer. It is a sustainable arts practice, not an extreme solution; a reasonable alternative to deal …

Callum Preston

Callum Preston is a multi faceted artist and designer from Melbourne, Australia.

He is known for working across many mediums, illustration, mural work, signwriting, sculpture, video and print. He has been a part of the Melbourne street art scene since 2002, joining the Everfresh crew and studio in 2005, over the following years he has exhibited in an array of group shows in Melbourne and all around Australia. He has also completed public works in Melbourne and interstate, as well as feature projects such as painting the bow of the Sea Shepherd Sam Simon anti whaling ship, been commissioned by …

Raquel Ormella

Raquel Ormella (b. Sydney 1969) has a diverse practice that includes video, installation, drawings, and zines.  Ormella is an artist working at the intersections of art and activism, investigating the means by which critical reflexivity in contemporary art encourages processes of self-examination regarding political consciousness and social action. Ormellaʼs practice is grounded in exploring the nature of the relationship between humans and the natural environment, with a particular focus on urban expansion and forest activism. In highlighting the connectedness between the two, Ormella attempts to show that our depictions of the natural world are not representations of true ʻwildernessʼ or …

Justene Williams

Gerry Wedd

Gerry Wedd lives on the coast of South Australia’s Fleurieu Peninsula and seaside themes are often found in his work. His many and eclectic occupations include being a designer for the surfwear company Mambo from the late 1980s until 2006.

From one perspective Arcadian still life can be viewed as a simple arrangement of functional ceramic forms. However, from the other side of the work, the vessels have been decorated to create a series of vignettes, all of which make reference to the coast and together form a landscape. Wedd describes these works as ‘blue shadows’ and his now signature …

Khaled Sabsabi

Khaled Sabsabi spent his childhood in Lebanon and moved with his family to Australia in 1978, settling in multicultural Western Sydney. He specialises in multimedia and site-specific installations, often involving people on the margins of society. In 2003, he returned to Lebanon for the first time, which led to a reengagement with the region and its people. He continues to work across borders, culture and disciplines to make artworks that challenge extreme principles and actions. Sabsabi has worked with communities, in particular communities in Western Sydney, to create and develop arts programs and projects that explore people and places from …

Josie Kunoth Petyarre and Dinni Kunoth Kemarre

Josie Kunoth Petyarre and Dinni Kunoth Kemarre recently completed a project titled Centre bounce which consisted of vibrantly painted wooden figures depicting Australian Rules football players. These include well-known players such as Nathan Buckley, Chris Judd, Michael Long and Aaron Davey. These carved sculptures were exhibited in Melbourne at AFLWorld in March 2007.

Josie Kunoth Petyarre and Dinni Kunoth Kemarre live with their family on their traditional lands at the remote outstation of Pungalindum in Utopia, Central Australia. Their language group is Anmatyerr. Josie Kunoth Petyarre comes from a highly respected artistic family; her mother is Polly Kngale and her …

Louise Hearman

In Louise Hearman’s paintings and drawings things are not always as they seem. It is up to us to imagine what is glimmering in the half-light or lurking deep in the shadows, as the artist offers no written clues to her usually untitled works. An underlying sense of disquiet permeates many of Hearman’s images. Like the fragmented memories of dreams or nightmares, they carry the emotional traces of everyday events, but their surreal logic does not seem to belong to the daylight hours.

Hearman’s single-minded attentiveness to the qualities of light and her technical ability to capture its effects in …

Richard Lewer

Based in Melbourne, Richard Lewer exhibits regularly in Australia and New Zealand. He is known for his video and animation, paintings, and delicately beautiful drawings, which evocatively rework some of life’s less pleasant elements – crime scenes, illness, horror movies and extreme events. The work is accessible and familiar, with a critical edge that probes what is beautiful and sinister about our society without injecting a moralising tone or political message. Lewer’s focus is, however, less concerned with telling the concrete facts of a case. Instead, his work explores the way that places can become repositories for the psychic residue …

Tarryn Gill and Pilar Mata Dupont

Pilar Mata Dupont is an artist based between Western Australia and the Netherlands. Using highly theatrical and cinematic methods, she investigates histories, identity, and mythologies through allegory and narrative. Through imaginings of the future, and the reimagining/reworking of histories and classical texts, she aims to create alternative readings that question the conditions of the construction of dominant narratives that shape history and its legacy in the present.

In July 2015, she was the winner of the Plymouth Contemporary Open Art Prize in the UK. The judges of this prize included Turner Prize judge, Helen Legg, and former Artistic Director of …

Gabrielle de Vietri

Gabrielle de Vietri is an Australian-based artist with a concept-driven, socially-engaged collaborative practice. Her work has taken form as pedagogical systems, community events, interactive public performances, documents, invented languages, fictional historical insertions, lectures and gardens.

She has carried out projects in non-traditional locations, and held exhibitions in major Australian institutions – Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (Melbourne), Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane), Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Artspace (Sydney), Monash University Museum of Art, Samstag Museum, Ian Potter Museum, Shepparton Art Museum – and internationally in public spaces, galleries and museums in Berlin, Toronto, Chicago, Auckland, …

Lauren Brincat

Lauren Brincat’s practice is guided by the formative influence of early performance artists working in the 1970s. Her artworks mark out her own physical and mental limits and push her instincts to the edge. As an artist, she wills herself to reach out of bounds. Brincat’s practice often involves documentation of personal ‘actions’ undertaken anonymously and in relative solitude. During May and June 2012, Brincat was based in Mexico City to research and develop this performance video.

Lauren Brincat is represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne.…

Patrick Pound

Bryan Phillips

Bryan Phillips A.K.A. Galambo is a Chilean/Australian artist working in community arts, music and performance, using sound as a means to facilitate engagement with others. His practice has mainly been developed in Chile, but after completing his Masters in Community Cultural Development (VCA-2013) he has become involved in projects with artists from Timor-Leste, Indonesia and Australia. He has collaborated in works for Mapping Melbourne (2015), Gertrude Street Projection Festival (2014-2015-2016), FCACheartsJogja (2015), Flight Project (2013, Dili, Timor-Leste), Animatism Exhibition (2013, Dili, Timor-Leste) and Timor-Leste’s first public art festival, Arte Publiku (2014).

Lately he has been collaborating with Fayen d’ Evie …

Clinton Nain

CLINTON NAIN Born 1971, Carlton, Victoria

Since obtaining his Bachelor of Fine Art (Painting) at the Victorian College of the Arts (1992–94), and more recently his Master of Fine Art (Research) at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales (2001–03), Clinton Nain has established a significant place in the critical debates of contemporary Australian art. Nain’s work lifts the rug to uncover a poorly hidden shame of Australia’s past and present, the orchestrated ill-treatment of the traditional owners of this land. Nain’s potent imagery exposes the brutal and contemptuous nature underlying European settlement of the many Indigenous …

Alex Martinis Roe

Alex Martinis Roe, b. 1982, holds a PhD in Fine Arts from Monash University, Australia (2010), and was awarded the Silver Jubilee Scholarship for post-graduate research (2006-9). In 2006-7 she was a resident at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne, and in 2007 undertook a summer program with Valie Export at the Salzburg International Academy for Fine Arts, Austria. Recent shows include HaVE A LoOk! Have a Look! FormContent, London (2010); Encounters: Conversation in Practice, Limbus Europae, Berlin (solo) (2010); Change, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne (2010); The Politics of Art, Linden Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2010); Opening Lines, …

Susan Hiller

Susan Hiller

Born Cleveland, Ohio 1940

Lives and works London

After several exhibitions of her paintings and a series of collaborative ‘group investigations’, in the early 1980s Susan Hiller began to make innovative use of audio and visual technology. Her ground-breaking installations, multi-screen videos and audio works have achieved international recognition and are widely acknowledged to be a major influence on younger British artists. Each of Hiller’s works is based on specific cultural artefacts from our society, which she uses as basic materials. Many of her works explore the liminality of certain phenomena including the practice of automatic writing, …

Alicia Frankovich

Alicia Frankovich (New Zealand, 1980) obtained a BVA in sculpture at AUT in Auckland in 2002. Her work is made up of performance, performance-based videos, short films and sculpture. She puts bodies into situations where they play out relations, often testing social conventions and behaviours. She has undertaken various residencies at AIR Antwerpen, The Firestation Dublin and Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne.

Selected individual exhibitions include: 

2014:perf infiltrations, curated by Madeleine Amsler and Marie-Eve Knoerle, WAOP, Geneva; Framed Movements, curated by Hannah Mathews, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art; Le Mouvement; Performing the City: 12th Swiss Sculpture Exhibition ESS SPA, Biel/Bienne, 2014, curated …

Léuli Eshraghi

Léuli Māzyār Lunaʻi Eshrāghi (Sāmoan, Persian, German, Chinese ancestries) is an uninvited guest in unceded Kulin Nation territory, and a PhD candidate at Monash University Art Design Architecture (MADA). Hailing from the Sāmoan villages of Āpia, Leulumoega, Siʻumu, and Salelologa, his work centres on ceremonial-political renewal, languages, embodied futures, and diasporic and local indigeneities. He has undertaken residencies at Para Site (Hong Kong), Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and University of British Columbia – Okanagan (both Canada), and Tautai Pacific Arts Trust (Aotearoa New Zealand).He serves on the board of the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective (Canada), editorial advisory panel for …

Fayen d’Evie

FAYEN D’EVIE –

Fayen d’Evie is an artist and writer based in Muckleford in rural Victoria.  Her practice explores drafting, editing and translation of texts and paintings as interdependent methods for critical, imaginative and poetic enquiry.  She is also the founder of 3-ply, which investigates artist-led publishing as an experimental, conceptual and strategic device to expand or disrupt the production, transmission or archiving of knowledge.

Recent solo exhibitions include “Not All Treasure is Silver and Gold, Mate…” at West Space, Melbourne. Recent group exhibitions include: ‘Just as Money is the Paper, the Gallery is the Room’ at Osage Art Foundation, …

Michael Cook

Michael Cook

Bidjara

Born Brisbane 1968

Lives and works Brisbane

Michael Cook is a Brisbane-based photomedia artist of Bidjara heritage. Through his photography, he develops speculative histories of Australia in which colonial stories and images are inverted, often cultivating the appearance of earlier photographic technologies and prints in his work. He is a highly skilled photographer, his artistic practice having been preceded by over twenty-five years’ experience as a freelance commercial photographer.

Cook’s recent significant solo exhibitions include: Mother, Tweed Regional Gallery, Murwillumbah, 2016; Undiscovered, Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney, 2015; Through My Eyes, Museum of Australian Democracy, …

Catherine or Kate

Catherine Sagin (1986) and Kate Woodcroft (1987) have been making art together since 2008 under various monikers including ‘Catherine or Kate’. They have exhibited at the Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane), Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces (Melbourne), the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (Melbourne), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney) and Artspace Sydney. They have undertaken residencies in Iceland (Skaftfell Art Centre) and the UK (Spike Island) and received a JUMP Mentorship grant in 2011 to work with duo Harrison and Wood. With the support of the 2014 Brisbane Lord Mayors Emerging Artist Fellowship Catherine or Kate trained in comedy writing …

Erik Bünger

Erik Bünger

Born Växjö, Sweden 1976

Lives and works Berlin

Erik Bünger is an artist, composer and writer who re-contextualises existing media in his lecture-performances, installations and web projects. His work revolves around the human voice and its contradictory relationship to the body, language, music and technology.

Bünger’s recent performance lecture, The Girl Who Never Was, is derived from the 2008 rediscovery by an American researcher of the lost traces of the first ever recorded voice: the 148-old voice of a little girl singing the French lullaby ‘Au clair de la lune’. One year later another researcher experiments …

Damiano Bertoli

Damiano Bertoli

Born Melbourne 1969

Lives and works Melbourne

For more than a decade, Damiano Bertoli has been concerned with the idea of a ‘continuous moment’, using the principles of collage to reveal the convergence of events or artworks across time. This has taken form in video, painting, sculpture and installation, appropriating historical elements to be recombined into Bertoli’s temporal continuum.

Some of Bertoli’s recent solo exhibitions include: Continuous Moment: Big Foot’s Studio Distant Measures, VCA Margaret Lawrence Gallery, 2016; Damiano Bertoli: Come to Now, TCB Art Inc., Melbourne, 2015; Continuous Moment: Sordid’s Hotel, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, …

Clare Milledge

CLARE MILLEDGE Born 1976, Sydney; lives and works in Sydney, Australia. Clare Milledge produces complex installations comprising paintings, textiles and sculptures that are highly informed and engaging – but also slippery and ambivalent – to consider our relationship to science, nature and language. She often invites collaborators to stage experimental performances within her installations, which complicate any logical narrative and render the familiar uncanny. Milledge completed her Doctor of Philosophy at Sydney College of the Arts, the University of Sydney in 2012. Part of her candidacy was spent at the Universität der Künste, Berlin; she completed her Honours year at …

Claire Lambe

CLAIRE LAMBE Born 1962, Macclesfield, United Kingdom; lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. Over the past two decades, Claire Lambe has utilsed the material and transformative possibilities of sculpture – and more recently the relationships between object/form and image/photograph – to unsettle conventional notions of gender, class and sexuality. Drawing on the experimental art, music and club scenes of the 1970s, her work engages the female body to address underlying histories of sexuality, violence and social discontent. Lambe completed a Bachelor of Fine Art at Bristol College of Art in 1985, followed by postgraduate studies at the University of New …

Tony Garifalakis

TONY GARIFALAKIS Born 1964, Melbourne; lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. Working across photography, collage, sculpture and installation, Tony Garifalakis’s artworks question the power and legitimacy of political, social, religious and artistic institutions. In Mob Rule, Gariflakis modifies a selection of prints and posters of military and royal figures through a similar process to that used by government agencies when censoring sensitive material. This process of concealment shifts both meaning and context of the images. Garifalakis completed a Bachelor of Fine Art (Painting) at RMIT University in 2000. Recent solo exhibitions include Mutually Assured Destruction, Ryan Renshaw Gallery, Brisbane, 2011; …

Jason Wing

Su-Mei Tse

Michael Nyman

Angelica Mesiti

Angelica Mesiti is a video, performance and installation artist living and working in Sydney and Paris. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree with Honors and her Master of Fine Arts Degree from the College of Fine Arts at the University of NSW Sydney, Australia.

Angelica’s video works use cinematic conventions and performance languages as a means of responding to the particularities of a given location, its history, environment and communities. Past projects have focused on traditional music, dance performance, narrative, the ballad, and oral story telling traditions.

She was a founding member of the Sydney artist run Gallery …

John McGhee

Laura Fisher

Volker Kuchelmeister

George Poonkhin Khut

Sean Cordeiro

Claire Healy

Yuri Ancarani

Michelle Nikou

Michelle Nikou lives and works in Adelaide South Australia. She holds a master of Visual Arts, a Graduate Diploma of Visual Arts and a Bachelor of Design (ceramics) from the University of South Australia, where she is currently completing her PhD. Nikou has held regular solo exhibitions and has exhibited extensively in Australia and abroad. Nikou has received various awards and travel grants. Her work is held in public and private collections including; the Art Gallery of South Australia, University of South Australia Art Museum; the NGA; the Clo Fleiss Collection, Paris and the Gigi and Josef Fainas Collection, Geneva.…

Mandy Nicholson [Wurundjeri]

Dorothy Lovett [Gunditjmara]

Glenda Nicholls [Wadi Wadi/Ngarrindgeri/Yorta Yorta]

Glenda Nicholls is a Waddi Waddi/Yorta Yorta/Ngarrindjeri artist who makes nets using techniques passed on by Nicholls’ ancestors. Nicholls’ aboriginal name is Jule Yarra Minj which means Little River Girl. Her maternal totem is the Writcharuki (willy-willy wagtail), a totem of the great Ngarrinjeri nation.

Nicholls’ craft reflects the continuity of her family storyline. It reflects the story of her elders and ancestors and the connection between the past and present. As the years flow on she is learning more about net making and using that knowledge to create artwork in different forms whilst also building on her skills of …

Treahna Hamm [Yorta Yorta]

Kelly Koumalatsos [Wergaia/Wamba Wamba]

Tommy McRae [Kwat Kwat]

Raymond Young (Gunnai/Gunditjmara/Yorta Yorta)

Born 1966, Melbourne, lives and works in Doncaster East, Victoria.  Young discovered his gift as an artist through the Statewide Indigenous Arts in Prisons and Community Pilot Program. During this time he was given access to Gunnai shield designs that inspired him to create innovative ceramic forms that connected him with his culture.  Young continues to create works that express his connection to his culture using the designs, shapes and markings of his ancestors, creating contemporary interpretations of these traditional designs.  Raymond’s Young’s artwork was included in Melbourne Now, National Gallery of Victoria, 2014.  His work is held in the …

Joshua Muir (Yorta Yorta/Gunditjmara)

Joshua Muir lives and works in Ballarat.  Muir uses a diverse range of different mediums in his creative practice, working across painting and digital media. In 2014 he received The People’s Choice Award – Victorian Indigenous Art Awards and the Arts Victoria Excellence Award – Koorie Art Show. Muir has been commissioned to work on a number of high profile creative projects, including; the Foundation for Young Australians – Innovation Nation, 2015; Eureka 160th Anniversary, City of Ballarat, 2014; MCG Mural, Richmond Football Club, 2014; CAAMA short animation film and mural design, Northern Territory, 2014.  Recently Muir’s work has featured …

Mitch Mahoney (Boon Wurrung)

Born in the north west of Victoria, Mitch Mahoney lives and works in Duns Creek NSW.  In 2015 Mahoney received the National Gallery of Australia Summer School Scholarship, which is awarded to 16 year 11 students from across Australia, two students from each state. His recent exhibitions include participating in the 3 Village Art Trail, Hunter Valley, and at the Hunter Valley Gallery in 2014. Mahoney has been commissioned to create a number of works including; possum skin pelts for the Melbourne Museum and he produced work for Life without Barriers for the National Cultural Respect Steering Committee in 2014 …

Aunty Marlene Gilson (Wathaurung) (Wadawurrung)

Marlene Gilson’s multi-figure paintings work to overturn the colonial grasp on the past by reclaiming and re-contextualising the representation of historical events. Learning her Wathaurung history from her grandmother, Gilson began painting while recovering from an illness. The artist’s meticulously rendered works display a narrative richness and theatrical quality akin to the traditional genre of history painting. Gilson, however, privileges those stories relating to her ancestral land, which covers Ballarat, Werribee, Geelong, Skipton and the Otway Ranges in Victoria. Often including her two totems, Bunjil the Eagle and Waa the Crow, Gilson’s paintings not only reconfigure historical narratives, but display …

Georgia MacGuire (Wurundjeri)

Georgia MacGuire is a contemporary Indigenous artist based in the Central Goldfields, Victoria. She has been a practicing artist since 2000 and completed a Bachelor of Creative Arts (Visual Arts) from Deakin University, Melbourne in 2004. Since completing her studies, Macguire relocated to a rural environment in the Central Goldfields.  She is drawn to materials that reconnect her to traditional craft practices. Her work has been selected for a number of awards and scholarships and she has recently received the CAL Victorian Indigenous Art Award for three dimensional works and the People’s Choice prize. Recent exhibitions include; I never painted …

Elizabeth Newman

Painting today reflects the diversity of cultures and personal sensibilities within societies. Elizabeth Newman refers to the objects she creates as ‘painting’. Employing everyday processes and affordable materials is Newman’s way of offering forms of expression that are more imaginative and generous than the pre-packaged products of consumer society.  Newman invites the viewer to participate in the creative act, so that in experiencing her work — and that of the other seven artists in the exhibition — painting will enter your world.

2009Painting today reflects the diversity of cultures and personal sensibilities within societies. Elizabeth Newman refers to the objects …

Nancy Naninurra Napanangka

For Boxer Milner Tjampitjin and Nancy Naninurra Napanangka in remote Western Australia, painting expresses deep affinities with ancestral lands. Each seemingly abstract composition conveys a sense of the country over which they have been appointed custodians by their paternal and maternal relatives. Painting is important for the individual, and family and community, offering a way of passing down knowledge, and celebrating and sharing.

2009For Boxer Milner Tjampitjin and Nancy Naninurra Napanangka in remote Western Australia, painting expresses deep affinities with ancestral lands. Each seemingly abstract composition conveys a sense of the country over which they have been appointed custodians by …

Boxer Milner Tjampitjin

For Boxer Milner Tjampitjin and Nancy Naninurra Napanangka in remote Western Australia, painting expresses deep affinities with ancestral lands. Each seemingly abstract composition conveys a sense of the country over which they have been appointed custodians by their paternal and maternal relatives. Painting is important for the individual, and family and community, offering a way of passing down knowledge, and celebrating and sharing.

2009For Boxer Milner Tjampitjin and Nancy Naninurra Napanangka in remote Western Australia, painting expresses deep affinities with ancestral lands. Each seemingly abstract composition conveys a sense of the country over which they have been appointed custodians by …

Diena Georgetti

Diena Georgetti explores the role and effect of paintings in the everyday world. Following her interest in modernism and the legacy of design, Georgetti’s modestly-scaled abstracts evoke a range of inspirations. Recalling architectural visions, theatre sets and schematic models, and ranging from surreal to non-objective compositions, Georgetti paintings are a homage to twentieth century culture and an aid to understanding life.

2009Diena Georgetti explores the role and effect of paintings in the everyday world. Following her interest in modernism and the legacy of design, Georgetti’s modestly-scaled abstracts evoke a range of inspirations. Recalling architectural visions, theatre sets and schematic models, …

Amanda Davies

The paintings of Amanda Davies suggest their inspiration may lie in biographical introspection. However, this artist is primarily interested in the ability of painting to present both real and fictive experiences. Situated in ambiguous spaces, which reference sites or memories of medical care, Davies’ images confront the viewer with their unexpected and uncertain subject matter. Do they portray the artist’s experience? The visceral impact of Davies’ images is accentuated by her technique of painting with high contrast, saturated colours in reverse on plastic.

2009The paintings of Amanda Davies suggest their inspiration may lie in biographical introspection. However, this artist is …

John Citizen

John Citizen limits his subject matter to contemporary interiors, which suggest their source in design magazines. The discordant colours and compressed perspective imply Citizen is commenting on the vacuousness of middle class, urban life and its values. John Citizen is an alter-ego for established artist Gordon Bennett, used by Bennett as a pseudonym to avoid associations with his reputation as a successful contemporary and Indigenous artist. Citizen is an identity which operates as an ‘other’, a status to which Bennett is sympathetic.

2009John Citizen limits his subject matter to contemporary interiors, which suggest their source in design magazines. The discordant …

John Wolseley

The walk caused me to evolve or push in another direction a particular kind of drawing that I call ‘frottage’, in which I move sheets of paper against and within the forms of the landscape after fire. In a sense both the landscape and artist are making the work – linking different patterns of growth and the juxtaposition of body and tree in a kind of awkward dance.

Making my way through the Cobbobonee Forest, I found myself moving through a tall vertical geography – feet in forest litter, body against burnt trunks and branches, arms grasping branches as one …

Jan Learmonth

Along the river, eons of weather sculpts fragile limestone cliffs that are home to birds and precarious plants. Amongst reflections and shadowed reeds, are places for hunting on long legs with javelin beaks. Creatures are swirls with flashing scales that live below.

 The suspended vessel, once floating, is now in the air with the detritus of the water-life clinging to its exposed underside. Its interior apse, like the river curve, is embossed with the textures and shapes of netted wood and spidery web. The small canoe shapes with Casuarina leaves, are a dry swamp looking across the reeds. Mapping our …

Brian Laurence

The soundscape of the Great South West Walk portrays a personal impressionist experience of the environments encountered along the route; Cobboboonee, Moleside, Glenelg, and Discovery Bay. Sounds in many areas of Australia are now almost impossible to capture in their natural state due to noise pollution such as trail bikes, aeroplanes, vehicles, non-native animals and even tourists. I sought to capture the sounds that are the characteristics of the region, making it different to any other.

To record these sounds I had to remain in one place for several hours. Listening instead of looking. Much of the area encompassed by …

Nicky Hepburn

Most of my day to day work at the bench is about attention to detail and small things. My natural inclination is to notice tiny, reflective, colourful or unusual shapes. To notice these things involves looking down. When I started walking I noticed my focus was drawn to the micro-environments at my feet, then gradually up to higher levels.

Referencing found objects such as cuttlefish and kelp on the tide line, the impressions of insect galls on leaves, forest litter, fish scales, shells, seed pods and native plants, this work is an observation and celebration of cycles and natural growth …

Peter Corbett

I hope that the images convey some sense of the ancient influences of the indigenous peoples that once lived there, and of the sense of discovery and danger that early Western settlers would have experienced – and from that how we can learn to appreciate and protect one of the most unique natural places on our planet.

Peter Corbett

Shot with a constantly moving camera to draw the viewer along the trail and into the landscape, Peter Corbett’s video illustrates the many moods of the Great South West Walk. From the beautiful, mysterious forests of the Cobboboonee through to the …

Constanze Zikos

Michael Zavros

Paul Wrigley

Peter Westwood

Amber Wallis

David Wadelton

Peter Tyndall

Richard Tipping

David H Thomas

David Thomas

Arlene TextaQueen

Arlene TextaQueen is part super-hero and part artist-performance artist-art curator. Key themes in TextaQueen’s most recent work are queer and feminist culture, Australian national identity and voyeurism. Her work is an eccentric blend of at times quite politicised subject matter, balanced by a playful, cheeky aesthetic.

Arlene TextaQueen graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Western Australia in 1995 and later studied Interactive Multimedia at Metro Screen in Sydney, graduating in 1998 with a Certificate II in Arts. Since graduating, TextaQueen has exhibited widely in group and solo shows around Australia and abroad, including shows in …

Masato Takasaka

Heather B Swann

Martin Smith

Gemma Smith

David Sequeira

Gareth Sansom

Giles Ryder

Mark Rodda

Geoffrey Ricardo

Ben Quilty

Ben Quilty’s painting is not polite. Smeared smudged, caked and slapped onto the picture plane with bold virtuosity, his rich impasto works challenge assumptions. Using bold and unsettling subjects, Quilty explores the problematic relationship between the personal and the cultural. Iconic imagery, animated by a textural third dimension, also becomes a vehicle for painterly meditations on the potency of painting. Emphatically expressive, they deny rumours that the medium is outmoded. Rather, their powerful and irresistible effect continues painting’s noble tradition as an antidote to complacency.

Sydney-based Quilty was already a regular exhibitor prior to completing Bachelor degrees in both Visual …

Elizabeth Pulie

For close to two decades, Elizabeth Pulie has drawn on a variety of oriental and occidental decorative traditions in her painting practice. Pulie’s recent works from 2006–08 continue this interest with the invention of an intricate personal iconography. The works’ highly coloured arabesques, flowers, geometric patterns, swirls and flourishes avoid sentimentality or nostalgia, instead delighting in a sense of novelty that alludes to the playfulness of the Rococo tradition. The works’ over-the-top decorative sensibility directs our attention to concepts of adornment, and is a provocative manoeuvre against contemporary trends to invest art with an ideological function.For close to two decades, …

Gregory Pryor

Kerrie Poliness

Kerrie Poliness was born in Melbourne in 1962 and lives in Melbourne. In 1984 Poliness completed a Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) at Victoria College, Melbourne and founded the Melbourne independent artist-run space Store 5 with Gary Wilson in 1989.

She was a finalist in the Basil Sellers Art Prize in 2012.Kerrie Poliness was born in Melbourne in 1962 and lives in Melbourne. In 1984 Poliness completed a Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) at Victoria College, Melbourne and founded the Melbourne independent artist-run space Store 5 with Gary Wilson in 1989.

She was a finalist in the Basil Sellers Art …

Linda Pickering

Stieg Persson

Louise Paramor

Rose Nolan

Rose Nolan

Born Melbourne 1959

Lives and works Melbourne

Rose Nolan is well-known for her distinctive red and white text-based works that draw on the visual languages of constructivism, suprematism and non-objective geometric art. Her banners and wall paintings are often grand in scale but their texts express an unlikely modesty and uncertainty. She uses text in onomatopoeic or paradoxical presentations, where its meaning is echoed in or confounded by the form of the artwork. She regularly uses very simple materials such as cardboard and hessian that underpin the works’ often humble assertions.

Nolan’s significant solo exhibitions include: …

Jonathan Nichols

Geoff Newton

Viv Miller

Lara Merrett

Tim McMonagle

Fiona McMonagle

Melbourne-based artist Fiona McMonagle is well known for her watercolours that belie her darker references to pedestrian life in the suburbs. Since graduating from the Victorian College of the Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Painting), McMonagle has exhibited extensively throughout Australia, both in highly successful solo exhibitions as well as curated group shows. Her most recent solo exhibition was a survey show at La Trobe University Museum of Art (LUMA) entitled Do I Look Like I Care (2016) curated by Dr. Vincent Alessi.

In 2015 McMonagle was the winner of UQ Art Museum’s National Self-Portrait Prize and in 2016, she was …

Rob McHaffie

Laith McGregor

Kat Macleod

Stewart MacFarlane

Joan Letcher

Sam Leach

Joanna Lamb

Josie Kunoth Petyarre

Josie Kunoth Petyarre (born Utopia c. 1954) and her husband Dinni Kunoth Kemarre (born Utopia 1954), live with their family on their traditional lands at the remote outstation of Pungalindum in Utopia, Central Australia. Their language group is Anmatyerr.

Josie Kunoth Petyarre comes from a highly respected artistic family; her mother is Polly Kngale and her aunts are Kathleen Kngale and Angelina Pwerle. Having attended school as a girl in Alice Springs, she has been involved in the Utopia art movement since the late 1980s, when she produced batik works and paintings on canvas.

Their individual works were finalists in …

Dinni Kunoth Kemarre

Dinni Kunoth Kemarre (born Utopia 1954) and his wife Josie Kunoth Petyarre (born Utopia c. 1954) live with their family on their traditional lands at the remote outstation of Pungalindum in Utopia, Central Australia. Their language group is Anmatyerr.

For Josie  and Dinni football matches have a family focus and are occasions to meet a far-flung community. Carving and painting stars from AFL and local teams is a process that gives voice to family and community passions. Their works traverse the full geographical and organizational spectrum of Australian sport, ranging from the Melbourne Cricket Ground to a local league in …

Jeremy Kibel

Caroline Kennedy

Matthew Johnson

Jess Johnson

Gary James a.k.a. Spook

Robert Jacks

Raafat Ishak

In 2006 Rafaat Ishak commenced a project generated by his reflections on the reality of concepts such as citizenship, subject, home, nationality, language and cultural bias. After having written requests to immigrate to 194 counties, Ishak is progressively painting the replies from each nation.  To date sixty one countries’ responses have been painted. Each country is represented by a section of its flag, symbolically depicted in pastel tones, and an excerpt from the reply (such as ‘ … its better that you give us a call … ’ or ‘ … go visit and see for yourself … ’) is …

Natalya Hughes

Euan Heng

Katherine Hattam

Ry Haskings

Nicholas Harding

Ian Haig

Marie Hagerty

Neil Haddon

Matthys Gerber

Louise Forthun

Philip Faulks

Chris Dyson

Ivan Durrant

Sue Dodd

Nick Devlin

Marc de Jong

Kate Daw

Adam Cullen

Greg Creek

Alan Constable

Brett Colquhoun

Julia Ciccarone

Sadie Chandler

Jon Cattapan

Jon Campbell

With a focus on text based works, Jon Campbell’s recent work carefully constructs imagery with abstracted and geometric elements.  Meaning is created in the negative spaces, hiding words and phrases within the surface image. Campbell implements this methodology to explore the colloquial language and culture of contemporary society, he also engages with the viewer as a critical part of the work itself as they decipher the text.

Campbell’s solo exhibitions include Absolutely Disgusting, Darren Knight Gallery at Stephen McLaughlan Gallery, Melbourne (2016); Art Basel Hong Kong, Discoveries Section, with Darren Knight Gallery, Hong Kong (2015); Ten years of neon, KALIMANRAWLINS, Melbourne (2013); Just Sing What …

Mitch Cairns

Fiona Cabassi

Angela Brennan

Chris Bond

Louise Blyton

Del Kathryn Barton

Peter Atkins

John Aslanidis

Colleen Ahern

Greg Ades

Simryn Gill

Born 1959 Singapore. Lives and works in Sydney.

Gill currently divides her time between Sydney and Port Dickson, Malaysia.

Her recent solo exhibitions have been held at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2008; the Tate Modern, London, 2006; the Arthur M Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, 2006; the Berkeley Art Museum, University of California, 2004; the Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2002; and Galeri Petronas, Kuala Lumpur, 2001.

She received an Australia Council Fellowship in 2003.

2010Born 1959 Singapore. Lives and works in Sydney.

Gill currently divides her time between Sydney and Port Dickson, Malaysia.

Her recent …

Trevor Nickolls

John Meade

Born in Ballarat in 1956, Melbourne-based sculptor John Meade is one of Australia’s leading artists and has held regular individual and group exhibitions with galleries and museums since 1995.

Selected solo exhibitions include: Show Business (2009), at Sutton Gallery, Melbourne and Incident in the Museum 2 (2004) Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne, Propulsion at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, and the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2001) and Tour de Force with Chris Langton at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne (1996).

Selected group shows include ShContemporary 08, Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair, China (2008), Adventures with …

Karen Russell

Kay Lawrence

Chrissie Houston

Sandy Elverd

Kirsty Darlaston

Rhonda Agius

Esther Kirby

Roy Kennedy

Ponch Hawkes

Ponch Hawkes (b. 1946) is a Melbourne-based photographic artist whose work has been widely exhibited and published in Australia. A significant part of Hawkes’ output is documentary, and a commentary on Australian society and cultural life since the 1970s. In her work she considers topics such as: the body and movement; sport; circus and theatre; the environment and community; and relationships—with a feminist purpose.

Hawkes’ work was included in the original iteration of In Her Words at Horsham Regional Gallery.…

Nici Cumpston

Barkandji people, New South Wales

This series of photographs was created on a group day trip through Old Mutawintji Gorge in late July 2022. Mutawintji is a place of great cultural significance to all Barkandji/Barkindji peoples and many neighbouring groups. For millennia we have gathered here, at this permanent place of water, for cultural activities such as marriages, initiations, ceremony, and trade.

We followed the creek bed, negotiating sandy patches and clambering up and down rocky outcrops. Making our way into the gorge I was empowered by a sense of collective pride. We were in awe of the beauty and …

William Blandowski

Badger Bates

Rhyll Plant

Rhyll Plant lives and works in Bendigo. She has just completed a Masters Degree in Print Making at Latrobe University, Bendigo. She created a wood engraving out of huon pine wood blocks based on her interpretation of a Murray Cod.  This intricate print and wood block was selected as the winner of the 2002 Swan Hill national Print Awards and remains a favourite work in the gallery’s collection.

2006Rhyll Plant lives and works in Bendigo. She has just completed a Masters Degree in Print Making at Latrobe University, Bendigo. She created a wood engraving out of huon pine wood blocks …

Yvonne Koolmatrie

Yvonne Koolmatrie was born in Wudinna, South Australia and was taught weaving skills by the traditional elder, Dorothy Kartinyeri in 1982. Since this time her basket weaving has seen her collected by most major national institutions and in 1997 represented Australia in the Venice Biennale. Koolmatrie achieves her elegant reed woven fish traps through an interpretation of traditional techniques and design. Tools and stories of her Ngarrindjeri people will often be found interspersed within works such as the Murray Cod (Pondi) fish traps.

2006Yvonne Koolmatrie was born in Wudinna, South Australia and was taught weaving skills by the traditional elder, …

Kurwingie Kerry Giles

Kurwingie Kerry Giles was born in 1959 in Waikerie, in the Riverland of South Australia.  Her love and concern for the health of the Murray River was the major subject of her art work.  She painted many large, sometimes 5 meter long, canvases about the changes to the Murray River from pre colonial times. Kurwingie Kerry Giles died in 1997 and a retrospective of her work was held at Tandanya in 2004.

2006Kurwingie Kerry Giles was born in 1959 in Waikerie, in the Riverland of South Australia.  Her love and concern for the health of the Murray River was the …

Arthur Bartholomew

Arthur Bartholomew was another early prolific illustrator completing more than 700 species of flora and fauna over 40 years. A selection of his superb drawings detailing scientifically accurate measurements of the Murray Cod will be included in the exhibition. Often completed directly from the living species, the immediacy present in the work by both illustrators allows viewers to draw into question matters of continuity and change within a species and reflect on the fragility inherent in ecological systems.

2006Arthur Bartholomew was another early prolific illustrator completing more than 700 species of flora and fauna over 40 years. A selection of …

Ludwig Becker

Ludwig Becker was born in Darmstadt, Germany in 1808. He became Australia’s foremost exploration artist and embarked on the 1860 expedition with Burke and Wills. Becker meticulously documented his natural surroundings and a fine array of sketches of local marine and freshwater life is a testament to his dedicated eye. Ink and watercolour drawings of the Murray Cod made in the 1890s to be included in the exhibition, were a substitute for photographic records and although aesthetically appealing, were foremost valued for their ability to preserve empirical information.

2006Ludwig Becker was born in Darmstadt, Germany in 1808. He became Australia’s …

Ian Abdulla

Ian Abdulla was born in 1947 at Swan Reach, on the Murray River, in the Riverland region of South Australia.  His art tells the story of his life and in particular his childhood growing up on the Riverland of South Australia. Swimming and fishing for pondi (Murray Cod) is a major theme that occurs regularly in his many works. Abdulla’s work is exhibited regularly throughout public and private many exhibitions in public and private galleries and his work is found in all public galleries throughout Australia.

2006Ian Abdulla was born in 1947 at Swan Reach, on the Murray River, in …

Clare Whitney

Bluey Roberts

Bluey Roberts was born in 1948 and belongs to the Ngarrindjeri tribe from the Lower Murray region of South Australia. He is widely exhibited within Australia and overseas and is held in collections of the National Gallery of Australia, Flinders University Art Museum in Adelaide, South Australian Museum and Queensland Art Gallery. Bluey Roberts is undoubtedly the most prolific of the Ngarrindjeri artists and is well known for his carved emu eggs and decorated weapons. The works selected for inclusion in Murray Cod: the biggest fish in the river are ancient narratives about the Fish and the Murray River, possessing …

Narelle Autio

Interview

Narelle Autio, one of Australia’s leading photographers, talks to NETS Victoria about her photographic practice and her new series of work which was commissioned for the touring exhibition, Murray Cod: the biggest fish in the river.

How would you describe your general photography practice from concept to print?

Most of the photography I do is found, rarely do I set out with a plan in mind. I am usually looking for the candid moment and as most of my photography is done out in the public domain, there is really no way to preconceive a photograph. Due to this, …

Daniel Von Sturmer

Daniel von Sturmer uses video to explore how perceptions of space and time are affected by expectation. Von Sturmer’s video installations have their basis in traditional media such as paint and sculpture, often referencing art historic tropes of abstraction, still life, modernism and minimalism.

Von Sturmer was born in Auckland, 1972, and currently lives and works in Melbourne. He completed an MA in Fine Arts at RMIT in 1999 and in 2001 was awarded a Samstag Scholarship. His work has been shown widely both in Australia and internationally. Most recently, von Sturmer represented Australia with The Object of Things (2007) …

Arlo Mountford

Arlo Mountford works primarily with large-scale installations that incorporate sound, video and animation. His witty and often macabre works use humour, self-reflexivity and appropriation – devices relating to postmodernism – to explore art history, popular culture, the role of the artist and the contextual relationship between contemporary art practice and the past.

Arlo Mountford was born in 1978 in Honiton, Devon, United Kingdom. He arrived in Australia in 1983 and lives and works in Melbourne. He completed a Diploma of Fine Art at the Western Australian College of Art, Design and Multimedia, Perth in 1998 and a Bachelor of Fine …

Jess MacNeil

Jess MacNeil’s practice encompasses painting, photography and video. Much of her work explores the convergence of these mediums and the recurring themes of absence/presence and stillness/movement. A set of photo-paintings made by the artist of people traversing the steps of the iconic Sydney Opera House provided the source material for the video work, Opera House Steps March. In the series of photo-paintings, the artist traced and delineated the figures and their various trajectories in opaque white paint. In the video, Opera House Steps March the artist uses digital manipulation to meticulously remove the physical forms of people using the steps, …

Shaun Gladwell

Shaun Gladwell was born in Sydney in 1972 and currently lives and works in London. In 1996, Gladwell received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney, and in 2001 was the recipient of an Anne and Gordon Samstag Scholarship, which enabled him to undertake research at Goldsmiths College, University of London.

Gladwell represented Australia at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009 and also travelled to Afghanistan that year as an Australian Official War Artist; in 2006 he was awarded an Australia Council Visual Arts Fellowship.

Gladwell’s work is held in many public …

Daniel Crooks

Daniel Crooks’ practice includes photography, digital media and installation. Using a range of techniques including stop-motion animation, time-lapse and precision camera motion control, Crooks breaks down the conventional relationship between time and space. His complex time structures reveal a sensibility seemingly at odds with the ordinariness of the subject matter, which often include the motion of trams, trains, elevators and city pedestrians. Many of his video artworks explore the boundaries of the medium itself.

Daniel Crooks was born in Hastings, New Zealand in 1973 and currently lives and works in Melbourne. He is a graduate of the Auckland Institute of …

Anthea van Kopplen

The Envelope, developed in 2001, generates a top, skirt, dress, coat and shelter. Part of the inspiration for the garment arose from a newspaper story that van Kopplen discovered about a group of snowboarders who perished after their gear failed to protect them against the freezing conditions. The tragedy was a catalyst for the designer who sought to create a single pattern template for a textile object with multiple iterations. The resulting design produces clothing as clothing (and clothing as accessories) that can be worn alone or on top of other garments.

The modified rectangular form, that was both pattern …

S!X

(Denise Sprynskyj and Peter Boyd)

The body of work on display here is derived from the surplus stock of Melbourne vendor Chiodo. S!X scrutinised the garments to transform this excess of unwanted men’s clothing into a new body of work for women. Fabric predominately drives their designs, however working with recycled cloth is complex and time-consuming with challenging defects or difficult fabrics. The activity of deconstruction entails a careful knowledge of how garments fit together and move with the body.

Named after the number on their first studio door, S!X call their work a recipe of recycling, carefully selected patterning …

Project

(Kara Baker and Shelley Lasica)

The cagoule – traditionally a cowl-like, waterproof coat popular in the 1970s – is the medium through which Project trace an exploration into shape and volume. Specifically, how a tailored form works with and against the human body and how one garment type has morphed and changed over the life of a label. The inherent strangeness of the formless form of the cagoule provides an ‘over shape’ to the body’s regular silhouette and distorts the notion of a typical body.

The idea for Project began with a collaboration. Fashion designer Kara Baker and dancer/ choreographer …

MATERIALBYPRODUCT

(Susan Dimasi and Chantal McDonald)

Soft Hard Harder Dress Curtain is a culmination of ideas about technique and process. Through their label MATERIALBYPRODUCT (MBP), Susan Dimasi and Chantal McDonald have developed an entire design language. Dress Curtain uses MBP’s ‘dot system’, with its running lines of fine white circles on black fabric. The effect was at first applied by hand at the studio with liquid paper pens but is now printed offsite. With this system in place, little pattern making is needed as the dots have become design information – a language developed and spoken by the two designers through …

FORMALLYKNOWNAS

(Toby Whittington)

In How You Make It, three cross-over vests show the FORMALLYKNOWNAS (FKA) design process sourced from Whittington’s plain white pattern, the Classic Cut, and the two variations in coloured and patterned fabric that are derived from it. More than a label, FKA is a complete design system devised by Toby Whittington in 2005. The system invites anybody to become a coCreator to work with Whittington – the ‘Primary Creator’. Using the FKA DesignMenu, coCreators, in this instance Renae Campbell and Ahmad Abas, choose from a fixed set of design elements including: colour, fabric, prints, pockets and fasteners to …

Ess. Laboratory

(Hoshika Oshimi and Tatsuyoshi Kawabata)

Ess. Laboratory combine two sets of unique skills – the tailoring skills of Oshimi with those of the visual artist and composer in Kawabata. The ‘Ess.’ in Ess. Laboratory stands for Experimental Surreal Style and the exploration of the subconscious through trial and enquiry pervades their design. To that end, Ess. Laboratory’s two ensembles in the exhibition seem to have been caught mid-way between this world and some fantastical narrative. Each seems to either rise from the floor or ooze into it, or appear part filthy or is it part bright and unsullied?

Vest coat …

Paula Dunlop

Dunlop explores the use of chance as a system for designing clothes. The deliberate staging of chance procedures to generate pattern shapes distances the designer from achieving an overly controlled outcome. Dunlop’s systems include: folding fabrics while blindfolded – dropping old toiles, pattern pieces or textile scraps (that don’t always land on the fabric completely); calling on an assistant to randomly select pattern pieces in a lottery-style process; or by a self-imposed rule such as determining that an op-shop visit on a particular day will uncover a garment that becomes a pattern.

Dunlop’s garments all incorporate experimental elements. She reworks …

Simon Cooper

The Chromosewn series is a group of precisely tailored garments for the radically transfigured. Cooper’s longstanding interest in the variability of the body and how it evolves was further engaged by the deformed bodies he witnessed from his travels in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. During his journey, Cooper was struck by the number of people he saw suffering from war-related injuries, including the ongoing exposure to landmines or birth defects resulting from Agent Orange. He also discovered a corresponding trade in tailored clothing in Ho Chi Minh City, a centre of exceptional tailors.

Cooper searched for a tailor who …

Jacqui Stockdale

Jacqui Stockdale, based in Melbourne, is an acclaimed Australian visual artist known for her theatrical portrait photography, figurative paintings, drawings and collages. Her practice explores cultural identity, folklore and the transformative nature of masquerade and ritual in society.

2016Jacqui Stockdale, based in Melbourne, is an acclaimed Australian visual artist known for her theatrical portrait photography, figurative paintings, drawings and collages. Her practice explores cultural identity, folklore and the transformative nature of masquerade and ritual in society.

2016…

Louiseann Zahra-King

Born in Melbourne in 1972, Louiseann Zahra-King has exhibited widely in Australia. Her work is represented in a number of public and private collections and she holds a PhD from Monash University.

Zahra-King uses etched glass and the lost wax process to transform indigenous flora and and dead fauna into theatrical woodlands of vitreous vegetation and fallen bronze birds. Her elaborate and shamelessly romantic installations speak of unrequited love, melancholia and mortality, and sparkle with glass, opalescence and silk. The floor installation, indigofera australis, has been especially created for The enchanted forest.

2008Born in Melbourne in 1972, Louiseann Zahra-King has …

Louise Weaver

Louise Weaver was born in Mansfield, Victoria, in 1966. She has an extensive exhibition history in Australia and overseas and her work is represented in major public and private collections around the world.

Weaver’s alluring anthropomorphic animals are supremely sophisticated creatures with their crocheted, embroidered and sequined pelts and their mysterious masks. The floor installation presented in The enchanted forest will include new and existing work that evoke folktales of eloquent and charming beasts.

Interview with Louise Weaver

Do you recall wanting to be an artist as a child, and if so what inspired you to pursue art making as …

James Morrison

Born in Papua New Guinea in 1959, James Morrison moved to Melbourne in 1972 and currently lives and works in Sydney. He has exhibited widely and his work is included in a number of public and private collections.

Morrison’s landscapes and histories draw from a wide range of sources and cultural references, defying chronology and operating according to their own idiosyncratic logic, the artist’s unexpected and whimsical combinations evoking children’s stories and fantasy novels. Morrison’s monumental painting, Freeman Dyson, created especially for The enchanted forest, features an Antipodean landscape that fluctuates between a roadside reserve and a future interplanetary space …

Milan Milojevic

Milan Milojevic was born in Hobart in 1954. His work has been widely exhibited both locally and internationally and is represented in public and private collections. He is the head of the Printmaking Studio at the Tasmanian School of Art, University of Tasmania. Milojevic manipulates the laser printer by hand-mixing pigments and overprinting in multiple layers with traditional mediums to produce digital prints with the richness and luminosity of medieval manuscripts. His imaginary beasts pay homage to the uncharted ‘there be monsters’ regions of early maps. Milojevic’s collaged chimeras and wildernesses serve as a metaphor for constructed identities and cultural …

Deborah Klein

Deborah Klein was born in 1951. Her work has been exhibited widely locally and internationally and is represented in numerous public and private collections. She holds a Master of Arts (Visual Arts) from Monash University, Gippsland.

Klein’s immaculately coiffed women are as exquisitely decorative, and as perfectly still, as the butterflies that accompany them. As though pinned by a spell these repressed Rapunzels dare not let down their hair, trapped by manners and social status, coveted and collected in ivory towers.

The iconography within Klein’s new works for The enchanted forest: new gothic storytellers will be derived from the insect …

Jazmina Cininas

Melbourne-based printmaker, Jazmina Cininas was born in 1965. Her work has been exhibited locally and internationally and is represented in numerous public and private collections. She is currently undertaking a PhD at RMIT University.

Cininas’ reduction linocuts explore the female werewolf as social barometer. Her hirsute heroines are drawn from folklore, medieval werewolf trials, psychiatric literature, eco-feminist writings and popular culture. Recently her lycanthropes have begun taking on the blonde pelt of the dingo, acknowledging the dual cultures – Australian and Lithuanian – that make up Cininas’ identity.

Her complex colour prints are made using the reduction linocut technique whereby …

Pip Stafford

Pip Stafford is a multimedia artist whose practice includes video installation, performance, web projects, printed media and illustration. She is primarily interested in personal rituals, private lives and exploring notions of isolation and group communication. A graduate of the University of Tasmania, School of Art, she is currently a resident of the Rat Palace, an artist-run studio space in Hobart. She has shown work at Platform Artists Group (Melbourne) and Inflight Gallery (Hobart). In 2007, Stafford co-founded and organised the ONO Project, a collective using dis-used urban space for unique art events, with the support of Contemporary Art Services Tasmania. …

Roderick Sprigg

Roderick Sprigg is a multi-disciplinary artist whose process and communitybased art practice centres on the politics of masculinity in regional communities. He gained his Bachelor of Arts (Visual Art) from Curtin University in 2006, which incorporated an exchange at the Ecole Nationale Superior d’Art in Dijon, France. Sprigg has participated in numerous exhibitions, from Year 12 Perspectives at the Art Gallery of Western Australia (1996) to Ceci n’pas une Usine in France (2006) and at Fremantle Arts Centre (2008). In conjunction to various group and solo shows, he has also carried out residencies at The Cannery (Esperance, 2007), the Perth …

Carly Preston

Ararat-based printmaker, Carly Preston recently received her Honours award in Visual Arts from La Trobe University in Bendigo after having previously completed a Diploma of Visual Arts at the Gordon Institute of TAFE in Geelong. Preston has also participated in a number of exhibitions including a solo exhibition at Allan’s Walk Artist Run Space in Bendigo. In 2007 she was awarded second prize at the Bendigo Works on Paper Prize at Bendigo Art Gallery. Preston has also investigated the ways in which rural women invite and include pattern and decoration into their domestic environment through working with the Country Women’s …

Trevor Flinn

Trevor Flinn is a Dunkeld-based artist who makes sculpture and video as a means of investigating legends and to further understand his place in regional Victoria. He wants to tell stories that draw the viewer into a more poetic world – a world of both humour and perversity. After completing a Bachelor of Arts (Art History) Flinn spent about six months overseas. On his return he decided to start making art. It was while studying sculpture at the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) that he developed a particular interest in installation, video and printmaking.

The series The Puma, the …

Ellen Coyle

Bendigo artist Ellen Coyle has a background in theatre and costume arts, having received her Diploma of Arts (Small Companies and CommunityTheatre) in 2003. Since 2007 she has exhibited her costume and textile art in solo and group shows in Bendigo. Coyle explores the similarities and differences between people and their environment in terms of biological and sociological distinctions.

Whilst referencing craft traditions, Coyle uses her works to connect to her surrounding landscape in surprising ways. Her subtle performances, which slip under the radar of everyday life and human traffic, are gentle interventions that place her textiles, and ideas, quietly …

Laurene Vaughan

Kit Wise

Carmel Wallace

Discovery Bay offered me materials on its tide-lines: plastic broken free from cray-pots, and jettisoned cargo wedges once used to hold logs, including those from local forests, on ships bound for the paper mills of Japan. These collected materials – the texture of the wood; and the patterns of the grain – and the weathered triangular motifs that signpost the walk, became my palette, their repetition of form echoing the cadence of walking.

Signs of those who have walked the land before me, they speak of the way nature is negotiated by people in these particular environs: of the local …

Marion Manifold

Jenny Lowe

Gini Lee

Seth Keen

Ruth Johnstone

Lesley Duxbury

Vicki Couzens

The Lands we walked upon are my Grandmothers’ Country; part of the Dharwurd Wurrong – Gunditjmara.

The Walk was a time of reconnection to ancestral lands and I experienced some powerful moments on the journey. These were balanced with contemplative times afterwards when I was able to absorb and integrate my experiences. It was a journey across both the outer physical landscape and my inner spiritual landscape.

Coloured with hues from the land and waters, my works are about the landscape and the changes in it as you traverse this Country. They are also about the unseen, what is above …

Josephine Tsui Tze Kwan

b. Hong Kong, 1974. Lives in Hong Kong

During the clay making, I enjoy silence. I can feel the circle and only I can go through the process. The circle for me is satisfaction. I can achieve a circle in my heart through concentration, meditation and repetition.

Josephine Tsui completed a Diploma in Fine Arts (Sculpture), Hong Kong Art School in 2006 and a Bachelor of Art (Fine Art) RMIT University in 2010. She is currently completing a Master of Visual Arts at Hong Kong Baptist University.

November 2011

b. Hong Kong, 1974. Lives in Hong Kong

During the clay …

Andrei Davidoff

b. Sydney, 1982. Lives in Melbourne

Travels in Asia, in particular, China and Japan have enabled me to encounter the eastern aesthetic and ceramic tradition. This has been a great influence on my work. The swirling ensos of a Zen monk have mixed with the saturated neon skyline of Shanghai, and the rough geometric construction of the Sodeisha movement combined with the narrow mudbrick alleys of ancient Xi’an form an influence which feeds into my practice. Currently I am interested in inversing the relationship between drawing and sculpture, to create abstract drawings by using sculptural forms as the armature for …

Jie Zhou

b. Changde City, Hunan, China, 1986. Lives in Beijing

I have always thought that the artist, through their work, exposes the world for others. I am fascinated by China’s urban explosion. Currently, I am using the most representative material of our nation – ceramic – to talk about our nation and the story of this civilization. Ceramics are very fragile, but they are also strong and difficult to erode. This material maintains the characteristics of the hand-made and the uniqueness of each work. I choose to make all of my works one edition. I feel that since we are unable …

Fiona Wong

Lai Ching

b. Hong Kong, 1964. Lives in Hong Kong

My work explores the cultural links between contemporary and traditional Chinese culture. I create hand-built sculptural works of clothing that weave porcelain fragments together: notably medieval inspired winged costumes which are reminiscent of traditional Chinese burial suits and ceremonial suits of woven jade that adorned the departed nobles of the Han dynasty. Clothing serves as a second skin for civilized people and provides a rich canvas to reflect cultural aspects of daily life.

In this work, the experience of shoemaking brings the idea of juxtaposition of concepts and techniques from …

Monxi Wu

b. Yunlin County, Taiwan, 1968. Lives in Kaohsiung, Taiwan

This series of ceramic sculptures were hand made in Raku clay, decorated by crackle glaze and slips, and fired at the temperature of 1100OC. It presents my curiosity for natural objects, especially botanic objects. Through utilising the contrasts between the relationship of interior and the exterior, I create a dialogue between spaces which reflects the dualistic concept of the Ying and the Yang from the Taoist philosophy. Yin and Yang originally derived from the observation of nature. It can be simply explained as notions of positive (Yang) and negative (Yin). Through …

Kevin White

b. Reading, UK, 1954; migrated to Australia in 1985. Lives in Melbourne

My ceramic vessels present an elegant physicality of form characteristic of oriental porcelain traditions. Respect for the materials is integral to my creative language, allowing for a certain restraint and emphasis of formal sculptural qualities. The sheared cone vessels echo a simplicity of line akin to Japanese ceremonial dotaku bells. Adorned with imagery drawn freehand or loosely imprinted in undulating grids, the fluent integration of surface with object creates a sense of ‘wholeness’ or ‘purity’ that remains dynamic. The vessel appears as a conversation between the painted mark …

Jane Sawyer

b. Melbourne, 1959. Lives in Melbourne

I have a strong interest in the physicality of the relationship between clay and human body. Clay, like flesh, responds to and reflects touch. A fascination with the tactile is the legacy of my Japanese training in studios both in Australia and Japan. The Tea Ceremony pre-requisite to handle the bowl and drink from it whilst assessing it is unashamedly in my work but is exaggerated by and entwined with an aesthetic pared down to the basics and an interest in form and material exploration.

Jane Sawyer lived and studied as an apprentice at …

Robyn Phelan

b. Melbourne, 1965. Lives in Melbourne

I am drawn to the qualities inherent in the hand-built vessel. Made by the direct and individual mark and pressure of the artist’s hand, the sculptures describe volume, being rounded and voluptuous. Recording in clay observations of art history and culture – experienced through travel, study, museum collections and in domestic life – is the artist’s challenge; to bring together sculptural forms and pictorial content. This creates narrative associations, tells stories and raises questions for the viewer.

The ‘Depleted’ series of sculptures is drawn from a visit to the remains of Mt Kaolin, near …

Sally Cleary

b. Canberra, 1961. Lives in Melbourne and Otway Ranges

I am interested in the relationship between objects, and the relationship that we, as human beings, have with nature. Through my art work I explore the representation of nature and human behaviour transposed through mixed-media artworks, combining hand made organic forms with natural and man-made found objects. Over the past twelve years, I have visited Hong Kong twice a year. These trips have had a huge influence on the way I work, as I have been exposed to a strong conceptual aesthetic in terms of ceramics, and have had access to …

Kris Coad

b. Yarram, 1959. Lives in Melbourne

I am interested in the spiritual and daily ritual of different cultures, the way an object, symbol, mark or shadow and its placement can trigger an emotional response. To interpret the anthropological sentiment behind beliefs, I make contemplative pieces that have a stillness and silence in an increasingly complex world. Through these pieces, I want to evoke a point of focus, a sense of mystery, contemplation and wordless thought.

Kris Coad completed a BA (Ceramics) at La Trobe University, Bendigo in 1979 and a Master of Fine Art by Research, RMIT University in 2002. …

Joe Chan

b. Hong Kong. Lives in Hong Kong

I was born in rural area in Yuen Long. When I was small, I lived in a traditional Chinese house. On rainy days, I looked at the expansive view of the surrounding area and listened to the sound, ‘ding ding dom dom…’ on the tiled roof. It is simple, natural but also relaxing. That’s what inspired me for this work. ‘Jing Ting’ is not only about nature and sound but also about desire. The world is too noisy, too fast and too complicated…let us listen to the beauty of the landscape in tranquillity.…

Fred Williams

Born Australia 1927, lived in England 1951-56, died 1982

Fred Williams was one of the most important landscape artists to emerge in Australia following the Second World War. In 1943, at the age of 16, he attended the National Gallery of Victoria Art School and continued his studies under the George Bell School between 1946 and 1949 where he was introduced to the principles of Modernism. In the mid 1950s Williams commenced studies at the Chelsea Art School, London and the Central School of Arts and Crafts, London focusing on the process of etching. In 1957 he returned to Australia …

Rover Thomas

Kakatuja/Wangkajunga peoples, born Australia 1926/1928, died 1998

Rover Thomas (Joolama) was born c. 1926 at Well 33 (Gunawaggi) on the Canning Stock Route in Western Australia’s Great Sandy Desert. At the age of ten, after his mother’s death, Thomas moved to Billiluna Station in the Kimberley where he later began work as a stockman along the Canning Stock Route. It was here during the Second World War that he was initiated into traditional law.

Thomas worked with a European fencing contractor as far north as Wyndham and into the Northern Territory. After several years he returned to Western Australia and …

Lin Onus

Yorta Yorta people, born Australia 1948, died 1996

Lin Onus was born of Yorta Yorta and Scottish decent. His visits with his father to the Cummeragunja, on the New South Wales side of the Murray River, was the place of his cultural learning. Stories told by his uncle Aaron Briggs, known as ‘the old man of the forest’ provided Onus his Koori name — Burrinja, meaning ‘star’.

Onus was the recipient of many prestigious awards and appointments. These included the ‘Introduced media section’ in the Fifth National Aboriginal Art Award, Darwin, 1988; The Kate Challis RAKA Award (Ruth Adeney Koori …

John Olsen

born Newcastle, New South Wales 1928

John Olsen began his career as a freelance cartoonist for publications such as Man and Fashion Design. Olsen attended the Datillo Rubbo Art School in 1947 and the Julian Ashton Art School in 1950 under the tuition of John Passmore and Godfrey Miller.

In 1957 Olsen travelled to Majorca, where his work was transformed by the influences of European art and the Mediterranean. Back in Sydney in 1960 he began work on his first major artwork, Spanish Encounter. Over the next two years he executed the You Beaut Country series.

In 1968 Olsen established …

Sidney Nolan

Born Australia 1917, lived and worked England 1953–92, died England 1992

Sidney Nolan grew up in the suburb of St Kilda, Victoria. Although he received some art training at Prahran Technical College and the National Gallery School, Melbourne, he was largely self-taught as an artist. He was a founding member in 1938 of the Contemporary Art Society, where he exhibited annually from 1939 to 1947. He was drafted into the army and stationed at Dimboola, western Victoria, in 1942 where he began a series of works based on the Wimmera landscape and in 1946 – 47 he completed the first …

Dorothy Napangardi

Walpiri, born c1956 Tanami Desert, Northern Territory

Dorothy Napangardi is considered one of the most experimental Aboriginal Australian artists currently working in Central Australia. In recent works she paints a women’s ceremonial site known as Mina Mina, the artist’s custodial country near Lake Mackay in the Tanami Desert, north of Yuendumu.

Her work has featured in exhibitions throughout Australia, as well as in Europe and North America. In 2001 she won the 18th National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award for her painting Salt on Mina Mina. In 2002 her work was the subject of a major survey exhibition …

Emily Kame Kngwarreye

Anmatyerre people, born Australia c1910, died 1996

Emily Kame Kngwarreye is the most well known of female Indigenous Australian artists. She was born in Alhalkere (Soakage Bore), Utopia in the Northern Territory c. 1910.

In 1977, Kngwarreye learnt the techniques of tie-dye, block printing and batik, which led to her playing a pivotal role in forming the Utopia Women’s Batik Group. In 1988 Kngwarreye began painting with acrylic on canvas. She first came to prominence when her paintings were displayed in Sydney in 1989 at the S.H. Ervin Gallery. Soon after, she was awarded a community-based artist-in-residency project by the …

Rosalie Gascoigne

Born Auckland, New Zealand 1917, arrived Canberra, Australia 1942, died 1999

Rosalie Gascoigne was born Rosalie Norah King Walker in Remuera, Auckland, New Zealand in 1917. She moved to Australia in 1942 to join her husband, Ben Gascoigne in the small scientific community of Mount Stromlo.

Gascoigne first came to prominence in the mid 1970s for her installations and boxes of found objects. After studying and eventually lecturing in Ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arranging, she began to organise other objects which she found in the surrounding landscape. The landscape of Canberra and its surrounds was the source of …

Russell Drysdale

Born England 1912, arrived Australia 1923, died 1981

Russell Drysdale was born in Bognor Regis, England, in 1912, arriving in Australia in 1923. He became interested in Post Impressionist painting while on a visit to England in 1932. From 1935 to 1938, he studied with Arnold Shore and George Bell in Melbourne. He attended the Grosvenor School in London and the Grande Chaumiere, Paris from 1938 – 39.

In 1944, western New South Wales was affected by severe drought, the worst on record. The Sydney Morning Herald commissioned Drysdale to accompany reporter Keith Newman to cover the story. The devastating …

John Davis

Born Ballarat, Victoria 1936, died Melbourne 1999

John Davis was born in Ballarat in 1936. Following several teaching positions between 1958 and 1962, Davis returned to part-time studies at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in 1963, graduating with a Diploma of Sculpture in 1966. The following year he was appointed as lecturer in sculpture and 3D design at Caulfield Institute of Technology.

In 1972, he travelled with his family to the United States of America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, returning to Australia the following year to take up position of lecturer in sculpture at the Prahran College …

Lorraine Connelly-Northey

Waradgerie people, born Swan Hill, Victoria 1962

Lorraine Connelly-Northey is a Waradgerie woman born in Swan Hill, Victoria in 1962. Her interest is in the ideas posed by cross-cultural narratives and in celebrating the traditional work of her ancestors. She is particularly inspired by the Mallee and Riverina bush environments of north-western Victoria where she spent her childhood. Her objects and installations relate to the history of the Waradgerie and her personal connection to the land.

Since 1991 she has exhibited in numerous exhibitions including Hunter-Gatherer, Mildura Arts Centre, Victoria and Cross Currents, Linden Centre for Contemporary Art in 2005 …

Anne Zahalka

Laurie Nilsen

Laurie Nilsen was born in Roma 1953, moving to Brisbane in the late 1960s to become a jockey. After finishing his apprenticeship at the age of 21, Laurie completed a three year certificate course in commercial illustration at the Queensland College of Art. In 1989-99 he graduated from the Gippsland Institution (VIC) with a BA in Fine Arts, majoring in sculpture. Laurie’s political works featuring barbed wire as a medium encompass cultural, political and environmental concerns. Selected exhibitions: Laurie Nilsenfireworks gallery Brisbane (2008); The Amersham Trophy (with proppaNOW Artists Collective) Ambleside Street Studio Brisbane; 70% Urban National Museum of Australia …

Gordon Hookey

Gordon Hookey was born in North Queensland, Gordon Hookey is Waanji. Visually, Gordon’s work has taken in a wide variety of medium and technique. He is widely travelled having exhibited and undertaken residencies in several countries and demonstrated pictorial and lyrical narratives encompassing drawing, printmaking, installation and painting. Selected solo exhibitions: “WHICHWAY!…?’’ Milani Gallery, Brisbane (2009); So Fist Tick Catered Phenomenaah, Belllas Milani Gallery, Brisbane (2007); Kopatai Project Space, Port Chalmers, Dunedin, New Zealand (2006). Selected group exhibitions: I walk the line: New Australian Drawing,  Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2009); Australian, Casula Powerhouse, Sydney, NSW (2008); Culture Warriors: National …

Jennifer Herd

Jennifer Herd is a proud Mbarbarrum woman whose family roots lie in far North Queensland. With strong feelings about the way in which Aboriginal people have been treated in this country, Jennifer’s work is about her experiences as an Aboriginal person and about making known the untold history of our people in Australia. Having worked in the theatre and fashion industry for 12 years before moving into the field of Indigenous education in the late 1980s, in recent years, Jennifer has made the shift from costume to installation, painting and sculpture. Her interests are now mainly concerned with Aboriginal Art …

Richard Bell

Richard Bell was born in Charleville, Queensland, in 1953 and is of the Kamilaroi, Ji’man, Kooma and Goreng Goreng people. He lives and works in Brisbane. Bell was a founding member of art collectives the Campfire Group in 1990 and proppaNOW in 2003.

Bell is a creative provocateur who arouses audience sensibilities and consciousness by acknowledging human histories that are pivotal to the development of human rights. He speaks through art with a political voice that often communicates justice issues, sometimes with overt confrontational imagery and at other times with Australian Aboriginal humour that reflects the ability to laugh in …

Bianca Beetson

Bianca Beetson is a Kabi Kabi woman, Born in Roma Western Queensland. Beetson studied a Bachelor of Art Visual Arts (Honours) at the Queensland University of Technology. She was selected for the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Primavera exhibition in 1997. As a member of the Campfire Group she participated in the project All Stock Must Go which was part of the 2nd Asia Pacific Triennial at Queensland Art Gallery in 1996. Her works have been presented in a variety of solo and group exhibitions within Australia and overseas and is held in the collection of Art Bank and Queensland Art …

Vernon Ah Kee

Vernon Ah Kee was born and raised in North Queensland and based in Brisbane, Vernon Ah Kee is Kuku Yalandji, Waanji, Yidindji, Gugu Yimithirr and Koko Berrin. With conceptualist text works anchored in minimal expression and drawings nuanced with a refined technical sense, Vernon underpins his critique of Australian popular culture with assertion that the Aboriginal condition is more the result of White Australian construction and machination than it is of Aboriginal invention. Recent solo exhibitions include: talkwalktalk, Mackenzie Gallery, Regina, Canada (2009); Woolloongabba; belief suspension, Artspace, Sydney (2008). Selected Group Exhibitions: Once Removed, ludateca, Castello,Venice Biennale #53, Venice, Italy …

Tony Albert

Tony Albert is a Brisbane-based artist born in North Queensland. His family comes from Cardwell, situated in the rainforest area of the far north. In 2004 Tony completed a degree in Visual Arts majoring in contemporary Australian Indigenous art. Provoked by the stereotypical representations of Indigenous Australians in mainstream culture, Tony’s paradoxical wordplay examines cultural alienation and displacement. Recent solo exhibitions include:There’s No Place Like Home, Gallerysmith, Melbourne; Ash on Me, Jan Manton Art, Brisbane (2009); Must Have Been Love, Canberra Contemporary Art Space (2008). Selected group exhibitions: WesternAustralia Indigenous Art Award, Art Gallery of West Australia; Octopus9, Gertrude Contemporary …

Joel Zika

Joel Zika is a Melbourne-based artist who completed a Master of Fine Arts (Photomedia) in 2009 at Monash University. Previously he completed a BA in Media Arts at RMIT in 2001. Recent exhibitions include Pleasure Island, Kick Gallery, Melbourne (2011), Terrorium, No Vacancy Gallery, Melbourne (2010), Night and Morning, Cube37, Melbourne (2008), Inside Outside, Despard Gallery, Hobart (2008), Hocus Pocus: Magic, Mystery & Illusion in Melbourne, City Museum, Melbourne (2008), and At Night…, Spacement Gallery, Melbourne (2005).

May 2011Joel Zika is a Melbourne-based artist who completed a Master of Fine Arts (Photomedia) in 2009 at Monash University. Previously he completed …

Sam Spenser

Sam Spenser is a British artist currently living and working in Los Angeles. Sam graduated from Goldsmiths University of London in 2008 with a BA in Fine Art. Past exhibitions include Scrap, The Wapping Project, London (2008), Yellow Since 1877, The Wapping Project, London (2007), and Wunderville, London Design Festival (2006). In 2009 Sam was awarded the prestigious Bursary Award by the Royal British Sculptures Award for his work Beacon for Land. Since, Sam’s works have been acquired by several collections including The Wapping Project, The Future Laboratory and Algorithmics Inc.

May 2011Sam Spenser is a British artist currently living …

Adam Laerkesen

Adam Laerkesen lives and works in Sydney. He graduated from Sydney College of the Arts with a Bachelor of Visual Arts in 1987. Adam’s recent exhibitions include his solo show at Anita Traverso Gallery, Melbourne (2009), Biosphere, Manly Art Gallery & Museum, Sydney (2008), Wind Songs, Damien Minton Gallery, Sydney (2007), and Hemispheres, Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney University. Laerkesen was twice a finalist at Sculpture by the Sea, Sydney (2000, 2001), the Woolhara Small Sculpture Prize, Sydney (2006). Adam Laerkesen is represented by Anita Traverso Gallery, Melbourne, and his work is held in a number of important collections throughout Australia.…

James Gleeson

James Gleeson (1915-2008) was one of Australia’s pre-eminent twentieth century artists and leading art historians. He was Australia’s foremost Surrealist painter, and was also a prominent critic and writer on art for newspapers and art magazines, and wrote several major texts on Australian art. James Gleeson was awarded membership of the Order of Australia (AM) for services to art in 1975, and held honorary degrees from Macquarie University, Sydney (1989) and the University of New South Wales (2001). In 2004 the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, staged a major retrospective of work by Gleeson, which toured to the National Gallery …

Eloise Calandre

Eloise Calandre is a London-based British artist who graduated with a MA in Photography at the Royal College of Art, London, in 2001. She previously completed a BA in Fine Art at the University of Leeds. Recent exhibitions include Interiors, Anna Pappas Gallery, Melbourne (2009); Light Divided – Art after Dark, Louise T Blouin Foundation, London (2008); Mothership Collective, South London Gallery, London (2006), and Kaleidoscope, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (2006).

May 2011Eloise Calandre is a London-based British artist who graduated with a MA in Photography at the Royal College of Art, London, in 2001. She previously completed a BA …

Aly Aitken

Aly Aitken is a Melbourne-based artist, who completed a BA in Fine Art at RMIT in 2008. Her recent exhibitions include If They Knock Don’t Answer, Platform, Melbourne (2010); Don’t Leave Home If You Don’t Have To, Red Gallery, Melbourne (2009), Debut V, Blindside, Melbourne (2009), and Fresh!, Craft Victoria, Melbourne (2008). Aly was a Finalist in Off The Wall, Art Melbourne (2010) and the Woolhara Small Sculpture Prize, Sydney (2010).

May 2011Aly Aitken is a Melbourne-based artist, who completed a BA in Fine Art at RMIT in 2008. Her recent exhibitions include If They Knock Don’t Answer, Platform, Melbourne …

Lily Hibberd

Lily Hibberd is a visual artist and writer, practicing in performance, painting, photography, video and installation. She works in collaboration with communities and artists to tell old and new stories based on places, memories and histories. Lily lives and works between Australia and France, and holds a PhD in Fine Art.

Recent projects include: The Phone Booth Project with Curtis Taylor commissioned for We Don’t Need a Map at Fremantle Arts Centre in 2012 (touring Australia in 2015) and curated in Vivid Memories, Musée d’Aquitaine, Bordeaux, France (2014), The Ice Pendulum, Paris Nuit Blanche festival (2013), and Les Aimants at …

Tom Nicholson

Tom Nicholson is an artist who lives in Melbourne. He often works with archival material and the visual languages of politics, often using public actions and focussing on the relationship between actions and their traces. He has made a number of works engaging aspects of Australia’s early colonial history, using combinations of drawings, monumental forms, and posters, often drawing these histories into relation with the histories of other places.

His recent work has been shown in Meeting Points 7, at M HKA in Antwerp, 21er Haus in Vienna, and the Beirut Art Centre, curated by WHW; at Art Gallery of …

Mikala Dwyer and Justene Williams

Behaviours of the marginal and the displaced are highlighted in Captain Thunderbolt’s Sisters and Red Rockers (both 2010). The videos made by Mikala Dwyer and Justene Williams on Sydney’s Cockatoo Island cite Australia’s colonial history but respond specifically to the history of women on the island, presenting us with a forgotten female history that runs parallel to better-known male histories.

Captain Thunderbolt’s Sisters engages the story of bushranger Fred Ward (known as Captain Thunderbolt) imprisoned on the island, however it brings particular attention to the rescue conducted by his Aboriginal girlfriend, Mary Ann Bugg. The two artists dressed in striped …

Claire Anna Watson

Lives and works in Naarm/Melbourne.

Multidisciplinary in approach, my practice explores aspects of contemporary culture and its relationship to foodstuffs, as well as humanity’s relationship to nature and the impact of scientific interventions on the natural world. Ephemeral matter is the medium for manipulation and experimentation, re-contextualised to invite the viewer into a state of reflection on the natural, or not so natural, world.

Claire Anna Watson has produced public art, often ephemeral, for the shores of the Black Sea in Turkey, a forest in Finland, the rural plains of Portugal and the snowfields of Australia. Her practice also encompasses …

Ghostpatrol

b. Hobart, 1981. Lives and works in Melbourne.

Experimentation has always been part of my work. My work spaces often turn into small shrines, indulging and entering the world I’m painting. The combination of paintings alongside the objects that inspire them gives a more rounded view into the world I’m building. Working with objects helps me learn, memorise and explore the line style and feeling I’m trying to capture in my paintings. My practice has always contained a split between creating highly archival works on paper and linen and creating more temporary sculptural works as well as street based …

Juan Ford

b. Melbourne, 1973. Lives and works in Melbourne.

My practice has consistently been engaged with opening up new possibilities for realism in painting. I have employed many strategies that argue around the theoretical ‘problems’ of realism in painting. I enjoy exploiting the limited short-comings of the dull, officially sanctioned dialogue between painting and it’s would-be executioner, photography, in order to develop new potential for realism. While my work evolves and varies across time, it characteristically involves an examination of our schismatic relationship to the natural environment.

Juan Ford’s practice over the last decade has been consistently engaged with realism …

Penny Byrne

b. Mildura, 1965. Lives and works in Melbourne.

I meticulously reconstruct manipulated figurines from damaged and antiquated ceramic objects into artworks that often wield a political message. My use of fragile ceramics contradicts the strong political messages evident in my work. My satirical viewpoint confronts a number of contemporary political, social and environmental issues that present an ongoing inquiry into popular culture and international politics. My training as a ceramics conservator strongly informs my practice.

Penny Byrne, who has exhibited nationally and internationally over the past decade, works with found materials, manipulating and reconfiguring vintage ceramic figurines into artworks wielding …

Brook Andrew

Brook Andrew examines dominant Western narratives and insinuates the forgotten, often invisible histories of colonial societies. Harvest and Memory Archive (both 2015) were created within the context of the ANZAC centenary, and challenge the narrative and legacy of that event.

Deeply informed by his own cultural background, Harvest presents a wunderkammer filled with rare books, postcards, objects and ephemera from Andrew’s personal archive, highlighting aspects of the narrative that have generally been overlooked – notably the role of Indigenous servicemen and women.

Fraught with straight historical reading, these works are – as anthropologist and Foundation Chair of Australian Indigenous Studies …

Joan Ross

Joan Ross was born in Glasgow in 1961 and migrated to Australia in 1962. Her recent solo exhibitions include BBQ this Sunday, BYO and Enter At Your Own Risk, Gallery Barry Keldoulis (Sydney). Group shows include Lines in the Sand, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery (New South Wales) and the National Works on Paper Prize, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery (Victoria). Her work is held in the National Gallery of Australia (Canberra), Gold Coast Regional Gallery (Queensland), City of Sydney and Artbank. She is based in New South Wales.

Joan Ross is represented by Michael Reid Gallery, Sydney and Bett Gallery, Hobart.

April …

Stuart Ringholt

Stuart Ringholt was born in 1971 in Perth and lives in Melbourne. He works across a range of media including video, sculpture and performance. Recent solo exhibitions include Starring William Shatner As Curator at TCB (Melbourne) in 2011 and Video Works at Club Laundromat (New York) in 2009. Ringholt has participated in group shows and festivals such as MONA FOMA 2012 (Tasmania), 2011 Singapore Biennale and the the 2008 Biennale of Sydney. He is the author of Hashish Psychosis: What it’s Like to be Mentally Ill and Recover (2006).

Recent group exhibitions include Performa 15 with Richard Bell et al …

Nicholas Mangan

Nicholas Mangan was born in Geelong in 1979. His solo exhibitions includeLet’s Talk about the Weather, Y3K (Melbourne), Between a rock and a hard place, Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney), Nauru, Notes from a Cretaceous World, Sutton Gallery (Melbourne) and Misplaced/Displayed Mass – A1 Southwest Stone, Gertrude Contemporary (Melbourne). His work has appeared in group exhibitions at the Centre for Contemporary Photography (Melbourne), National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne) and the Centre Pompidou (Paris). In 2006 Nicholas undertook a New York Studio Residency, funded by the Australia Council for the Arts. He currently lives and works in Melbourne.

April …

Deborah Kelly

Deborah Kelly is a Sydney-based artist whose works have been shown in streets, skies and galleries around Australia, in the Singapore and Venice Biennales, and elsewhere. Her collaborative artwork with Tina Fiveash, Hey, hetero! has been shown in public sites from Sydney to Glasgow, and won the 2001 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras visual art award. She is a founding member of the art gang boat-people.org, which has been making public work dealing with race, nations, borders and history since 2001. The distributed memorial she devised for the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests was performed in twenty …

Mandy Gunn

Mandy Gunn was born in Leeds, England and migrated to Australia in 1966. Recent solo exhibitions include re-source, Counihan Gallery (Melbourne),TEXTile, Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts (Melbourne), Shreds of Evidence, Leongatha Gallery and Mondo Trasho, A survey exhibition, Latrobe Regional Gallery (Morwell). Her work has been exhibited in group shows at the Bendigo Art Gallery (Victoria), Gippsland Art Gallery (Sale) and the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery (Victoria). She currently lives and works in Victoria.

April 2012Mandy Gunn was born in Leeds, England and migrated to Australia in 1966. Recent solo exhibitions include re-source, Counihan Gallery (Melbourne),TEXTile, Linden Centre for Contemporary …

Elizabeth Gower

Elizabeth Gower has exhibited in over forty solo exhibitions in Australia and overseas. Her work has appeared in the Biennale of Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney), Clemenger Art Award, Heide Museum of Modern Art (Melbourne), Embracing Space, Art Gallery of Western Australia (Perth) and Stick it! Australian Collage, National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne). She is represented in most Australian state collections including National Gallery of Australia (Canberra), Art Gallery of New South Wales, National Gallery of Victoria, Queensland Art Gallery (Brisbane) and the Art Gallery of South Australia (Adelaide). Gower is a recipient of numerous awards and …

Simon Evans

Simon Evans was born in London in 1972.  Recent solo exhibitions include Shitty Heaven, James Cohan Gallery (New York, NY), Failing at Living Alone, Galeria Fortes Vilaça (São Paulo, Brazil), Island Time, James Cohan Gallery (New York, NY), Humble Junkatarian Seeking White Frame, Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco, CA and How to get about, Aspen Art Museum (Aspen, CO).  His work has been exhibited at the Tate Modern (London, UK), Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Humlebæk, Denmark) and Mori Art Museum (Tokyo, Japan) as well as in major biennials in Brazil and Istanbul. Simon Evans currently lives and works in …

Christian Capurro

Christian Capurro was born in Dampier, Western Australia, in 1968. He completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Printmaking), Victorian College of the Arts in 1995 and received his Master of Arts (Media Arts) from RMIT University in 2006. Recent solo exhibitions include a vacant bazaar (provisional legend), Artspace (Sydney) and Mouthpiece, Milani Gallery (Brisbane). He has appeared in group exhibitions at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (Melbourne), Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane) and Samstag Museum of Art (Adelaide). His work has been exhibited in North America, Asia, New Zealand and Europe, including at the 52nd Venice Biennale of International …

Bridget Bodenham

Bridget Bodenham has a Diploma of Arts (Ceramics) from the University of Ballarat. In 2006 she received an Emerging Artist grant from the Australia Council for the

Arts and was also part of Craft’s annual graduate survey exhibition, Fresh!. Bodenham was a finalist in the Bombay Sapphire Design Discovery Award in 2008 for a series of ceramic mortars and pestles. She has exhibited in Melbourne, Japan, Munich and has had her ceramics featured in various Australian magazines and journals.

March 2013Bridget Bodenham has a Diploma of Arts (Ceramics) from the University of Ballarat. In 2006 she received an Emerging Artist …

Nina Oikawa

Nina Oikawa is a Tokyo-born, Melbourne-based jeweller who completed the Doctorate of Fine Art in Gold and Silversmithing at RMIT University in 2011. She is also a qualified gemmologist and valuer certified by the National Council of Jewellery Valuers. She has been lecturing in jewellery part-time at RMIT University since 2008. Oikawa’s work has been exhibited in several countries and has also featured extensively across print and online publications. Her jewellery is stocked in Australia, the United States and Japan.

March 2013Nina Oikawa is a Tokyo-born, Melbourne-based jeweller who completed the Doctorate of Fine Art in Gold and Silversmithing at …

Nicholas Bastian

Nicholas Bastin is a Melbourne-based artist/jeweller who creates objects imagined as merchandise from an invented popular culture. He has participated in numerous exhibitions in Australia and internationally, including a 2012 exhibition at Craft, Sleepless Hero. In 2013 Bastin currently lectures in the School of Art at RMIT University, Melbourne, where he completed a PhD in 2011.

March 2013Nicholas Bastin is a Melbourne-based artist/jeweller who creates objects imagined as merchandise from an invented popular culture. He has participated in numerous exhibitions in Australia and internationally, including a 2012 exhibition at Craft, Sleepless Hero. In 2013 Bastin currently lectures in the School …

Matthew Dux

Matthew Dux is a Melbourne-based garden designer/landscaper. His body of work ranges from city rooftops, to vertical gardens, to large country estates. This work, although diverse, focuses particularly on the subjugation of nature and the organic world to increased urbanisation and unruly development. Before moving into horticulture Dux completed an Honours degree at Sydney University studying music, composition and fine arts.

March 2013Matthew Dux is a Melbourne-based garden designer/landscaper. His body of work ranges from city rooftops, to vertical gardens, to large country estates. This work, although diverse, focuses particularly on the subjugation of nature and the organic world to …

Kane Ikin

Kane Ikin is an Australian experimental musician. A self-taught guitarist, early exposure to post punk/rock and electronic music sparked a desire for exploration beyond standard sounds, into synthesis, field recording, found sound and heavily treated signal paths.

Ikin has released several critically acclaimed albums alone and as part of experimental band, Solo Andata.

March 2013Kane Ikin is an Australian experimental musician. A self-taught guitarist, early exposure to post punk/rock and electronic music sparked a desire for exploration beyond standard sounds, into synthesis, field recording, found sound and heavily treated signal paths.

Ikin has released several critically acclaimed albums alone and …

Michaela Bruton

Michaela Bruton works with video, installation and design. In 2009 she graduated with Honours in Fine Arts in Gold and Silversmithing at RMIT University and has since exhibited both nationally and internationally. In 2013 she is currently a candidate in the Master of Contemporary Art at the Victorian College of the Arts where her research is focused on the relationships between text, object and voice.

March 2013Michaela Bruton works with video, installation and design. In 2009 she graduated with Honours in Fine Arts in Gold and Silversmithing at RMIT University and has since exhibited both nationally and internationally. In 2013 …

Alexi Freeman

Freeman studied Fine Art at the University of Tasmania and has since produced paintings, sculptures, prints, garments and costumes. Receiving the Manufacturing Design Fund from Arts Tasmania enabled him to establish his ALEXI FREEMAN fashion label in 2006. Freeman has since completed twelve seasons of ready-to-wear and has collaborated on many projects including work with The Australian Ballet, Tourism Victoria and Preston Zly.

March 2013Freeman studied Fine Art at the University of Tasmania and has since produced paintings, sculptures, prints, garments and costumes. Receiving the Manufacturing Design Fund from Arts Tasmania enabled him to establish his ALEXI FREEMAN fashion …

Tessa Blazey

Having studied Sculpture and Interior Design at RMIT University and Jewellery at NMIT Blazey now works exclusively as a jeweller from her Melbourne studio. Blazey has shown her work extensively, both nationally and internationally, and is represented by Pieces of Eight gallery. She lectures in Interior Design at RMIT University and is a recipient of an ArtStart grant from the Australia Council. Blazey’s work is held in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Australia.

March 2013Having studied Sculpture and Interior Design at RMIT University and Jewellery at NMIT Blazey now works exclusively as a jeweller from her Melbourne …

Katherine Doube

Katherine Doube is an independent dancer who trained in ballet (Royal Academy of Dance) at the National Theatre in St Kilda, and in modern dance at Deakin University, The Place (London), Menagerie de Verre (Paris) and Merce Cunningham (New York). In 2012 Doube designed the movement for the fashion film Concrete shown as part of Vivid Sydney at the Museum of Contemporary Art. In 2013 she participated in a dance/design experiment at RMIT Design Hub with body architect Lucy McRae and choreographer Anthony Hamilton.

March 2013Katherine Doube is an independent dancer who trained in ballet (Royal Academy of Dance) at …

Natalia Milosz-Piekarska

Natalia Milosz-Piekarska is a contemporary jeweller working with a variety of media and contexts. Completing a Bachelor of Fine Art in Gold and Silversmithing at RMIT University, she has exhibited her work both nationally and internationally. She received the British Council’s Realise Your Dream travel grant and an Ian Potter Cultural Trust travel award.

March 2013Natalia Milosz-Piekarska is a contemporary jeweller working with a variety of media and contexts. Completing a Bachelor of Fine Art in Gold and Silversmithing at RMIT University, she has exhibited her work both nationally and internationally. She received the British Council’s Realise Your Dream travel …

Polly van der Glas

Polly van der Glas creates jewellery and objects. She completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Fashion at RMIT University, a Graduate Certificate in Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne, and an Advanced Diploma in Jewellery at NMIT. Her first collection of metal objects won the Craft Victoria Fresh! award in 2006. She creates jewellery under the label VAN DER GLAS, which is stocked nationally.

March 2013Polly van der Glas creates jewellery and objects. She completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Fashion at RMIT University, a Graduate Certificate in Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne, and an …

Katherine Wheeler

Katherine Wheeler completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Gold and Silversmithing at RMIT University in 2007, and a Diploma of Fine Arts at RMIT University in 2003. Wheeler has exhibited in Australia and internationally and has been represented by Charon Kransen Arts at SOFA Chicago and SOFA New York in 2012. In 2013 Wheeler was a finalist in the Cicely & Colin Rigg Contemporary Design Award at the National Gallery of Victoria.

March 2013Katherine Wheeler completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Gold and Silversmithing at RMIT University in 2007, and a Diploma of Fine Arts at RMIT University …

Christopher LG Hill

Christopher LG Hill’s practice takes the form of extended collage in sound, text and installation, as well as the shifting sands of surface and conversations in paint, object, movement and grammar. He has been involved in numerous projects (see Signature Style Catalogue for full details).

March 2013Christopher LG Hill’s practice takes the form of extended collage in sound, text and installation, as well as the shifting sands of surface and conversations in paint, object, movement and grammar. He has been involved in numerous projects (see Signature Style Catalogue for full details).

March 2013…

Oliver van der Lugt

Originally from New Zealand, Oliver van der Lugt is an artist working across a range of materials and techniques. He completed his Bachelor of Fine Art at Dunedin School of Art, New Zealand in 2010. He has since participated in group and solo exhibitions in Melbourne, Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin and Berlin.

March 2013Originally from New Zealand, Oliver van der Lugt is an artist working across a range of materials and techniques. He completed his Bachelor of Fine Art at Dunedin School of Art, New Zealand in 2010. He has since participated in group and solo exhibitions in Melbourne, Auckland, Christchurch, …

Charlie Sofo

Charlie Sofo works across a range of media, using actions such as walking, mapping, noticing, collecting and arranging in his practice. He often uses mundane and underwhelming objects acquired during his explorations of the suburban lands of Melbourne. Sofo investigates consumption and consumerism in everyday life.

March 2013Charlie Sofo works across a range of media, using actions such as walking, mapping, noticing, collecting and arranging in his practice. He often uses mundane and underwhelming objects acquired during his explorations of the suburban lands of Melbourne. Sofo investigates consumption and consumerism in everyday life.

March 2013…

Liang Luscombe

Liang Luscombe is an artist, curator and writer. She completed a Bachelor of Visual Art (Hons) in 2009 at Canberra School of Art, Australian National University. She has since shown in group and solo exhibitions across Australia. In 2012 she co-edited issues 6.1 and 6.2 of un Magazine, alongside Lisa Radford.

March 2013Liang Luscombe is an artist, curator and writer. She completed a Bachelor of Visual Art (Hons) in 2009 at Canberra School of Art, Australian National University. She has since shown in group and solo exhibitions across Australia. In 2012 she co-edited issues 6.1 and 6.2 of un Magazine, …

Bianca Hester

Hester recently completed a PhD by project in sculpture at RMIT University. She was a founding member of CLUBSproject Inc (2002-2007), a member of OSW and coordinates the second year program in the department of Sculpture and Spatial Practice at the Victorian College of the Arts. Recent exhibitions have been held at The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (2010), Sarah Scout Presents (2011), and The Narrows (2009).

March 2013Hester recently completed a PhD by project in sculpture at RMIT University. She was a founding member of CLUBSproject Inc (2002-2007), a member of OSW and coordinates the second year program in …

Nathan Gray

Nathan Gray is an artist and experimental musician. He completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Curtin University, Perth and a Postgraduate Diploma in Electronic Design and Interactive Media at RMIT University. He has exhibited extensively across Australia and abroad. Gray completed a studio residency at Gertrude Contemporary from 2008-2010 and a residency at Sacatar Foundation in Bahia, Brazil in 2008. Gray is a member of the improvised electro-acoustic group Snawklor and band The French.

March 2013Nathan Gray is an artist and experimental musician. He completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Curtin University, Perth and a Postgraduate Diploma in …

Dan Bell

Dan Bell studied at Canberra School of Art, Australian National University, and completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts in 2006. Recent exhibitions include Alluvial Atomiser, Rice and Beans, Dunedin, New Zealand 2011, Pwdre slurr, Y3K Gallery, Melbourne 2010 and Tectonic Shivering, TCB art inc., Melbourne 2009. Group shows include Pretty Air and Useful Things at Monash University Museum of Art, 2012.

March 2013Dan Bell studied at Canberra School of Art, Australian National University, and completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts in 2006. Recent exhibitions include Alluvial Atomiser, Rice and Beans, Dunedin, New Zealand 2011, Pwdre slurr, Y3K Gallery, Melbourne 2010 …

Manon van Kouswijk

After completing a goldsmithing education, Manon van Kouswijk studied art/jewellery at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. Van Kouswijk is Coordinator of the Jewellery Studio and Lecturer in the Department of Fine Arts at Monash University, Melbourne. Van Kouswijk is interested in the value and meaning of jewellery and other personal objects. Her work is exhibited in galleries and museums and is part of private and public collections worldwide.

March 2013After completing a goldsmithing education, Manon van Kouswijk studied art/jewellery at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. Van Kouswijk is Coordinator of the Jewellery Studio and Lecturer in the Department …

Meredith Turnbull

Meredith Turnbull completed a Bachelor of Fine Art at RMIT University in 2005 and is currently a PhD candidate in Fine Art at Monash University. Turnbull’s practice concerns projects that engage various scales, art historical traditions and manifests in connections between images, jewellery, decorative objects and sculpture through spatial practice.

March 2013Meredith Turnbull completed a Bachelor of Fine Art at RMIT University in 2005 and is currently a PhD candidate in Fine Art at Monash University. Turnbull’s practice concerns projects that engage various scales, art historical traditions and manifests in connections between images, jewellery, decorative objects and sculpture through spatial …

Danielle Maugeri

Danielle Maugeri is an established ceramicist and jeweller based in Melbourne. After completing her Bachelor of Design (Industrial Design) from Swinburne University in 2000, Maugeri launched Dani M Designs, a studio specialising in ceramic homewares and fine jewellery. Her work is sold in boutiques throughout Australia and she has exhibited at various galleries including Craft.

March 2013Danielle Maugeri is an established ceramicist and jeweller based in Melbourne. After completing her Bachelor of Design (Industrial Design) from Swinburne University in 2000, Maugeri launched Dani M Designs, a studio specialising in ceramic homewares and fine jewellery. Her work is sold in boutiques …

Milly Flemming

Milly Flemming works from a studio in central Victoria working predominantly in silver, gilding metal and other low-tech materials. She graduated from NMIT in Silversmithing in 2008 and uses jewellery as an ongoing study into the way shape and form connect, allowing visually interesting and wearable forms to emerge.

March 2013Milly Flemming works from a studio in central Victoria working predominantly in silver, gilding metal and other low-tech materials. She graduated from NMIT in Silversmithing in 2008 and uses jewellery as an ongoing study into the way shape and form connect, allowing visually interesting and wearable forms to emerge.

March …

Dylan Martorell

Artist and musician Dylan Martorell has been exhibiting and performing for over ten years. Music and sound, from field recordings to ritualised performances, play a major part in his multidisciplinary practice. His works typically involve a highly disciplined and refined level of detail intertwined with an ad hoc improvisation and magpie junkyard aesthetic. Martorell has exhibited and performed extensively throughout Australia and overseas. He is also an illustrator and a member of the Slow Art Collective, with Tony Adams, Chaco Kato and Ash Keating, and a member of the experimental music group Snawklor, alongside Signature Style artist Nathan Gray.

March …

Karla Way

Karla Way is a Melbourne-based jeweller. She began her jewellery studies at NMIT in Collingwood in 2001, and went on to complete a Bachelor of Fine Art with Honours in Gold and Silversmithing at RMIT University in 2008. Her work was shortlisted for graduate awards such as Fresh! at Craft, Design Now at Sydney’s Object Gallery and Hatched at PICA in Perth. Way has also exhibited in Australia, the Netherlands and the USA.

March 2013Karla Way is a Melbourne-based jeweller. She began her jewellery studies at NMIT in Collingwood in 2001, and went on to complete a Bachelor of Fine …

Matt Siwerski

Matt Siwerski is a visual artist who works across digital media and textiles. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Dunedin School of Art, New Zealand in 2008.  He was first drawn to textiles by ideas of gender politics and fashion. Inspired by a punk DIY ethos and challenging social constructions, Matt has since combined skillsets of digital modelling and sculpture with the use of a sewing machine. After winning a national textiles award in New Zealand, he moved to Melbourne to further establish his practice. In early 2014 he visited Finland for his first international …

Mae Finlayson

Demelza Sherwood

Demelza Sherwood’s practice, which initially focussed on drawing, shifted to include embroidery, after completing her Bachelor of Arts (Hons) degree at the Australian National University School of Art in 2004. Since that time she has consistently produced embroidered figurative works on found linens. She deliberately collects worn domestic cloths upon which to stitch for the unique canvas that they offer. She said that, ‘The practice of investing time to hand-sew a portrait forms a sharp contrast with the instant nature of 21st century technology.’ Demelza has exhibited widely including in the 1st Tamworth Textile Triennial, Sensorial Loop, which toured nationally …

Sera Waters

Sera Waters’ practice considers the legacies of Australia’s colonial past to contemplate how this past’s reverberations haunt us today and how one is implicated by ancestry within our shared histories. Sera is a graduate of the South Australian School of Art (2000), has a Master of Arts (Art History) from University of Adelaide (2006), and is a PhD candidate at the University of South Australia.  She teaches at the Adelaide Central School of Art. In 2006 Sera was awarded the Ruth Tuck Scholarship to attend the Royal School of Needlework (Hampton Court Palace, UK) to study hand embroidery. Since this …

Lucas Grogan

Lucas Grogan’s practice spans multiple disciplines including, drawing, painting and embroidery. His work explores themes such as identity, sexuality, shared humanity, spiritual divorce and isolationism. He studied at the University of Newcastle and has since exhibited extensively in solo and group shows, completed public mural commissions and collaborated with a wide range of designers. He is represented by Gallerysmith, Melbourne, Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide and Martin Brown Contemporary, Sydney. Lucas is represented in corporate, private and public collections including Ararat Regional Art Gallery, Artbank and Newcastle Art Gallery.

March 2015Lucas Grogan’s practice spans multiple disciplines including, drawing, painting and embroidery. …

David Green

David Green is a formative influence on textile art in Australia. He completed postgraduate studies at the Royal College of Art in 1964 and taught at Croydon College of Art and Goldsmiths College. With an established career in the United Kingdom, he came to Australia in 1976 on an Australia Council sponsored visit and settled here in 1978, accepting a position as Senior Lecturer in Textiles at RMIT. He was appointed Head of the School of Visual and Performing Arts at the now Charles Sturt University in Wagga Wagga, NSW in 1985, inaugural Professor of Visual Arts in 1989, Head …

Jane Théau

Jane Théau develops sculptural installations, such as her on-going series of large-scale embroidered Threadworks. Jane said, ‘Given my conceptual concern with sustainability, I enjoy the fact that these textile works use very little material, and weigh but a few grams, even as room-sized installations…I particularly appreciate the metaphorical qualities of textiles: the ravelling and unravelling, the weaving and fraying, the mending and rending.’ Jane has a Master of Art (Sculpture) from the College of Fine Arts (COFA), University of NSW, a Master of International Affairs from Columbia University and a Bachelor of Applied Science from the University of Technology Sydney. …

Ilka White

Ilka White’s practice spans projects in textiles, drawing, sculpture and installation, video, art-in-community and cross disciplinary collaboration. Direct engagement with the natural world (and the forces at work therein) is central to Ilka’s making process. Her current work explores relationships between the mind, body, time and place, and questions the separation of these elements. Ilka holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Monash University and an Associate Diploma from Melbourne Institute of Textiles (now RMIT). She taught in the areas of textiles and design at RMIT University from 1999 to 2011. She has exhibited internationally and her work is represented …

Elyse Watkins

Elyse Watkins has degrees in both the visual arts and psychology. Psychological concepts deeply imbue her embroidered artworks. Her Unbridled Mind series was shown in the College of Fine Arts (COFA), University of NSW graduate exhibition in 2010.  In these works Elyse overlays drawings on sheer organza with stitched imagery using horsehair to give an internal and external bodily perspective; the inside visceral workings of skin peeled back in juxtaposition with a garment or covering. She says of this dual view that ‘the internal and external realms of the female body have been examined in fine detail in order to …

Alice Kettle

Alice Kettle is internationally known for her distinctive application of machine embroidery in the construction of large-scale wall works. Her work explores the deep material connection of the cultural and human condition. She completed a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) at the University of Reading in 1984 and a Postgraduate Diploma in Textile Art at Goldsmiths College in 1984. She is a writer and lecturer and is currently Senior Research Fellow at Manchester Metropolitan University and Visiting Professor at the University of Winchester. Alice is represented in the collections of the Crafts Council, London, the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, the Museo …

Silke Raetze

Silke Raetze studied at the National Art School, Sydney and completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2005. Formally trained in painting, her practice now encompasses a variety of different mediums and techniques, including text-based cross-stitch embroidery for which she is well-known. Silke continues to explore the undercurrents of love and lust and in so doing leads us on a visual journey through her world of dreams, hopes and desires. Represented by Michael Reid since 2007, she continues to be an active participant in curated exhibitions and art awards throughout Australia.  Silke is represented in the collection of the …

Tim Moore

Tim Moore is best known for his wry, embroidered images of people in oddly compromising social settings. His depiction of otherwise respectable leisure activities is corrupted through the depiction of semi-naked or strangely costumed protagonists.  There is a charming incongruity between his use of embroidery and his risqué and sometimes provocative subject matter. Tim completed a Bachelor of Three Dimensional Design (Hons) at Brighton University, England in 1998. He arrived in Australia in 2001, and on the flight over began embroidering images, for the first time, using an in-flight sewing kit.  He has exhibited since the late 1990s, presenting five …

Simon Finn

My studio practice generates artworks that are an exploration of temporal representations and the variable syntheses between artist, environment and technology. The works investigate the boundaries of sight, experience and scientific visualisation by de-centring the human in networks of artistic production.

Computation effectively provides highly complex processes, from which a series of sequential images are derived for further analysis. Through these technologies I employ precision geometry, accurate lighting systems and exact surface definitions for generating believable subject matter for drawing. The range of static imagery generated by computation is staged and then re-imagined through the hand, using traditional drawing processes. …

Paul Yore

Paul Yore completed his studies in painting, archaeology and anthropology at Monash University in 2010 and has since taken up full-time work as an art practitioner. His multidisciplinary practice involves installations, painting, sculpture, sound, drawing and textiles. Yore draws on the traditions of classical Greek art, decorative Flemish and French tapestries, trashy pop-culture, gay por n , cartoons, psychedelia, and the frenzied excesses of rococo style.

Yore has undertaken residencies nationally and internationally at Artspace, Sydney (2014), Seoul Artspace Geumcheon, South Korea (2013-14) and Gertrude Contemporary Artspaces, Melbourne (2011-2013).

Selected group and solo exhibitions include: Mad Love, A3 Arnt Art …

Kristin McIver

The works in ‘Synthetica’ continue my investigation into art and identity in the age of hypercapitalism. ‘Thought Piece (What’s Going On?)’ is part of an installation series which explores the notion of identity as commodity. The work transposes digital subject matter into physical objects to highlight the tangible economic value placed on our thoughts and desires. ‘Thought Piece’ appropriates language from the seemingly innocuous status prompts of applications such as Facebook; the viewer encounters a mass of concrete paving stones, inscribed with my thoughts, both public and private.

‘Divine Intervention’ proposes that the media and digital age have created a …

Boe-lin Bastian

I make videos and rudimentary sculptures in order to better comprehend the strangeness of motion, gravity and momentum. My works operate at the juncture of object and action, drawing from a post-minimalist aesthetic and increasingly mixing old and new technologies. Critiques on humour, accident and the nature of impermanence inform the way that I think about my work.

The investigation of the innate qualities of materials and their relative scale is an ongoing interest. Equally important is the tendency of the viewer to project meaning and narrative onto existing sculptural forms. This tension between implied and projected meaning is key …

Alice Wormald

I create paintings that depict impossible spaces where surface and depth, representation and abstraction and naturalism and artifice, converge. My paintings are based on collages using found images of natural and geological formations, vegetation, rocks and landscapes. The assembled imagery bypasses narrative in order to concentrate on the surfaces of the paper objects that are depicted, and the formal elements of the painting itself. This creates a compelling encounter between the physical depth of the images that have been represented and the abrupt white edges that hint at their origin as printed pieces of paper. The natural elements are not …

Kate Shaw

My practice aims to convey ideas of nature, alchemy and cycles of creation/destruction. The paintings and video works deal with the tensions and dichotomies in the depiction of the natural world and our relationship to it. I am concurrently exploring the sublime in nature whilst imbuing a sense of toxicity and artificiality in this depiction. The intention is to reflect upon the contradiction between our inherent connection to the natural world and continual distancing from it.

The video ‘The Spectator’ combines footage of natural disasters from YouTube and video of the poured paint. I am seeking to draw out the …

Bonnie Lane

By exploring emotional responses to the world in which we live, my predominantly video-based practice focuses on universal human experience, often from an existential perspective. My video pieces utilise the atmosphere and history of existing architectural spaces to create immersive environments to be ‘stepped into’.

Though somewhat contradictory I utilise new technologies and media to capture sentiment and nostalgia with an aim to create a purely human dialogue from artwork to viewer, viewer to artwork. Through visual techniques such as masking and unusual methods of video projection, I aim to escape the ‘flat rectangle screen’ and explore video as a …

Timothy Cook

Timothy Cook began painting in Milikapiti on Melville Island in the late 1990s. Renowned artists Freda Warlapinni and Kitty Kantilla provided important early influences on his practice.

Cook is widely celebrated for drawing a classical style of Tiwi painting into dialogue with his own individual take on Tiwi visual tradition and history. In his work, iconographic representations of Tiwi ceremony, in particular the once-annual ceremony known as the Kulama, are positioned in relation to the Catholic cruciform—emblematic of the influence of the missions that held sway on the islands for much of the twentieth century. His paintings on canvas and …

Djambawa Marawili

Djambawa Marawili AM began painting in the early 1980s. One of the most successful Yolngu artists of recent times, he has spearheaded a number of significant innovations within the tradition of Yolngu art. Key among these is buwuyak (invisibility), a development that has seen Marawili and his contemporaries move beyond the overt figuration often employed by their immediate forebears.

While to Western eyes, buwayak—which is marked by the dense patterning of minytji (sacred clan designs)—appears to be a move towards abstraction, the opposite is more accurate. The shimmering fields that Marawili often employs to overlay and obscure distinct figurative elements are …

Nyapanyapa Yunupingu

Nyapanyapa Yunupingu’s recent practice takes a strikingly divergent approach to that of many of her Yolngu contemporaries. Initially recognised for drawing personal narratives and memories into her bark paintings and prints – a sphere usually reserved for ancestral narratives and clan related iconography – she has since taken a step towards what we might categorise as outright abstraction.

Characterised by an absence of the minytji (sacred clan designs), which places the work of fellow Yolngu artist Djambawa Marawili within a clearly defined network of clan relations and ancestral responsibility, the content of Yunupingu’s work lies elsewhere. An early group of …

Ngarra

Ngarra was an important cultural figure in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, where he was responsible for the maintenance of traditional law across a vast area extending from the West to the East. He began painting in the mid-1990s after a life spent working on the region’s cattle stations, and died recently, in 2008.

Ngarra was uniquely placed in relation to the painting traditions of the East and West Kimberley. Although the planar and iconographic aspects of his work recall both, his idiosyncratic painting style was essentially his own. Along with a celebrated body of work on paper and …

Rusty Peters

Rusty Peters’ densely composed, often monumental paintings draw on the interwoven historical and mythological narratives of the East Kimberley landscape. In addition to establishing a painting practice in his later years, Peters has been an important figure in cultural education throughout his life. He helped to establish the Warmun School in the 1970s and has since participated in cultural maintenance programs on a regular basis, such as the Gelengu Gelenguwurru New Media Project which uses new media to aid cross-generational cultural transmission. In the context of this exhibition, Peters’ canvasses provide a dark and slightly brooding presence, a further contrast …

Freda Warlapinni

The late Freda Warlapinni commenced painting within a secular context when she was in her 70s and quickly became a leading figure among the older generation of Tiwi artists. Her work is often titled Pwoja, a Tiwi term that refers to the designs painted on the bodies of dancers for ceremonial performance.

Although Tiwi art is marked by strikingly consistent formal parameters, individual inflection remains highly regarded. Warlapinni’s often starkly applied networks of ochre lines (referred to in Tiwi as mulypinyini) provide something of a signature in her work. Retaining the looseness of execution that many younger Tiwi artists associate …

David Rosetzky

David Rosetzky works in a variety of media including video, installation, photography, sculpture and drawing. He studied painting at Victoria College, Prahran and recently completed a PhD in Fine Art at Monash University, Caulfield. From 1994-2002 he was the founding director of the artist and writer run gallery, 1st Floor Artists and Writers Space, Melbourne.

Rosetzky has presented his work widely in Australia and overseas in exhibitions including We Used to Talk About Love, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, (2013); the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art, (2012); Dress Codes; The Third ICP Triennial of Video and Photography …

Foreword

Once relegated to ‘something my Grandma does’, craft is being embraced by contemporary artists as a vehicle for making a statement. I often think that a political statement made through …

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Curating Safe Practices | Curatorial Intensive

NETS Victoria is delighted to collaborate once again with the Public Galleries Association of Victoria (PGAV) to present the 2020 Curatorial Intensive, continuing to reach curators across Victoria and beyond. Unlike previous iterations, the 2020 program adopts a new format comprising of a free series of one-hour webinars.

The program is multi-faceted and provides a platform for curators, artists and writers to share their experiences and knowledge with one another through a live Q+A forum.

Responding to the themes which have shaped 2020, the Curatorial Intensive will include sessions on: managing curatorial risk; First Nations cultural safety; online engagement; and …

Managing Curatorial Risk – Live Webinar

Date: Wednesday 18 November Time: 2:30-3:30pm (including 15 minutes of Q&A)

This live webinar Managing Curatorial Risk, introduces a new resource ‘Risk Assessment and Management for Exhibition Content‘ developed by NETS Victoria and Museums and Galleries of NSW (MGNSW) aimed to assist with curatorial risk management. The session will reflect upon exhibitions’ intent to incite conversation, new ideas and debate, while asking the question – what happens when exhibitions contain content that could be perceived to be controversial, provocative or have the potential to offend certain members of the community, audience or stakeholder groups? This session investigates ‘Conflict In …

Best practice approaches for working inclusively with artists with disability

Date: Tuesday 10 November Time: 2:30 – 3:30pm (including 15 minutes of Q&A)

This live seminar Best practice approaches for working inclusively with artists with disability, will explore considerations in working collaboratively with contemporary artists with and without disabilities, and the approaches organisations and curators should consider to meet best practice in this area using the exhibition FEM-aFFINITY as a case study. The session draws upon different types of disability: intellectual, physical and mental health issues, and the different approaches to working inclusively and providing access for these groups across Australia. Join Chair Sim Luttin of Arts Project Australia; …

First Nations Cultural Safety – Live webinar

Date: Wednesday 2 December

Time: 2:30-3:30pm (including 15 minutes of Q&A)

This live webinar brings together First Nations perspectives in a candid discussion aiming to shift curatorial approaches for the better. The session delves into important questions including, how do we as institutions ensure that First Nations cultural safety is embedded in our institutions? Whose job is it? And, when it comes to ensuring the safe interpretation of art through education, children’s labels and didactics, who should write and approve this content? Who should be consulted? Join Chair Bec Cole, Director Creative Arts, Latrobe City Council and presenters, Clothilde Bullen, …

Online Engagement – Learnings, Pitfalls and Triumphs | Live Webinar

Date: Tuesday 8 December

Time: 2:30-3:30 pm (including 15 minutes of Q&A)

This live webinar Online Engagement – Learnings, Pitfalls and Triumphs, will reflect heavily on the challenges that 2020 presented and the need for galleries to use digital technologies to engage audiences in the absence of physical visitation. The session will consider how galleries rose to the challenge to adapt to this process, what has been successful, and if online engagement will continue to be a useful tool after the pandemic. Chair Danny Lacy, Artistic Director / Senior Curator, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery and presenters: Miriam Kelly, Curator, …

Curatorial One-on-One

Date: Thursday 10 December

Time: 4:00-5:00 pm

Session 5, Curatorial One-on-One, is a live curatorial session where you will be paired up with another curator to discuss topics that have been explored in this year’s Curatorial Intensive. It will provide a rare opportunity to connect beyond your geographical area to another curator and discuss some of the burning issues affecting our post-pandemic environment. Each pairing will last ten minutes and you will be randomly paired with three other curators in total, hosted by Esther Anatolitis, arts consultant, advocate and writer. In a bid to bring like-minded people together to reflect …

Congratulations to the recipients of the 2020 Exhibition Development Fund (EDF)

NETS Victoria is excited to announce the recipients of the 2020 Exhibition Development Fund (EDF).

Blak Dot Gallery will present ‘EXCHANGE’ by curator and artist Kimba Thompson, exploring the exchange of ideas between First Nations Peoples, and supporting the validity of knowledge and permissions to access old/living knowledge.

Bus Projects will present ‘Notions of Care’ curated by Nina Mulhall and Kathryne Honey. Featuring artists Polly Stanton, Kate Tucker and Katie West, Notions of Care explores the ways in which art and nurture are interlinked, asking us to take time, to pause, to contemplate.

La Trobe Art Institute will present …

Kawita Vatanajyankur: The Scale of Justice

In The Scale of Justice (2016), Kawita Vatanajyankur becomes a traditional ‘beam scale’, balancing hanging baskets from her arms and feet. Against the jewel-coloured backdrop of sapphire pink, the baskets fill up and overflow with luscious green vegetables while we watch as her balance and composure are increasingly tested, her corporeal and psychological limits measured.

The Scale of Justice is a part of Kawita Vatanajyankur’s Mechanized series, in which the artist is a tool, a moving part in a machine. She transforms herself into food production equipment in performance videos that restage processes such as boxing eggs and weighing leafy …

Apply Now! First Nations Engagement Coordinator

FIRST NATIONS ENGAGEMENT COORDINATOR 

Join the NETS Victoria team!

The First Nations Engagement Coordinator supports the development and presentation of an outstanding program of First Nations content. This position is responsible for liaising with First Nations artists and supporting the coordination of projects which are specifically First Nations. It is expected that the incumbent will establish and build strong and productive relationships between NETS Victoria and a range of Indigenous organisations and community members. The role will also contribute to the coordination, logistics and presentation of NETS Victoria touring exhibitions and public programs which include First Nations artists. …

NETS Victoria welcomes Zoë Bastin to the Artistic Program Advisory Committee

We are delighted to welcome Zoë Bastin to our new Artistic Program Advisory Committee. Zoë is an artist, sometimes writer and self-described ‘rat bag’. Bastin works in-between dance and sculpture creating choreography, objects, videos, essays and performances. Since childhood she’s been fascinated by gender roles in dance class; particularly who’s allowed to do what and why. Currently undertaking her PhD at RMIT University, she researches gender by transforming patriarchal hierarchies in bodies and objects. Bastin hosts Queer(y)ing Creative Practice live on Bus radio, performs often and is currently working with a team of eight dancers on an immersive performance called …

New commission project: ‘Conflated’

We’re excited to announce the commissioning of new artworks by seven contemporary artists that involve inflatables in a project titled ‘Conflated’. This new commission series seeks to answer: How can artists conflate new ideas with sculptures, performances or installations that are blown up?

A NETS Victoria initiative, conceived by Zoë Bastin and our Director Claire Watson, the new commissions have been made possible through funding from Creative Victoria’s Strategic Investment Fund and will see new works made by artists: Amrita Hepi, Bronwyn Hack, Christopher Langton, Eugenia Lim, James Nguyen, Steven Rhall and Zoë Bastin.

Find out more in this article …

Jill Orr : Antipodean Epic

Jill Orr’s Antipodean Epic is a poetic journey that incorporates seed both in abundance and scarcity. Utilising costume to create three character creatures, as a means to ask: Are the creatures the end of their species or the beginning of another? Are they displaced or transported viral creations? Are they unwanted interlopers within the seed stock? Are they the carriers of a potential future or remnants of a distant past or both?

Humanities’ survival depends on seed, the ultimate …

Yhonnie Scarce joins the Artistic Program Advisory Committee

A huge welcome to Yhonnie Scarce who has joined our Artistic Program Advisory Committee. Yhonnie Scarce was born in Woomera, South Australia, and belongs to the Kokatha and Nukunu Peoples. A master contemporary glass blower, her practice explores the political nature and aesthetic qualities of glass. Scarce’s work often references the on-going effects of colonisation on Aboriginal people. Family history is central to Scarce’s work, drawing on the strength of her ancestors, she offers herself as a conduit, sharing their significant stories from the past.

Scarce was the winner of the prestigious NGV Architecture Commission 2019. In 2018 Scarce was …

Myles Russell-Cook joins the Artistic Program Advisory Committee

We extend a very warm welcome to Myles Russell-Cook who has joined our newly created Artistic Program Advisory Committee. Myles is the Curator of Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Victoria. He is jointly responsible for the National Gallery of Victoria’s collections of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art and the Art of Oceania, Pre-hispanic America and Africa.⁣ ⁣ Myles’ passion is for First Nations contemporary art, and much of his influence and inspiration comes from his own maternal Aboriginal heritage in Western Victoria with connections into Tasmania and the Bass Strait islands.⁣ ⁣ Myles has lectured in Art …

Catherine Bell: The Artists

The Artists is a silent film by Catherine Bell documenting an artist residency at Norma Redpath House, University of Melbourne in December 2017. Undertaken by artist collaborators Cathy Staughton and Catherine Bell, who have been each other’s muse since 2009, both artists explore the lived experience and female identity in their painted and video portraits. This film documents the first time “The Artists” have lived together and produced artworks outside of Cathy’s studio at Arts Project Australia.

For a brief time in history, the silent film genre provided an inclusive experience for the hearing impaired who …

Deborah Kelly: Pada Suatu Ketika (Once Upon a Time)

Pada Suatu Ketika (Once Upon A Time) is a stopmotion collage animation made by celebrated Australian artist Deborah Kelly with WayangCyber2 during workshops with children living in Cikapundung, Indonesia in 2015. The families involved in the project were economic migrants to the area, a community facing constant challenges from government and land developers. Pada Suatu Ketika (Once Upon A Time) sees them taking part in a mythic narrative of the David and Goliath struggle, underlining the importance of unity and the perils of unchecked development and growth. The work began as a technical experiment in animating collage with minimal resources, …

Xanthe Dobbie: Desktop Holiday

Xanthe Dobbie’s Desktop Holiday is a triptych of digital collage loops. The three parts explore notions of fractured identity in the age of globalisation and instant travel. The work juxtaposes hyper-stimulating queer internet aesthetic with religious iconography, historical imagery and gathered footage of natural structures.

Audiovisual fragments are carefully curated in an unsettling mix of holiday snapshots, emojis, relaxation tracks, and ever-impending message alerts.

Desktop Holiday plays on ideas of a plugged-in society. Incapable of switching off, it continues infinitely – mesmerising, banal and infuriating. Each loop is made up of sourced digital content and recorded footage of the Catholic …

Welcome Nikki Lam to the Board of Management & Artistic Program Advisory Committee

We’re thrilled to announce that Nikki Lam has joined the Board of Management and our newly created Artistic Program Advisory Committee. Nikki is a visual artist, curator and producer. She is the Co-Director of Hyphenated Projects and Associate Producer at Next Wave. With an expanded art practice in writing, exhibition and festival making, she is passionate about bridging the boundaries between disciplines, audiences and spaces.

Working primarily with moving images, performance and installation, her work often examines hybridity through studies of rituals, language and representations, as well as the ephemeral medium of video. Born in Hong Kong, Nikki’s research deals …

Bec Cole joins the Board of Management & Artistic Program Advisory Committee

We’re so excited that Bec Cole has joined the Board of Management and our newly created Artistic Program Advisory Committee!

Bec Cole is Director Creative Arts at Latrobe City Council. This role encompasses the direction of Latrobe Regional Gallery and Latrobe Performing Arts Centre. Bec is a champion of creating access to quality contemporary art and has led the establishment of public art programs, creative industry development initiatives and public programming in gallery, major events and activity centre settings.

Prior to commencing at Latrobe in early 2020, Bec led the Arts & Culture program at Wyndham City Council. Here she …

Touring Video

Welcome to NETS Victoria’s selection of online touring video works. This is a private viewing page for galleries in Victoria and across Australia interested in supporting their communities with online art experiences during the current pandemic measures which has forced galleries to physically close their doors.

This is an opportunity to increase your social media and web presence. Each video comes with a suite of supportive materials to engage your audiences. As the lender you can decide how you make this content available. Hosted on your website, it can be an online exhibition for up to 6 weeks or you …

FEM-aFFINITY begins tour in Devonport

Partnering with Arts Project Australia, NETS Victoria is thrilled to be touring FEM-aFFINITY in 2020. This exhibition brings together female artists from Arts Project Australia and wider Victoria whose work shares an affinity of subject and process. Curated by Dr Catherine Bell this exhibition uncovers shared perspectives on female identity by drawing upon interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches. FEM-aFFINITY reveals how feminism materialises in distinctive and uncanny ways. First stop on the tour is Devonport Regional Gallery from 25 January – 15 March 2020.…

NETS Victoria welcomes new Director Claire Watson

NETS Victoria announces Claire Watson as their new Director.

Chair of NETS Victoria’s Board of Management, Adam Harding says: ‘We are thrilled to announce the appointment of Claire Watson as the organisation’s new Director. The board is very excited for Claire’s new vision to invigorate NETS Victoria and to continue the fantastic projects and ongoing relationships we have within Victoria’s regional communities and beyond. Claire has a wealth of knowledge and experience to manage the organisation, building strong relationships with contemporary arts organisations and the public gallery sector.’

New Director Claire Watson says: ‘I am excited to join the team …

NETS Victoria announces farewell to Ellen Wignell

Since 2017, Ellen has been a vital part of the NETS Victoria team. As Exhibitions Coordinator, she has organised and managed a wide range of NETS Victoria’s tours and exhibition programming. Ellen oversaw the development of major touring exhibitions including Craftivism. Dissident Objects and Subversive Forms, Raquel Ormella: I hope you get this, Play On: The art of sport and NETS Victoria’s upcoming touring exhibition with Arts Project Australia, FEM-aFFINITY. Her drive, professionalism and warmth has been integral to the success of these outstanding projects.

She has been instrumental in organisational strategic planning, applying for exhibition grants and looking …

Great Movements of Feeling is on at Hamilton Gallery until 3 November

Great Movements of Feeling is a multi-disciplinary project that explores emotion as a cognitive and bodily force. Originally developed for the 2018 Next Wave Festival through the Gertrude Contemporary Emerging Curators Program, the exhibition considers emotion through personal and historical lenses; as a flowing drive that occurs between people, concepts and objects.…

Craftivism. Dissident Objects and Subversive Forms in on at MOAD

Craftivism. Dissident Objects and Subversive Forms continues at the Museum of Australian Democracy Canberra (ACT) until 2 February 2020. Presenting the work of 18 contemporary Australian artists who utilise craft based materialities with a political intent Craftivism broadens our understandings of craft making traditions.

 …

Play On: the art of sport tour is coming to an end

Play On: the art of sport tour is coming to an end, closing at Western Plains Regional Gallery in Dubbo (NSW) on 3 November. Celebrating 10 years of the Basil Sellers Art Prize, the prestigious and distinctively Australian biennial exhibition reflects upon one of our great national obsessions — sport.…

In Her Words opens at Wangaratta Art Gallery

Opening 2 November In Her Words is the first touring exhibition to show the riches of contemporary photography from the Horsham Regional Art Gallery collection showcasing women behind and in front of the camera. Recognizing the significance of feminist photography, guest curator Olivia Poloni was invited to draw works from the collection alongside key figures in contemporary Australian photographic practice. In Her Words presents the work of women who are bold in the telling of their flaws, uncertainties and strengths; aiming to get to the core of the female experience, rights and challenges. Through these images the photographers make bold …

Final Stop for I hope you get this: Raquel Ormella at Penrith Regional Art Gallery

After a whirlwind tour around the country I hope you get this: Raquel Ormella is heading to Penrith (NSW) for one final stop.

Curated by Rebecca Coates and Anna Briers this exhibition brings together a selection of new and recent work by one of Australia’s leading contemporary artists. Opening on 30 November at Penrith Regiona Art Gallery the exhibition employs a wide variety of media, including video, painting, installation, drawing, textile and zine production, revealing Ormella’s experimental relationship with textiles and a playful exploration of semiotics, critical hallmarks of her sustained practice. I hope you get this: Raquel Ormella is …

Great Movements of Feeling

Great Movements of Feeling is a multi-disciplinary project that explores emotion as a cognitive and bodily force. Originally developed for the 2018 Next Wave Festival through the Gertrude Contemporary Emerging Curators Program, the exhibition considers emotion through personal and historical lenses; as a flowing drive that occurs between people, concepts and objects.

This structure brings together the two historical ‘camps’ of emotion theory: emotion as primarily tied to bodily sensations, and emotion as thought. The works in this exhibition inhabit facets of emotion …

Ngardang Girri Kalat Mimini – Mother Aunty Sister Daughter

Curated by Georgia MacGuire, Ngardang Girri Kalat Mimini was established in 2016 as a collaborative network of Victorian Indigenous women artists, committed to promoting unique art practices, with a particular focus on those regionally located.

This is the first collective exhibition of Ngardang Girri Kalat Mimini and highlights the skills, talents and cultural knowledge of Indigenous women artists in regional Victoria. This exhibition is also the first of its kind in Australia and will be an opportunity for audiences to see the quality and uniqueness of Indigenous culture and the art practices of women connected to Victoria.  This project has …

Farewell and Welcome!

Over the past four years, Angie has been an integral part of the NETS Victoria team. She has organised and overseen a wide range of NETS Victoria’s tours and exhibition programming. Angie travelled across Victoria and Australia with the exhibitions Synthetica, The world is not a foreign land, Slipstitch, Wominjeka: A New Beginning, Jacqui Stockdale: Drawing the Labyrinth, Erewon, Seeing Voices and Callum Preston: Milk Bar, as well as overseeing the development of In Her …

Exhibition Development Fund 2019 – Successful Applicants!

The NETS Victoria Board of Management is excited to announce the successful applicants of our grant to get their exhibitions and projects up on the road for 2019. 

The Exhibition Development Fund (EDF) program supports the Victorian arts sector with grants of up to $10,000 to arts organisations and curators who wish to develop new exhibitions and projects of contemporary art, craft or design with the aim to tour.

The 2019 successful applicants are:

Central Goldfields Art Gallery to engage independent curator Georgia MacGuire to research and develop a new touring exhibition, presenting the work of Ngardang Girri Kalat Mimini …

Farewell to Director Mardi Nowak

NETS Victoria Board of Management announce with sadness the departure of Director Mardi Nowak. 

Over the two years leading the team at NETS Victoria, Mardi has overseen an exciting tour program, travelling throughout Australia. She has been successful in obtaining funding for I Hope You Get This: Raquel Ormella, Craftivism, Fem-affinity, MilkBar by Callum Preston, In Her Words and Great Movements of Feeling.  Mardi has been instrumental in supporting Shepparton Art Museum, Arts Project Australia, Horsham Art Gallery, Hamilton Art Gallery and others in their exhibition programs and ambition to share their work across Victoria and Australia. Alongside the artistic …

Craftivism opens at Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery

NETS Victoria and Shepparton Art Museum are excited to announce the launch of Craftivism. Dissident Objects and Subversive Forms at Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery in Victoria from the 18th of May, 2019.

Craftivism. Dissident Objects and Subversive Forms presents the work of 18 contemporary Australian artists who utilise craft based materialities with a political intent. Broadening our understanding of craft-making traditions, the artists in this exhibition subvert and extend these forms into the realm of activism and social change, reflecting on the world in which we live. While some respond directly to artistic or political movements, others encourage social connection …

Exhibition Development Fund 2019 – Open for applications

Applications to the 2019 NETS Victoria Exhibition Development Fund are now open! Please refer to the EDF Page for full application details.…

In Her Words

28 page catalogue with colour plates including: essays, a list of works, artist biographies and images.

Foreword by curator Olivia Poloni

Essays by Dr. Athena Bellas and Michelle Mountain

Published by Horsham Regional Art Gallery on the occasion of the exhibition In Her Words. …

In Her Words to launch at Horsham Regional Art Gallery

National Exhibition Touring Support Victoria and Horsham Regional Art Gallery are excited to announce the launch of In Her Words, one of the recipients of the 2017 NETS Victoria Exhibition Development Fund.

In Her Words is a photographic exhibition focusing on women behind and in front of the camera. Recognizing the significance of feminist photography held by the Horsham Regional Art Gallery, guest curator Olivia Poloni was invited to draw works from the collection alongside key figures in contemporary Australian photographic practice.

In this exhibition we hear from women who are bold in the telling of their flaws, uncertainties and …

Simon Terrill – Crowd Theory

Crowd Theory presents a major survey of the monumental photographic work by Melbourne-born, London-based artist Simon Terrill. The exhibition explores crowd dynamics and the relationship between urban architectural spaces and those who inhabit them.

Crowd Theory (2004–2018) is an ongoing series of performance-based events, where Terrill engages with entire urban groups, asking them to perform ‘an idea of how they imagine their communities’. The first iteration of the work took place at Footscray Community Art Centre in 2004 and the most recent event was staged in Thamesmead, London. For each project, an invitation is made to anyone and everyone with …

FEM-aFFINITY

Curated by Associate Professor, Catherine Bell, Australian Catholic University, FEM-aFFINITY brings together female artists from Arts Project Australia and wider Victoria whose work share an affinity of subject and process. By situating female Arts Project studio artists alongside other female contemporary artists, the exhibition uncovers shared perspectives on female identity. Drawing upon interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches, and understanding artworks as a complex and nuanced way of thinking about embodied knowledge, …

Craftivism. Dissident Objects and Subversive Forms exhibition catalogue

68 page catalogue with colour plates including: essays, a list of works, artist biographies and images.

Published by Shepparton Art Museum and NETS Victoria on the occasion of the exhibition Craftivism. Dissident Objects and Subversive Forms.…

Raquel Ormella: I hope you get this exhibition catalogue

75 page catalogue with colour plates including: essays, a list of works, artist biographies and images.

Published by Shepparton Art Museum and NETS Victoria on the occasion of the exhibition Raquel Ormella: I hope you get this.

This publication was supported by the Gordon Darling Foundation.…

In Her Words

In Her Words is a photographic exhibition focusing on women behind and in front of the camera. Recognizing the significance of feminist photography held by the Horsham Regional Art Gallery, guest curator Olivia Poloni was invited to draw works from the collection alongside …

NETS Victoria Exhibition Development Fund Successful Applicants!

NETS Victoria Board of Management is pleased to announce the 2018 successful applicants of a $10,000 grant to get their exhibitions and projects up on the road.

“We had a fantastic number of submissions this year from both public art galleries and independent curators – all with great ideas!” NETS Victoria Director Mardi Nowak

The Exhibition Development Fund (EDF) program supports the Victorian arts sector with grants of up to $10,000 to Victorian arts organisations and curators who wish to develop new exhibitions and projects of contemporary art, craft or design with the aim to tour.

The successful applicants are:…

Craftivism tour launching at Shepparton Art Museum

NETS Victoria is pleased to announce the launch of the new touring exhibition Craftivism. Dissident Objects and Subversive Forms – a collaborative, playful and immersive exhibition featuring craft-based materialities with a political intent, by contemporary Australian artists and artist collectives.

Curated by Anna Briers, Shepparton Art Museum (SAM) Senior Curator, and Dr Rebecca Coates, SAM Director the exhibition will launch in Shepparton on 24 November 2018 before embarking on a national tour.

Craft, activism and social change have long been interlinked; they have crossed boundaries and borders, genders and generations. Craftivism. Dissident Objects and Subversive Forms evidences this moment in …

Longitude

The Longitude exhibition will showcase cultural, experimental and arts practices from across the Asia-Pacific region in the medium of games. Featuring analogue and digital games, play workshops and public presentations, Longitude celebrates games and play as broad and persistent aspects of culture with the capacity to connect diverse groups. The exhibition highlights games as activities beyond escapist entertainment instead as nuanced, challenging and inspiring forms of cultural expression that bring broader understandings of the world and the people it.

Artists include: DreamTree (Malaysia), Sun Yu (Taiwan), Dong Nguyen (Vietnam), Mojiken Studio (Indonesia), Spotlighter (China), IP Yuk-Yiu (Hong Kong), Ojiro …

Looking But Not Seeing

Curated by Kiron Robinson.

Looking But Not Seeing brings together the work of eleven leading artists, at various stages of their careers from early career to established practitioners.

“What is a photograph?” and “What can a photograph be?” are the key questions driving contemporary artists who use photography. While employing diverse artistic approaches each of these artists asks how the world can be imaged if it is already a photograph? 

Looking But Not Seeing was the recipient of the 2016 Exhibition Development Fund and is presented in partnership with Benalla Art Gallery.…

Callum Preston: Milk Bar

For kids growing up in Australia, the local milk bar was more than just a shop – it was a symbol of freedom. For Callum Preston, the milk bar was a meeting place and a cherished after-school ritual in a time before SMS and Instagram – a place where you’d just turn up and see who else arrived.

As a child in the 1990s, Preston well remembers his neighbourhood milk bar as a place of wonder: the buzzing neon, the faded posters of Diet Coke-loving windsurfers, collector cards, musk sticks, jelly snakes, cigarette ads, the smell of pies and the …

Craftivism. Dissident Objects and Subversive Forms

Fayen d’Evie and Bryan Phillips describe ‘Seeing voices’ at Horsham Regional Art Gallery

Fayen d’Evie and Bryan Phillips have collaborated to make a new work that responds to the exhibition ‘Seeing voices’ as it was installed at the first venue, Horsham Regional Art Gallery. D’Evie, whose background as a curator and artist pivots on modes of engaging art beyond the ocular norm, and Phillips, an artist and musician, together create an audio tour that navigates the sensory geography of the exhibition in that place at that time. The audio tour layers extremely close, or what they term ‘myopic’ readings, of artworks, listening meditations and excerpts from a workshop they hosted with people from …

Raquel Ormella – NEW TOUR

NETS Victoria is pleased to announce the national tour of I hope you get this: Raquel Ormella after successfully obtaining funding for the project from the Australian Government’s Visions of Australia program.

Curated by Dr. Rebecca Coates and Anna Briers from Shepparton Art Museum, I hope you get this will launch in Shepparton in May this year before touring to Horsham, Canberra, and Penrith among other venues.

Shepparton Art Museum were recipients of an Exhibition Development Fund grant in 2016 which has allowed them to work with Raquel Ormella and also to commission new work for the exhibition and …

I hope you get this: Raquel Ormella

This exhibition brings together new and recent work by one of Australia’s leading contemporary artists, Raquel Ormella.

I hope you get this: Raquel Ormella includes work from a wide variety of media, and particularly draws on her experimental textile works. The exhibition explores key themes that Ormella has consistently focused on: social and environmental activism; human and animal relationships; …

Play On: The art of sport catalogue

66 page catalogue with colour plates including essays, artist texts, images and biographies and a list of works.

Published by NETS Victoria and the Ian Potter Museum of Art on the occasion of the exhibition Play On: …

NETS Victoria appoints new Chair

NETS Victoria Board of Management is pleased to announce the appointment of Adam Harding to the position of Chair.

Adam Harding has been the Director of Horsham Regional Art Gallery (HRAG) since 2009 and oversaw their recent redevelopment.  He has continued Horsham’s commitment to community engagement while reinterpreting the Gallery’s collection to focus on their three main areas of collecting; artworks and images of Horsham and the Wimmera, the Mack Jost Collection of Australian Art, and its nationally significant collection of Australian photography.  Harding has been focusing on investigating modes of exhibition development and presentation that places HRAG and the …

INTERVIEW: Fayen d’Evie

AZ: Fayen, thanks for taking the time to discuss your involvement in Seeing voices. I think audiences are accustomed to exhibitions being quite fixed with a stable list of selected works and an accompanying public program that activates the exhibition. Can you talk about what you have planned for Seeing voices and the way it challenges some of those established museum practices?

FE: I’m working with Bryan Phillips on this project – he is a musician and sound artist who I’ve been collaborating with over several exhibitions, experimenting with ways that sound works can convey a vibrational description or story …

‘Seeing voices’ – public programs

WrongSolo, Rehearsal documentation for I am a branch floating on a swollen river after the rain 2017

Seeing voices uses the Monash University Collection as a springboard for thinking through the voice and how it is visualised, employed and reimagined in contemporary art.In the exhibition, the voice might act as a metaphor for collective action, for speaking out against injustice and coming together in gestures of solidarity. It can be a marker of cultural and geographic specificity or the trace of disappearing language. It may also function like a spiritual medium; through its historical recording and archiving it time-travels …

Seeing voices exhibition catalogue

82 page catalogue with colour plates including: essays, a list of works, artist biographies and images.

Published by Monash University Museum of Art – MUMA and NETS Victoria …

Launch of ‘Play On: The Art of Sport’

Fans of sport will be excited by the news that an exhibition that brings together 10 years of contemporary art commissions on the subject of sport and sporting culture will open in regional NSW in December.

Play On: The Art of Sport includes painting, sculpture, video, drawing and mixed-media installation by prominent Australia artists from diverse cultural backgrounds from the Basil Sellers Art Prize. Individual works in the exhibition engage with gymnastics, running, community sport, ground-keeping, AFL, race relations and the representation of women in sport amongst other ideas. The prize has inspired innovative and complex explorations of sport from …

Play On: The art of sport

‘Seeing voices’ to open at Horsham Regional Art Gallery

An exhibition that thinks through how the voice is visualised, employed and reimagined in contemporary art opens at Horsham Regional Gallery on 14 October and runs until 10 December.

Seeing voices, a collaboration between NETS Victoria and Monash University Museum of Art I MUMA uses the Monash University Collection as a springboard for thinking through the voice. The exhibition encompasses drawing, painting, photography, sculpture and video, and a live performance with each iteration of the exhibition.

In the exhibition, the voice might act as a metaphor for  collective action, for speaking out against injustice and coming together in gestures of …

‘Slipstitch’ concludes its seven venue two-year tour

Ararat Regional Art Gallery’s long tradition of collecting and exhibiting textile art was established because of its region’s historic ties to fine wool production. For gallery director Anthony Camm this textile art focus informed the gallery’s decision to develop a touring exhibition exploring the recent uptake of embroidery by a new generation artists.

Anthony Camm: “Ararat Regional Art Gallery is Australia’s most dedicated presenter and collector of textile art. It’s important that we also share our expertise and collection with other galleries in order to reach new audiences. Embroidery is a growing area of interest to artists and this …

Seeing voices

Seeing voices uses the Monash University Collection as a springboard for thinking through the voice and how it is visualised, employed and reimagined in contemporary art.

In the exhibition, the voice might act as a metaphor for collective action, for speaking out against injustice and coming together in gestures of solidarity. It can be a marker of cultural and geographic specificity or the trace of disappearing language. It may also function like a spiritual medium; through its historical recording and archiving it time-travels to haunt the present. The voice is also an index, a measure of positon, perspective, distance and …

The world is not a foreign land exhibition catalogue

64 page full colour catalogue including: essays, a list of works, artist biographies and images.

Published by the Ian Potter Museum of Art, the University of Melbourne, on the occasion of the exhibition The world is not a foreign land, Curated by Quentin Sprague, 6 March to 13 July 2014. An Ian …

Exhibition Development Fund applications now being accepted

Applications for the 2017 Exhibition Development Fund (EDF) are now open!

The EDF provides funding up to $10,000 to develop new exhibitions of contemporary art, craft or design with the potential to tour them with NETS Victoria.

Independent curators and artists are encouraged to apply through a partner organization and this is a wonderful way for smaller institutions to work with new and upcoming curators.

Funds can be used to assist development areas such as research, engaging an independent curator, artists’ commissioning or loan fees, exhibition design, audience development or publications and education kits. EDF grants are not available …

‘Wominjeka: A New Beginning’ travels to Horsham

Wominjeka: A New Beginning opened at Horsham Regional Gallery this week. The exhibition traces cultural continuities and explores new modes of creative practice in South Eastern Aboriginal art and cultures.

Featuring a diverse array of materials and techniques including; painting, animal skin cloaks and textiles, bark and feather flowers, clay shields and digital prints this landmark exhibition brings together specially commissioned work by five cross-generational early career artists; Georgia MacGuire, Aunty Marlene Gilson, Mitch Mahoney, Josh Muir and Raymond Young.  As part of this project each participating artist has been mentored by a senior artist including Maree Clarke, Lee Darroch, …

NETS Victoria appoints new Director

NETS Victoria is thrilled to announce the appointment of Mardi Nowak as Director. Ms Nowak, who trained as an artist, has worked as a curator and gallery manager for more than 16 years in the public gallery and local government sector most recently at the Town Hall Gallery, Hawthorn.

Over the past decade she has developed over 100 exhibitions and programs, working closely with gallery staff, artists and organisations on collection building, artist-in-residence programs and overseeing public art commissions.

Sarah Bond, Chair of NETS Victoria: “The Board was won over by Mardi’s significant professional achievement, commitment to the sector and …

Senior Curator to depart NETS Victoria

Senior Curator and Acting Director Melissa Keys leaves the organisation at the end of the month to join the curatorial team at the Ian Potter Museum Museum of Art.

Melissa joined NETS Victoria in April 2015. During her time at NETS she has developed a dynamic program of exhibitions that are currently touring nationally and a number of forthcoming exhibitions.

We will continue working with Melissa on the Michelle Nikou: a e i o u exhibition  she co-curated with Kendrah Morgan (Heide Museum of Art)  as it tours nationally throughout 2017 and into 2018.

We will miss her wit and …

INTERVIEW: Vikki McInnes, curator EREWHON

The title of the exhibition refers to a Samuel Butler novel ‘Erewhon’ from 1782 novel. Can you explain the significance of this reference literary reference to you?

There are so many reasons why EREWHON resonates with me, not least because I originally came to Melbourne from New Zealand, where the satirical Victorian novel is based, and where Butler lived as a young man. There’s a terrific melding of the real and the imagined throughout the narrative and also a strong sense of dislocation or displacement, which I respond to personally. The Erewhon of the story is a curious place where…

Michelle Nikou: a e i o u makes its way to Benalla

The intriguing and beguiling works of Michelle Nikou have made their way to Benalla. This marks the second in a seven venue journey for the survey exhibition of the Adeliade-based contemporary artist.

Exhibition co-curator, Melissa Keys “We were thrilled with how audiences responded to the exhibition so far. Nikou has such an interesting practice and visitors are connecting to the feeling, humour and materiality of the artworks.”

​As part of the exhibition Michelle Nikou ran a two-day art making workshop at Heide Museum of Modern Art in August last year. The public program was well attended and very well received. …

Michelle Nikou: a e i o u exhibition catalogue

A NETS Victoria and Heide Museum of Modern Art touring exhibition, curated by Melissa Keys and Kendrah Morgan

A 74 page full colour soft cover catalogue.

Features:

EREWHON exhibition catalogue

A NETS Victoria regional touring exhibition curated by Vikki McInnes

40 pages, unpaginated.

Features:

• A foreward by Sarah Bond, Director Visual Arts – Asialink Arts and Georgia Cribb, Director NETS Victoria • An essay ‘Dark Pasts, Dark Presents’ by curator Vikki McInnes • An essay ‘Stigma: the work of the straightener’ by Molly McPhee

18 pages of coloured plates Artist biographies…

Wominjeka: A New Beginning exhibition catalogue

This 32 page full colour paperback catalogue features:

 …

EREHWON travels to Warrnambool Art Gallery

NETS Victoria’s most recent exhibition titled EREWHON opened at Warrnambool Art Gallery in February and will run until 12 June. This is the third of five partner venues that the exhibition will be presented. EREWHON will tour Victoria until 2018.

Featuring work by six leading contemporary artists and curated by Vikki McInnes, this significant exhibition explores themes including the effects of colonisation, technological progress and the ramifications of social discipline and order. It features a range of work in a diversity of media including installation, photography, video and textiles. We talk to Vikki about the exhibition.

Vikki McInnes is Research …

Director departs NETS

After 12 years at the helm of NETS Victoria – and 14 years with the organisation –  Georgia Cribb will depart the organisation to take up the new position as Director of Bunjil Place at the City of Casey in Melbourne’s south east.

Georgia’s contribution to NETS Victoria has been immense, so much so that it’s difficult to imagine the organization without her.

NETS Victoria has changed, and grown, significantly under her leadership. Her achievements include developing countless exhibitions and programs, commissioning new works and collaborating with a network of regional and metropolitan galleries across Australia to share exciting, moving …

New Appointment

NETS Victoria is delighted to announce the appointment of Anna Zagala as Communications Manager.

Anna Zagala has worked in the arts across Communications, Graphic Design and Publicity at various institutions including the National Film and Sound Archive, the National Gallery of Australia, the Dax Centre and Monash University Museum of Art. She writes regularly for art publications and runs Sweetpolka, a design and communications studio.…

EREWHON

Curated by Vikki McInnes

Erewhon is the return of Neverwhere, an exhibition that travelled to Istanbul last year, commissioned by Asialink as part of the Australia Year in Turkey. Neverwhere presented the work of eight contemporary Australian artists that disturbed distinctions between our real and imagined selves, and between the authentic and the fantastical. Narratives were informed by external – and often mysterious – forces, both seen and unseen. The exhibition shifted registers between sincerity and satire although its propensity was to shadowy psychological turns. And it is farther in this direction – towards the darker, more charged imaginings – …

2015 Annual report

David Rosetzky Half Brother, 2013, Courtesy the artist and Sutton Gallery, Melbourne

Through twelve months of flux in 2015, NETS Victoria has both focused inwards to shape a new vision for the organisation and the sector we service, whilst simultaneously delivering a dynamic artistic program in partnership with galleries across the country.

Read more about highlights for the year in our 2015 Annual Report.

 …

Exhibition catalogues

Did you know you can access exhibition catalogues from the most significant projects NETS Victoria has delivered from the past decade? Fully illustrated with scholarly yet accessible essays, the catalogues are a fantastic resource for anyone who is interested in Australian art, craft and design.

To discover more, visit Publications.…

Education resources for everyone

Photograph by Christian Cappuro, 2016.

NETS Victoria commissions leading education consultants to prepare resources which are available to download free.

We not only give physical access to the best of contemporary art, craft and design, we also actively enable our audiences the opportunity to build their understanding and appreciation of the works of art.

The resources include background information on the artists, explanations on the concepts which underpin the exhibition which can be enjoyed by anyone with a curiosity about art.

For educators, it also includes curriculum links and activities which can be used before, during and following a visit …

Exhibition tour launching soon – ‘Wominjeka: A New Beginning’

A NETS Victoria and Koorie Heritage Trust touring exhibition

A new exhibition tour launches at East Gippsland Art Gallery on the 19th May. Wominjeka: A New Beginning traces cultural continuities and explores new modes of creative practice in South Eastern Aboriginal art and cultures. Featuring a diverse array of materials and techniques including; painting, animal skin cloaks and textiles, bark and feather flowers, clay shields and digital prints this landmark exhibition brings together specially commissioned work by five cross-generational early career artists; Georgia MacGuire, Aunty Marlene Gilson, Mitch Mahoney, Josh Muir and Raymond Young. As part of this project each …

Slipstitch at Latrobe Regional Gallery in May

Slipstitch comes to Latrobe Regional Gallery in May, presenting an Australian perspective on the contemporary uptake of embroidery by a new generation of artists. The exhibition features recent work from Mae Finlayson, David Green, Lucas Grogan, Alice Kettle, Tim Moore, Silke Raetze, Demelza Sherwood, Matt Siwerski, Jane Theau, Sera Waters, Elyse Watkins and Ilka White.

The exhibition showcases a wide range of works, ranging from incredibly detailed to the quite liminal or gestural, that include both elaborate and reticent encounters with hand and machine embroidery. Many of the artists in Slipstitch use relatively simple hand embroidery methods and a very …

Jacqui Stockdale comes to McClelland Gallery+Sculpture Park

Jacqui Stockdale: Drawing the Labyrinth

See more than one hundred metres of drawings by acclaimed artist Jacqui Stockdale at McClelland Gallery+Sculpture Park, on display until the 19th June. Presented in a fold-out concertina sketchbook and configured in the form of a labyrinth, this continuous length of drawings reflects the artists’ intimate journey over a twelve month period. Stockdale depicts moments spent travelling across Europe, incorporating a diverse array of portraits such as friends, family members, self-portraits, anonymous people on trains, teenagers in their classrooms, a live band on stage, even a woman giving birth. Making these sketches Stockdale seeks a …

National Artist or Curator Residency (ACR) Program 2017 – Applications Open!

Did you know that Museums & Galleries of NSW has a grant program open to regional public galleries across Australia? The ACR program offers the opportunity for regional galleries nationally to engage artists or curators to undertake a residency activity. The program is designed to provide artists or curators with the time and space to research, create and/or develop new work.

To be successful, applicants will need to demonstrate a tangible benefit to the artist or curator’s work. In return, the resident is expected to contribute generally to the host gallery’s education and public program activities.

Amount available: 5 …

NETS Victoria Program Highlights 2012 – 2015

NETS_Highlights_2012-15…

Talk at Heide – Michelle Nikou: a e i o u

Adelaide-based artist Michelle Nikou draws inventively on the traditions of Surrealism, Pop art and Arte Povera to transform everyday items into objects of humour and marvel. In this exhibition of new and recent work she comments on aspects of domestic life, family interactions and our relationship with food, often investing overlooked aspects of daily existence with unexpected significance. Join the artist for a discussion of her exhibition a e i o u with curators Kendrah Morgan, Heide Museum of Modern Art, and Melissa Keys, Senior Exhibitions Manager, NETS Victoria.

This is a live tweet event. Follow @heidemoma

Date: 23 April …

Exhibition tours at Heide – Michelle Nikou: a e i o u

Take a tour of Michelle Nikou: a e i o u with a volunteer guide.

Dates: Various, check the Heide website for details. Times: 2pm Location: Heide Museum of Modern Art (Heide II) Cost: Free with museum entry…

Michelle Nikou: a e i o u

Michelle Nikou in her studio, Adelaide, 2016.

Curated by Melissa Keys and Kendrah Morgan

Adelaide-based artist Michelle Nikou draws on surrealism in a reflective and productive way to transform mundane domestic objects and materials into sculptures of humour and marvel. In this exhibition of new and recent work she utilises surrealist strategies such as chance, psychological metaphor, deadpan wit and juxtaposition, and inventively mingles high and low art sources and cultural references. Her work intentionally blurs and extends the boundaries between fine art and craft and often invests unremarkable or overlooked facets of daily existence with new and unexpected significance.…

Wominjeka: A New Beginning

Wominjeka: A New Beginning traces cultural continuities and explores new modes of creative practice in South Eastern Aboriginal art and cultures.

Featuring a diverse array of materials and techniques including painting, animal skin cloaks and textiles, bark and feather flowers, clay shields and digital prints this landmark exhibition brings together specially commissioned work by five cross-generational early career artists; Georgia MacGuire, Aunty Marlene Gilson, Mitch Mahoney, Josh Muir and Raymond Young. As part of this project each participating artist has been mentored by a senior artist including Maree Clarke, Lee Darroch, Ray Thomas and Peter Waples-Crowe, to explore the Koorie …

The world in painting

The world in painting offers a perspective into how Australian artists, from a range of generations and locations, are painting their worlds from domestic interiors to dream-like landscapes. It explores a number of themes including the workings of subjectivity and power, the strangeness and fantasy of the natural world, and the desire to encourage forms of creativity that are accessible to all.

Despite regular forecasts of painting’s demise last century, the medium retains its strong presence, undiminished for thousands of years. Figurative or abstract in imagery, expressive or conceptual in character, painting is everywhere today.

Contemporary artists are well aware …

Walk

Walk presents the work of eight Australian artists – Peter Corbett, Vicki Couzens, Nicky Hepburn, Brian Laurence, Jan Learmonth, Carmel Wallace, Ilka White and John Wolseley. At the heart of this exhibition is a 250 kilometre trek along the Great South West Walk, an increasingly endangered natural environment cradled in the far south-west corner of Victoria.

For three weeks, this seemingly diverse group of artists walked through forest and river, estuary and bay to create work in response to their experience of an ever-shifting environment. Caught in the movement of the landscape, the artists followed a path that took them …

The Shilo Project

An iconic album cover from the 1970s, Neil Diamond’s Shilo, is the stimulus for an exhibition at the Ian Potter Museum of Art and Victorian tour, which will explore the intricate relationship between pop music and modern art.

The original album cover featured an innovative join-the-dots image of Neil Diamond, inviting fans to complete their own portrait. For the Shilo project, Museum Director, Dr Chris McAuliffe, invited 100 leading contemporary artists to respond to the artistic challenge posed by the do-it-yourself album cover.

Their works will be exhibited along with a number of amateur responses – many of which have …

Simryn Gill: Inland

Simryn Gill: Inland is the first survey of photography by Singapore-born, Sydney and Malaysia-based artist Simryn Gill, drawing upon works created over the past two decades. While photography forms a significant part of her practice, the artist does not consider herself to be a photographer. Simryn Gill: Inland embraces this conundrum as an entry point for considering Gill’s artistic practice, and how photography might function more broadly as a way of engaging with the world.

This expansive survey includes selections from Gill’s series Forest (1996-1998),Rampant (1999) and Vegetation (1999) as well as the iconic Dalam (2001). Further works include the …

NEW EXHIBITION – Jacqui Stockdale: Drawing the Labyrinth

Jacqui Stockdale’s Drawing the Labyrinth comprises more than one hundred metres of drawings presented in a fold-out concertina sketchbook set out on tables and configured in the form of a labyrinth. This continuous length of drawings reflects the artists’ intimate journey over a twelve month period, variously depicting moments spent travelling across Europe, incorporating a diverse array of portraits such as friends, family members, self-portraits, anonymous people on trains, teenagers in their classrooms, a live band on stage, even a woman giving birth.

Making these sketches Stockdale seeks a direct connection with her subject, often drawing people she has spontaneously …

Last chance to see ‘Synthetica’

Synthetica is on at Wagga Wagga Art Gallery until the 13th March 2016 and then it’s time to say goodbye to this visually-charged exhibition.

The exhibition brings together artists Boe-lin Bastian, Simon Finn, Bonnie Lane, Kristin McIver, Kate Shaw, Alice Wormald and Paul Yore, who all incorporate artificial and technological innovations into their practice.

As exhibition curator Claire Anna Watson explains:

The works in Synthetica have been selected to provoke questions relating to the relationship we have with the physical world and the nature of experimentation in an increasingly technologised climate. A mesmerising display of video, painting, sculpture, installation and …

New website and logo!

We’re very excited to announce the launch of our new website and logo, designed by Sweet Creative. Our gorgeous new site will keep you up-to-date with all the latest NETS Victoria news, includes detailed information about our exhibition touring program and still provides a rich back-catalogue of our touring projects.

There is a new section called Artists and Works where you can discover artists that we have worked with, accessing a range of information and useful links about their practice. This is an ever-growing database of information, currently including 139 artists!

All the latest NETS Victoria publications are available through …

Other side art: Trevor Nickolls, a survey of paintings and drawings 1972 – 2007

Other side art is the first museum survey of the work of senior South Australian artist, Trevor Nickolls who has been described as ‘the father of urban Aboriginal art’. He stands as a seminal figure whose career has spanned an unprecedented era of Aboriginal cultural expression. This major survey exhibition will chart in detail Nickolls’s themes, symbols and techniques to establish a powerful comprehension of his inspiration and direction.

Spanning Nickolls’ work over a thirty-five year period, the survey tracks the social history of Australia using the artist’s visual vocabulary, his own iconic language that has influenced and informed subsequent …

Objects to Live By: The Art of John Meade

Objects to Live By / The Art of John Meade is the first exhibition to review fifteen years of practice from one of Australia’s leading sculptors. Meade’s oeuvre is distinguished by its synthesis of figuration and abstraction. In dissolving the distinctions between sculpture, modern design and everyday objects, his art is a catalyst for the imagination.

Text by Georgia Cribb, Director, National Exhibitions Touring Support (NETS) Victoria

My earliest direct encounter with the art of John Meade occurred relatively recently, in the artist’s studio. In production were some of his most recent works of art including Sabrina (2009). Chance encounters …

Murray Cod: the biggest fish in the river

Murray Cod: the biggest fish in the river showcased a rich array of visual art inspired by Australia’s most iconic fish. A fabled fish, the Murray cod has a special place in the nation’s imagination with its mouth that is as big as any storyteller and its tail that is as long as any yarn.

Consisting over 40 works of art by 27 artists, this timely and unique touring exhibition examined a great fish that symbolised the Murray River itself. Works by colonial artist Ludwig Becker, through to narratives about the fish by Ian Abdulla and a contemporary view of …

Jacqui Stockdale: Drawing the Labyrinth workshops

In association with the exhibition Jacqui Stockdale: Drawing the Labyrinth at Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery, the artist will host a series of drawing workshops that focus participants on observing and sketching the world around them.

Workshops are free and will be held on 10 and 17 February from 7pm to 9pm, please contact the gallery to register on 03 5036 2444…

Loop: new Australian Video Art

Curated by Daniel McOwan, Loop: new Australian video art showcases innovative contemporary video art by five of Australia’s leading artists – Daniel Crooks, Shaun Gladwell, Jess MacNeil, Arlo Mountford and Daniel von Sturmer. In bringing together this group of seemingly diverse artists, Loop is intended to provide a glimpse into some of the fresh methods being employed in video art today. Testing the boundaries of this visual medium, the works in Loop present a spliced meditation on time, space, motion, place and perspective.

The artists showcased in this exhibition all portray a deep interest in, and knowledge of the medium …

How You Make It

Some of Australia’s leading conceptual fashion designers open a dialogue between craft and design that places the focus back on how and why objects are made.

Curated by Kate Rhodes, How You Make It is an exhibition that takes the making process itself as a conceptual starting point. Specifically, it looks at the approach of the designer towards garment construction as an idea while investigating the evolution of artisan fashion design practices – revealing how traditional highly-crafted tailoring techniques continue to form contemporary clothing in often radically new ways.

How You Make It features around 25 newly-created and existing …

Jacqui Stockdale: Drawing the Labyrinth

Jacqui Stockdale’s Drawing the Labyrinth comprises more than one hundred metres of drawings presented in a fold-out concertina sketchbook set out on tables and configured in the form of a labyrinth. This continuous length of drawings reflects the artists’ intimate journey over a twelve month period, variously depicting moments spent travelling across Europe, incorporating a diverse array of portraits such as friends, family members, self-portraits, anonymous people on trains, teenagers in their classrooms, a live band on stage, even a woman giving birth.

Making these sketches Stockdale seeks a direct connection with her subject, often drawing people she has spontaneously …

The Enchanted Forest: New Gothic Storytellers

Six of Australia’s most respected contemporary artists evoke a mesmerising woodland with intersecting storylines possessing both the charm and the implied menace of a Grimm’s fairytale. The enchanted forest: new gothic storytellers revisits a time when animals and trees were thought to speak, when man was at the mercy of the forest, and the boundary between civilisation and the wilderness was less clearly defined.

Each of the artists – Jazmina Cininas, Deborah Klein, Milan Milojevic, James Morrison, Louise Weaver and Louiseann Zahra-King – work in meticulous, time-consuming methods to re-interpret the natural world through intricately crafted images and objects.

Through …

The Stony Rises Project

The Stony Rises Project brought together ten contemporary artists and designers in an investigation of the rich, layered histories of the Western District of Victoria, in an exhibition developed by RMIT Design Research Institute which toured regional Victoria in 2010-2011, managed by National Exhibitions Touring Support (NETS) Victoria.

Following a four-day artists’ camp in April 2009, works were made in response to the area to the southeast, south and southwest of Lake Corangamite distinguished by the basalt rocks erupting from the landscape forming Stony Rises, as well as volcanic cones and crater lakes. Designers, artists, curators and community members were …

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Celebrating 30 Years of NETS Victoria

In 1985 NETS Victoria emerged as an initiative of the Australia Council, who saw a gap within the arts sector in facilitating touring exhibitions and supporting curators, artists and public galleries. Thirty years later in 2015 NETS Victoria continues to create opportunities to bring high quality contemporary art, craft and design practice to different regional communities, whilst supporting regional galleries in presenting contemporary art programs.

From the early days of just one staff in an advisory role, NETS Victoria has grown to a team of four professional staff that manage a variety of contemporary art programs. We continue to double …

Seasons Greetings from NETS Victoria

Another busy year at NETS Victoria draws to a close and we’ve been working hard to bring you some fantastic touring exhibitions that will keep everyone entertained over summer.

Our stunning touring exhibition of contemporary Indigenous art, The world is not a foreign land, is on at Benalla Art Gallery until the 14th February 2016. At Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery is Slipstitch, an exhibition of contemporary embroidery. Visit the exhibition until the 10th January and if you feel inspired try your hand at embroidery in the exhibition space! If you are travelling to New South Wales don’t miss Synthetica, …

Tooth & Nail: Cross Cultural Influences in Contemporary Ceramics

Tooth & Nail was a dynamic exploration of contemporary artistic practice and cultural influences between Asian and Australian ceramicists and the creation of a hybrid contemporary ceramic practice. Eleven artists were chosen from Australia, Beijing, Hong Kong and Taiwan including Joe Chan, Sally Cleary, Kris Coad, Andrei Davidoff, Zhou Jie, Josephine Tsui Tze Kwan, Jane Sawyer, Robyn Phelan, Kevin White, Fiona Wong and Mon-Xi Wu.

Since the 1500s Chinese and Japanese ornamentation and luxury goods – with specific reference to ceramics – have significantly influenced Western style and culture. During the Ming period, when China and the West where involved …

Spirit in the Land

The landscape has been an enduring subject in the history of Australia art and vital to the on-going formation of images of a national identity. Within this tradition Spirit in the Land explores the connection between eleven Australian artists, historical and contemporary, indigenous and non-indigenous, and their special appreciation and engagement to the spiritual ethos and power of the land.

Unearthing shared themes and cultural exchanges this exhibition brings together key paintings and sculptures by some of Australia’s most influential artists, Lorraine Connelly-Northey, John Davis, Russell Drysdale, Rosalie Gascoigne, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Dorothy Napangardi, Sidney Nolan, John Olsen, Lin Onus, …

Loop: New Australian Video Art Catalogue

This illustrated catalogue provides a glimpse into some of the fresh methods being employed in video art today. Loop: new Australian video art presents the work of five innovative Australian media artists – Daniel Crooks, Shaun Gladwell, Jess MacNeil, Arlo Mountford and Daniel von Sturmer. Combined with a scientific-like fascination with the medium of technology, these inspired works display a poetic and hybrid form of video.…

Murray Cod: the Biggest Fish in the River exhibition catalogue

There is a story about a Murray cod for every inch of the river. And each story was true in the moment it slipped from the mouth of the teller into the world of memory and legend… A beautifully illustrated companion publication to the touring exhibition, Murray Cod: the biggest fish in the river, which traces the stories and showcases the rich imagery of Australia’s most iconic fish. Designed by award-winning studio 5678 Design, this book was produced with the generous support of the Gordon Darling Foundation.…

The Shilo Project

How You Make It exhibition catalogue

A stylish companion publication to the Craft Victoria and NETS Victoria touring exhibition, How You Make It, which investigates the process behind some of Australia’s leading artisan fashion design practices.…

Simryn Gill: Inland exhibition catalogue

Tomorrow Land. The 11th Triennale India, Callum Morton (Australia) exhibition catalogue

Walk exhibition catalogue

Walk presents the work of eight Australian artists – Peter Corbett, Vicki Couzens, Nicky Hepburn, Brian Laurence, Jan Learmonth, Carmel Wallace, Ilka White and John Wolseley. At the heart of this exhibition and accompanying book is a 250 kilometre trek along the Great South West Walk, an increasingly endangered natural environment cradled in the far south-west corner of Victoria. For three weeks, this seemingly diverse group of artists walked through forest and river, estuary and bay to create work in response to their experience of an ever-shifting environment. Caught in the movement of the landscape, the artists followed a path …

Come on the Scene exhibition catalogue

This beautifully illustrated companion publication to the Next Wave and NETS Victoria touring exhibition is jam-packed with great works of art and cool reading. Co-curator Tamara Marwood writes about how these five young regional artists have overcome the tyranny of distance in sustaining their practices while each of the artists have been interviewed by members of their local community. There are also newly-created artists’ pages and a dazzling selection of works that have been reproduced for your enjoyment. Stylishly designed by Dylan Fowler, this 48 page publication was produced with the generous support of the Gordon Darling Foundation.…

Objects to Live By / The Art of John Meade

This illustrated catalogue provides a glimpse into some of the fresh methods being employed in video art today. Loop: new Australian video art presents the work of five innovative Australian media artists – Daniel Crooks, Shaun Gladwell, Jess MacNeil, Arlo Mountford and Daniel von Sturmer. Combined with a scientific-like fascination with the medium of technology, these inspired works display a poetic and hybrid form of video.…

The Presence of Things: Sense, Veneer and Guise exhibition catalogue

Heavens: Asher Bilu

The Enchanted Forest: New Gothic Storytellers exhibition catalogue

Enter the enchanted forest, where woodland animals sport shimmering sequined pelts, fallen birds are turned to bronze amongst glass flowers and moths metamorphose into beautiful women and back again. Werewolves and dingoes lurk in the wolfsbane undergrowth, giants are felled among the eucalypts and fanciful trees with nocturnal blooms are home to chimeras… Drawing on the tradition of fairytales and folklore, the artists in The enchanted forest create their own personal iconography and mythologies while investigating ways in which our perception of the natural world has been constructed and represented. Grab a copy of the spellbinding exhibition catalogue, which was …

Other Side Art: Trevor Nickolls, a Survey of Paintings and Drawings 1972 – 2007 – Room Brochure

Spirit in the Land exhibition catalogue

Dreamweavers exhibition catalogue

Cut with the kitchen knife exhibition catalogue

Made to last: the conservation of art exhibition catalogue

Signature Style exhibition catalogue

Catalogue to accompany the exhibition Signature Style.…

Brook Andrew: De Anima exhibition catalogue

16 page full colour catalogue to accompany the Brook Andrew: De Anima exhibition at Bendigo Art Gallery, as part of The Cinemas Project. The publication includes an essay by exhibition curator Bridget Crone and images of the exhibition and its development.…

The Cinemas Project Book

Catalogue for The Cinemas Project – five commissions of contemporary art presented across regional Victoria in 2014. Artists Brook Andrew, Lily Hibberd, Mikala Dwyer, Bianca Hester and Tom Nicholson were commissioned by NETS Victoria to respond to present or past cinema sites and their context. Full colour 188 page publication with essays by Bridget Crone, exhibition curator, Ian Christie and Adrian Martin. Includes photographs from each exhibition project.…

True Self: David Rosetzky Selected Works exhibition catalogue

Catalogue to accompany the exhibition True Self: David Rosetzky Selected Works.…

Synthetica exhibition catalogue

52 page full-colour catalogue that includes an introduction by exhibition curator Claire Anna Watson, essays by Jane O’Neill and Dan Rule, a list of works, artist biographies and images.…

Host an Exhibition

When hosting a NETS Victoria exhibition, you can rest assured that the exhibition is delivered with beautifully designed signage, quality curatorial essays, comprehensive promotions kits and all the exhibition furniture and technology required. We provide support and assistance at every step of the journey.We are dedicated to working collaboratively with staff at host galleries to install our touring exhibitions and to achieve the best presentation, allowing for the uniqueness of your gallery. For many gallery staff, our presence provides breathing space so you can relax knowing that new creative perspectives will …

Travelling Exhibitions: A Practical Handbook for Metropolitan and Regional Galleries and Museums by Sara Kelly

If you’re serious about developing a travelling exhibition then make sure you grab a copy of this detailed resource. Whether you are a newcomer or a veteran to travelling exhibitions, an individual or an organization, this comprehensive guide will take you step-by-step through the planning, standards and practice of putting an art or museum exhibition on the road.

Publication Info

Slipstitch exhibition catalogue

Slipstitch presents an Australian perspective on the contemporary uptake of embroidery by a new generation of artists. The exhibition features recent work from Mae Finlayson, David Green, Lucas Grogan, Alice Kettle, Tim Moore, Silke Raetze, Demelza Sherwood, Matt Siwerski, Jane Theau, Sera Waters, Elyse Watkins and Ilka White.

This full colour exhibition catalogue features an essay by the exhibition curator Dr. Belinda von Mengersen, images from the exhibition, artist biographies and a glossary of terms.…

Shop

The world is not a foreign land exhibition catalogue

The world is not a foreign land exhibition is accompanied by a gorgeous full colour catalogue. The publication includes an introduction by Director of The Ian Potter Museum of Art Kelly Gellatly and also Exhibition Curator Quentin Sprague. Included is a conversation between Quentin Sprague and Ian Potter Museum of Art Curator Joanna Bosse, essays by Ian McLean (Research Professor of Contemporary Art at the University of Wollongong, NSW and the University of Western Australia, Perth) and Stephen Gilchrist (Independent Curator and Lecturer at New York University, Sydney) and sumptuous reproductions of the exhibition artworks in full colour.…

Education

NETS Victoria creates a range of education resources and activities designed to help galleries deliver innovative learning programs to stimulate, inspire and engage audiences of all ages.This includes information on each exhibition’s background, arts practices and themes, video interviews with artists and curators, and comprehensive Education Kits with links to State primary, secondary and tertiary curriculums.We are committed to educating people of all backgrounds and ages from primary to tertiary, in a deeper level of engagement and understanding of contemporary art, craft and design.

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1. Our Privacy Policy

2. Copyright and intellectual property

NETS Victoria respects the intellectual property of others, and asks our website users to do the same.

The contents of the website are protected by copyright, and are owned or controlled by NETS Victoria or by third parties that have licensed their content to NETS Victoria. This includes text, graphics, images, audio, video, data, coding, scripts, computer programs, trademarks, logos, and other material.

Unauthorised use of this material may violate copyright, trademark, and other laws. The use of this …

Privacy Policy

Purpose 

NETS Victoria collects, holds and administers a range of personal information in order to communicate and conduct our programs and activities. 

Personal information is information that directly or indirectly identifies an individual. This includes any information or opinion recorded in a material form about an individual whose identity is either apparent or can reasonably be ascertained.

We are committed to protecting the privacy of this personal information and recognise the rights of individuals to have their information administered in ways they would reasonably expect. 

This policy outlines what NETS Victoria does to meet legislated privacy requirements and maintain good …

Our Team

she/her Director, NETS Victoria Secretary, Board of Management

Claire Watson is a passionate contributor to the arts community through her role on boards and advisory committees, as a judge for industry prizes, a writer, and lecturer. Her professional experience includes serving as an advisor on the Touring Panel for Creative Victoria (2014-2016), board member of the Public Galleries Association of Victoria (2017-2019) chairing their Advocacy and Research Committee; and a range of senior roles at arts organisations including BLINDSIDE, Asialink, Gippsland Art Gallery, and Bundoora Homestead Art Centre. Claire has curated over 100 exhibitions including the Artspace …

Board & Advisors

she/her palawa Executive Director and Co-CEO of Footscray Community Arts Chair: Board of Management

Bec Cole is the Chair of NETS Victoria, and the Executive Director and Co-CEO of Footscray Community Arts. She has previously worked extensively in local government spanning leadership, strategic and creative programming roles across public art, galleries, performing arts, major event and activity centre settings. Bec is a former Director of Latrobe Regional Gallery, led the establishment of Gippsland Performing Arts Centre and is a champion of creating access to contemporary art for everyone. Previously, Bec led …

NETS Australia

Central to our organisation is participation in the NETS Australia network. 

National Exhibitions Touring Support (NETS) Australia is the national network committed to the delivery of best practice touring exhibitions of contemporary visual culture to remote and metropolitan communities throughout Australia.

The network is made up of seven State and Territory organisations: Artback NT, Art on the Move, Contemporary Art Tasmania, Country Arts SA, Museums & Galleries NSW, Museums and Galleries Queensland, and NETS Victoria.

Our membership of NETS Australia represents a shared ambition to ensure that regional, remote and metropolitan audiences have access to …

Reports

Our Supporters

NETS Victoria is grateful for the generous support of our valued partners.

CREATIVE VICTORIACreative Victoria is the state government body dedicated to championing, growing and supporting Victoria’s creative industries. We give thanks for their ongoing support.

CREATIVE AUSTRALIACreative Australia is the Australian Government’s principal arts funding and advisory body. We are grateful for their continued support.

THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF VICTORIAWe are grateful for the generous support of our long-term partner, the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV). The NGV provides accommodation and I.T. support for our organisation.

INTERNATIONAL ART SERVICESWe enjoy a partnership with International …

Our Story

Over time, the organisation began to take a more proactive role in the development of touring contemporary visual arts by expanding our exhibition and education programs, and significantly increasing audience engagement.

Since 1991, …

Exhibition Development Fund

Exhibition Development Fund –

Opens in 2025

Applications Due 5pm, Date to be confirmed 2025.

NETS Victoria’s Exhibition Development Fund (EDF) provides seed funding to research and develop new, curated exhibitions of contemporary visual arts, craft and design. 

The program supports innovative exhibitions of high-quality work and accompanying public programs that engage, inspire and develop artists, curators, arts organisations, public galleries and audiences across Victoria (and beyond). Projects may be entirely research and development and/or include a public outcome (such as staging the exhibition in a single venue or online, or producing an exhibition catalogue).

Past recipients include the Australian …

Tour Partners

If you are from an arts organisation or a public gallery with a great idea for a touring exhibition that will resonate with Victorian regional communities and beyond, we encourage you to reach out and advise NETS Victoria staff to discuss the potential alignment with our program. NETS Victoria also initiates projects to develop exhibitions for tour.The benefits of partnering with NETS …

National Exhibition Register

NETS Victoria is strongly committed to providing the Victorian public gallery sector with a diverse range of exhibitions featuring the best contemporary art, craft and design. We are committed to working collaboratively with our clients and partners. Our key clients are the regional gallery sector.

As the exhibition program includes works by Australia’s leading artists which are often on loan from institutional collections, NETS Victoria works with public galleries who have appropriate facilities, professional staff and a commitment to attracting audiences within their communities and beyond.

To assist galleries and museums in Victoria to source exciting new projects for their …

Contact Us

+61 3 8662 1507info@netsvictoria.org

Please direct your enquiries to the above email address, and the appropriate staff member will respond accordingly.

Please note: As our team regularly works off-site within our partner galleries, we may not be able to respond to your query immediately. 

National Exhibitions Touring Support (NETS) VictoriaC/- The Ian Potter Centre: NGV AustraliaWurundjeri CountryFederation SquarePO Box 7259Melbourne VIC 8004

DirectorClaire Watson(Mon–Thurs)

Senior Exhibitions CoordinatorChantelle Mitchell(Mon–Thurs)

Exhibitions CoordinatorHester Lyon(Tues–Wed)

Exhibitions CoordinatorSherryn Vardy(Tues–Wed)

…

About

NETS Victoria is the peak body for visual art, craft and design touring and the State’s only full-service visual arts touring organisation.

We take a hands-on approach to supporting and showcasing the work of Australian curators, artists, arts workers and arts organisations, connecting them with one another, and fostering collaboration through the provision of curatorial, financial and capacity building support.

We work with an established network of regional galleries to bring new exhibitions to life in new locations and support galleries to capture wider audiences.

Our exhibitions …

Opportunities

NETS Victoria tours extraordinary contemporary visual art, craft and design across Victoria and beyond. We do this through the provision of curatorial, financial and capacity building support.

Curatorial: We manage all aspects of exhibition and tour development and delivery – from planning to audience engagement. This includes partnering with organisations that want to tour their own exhibitions and working with galleries to host NETS Victoria tours.

Financial: We …

Exhibitions & Projects

Slipstitch

Curated by Dr Belinda von Mengersen

Slipstitch presents an Australian perspective on the contemporary uptake of embroidery by a new generation of artists. The exhibition features recent work from Mae Finlayson, David Green, Lucas Grogan, Alice Kettle, Tim Moore, Silke Raetze, Demelza Sherwood, Matt Siwerski, Jane Theau, Sera Waters, Elyse Watkins and Ilka White.

In recent years contemporary artists in Australia have embraced embroidery for its capacity for poignant and reflective narrative. The re-emergence of embroidery is part of a broader questioning of the hierarchy of materials that has gained momentum since the 1990s. Embroidered objects have often been read literally …

Synthetica

A NETS Victoria and BLINDSIDE touring exhibition curated by Claire Anna Watson

Synthetica is not for the fainthearted—the artists have been selected for their visually charged and hypnotic imagery. Expect an experience that smacks of the strange with pulsing machines and courageous forms brimming with life and wonder.

Nothing is too outrageous: from helium balloons to plasticine painting through to artificial plants and sensor-based technology, Synthetica will both shock and delight. The artists explore humorous, performative and theatrical devices to interrogate the interplay between nature / culture, and humankind / machine. In dramatic and oftentimes-absurdist explorations, the artists reveal how a synthetic reality …

The Cinemas Project

The Cinemas Project was a program of major, new contemporary artworks that explored the spaces of cinema in regional Victoria. These projects, by five of Australia’s leading contemporary artists, evoked both the mechanics of film as well as the history and present day reality of cinema. In many cases the works were housed within or made reference to cinema buildings that still stand, have vanished or have been re-purposed.

In the early days of film, movie theatres occupied a pivotal place in our communities often doubling as town halls, dance halls and even skate rinks. They were places of social …

The world is not a foreign land

The world is not a foreign land An Ian Potter Museum of Art and NETS Victoria touring exhibition, curated by Quentin Sprague

Indigenous works from three geographically and culturally distinct regions, the Tiwi Islands, the Kimberley and North-Eastern Arnhem Land, are featured in The world is not a foreign land, an Ian Potter Museum of Art and NETS Victoria touring exhibition.

The world is not a foreign land, curated by guest curator, Quentin Sprague, presents works by Timothy Cook, Djambawa Marawili, Nyapanyapa Yunupingu, Ngarra, Rusty Peters and Freda Warlapinni, which reveal a series of productive and meaningful relationships. Sprague, who travelled …

True Self: David Rosetzky Selected Works

True Self: David Rosetzky Selected Works will be toured by NETS Victoria to venues across Australia from 2013 to 2015 with the support of Visions of Australia.

One of Australia’s foremost exponents of video art, David Rosetzky creates intensely beautiful videos, photo-collages and installations exploring identity, subjectivity and interpersonal relationships. Drawing on fifteen years of practice, this is the first comprehensive survey of his work to date. Lured by high production values and beautiful subjects, the viewer becomes ensnared in Rosetzky’s stiflingly stylish worlds. The artist heightens the alienation of his subjects through devices such as repetition of dialogue and …

Signature Style

Collaboration poses a very different method of working, and by its very nature, eschews individual artistic identity in favour of some kind of ‘third’ position. Signature Style examined new methodologies of working and the idea of ‘work’, thinking through the potentials of collaboration within craft and design. Accompanying the exhibition is a limited edition catalogue profiling the artists’ collaborative processes and working methods. This exhibition toured Victoria in 2013 – 2014.

Watch a short video about curating Signature Style at Warrnambool Art Gallery here.…

Made to last: the conservation of art

The conservation of art is commonly associated with the restoration of seventeenth century easel paintings or marble sculptures from antiquity. Materials used in contemporary art have challenged this perception and necessitated a shift in the way conservators interact with artists. Knowledge of the artist’s intent, creative processes, materials and techniques, and accurate documentation, are all important tools employed by conservators in the preservation of contemporary art.

The profession has adapted alongside artists in their use of materials, techniques and technology. The twentieth century saw a rapid increase in the availability of existing and new materials, particularly with the boom in …

Cut with the kitchen knife

Cut with the kitchen knife surveyed the current manifestations of collage in contemporary art; a movement which takes as its starting point the absurdist collages arising from the highly influential Dadaist movement of the early twentieth century.

Less concerned with addressing the problems of the picture plane and more those of an existential nature, works on paper were selected from contemporary Australian and international artists who traverse the surface, relay absurdisms and reorganise obsessive collections.

Featuring works by artists including Christian Capurro, Simon Evans, Elizabeth Gower, Mandy Gunn, Deborah Kelly, Nicholas Mangan, Stuart Ringholt, Joan Ross and Heather Shimmen, Cut …

Dreamweavers

Dreamweavers plotted a strange and enchanting course through the world of dreams, nightmares and the imagination. It imagined a world with the lights turned off, where monsters come out to play and reality becomes a flickering memory.

The exhibition explored the contemporary preoccupation for the Fantastic through a range of national and international art practices, that were united by an enduring fascination with darkness and dark places. Dreamweavers was a multi-sensory experience that was more like entering another world than an art exhibition. It combined sculpture, digital media, photography and painting, in an intoxicating visual feast.

Dreamweavers featured the work …

Jus’ Drawn: The proppaNow collective

Drawing is something that we do. As Aboriginal people, as Blackfellas, drawing is something we all do. For proppaNOW, it is an action, a tool, and a mechanism that we use to communicate our feelings and ideas and it is the beginning of our art-making processes. It is a human trait to recognise or sense the personal in Drawing. Engaging in and with drawing is to acknowledge the uniqueness we each possess as people and as individuals. But spending time with these works is really a window into how we, as a group of artists interact and engage with each …

Mary and Max: The Exhibition

Mary and Max: The Exhibition

Go behind-the-scenes of the marvellous miniature world of Adam Elliot’s Mary and Max.

The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), in collaboration with Oscar®-winning director and writer Adam Elliot, presented Mary and Max: The Exhibition, a unique exhibition developed from the plasticine world of Mary and Max (2009), Elliot’s first animated feature film that tells the story of an unlikely pen-pal friendship between lonely eight-year-old Mary Daisy Dinkle and Max Jerry Horowitz, who has Asperger’s Syndrome and loves chocolate hot dogs.

Exploring the creative and technical processes behind this acclaimed Australian animation, the exhibition …

Come on the Scene

Next Wave and NETS Victoria were thrilled to present Come on the Scene, an exhibition that presented some dazzling new works by five young regionally-based contemporary artists from Victoria, Tasmania and Western Australia. Arising from Next Wave’s inaugural regional program, each artist represented in Come on the Scene developed an ambitious, large-scale new project, which was included in the 2008 Next Wave Festival. With the support of NETS Victoria, the artists have now redeveloped their work into a touring exhibition that takes the works back into regional Australia, to the communities and towns from which they originated.

Featuring multimedia, sculpture, …

Hall of Mirrors: Anne Zahalka portraits 1987 – 2007

Hall of Mirrors: Anne Zahalka Portraits 1987-2007 explored the thread of portraiture through the prolific career of one of Australia’s pre-eminent photomedia artists. Featuring many iconic images, this major survey examined portraiture, representation and identity throughout Zahalka’s celebrated career, which spans over 20 years. Her portraits reveal more than just the individual – with an ironic and critical voice the images cleverly subvert stereotypes while capturing subcultures and a spirit of the times with acute observation.

OBJECTS IN MIRROR MAY BE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR ANNE ZAHALKA IN CONVERSATION WITH CURATOR KARRA REES

From the self-conscious stage-setting of her …