PAT BRASSINGTON & JACKY REDGATE IN BOWNESS ANNIVERSARY EXHIBITION

Pat Brassington, Shadow Boxer, pigment print, 72 x 50 cm

JACKY REDGATE & PAT BRASSINGTON have works on display at Smith & Singer on Collins Street for the next few weeks, as part of the MGA’s travelling exhibition Bowness Photography Prize Celebrates 15 Years.

In 2020 the Bowness Photography Prize marked its 15th year. To celebrate MGA has partnered with Smith & Singer to showcase the previous 15 recipients during the International Photo Festival. As the recipients of the 2011 and 2013 prizes respectively, Redgate and Brassington’s works are on view!

The Bowness Photography Prize has become an important survey of contemporary photographic practice and one of the most prestigious prizes in the country. The Prize reveals artists’ continued fascination with exploring and pushing the boundaries of the photographic medium, embracing its capacity to explore a diversity of voices and perspectives.

The exhibition will continue until 7 March.

More information >

ROBERT OWEN FEATURED IN ART COLLECTOR

Image: Art Collector Magazine issue 95.

ROBERT OWEN is featured in the latest issue of Art Collector Magazine.

Jacqueline Millner writes about the the artist's forthcoming survey exhibition at Heide Museum of Modern Art, 'Blue Over Time: Robert Owen - A Survey'.

'The Heide survey's title underlines the importance of the colour blue in Owen's practice, with its evocation of infinite space and the possibility of dimensions beyond those we currently know. In Owen's work, blue occupies that place between earthly and otherworldly realms, embodying the reverie and imagination that the artist hopes his art will also spark, along with the capacity to patch and heal what has been fractured. Owen inflects the materiality of colour, light and place through the beauty of mathematics, having some time ago observed that "geometry is a good way to find yourself through a crisis" (a sentiment all too pertinent today)', writes Millner.

'Blue Over Time: Robert Owen - A Survey, curated by Sue Cramer, shows at Heide Museum of Modern Art from 27 February to 23 May 2021.

EUGENIA RASKOPOULOS MONOGRAPH RECOGNISED IN PUBLISHING AWARDS

EUGENIA RASKOPOULOS’ artist monograph, co-published by The Power Institute and Formist, has been recognised with a Highly Commended in the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand’s 2020 Art Writing and Publishing Awards.

Eugenia Raskopoulos: Vestiges of the Tongue was highly commended in the 'Artist-led Publication' category.

The judges described the publication as: 

Eugenia Raskopoulos: Vestiges of the Tongue, 224 pages, 30 x 23 cm, hardcover, published by Formist (Sydney).

“...a fine book on the artistic practice of Eugenia Raskopoulos, whose family cultural background and experiences of multicultural Australia informs her interest on a range of issues including the feminine body, language, translation, cultural exchange, knowledge and power. Between sumptuous colour plates of images representative of an artistic practice that prompts critical reflection and response, a collection of engaging and insightful essays by curators and academics brings a scholarly rigour to this high quality publication that is to be commended for both its aesthetic and intellectual appeal."

Congratulations to the team!

Buy the book here >

JANET LAURENCE IN MUMA SHOW

Janet Laurence, Conversations with Trees (detail), 2020, duraclear prints and dibond mirror, 120 × 80 cm

JANET LAURENCE is featured in MUMA Monash exhibition Tree Story, opening tomorrow.

Tree Story brings together creative practices from around the world to create a ‘forest’ of ideas relating to critical environmental and sustainability issues. At its foundation—or roots—are Indigenous ways of knowing and a recognition of trees as our ancestors and family. An exhibition, publication and podcast series, Tree Story takes inspiration from the underground networks, information sharing and mutual support understood to exist within tree communities, and poses the question: what can we learn from trees and the importance of Country?

Janet’s exhibited artwork Conversations with Tree’, is based on work that she undertook for her solo exhibition in Taiwan last year. Images of the forest are printed on transparent duraclear and suspended in front of mirrors, recalling greenhouse windows or museum display cases—forms of mediation of nature.

Tree Story continues at Monash University Museum of Art until 10 April.

More information >

PAT BRASSINGTON'S 'NIGHT SWIMMING' EXHIBITION NOW OPEN

One of Australia’s most significant and influential artists, Pat Brassington, returns to ARC ONE with Night Swimming, a new body of work presented as part of the PHOTO 2021 International Festival of Photography. An opening reception will be held on Friday 19 February, 6-8pm.

Pat Brassington’s work uncovers how the endless possibilities of our deep and complex inner states — narratives of sex, memory and identity — run quietly rampant.

Influenced by surrealism, feminism and psychoanalysis, Brassington is known for her ability to combine the ordinary with the unusual, making her work provocatively ambiguous.

Pat Brassington, Footloose, 2019, pigment print, edition of 6, 75 x 75 cm

In Night Swimming, she employs photomontage to reveal the power of the mind to transform mundane objects and situations into sites/sights of sensuality, desire, horror or menace. Baulking prior to resolution, Brassington leaves her work open to interpretation; allowing the viewers’ visual mind to make its own associations. Digitally manipulated and evocatively juxtaposed, bodily fragments, inky tones, fetish objects and claustrophobic interiors are rendered abject or sublime, unsettling or seductive by the viewer; exposing our innermost predilections, hopes, biases and fears.

Typical of the artist’s work, these monochromatic images bring together a series of fragments which
create a strange and ambiguous world.

Pat Brassington, Precious, 2019, pigment print, edition of 6, 75 x 75 cm

The parts of the images – a fish slipping down a throat, a jarring clash of sharp fingernails, heads which twist into a strange darkness and feet that curl – are drawn from Brassington’s vast archive of visual material and are deeply personal. These disjointed compositions offer contradictions between the soft charcoal tones of the pigment print, the intimacy of the forms and the unsettling charge of the juxtapositions. Night Swimming rouses a sense of disquiet as the images subtly and humorously scratch at the underbelly of the human condition.