Tomorrow Saturday 24 April at 3pm, Heide x Cinema Nova will be presenting Marianne & Leonard, Words of Love to celebrate the exhibition Robert Owen: Blue Over Time – A Survey, with an introduction by the artist. Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love is a documentary film about the relationship between Marianne and Leonard, and their time spent on the Greek island of Hydra in the 1960s and 1970s.
In 1963, Robert Owen set off on a Greek boat for London. Along the way, he stopped off on Hydra intending to only stay a night. Unbeknownst to him, Hydra was a haven for bohemian expatriates, including George Johnston, Charmian Clift, William Lederer, Jack Hirschman and Leonard Cohen.
For three years (1963 – 66) Robert lived and worked on the island, making musical instruments and artworks, writing poetry and selling jewellery to tourists in the summer. It was also on Hydra that two events occurred that would change the course of Robert’s arts practice: an eclipse of the sun over the Peloponnese and the discovery of a Maggi soup cube wrapper.
More information >
Catherine Woo, Current I-IV, 2021, acrylic on aluminium, 183 x 503 cm (overall)
CATHERINE WOO OPENS 'VIBRANT MATTER' AT ARC ONE
A master of the surface and abstraction, Catherine Woo’s striking new body of work is an instinctive and powerful examination of the human connection with the natural world.
Catherine Woo is known for her visually arresting oeuvre of ‘painting with weather’. By using a range of unconventional materials and processes, Woo creates works that are both macro and micro-interpretations of natural phenomena. Her delicate, abstract forms, rendered in intensely detailed surfaces, draw forth various analogies between the body and the environment. In this recent body of work, Woo continues this investigation into the interrelationship between humans and the natural world via layered, undulating and ethereal paintings that examine the complex systems and structures of nature.
In previous works Woo found herself a silent partner to the visualisation of natural forces – vibration, evaporation, reticulation. In this chapter, she is now compelled to make the human element more present by incorporating intimate, hand-painted forms.
Intricate compositions weave together evoking water currents; leaf veins; coral skeletons; pulsing arteries; webs; microscopic snapshots from within the body and formations of earth. In conflating the regions
of the body and the environment, new possibilities are explored where the self is inextricable from the environment that contains it. Drawing the exhibition title from a text by philosopher Jane Bennett, Woo suggests that by seeing ourselves as part of a network of Vibrant Matter, we can begin to think more ecologically:
“Rather than seeing the environment as something ‘outside’, beyond our bodies, these patterns and processes suggest being within it – where our own bodies are part of a larger body, intimately and inextricably linked. It is a kind of visual acknowledgment of our participation in a vast changing body of living matter.” - Catherine Woo, 2021
As Jane Bennett asserts in the text “such a new found attentiveness to matter and its powers will not
solve the problem of human exploitation or oppression, but it can inspire a greater sense of the extent to which all bodies are kin in the sense of inextricably enmeshed in a dense network of relations. And in the knotted world of vibrant matter, to harm one section of the web may very well be to harm oneself. Such an enlightened and expanded notion of self-interest is good for humans.” 1
Visually stunning, these extraordinary paintings simultaneously speak to themes of nature, beauty, the body, and geography, while resisting representation in the pursuit of more philosophical concerns.
Catherine Woo graduated with a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Tasmania in 2013, having also studied at Sydney College of Fine Arts and the ANU School of Art. She has exhibited her work across Australia and internationally since 1997. In 2008 and 2011, Woo was awarded a $20,000 New Work grant by the Australia Council Visual Art Board, and was included in the Biennial of Australian Art, Art Gallery of South Australia (2008). In 2010, Woo was curated into an exhibition at the Samstag Museum in Adelaide titled Abstract Nature. She has been a Finalist in the City of Hobart Art Prize in 2002, 2011 and 2012. Her major corporate commissions include: Visy Corp Australia, the Chinese World Trade Centre, Beijing, Shangri-
la Hotel, Beijing; Four Seasons, Hong Kong; and the Ritz Carlton Hotel, Shanghai and Perth. Her work is represented in private and public collections in Australia, including Artbank, Macquarie Bank, and RACV, as well as in the UK and Asia.
1 Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Duke University Press, 2010), 13.
CYRUS TANG SHORTLISTED FOR SOVEREIGN ART PRIZE
Cyrus Tang, Remember me when the sun goes down: Power Cables, 2020, archival pigment print, 90 x 90 cm.
Congratulations Cyrus Tang! Her work Remember me when the sun goes down: Power Cables is shortlisted for the Sovereign Art Prize.
The Sovereign Asian Art Prize was launched in 2003 to increase the international exposure of artists in the region, whilst raising funds for programmes that support disadvantaged children using expressive arts. Held annually, The Prize is now recognised as the most established and prestigious annual art award in Asia-Pacific.
In the wake of the past year, Tang wishes to memorialise images that address our collective experiences, anxieties, and hopes, allowing us space to remember and recover. Having had a renewed opportunity to explore her landscape, Tang created 'Remembering me when the sun goes down - Power Cables'. The artist, drawn to the geometrical composition of the sky, took daily photos of the power cables. She then collated the images, creating composite, ethereal layers. At the centre point of convergence, the image condenses and vibrates, as if to confirm a moment of real existence.
The finalists’ artworks will be presented to the public at 9 Queen’s Road Central, Central, Hong Kong from 5 – 16 May 2021. The artworks will then be exhibited at Art Central at Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre from 20 – 23 May 2021.
More information >
LYNDELL BROWN & CHARLES GREEN AT CAM
LYDNELL BROWN & CHARLES GREEN have work showing at the Castlemaine Art Museum in their new exhibition Cloudy - a few isolated showers.
In this exhibition, clouds gather in the Whitchell Gallery with historical and contemporary painting, photography, sound, watercolour and sculpture, curated by Jenny Long.
Castlemaine-locals Charles and Lyndell present three new works made during 2020, over a period of uncertainty, crisis and the suspension of sociability and travel. The paintings depict Castlemaine clouds, the winds of change, and the wider world and its turbulence.
Cloudy - a few isolated showers continues at CAM until the end of the year.
Left to right: Lyndell Brown & Charles Green, Activism is Learning, 2020, oil on linen; Lyndell Brown & Charles Green, Orpheus, 2020, oil on linen; Lyndell Brown & Charles Green, Into the White Light, 2020, oil on linen.
JANET LAURENCE AT S.H. ERVIN GALLERY
Janet Laurence. ‘Tree of Knowledge’, 2021, mixed media installation
JANET LAURENCE is featured in the new show at S.H. Ervin Gallery, ‘TREE of LIFE: a testament to endurance’.
Opening today, this group exhibition led by First Nations artists will generate a fresh, positive energy towards the reclamation of diminishing natural resources. Threads woven through 'Tree of Life' will recognise the deep spiritual and physical associations that connect all forms of life – life that must be nurtured as we chart a course of action through this perilous age of climate change, pandemics and wildfires.
The exhibition will continue until 30 May.