Compiler

Ruth Maddison, The Beginning of Absence (detail), 1996, printed 2006, 11 inkjet prints from Polaroid originals, © Ruth Maddison 1996/2006. In Reveries: Photography and Mortality, curator Helen Ennis, National Portrait Gallery, Old Parliament House Canberra, until 5 August. Exhibition touring to University Art Museum, the University of Queensland, 31 August to 14 October 2007, and Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, 19 March to 18 May next year.

Showing around town

At Canberra Museum and Gallery until 10 June: Klaus Moje, part of
the series Living treasures: Masters of Australian craft, an Object
Gallery exhibition toured by Museums and Galleries New South Wales, and
Meg Buchanan: Five years on… At Craft ACT until 1 July: the 2006 Cicely
and Colin Rigg Contemporary Design Award, incorporating techniques and
materials such as beaten metals, baked enamel, carved plastics, blown
glass and taxidermy; Decades and diversity, a tribute to textile artist
Solvig Baas Becking, by three artists – Pam McDougall, Fay Skyring and
Di Landsdown… Two ANCA studio artists will exhibit at ANCA gallery
until 10 June – in Heaven’s net painter Andrew Kavunenko
collaboratively explores negative space with installation artist and
sculptor Clare Martin… Curator and writer on sculpture, Ken Scarlett
opened the exhibition Greg Johns: Patterns of thought at the recently
re-opened Drill Hall Gallery at the Australian National University in
May; on until 24 June… George Lambert Retrospective: Heroes & icons
opens at the National Gallery of Australia on 29 June and runs until 16
September… At the ANU School of Art Gallery, Thresholds of tolerance
until 5 June, an exhibition curated by Caroline Turner and David
Williams from the ANU Research School of Humanities.

Happy Birthday Art Monthly Australia

Time to celebrate twenty years of a great magazine. Congratulations!

News & events

ACT Arts Fund Applications for 2008

It is grant time again and although applications for Project Funding closed on 30 May the applications for Key Arts Organisation Funding will close on 15 June. Check the website www.arts.act.gov.au

Climate changing climate

Jennifer Lamb of Goulburn Regional Gallery is tackling important current issues once more with an exhibition and seminar Climate changing climate. Jenny Bell, Diana Boyer, Kirstie Chalker, Alison Clouston and Boyd, Jan Green, Bev Hogg, Jenny Lawrence, Kerry McInnis and Bruce Woods ‘visualise climate change to change a climate of inaction’ – if you don’t feel slightly dizzy. The seminar opened the show in May but you can see the exhibition until 23 June. Also coming up at the Goulburn Gallery is Patti Holden: A retrospective, from 30 June to 21 July, covering a fifty-year period of the artist’s work.

Brancusi back in a new National Sculpture Gallery

Those who have missed Brancusi’s Birds in space in their reflecting pool at the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) will be happy to know that they will part of a new National Sculpture Gallery, which will be the only exhibition space dedicated entirely to sculpture within an Australian art institution. This is the first part of the National Gallery of Australia’s twenty-fifth birthday celebrations and denotes a new arts partnership, between the NGA and the National Australia Bank. The new exhibition space will be known for ten years as the National Australia Bank Sculpture Gallery, and will display new acquisitions alongside sculptures that are already part of the NGA’s collection. ‘The new NAB Sculpture Gallery places Australian sculpture firmly within the context of international sculptural tradition – our visitors will see Australian pieces side by side with the finest European and American works in our collection’, said Ron Radford, Director of the NGA.

Another partnership for the NGA’s twenty-fifth birthday

A major new arts partnership between the NGA and BHP Billiton will see the inaugural National Indigenous Art Triennial exhibition open at the NGA in Canberra on its twenty-fifth birthday, 12 October this year. Curated by Brenda L Croft, Senior Curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art at the NGA and a member of the Gurindji and Mudpurra communities, the show, Culture warriors, includes the work of thirty artists, and encompasses painting on canvas and bark, sculpture, textiles, weaving, new media, video, photo-media and installation works. The National Indigenous Art Triennial will become a permanent event in the Australian and international art calendar. Every three years an Indigenous guest curator will be invited to curate the exhibition, which will include artists from every state and territory in Australia. A scholarly full-colour publication will accompany each exhibition.

A new library exhibition

Cooee: Australia in the 19th century can be seen from 14 June until 9 September in the Exhibition Gallery of the National Library of Australia (NLA). Drawn from the NLA’s pictorial collection, the exhibition concentrates on everyday happenings – working, shopping, going to church, travelling and leisure time. It demonstrates the growth of the colonies and the hardships and successes of those who came to a new land hoping to build a better life for themselves.

Canberra Glassworks Grand Opening Weekend

The hugely anticipated happening of 2007 was the opening of the Canberra Glassworks on 25 May. There were demonstrations in the hotshop, the opening of the inaugural exhibition Heartland and an artist’s party. To keep in touch now that they are open, visit www.canberraglassworks.com