Emily Kam Kngwarray @ Tate Modern, London

Emily Kam Kngwarray 

Tate Modern, London

10 July 2025 – 11 January 2026

Emily Kam Kngwarray 

near Mparntwe  / Alice Springs in 1980

Photograph © Toly Sawenko

Tate Modern presents Europe’s first major solo exhibition dedicated to one of the most extraordinary figures in international contemporary art, Emily Kam Kngwarray (c.1914-1996). A senior Anmatyerr woman from the Sandover region in the Northern Territory of Australia, Kngwarray translated her ceremonial and spiritual engagement with her ancestral Country, Alhalker, into vivid batik textiles and monumental acrylic paintings on canvas. Taking up painting in her 70s and devoting her final years to creating a large body of art, Emily Kam Kngwarray forged a path for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists, women artists and Australian artists, and continues to entice audiences around the world three decades after her passing. Organised in collaboration with the National Gallery of Australia, this extensive survey brings together over 80 works from across her extraordinary career. Showing many pieces outside Australia for the first time, the exhibition offers European audiences a once in a lifetime chance to experience Kngwarray’s powerful batiks, paintings and vibrant legacy.

Emily Kam Kngwarray began experimenting with new art media at Utopia Station in the 1970s. After learning the technique of making batik, in the late 1980s she transitioned to painting in acrylic on canvas. Her practice was shaped by her intimate knowledge of her Country and by her role in women’s ceremonial traditions of ‘awely’, which encompass song, dance and the painting on bodies with ground ochres. She sat on the ground when she painted, much in the same way she would sit to prepare food, dig yams from the earth, tell stories by drawing on the sand or ‘paint up’ for awely ceremonies. Her deeply personal approach to painting was developed in isolation from the European and North American artistic practices of her time. This exhibition presents Kngwarray’s work through the lens of her own world, showcasing her as a matriarch of her community, storyteller, singer, visual artist, and custodian of Country.

Encapsulating the ecology of her homeland, Kngwarray’s work features motifs derived from native plants, animals and natural forms. She regularly depicted the pencil yam (anwerlarr) and its edible underground tuber and seedpods (kam), after which she is named, as well as the emu (ankerr), reflecting the animal’s significance to Aboriginal Peoples. The exhibition opens with three acrylic paintings acquired for Tate’s collection in 2019 - Untitled (Alhalker) 1989, Ntang 1990, and Untitled 1990 - featuring densely layered fields of dots representing native seeds. These are accompanied by Awely 1989, inspired by designs women paint on each other’s bodies before performing awely. Two of Kngwarray’s early batiks join Emu Woman 1988, her first ever work on canvas that attracted widespread national attention. These introductory rooms trace the evolution of the artist’s visual language, grounded in her detailed knowledge of the desert ecosystems of Alhalker.

Works from the early phase of Kngwarray’s painting career are shown alongside a striking display of batiks on silk and cotton that hang from floor to ceiling and immerse visitors in the artist’s vivid evocations of her Country. These works are often rooted in the Dreaming (Altyerr), the eternal life force that created the land and its myriad living forms and defined the social and cultural practices of people. Ntang Dreaming 1989 depicts the edible seeds of the woollybutt grass (alyatywereng), while Ankerr (emu) 1989 maps a path of emu footprints travelling between water sources. Larger canvases, including the three-metre Kam 1991, demonstrate how Emily Kam Kngwarray began working on monumental paintings and employing a brighter colour palette.

At the heart of the exhibition is The Alhalker Suite 1993, one of Kngwarray’s most ambitious works on loan from the National Gallery of Australia. Produced at the height of her painting career, it offers a vibrant portrait of Alhalker Country across 22 canvases. Revealing Kngwarray’s broadened colour spectrum and techniques, bright pastel pinks and blues evoke the wildflowers which carpet the landscape after rainfall, and collections of merging dots represent the rockfaces and grasslands of Alhalker. The artist did not impose any limitations for the configuration of the panels, so a new way of seeing her land is possible each time the work is displayed- an ongoing reminder that the stories and places she painted are very much alive.

In her final years, Emily Kam Kngwarray made an abrupt stylistic change, creating a suite of works comprising bold parallel monochrome lines in her familiar palette of reds and yellows, painted on white paper or canvas. Tate Modern presents Untitled (Awely) 1994, a six-panel work originally shown as the centerpiece of the Australian Pavilion at the 1997 Venice Biennale. The evident tactile quality with which Emily Kam Kngwarray applied the paint evokes the gesture and intimacy of painting on the body for awely ceremonies. Moving away from lines and dots during this late period, Kngwarray developed gestural paintings with fluid brushstrokes that burst with energy. Closing the exhibition, Yam Awely 1995 with its intricately painted twists of white, yellow and red intertwined with linear markings of grasses, yams, roots and tracks signifies the timeless connection between Emily Kam Kngwarray and her Country.

Exhibition organised by Tate Modern and the National Gallery of Australia based on an exhibition curated by Kelli Cole, Warumungu and Luritja peoples and Hetti Perkins, Arrernte and Kalkadoon peoples.

Curated by Kelli Cole, Director of Curatorial & Engagement, National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Gallery of Australia project, with Kimberley Moulton, Adjunct Curator, Indigenous Art, Hyundai Tate Research Centre: Transnational; Charmaine Toh, Senior Curator, International Art, Tate Modern; Genevieve Barton, Assistant Curator, International Art, Tate Modern and Hannah Gorlizki, Exhibitions Assistant, Tate Modern.

Following its presentation at Tate Modern, the exhibition will tour to Fondation Opale, Switzerland in a new iteration developed in collaboration with curator Kelli Cole.

TATE MODERN

Bankside, London SE1 9TG

www.tate.org.uk

Australian artist Emily Kam Kngwarray @ Pace Gallery, London - "My Country" Exhibition in collaboration with D’Lan Contemporary

Emily Kam Kngwarray: My Country

Pace Gallery, London

June 6 - August 8, 2025

Alhalker Country is ours—so is the anwerlarr yam. I paint my plant, the one I am named after—those seeds I am named after. Kam is its name. Kam. I am named after the anwerlarr plant. I am Kam! -- Emily Kam Kngwarray [1]

Pace presents an exhibition of works by renowned Australian artist Emily Kam Kngwarray, in collaboration with D’Lan Contemporary, at its London gallery. The show—titled My Country— coincides with Tate Modern’s major survey of Emily Kam Kngwarray, which will open in July. My Country traces Kngwarray’s artistic evolution from her early organic forms to her later vibrant, dot-filled color fields, culminating in the minimalist compositions that defined her mature work. To reflect her profound influence on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists, as well as on women artists and the broader Australian art landscape, the exhibition will also include historical and contemporary batiks by artists inspired by Kngwarray’s pioneering practice.

Emily Kam Kngwarray (ca. 1914–96) is one of Australia’s most critically acclaimed contemporary artists. Her use of new art media began in the 1970s, when she was introduced to batik at Ankerrapw (Utopia Station homestead) in Australia’s Northern Territory. After developing a distinctive style with little external influence, she shifted from batik to acrylic on canvas in 1988, marking the start of an extraordinary eight-year painting career during which she is estimated to have created around 3,000 works.

An Elder of the Anmatyerr people and custodian of her ancestral Country, Alhalker, Emily Kam Kngwarray produced vivid, deeply personal works that express the ancestral and ecological relationships that continue to shape her land. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, the term Country encompasses not only the physical terrain but also waters, skies, and all living beings, together with the cultural, spiritual, and familial responsibilities that connect them. Kngwarray’s practice was rooted in the Dreaming: a dynamic, lived worldview in which ancestral creation stories and laws animate the land, its people, and their connections. Her paintings do more than depict these forces; they embody them, giving visual form to the rhythms and energies of her Country.

The works on view at Pace, some of which have never been exhibited before, trace Kngwarray’s rapid stylistic and thematic evolution, illuminating the inseparable interior and exterior worlds that shaped her practice. Harmony of Spring (1990), included in the exhibition, exemplifies the immediate confidence of her early paintings, marked by linear compositions overlaid with fields of singular and concentric double dots. In this work, as in others from the same period, the underlying structure recalls the rhizomatic paths of the anwerlarr yam, along with its seed and seedpods—kam—from which Emily Kam Kngwarray takes her middle name. Nested within the dense interplay of lines and dots are arrow-like forms depicting the tracks left across the ground by emus. These paintings can be read as experiential maps, charting time—seasonal shifts and the life cycles of plants and animals—and space, encompassing the vast terrain of Alhalker and the networks of roots and foliage above and below the earth’s surface. Kngwarray’s paintings not only make her relationship with this living world tangible, but extend its presence, drawing work, viewer, and artist into an ongoing expression of cultural and ecological responsibility.

Between 1992 and 1993, Kngwarray’s paintings surge with stippled fields of dots that engulf the linear foundations of her earlier works. Her use of color is denser, structuring the compositions through vibrant, often unexpected flashes of contrast and harmony—as seen in Desert Storm (1992), included in the exhibition, where an effervescent patch of mossy greens and earthy reds rolls off the right edge of the canvas, returning to the meteorological energy it describes. Kngwarray’s shifting use of tools and techniques is evident throughout this transformative period: larger canvas stretchers and longer brushes allowed for an expanded gestural range, while trimmed brushes enabled her to manipulate the texture of each daub.

As a senior member of her community, Kngwarray played a central role in awely— women’s ceremonial traditions encompassing song, dance, and the painting of bodies with ground ochres. Often painting her canvases while seated, her mark-making is defined by a fluid expressiveness and an ease with materials that echoes the ritual movement and touch of ‘painting up’ for awely. The striped designs of these ceremonies translated into the astonishing, austere canvases of her final years. These works—often composed of minimal, webbed structures painted over dark backgrounds—combine an assured command of linear form and the picture plane with the gestural force that defines all of Kngwarray’s work, from paintings and batiks to the ancestral, familial contact of ochre onto skin.

Alongside a 1987 batik by Emily Kam Kngwarray, this exhibition also includes textile works by Judy Greenie Ngwarai, Audrey Morton Ngwarai, Ruby Morton Ngwarai, Annie Petyarre, and Lena Pula Pwerle. Together, these works demonstrate the enduring influence Kngwarray continues to have on generations of artists working in Australia today.

Emily Kam Kngwarray (b. ca. 1914, Alhalker, Utopia, Australia; 1996, Mparntwe/Alice Springs, Australia) began painting on silk and cotton fabric in the batik style alongside the women in her community, and, in 1977, became a founding member of the Utopia Women’s Batik Group. Introduced to canvas in 1988, Kngwarray’s practice shifted in part due to the adaptability of paint as a medium, which allowed her to create spontaneous, gestural marks using various implements. Kngwarray’s paintings are a continuation of the deep-rooted oral and visual traditions that inspired her batik work. When she was already in her seventies, her first painting, Emu Woman (1988–1989), debuted in the group exhibition, A Summer Project: Utopia Women's Paintings held at S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney (1989). Emily Kam Kngwarray was a prolific artist, executing an estimated three thousand paintings in an eight-year span. In 1997, she was represented posthumously at the 47th Venice Biennale. Her work is held in public collections worldwide including Araluen Arts Centre, Alice Springs, Australia; Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida; Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; and The Vatican Museums, Vatican City, among many others. In July 2025, Tate Modern, London, will open the first major survey of Emily Kam Kngwarray’s work in Europe. 

[1] Emily Kam Kngwarray quoted in Jennifer Green, “The life and legacy of Emily Kam Kngwarray” in Emily Kam Kngwarray, ed. Kelli Cole, Jennifer Green, and Hetti Perkins (National Gallery of Australia, 2023), 150.

PACE, LONDON

5 Hanover Square, London W1S 1HQ

www.pacegallery.com

Primavera 2025: Young Australian Artists @ MCA Australia, Sydney - Museum of Contemporary Art Australia

Primavera 2025: Young Australian Artists

MCA Australia, Sydney

5 September 2025 - 8 March 2026 

EMMALINE ZANELLI

Magic Cave, 2024 

6.5 x 4 x 2.4 m, bird, mouse, rat, cat, dog and 

hermit crab cages, plastic tunnels, toys, LED lights

Installation view, Firstdraft, Sydney

© and courtesy of the artist

Primavera is the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia's annual exhibition of young Australian artists aged 35 and under. Now in its 34th year, Primavera continues to be a significant platform for early-career Australian artists and curators to present exciting new work. Since its inception, the exhibition series has presented the work of more than 250 artists and 30 curators and propelled the careers of many of Australia’s most significant artists. Primavera was initiated in 1992 by Dr Edward Jackson AM, Mrs Cynthia Jackson AM and their family in memory of their daughter and sister Belinda, a talented jeweller who died at the age of 29.

The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA Australia) announces the five artists to exhibit in Primavera 2025: Young Australian Artists, Francis Carmody (VIC/NSW), Alexandra Peters (VIC), Augusta Vinall Richardson (VIC), Keemon Williams (QLD) and Emmaline Zanelli (SA).

Primavera 2025: Young Australian Artists is curated by MCA Australia Curator, Tim Riley Walsh. The artist selection is driven by the theme of society’s relationship to industry and the machine in the contemporary era. The work of the five artists address es technology and mechanical intertwinement in various ways.

About Primavera 2025, Riley Walsh said: 'The selected artists for Primavera 2025 reflect the innovation and sheer talent of the emerging contemporary Australian art world. Over the course of close to 50 studio visits I conducted across the country I saw intriguing shifts in how young practitioners are engaging with a rapidly changing sociopolitical and technological landscape. How this translates into creative practice is the focus of this presentation.'

'My ongoing interest as a curator is art’s power to make us look anew at subjects that typically evade representation or understanding. What is out of view or exceeds our senses. These five artists help broaden our world view and begin to unravel the complexity of the current era.'

Primavera 2025: Young Australian Artists - About the artists

FRANCIS CARMODY

Photo: Tim Herbertson

Francis Carmody 

Born 1998, Gadigal Country/Sydney. Lives and works Naarm/Melbourne 

Francis Carmody thinks of his practice as a form of speculative storytelling. He considers the social structures that underpin our current reality to understand our past and to imagine possible futures. Carmody’s work spans mediums and engages collaborators with expertise across diverse disciplines to investigate historical and natural phenomena. Francis Carmody received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Between 2022–2024 he was a Gertrude Studio Artist at Gertrude Contemporary, Naarm/Melbourne. Recently he has exhibited work at Gertrude Glasshouse, Conners Conners, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art and Mejia, all located in Naarm/Melbourne.  

FRANCIS CARMODY

Black Swan Event: Incubating (detail), 2024 

Plaster, horsehair, polymer paint, nylon, 

60 x 60 x 30 cm

© and courtesy of the artist. Photo: Christian Capurro

FRANCIS CARMODY

A Relic Remains, 2023 

Installation view, Gertrude Glasshouse, Collingwood 

© and courtesy of the artist. Photo: Christian Capurro

Alexandra Peters 

Born 1990, Warrnambool. Lives and works Naarm/Melbourne 

Alexandra Peters is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Naarm/Melbourne. Her work spans painting, print, sculpture and assemblage, often taking the form of an installation. These arrangements explore the field of expanded painting through the interrogation of support structures and framing devices. Peters completed a Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours) at Monash University, Melbourne in 2022, where she was the recipient of the Monash University Museum of Art Award and the Megalo Print Award. Her works have been exhibited throughout Australia and internationally and include recent commissioned presentations at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne and Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne. She has also been featured in exhibitions by 1301SW, Melbourne; Asbestos, Melbourne; NAP Contemporary, Mildura; Perth Institute of Contemporary Art; and Propaganda Network, Tbilisi, Georgia. She is currently part of the studio program at Gertrude Contemporary.

ALEXANDRA PETERS 

Breakneck: Blowback (Source), 2024

Acrylic and water-based ink with screen-print 

medium and paste on leatherette, 250 x 180 cm

(2-panels, each 250 x 90 cm) 

© and courtesy of the artist. Photo: Andrew Curtis

ALEXANDRA PETERS

Installation view, Future Remains: 

The 2024 Macfarlane Commissions, 

Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, 

Naarm/Melbourne, 2024 

© and courtesy of the artist. Photo: Andrew Curtis

ALEXANDRA PETERS

Breakneck: Fenestration (Auto-Extrication), 2024

Acrylic and water-based ink with screen-print 

medium and paste on leatherette,

250 x 480 cm (4-panels, each 250 x 120 cm) 

© and courtesy of the artist. Photo: Andrew Curtis

AUGUSTA VINALL RICHARDSON

© the artist. Courtesy The Commercial, Sydney

Photo: Lucy Foster

Augusta Vinall Richardson 

Born 1991, Naarm/Melbourne. Lives and works Naarm/Melbourne 

Augusta Vinall Richardson makes abstract composite sculptures out of sheet and cast metals, employing industrial materials and processes in a practice underpinned by an ethics of responsibility for objects. Her works recall legacies of minimalism but celebrate irregularities and imperfections, investing especially in textural qualities. Her process begins with hand drawings or the building of cardboard and papier-mâché maquettes. In 2022 Vinall Richardson was awarded a Master of Fine Art by Monash University, Naarm/Melbourne. She has exhibited at La Trobe Art Institute, Djaara/Bendigo, and in the 2024 Melbourne Sculpture Biennial. In 2026, she will present a solo exhibition at Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne. She is represented by The Commercial, Sydney.

AUGUSTA VINALL RICHARDSON

Box Sculpture (side by side), 2025

Stainless steel, 150kg approx., 226 x 99 x 23 cm

© the artist. Courtesy The Commercial, Sydney. 

Photo: Andrew Curtis

AUGUSTA VINALL RICHARDSON

Day by day, 2025 

Bronze, patina, 120kg approx., 93 x 215 x 18 cm 

Private collection, Melbourne

© the artist. Courtesy The Commercial, Sydney

Photo: Andrew Curtis

KEEMON WILLIAMS

Photo: Sam Harrison

Keemon Williams 

Kuku Yalanji, Koa, Meriam, and South Sea Islander peoples. Born 1999, Gimuy/Cairns. Lives and works Magandjin/Brisbane 

Keemon Williams is a Koa, Kuku Yalanji, Meriam Mir and South Sea Islander artist and curator based in Magandjin/Brisbane. His practice considers queer, Indigenous and Australian experiences as lived in the shadow of colonisation. His work often draws on the language of production, as well as memory and humour. Williams has presented solo exhibitions at Kuiper Projects, Brisbane, Milani Carpark Gallery, Brisbane and Northsite Contemporary Arts, Cairns. His work has been featured at the National Gallery of Victoria; Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane; UQ Art Museum, Brisbane; QUT Art Museum, Brisbane; Griffith University Art Museum, Brisbane; and Museum of Brisbane. Williams is currently Assistant Curator, Indigenous Australian Art at QAGOMA, Brisbane. He was previously the Exhibitions Officer at Outer Space in Brisbane from 2022–2025. He graduated from Queensland University of Technology with a BFA (Visual Art) in 2019. 

KEEMON WILLIAMS

Installation view, Boomerangs, 2023

Wurrdha Marra, The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, 2023 

© and courtesy of the artist. Photo: Tom Ross

KEEMON WILLIAMS

Business is Boomin’, 2021

Porcelain, underglaze, glaze, epoxy, 55 x 45 mm 

© and courtesy of the artist. Photo: Kyle Weise

KEEMON WILLIAMS

Business is Boomin’, 2021

Porcelain, underglaze, glaze, epoxy, 55 x 45 mm 

© and courtesy of the artist. Photo: Kyle Weise

EMMALINE ZANELLI

Photo: Thomas McCammon

Emmaline Zanelli 

Born 1994, Tarndanya/Adelaide. Lives and works Tarndanya/Adelaide

Emmaline Zanelli’s work combines elements of video, photography, sculpture and performance. Influenced by absurdism and surrealism, she creates art that seeks humour and meaning in the everyday. Recently, her work has considered themes of labour and youth culture. Emmaline Zanelli completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts at Adelaide College of the Arts in Tarndanya/Adelaide in 2015, and a MA in Photography at the Photography Studies College in Naarm/Melbourne in 2021. Her work has been exhibited in galleries across Australia, including Stills Gallery, Sydney, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Naarm/Melbourne, and the Art Gallery of South Australia, Tarndanya/Adelaide. Her work has been published in the British Journal of Photography and Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, and screened at the Arles Photography Festival in France. In 2022 her video work Dynamic Drills (2019–2021) was selected as the winner of The Churchie Emerging Art Prize. 

EMMALINE ZANELLI

Magic Cave, 2024 

6.5 x 4 x 3.8 m, bird, mouse, rat, cat, dog and 

hermit crab cages, plastic tunnels, toys, LED lights

Installation view, Studios: 2024, 

Adelaide Contemporary Experimental 

© and courtesy of the artist

EMMALINE ZANELLI

I take care of what’s mine (still), 2023–2024

Two channel video, sound, 25:47 minutes, 

Commissioned by Adelaide Film Festival X UniSA 

Samstag Museum of Art EXPAND Lab, 

Supported by Creative Australia 

© and courtesy of the artist

EMMALINE ZANELLI

I take care of what’s mine (still), 2023–2024

Two channel video, sound, 25:47 minutes, 

Commissioned by Adelaide Film Festival X UniSA 

Samstag Museum of Art EXPAND Lab, 

Supported by Creative Australia 

© and courtesy of the artist

EMMALINE ZANELLI

I take care of what’s mine (still), 2023–2024

Two channel video, sound, 25:47 minutes, 

Commissioned by Adelaide Film Festival X UniSA 

Samstag Museum of Art EXPAND Lab, 

Supported by Creative Australia 

© and courtesy of the artist

Primavera 2025: Young Australian Artists - Curator Tim Riley Walsh

TIM RILEY WALSH

Photo: Hamish McIntosh

Primavera 2025 Curator, Tim Riley Walsh, is Assistant Curator at the MCA Australia. Previously, he was Curator in Residence, Gertrude, Naarm/Melbourne, and held roles at Camden Art Centre, London and Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Magandjin/Brisbane. Riley Walsh’s MCA Australia curatorial projects include Data Dreams: Contemporary Art in the Age of AI (2025, co-curator), MCA Collection: Artists in Focus (2025, curatorium) and supporting the presentations of Hiroshi Sugimoto: Time Machine (2024) and Tarek Atoui: Waters’ Witness (2023–24). Outside of the MCA, his recent external projects include Unbecoming, La Trobe Art Institute, Djaara/Bendigo (2025) and You Are Here Too, Institute of Modern Art, Magandjin/Brisbane (co-curator, 2025).

MCA AUSTRALIA

Museum of Contemporary Art Australia

Tallawoladah, Gadigal Country

140 George Street, The Rocks, Sydney NSW 2000

www.mca.com

Biennale of Sydney 2024 @ The White Bay Power Station - Artists + Artworks

Biennale of Sydney 2024 

@ The White Bay Power Station

9 March - 10 June 2024

Cosmin Costinaș and Inti Guerrero

24th Biennale of Sydney 2024 Artistic Directors 

at The White Bay Power Station 

Photograph by Joshua Morris

Biennale of Sydney 2024

Artistic Directors Cosmin Costinaș and Inti Guerrero

Media Launch at The White Bay Power Station

Photograph by Daniel Boud

Biennale of Sydney 2024 

Media Launch at The White Bay Power Station

Photograph by Daniel Boud

The White Bay Power Station was constructed between 1912 ans 1917. It remained in service until 1984. The White Bay Power Station will be one of the locations of the 24th Biennale of Sydney 2024.

The announced artists on view at The White Bay Power Station for the 24th Biennale of Sydney 2024 include Dylan Mooney, Darrell Sibosado, the collective VNS Matrix, Martin Wong.

Dylan Mooney

Photo: Rhett Hammerton. Courtesy of the artist

Dylan Mooney

Grevillea Venusta – Grevillea (from the Intertwined series), 2022

Digital illustration hand-painted with Yuwi ochre, 120 x 88cm

Image courtesy of the artist and N. Smith Gallery, Sydney

Dylan Mooney

Still Thriving (from the Still Thriving series), 2023

Digital illustration hand-painted with Yuwi ochre, 118.9 x 84.1cm

Image courtesy of the artist and N. Smith Gallery, Sydney

Dylan Mooney

Our Islands, Our Homes, 2021

Digital illustration printed on 320gsm cotton paper, 84.1 x 59.4cm

Image courtesy of the artist and N. Smith Gallery, Sydney

Artist DYLAN MOONEY, a Yuwi, Torres Strait and South Sea Islander man from Mackay (North Queensland). Working across painting, printmaking, digital illustration and drawing, the artist is known for his high-impact illustrative style with bright, saturated colour, creating works influenced by history, culture and family. He will create a large-scale mural celebrating the life of the late queer, First Nations dancer and activist Malcolm Cole, who led the first Aboriginal float at the 1988 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade. Through this new commission, Dylan Mooney will commemorate Malcolm Cole’s life and activism in the queer and Aboriginal communities.

Darrell Sibosado

Photography:The National Gallery of Australia

Darrell Sibosado

Aalingoon (Rainbow Serpent), 2019

Corten Steel, 550 x 300 cm 

Collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia

Photographer: N. Smith Gallery

Courtesy the artist and N.Smith Gallery, Sydney

© Darrell Sibosado

Darrell Sibosado

Ngarrgidj Morr (the proper path to follow), 2022

Powder-coated steel, LED tubes, fittings, electrical component

300 x 245 x 8 cm (each panel)

Collection of The National Gallery of Australia

Photographer: The National Gallery of Australia

© Darrell Sibosado

Darrell Sibosado

Gulgan (Fishtrap), 2014

Etching printed in red ink on paper

39.7 x 30.3 cm

Courtesy the artist and N.Smith Gallery, Sydney

© Darrell Sibosado

 

DARRELL SIBOSADO is a Bard man from Lombadina, situated on the Dampier Peninsula of the Kimberley coast, Western Australia. His practice explores the innovative potential of the riji (pearl shell) designs within a contemporary context. Passed down over countless generations, the designs represent the detached scales of Aalingoon, the Rainbow Snake, as he rests on the ocean surface, shedding his scales containing traditional knowledge and beliefs. Through his printmaking and installations, Sibosado reflects on traditional Bard lore and is intent on reiterating that Aboriginal culture is a living, adaptive culture that undeniably commands a presence in the contemporary space. For the 24th Biennale of Sydney, Sibosado will create a neon work centred around the meticulous preparations and movements orchestrated in harmony with the rich traditions and deeply rooted networks of kinship, obligations and interpersonal relationships that are fostered within Sibosado’s community.

VNS Matrix

Image courtesy the artists

VNS Matrix

Viral Pleasure World [still] (from ‘VNS Matrix Virtual Theme Parks’),1996

Commissioned by Performance Space Sydney 

in association with the Australian Film Commission 

Image courtesy the artists

VNS Matrix

Corpusfantastica [still] (from ‘Bad Code’), 1997 

Digital image

Image courtesy the artists

 

Australian (Adelaide/Tarntanya) feminist art collective VNS Matrix emerged in 1991 to challenge the male-dominated culture of technology and cyberspace. Their installations, happenings, posters, games, and manifestos explore the sexual, political, and aesthetic dimensions of gendered relationships with technology. They coined the term cyberfeminism to capture their radical vision of empowerment, embodiment, and resistance in the digital age. Notable works including A Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century have been widely translated and circulated. Their legacy continues to manifest, inspiring new generations of artists and activists. VNS Matrix is Josephine Starrs, Julianne Pierce, Francesca da Rimini, and Virginia Barratt. 

Chief Executive Officer of Biennale of Sydney Barbara Moore said: “We are thrilled to be hosting the first major event at White Bay Power Station. Admission is free. We are presenting some of the best contemporary art from around the world and across Australia, with a robust program of music and food too, and we can't wait for you to experience it. For 50 years, the Biennale of Sydney has brought people together to think about and talk about the world we live in, infusing art into the very fabric of Sydney and rejuvenated public spaces across the city. In March, we swing the doors to White Bay Power Station wide open, and we can't wait for you to be part of it.”

Minister for the Arts John Graham said: “The Biennale of Sydney at White Bay Power Station will be a major event on the international stage and will draw people from all over the world to view the work of some of the best local, national and international artists in a magnificent new space, with free admission for all.

“The event will harness Bays West’s rich First Nations, multicultural and industrial histories into the iconic location, serving as a world-class destination for people visiting Sydney.”

Chief Executive of Placemaking NSW Anita Mitchell said: “Placemaking NSW is delighted to have secured Biennale of Sydney as the first free public activation at the site.

“The opening of White Bay Power Station is the first step in the transformation of the Bays West precinct in line with the Bays West Place Strategy.”

Minister for Planning and Public Spaces Paul Scully said: “White Bay Power Station was powering Sydney’s trams and dominating the harbour skyline before the Harbour Bridge and then Opera House captured our attention.

“While planning is underway for its long-term future, we are taking this opportunity to let the community immerse themselves in the site, through a program of events and activations, starting with the Biennale of Sydney.”

The White Bay Power Station, Sydney

YouTube Screen Shot

For a short history of The White Bay Power Station since its construction, you can look at a short video on YouTube realized by the NSW Department of Planning and Environment:

https://youtu.be/mKdONUWzxWk

BIENNALE OF SYDNEY

biennaleofsydney.art

Margel Hinder @ Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney & Heide Museum of Modern Art, Bulleen - Modern in Motion

Margel Hinder: Modern in Motion

Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

30 January – 2 May 2021

Heide Museum of Modern Art, Bulleen

30 June – 10 October 2021

MARGEL HINDER 

Revolving construction 1957

Art Gallery of New South Wales, purchased 1959 

© AGNSW

The Art Gallery of New South Wales presents Margel Hinder: Modern in Motion, the first retrospective of one of Australia’s most important and dynamic, yet underrated, modernist sculptors of the 20th century.

The exhibition, presented in collaboration with Heide Museum of Modern Art in Melbourne, showcases an arresting array of sculptures by Margel Hinder (1905 – 1995) produced over five decades of her career.

From the solidity and volume of her wood carvings in the 1930s, to the ‘space age’ kinetic and wire works of the 1950s and her major public commissions in the 1960s, Margel Hinder: Modern in Motion traces the development of Margel Hinder’s creative vision and her exploration of sculptural languages.

Art Gallery of NSW director Dr Michael Brand said the exhibition aims to rectify Margel Hinder’s profile as one of the most underestimated Australian sculptors of the 20th century.

“Margel Hinder was an agent for cultural change and part of the first generation of abstract artists in Australia. This important retrospective reveals how vital Hinder was in the making of Sydney’s modernism and for asserting the place of sculpture within it,” Brand said.

Margel Hinder: Modern in Motion is co-curated by Art Gallery of NSW senior curator of Australian art Denise Mimmocchi and Heide Museum of Modern Art artistic director Lesley Harding.

Lesley Harding said the exhibition uncovers the expansive nature of Margel Hinder’s creativity, and her skill in giving sculptural form to universal concepts like time and motion in materials expressive of the era.

“Apart from her inclusion in a few surveys of local modernism, Hinder’s vanguard practice and its legacy have largely been overlooked since the 1980s. This exhibition presents her innovative and visually arresting sculpture to new generations and the wide audience it deserves.”

Denise Mimmocchi said the exhibition is an opportunity to explore the breadth and depth of Hinder’s oeuvre.

“Margel Hinder: Modern in Motion brings together major sculptures from public and private collections, immersive representations of public sculptures, maquettes, drawings and archival photographs to present an insightful portrait of the pioneering sculptor’s life and work.”

“The Art Gallery of NSW has a substantial collection of Hinder’s maquettes that reveal incredible details of her creative processes. We are excited to have recently completed conservation on more than 40 of these maquettes so that they can be exhibited,” said Denise Mimmocchi.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Margel Hinder (née Harris) initiated her sculpture studies in Buffalo and Boston. She migrated to Australia in 1934, following her marriage to Australian artist Frank Hinder, where her mature practice flourished.

Exhibition highlights include Margel Hinder’s commanding kinetic works, whose slow rotations encapsulate a sense of the world in perpetual motion, and an immersive installation based on two of Hinder’s major public sculptures.

Created by environment designer and 3D artist Andrew Yip, the life-size digital reconstructions are of two of the most significant public sculptures of Hinder’s career: the Civic Park fountain, Newcastle 1961–66 and the now decommissioned Northpoint fountain 1975. This project allows for a presence of this important component of Hinder’s art within the context of her retrospective while also demonstrating the dramatic shift in the style and scope of Hinder’s art in monumental and water kinetic sculpture.

The exhibition is accompanied by the richly illustrated publication Margel Hinder: Modern in Motion featuring essays by Denise Mimmocchi; Lesley Harding; Art Gallery of NSW object conservator Melanie Barrett; and Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University assistant professor of immersive media, Dr Andrew Yip; and a foreword by University of Oxford professor of the history of art Dr Geoffrey Batchen.

Margel Hinder: Modern in Motion is presented at the Art Gallery of NSW and will tour to Heide Museum of Modern Art.

ART GALLERY OF NEW SOUTH WALES

Art Gallery Road, The Domain, Sydney

www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au

HEIDE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

7 Templestowe Road, Bulleen VIC 3105

www.heide.com.au

Vanity Fair Portraits: Photographs 1913 – 2008, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra

Vanity Fair Portraits: Photographs 1913 – 2008 

National Portrait Gallery, Canberra 

5 June - 30 August 2009 

This is the first exhibition to bring together rare vintage prints with contemporary classics from Vanity Fair and the legendary Condé Nast Archive. The exhibition is a photographic history of celebrity portraiture, including the works of master photographers such as Edward Steichen and Cecil Beaton, Annie Leibovitz and Mario Testino. The National Portrait Gallery is the sole venue in Australia to host this travelling exhibition. Vanity Fair Portraits: Photographs 1913 – 2008 is a collaboration between Vanity Fair and National Portrait Gallery, London. 

In Vanity Fair's first period (1913­1936), celebrated subjects such as Albert Einstein, Charlie Chaplin and Jean Harlow are shown in portraits by legendary photographers, among them Edward Steichen, Cecil Beaton, Baron De Meyer, Man Ray and Australian-born Anton Bruehl, a pioneer in colour photography. From the magazine's re-launch in 1983, the works of photographers including Annie Leibovitz, Helmut Newton, Bruce Weber and Mario Testino are featured, depicting a wide range of subjects, from Arthur Miller to Madonna. 

Vanity Fair Portraits presents a rare opportunity to see definitive portraits of the 'Jazz Age', including now classic studies of Louis Armstrong, Josephine Baker and Noël Coward. The selection of portraits also includes two previously unpublished and unseen 1928 studies: Florence Vandamm’s portrait of actress Alice White and Emil Bieber’s rendering of German artist George Grosz.

Although Vanity Fair suspended publication in 1936, it would be resurrected in another period of decadence and excess, the 1980s. Once again, its purpose was to record modern men and women of culture, stature and talent and as in the early period, portrait photography was the graphic bedrock of the magazine. In the tradition of editor Frank Crowninshield (who ran Vanity Fair from 1914 to 1936), the revived monthly commissioned the world's leading portrait photographers, among them Helmut Newton, Nan Goldin, Herb Ritts, Harry Benson, Mario Testino, Jonathan Becker and Bruce Weber. 

Vanity Fair's iconic photographs continue to make news. Since the magazine's re-launch in 1983, cover images including the Reagans dancing (1985), a very pregnant Demi Moore (1991), a formal portrait of President Bush's Afghan War Cabinet (2002) and most recently actresses Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightley photographed naked (2006) have been embedded in the collective cultural consciousness. 

Annie Leibovitz has become the dominant image-maker of Vanity Fair, just as Edward Steichen dominated Vanity Fair's first period. Edward Steichen (1879-1973), who created an unrivalled gallery of portraits of the dominant personalities of the 1920s and 1930s, has a worthy successor in Annie Leibovitz and Vanity Fair Portraits is the first major exhibition to display their works together. 

“We are very pleased to be able to present this exhibition to Australian audiences. It fits perfectly with our interest in celebrity, style, of-the-moment people and, of course, the work of great portrait photographers. A particular feature of the exhibition season at the National Portrait Gallery is the inclusion of a number of Australians who have made it on the world’s stage. Like all of the subjects in the exhibition  these Australians have been captured with that mixture of flair, originality and incisiveness that is a unique quality of Vanity Fair”, said Andrew Sayers, Director, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra.

NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

King Edward Terrace, Parkes, Canberra, ACT 2600

www.portrait.gov.au

Open Air: Portraits in the Landscape, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra

Open Air: Portraits in the Landscape 

National Portrait Gallery, Canberra 

4 December 2008 - 1 March 2009 

Open Air: Portraits in the Landscape,  the first exhibition in the temporary exhibition spaces of the new National Portrait Gallery, is about people and place. Australian art is full of rich expressions of ideas and feeling about the landscape. This exhibition, with its evocative works drawn from public and private collections across Australia, invites visitors to reflect on what places mean to people, and on how our views of ourselves are shaped by place. Open Air: Portraits in the Landscape has been organised by the National Portrait Gallery and curated by Andrew Sayers with Dr Sarah Engledow and Wally Caruana.

We all have relationships with specific places and in many ways these relationships define us. Open Air explores many dimensions of these relationships as they have been expressed in art. Including paintings, photographs, bark paintings and sculpture, the exhibition brings together the works of Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists whose work incorporates deep personal responses to the land. It reveals the importance of land in Indigenous self-definition; the engagement of landscape and historical figures (such as Daisy Bates and Burke and Wills); landscapes of alienation; landscapes with significant family associations and art in which the idea of ‘presence’ is fundamental. 

The exhibition includes conventional portraits as well as opening up a new and distinctly Australian way of looking at portraiture; it goes beyond a definition of a portrait simply as ‘a picture of a face’, to embrace representations of the order of nature and of ancestral stories within the landscape. The exhibition includes the work of some of the major Australian artists of the twentieth century and the present: Mawalan, Wandjuk and Banduk Marika, Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri, Tim Johnson, Arthur Boyd, Sidney Nolan, Bea Maddock and Russell Drysdale.

NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

King Edward Terrace, Parkes, Canberra, ACT 2600

www.portrait.gov.au

Robert Klippel. A Tribute Exhibition at Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney - Text by Edmund Capon + Biography

Robert Klippel

A Tribute Exhibition to Australia's Greatest Sculptor

Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

9 August - 13 October 2002

When Robert Klippel died in Sydney on his 81st birthday on 19 June last year, the next day’s headlines acclaimed his artistic achievements – ‘Australia’s greatest sculptor’, ‘a sculptor with iconic status’. As early as the 1960s, Robert Hughes was claiming Robert Klippel as an outstanding figure of Australian art and one of few sculptors worthy of international attention.

While Klippel’s sculpture is extolled, he was a man who eschewed publicity, and to the public his name, unlike those of other major Australian art figures such as Sidney Nolan, Brett Whiteley and Arthur Boyd amongst others, may not be familiar.

With a career spanning 60 years of prodigious creativity, Robert Klippel worked closely with the Gallery’s curator of Australian art, Deborah Edwards, to present this first full-scale retrospective of his life’s work.

“Robert Klippel was Australia's greatest sculptor and arguably one of the most significant sculptors of his generation internationally. Klippel's particular vision, inspired by the intricacies and the profusion of our natural and man-made environments and by his quest for a spiritually relevant form, stands alone in the history of Australian art,” said Deborah Edwards.

Comprising more than 250 pieces, the exhibition encompasses Klippel’s development from figurative sculpture into abstraction, from Surrealist wood carvings to the extraordinary junk assemblages of the 1960s and 1990s. The diversity of junk materials in Klippel’s art – wood, stone, plastic toy kits, wooden pattern parts, typewriter machinery, industrial piping and machine parts – as well as bronze, silver, oils, photography, collage and paper; and the great range in scale of his work, from intimate whimsical structures in metal to the large wooden assemblages of the 1980s, are all incorporated in the exhibition.

Robert Klippel was a fossicker, and his waterfront home in Balmain a cornucopia of industrial discards. These he pondered and re-assembled into some of the most exciting works of art ever produced in this country. He created an amazing number of collages and works on paper, more than 5,000 – outlines and inspirations for his sculpture – “far too many to ever be realised into sculptures, but wonderful pictorial studies in their own right,” said Deborah Edwards.

To accompany the exhibition, the Art Gallery of New South Wales is publishing a comprehensive monograph and a CD ROM catalogue raisonne. This CD ROM catalogue raisonne is the first produced on an Australian artist, and provides detailed information on more than 1,200 of Klippel’s sculptures.

“Robert Klippel’s indefatigable instinct to make things embraced the realms of fantasy, of imagination and whimsy, but at the same time there is a sturdy reality in all thos reawakened bits and pieces of discarded industry and long lost purpose. These works of surprising contemplation and fascinating intrigue are, for me, perfect testaments to the contribution of Robert Klippel, that independent, somewhat solitary but relentlessly creative spirit.”

Edmund Capon

Director, Art Gallery of New South Wales

ROBERT KLIPPEL: A brief biography

Robert Klippel was born in 1920. At the age of six he made his first model ship after being taken on a ferry ride on Sydney Harbour. Model making became a passion – he was employed to make models of planes while he was serving in the Defensively Equipped Merchant Ships at the Gunnery Instruction Centre during World War II. While working at the Centre he was able to attend evening classes at East Sydney Technical College and, after his discharge, was able to attend for a full year.

His parents’ business was successful and with their support, he left Australia for the Slade College in London – a 6 month experience which did not satisfy his need for freedom of expression. However, in London he met the Australian painter and art critic, James Gleeson, with whom he formed a life-long friendship. In November 1948 Klippel, Gleeson and the young Lucian Freud exhibited together in London. André Breton, the originator of Surrealism, arranged for Klippel’s work to be exhibited in Paris the following year. After 18 months in Paris, Robert Klippel returned to Australia.

Australia was culturally dismal in the 1950s, and Robert Klippel's first sculptural work was not sold in this country until 1956. Nor could the artist achieve any commercial success in a short-lived career as an industrial designer. In 1957 he set sail for America, where he remained until 1963, teaching sculpture at the Minneapolis School of Art from 1958-1962. Living in New York in 1957 (and again in 1962-63) Klippel became attuned to the paintings and sculptures of the 'New York' school, and produced his first junk assemblages in 1960, using various parts and sections from old machinery (such as typewriters and cash registers). With these works he subsequently established his mature reputation as a radical new voice in Australian art, after he returned to Sydney in mid-1963.

Living in a huge old house in Birchgrove from 1968, Robert Klippel consolidated his vision and also became, by the 1970s, one of the country's most important collagists. In decades during the 1970s and 80s, when the traditional distinctions between sculpture and architecture, design, photography, performance and painting were frequently presented as obsolete, Klippel's belief in his sculpture was a commitment to the traditional, imaginative concerns of his art. He remained committed to the idea of sculpture as abstract, as occupying sculptural space, and as sustaining in ways beyond any literary or narrative function. In the 1980s he completed a series of spectacular small bronzes, as well as a large number of monumental wooden assemblages, made from the pattern-parts of early twentieth century maritime machinery.

Robert Klippel's last decades proved extremely prolific. Working with wood, metals, plastics, junk, machinery parts, oils, watercolours and paper, and utilising the techniques of casting, assemblage, painting and collage, he had completed over 1,200 sculptures by the end of the 1990s. His independence of thought continued to mark his creative life, as did the exceptional fertility and suppleness of his sculptural imagination, until his death, during his last major exhibition of work, in June 2001.

ART GALLERY OF NEW SOUTH WALES

Art Gallery Road, Sydney

www.agnsw.com.au

Kate Breakey, Julie Saul Gallery, New York - Small Deaths Exhibition

Kate Breakey: Small Deaths 
Julie Saul Gallery, New York
March 15 - April 21, 2001 

The Julie Saul Gallery presents Australian born artist Kate Breakey’s first solo exhibition in New York. The exhibition includes a selection of large painted photographs of birds from the series Small Deaths with works from 1997 to the present. Kate Breakey describes her interest in "these individual creatures...little representatives of all the lives and deaths that we disregard." She is concerned with expressing a reverence for nature and life. The dead things that she finds or is given, plant, fowl, reptile and mammal, possess a fundamental spirit beyond the shell that is left behind. In collecting and examining these "small deaths" she invokes the role of the naturalist and artist. Her titles which are inscribed on the print provide the Latin scientific taxonomy, followed by the popular name. Kate Breakey enters the realm of text and image, and references the nineteenth century practice of assembled collections of specimens into natural history collections.

Like the photogenic drawings of Henry Fox Talbot, Kate Breakey’s coloration varies considerably from the reddish tones to the pale grays, lemons and lilacs. Her use of transparent photographic oils and pencil, subtlety applied to a toned gelatin silver print, create lush soft focused surfaces and depths. The large scale format of the images monumentalizes the seemingly small bearing of her subjects and furthers the commemoration of their fugitive aspect.

From early Daguerrean funerary portraits, the pictorialist acceptance of the classic subjects like cemeteries, or the nature morte and vanitas traditions in art, these still life’s of dead birds are allegorical novellas. The depiction and interpretation of death’s presence whether for documentary or expressive purposes conciliates a vision of self with more than the nullity of death.

A monograph of Kate Breakey’s work will be published in October of 2001 by the University of Texas Press and her work is included in the collections of Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Australian National Gallery, Canberra, Australia, Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego and numerous private collections.

JULIE SAUL GALLERY
535 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011
www.saulgallery.com