FIGURATION at APW Gallery

My linocut, Untitled, 2000, (pictured above), is among the works selected for the group exhibition, Figuration, at the Australian Print Workshop, Melbourne. 

Back in 2020, I was awarded the APW George Collie Memorial Print Award, along with one of my printmaking Muses, the late Barbara Hanrahan, so I was delighted to find my work hanging alongside her etching, Lovers with Angels, 1990.

Unfortunately, I’ve almost come to feel that the award never really happened. The 2020 George Collie Memorial Print Award Ceremony and accompanying exhibition subsequently became buried ever deeper by the ongoing pandemic - but fortunately, not without trace. All going well, the exhibition and ceremony will finally proceed this year, albeit in a slightly different format. Further information will follow when I’m more certain of times, dates and other details. 

Meanwhile Figuration is on exhibit at the APW Gallery from Saturday 5 February 2022 to Saturday 12 March 2022. 

The show features work by Davida Allen, Brook Andrew, Benjamin Armstrong, Del Kathryn Barton, Martin Bell, Arthur Boyd, Jazmina Cininas, Noel Counihan, Heri Dono, Emily Floyd, Graham Fransella, Shaun Gladwell, Barbara Hanrahan, Richard Harding, Julie Harman, Euan Heng, Shane Jones, Lily Karadada, William Kelly, Deborah Klein, Richard Lewer, Sian Marlow, Laith McGregor, Lewis Miller, Chris O’Doherty (aka Reg Mombassa), Emmet O'Dwyer, Geoffrey Ricardo, Robert Rooney, Gareth Sansom, Pijaju Peter Skipper, Jeffrey Smart, Mervyn Street, Thornton Walker, Judy Watson, and Peter Wegner. 

Apologies for the reflections - they were impossible to avoid, particularly in the installation view directly above. Click on images for a clearer view. 

Figuration

Australian Print Workshop Gallery
210 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy, Victoria 3065
T: (03) 9419 5466  E: contact@australianprintworkshop.com
Gallery hours: Tuesday to Saturday 10am-5pm

New hang at the Art Gallery of Ballarat

As 2018 was drawing to a close, curator Julie McLaren and her crack team undertook the mammoth task of rehanging the staircase area overlooking the foyer of the Art Gallery of Ballarat. I'm a long-time advocate of the salon-style hang, both for aesthetic and practical reasons (Shane Jones and I employ it extensively in our Melbourne and Ballarat homes and studios), and find the finished result, highlighted in this post, quite stunning.

The installation focuses entirely on figurative works. I'm honoured to have my painting Vorticist 2 (pictured above, top row, fourth from right) included, particularly as it is surrounded by so many works from the collection that I hugely admire. Among them is former From the Bower colleague Loris Button's poignant self-portrait The artist in her middle years: Memento 1, 1995 (pictured above, third row from top, second left).

Vorticist 2 was first exhibited in the solo show Tease (2004) at Charles Nodrum Gallery, Melbourne. In 2008 it was part of the touring survey show Deborah Klein: Out of the Past 1995 - 2007 and the work is featured in the standard school text book Art Detective by Michelle Stockley (2017).

When Vorticist 2 was acquired back in 2005, I never dreamed that one day I would be living in Ballarat and, as Shane and I tentatively start the slow, complex process of cutting ties with Melbourne, that we’d come to regard it as home.

Vorticist 2, 2004, oil and acrylic on linen, 122 x 91 cm. Collection: Art Gallery of Ballarat.

This group hang extends an invitation to engage with the works, both singly and collectively, something not all salon-style arrangements successfully achieve. It's virtually impossible to do the new installation justice here, or to more than suggest the myriad of connections and dialogues between works that it instigates.

The staircase area is directly opposite the main entrance to the Art Gallery of Ballarat, providing a tantalising indication of what is in store. On several occasions I've spoken to past visitors who admit they've never climbed the staircase to the second level, which is where some of the finest works in the collection, as well as some terrific curated shows, are displayed. I've no doubt that this striking new hang will lead all but the chronically uncurious irresistibly upwards and onwards.

To read a short essay on the history of the salon-style hang, visit the Polk Museum of Art HERE.

Admiring the new hang at the Art Gallery of Ballarat. Photo credit: Shane Jones

View from the top of the stairs (left)

View from the top of the stairs (right)

A list of the above works, section by section, follows directly. Click on individual pages for a clearer view.