Titania Henderson | NGV

Titania Henderson has been selected to participate in the 6th Cicely and Colin Rigg Contemporary Design Award.

Titania's work Together 2010 will be included in the exhibition at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia in 2012.

Magda Matwiejew | Wasp Waist

We thought we would share a few images from Magda Matwiejew's newest video work Wasp Waist ("Taille de guêpe") which was completed in April 2011.

The work has been selected in the 2011 Videoholica International Video Art Festival in Varna, Bulgaria, from August 5-12.

100 Artists. 100 Tickets. 100 Dollars.

We are very pleased to support You're Welcome - a charity art raffle where every ticket wins an original work and all proceeds go to the Asylum Seekers Resource Centre.

100 Artists. 100 Tickets. 100 Dollars.

Heather B. Swann, Lara Merrett, Lionel Bawden and Rhys Lee have donated works to the project. Get involved!

For one afternoon only at Mars Gallery (418 Bay St, port Melbourne) from 3-6pm on Sunday July 24 to add a special piece to your wall and contribute to a great cause.

We're Loving | Nell and Romance Was Born

We're loving the newest collaboration by our friends Romance was Born and Nell.

The first drop of the SS12 collection has arrived in Melbourne and we are super keen to snap some up!

You may recall gallery artist Kate Rohde collaborated with the eponymous fashion duo last year for their Renaissance Dinosaur collection? (We blogged about it here.) And before that Del Kathryn Barton.

Save the Date | Locust Jones

Locust Jones features on this Sunday's Art Nation on ABC 1 from 5pm, ABC 2 9.50pm.

On the programme Locust talks about his concerns about contemporary international politics and issues via the voice of his practice.

Gallery Interview | Michael Cusack

Michael Cusack has been in Melbourne these last few days to launch his new exhibition Transverse Series at Karen Woodbury Gallery. We caught up with him for a few quick questions about his life as an artist...

Michael Cusack

Describe your work in 5 words.
Abstracted, reduced, interrupted, optimistic, autobiographical

Tell us about this new body of paintings? They seem a lot ‘looser’ than the works in your 2008 show. Once you make something its made, then you have to make something else. It can apply to a body of work or to shapes within a work. I took a slightly different approach this time, a more vigorous approach. I used bigger brushes and rags to make marks. I was also toying with ideas about when a painting is finished and I wanted to use the whole canvas again. My last exhibition I was moving shapes around on a flat background and the shape making was more contained. On this occasion I wanted to change the way I made paintings. I introduced line and made structures or frameworks to support the shapes. The large dark shapes are still there but they are getting older and heavier now they need frames or scaffolding to support or hold them up.

top: anchor 2011, bottom: fig.11 2011

What are your influences at this time? Hard to say, as the process is internal and widespread. Everything from photographs by Cartier Bresson, to architectural plans, to images of ship building. Any old stuff on the street I find inspiring. It can be anything from a cardboard box shape to oil marks on the road. As an Art teacher I do a lot of research into other artists and artists practices, so these too are influences. There is also studio research of course.

Who or what inspires you to keep making? I think Jasper Johns said, “Do something and then do something else to it, and then do something else to it.” And there you go; you’re painting. The act of painting and the use of materials is its own inspiration, I guess you choose to do it. Being in the studio is not always about painting but research and converting the sometimes mundane into something poetic or of beauty. I really haven’t solved all the problems I am trying to work out in the studio and I am inspired to work on that. I believe in the work and that it changes every year and I am curious enough to stick at it to learn new things and to try and make the best work I can. I haven’t finished working out things yet and that is inspiring.

top: stone wall in Ireland, bottom: paintings at home

Tell us about your background. What path led you to become an artist? I grew up in Ireland and moved to Australia when I was 21. Early on in Dublin I had no inkling of becoming an artist, certainly not a painter. We were exposed to a lot of literature and I was inspired by a lot of Irish writers Beckett, Joyce, O’Casey etc. Apart from musicians, they were the creative people I was attuned to early on. When I was 16 or so I took up photography and spent those early years wandering the streets of Dublin taking photographs. I think photography taught me how to look and examine. I still find it incredibly inspiring. Much later after moving to Australia all my negatives were burnt in a fire and soon after my cameras were stolen. I took that as a sign and so I gave up photography per se. I did draw from an early age but didn’t go to Art school until 1995 (when I was thirty five) at Hunter Street Institute in Newcastle NSW, which I loved. That was the beginning of painting making sense to me, now I teach painting trying to make it make sense for others.

What does a typical day in the studio involve? There is nothing typical in the studio though I always listen to music, but closer to an exhibition I will be in there day and night. It’s sort of like: paint, paint, paint, sit around and read, do some drawing, experiment, paint, paint, paint, tidy up, jump on the computer, sit around again.

top: studio inspiration, bottom: the studio

What is your dream project? I don’t really have a dream project as such but I love travel and it feeds the mind so guess a few residencies in odd locations might be something.

If you could live with any artwork ever made what would it be?
There is too many to choose from really though I would like a Thomas Nozkowski painting. I do have a lovely drawing done by my daughter who has drawn me with a scruffy beard and the words ‘my naym is dad’ written on it. I am happy to have that one.

my naym is dad'

Michael Cusack | Transverse Series

As the final touches are put in place for Michael Cusack's upcoming exhibition, Transverse Series we thought we would give you a glimpse into this new body of work... in the words of the artist.

This stream of work began in 2009 with an exhibition in which the walls of the Aran Islands (off the west coast of Ireland) with their interlocking shapes held together by weight, weather and time were the beginning of a seed of influence. The metaphor of those walls (sometimes called famine walls) is long forgotten in the making of the work in that the work is not specific per se and can be read as autobiographical as much as any reference to a certain place and time.

What isn’t forgotten is the sort of logic of construction. With a long time interest in the diagram, the architectural blueprint, engineers’ drawings, boat diagrams etc, the interlocking shapes in building and technical drawing. It is not as if the paintings have to stand up as an architectural model but they do have to a certain purpose. I am trying to make work that has a certain logic, but at the some stage that logic is interrupted.

With every new body of work I am trying to re-write. Not a new language but trying to inform my current language with new codes, new rhythms, new passages. I don’t want to give too much as I want the reader to have something to do. I am interested in space and although I have abandoned perspective per se I am interested in the relationship between 2 dimensional and 3 dimensional space.

Michael Cusack, July 2011

Transverse Series opens on Wednesday July 6, from 6-8pm.

Apology

We would like to apologise for the Heather B. Swann post which was emailed earlier today - this was a technical error. The Heather B. Swann show took place from March 30 - April 30 2011.

Warm regards,

The Karen Woodbury Gallery team.

Lisa Roet: Adelaide Zoo

Lisa Roet’s sculpture Chimpanzee Finger 2006/07 has been donated to the Adelaide Zoo by collectors Paul and Bronwyn Smith.

The sculpture was unveiled earlier this month by primate expert Jane Goodall, and now sits in the zoo’s entrance forecourt.

Meeting Goodall was an incredible highlight for Roet who told the Adelaide Advertiser,

"For me, it's huge, it's like meeting my childhood hero. When I was about 10 or 11, I was reading one of her books – I was fascinated by chimpanzees and her research. I wanted to go and study primatology or zoology but I did very badly in physics."

Read more about Roet's work and her path to becoming an artist in our gallery interview, here.
Roet's exhibition of primate inspired prints finishes today at the APW.

Gallery interview: Rhys Lee

Rhys Lee, image courtesy of Cory White / Mr Blanc

We sat down with Rhys Lee for a quick chat about his newest exhibition Scarecrow...

Tell us about the process of putting this show together?

I have always had in my mind that I wanted to make vessels and as you know I’ve made bronze things before but I ran out of money so I had to come up with a way of making new works on the cheap so I decided I’d get some clay. It’s a lot less expensive but it’s actually a lot harder because you are making something that becomes the finished product... when you make a bronze you can make it out of anything it goes into a mould and becomes a bronze thing so it was a lot more difficult than making a bronze.

It’s been really nice as well, Pia had a little show of ceramic stuff and that got me really interested in doing it when I saw that she was quite good at it and made some really beautiful things. Our studios at home are right next to each other, we see can each other and work in the same space and ideas bounce off each other so the work evolves together and almost becomes one work in a lot of ways.

bird 2011

What about the other artists you worked with for this exhibition?

They are all people that I admire and have a reasonably close relationship with, some I’ve known a long time, some not that long. I'd been wanting to curate a show for a long time with people’s work I really love and seeing all their work together. With this show I really liked the idea of an eclectic group of work that feels like someone’s collection almost and I think the show has that feeling. Usually people’s collections have a few things like a sculpture, a painting and drawing so there is that element to it as well that I like. I wanted to mix it up and make it more interesting than just paintings on the wall.

irma (picnic at hanging rock) 2011
collaboration with Heidi Yardley

What would you say are your main influences at the moment?

That’s a really strange question because I am easily influenced by things. I might see something while walking down the street or I might look at someone’s blog and there might be a photo I’ll remember or go back to. If I feel like doing a painting I’ll just go down to the studio and maybe turn my phone on and that image will come up and I’ll start painting that image and that will evolve into something else. Like a visual memory that feeds into the work? Yeah. I think so. Yeah. So it’s constantly different things influencing the work.

Can you tell us a little about your background and what led you to become an artist?

I was never discouraged to draw or paint or do that stuff growing up. My parents were always pretty good with that and encouraging me. If you don’t get told not to do something I suppose you just keep doing it if you feel like doing it. It’s always been a constant thing that just kept going. The graffiti thing was a pretty big part of my life for awhile in the nineties - pretty much all the nineties - then I moved to Melbourne. I had no money so I started doing drawings then selling them to people, trying to get them into shops and I had work up in Fat 52 (now FAT) they would buy drawings off me so that gave me a bit of a kick-start showing work here and then it just evolved from that into the gallery thing.

the bunyip that William Buckley saw 2011

Do you have a typical day in the studio? What does that involve?

There’s never really a typical day in the studio. When I am making work for a show I will dedicate a solid block of maybe 3 or 4 months everyday I’ll go to the studio. I’ll be working on bits and pieces, maybe work on a painting for an hour then do a bit of sculpture, a lot of the time is spent pacing around thinking.

Do you have a dream project?

I don’t have a dream project... It changes depending on what I’m working on at the time I suppose it’s not about one definitive project it’s about how I am feeling at the time. If I want to make some ceramics then I’ll dedicate time to making that and I’ll have an outcome and be happy. Or if I want to make a book I’ll make a book and be happy with that and if I want to make 10 paintings… It’s more about the little things than one big thing.

baboon 2011

I think you were asked this recently… If you could live with any artwork every made what would it be?

There are nice things that would be nice to have around but there’s not one thing. No one could be happy with one thing. That’s why people buy stuff - that’s why people have ten pairs of shoes!

boxer, 2011
collaboration with Rob McHaffie

Magda Matwiejew: Black Box White Cube

Magda Matwiejew features in Black Box White Cube a free exhibition that explores the creative intersections between art and performance in contemporary Australian art at the Arts Centre. Starting with performance art from the 1970s, the exhibition captures the vitality that music and dance, staged photography and film, theatricality and the spectacle of performance infuse into contemporary Australian art. Current until September 25.

54th Venice Biennale: glimpses

Australian Pavilion, Hany Armanious

54th Venice Biennale: glimpses

Peggy Guggenheim

54th Venice Biennale: glimpses

54th Venice Biennale: glimpses

How to get around when in Venice (left)
Palazzo Bembo (right)

54th Venice Biennale: glimpses

Venezuela (left)
Venice by night (right)

Michael Cusack

Michael Cusack has been featured on the johnnygoodsir blog this week - offering a sneak peak into some of the works he is making for his upcoming exhibition at Karen Woodbury Gallery, from July 6-30.

Jonathon Nichols and Derek O'Connor: Cologne

Jonathon Nichols and Derek O'Connor have work included in the exhibition *Schnittmengen/Intersections* at Galerie Emmanuel Walderdorff in Cologne.

If you happen to be in Cologne be sure to check it out.

Current until July 9 2011.

Lara Merrett | new website

Gallery artist Lara Merrett has recently launched her new website. Save it to your bookmarks and take a moment to explore Lara's backlog of exquisite works and projects.

www.laramerrett.com

Art Guide Australia launches iPhone app

We're pleased to be involved with the new Art Guide Australia iPhone App. Download it here for the most up to date coverage of what's on in the visual arts.