ANNE ZAHALKA's 'Radical Reimaginings' the Subject of Curatorial Talk at Art Gallery of Ballarat

Zahalka at ‘Beating About The Bush’.

CURATOR'S TALK

ANNE ZAHALKA’S RADICAL REIMAGININGS

Anne Zahalka's work is the subject of an upcoming curator’s talk at the Art Gallery of Ballarat, for their fantastic exhibition, ‘Beating About The Bush’, with
curator KELLY GELLATLY.

Visitors will note that Zahalka’s work is central to this display, with many of her most significant photographs included. Join Gellatly at 2 pm, 4 February 2023. Details on the Art Gallery of Ballarat’s website.

Bookings essential

ANNE ZAHALKA features in Art Guide Australia preview

Featuring in The Art Gallery of Ballarat’s current exhibition ‘Beating About The Bush’ Anne Zahalka is spotlighted in the November/December issue of Art Guide Australia.

“A major inspiration for the show was Zahalka’s 1985 exhibition The Landscape Revisited. As Tegart explains, ‘Zahalka chose to recast characters within the landscape to offer a more inclusive and compassionate portrayal of the people—migrants, First Nations, women, people of non-Christian faiths—missing from Australian Impressionist narratives . . . Her work is as much a comment on society and the art world as it is about the painters themselves.’ Such comments abound in Beating about the Bush.”

View the article in-print on page 54 or online
The exhibition continues until February 19, 2023

Anne Zahalka, The Immigrants, 1983, Collage on found images.

PAT BRASSINGTON and ANNE ZAHALKA feature in the current exhibition 'The Cost of Living' at The Art Gallery of Western Australia

PAT BRASSINGTON, Untitled #13, from Cambridge Road, 2007, Pigment Print, Edition of 8 + 2 A/P, 45.5 x 32.5 cm.

“What is the price of living in the ways we do? What do we value, and who decides? How do we make livings and meanings that get in the way of flourishing? And who gets to define what flourishing means?

The Cost of Living floats these questions through art works on various themes such as: the lure and limits of aspirational romance, social and emotional dislocation, toxic living environments, police violence, the ravages of war and the impact of social media.”

Robert Cook - AGWA Curator of Western Australian and Australian Art

Exhibition continues until January 29, 2023.

ANNE ZAHALKA & JANET LAURENCE feature in the upcoming exhibition 'Beating About The Bush' at The Ballarat Art Gallery

Anne Zahalka, Down on His Luck, 2017, Pigment ink on rag paper, 100 x 134 cm.

This exhibition brings Art Gallery of Ballarat’s collection of Australian Impressionist landscape paintings together with female photographers who have re-examined the Australian Impressionists and brought a new lens to the Australian landscape.  

Themes such as gender, hardship of life in the bush, immigration, urban growth, environmental concerns and the presence of Indigenous peoples are explored through the work of some of Australia’s most exciting contemporary artists.

OPENING NOVEMBER 5

ANNE ZAHALKA features in HIDDEN Rookwood Sculptures 2022

ANNE ZAHALKA features in HIDDEN Rookwood Sculptures annual exhibition with her work 'May Their Memory Be a Blessing' (2022)

"May their memory be a blessing is a traditional Jewish expression said for the dead, to comfort the bereaved and to honour the memory of those they mourn. I have used this honorific as the title of the work to speak of Jewish families lost in the Holocaust." - Anne Zahalka

Available to view for free at The Rookwood Cemetery until October 9.

Artist feature in 'Installation View: Photography Exhibitions in Australia (1848-2020)'

IMAGE: Anne Zahalka, The Cook (Michael Schmidt/architect) from the series Resemblance, 1986, matt Cibachrome paper, unique larger size, 100 x 100cm.

Six of our artists ANNE ZAHALKA, PAT BRASSINGTON, JULIE RRAP, JACKY REDGATE, JUSTINE KHAMARA and JOHN YOUNG feature in Daniel Palmer and Martyn Jolly's publication 'Installation View: Photography Exhibitions in Australia (1848-2020)', published by Perimeter Books and designed by Public Office.

"Installation View offers a significant new account of photography in Australia, told through its most important exhibitions and models of collection and display. By looking at what lies beyond the frame the exhibition speaks not only to pictures, but to the people and places that nurture them."
Find more information about the book here

Five of ANNE ZAHALKA's works featured in exhibition ‘Carbon Neutral’ at the CCAS

Five of ANNE ZAHALKA’s works from the series ‘Wild Life’ and ‘Lost Landscapes’ are included in the upcoming exhibition, ‘Carbon Neutral’, opening at 6pm on Friday 18 February at the Canberra Contemporary Art Space (CCAS).

Curated by Alexander Boynes, ‘Carbon Neutral’ is an exhibition of works by contemporary Australian artists that addresses the Climate Crisis, and attempts to add to the cultural wealth of our society without adding more carbon emissions. Artists have the capacity to provoke meaningful dialogue around the existential threats of fire, drought and ecocide due to human-induced climate change through their practice. ‘Carbon Neutral’ ultimately aims to pose one question: how does an artist produce work to inspire hope and optimism to face the biggest challenge in our lifetimes, without leaving a carbon footprint?

Find out more at https://www.ccas.com.au/future-1/carbon-neutral

Anne Zahalka, ‘Koala, Yarra River at Woori Yallock on Daung Warrung land, Victoria’, 2019, Archival pigment ink on rag paper, Edition 4/6, 80 x 80 cm.

ANNE ZAHALKA’s exhibition at the Wollongong Art Gallery

Installation view of exhibition SNAPPED! Street Photography in the Illawarra – Anne Zahalka with Sam St Jon and residents of the Illawarra.

ANNE ZAHALKA’s exhibition ‘Snapped! Street Photography in the Illawarra’ at the Wollongong Art Gallery continues until 20 February.

For this exhibition Zahalka has collected, examined and reconfigured photographic street portraits made in Wollongong in the mid decades of the 20th Century to form the imagery. Recorded originally by early commercial street photographers from 1930’s – 60’s of passers-by, these postcard sized prints captured people in a candid way. Collected through a call-out from residents, these photos have been assembled to provide a tangible trace of the city allowing visitors to reimagine how this city once looked.

For more information:
http://www.wollongongartgallery.com/exhibitions/Pages/SNAPPED-Street-Photography-in-the-Illawarra

ANNE ZAHALKA listed as the 2021 ‘Hundred Heroines’

Anne Zahalka, ‘artist (self-portrait)’, 2013, Duraflex print mounted onto perspex with engraving, 85cm x 87cm.

Congratulations to ANNE ZAHALKA who has been listed in the 2021 ‘Hundred Heroines’. ‘Hundred Heroines’ is a pioneering UK charity that champions inspiring women photographers, as well as celebrating the diversity of women working globally in photography today.

The full list can be found at hundredheroines.org.

Five of ARC ONE artists are featured in the newly published 'Doing Feminism: Women’s Art and Feminist Criticism in Australia'


Anne Marsh, ‘Doing Feminism: Women’s Art and Feminist Criticism in Australia’, published on 2 November, 2021, by The Miegunyah Press.

Five of ARC ONE artists – ANNE ZAHALKA, EUGENIA RASKOPOULOS, PAT BRASSINGTON, JULIE RRAP and JACKY REDGATE are featured in the newly published ‘Doing Feminism: Women’s Art and Feminist Criticism in Australia’.

Providing a comprehensive analysis of women’s art movements in Australia from the 1960s onward, this remarkable book by art historian Anne Marsh chronicles the struggles, contestations and achievements of women and feminism in Australian visual arts history. The book also acts as an divergent investigation into how the “doing” of feminism has shaped contemporary art and culture at home and abroad.

“…art and feminism are cyclical; they spiral in and out of time, and it’s interesting to see these younger women, very schooled in theoretical frameworks, turning back to an earlier time, and asking: why aren’t we doing that anymore?” ——Anne Marsh in conversation with Susanna Ling.

ANNE ZAHALKA AT GEELONG GALLERY

Anne Zahalka, The Pioneer, 1992 (printed 2021), pigment ink on rag paper mounted onto gatorboard

Anne Zahalka, The Pioneer, 1992 (printed 2021), pigment ink on rag paper mounted onto gatorboard

ANNE ZAHALKA is included in Geelong Gallery’s new exhibition Exhume the grave—McCubbin and contemporary art, opening tomorrow.

Exhume the grave includes works by contemporary Australian artists in response to Frederick McCubbin’s enduringly popular paintings. The sentiments and emotive subjects of McCubbin’s works have helped develop for them a popular visual literacy: they are images that have impressed themselves powerfully on public consciousness over time. Not surprisingly, their significant public profile has also led to these paintings being the subject of re-evaluation and reinterpretation by contemporary Australian artists, through the lens of gender, cultural diversity and inclusion.

In The Pioneer, for example, Anne Zahalka reworks the central panel of McCubbin’s triptych, removing the seated bushman to emphasise the role of women in settling the land, and to rewrite the dominant narrative of the role of men in nation-building.

This exhibition continues until 28 November and coincides with the complementary exhibition Frederick McCubbin—Whisperings in wattle boughs.

More information >

Read article from The Age >

ANNE ZAHALKA FINALIST IN OLIVE COTTON AWARD

Congratulations to ANNE ZAHALKA, whose recent self portrait is a finalist in the Olive Cotton Award for Photographic Portraiture.

Anne says of this work:
“Venturing into the reimagined landscape of Macquarie Island carrying a trusty pair of binoculars, I found myself amongst an astonishing array of wildlife and mega herbs. Scientists, adventurers, and volunteers navigate carefully through the fauna and flora of this fragile ecosystem doing important field work.

While biological sciences play a vital part of the research program on Macquarie Island, there is the greater uncontrollable environmental issue of marine plastics. As I scoured this habitat of courtly creatures, I was disturbed to see small colourful pieces of plastic populating the ground washed in with tidal flows.”

The Olive Cotton Award exhibition will be on display at Tweed Regional Gallery until Sunday 19 September.

More information >

Anne Zahalka, Anne Zahalka with a Colony of Boffins, 2021, pigment ink on rag paper with plastic, 54cm x 70.6cm

Anne Zahalka, Anne Zahalka with a Colony of Boffins, 2021, pigment ink on rag paper with plastic, 54cm x 70.6cm

ANNE ZAHALKA AT CHINA CULTURAL CENTRE

Anne Zahalka, Flocking Flamingos, 2018, pigment ink on canvas, 100x 150cm

Anne Zahalka, Flocking Flamingos, 2018, pigment ink on canvas, 100x 150cm

ANNE ZAHALKA is featured in the new exhibition at the China Cultural Centre in Sydney. ‘AIR WATER LOVE’ is now open at CCC and will continue until 29 April.
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This is the second exhibition at CCC privileging a cross-cultural women’s perspective after the successful ‘WHOSE STORY IS THIS?…anyway!’ in 2020. In this exhibition eight women artists from China and Australia have a dialogue under the same theme, calling for a rethink of crucial environmental issues. Three keywords of water, air and love were selected to present the relationship between humanity and nature.
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‘AIR WATER LOVE’ highlights the true effects of global warming and climate change – showing the impacts, offering solutions, and telling real-life accounts, this exhibition is interactive and creative.
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More information >

BOWNESS FINALIST EXHIBITION NOW ON

Screenshot from the virtual tour of the exhibition, featuring Cyrus Tang’s work.

Screenshot from the virtual tour of the exhibition, featuring Cyrus Tang’s work.

The Bowness Photography Prize exhibition is in full swing and open to the public Thursday - Sunday at the MGA!
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The Bowness is an important annual survey of contemporary photographic practice in Australia and one of the most prestigious prizes in the country. The prize continues to showcase excellence in photography. ARC ONE artists Honey Long & Prue Stent, Cyrus Tang and Anne Zahalka are finalists in this year’s pool and their works are on display in the exhibition.
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The gallery has also just launched the virtual exhibition if you’re unable to attend in person. Take a tour here.

More information >

ANNE ZAHALKA SOLO SHOW IN TASSIE

ANNE ZAHALKA has just opened Lost Landscapes – a solo show at Launceston’s Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery.

In this exhibition, Zahalka turns her lens towards QVMAG’s historic dioramas for the latest iteration of her series Wild Life: a project in which she unearths habitat displays from around Australia and re-imagines them to reflect contemporary concerns about the environment.

The popularity of dioramas has faded with the advancement of technology in museum displays. Today they are mostly lost or destroyed. This exhibition brings together QVMAG’s historic dioramas, restored as they were originally displayed, alongside Zahalka’s radial interpretations.

In an era of climate change awareness, this exhibition calls us to notice the drastic changes in the Tasmanian environment and our role in it’s degradation or preservation. Using digital manipulation to interrupt the idealistic and static landscapes depicted in the dioramas, Zahalka offers both apocalyptic and utopian visions of what our future could be.

Lost Landscapes continues at QVMAG until October 2021.

More information >

ANNE ZAHALKA IN 'KNOW MY NAME' AT NGA

ANNE ZAHLKA’s The Cleaner is part of ‘Know My Name’ at the NGA.

This work is part of Zahalka's Resemblance series – a group of photographs based on seventeenth- century Dutch genre paintings. In The Cleaner we see the black-and-white tiled floor associated with Vermeer, and a painting on the wall that references the earlier art historical period. But at the same time, the subject wears headphones around her neck.

The image functions as a formal, contemporary portrait of a real person, but in a pastiche style quoting a genre of painting that has been functionally redundant for centuries. As Martyn Jolly observed, Zahalka “stretches the assumptions underpinning our conventions of candid portraiture”.

Through quotation and reference, the artist allows the visual images of the past to enter our contemporary world and create new meanings for new audiences.

More information >

PAT BRASSINGTON & ANNE ZAHALKA IN NEW GEELONG GALLERY SHOW

PAT BRASSINGTON & ANNE ZAHALKA are featured in Geelong Gallery’s new exhibition Framing the Figure - contemporary photography and moving image works from the collection.

This exhibition explores artists’ use of the camera to capture their human subjects in both still and moving images. Through performative gestures, constructed narratives or a focus on specific body parts, these lens-based artists work closely with their subjects to compose the figure within the camera’s frame.


Framing the figure opens today and continues until 25 April 2021. Book a free, timed-entry ticket ahead of your visit!

More information >

Pat Brassington, Akimbo, 1999, pigment print, 72 x 52 cm

Pat Brassington, Akimbo, 1999, pigment print, 72 x 52 cm

ANNE ZAHALKA IN EXHIBITION OF AUSTRALIAN PHOTOGRAPHY IN FLORIDA

ANNE ZAHALKA is a featured artist in the exhibition From All Points of the Southern Sky: Photography from Australia and Oceania, open now at the Southeast Museum of Photography in Florida.

Curator Ashley Lumb has chosen thirteen artists who incisively explore the Australian continent. The artists drag Australia’s contentious past into the light of the present, visualising the ghostly legacy of colonialism and bearing witness to the devastating impact of human-induced climate change.

Conveying a singularly Australian experience but one with innumerable global parallels, From all Points of the Southern Sky continues at SMP until 16 December.

More information >

Interview with curator Ashley Lumb >

Review in This Is Tomorrow art magazine >

HONEY LONG & PRUE STENT, CYRUS TANG & ANNE ZAHALKA SHORTLISTED FOR BOWNESS PRIZE

Congratulations to ARC ONE artists HONEY LONG & PRUE STENT, CYRUS TANG and ANNE ZAHALKA who are all finalists in this year’s Bowness Photography Prize!

This year the MGA Foundation is committed to ensuring a physical as well as a virtual exhibition of the Bowness Prize finalists, and has extended the exhibition period over summer.

The shortlisted photographs will be exhibited from 31 October 2020 until 7 February 2021, with the prize announcements scheduled for January 2021!

More information >