Compiler

Juan Ford, Negative space 2, oil on linen. In his exhibition 100,000 Lux at sullivan + strumpf, 44 Gurner Street, Paddington, Sydney, from 4 to 22 April.

Winners

Congratulations to winners of the Archibald Prize: John Beard; the Wynne Prize: Philip Wolfhagen; the Sulman Prize: David Disher, and the Trustees’ Watercolour Prize: Graham Fransella. The $5,000  Bald Archy prize has been won by Xavier Ghazi for his portrait of Dame Edna Everage. This exhibition previewed at the Museum of the Riverina in Wagga Wagga, and then tours the eastern states throughout 2007… And you can catch the Archibald Salon des refusés at the S H Ervin Gallery, Observatory Hill, Sydney until 6 May. Winners of the 2007 Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing are artists Joe Frost and John Fitzgibbon who’ll share the $15,000 first prize. 

News and gossip

Art and influence
Guido Belgiorno-Nettis, son of Franco the father of the Sydney Biennale, has joined the AGNSW as a trustee… Steven Lowy is the new president of the AGNSW Board of Trustees. He is the CEO of Westfield, apparently the largest listed retail property group in the world with a market capitalisation of $40 billion or so. Guess he’ll just add noughts to numbers when working with trustees and staff on long term strategic management and direction for the gallery

The ongoing naming rights
tussle ‘twixt Deutscher Hackett (Chris Deutscher & Damian Hackett) and Rod Menzies who wished to retain the Deutscher-Menzies name has been sorted, sort of. The court dismissed Menzies’s request for an injunction to prevent them trading under the new name. Menzies also requested the return of all intellectual property held in Deutscher-Menzies’s databases. Justice Sundberg issued a return of all information held on the databases. We’ll also see notices in newspapers and correspondence, catalogues etc. saying the firm is not associated with Deutscher-Menzies. Deutscher and Hackett host their first auction next month.

Talking shop

The Australian Centre for Photography, Oxford Street, Paddington, has a host of interesting talks coming up, including Robyn Stacey’s ‘Making art in the museum’, Wednesday 11 April at 6.30; ‘Slide Night – New Work by Oculi Photographers’ on Thursday 26 April 6.30-10pm, with discussion from practitioners about recent projects… Jeremy Morrison, Head of 20th Century Decorative Arts and Design at Sotheby’s London will speak in Sydney from 17 to 20 April – further details from Sotheby’s. Morrison is in Australia for the Ninth World Congress on Art Deco in Melbourne.

In and around

Gallery moves
Byron McMahon Gallery is the latest addition to (double-barrelled) art spaces in Redfern. Sandra Byron and Brett McMahon have converted the historic Redfern Hotel at 88 George Street to a photography exhibition space, next door to Grantpirrie at No 86 with Boutwell Draper at 82-84 further up. The new gallery opens with a group exhibition of renowned Australian and international photographers followed by a Lee Miller Centenary Show which runs from 27 April to 2 June.

Invigi-dating
Try ‘space dating’ – run by Sydney College of the Arts student Grzegorz Gawronski who cleverly set up a way of getting people together on blind dates while they minded gallery spaces – move over rsvp, try www.myspace.com/space dating.

Earthly encounters
…embraces studio ceramics by twenty-one artists of the central west of NSW. The Orange Regional Gallery touring exhibition runs until 22 April. Concurrently, The place where three dreams cross is also on show. It hails from the University of Tasmania’s Plimsoll Gallery, with such media as photography and shell objects from artists in Tasmania, Western Australia and Central Australia

March into Design
The Powerhouse Museum’s Smart works: Design and the handmade exhibition, curated by Grace Cochrane, features work from forty New Zealand and Australian makers, and runs from 30 March to 19 August. In conjunction, Object Gallery’s Freestyle: new Australian design for living exhibits work from forty Australian designers in the fields of furniture, fashion, lighting, jewellery and more at their Surry Hills gallery until 13 May

Signing off

Academics Alan Cholodenko and Julian Pefanis from the Power Institute of Fine Arts at the University of Sydney mourned the recent death of philosopher and sociologist Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) via email to scholars and students. It recalled his delivering of the inaugural Mari Kuttna Lecture and keynote address at Futur*Fall: Excursions into Modernity, a conference where the student groupies elbowed to watch his performance on television in the Carslaw Theatre rather than in the flesh next door at the Stephen Roberts Theatre. Baudrillard’s passing signs off a fond era in art theory that influenced much teaching and research in Australia.