Issue 89 April12

trouble

apr

2012

LISTINGS NSW / ACT

(69)

TASMANIA

[71]

MELBOURNE

(73)

BAY & PENINSULA

(83]

CENTRAL VICTORIA

(84)

EASTERN VICTORIA

(94)

MURRAY RIVER

(95)

NORTHERN VICTORIA

(96)

WESTERN VICTORIA

(98)

Issue 89 April 2012 trouble is an independent monthly mag for promotion of arts and culture Published by Newstead Press Pty Ltd, ISSN 1449-3926 STAFF: administration Vanessa Boyack - admin@troublemag.com | editorial Steve Proposch - art@troublemag.com | listings - listings@troublemag.com CONTRIBUTORS: Mandy Ord, Ive Sorocuk, Inga Walton, Liza Dezfouli, Jay Weston, Katy Mutton, Ben Laycock, Courtney Symes, Robyn Gibson, Jean-Franรงois Vernay, Darby Hudson, Matt Bissett-Johnson, Matt Emery. Find us on Facebook - www.facebook.com/Troublemag Subscribe to our website - www.troublemag.com DIS IS DE DISCLAIMER! The views and opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of the publisher. To the best of our knowledge all details in this magazine were correct at the time of publication. The publisher does not accept responsibility for errors or omissions. All content in this publication is copyright and may not be reproduced in whole or in part in any form without prior permission of the publisher. Trouble is distributed online from the first of every month of publication but accepts no responsibility for any inconvenience or financial loss in the event of delays. Phew!

FEATURES (4) (18)

trouble

apr

2012

COMICS FACE

Ive Sorocuk

THE RISE OF THE NEW VULGARIANS

Jaklyn Babington

(26) ROOM FOR FURTHER EXCAVATION Emily Jones

(34) CHARLES BILLICH AND HIS SURREALIST ESCAPISM Jean-François Vernay

(36) MELBURNIN’

[44] PARALLEL COLLISIONS Ruby Noise

(48) APRIL SALON Ahh-some

(62) STRALIAN BOOKS

Jean-François Vernay

(64) GREETINGS FROM DARKEST PERU Ben Laycock

Courtney Symes

[40] GREENWISH #5 Robyn Gibson

[43] ADSFORMUM Darby Hudson

COVER: Christian THOMPSON, Howl for your troubles 2012, type c print, 100 x 100 cm. The 60th Blake Prize, Burrinja Gallery, cnr Glenfern Road and Matson Drive, Upwey (VIC) , 10 March – 29 April - www.burrinja.org.au

READER ADVICE: Trouble magazine contains artistic content that may include nudity, adult concepts, coarse language, and the names, images or artworks of deceased Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people. Treat Trouble intelligently, as you expect to be treated by others. Collect or dispose of thoughtfully.

TM_806

Melbourne 97 Franklin St T. 9663 6799 Prahran 126 Commercial St T. 9510 1418 www.eckersleys.com.au *Conditions apply. Offer only available from 2/4/12 until 29/4/12, while stocks last. Offer applies to stretched canvas and rolls by the metre only. Photographic canvas sheets and canvas pads are excluded. Purchases cannot be added to the Eckersley’s Loyalty Program. No further discounts. No rainchecks. Canvas range and sizes may vary from store to store. †For the full terms and conditions for the competition, visit www.eckersleys.com.au/canvascompetition.

PRESENTS:

Josh

Earl vs CHILDREN’S

BIRTHDAY BOOK CAKE “Talent to burn.”

THE SUNDAY AGE

Bendigo 23 April Castlemaine 24 April Heathcote 26 April Pyramid Hill 27 April Elmore 28 April

Bookings 5434 6100 or

www.engineroompresents.com.au

“You’ll want to give him a warm hug by show’s end.”

THE AGE

2013 s a m s t a g applications close 30 June 2012 www.unisa.edu.au/samstag 08 8302 0865

Bendigo Art Gallery 11 March - 17 June Actress, Bride, Princess – witness the evolution of Grace Kelly’s style Film costumes, personal wardrobe and accessories by leading designers: Balenciaga, Chanel, Dior, Givenchy, Yves Saint Laurent, Helen Rose, Edith Head, Hermes and Cartier

Timed ticketing book now: www.gracekellybendigo.com

Exhibition organised by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London and the Grimaldi Forum, Monaco Proudly owned and operated by the City of Greater Bendigo with additional support from Arts Victoria

Exhibition Sponsors

Media Sponsors

42 VIEW ST BENDIGO VICTORIA 3550 BENDIGOART GALLERY.COM.AU

Exhibition Supporters A participant of the 2012 L’Oréal Melbourne Fashion Festival Cultural Program

Grace Kelly (detail). © Everett Collection / Rex Features

Marion Manifold Through the Notebook - Marie Antoinette Until Sunday 6 May Mes pauvres enfants adieu, adieu (detail) 2010, linocut and beads on paper.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.

Kerry Leishman The new beauty?

Until Sunday 13 May Terra Cumulus (detail) 2011, oil on canvas

Art Gallery of Ballarat | 40 Lydiard Street North Ballarat VIC 3350 | T 03 5320 5858 artgalleryofballarat.vic.gov.au | 9am - 5pm

SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER - Goldsmith National Theatre Live Screening

Starring Katherine Kelly and Sophie Thompson

SATURDAY 14 APRIL 1pm

2012

17 LYDIARD STREET SOUTH BALLARAT VIC 3350 ADMIN 5333 5800 TICKETS SALES MAJESTIX 5333 5888 HERMAJ.COM

Our Place: Visiting the country we live in Deakin University Art Gallery (Melbourne Burwood Campus) 18 April to 26 May 2012

Dennys Lascelles Exhibition Space (Geelong Waterfront Campus) 4 June to 6 July 2012

Deakin University Art Gallery, Deakin University, Melbourne Burwood Campus, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood Victoria 3125. Melways Ref 61 B5.

T +61 3 9244 5344 F +61 3 9244 5254 E artgallery@deakin.edu.au Hours Tuesday–Friday 10 am–4 pm, Saturday 1 pm–5 pm, free entry.

Gallery closed on public holidays.

Please visit www.deakin.edu.au/art-collection for exhibition details.

Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code: 00113B

George Matoulas Map of Australia 2009 29.5 x 34 cm Edition 5 Collagraph, chine colle Deakin University Art Collection Photography by Simon Peter Fox Image reproduced courtesy of the artist

A NETS Victoria touring exhibition curated by Emily Jones Counihan Gallery in Brunswick 5 April - 13 May For more information visit netsvictoria.org.au Stuart Ringholt, Circles Passing (page 43), 2007 collage on paper, 33 x 40 cm framed Courtesy the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane.

SILVER

1987 - 2012

Wangaratta Art Gallery celebrates 25 years 31 March 20 May 2012

56 Ovens Street, Wangaratta VIC 3677 T: 03 57220865 E: gallery@wangaratta.vic.gov.au Gallery Hours: 12-5 Mon-Tues 10-5 Wed-Fri 1-4 Sat-Sun A Cultural Service of the Rural City of Wangaratta

image: STELARC, Ear on Arm, cast aluminium, 130 x 45 x 45cm, image courtesy the artist and Scott Livesey Galleries

ART BEAT FESTIVAL 2012 Applications are invited for the following activities and programs:

ART BEAT PHOTOGRAPHIC SHOW MELTON SHIRE COUNCIL 31 August - 7 September BOOKED2012 BY

Entries close Friday 29 June at 4.45pm

RUBY WINGROVE

ART DAY OUT

9 September 2012  Contemporary Craft Market Stalls  Original Performances  Activity Presenters

Applications close Wednesday 30 May at 4.45pm

For more information contact: artsandculture@melton.vic.gov.au 9747 7200 www.melton.vic.gov.au/artbeat

Post Your Art! 2012 Opens April 16th • Closes June 25th Winning image is printed onto 5000 postcards

+

heaps of other prizes categories.

sponsored by

IMAGE: Sean Quirk, Within the Person (detail), 2011 Post Your Art Winner.

Information and application form @ www.takeapeek.com.au

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COUNIHAN

GALLERY IN BRUNSWICK

CALL FOR PROPOSALS The Counihan Gallery In Brunswick invites exhibition proposals from artists and curators for the 2013 Program.

Information packs: www.moreland.vic.gov.au/gallery Applications close 27 July 2012

Counihan Gallery In Brunswick

233 Sydney Road, Brunswick VIC 3056 Wednesday - Saturday 11 am - 5 pm| Sunday 1 - 5 pm 03 9389 8622 | counihangallery@moreland.vic.gov.au

The Rise of the New Vulgarians

by Jaklyn Babington

“There is a moral dilemma implicit in these latest vulgarities ... the truth is, the art galleries have been invaded by the pinheaded and contemptible style of gum chewers, bobby soxers, and worse, delinquents ... save us from the ‘uncharmers’, or permutations thereof, the Rosensteins or Oldenquists to come!” 1 - Max Kozloff 1962 The New York art scene of the late 1940s and early 1950s operated beneath the giant shadows cast by Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock. A second generation of Abstract Expressionists and Color Field painters including Helen Frankenthaler, Kenneth Noland and Morris Louis – championed by the art critic Clement Greenberg for their embrace of the non-objective, the immediate and the complete flattening of the painted surface – ensured that gestural abstraction continued as a dominant painting style.

However, for a younger set of artists – those dubbed the New Vulgarians – the desire to work beyond the enduring legacy of Abstract Expressionism became paramount.

Two American artists, both assemblagists, provided the essential aesthetic fracture that forced a radical change in the American art scene. Initially termed Neo-dada, Jasper Johns breached the restraints of abstraction by producing conceptually based painted objects invested with meaning. Robert Rauschenberg combined gestural mark making with its antithesis – mechanically reproduced imagery. The reintroduction of the figurative via the remarkable clash of visual elements in both Johns’ and Rauschenberg’s work signalled a departure from the heroic painterly gestures of Abstract Expressionism towards the adoption of popular culture as subject matter. Marcel Duchamp and Kurt Schwitters were important precursors of Johns and Rauschenberg in their efforts to fuse art and life, to ‘drag ordinary materials into the art world for a direct confrontation’.2 This approach was realised through the technique of collage using objects and found images, including small scraps of comic strip.3 Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns ultimately laid the local groundwork for the development of American Pop Art. (continued next page)

continued

Artists in Europe and the United Kingdom were also clamouring for a dramatic cultural change. The seeds of British ‘Pop Art’ were sown in London in the early 1950s, when a group of disparate artists, writers and architects gathered at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) and formed the Independent Group (IG).

The IG included artists Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi and writer Lawrence Alloway, who met to discuss such subjects as science, industry, mass media, philosophy, music and fashion. Although the term ‘Pop Art’ was coined

by Lawrence Alloway and was in circulation by the mid-1950s, it was Richard Hamilton who attempted a definition of the conditions of Pop Art in 1957: • popular (designed for a mass audience) • transient (short term solution) • expendable (easily forgotten) • low cost • mass produced • young (aimed at youth) • witty • sexy • gimmicky • glamorous • big business Against the bleak backdrop of post-war Britain and inspired by the technicolour found imagery of America – the advertisements, magazines, posters and flyers of the time – Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi began creating works that featured these subjects as collaged composition. Thus, in America and England, although at very different times, the mixing of media through collage and assemblage afforded

the significant aesthetic shift from flatness to illusion and from abstraction to figuration. A wider understanding that an important transition in art had begun was not realised until much later.

Roy Fox Lichtenstein had grown up in New York but it wasn’t until he joined the teaching faculty at Rutgers University, New Jersey, in 1960, that he came into significant contact with the New York avant-garde. It was at Rutgers that he met Allan Kaprow and Claes Oldenburg, artists who were both involved with the first ‘Happenings’ – performance events that had an immediate and a lasting impact on Lichtenstein’s thinking about art.

‘I was more aware of the Happenings of Oldenburg, Dine, Whitman and Kaprow … I didn’t see many Happenings but they seemed concerned with the American industrial scene.

They also brought up in my mind the whole idea of the object and merchandising ...’ 4 These artists were part of a generation who knew instinctively that the myth of the artist-as-genius was exhausted, a myth typified by the great Abstract Expressionists. After the tragic death of Jackson Pollock in 1958, Allan Kaprow wrote his seminal essay, ‘The legacy of Jackson Pollock’, in which he states: Not satisfied with the suggestion through paint of our other senses, we shall utilize … objects of every sort of materials for the new art: paint, chairs, food, electric and neon lights, smoke, water, old socks, a dog, movies, a thousand other things will be discovered by the present generation of artists … all will become materials for this new concrete art. 5

The Rise of the New Vulgarians / Jaklyn Babington

The American art scene was in dramatic transition. The doctrine of gestural abstraction had to be pushed aside and replaced with new subject matter and new creative concepts.

What could be more obvious and indeed ‘antiheroic’ than the worn-out, over-used images of industry and mass production? Influenced by these ideas, Lichtenstein began to incorporate what he termed standard imagery, the hackneyed images of advertising and cartoons – so utterly familiar that they appeared completely adverse to art. Over the next 40 years, Lichtenstein systematically worked through the subjects of advertising imagery, common objects, foodstuffs, comic strips, lettering, recasts of famous artists, sculpture, landscapes, architectural ruins, brushstrokes, explosions, recasts of art-historical movements and specific art genres, mirrors, entablatures and serial imagery.6 Roy Lichtenstein established himself as a master of appropriation. Applying a refined strategic approach to his creative energies, the artist’s entire body of work from the 1950s through to the late 1990s was constructed following a sophisticated process of image selection, reinterpretation and reissue. Lichtenstein developed a central creative principle that became a potent formula: an ability to identify cultural clichés and to repackage them as monumental remixes.

Roy Lichtenstein: Pop remix traces the artist’s print projects over 50 years exploring how the artist appropriated, transformed and ‘remixed’ numerous art-historical sources including Picasso’s Cubism, Claude Monet’s Impressionism, Max Ernst’s Surrealism and

Willem de Kooning’s Abstract Expressionism.

Lichtenstein reinterpreted the work of these artistic giants and significant art movements using an instantly recognisable graphic aesthetic, effectively branding his art with a signature Lichtenstein look to secure his place alongside those masters he so admired.

Slick, intelligent and humorous, Lichtenstein’s remixes of romance and war comics, brushstrokes and nude girls are among the best known of Pop prints.

Jaklyn Babington Curator, International Prints, Drawings and Illustrated Books, National Gallery of Australia Extracted from the catalogue essay for Roy Lichtenstein: A Pop Remix, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery from 19 April – 11 June 2012 -www.nga.org.au FOOTNOTES: 1. Max Kozloff, ‘Pop culture, metaphysical disgust, and the new vulgarians’, Art International, March 1962, pp 35–6; reprinted in Steven Henry Madoff, Pop Art: A critical history, University of California Press, Berkeley, California, 1997, p 29. | 2. Walter Hopps, ‘Introduction: Rauschenberg’s art of fusion’ in Walter Hopps & Susan Davidson, Robert Rauschenberg: a retrospective, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, 1997, p 29. | 3. Robert Rauschenberg had collaged scraps of newspaper comics into a number of his paintings during the 1950s, including Collection and Charlene, both of 1954, as did Jasper Johns in Alley oop of 1958. | 4. John Coplans, ‘An interview with Roy Lichtenstein’, Artforum 2, no 4, October 1963, reprinted in John Coplans (ed), Roy Lichtenstein, Praeger, New York, 1972, p 51. | 5. Allan Kaprow, ‘The legacy of Jackson Pollock’, 1958, reprinted in Allan Kaprow: Essays on the blurring of art and life, (expanded edition), edited by Jeff Kelley, University of California Press, Berkeley, California, 2003, pp 7–9. | 6. John Coplans, ‘Chronology of imagery and art’ in Coplans, 1972, pp 33–47.

IMAGE CREDITS: The Rise of the New Vulgarians / Jaklyn Babington

Roy LICHTENSTEIN, Crak! 1963–64, colour lithograph. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Purchased 1996 © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein. Licensed by Viscopy.

Roy LICHTENSTEIN, Reflections on The Scream 1990, colour lithograph, screenprint, woodcut, metalised PVC plastic film collage and embossing.

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.

Purchased with the assistance of the Orde Poynton Fund 2002 © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein. Licensed by Viscopy.

POLITICS, POP AND PORN

POLITICS, POP AND PORN

Available through selected news agencies, book shops, retailers and online www.large.ac

Available through selected news agencies, book shops, retailers and online www.large.ac

Christian CAPURRO, grafting #27 1997 - 1998, removable sticky tape, ink, paper, 14.6 x 10.9 cm. Courtesy the artist, Milani Gallery, Brisbane and Breenspace, Sydney.

Photography by Christian Capurro

“It’s not Dada that is nonsense – but the essence of our age that is nonsense.”

- The Dadaists1

ROOM FOR FURTHER EXCAVATION Emily Jones

In an era when the proliferation of digital media within art and design is widespread, a resurgent nostalgia for materials that are hand-made is flourishing. Evidence of the maker provides a reconnection, in a therapeutic sense, to the world from which we are becoming increasingly disconnected. Even the degree to which the act of ‘cutting and pasting’ has entered our vocabulary is evidence of a dependence on digital manipulation.

Materiality might signal an ‘authentic’ article, but on the other hand, the accumulation of disparate materials intentionally creates an artifice in order to disguise the meaning of the original item. >>

Cut with the kitchen knife brings together nine artists who have embraced the relevance and potential of collage and the resulting conversation between materials and representation: Christian Capurro, Simon Evans, Elizabeth Gower, Mandy Gunn, Joan Ross, Deborah Kelly, Nicholas Mangan, Stuart Ringholt and Heather Shimmen.

Since the moment that the term ‘collage’ was coined, by Cubists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque in 1912 from the French word Colle meaning to paste, the pictorial plane would never again be the same. As the picture became increasingly fractured, it was a natural progression that the surface become physically disrupted by the introduction of found materials. Literally pasting images or text onto the painted surface sharply diverged from the prerequisite that an artwork should offer the viewer a pictorial illusion, but instead it began to act as a signifier for the world of signs and symbols.

Embracing this newly found power of the ‘real’, the Dadaists literally cut up their world, using collage as a political imperative. Buoyed by the desire to subvert dominant power structures, the works were enlivened with an anarchic, absurd and demonstrative approach. Hannah Hoch’s influential Cut with the Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany (1919-1920), pioneered the use of an early collage technique, photomontage, as a means of critiquing popular media culture. Her works reconfigured the mediums of advertising and political propaganda as means to comment on the social upheavals of the era.

Famously refining an art of the absurd, the Surrealists also extensively examined the power of the psyche. Elza Adamowitz, when reiterating Max Ernst in her Surrealist collage in text and verse: dissecting the exquisite corpse (1998), translates: “Collage (and by extension frottage), tapping the resources of the unconscious mind, are considered processes parallel if not equivalent to automatic writing, in their capacity to stimulate the hallucinatory powers of the artist and generate a flow of multiple, contradictory images, as in hallucinations or visions of halfsleep.” 2 Through collage, artists such as Ernst were able to explore the premise that one need not dominate the medium, and instead highlighted their dependency on ‘found’ materials that were fortuitously discovered. A marriage between opposing forces of chance and design was sealed.

Elizabeth GOWER, Savings 11 (detail) 2010, paper cuttings on canvas, 45 x 45 cm. Courtesy the artist, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne and Milani Gallery, Brisbane.

continued

Room for Further Excavation / Emily Jones

By the 1960s, and in response to bold graphic design and the burgeoning materialism of popular culture, artists such as Robert Rauschenberg began using collage as a medium of immediacy and a way of embracing the visual explosions occurring in print media.The incorporation of whole objects into the picture plane, and even complete departures from the canvas, further exploited tensions between two and three dimensionality.The object was finally liberated from being a component of a pictorial reality, becoming part of the environment around it.

Contemporary collage has arisen as a product of this art historical canon, though certainly not in a linear fashion. Less concerned with addressing the problems of the picture plane or the spatial environment, the artists selected for Cut with the kitchen knife are tuned to issues of an existential nature and to the ability of collage to reshape our expectations of visual language. Interventionist actions upon found or collected materials are of primary importance, reordering the physical world as a means of interacting with and thus shaping it. The surface is under excavation, absurdities are babbled, the world is disarticulated and obsessive collections are fastidiously organised.

Removing and collecting items or information and storing them until they become useful is the artist’s natural disposition, be it metaphorically or literally.

Regarding Nicholas Mangan and Stuart Ringholt’s use of collage, Charlotte Day, in her essay accompanying the 2008 exhibition Lost & Found at Tarrawarra Museum of Art, says, “by taking individual fragments out of the stream of information, the artists give them opportunity to become something more intense and relevant in the moment.” 3 Many artists who use collage are obsessive collectors and hoarders.

Elizabeth Gower’s ‘junk-mail’ catalogues, tickets and magazines, accumulated since the 1970s, are a reflection of her fascination with consumerist excess, ephemerality and the seduction of advertising imagery. Her ability to redesign these chance encounters and to pull her works tenuously back and forth from chaos to delicately ordered designs are a testament to her subtlety and finely tuned restraint. In this series, Savings (2010), Gower highlights that advertising is more closely linked to consumption than to saving money.

But the title is also a reference to the artist’s own >>

activities – saving and collecting domestic by-products for future use.

Repetition and geometric patterning are also features of the work of Mandy Gunn, whose reconfigurations of texts, from Shakespeare to through to the Bible, take on architectural forms. Pages from books have been finely shredded leaving the text barely legible. The abstract qualities of the intricately woven and layered Cubist structures here are paramount. They hold a likeness to speech or soundwaves, echoing the babbling words out of context from their original sources.

The layering and subtracting of physical materials can be a literal or metaphoric act. Christian Capurro’s erasure of magazine images, in this instance through the peeling and pasting of ink encrusted tape, should be more aptly called un-collage. Known for his erasure works, Capurro captures a distilled emptiness from the mass-produced image. Spending hours rubbing away the images, he exhibits both the erased magazine, the documentation of the time it took and the rubbings left behind. In this exhibition his series of ‘graftings’ (1996-1998) provide a glimpse into the origins of Capurro’s activities– graceful and subtle whilst at times being violent and mutilated.

Capurro has pressed tape onto the images, in this instance meat from supermarket catalogues, removing some of the image and then collaging them densely to become flowering pods or cellular growths. By relocating the trace of images he draws our attention to the ghosts of past materials.

Nicholas Mangan also layers and then mines surfaces through physical actions, in both his collages and in his sculptural works. Crystalline structures are built and contrasted with actual and fictional excavations of objects and places. He also has a passionate interest in the excess of commodification and that which has been discarded as a by-product. The geological and archaeological imagery found in Flohetrauling (2008) contain fragments from magazines the artist found in Berlin flea markets. Taken on face value they could be encyclopaedic entries regarding an actual place or territory. But layered and partly peeled back they engender both timeless and historic, interventionist and absurd readings.

Simon EVANS, 25 Pictures of the World, 21. (Defection, Copulation and Murder) (detail) 2009, collage, 27 x 21.59 cm. Cour tesy the ar tist and James Cohan Gallery, New York/Shanghai.

continued

Room for Further Excavation / Emily Jones

Stuart Ringholt’s collage works are also small-scale versions of what is enacted on a larger physical scale.

They spring from a melting pot of Dadaist irrationality, Surrealist serendipity and Post-modern selfconsciousness.

For Ringholt, the ability to juxtapose two subtly related but seemingly disparate things through his performance is a vital force in making the viewer aware of shifting realities; that things are not always how they seem. The collages from Circles Passing (2007) show images of people with the head of another person replacing their own. Due to this simple alteration, the reading of the image is disrupted and distanced; it is impossible to tell who they are or why they are there. His collages command us to stop, ponder and laugh at the bizarre qualities of everyday life..

A diet of irony and the nonsensical also fuels the mindmaps created by Simon Evans. Obsessive masses of words, captured usually with sticky tape, are catalogued in ordered fields across the page. His background as a former skateboarder and writer has clearly informed the way he approaches words and objects; his collages are casual, yet contain subtle poetic and rambling narratives.

Cathartic and diaristic in their personal summation of his life, his works continue quickly to something much more quirky and lyrical. The series 25 Pictures of the World (2009) is an idiosyncratic monologue dedicated to abstract thoughts about the world, from communication and racism to international spies.

Continuing with the psychological, but in a surrealist twist, fabulous hybrid creatures and tortured colonial portraits pervade Heather Shimmen’s large-scale linocut prints. In Suspended Anima (2011) the intricate print and filigreed hanging Rorschach forms depart the gallery walls entirely.

Multi-legged bugs and cut-out spiders shadow haunting of fear and therapy. While Shimmen acknowledges the more sinister aspects of her work, it is only through embracing the beauty of entomological form that these works take their cue. Sensitively printed and collaged into oversized pop-up books, these chimeras summon a child-like enchantment.

Mad beasts and mythical man-eating women from outer space inhabit Deborah Kelly’s collages. Following in Hannah Hoch’s footsteps, Kelly recontextualises the depiction of the female image in the mass media. She is at once creating a new world of fantastical females >>

whilst satirising current preoccupations with beauty. Much of Kelly’s practice has been presented on a small scale, however some large scale projections emphasise her grand vision and political intent. Incomplete notes from timespace tourism (2011) utilises images from ghostly 1970s Croatian girly magazines that Kelly has barnacled with jewels and ocean creatures. It is paradoxical and intriguing that these nude images of women appeared during Socialism, when Croatian females were being actively encouraged to seek education and become equals in undertaking work.

Deeply interested in the role of women and early colonial life, Joan Ross creates characters who express a profound ambivalence towards the legacy of colonialism.

BBQ this Sunday, BYO (2011), her animated collage and accompanying three prints layer and collage landscape paintings by Joseph Lycett, providing a critique of the colonial vision at large. Her appropriation of this painting satirises the typical New Year’s Day celebrations and questions what being Australian really means. The use of a digital collage technique here is an extension of her object based collages, contrasting and playing off one reality against another. The digital technique has enabled her to more fully realise the deception of an entirely new narrative.

In the hands of the artists in Cut with the kitchen knife, collage delivers a satirical bite whilst retaining its ability to bring harmony and whimsy to the juxtapositions. Collage as a medium has, for almost a century, been a vehicle through which to explore a multitude of political and social concerns. It could in fact be the juxtaposition of many disparate realities and forms; works on paper, objects, words, dance, sound or digital media. The capacity of collage to reflect and reconfigure contemporary life gives it its continued potency as a dynamic medium.

Emily Jones Catalogue Essay for Cut with the kitchen knife, A NETS Victoria touring exhibition curated by Emily Jones. Counihan Gallery in Brunswick, 233 Sydney Road, Brunswick (VIC), 5 April – 13 May - www.moreland.vic.gov.au/gallery.

FOOTNOTES: 1. Dietmar Elger, Dadaism, ed. Sabine Blessmann, Taschen GmbH, Cologne, 2004, p.24 | 2. Elza Adamowicz, Surrealist collage in text and verse: dissecting the exquisite corpse, ed. Michael Sheringham, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998, p.7 | 3.

Charlotte Day, Lost & Found, An Archeology of the Present, ed. Lina Michael, Tarrawarra Museum of Art Ltd, Healesville, 2008, p.58

Joan ROSS, BBQ this Sunday, BYO (detail) 2011, still from digital animation, 5 minutes, ed. of 20. Animator: Ben Butler. Sound: Sumugen Sivanesan. Courtesy the artist and Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney.

continued

Room for Further Excavation / Emily Jones

charles billich and his surrealist escapism by jean-françois vernay Charles Billich is one of the senior figures of Australian contemporary painting. His style can be defined as a skilful blend of figurative (hence the realist note) and abstract painting, with a graphic design inspiration which gives his works the shine of refinement, the whole being sometimes enhanced by a surrealist touch which he finds useful to convey his metaphysical ambitions. Often, his oils on canvas give the impression of being soft and light watercolours, an effect the artist sometimes combines with the chiaroscuro technique.

To each master his muse: Picasso immortalized his Dora, Dalí extolled his Gala; Billich, as for him, has his Christa who, since their first encounter in 1985, has been for many years a great source of inspiration for many of his nudes. Billich is one of these painters who want the nude to be a sensual art form.

As he puts it, “My erotica style is more about aesthetic clarity than explicit. My proclivities are more sentimental than carnal.

Introspective rather than descriptive, playful rather than casual.”

The spectator will find it hard to see lewdness in Billich’s nudes: women’s curves are rather scarce and their gaze is never lascivious. His sitters are often depicted as rather slim, slender and graceful. His colours – red and orange being the predominant hues – convey all the passion that transpires in these poses. The spectator comes close to be unwittingly placed in the shoes of a voyeur with a soft focus reminiscent of the dream-like quality found in surrealism.1 Billich’s work is based as much on the persistence of his mental vision drawn from memories as on an effort of his imagination. Images come to his mind in the guise of altered, if not “hyperbolated”, memories. The artist has an explanation for it: “I manipulate reality. I turn it into some kind of symbolic analysis which works on several levels of meanings. There’s a touch of irony in what I paint as there is in all surreal art, it contains a fair amount of humour.”

In Rings of Confidence (1996), Billich takes his revenge on a childhood passion of his that he was not able to harbour for a long time, namely his short-lasting ballet experience in the Rijeka Opera Corps. It is this very obsession which resurfaces a decade later with Bolshoi White Nights (2007), a painting with surrealist overtones that discloses the painter’s personal fantasy – escaping the tyrannical weight of gravity.

As Billich points out, “So I dream of a world free of gravity where space has a totally different meaning and our faculties mimic those of the geckos […]. With Agravitationism I have achieved the management of complexity, winning over the spatial restriction of linearity, evading the boundaries of the canvas, freeing myself of physics and logic in order to propagate my visual message in all directions.”

Bolshoi White Nights Editions Released: 49 750 X 770 cms

We can go as far as to say that, generally, Billich’s surrealist inclination is the mirror of his obsessions, fantasies and abortive plans. In Rings of Confidence, the painter defies the sad reality of gravity and the limits of the human body by depicting an ethereal ballet in which his figures dance with a light step. The central figure, the only male dancer in the foreground, almost flies to the sky. This could be construed as the artist’s fantasy-packed projection, an attempt to symbolically carry his childhood dream of becoming a principal dancer to a successful conclusion.

To find solace, Billich paints with his head in the clouds intoxicated with the fire of his imagination … for the greatest pleasure of his admirers. Perhaps, one could look upon Charles Billich as a star shining continuously at the height of Australian painting.

Billich Art Gallery, 106 George Street The Rocks, Sydney (NSW) - www.billich.com Jean-François VERNAY specializes in Australian culture. His latest book is The Great Australian Novel – A Panorama (Melbourne : Brolga, 2010).

FOOTNOTES: 1. See Jean-François Vernay, ‘La poésie de la sensualité’ : les nus de Charles Billich, Correspondances Océaniennes 2 : 2 (December 2003), pp. 22-3.

DATELINE: APRIL 2012

by Courtney Symes

I recently attended one of L’Oréal Melbourne Fashion Festival’s Industry Forums, The New Consumer. The topic of discussion was the future of consumer’s shopping habits. A key emerging trend identified from this discussion was the concept of ‘editing’. Businesses that want to stand out from the crowd should focus on making life easier for their timepoor customers. Hot Picks, Key Items, Top Five, lists, etc. are all just some of the ways that successful retailers are re-packaging information to help consumers ‘edit’ their options. This prompted me to think about the similarities between the editing trend and what we try to achieve with Melburnin’ each month. The myriad of Melbourne’s monthly exhibitions can be overwhelming. Whilst it’s challenging to restrict our picks to 1000 words, our ultimate objective is to sift and edit. So if you’re looking for the hottest, freshest art in town, stick around…

Named after one of Brisbane’s historical red-light districts, Anastasia Booth’s latest exhibition, Nine Holes at Brunswick Arts Space, “uses sculpture and installation to reimagine the position of female desire in sexual fetish”. Whilst Booth has drawn some of her inspiration from historical Brisbane, she has also looked to elements of sexual deviance and fetish from Melbourne’s past, including Melbourne’s Nine Holes equivalent, Little Lon. “Gleaning” an array of materials including leather, glass, Perspex, horsehair and wood to create her sculptures and installations, Booth’s works “generate practical uncertainty and recall the characteristics of bondage wear”.

Liz Walker has also “gleaned” found objects such as leaves, feathers, bones, glass, ceramic shards and insects for her latest exhibition, A trace of residence. These natural and man-made

< Victor GREENAWAY, Passegiata, Orvieto (detail) 2011, ink on paper, 100 x 70cm.

objects were collected during her daily wanderings around Hill End, Birrarung in Eltham and Murrays Cottage. Back in the studio, Walker presents the items “in an archaeological display reminiscent of the museum”. Whilst Walker’s works “celebrate the beauty of decay, of imperfection”, she continues to question “the environmental impact of relentless and unsustainable urban growth”. Also check out group show, Visual Masturbation in gallery three, featuring work from Soft Science, Katie Parrish Gandrabur and Tessa Carapic. All shows run from 14-29 April. www.brunswickarts.com.au

as thinning and altering the fine porcelain rims to resemble the transient movement of water.” www.manningham.vic.gov.au

Fortyfivedownstairs presents an exciting trio of exhibitions this month, including Peter Garnick Without a Trace, Nicholas Harder Land Like Mine - Recent Paintings and UNFOLD works from paper. Following the decommission and relocation of the Western Districts Grampian’s Wool Scour to China, photographer Peter Garnick was compelled to create a record of this fifty-year-old institution. “My intent was to capture the atmosphere, commitment, irony and pathos Renowned Australia Ceramicist, Victor at the closing of another chapter of Victoria’s Greenway presents his latest exhibition, The agricultural history”, explains Garnick. The Art of Victor Greenaway, Italy 2007 – 2012 at exhibition consists of twenty of Garnick’s Manningham Gallery until 14 April. Greenaway framed Archival Pigment photographs is a Victorian artist with an established (ranging in size from 60cm x 60cm to 60cm following from his forty years of professional x 168cm) from the Scour’s last two working practice. Greenaway’s latest exhibition is the days, depicting the workers and machines result of his five year hiatus in Italy, where in operation. Additional images were also he has drawn inspiration from Italian culture, captured by Garnick when he returned to the art and history. The exhibition “illuminates deserted factory a couple of weeks later. an artist’s impression of a union between ideas, cultural exchange and media and is A trip to Kakadu in 2009 prompted Nicholas a testimony to a five year journey through Harder’s latest exhibition, Land Like Mine. multiculturalism and discovery, through Captivated by the diverse landscape in this experience and vision, drawing together the part of Australia, Harder recalls ‘As we drove various impressions and the unity of forms back to camp from ‘Ubirr’ in the quickening and media from raw clay, to canvas and paper, dusk, the landscape in the headlights seemed oils and ink”. Curated by Skepsi Gallery’s alive. Driving around bends, fires from backAnna Maas, the exhibition includes thirty new burns lit up trees and rocky escarpments, ceramic works, as well as thirty new paintings. while simultaneously tropical greens fluoresced Greenaway’s work has been influenced by in the headlights. This was a landscape vivid, the Etruscan society of 2,500 years ago. He animated, immediate and wild.” Harder’s explains that “Several trips to Venice inspired paintings combine mixed media on paper, a series of pieces adding imagery to the mark making as well as layering, transparency surfaces depicting the colour and reflections and an abundance of colour. >> of the inherent carnivale atmosphere, as well continued next page

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UNFOLD: works from paper is a group exhibition that features paper as the common medium. Curated by Sally McKittrick, the exhibition features eleven talented Australian artists: Louise Rippert, Nicholas Jones, Nobby Seymour, Graham Hay, Wendy Edwards, Lan Nguyen-Hoan, Shellaine Gobold, Adam Simmons, Alana Sivell, Claudia Gleave, and Sara Nothrop. Whilst the brief of only using one medium might seem extremely limiting, it is remarkable how flexible paper can be as the artists experiment with techniques such as crushing, folding, twisting, cutting, tearing, stitching, burning and puncturing within their works. Peter Garnick Without a Trace and Nicholas Harder Land Like Mine - Recent Paintings both run from 3-12 April and UNFOLD works from paper runs from 24 April to 5 May. www.fortyfivedownstairs.com Paper has also been used as a source of inspiration for Box Hill Community Arts Centre’s Discarded Recycled Art Competition, Paper Cut. Run in conjunction with Whitehorse City Council’s Sustainable Living Week celebrations, the competition aims to demonstrate fun and creative ways of recycling paper products by encouraging the people of Whitehorse to submit artworks created from recycled paper. Primary school children are also encouraged to participate with a separate competition category to create a threedimensional recycled paper tree. An exhibition of all artworks submitted will run at the Box Hill Community Arts Centre gallery until 15 April. www.bhcac.com.au

Melburnin’ / Courtney Symes

Now in its 60th year, the 2012 Blake Prize exhibition will be held at Burrinja Cultural Centre in Upwey. The Blake prize is named after renowned artist and poet William Blake. One of Australia’s longest running and highly recognised art awards, the competition encourages artists to submit works in response to the theme of religion or spirituality. Burrinja Executive Officer, Dr Ross Farnell, believes that the Blake Prize “encourages open, personal and idiosyncratic responses to its theme, supports cultural diversity, imaginative creativity, human justice and emerging artists. In so doing it creates opportunities for dialogue, it challenges and engages audiences and the wider public in conversations about the meaning, place and power of cultural expression through art.” Running until 29 April, the Blake Prize exhibition features over thirty finalist and winning works, selected from over 1000 entries. Free Guided Gallery Tours of the exhibition will run every Thursday and Sunday at 11am. www.burrinja.org.au

IMAGES: above Anastasia BOOTH, Nine Holes (detail) 2011, glass, leather and metal rings. right Peter GARNICK, Without a Trace. (detail).

< Clayton Tremlett, FloatingFalling (detail) 2008, 17 x 18cm, enamel on wood.

ROBYN GIBSON

Ahh ... ahh ... affluenza!

greenwish #5

“…[A]ny talk of diminishment is usually met with much resistance, as the individual feels that what is rightfully theirs cannot be impinged on. In other words, I do not want to be less comfortable for the sake of sustainability.”

– Ted Quinton, ‘Shifting Attitudes’, Houses magazine, issue no. 82.

I’ve been despairing recently of the global environmental situation and the enormity of our task to make crucial changes to our lifestyles. But it seems to me ‘sustainability’ has been hi-jacked, and largely come to mean buying more stuff.

Aren’t we missing the point? Aren’t we doing again what we always do in our modern world: focusing on the glamorous, what we can have, rather than changing the underlying attitude?

Behavioural change = hard work, basically; and that’s antithesis to a culture that’s become accustomed to spending its weekends driving to home-maker centres (!) to sort out the problem from amongst highly stacked shelves and attractive price tags. I’ve experienced it personally recently, designing a house for my partner and myself: lusting after certain materials and objects with the ‘right credentials’… It’s a deep addiction.

Our society also becomes time-poor as we take on more debt: we work longer hours, have less time for relating to each other, less time for thinking and acting creatively and with thought for the consequences of our actions, and much less time to devote to lower impact/ greater good activities such as growing our own food, walking to work, or making dinner from locally-sourced ingredients. The culture of consumerism demands our time in payment for greater wealth and so-called ‘satisfaction’.

And as we become richer, we consume

more. As we consume more, we create more greenhouse gas emissions – in fact, studies show a direct correlation between economic status of suburbs, consumption, and pollution (E.g.

ACF’s Consumption Atlas: http://202.60.88.196/ consumptionatlas/) and therein lies the crux of the problem of our ongoing addiction and continued speed of flight towards the cliff edge.

Psychologically, personal cost vs. ‘doing the right thing’ for the environment can create huge internal conflict in people.

John de Graaf, David Wann and Thomas H Naylor coined the term ‘affluenza’ in their 2002 book of the same name, and described it as “a painful, contagious, socially-transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety, and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more”. Even a decade ago, the authors stated that in one year, Americans spent more on goods that ended up in the rubbish than 90 of the world’s 210 countries’ total expenditure, and more people were filing for bankruptcy than graduating from university. “To live, we buy”.

In one context, this need to keep up with the Joneses has spawned an awe-inspiring march of massive homes across the mainstream housing landscape, with the biggest now well over 550 square metres! One website sells their largest model as “boasting a huge 52 squares of quintessentially modern urban living, this is indeed a home with everything. If space is the final frontier, then the Lindrum has conquered it.” (www.metricon.com.au) continued next page >>

Greenwish#5 / Robyn Gibson

“Hi, my name is Tom and I am an addict to consumption. But I’m ready to make different choices, no longer a victim to habit…”

– Tom, treehugger.com

(continued from previous page)

In the same vein, a friends’ mother recently told her (to paraphrase), “But I have to build a bigger house than my friends! – and it will have to be bigger than the one we’re in now”. This habitual tendency to never-ending growth is ingrained to the point that we are fixated on constantly looking outwards rather than at the actual reality of our daily needs: there is no questioning of replacing a perfectly functioning two-year-old car or phone because that’s what our society has trained us to do. Architectural educator and commentator Leon van Schaik points out in his essay Residential indulgence: “Collections of glamorous houses have enormous appeal. At best they support our voyeuristic tendencies … at their worst they induce lifestyle envy – the sort that causes us to rush out and buy an object, when we might be better served decluttering and reorganising our space.”

The perilous combination of ruthless consumption and a hurried pace of life is luckily

being challenged by many, who take responsibility for their part in an addictive society – like Tom, on treehugger.com: “Hi, my name is Tom and I am an addict to consumption. But I’m ready to make different choices, no longer a victim to habit…” Tom goes on to list three things he’s immediately prepared to do (buy less disposable products; eat lower down the food chain, or even vegetarian; and buy less) to start shrugging off the pall of ‘affluenza’.

Ultimately of course, we need a deep and lasting attitudinal shift in our thinking in order to create any fundamental change. It is worth noting that the United Nations General Assembly’s definition of sustainability established on March 20, 1987 is “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” This is a huge ask given our seemingly uncontrollable growth and use of world resources, but surely it is an imperative we need to grasp immediately, creatively, and radically.

Robyn Gibson is a printmaker, and partner in Lifehouse Design, award-winning sustainable building designers in Castlemaine, Central Victoria. Lifehouse Design is currently developing a unique flexible module-based house, called the LiFEHOUSE. See www.lifehousedesign.com.au and facebook Patrick Jones is taking a break to complete his PHD. visit http://permapoesis.blogspot.com/

by darby hudson

<

Curators Natasha Bullock, Alexi Glass-Kantor, and the Art Gallery of S.A. have collaborated with an experimental proposition inspired by art, cinema and literature, commissioning twenty-one artists to explore the ways that ideas emerge and re-form through time. Bringing together the past and future, this 2012 Adelaide Biennial brings forth new pieces to sit alongside the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;oldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; of the gallery. Pictured above, at work, is local artist Andrew Clarke, sketching in chalk a reproduction of Charles Conderâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Holiday at Mentone. Local chalk artists have been invited to reproduce the paintings that are housed inside the gallery, outside at the entrance during the course of the exhibition.

<

Richard Bell: Brisbane. Solidarity. Richard is the only artist in the 131-year history of the gallery to be allowed to paint the wall in the vestibule behind the neo classic columns that frame the entrance to the building. One of the iconic images of the twentieth century, Bell’s ode to Solidarity depicts the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico, where Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised a fist in support of the American Civil Rights Movement, after winning gold and bronze in the men’s two-hundred metre sprint.

Both Smith and Carlos spoke to Peter Norman, an Australian who won silver in the event, and asked his permission to perform their protest. He agreed.

< Rosemary Lainge: Sydney. Groundspeed (Rose Petal) #17.

A feast for the eyes awaits with a floral carpet that covers the ground of John Glover’s painting of his garden in bloom during spring. This piece had me captivated and it took some time to work out that the carpet wasn’t there originally. My eyes wanted to tell me another story.

words and pix

by Ruby Noise

continued >>

continued

Parallel Collisions / Ruby Noise

> Nicholas Folland: Adelaide.Jump Up. A suspended sculpture using two-thousand pieces of cut glass decanters, bowls and drinking glasses floats serenely in the centre of the Elder Wing. The light cast on it during different times of the day brings out colours as well as the ethereal nature of pieces that were once your grandmotherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s best glass. Visually moving and floating in a space of beauty and serenity, with inspirations from Atlantis and the crystalline nature it once evoked.

Parallel Collisions: Art Gallery of South Australia, North Tce Adelaide (SA), 2 March â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 29 April 2012. Free Admission - www.artgallery.sa.gov.au

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APRIL SALON

1. Bernardo BELLOTTO, Ruins of the Forum, Rome c. 1743, oil on canvas. Collection: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Felton Bequest, 1919. In search of the picturesque - the architectural ruin in art Geelong Gallery, Little Malop Street, Geelong (VIC), 21 April â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 24 June - www.geelonggallery.org.au

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2. Martin HODGE, Batman and Lamb 2012, laser cut steel, 100 x 150cm. Stockroom, 98 Piper Street, Kyneton (VIC), 12 April – 6 May - www.stockroomkyneton.com 3. Ewen COATES, Hatchlings 201, installation, bronze, dimensions variable. The Atrium Project: Filling The Void, Incinerator Gallery, 180 Holmes Road, Moonee Ponds (VIC), 13 April – 13 May - www.incineratorgallery.com.au NEXT SPREAD: Khadim ALI, Rustam 2009, gouache on wasli, 42 x 32 cms. Only From The Heart Can You Touch The Sky, RMIT Gallery, 344 Swanston Street Melbourne (VIC), 12 April – 9 June - www.rmit.edu.au/rmitgallery

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5. Kir LARWILL, Small Pleasures 2012, oil on hardcover book, 170x225mm. Union Studio Framers and Gallery, 74 Mostyn Street Castlemaine (VIC), 7 April – 20 May - www.unionstudio.com.au 6.

Stuart DEVLIN, Surprise Egg 1972-73, silver, silver-gilt, steel spring, ed.

85/300. (k-l) 7.3 x 4.7cm diameter (overall). National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Gift of Sir Frederick and Lady Wiltshire, 1986. SILVER 1987 – 2012: Wangaratta Art Gallery celebrates 25 years, Wangaratta Art Gallery, 56 Ovens Street Wangaratta (VIC), 31 March – 20 May.

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7. Paul COX, Age of Aquarius (Carol Jerrems, Jan Hurrell), 1970, gelatin silver print.

Monash Gallery of Art, City of Monash Collection, donated by the artist through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program 2000. Courtesy of the artist. Age of Aquarius: the photography of Paul Cox, Whitehorse Art Space, Box Hill Town Hall, 1022 Whitehorse Road Box Hill (VIC), 19 April – 26 May - www.whitehorse.vic.gov.au 8.

Amanda AISH, Dancer 2, 2011, watercolours, ink and pastel. Woodend Art Group Easter Market, Woodend Railway Station Precinct, High Street, Woodend (VIC) 7 – 9 April - www.woodendartgroup.org.au NEXT SPREAD: Marion MANIFOLD, Le Sphinx 2010, linocut. Marie Antoinette Through the Notebook, Art Gallery of Ballarat, 40 Lydiard Street Nth Ballarat (VIC), 31 March to 13 May - wwwartgalleryofballarat.com.au

APRIL SALON

APRIL SALON

Roger McKindley, Frozen Moment 2011, reclaimed steel, 50 x 50cm. Antares Iron Art Garden, Newstead (VIC), 28 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 29 April.

Part of ArtsOpen www.artsopen.com.au

stralian books with Jean-François Vernay

was devised to compile a list of books that would be apt to encapsulate the “Australian experience”. And the winners are ...?

In the context of the weakening of the bookshop industry with the nationwide closures and job losses REDgroup Retail incurred last year, I see fit to ask ourselves if books are indeed getting into trouble.

Sorry for sounding a tad emotional here, but one tends to forget that emotions and intelligence are equally important in many situations, according to research in neurosciences. Emotions are crucial especially when it comes to any decisionmaking process, like choosing a book for instance. But, generally speaking, it seems that books – like medicine – are made

When researching Australian fiction, people started asking me what they should read. It is a tricky question because you want to provide an answer while avoiding establishing a canon. Yet, whatever you say will reflect your own taste. So I imagined a virtual space, epitomized by The Great Australian Novel – A Panorama, with a giant table on which basically any appealing Australiana-packed novel would be on display for avid Aussie readers to make their own choices. No big deal! It is merely the horizontal counterpart of the vertical library bookshelf concept: pre-selection, classification and exposure.

By writing this essay, I also wanted to convey the largely underrated pleasure of

“Emotions are crucial especially when it comes to any decision-making process, like choosing a book for instance. ” available only on prescription: critics might recommend such and such a book, TV and radio book shows might promote a writer whose latest book has freshly been released, literary festivals are intent on honouring the highest profiles that could dispense with that extra bit of good buildup, literary prizes like the Miles Franklin Award also contribute to this winner-takesall logic, and the dutiful consumers are meant to take their picks – but chance or personal taste has nothing to do with it anymore. Please note that, as part of the National Year of Reading, a 2011 campaign

the text, the kind you cannot derive from science books. For it is the privilege of the literary text to enable readers to experience its “jouissance” – a noun Roland Barthes used to refer as much to delight and sensual pleasure as to orgasm. And the pleasure of the text can only be felt by sharing one’s emotions and satisfying reading experiences.

Some bookshops have perfectly understood this, and I love wandering around browsing in the bookshops where the staff has thoughtfully decorated the shelves with reading cards designed to share their

Natural Selection unflagging enthusiasm for books. You might say, here comes a prescription in a different guise! Except for the fact that emotions are central in the response that you give.

Since I started this article on a jocular note, allow me to share this amusing gift from an insatiable reader, Michael Nelson, who has come up with a mind-expanding reward system to guestimate the value and success of a book held in a library.

Copy in mint condition, never borrowed.

Borrowed once in the last five years and will remain on the shelves till the next library cull.

Placed on reading list occasionally for essay, short term loan only.

Key passages underlined (and presumably copied for essays, possibly even with acknowledgment of source).

Extensive underlining and some pages torn out. Missing pages might even be replaced with photocopies from another copy.

All copies stolen from library..

Jean-François Vernay is the author of The Great Australian Novel – A Panorama (Melbourne: Brolga, 2010).

top - Inside cover of annotated copy of Don DeLillo’s Players. middle - Inside cover of annotated copy of Suttree by Cormac McCarthy. bottom - Inside cover of annotated copy of Don DeLillo’s Ratner’s Star.

All images from the archive of David Foster Wallace (1962-2008), The Ransom Center, University of Texas - www.hrc.utexas.edu/

DARKEST PERU

words and pics Ben Laycock

The year was 1978; Olivia Newton-John was top of the charts with Let’s Get Physical. A rumour went around that The Rolling Stones were playing their farewell concert in Machu Pichu and we were going to get there by hook or crook. As it turned out the rumour was a hoax, spread no doubt by The Peruvian Tourist bureaux. We should have known better: that band will never play a final concert while still they breathe. But it did the trick, it got us to South America.

A flight to the U.S. cost – amazingly – the same as it does now, about $1500. There was no way I could raise that by making mud bricks, but we read in Time magazine of all places that cheap flights were available in Singapore – $700 to L.A. Cheap flights to Singapore were to be picked up in Perth, so West we went, four of us in an HR Holden with the ‘canary’ scrubbed off.

We nearly didn’t make it. Against our better judgement we picked up a large German backpacker just out of Adelaide who plonked himself in the back seat and refused to budge until we reached Perth. He didn’t understand the word goodbye. He was so heavy the headlights pointed into the sky, exacerbated by our lack of low beam. One night in the middle of the Great Australian Bight we pulled off the road to bed down for the night. The road trains were noisy so we drove cross-country ‘til the roar diminished somewhat, and lay down to rest our weary heads in the soft sand. The next morning we woke to the sound of giant

waves smashing against an eighty metre cliff that was a stones throw from our campsite, with Gustaff guiding our vision heavenwards the night before, we could have sailed straight over the edge and into oblivion.

We blew a welsh plug on the Nullarbor when the temperature hit a hundred degrees in the old language. We stuffed a thong in it and limped into Perth, sold the HR to the wreckers for $100 and took off to Singapore. Alas, we were not the first to arrive, and the cheap flights had dried up. The nice lady suggested we go to Thailand, so we jumped on the train and headed for Bangkok, but alas the good citizens of Bangkok had also read Time magazine, and their cheap flights were also gone. As luck would have it, they did have some very cheap tickets to London via Romania with Tarom Airlines. The Pacific Ocean was proving an insurmountable obstacle so we turned our backs on it and continued westward. There is more than one way to skin a cat.

continued next spread >>

continued

> In London, Freddie Lakker, (remember him?) was in the process of smashing the airline cartels, which meant very cheap flights across the Atlantic, but you had to bring your own lunch. In New York we got a ‘DriveAway’. As we all know, there are many, many filthy rich people in the U.S. who own more cars than family members to drive them, so when they shift from one coast to another as they love to do, they get backpackers to drive their extra cars across for them. Whoopee!

Our own car and seven days to get to San Francisco. We stayed with some genuine Hippies up in Marion County, living in the hills off their Kellogg’s Cornflakes shares.

Greetings from Darkest Peru / Ben Laycock

potatoes. We followed the swift flowing Riobamba downstream for another three days, sheltering at night from the ceaseless rains in thatched huts, waking in fear of those little bugs that drop out of the thatch and suck your blood and infect you with an affliction that festers in your bloodstream for twenty years until one fine day you wake covered in boils that all burst, causing one to bleed to death, writhing in agony. After twenty years of anxiety we have found this not to be the case.

One fine morning we arrived at the spot marked with an X on the map, bitterly disappointed to find nothing more than a plot of sugar cane and a makeshift shack To cut a long story short, after braving the surrounded by impenetrable jungle. As we deserts of Mexico, the malaria riddled swamps approached, a small boy ran into the jungle of Guatemala, the banditos of Colombia and in fear of the white ghosts. His elder brother the volcanos of Equador we finally made it emerged from the shack, machete in hand and to Machu Pichu, a year late for the mythical gave us a chunk of cane to chew on. We gave concert. An old man in a chicha bar in Cuzco them the last of our ‘sublime’chocolate and who still spoke Cechua, the language of they gave us a guided tour of the lost city of the Incas, told us in broken Spanish, of the Vilcabamba. It was all around us. So overgrown lost city of Vilcabamba on the banks of the after five hundred years it was invisible. Giant Riobamba, way downstream from Machu trees were growing out of the walls, their roots Pichu, on the very edge of the ‘civilized’ world holding everything together. Baths carved out before you enter the vast unknown of The of the rock, fed with aqueducts, were the home Amazon. For four hundred years Vilcabamba of frogs and turtles. Butterflies filled the Inca remained undetected, until 1911 when Hiram temples. Black monkeys overhead pissed on us Bingham, riding a great British wave of 19th from a great hight, screeching with mirth.

Century exploration and plunder, stumbled across it. As for the inhabitants, the last of the We soon befriended the local campesinos, trading razor blades for oranges and aspirin Inca royalty, fleeing the merciless onslaught for tortillas. We heard chilling tales around the of the Conquistadors, they were swallowed campfire of the exploits of ‘Sendero Luminoso’ up by the jungle and never heard of again. the bunch of ruthless Maoist Revolutionaries To this day nobody knows their fate. The old that terrorized the country at the time. man drew us a mud-map on a napkin that Unbeknownst to us, we were travelling right explained how to get there. We had to follow through the very heart of their territory. One a road built by the Incas and still in good nick fellow emerged from the shadows to show us after five hundred years of constant use. After his prize possession; a wind up gramophone a days tramping we came across a clearing complete with the latest hit record. As he in the jungle. A cripple with a hair-lip ran wound the little handle, out came ‘Let’s get around the fields on all fours like a wild beast. physical, I wanna hear your body talk’.

He beckoned us to follow him to a mud hut where his mother fed us steaming purple www.benlaycock.com.au

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your art life online

the blue mountains • The Blue Mountains Botanic Garden An exhibition of marble and wood sculptures that reveal the metamorphosis of the Blue Mountains Botanic Garden through the seasons opens at the garden on 31 March.

Metamorphoo, an exhibition of works by local sculptor TONY LENNON, is based on the changes that take place in the natural world. Metamorphoo, the Greek word for metamorphosis, explores transformations – in the natural world and in folklore where people turn into plants and stones become people. The Blue Mountains Botanic Garden, Mount Tomah NSW 2758; www.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au

canberra • National Gallery of Australia Eugene von Guérard: Nature revealed, opening 27 April 2012. EUGENE VON GUÉRARD is arguably Australia’s most important colonial landscape painter. The exhibition features over 150 works, including many of von Guérard’s beloved iconic landscapes, as well as beautifully illustrated sketch books, and never-before-seen paintings. unDisclosed 2nd National Indigenous Art Triennial, opening 11 May 2012. From May 2012, the National Gallery will celebrate the second National Indigenous Art Triennial. Gallery visitors will have the opportunity to experience the dynamic visual expression of contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art. From across the country, 20 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists have been selected to represent Indigenous arts today. Open daily 10am - 5pm.

Parkes Place, Parkes, Canberra 2600. T: (02) 6240 6411, www.nga.gov.au • PhotoAccess Huw Davies Gallery 5 to 29 April KERRY BAYLOR: Saturday Morning Water; ALISON SPENCE: Milkshakes and Mixed Lollies. PhotoAccess Huw Davies Gallery, Manuka Arts Centre, Manuka Circle Griffith ACT. Tuesday to Friday 10am to 4pm, weekends 12 noon to 4pm. T: (03) 6295 7810; www.photoaccess.org.au Image: Kerry Baylor.

NSW / ACT

cowra • Cowra Regional Art Gallery See our website for this month’s exhibitions.

77 Darling Street Cowra NSW 2794. Tues to Sat 10am - 4pm, Sun 2 - 4pm. Free Admission. www.cowraartgallery.com.au

sydney • Art Gallery of New South Wales Until 3 June Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes 2012. Until 22 April ArtExpress 2012. Art Gallery Road, The Domain, Sydney NSW 2000.

T: (02) 9225 1744, www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au

• The Cardshow Fifty-eight artists: one deck of cards. 12 April – 12 May. Opening night 12 April, 6-8pm. Mori Gallery, 168 Day Street Sydney. Exhibition opening night extravaganza and silent auction of original cardworks to raise money for the Muckaty anti-nuclear waste dump campaign.

Artists featured: REG MOMBASSA, SUSAN NORRIE, SIMON YATES. Decks of cards for $20.

Opening hours Wed-Sun 11am-6pm. Come along to The Cardshow! Image: L.Rigozzi/M.SinclairFerguson/J.Zaag - www.thecardshow.org

newtown • At The Vanishing Point Inc. 22 Mar – 15 Apr: Process Emergent 2 a selection of the best 2011 Honours students – curated by PETER JOHNSON. In my mother’s house, CATHERINE KENNEDY. I’m homeless, JAMES LIEUTENANT. 19 Apr – 13 May: Box Brownie, paintings of memory and war by ELIZABETH RANKIN. The Drop-In Centre & Street Scenes, paintings by JAMES SMYTHE. Humor from my Pen, political cartoons by GERARDO HERNÁNDEZ. iWitness, BUBALOO FAHY. Hours: Thurs to Sun 10am to 6pm.

565 King Street, Newtown 2042. T (02) 9519 2340.

E info@atthevanishingpoint.com.au; www.atthevanishingpoint.com.au

windsor • Hawkesbury Regional Gallery Until 13 May: The Versatile Clints: four generations of artists. Deerubbin Centre, 1st Floor, 300 George Street Windsor 2756. T: (02) 4560 4441 F: (02) 4560 4442; Mon-Fri 10am-4pm Sat & Sun 10am-3pm, (Closed Tues and public holidays). Free admission. www.hawkesbury.nsw.gov.au

devonport • Devonport Regional Gallery Until 22 April: Main Gallery The Good, The Bad, The Ugly. Works from the Permanent Collection.

The Little Gallery Undercurrent, MAUREEN KING. Open Mon - Sat 10am-5pm, Sun and pub hols 12-5pm. 45 Stewart Street, Devonport, Tasmania 7310. E: artgallery@devonport.tas. gov.au T: (03) 6424 8296, www.devonportgallery. com IMAGE: Dale Richards, Landscape Near Manly 1987, oil on canvas.

TASMANIA

hobart • Inflight ARI Gallery Hours: Wed-Sat 1-5pm. 100 Goulburn Street, Hobart. www.inflightart.com.au IMAGE: Freunde, 2012, single channel video of Dr. Philip Nitschke reading aloud from Friedrich Nietzsche’s ‘Twilight of the Idols’ – 4 min looped, dimensions variable. Image courtesy of the artist.

• Inka Gallery Inc. Not-for-profit, artists’ run, original contemporary art. Exhibitions three-weekly. Salamanca Place, Hobart. Hours 10am-5pm,T: (03) 6223 3663 www.inkagallery.org.au; www.inkagalleryhobart. blogspot.com

• MONA, Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart Ancient, modern and contemporary art.

Monanism becomes the permanent collection evolving over time. Some pieces are moving or going, others are staying. Forever. Like SIDNEY NOLAN’s Snake (1970 – 1972). WIM DELVOYE exhibition ending 09 April, 2012. More cloacae, Tattoo Tim, carved tyres, Delft-blue shovels.

Next exhibition: June 23, Theatre of the World.

Fees: $20 adult for non-residents of Tasmania.

Autumn/winter opening hours from 30 April: 10am to 5pm, closed Tuesdays (except Tuesday after Easter). Food, bars, winery, microbrewery, accommodation, bookshop and library. 655 Main Road Berriedale, Tasmania, 7011. T: (03) 6277 9900, www.mona.net.au

box hill • Box Hill Community Arts Centre Discarded Recycled Art Competition Paper Cut, 27 March – 15 April; BERNADINE WILLIAMS and fellow artists 18 – 29 April. Box Hill Community Arts Centre 470 Station Street, Box Hill. T: (03) 9895 8888 www.bhcac.com.au

• Whitehorse Art Space Until 14 April Then & Now. Work by established potters represented in both the Ceramics Victoria and City of Whitehorse collections will be profiled in this exhibition curated by ceramicist, SUE MCFARLAND. Exhibitors include JANE ANNOIS, ROBERT BARRON, STEPHEN BENWELL, SANDRA BLACK, KEVIN BOYD, GLENN ENGLAND, PETER RUSHFORTH and CHRIS SANDERS. 19 April – 26 May 2012 AGE OF AQUARIUS: THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF PAUL COX. This travelling exhibition of photographs from Monash Gallery of Art sheds light on this overlooked aspect of PAUL COX’s work. Screenings of Paul Cox’s early short films will accompany the exhibition.

Meet Paul Cox, with Monash Gallery of Art Curator STEPHEN ZAGALA, Saturday 21 April 2012 at 2pm. Bookings essential 9262 6250.

Tues and Fri 10am - 3pm, Wed and Thurs 9am - 5pm, Saturday noon - 4pm. T: (03) 9262 6250, 1022 Whitehorse Road, Box Hill VIC 3128, www.boxhilltownhall.com.au

MELBOURNE

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brunswick • Brunswick Arts Space 14 to 29 April (opening Fri 13 April, 6-9pm) solo shows by LIZ WALKER and ANASTASIA BOOTH. Visual Masturbation by SOFT SCIENCE, KATIE PARRISH GANDRABUR, and TESSA CARAPIC. 2a Little Breese Street, Brunswick. Thu-Fri 2-6pm, Sat-Sun 12-5pm.

Brunswickarts is accepting applications for 2012, check out www.brunswickarts.com.au

• Counihan Gallery in Brunswick 5 April – 13 May: Cut with the kitchen knife: CHRISTIAN CAPURRO, SIMON EVANS, ELIZABETH GOWER, MANDY GUNN, DEBORAH KELLY, NICK MANGAN, STUART RINGHOLT, JOAN ROSS, HEATHER SHIMMEN. A NETS Victoria touring exhibition.

Curated by EMILY JONES. Gallery open Wed-Sat 11am to 5pm, Sun 1pm to 5pm. 233 Sydney Road, Brunswick 3056 T: (03) 9389 8622; www.moreland.vic.gov.au/gallery.

E: counihangallery@moreland.vic.gov.au

Love an Box Trad Women Exhibitio

burwood • Deakin University Art Gallery 18 April to 26 May Our Place: Visiting The Country We Live In. This exhibition, drawn from the Deakin University Art Collection, features many recent acquisitions. It examines symbols, contexts and narratives that have become part of the identity vernacular with artworks that challenge simple and self-congratulatory identities, sometimes contentious and challenging, sometimes playful and irreverent, but always revealing. Gallery hours 10am - 4pm Tuesday to Friday, 1 - 5pm Saturday. Closed Public Holidays, Free Entry. 221 Burwood Hwy, Burwood 3125. T: (03) 9244 5344; F: (03) 9244 5254, E: artgallery@deakin.edu.au; www. deakin.edu.au/art-collection

10 February

Our Place:

Hunt Club Comm 775 Ballarat Road T: 03 9249 4600 E: HuntClubArts@ www.brimbank.v George Matoulas Map of Australia 2009 29.5 x 34 cm Edition 5 Collagraph, chine colle Deakin University Art Collection Photography by Simon Peter Fox

deer park • Hunt Club Community Arts Centre Galleries 21 April to 26 May 2012. The Myth of Manarmakeri – the myth of the Morning Star. Selected works from the Robert Hewatt Collection. Presented by Australian Pacific Arts Network (APAN). Curated by LEANNE CLAYTON. Centre open Mon-Thurs 9am 7.30pm, Fri 9am - 4.30pm, Sat 9am -12.30pm.

Closed Public Holidays. 775 Ballarat Road, Deer Park (Melway 25, F8) T: (03) 9249 4600 E: huntclub@brimbank.vic.gov.au www.brimbank. vic.gov.au/arts

doncaster • Manningham Gallery 14 March – 14 April. The Art of Victor Greenaway, Italy 2007 – 2012. After five years of living and working in Italy, renowned ceramicist VICTOR GREENAWAY returns to Australia with a selection of ceramics and paintings that reflect the people and environment of Italy.

26 April – 12 May. Metal Madams and Mad Moments. TRISH SIDWAY’s solo exhibition brings together a selection of her whimsical sculptures that have been created through her curiosity for neglected and abandoned objects.

699 Doncaster Road, Doncaster 3108. Open Tuesday to Friday 11am to 5pm, Saturday 2 to 5pm. T: (03) 9840-9367. E: gallery@ manningham.vic.gov.au; www.manningham. vic.gov.au/gallery Free entry. Image: Victor Greenaway, Towards Sant’Angelo, Orvieto 2008, acrylic on canvas, 100 x 100cm. Courtesy the artist and Skepsi on Swanston.

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Call for Proposals

Manningham Art Gallery at Manningham City Square (MC²)

munity Arts Centre 2013 Exhibition Program For anPark Information Kit and Application Form visit www.manningham.vic.gov.au/gallery d, Deer VIC Applications close Friday 27 April, 2012.

0 @brimbank.vic.gov.au vic.gov.au/arts

east melbourne • The Johnston Collection House Museum and Gallery Fairhall: After The Meal: A Taste For Excess 5 March – 22 June. Melbourne architect and restaurateur, Pascale Gomes-McNabb rearranges William Johnston’s collection. This guided tour explores the hedonistic aspects of eating against the backdrop of Johnston’s extraordinary collection. Gallery: Pride & Ornament: The Folly of Vanity 5 March – 22 June. Explores vanity in its various forms, from the creation of beauty and concealment of physical flaws, to more complex ideas about how collecting and connoisseurship can be used to construct identity. Bookings essential www.johnstoncollection.org

eltham • Eltham South Fine Art Studios & Gallery Painting, Sculpture, Photography. Painting Classes with Jenni Mitchell. JENNI MITCHELL, GRACE MITCHELL, MERVYN HANNAN. Thurs - Sat 10am - 5.30pm. 6 Mount Pleasant Road, Eltham. T: (03) 9439 3458; M. 0417 585 102 www.ElthamFineArt.com.au E: jenni@ ElthamFineArt.com.au

• When the River meets the Sea Recent paintings by BEN LAYCOCK, The Long Gallery, Montsalvat Hillcrest Ave Eltham, 4 – 29 April. I grew up in the bush in the Dunmoochin artists enclave at Cottlesbridge, just north of Melbourne. After living in St.Kilda for many years I am now back in the bush, just outside Castlemaine. I have spent a lot of my time roaming around Australia, painting, drawing, looking and wondering. I have come to realise Australia is very old, very dry and very flat, etched and carved and shaped by countless floods till it resembles a vast canvas, painted by the weather over millions of years. Water, and the landscape it has created over millennia is my primary fascination. www.benlaycock.com.au; www.montsalvat.com.au

fitzroy • Colour Factory Gallery Backstage Pass curated by CF Gallery and made possible through the assistance of Chip Monck. Opening night Thursday April 5, 6-8pm.

Exhibition dates 6 – 28 April. 409 - 429 Gore Street, Fitzroy 3065. T: (03) 9419 8756, F: (03) 9417 5637. Gallery hours: Mon - Fri 10am - 6pm, Sat 1 - 4pm. E: Gallery@colourfactory.com.au, http://www.colourfactory.com.au/gallery/

footscray • Magnani Papers Australia Beautiful fine art papers for printmaking, painting and drawing. Mention this Trouble ad and get 10% off! 40 Buckley Street Footscray 3011. T: (03) 9689 5660, www.magnani.com.au E: james@magnani.com.au

langwarrin • McClelland Gallery + Sculpture Park 1 April to 15 July, Beyond the Self: Contemporary Portraiture from Asia. A travelling exhibition from the National Portrait Gallery.

Australia’s leading Sculpture Park and Gallery.

390 McClelland Drive, Langwarrin (Mel. Ref. 103 E3 only 45 min from St Kilda!) T: (03) 9789 1671. Gallery Hours: Tues-Sun 10am-5pm (Entry by donation). McClelland Gallery Café, Tues-Sun 10am-4.30pm. Guided Tours: Wed and Thurs 11am and 2pm, and Sat and Sun by appointment only. Prior bookings highly recommended. E: info@mcclellandgallery.com, www.mcclellandgallery.com

melbourne • Beam Contemporary Until 5 May. KARLA MARCHESI To Have and to Hold. New work from Brisbane-based painter.

Scenes of detritus are translated into objects of contemplation via an intricate realist painting style. The paintings re-imagine the still-life for an era of waste and consumption. Level 1/ 30 Guildford Lane, Melbourne VIC 3000. Opening Hours: Wed-Sat 12-6 or by appointment. T: (03) 9670 4443; E: info@beamcontemporary.com. au; www.beamcontemporary.com.au Image: Karla Marchesi, These myths no longer ring true, 2010, oil on board.

• Blindside Artist Run Space 21 March – 7 April Gallery 1: CAROLINE PHILLIPS, Easement; Gallery 2: KATE PRICE, Relics. 11 – 28 April Gallery 1: CLAIRE KROUZECKY, On The Fly; Gallery 2: LAUREN SIMMONDS, Moments of Stillness for an Evolutionary Race. Nicholas Building, 714/37 Swanston St (enter via Cathedral Arcade lifts, cnr Flinders Lane), Melbourne. Hours: Tue to Sat 12-6pm. T: (03) 9650 0093; www. blindside.org.au Image: Claire_Krouzecky, Hatched, PICA Perth, WA.

• fortyfivedownstairs 3 – 21 April, Land Like Mine – recent paintings

by NICHOLAS HARDER, painting; Without a Trace by PETER GARNICK, photography.

26 April – 13 May, Far Away by SAYSIX THEATRE, theatre. 24 April – 5 May, Gone Bush by BECK WHEELER, painting; 24 April – 5 May Unfold – works from paper curated by SALLY MCKITTRICK. 30 April, Revolution by IRONWOOD, chamber group classical music.

45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne, 3000. T: (03) 9662 9966, www.fortyfivedownstairs.com

• Matt Irwin Photographic Gallery Autumn In The City. New season by MATT IRWIN. 1 – 31 April. Matt Irwin Gallery, 239 Flinders Lane (entrance via Scott Alley), Melbourne www.mattirwin.com.au

• Print Council of Australia Inc. Printmakers and print collectors stay in touch with print exhibitions, events and technical issues through IMPRINT magazine. Members receive frequent email updates and information about opportunities (courses, forums, group exhibitions and competitions). Subscriptions $65/year or $45 concessions see website: www.printcouncil.org.au or phone T: (03) 9328 8991 for membership details

• RMIT Gallery • RMIT Gallery Touch Only Only From From The The HeartHeart Can Can You You Touch The The 12 April 9 June Drawing Sky, Sky, 12 April – 9 –June 2012.2012.

Drawing its its title from a from a poem

by JALAL AL-DIN title from a from a poem

by JALAL AL-DIN the celebrated 13th-century Persian RUMI,RUMI, the celebrated 13th-century Persian Muslim and Mystic, Sufi Mystic, this exhibition Muslim poet poet and Sufi this exhibition of of contemporary work focuses on the fusion contemporary work focuses on the fusion of of art poetry. and poetry.

Featuring paintings

by KHADIM art and Featuring paintings

by KHADIM ALI and calligraphy by ALI BABA AWRANG ALI and calligraphy by ALI BABA AWRANG and and MAMMAD AIDANI Persian sourced MAMMAD AIDANI and and Persian rugs rugs sourced from private collections.

Public Programs from private collections. Public Programs at RMIT Gallery events.

Bookings at RMIT Gallery and and free free events.

Bookings essential: (03) 9925 1717. Thurs 12 April: 12essential: (03) 9925 1717. Thurs 12 April: 121pm: Artists’ talk Afghan-Australian artists; Abdul 1pm: Artists’ talk Afghan-Australian artists; Abdul Karim Hekmat, Khadim Ali and Afghan artist, Ali Karim Hekmat, Khadim Ali and Afghan artist, Ali Baba Awrang (Kabul) Thurs 10 May: 5.30 - 7.00 Baba Awrang (Kabul) Thurs 10 May: 5.30 - 7.00 pm. Panel Discussion: Only From The Heart pm. Panel Discussion: Only From The Heart Can You Touch The Sky Dr Mammad Aidani, Can You Touch The Sky Dr Mammad Aidani, Researcher and playwright, ARC Research Researcher and playwright, ARC Research Fellow, School of Historical and Philosophical Fellow, SchoolUniversity of Historical and Philosophical Studies, of Melbourne.

Neil Grant, Afghani refugee, author: The Rugmaker of Studies, University Melbourne. refugee, author: The Rugmaker Author, The InkofBridge; editor Neil and Grant, contributorAfghani Mazar-e-Shari;The Honey Thief Thurs 24 of May: Author, The Ink Bridge; editor and contributor Mazar-e-Shari;The Honey Thief Thurs 24 The May:Kite to From Kinglake to Kabul. Pooya Mehman 5.30-7pm Art After Work film screening to From Pooya Mehman Art 2007, After Work film by screening Kite Pazir,Kinglake musician,totheKabul.

Mehr Ensemble (founded in5.30-7pm Runner, directed MARC The FORSTER. Pazir,Tehran, musician, the Mehr Ensemble (founded in Runner, 2007, directed by MARC FORSTER. 1999) Dr Gay Breyley, ethnomusicologist Daily screenings (11.30-1pm/ 1.30-3pm/3.30Tehran, 1999) Dr Gay Breyley, screenings (11.30-1pm/ 1.30-3pm/3.30and cultural historianethnomusicologist Adjunct ResearchDaily5pm) The Sweetest Embrace: Return to and Associate, cultural historian Adjunct- Conservatorium, Research 5pm)Afghanistan, The Sweetest Embrace: Return MIRZA. to School of Music 2008, directed

by NAJEEB Associate, School of Music Conservatorium, 2008, 344 directed

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T: (03) 1717 F: (03) 9925 1738. E: 1 pm/ 1.30-3pm, 3.30-5pm Gabbeh, 1996, T: (03) 9925 1717 F: (03) 1738. E: directed

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Dr Citizenship: Irregular Anne Contesting McNevin: RMIT Research Fellow.Migrants Author, and the New Frontiers ofIrregular the Political.

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moonee ponds • Incinerator Gallery It’s Never Too Late To Mend, RAYNA FAHEY. 13 April – 13 May. The Atrium Project: Filling The Void. Rotating yearlong sculpture and installation with Hatchlings by EWEN COATES. 13 April – 13 May. Opening hours: Tues to Sun, 10am-4pm. Incinerator Gallery, 180 Holmes Road, Moonee Ponds VIC 3039 T: (03) 8325 1750, E: incinerator@mvcc.vic.gov.au, www. incineratorgallery.com.au

north melbourne • Langford120 Closed for the Easter break from Mon April 2nd until Friday April 13th, except for our lecture on Wednesday April 4th from 6:30-7:45pm.

We will re-open on April 14th for the opening of ASHER BILU, M-Theory from 2-5pm. Asher Bilu, M-Theory exhibition dates: 14 April – 6 May. 120 Langford Street, North Melbourne.

Directors: IRENE BARBERIS, WILMA TABACCO. T: (03) 9328 8658; M: 0433 138 058 Gallery hours: 11am-5pm, Wed to Sat, Sun 12-4pm. E: Langford120@gmail.com; www.langford120.com.au

southbank • ACCA - Australian Centre for Contemporary Art 17 March – 20 May 2012, NEW12, presented by the Balnaves Foundation. Now in its tenth year, the NEW series is ACCA’s annual commissions exhibition for promising Australian artists, this year curated by JEFF KHAN (formerly Artistic Director of Next Wave, current Co-Director of Sydney’s Performance Space), and featuring major new works from selected artists ANGELICA MESITI (NSW), MATTHEW BRADLEY (SA), KATIE LEE (VIC), BENNETT MILLER (WA), KATE MITCHELL (NSW) and CHARLIE SOFO (VIC). Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, 111 Sturt Street, Southbank.

Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Friday 10am-5pm, Weekends and Public Holidays 11am-6pm.

Mondays by appointment. T: (03) 9697 9999.

Admission: Free. www.accaonline.org.au

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st andrews • The Baldessin Press and Studio Artists / writers retreats, workshops, studio access etc in tranquil bushland 50 kms from Melbourne. T (03) 97101350, www. baldessinpress.com

upwey • Burrinja Gallery The 60th Blake Prize. Burrinja is proud to be the exclusive Victorian venue for the 2011 Blake Prize for Religious Art. The Blake Prize was established 60 years ago as an incentive to raise the standard of contemporary religious art away from out-dated or imitative styles, until 29 April. Cnr Glenfern Rd and Matson Dr. Tue to Sun 10.30am-4pm. T: (03) 9754 8723. W: burrinja.org.au

wheelers hill • Monash Gallery of Art (MGA) 30 March–3 June 2012 Cold eels and distant thoughts curated by DJON MUNDINE OAM. 30 March–13 May 2012 Notorious: Duffy’s portrait photography. 860 Ferntree Gully Road, Wheelers Hill 3150. Tues - Fri 10am to 5pm, Sat - Sun 12 to 5pm, Closed Mon. T: (03) 8544 0500, E:mga@monash.vic.gov.au, www.mga.org.au

geelong • Geelong Gallery Belleek porcelain until 15 April. The Colin and Elizabeth Laverty Collection - a selection of Indigenous and non-Indigenous works of art until 15 April. Freshwater Saltwater - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prints until 15 April. In search of the picturesque - the architectural ruin in art 21 April to 24 June. Geelong region artists program; Industrial Desire, Gary Smith until 6 May. Little Malop Street, Geelong. T: (03) 5229 3645, www.geelonggallery.org.au, Free entry.

Open daily 10am to 5pm. Closed Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day. Image: Bernardo Bellotto, Ruins of the Forum, Rome c.

1743, oil on canvas. Collection: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Felton Bequest, 1919.

mornington peninsula • Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery Until 9 April: At first sight: Peninsula and bay photographs of JW TWYCROSS 19181925, A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition, and MICHAEL SHANNON: Australian Romantic Realist, An Art Gallery of Ballarat travelling exhibition. From 19 April – 11 June: Roy Lichtenstein: Pop remix, a National Gallery of Australia exhibition. Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Civic Reserve, Dunns Rd, Mornington VIC 3931. Tel: 03 5975 4395 Web: mprg.mornpen.vic.gov.au. Open Tuesday – Sunday and Easter Monday 10am5pm, Closed Good Friday.

BAY & PENINSULA

CENTRAL VIC ballarat • Art Gallery of Ballarat To 15 April Queen Elziabeth II by CECIL BEATON: A Diamond Jubilee Celebration, exhibition organised by the V&A. Adult $12, Concession $8, Child and Member Free. 24 March to 6 May, MARION MANIFOLD: Marie Antoinette - Through the Notebook. 31 March to 13 May, KERRIE LEISHMAN: The New Beauty?

Art Gallery of Ballarat, 40 Lydiard St Nth, Ballarat 3350. E: artgal@ballarat.vic.gov.au T: (03) 5320 5858. W: wwwartgalleryofballarat.com.au Free entry unless specified. Open daily.

• Ballarat Arts Foundation Grants Rounds for emerging artists: 1 – 31 A Diamond Jubilee Celebration March and 1 – 30 September. Visit Downloads on www.ballaratartsfoundation.org.au or T: (03) 25 February - 15 April 5332 4824 or M: 0409 352 268 Tickets $12, Conc $8. Open daily 9am - 5pm Cecil Beaton, Queen Elizabeth II, Buckingham Palace, 2 June 1953 (detail), C-type colour print. Copyright © V&A

Exhibition organised by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London

• Ballarat Arts Foundation – MIB 2012!

Anything You Can Do, 2pm, Sunday 24 June, Her Majesty’s Theatre. BAF presents another in their blockbuster series of concerts showcasing established and emerging artists ‘made in Ballarat, in a light-hearted battle of the sexes on stage featuring jazz, music theatre, opera and dance. Directed by PETER TULLOCH, with MD IAN GOVAN, arrangements by GRAEME VENDY, and hosted by BRUCE ROBERTS of WIN News, it stars ROGER LEMKE, JACQUELINE DARK, AND CHELSEA GIBB. Booking: Majestix (03) 5333 5888 or www.hermaj.com

Present your V-Line ticket for 20% discount on entry

Only Australian venue Art Gallery of Ballarat 40 Lydiard St Nth, Ballarat T. 03 5320 5858 artgalleryofballarat.com.au

• Buninyong Film Festival 4 – 5 May 2012 A great festival with fabulous films, food and atmosphere. Buninyong Town Hall, 10km south of Ballarat. Friday 4 May, 7pm: The Hunter, Australia; 10.30pm: The Skin I Live In, Spain. Saturday 5 May – 9.15am: The Human Resources Manager, Israel; 11.15am: The Illusionist, France/UK; 3.45pm: Incendies, Canada; 8pm: Buck, USA. Bookings: www. buninyong.vic.au/filmfestival

• Her Majesty’s Saturday 31 March 8pm, Stephen Sondheim’s Company from Lincoln Center New York; Wednesday 11 April 8pm, Men in Pink Tights; Saturday 14 April 1pm, National Theatre Live She Stoops to Conquer; Saturday 14 April and Sunday 15 April 8pm (Helen Macpherson Smith Theatre), Titanic the Musical; Sunday 15 April 8pm, John Butler’s Tin Shed Tales; Wednesday 18 March, 7.15pm, Greg Riley – the Afterlife; Friday 20 April 11.30am and 1.30pm. Hi-5 Holiday; Friday 20 April 7.30pm, Tap Rhythm; Sunday 29 April 1pm, MetHD Manon (Massenet). Her Majesty’s Theatre, 17 Lydiard Street South, Ballarat. Box Office/Ticket Sales: MajesTix T: (03) 5333 5888 Box Office hours - Monday to Friday, 9.15am - 5pm and one hour prior to performance starting times.

• Post Office Gallery Wed 28 March – Sat 28 April STEPHEN DAVIDSON: Island Relics. Post Office Gallery, Arts Academy, University of Ballarat.

Cnr Sturt and Lydiard St Ballarat. VIC. 3350.

Mon/Tue by appt. Wed-Sat 1-4pm. T: (03) 5327 8615, E: s.hinton@ballarat.edu.au www.ballarat.edu.au.

• Radmac “Now Showing” at the Radmac Gallery through April local photographer KEITH AGGETT along with the Ballarat Society of Artists display. Keith will also be conducting a one day workshop on Digital Photography at Radmac, bookings essential contact Radmac (03) 5333 4617.

Radmac Office Choice (incorporating Radmac Gallery) is your one stop shop for all your office and school supplies, computer consumables, copy and specialty papers, art and craft supplies, art classes (bookings essential) and much much more. Radmac 104 Armstrong Street (Nth) Ballarat 3350 T: (03) 5333 4617 Gallery Hours 8.30am to 5.30pm Mon – Fri, 9am to 12pm Sat.

RADMAC

art * graphic * office and school supplies

*we supply service* 104 Armstrong St North, Ballarat 3350 Phone (03) 5333 4617 Fax (03) 5333 4673 Email radmac@ncable.net.au

bendigo • Bendigo Art Gallery 11 March to 17 June Grace Kelly: Style Icon.

Organised by the V&A Museum, London and the Grimaldi Forum, Monaco. Introductory talks – Grace Kelly, 10.30 and 11.30am Mondays and Tuesdays (except public holidays). This month’s guest speaker is ROGER LEONG, Curator, International Fashion and Textiles at the National Gallery of Victoria, for an insight into the musthaves and must-dos of accessorising. 11.30am Friday 20 April 42 View Street, Bendigo. T: (03) 5434 6088. www.bendigoartgallery.com.au Image: Grace Kelly, 1953. © Everett Collection / Rex Features.

• The Capital Info and tickets online at www.thecapital.com.au.

T: (03) 5441 6100 or visit 50 View Street, Bendigo. Full list of shows at website.

5434 6100 www.thecapital.com.au 50 VIEW STREET BENDIGO

La T • Community & Cultural Development (CCD) www.bendigo.vic.gov.au - for arts, festivals and events info at your fingertips. Select Council Services, then Arts Festivals and Events for Events Calendar and Arts Register. The CCD Unit is an initiative of the City of Greater Bendigo. E: eventscalendar@bendigo.vic.gov. au T: (03) 5434 6464

• La Trobe University Visual Arts Centre VAC Gallery: To 6 May SYLVIA GRIFFIN, LUCAS DAVIDSON, RHONDA PRYOR, and PARISH STAPLETON – Transitory States.

Access Gallery: To 22 April Bendigo Queer Film Festival exhibition – Queer Country. 25 April – 20 May KAWAYAN DE GUIA. Gallery hours: Tue - Fri 10am-5pm, Sat - Sun 12pm-5pm. 121 View Street, Bendigo. T: (03) 5441 8724, www. latrobe.edu.au/vac

• Sonic Decadence - Undue Noise Celebrating 10 years of undue noises in central Victoria. Sat 28 April and Sun 29 April, 2pm and 8pm. Old Fire Station View St Bendigo.

More info: 0421 786 595 or http://undue.cajid. com/blog

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castlemaine • Art Supplies Castlemaine Extensive range, art gift ideas, kids art materials, 10% art student discount, special orders welcome.

Tues - Thur 9am-5pm, Fri 9am - 5.30pm, Sat 9am-1pm. 25 Hargraves Street. T: (03) 5470 5291, E: artsuppliescastlemaine@gmail.com

• Arts Officer - Jon Harris Community Activity and Culture Unit Mount Alexander Shire Council Jon Harris (Tues, Wed, Thurs, Fri) PO Box 185 Castlemaine 3450. T: (03) 5471 1793, M: 0428 394 577, E: arts@mountalexander.vic.gov.au

• Arts Open The inaugural bi-annual festival of open studios in Castlemaine and surrounding artistic enclaves.

Over 50 artists in 36 studios will throw open their doors to the connoisseur and the curious on the last weekend in April. A cornucopia of art, a plethora, a deluge. www.artsopen.com.au

• Buda Historic Home and Garden A property of national significance. Home of the creative Leviny family from 1863 to 1981, featuring their personal belongings, original furnishings and arts and crafts collection.

1.2 hectares of heritage gardens to wander including plant nursery. Textiles Award & Exhibition 2-17 June. 42 Hunter Street, Castlemaine 3450. T/F: (03) 5472 1032, W: www.budacastlemaine.org Open Wed - Sat 12 - 5, Sun 10 – 5. Groups by appointment.

• CASPA Stone and Clay – paintings and sculptures

by JOHN A SMITH and DAVID WATERS, capturing spirit and meaning as projected by the materials. Opening Fri 30 March 6pm until Sun 29 April. www.castlemainefringe. org.au/caspa Arts Open - open studios Thurs 26 – Sun 29 April BEN LAYCOCK, LILLYAN SHIRVINGTON, LORENA MORDANA www. artsopen.com.au

• Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum 10 March – 29 April RAY PEARCE: Bite. Recent ceramics and prints by this Maiden Gully artist recently featured on the ABC Arts Program.

LIONEL LINDSAY: Works from the Permanent Collection, Benefactors Gallery. Recognised as a painter, graphic artist, writer and critic, this exhibition features the complete holdings from the permanent collection with a focus on his superb woodcuts of birds and still life.

14 Lyttleton Street Castlemaine, Vic. For full list of events and exhibitions log onto: www. castlemainegallery.com

• Falkner Gallery Until 15 April: DEBRA JOHNSTON, paintings, works on paper, sculptures; ROBYN RAYNER, etchings. 19 April – 10 June: Taken CHRISTOPHER RACE and NICHOLAS SERGEANT, photography, and All Sorts of Snippets, LIZ CAFFIN, DAVID FRAZER, ANITA KLEIN, ANITA LAURENCE, ROBYN RAYNER and ILSE VAN GARDEREN, prints. 35 Templeton Street, Castlemaine Hours: 11am-5pm ThursSun T: (03) 5470 5858; E: falknergallery@tpg. com.au; W: www.falknergallery.com.au Image: Nicholas Sergeant, Transatlantic Coastline.

• Greengraphics: web and print We design anything, in web or print. Call (03) 5472 5300 or visit www.greengraphics.com.au

• Lot19 Studios and Artspace Lot 19 is an evolving artspace in the central highlands of victoria with studio spaces, an outdoor stage, a contemporary art gallery which also presents excellent music, marionette theatre, performance, and film, and an outdoor sculpture park. Gallery Opening Hours: Thurs – Fri 10-4, Sat – Sun 12-5. Lot19, Langslow Street. www.lot19art.com

• Union Studio Framers and Gallery Custom, exhibition and conservation framing.

Contemporary art and design gallery. 7 April – 20 May KIR LARWILL Small Pleasures, LISA KEARNS Tre Ordinaire. Open 7 days. 74 Mostyn Street (enter via Union St) Castlemaine. www.unionstudio.com.au T: (03) 5470 6446

kyneton • Stockroom Makers, artists and project space. 12 April – 6 May (opening Sat 14 April, 430pm) JASON WATERHOUSE, Floor; MARTIN HODGE, Gorvan and Friends; STOCKROOM PRESENTS, Rhythm and Pulse: BRYAN SPIER, RHETT D’COSTA, RENEE COSGRAVE, TROY CHRISTMASS, LIANG LUSCOMBE. Thurs-Mon 10.30am-5pm. 98 Piper Street, Kyneton 3444. T: (03) 5422 3215. www.stockroomkyneton.com

newstead • Dig Café April exhibition ROBERT POLLARD, photographs.

Closed Monday and Tuesday. Open Wednesday and Thursday 9am-4pm, Friday and Saturday 9am - late, Sunday 9am-4pm. Cnr Lyons and Panmure Streets Newstead. T: (03) 5476 2744; www.digcafe.com.au Image by Robert Pollard.

• Gathering Gathering is located in Newstead, 15 minutes from Castlemaine, 25 mins from Daylesford. We stock all original, all Australian, all handmade goods. Perfect for shopping for that special gift or for something for yourself. You can find one of a kind pieces for grownups and kids to wear, adorn yourselves with, and place in your home.

It is a space in our community to see hand making at its best. Panmure Street Newstead.

• Karen Pierce Painter, Illustrator, Art Teacher, Community Artist.

Quality prints and cards. Old Post Office Studio, 22 Panmure Street Newstead. T: (03) 5476 2459, www.karenpierceart.com Open Studio: Wed 25th to Sun 29th April. See Arts Open Castlemaine website: www.artsopen.com.au

taradale • Shelf Life Gallery at Taradale Wine and Produce Featuring: recent works (and plenty of rabbits)

by FRANK VELDZE, opening on Good Friday 6th April at Taradale Wine & Produce from 3-6pm. Don’t miss the giant gorse rabbit in the garden. It should be a great afternoon so don’t miss out - come down and enjoy a glass or two of fine wine, hot cross buns and chit chat. 6 April – 10 May as part of Arts Open. Taradale Wine and Produce, 120 High Street, Taradale.

Fri, Sat and Sun 11am - 6pm. T: (03) 5423 2828

trentham • Gold Street Studios – Workshops & Gallery Home of the handmade photograph. Until 15 April JOYCE EVANS Eternal Prague. Handmade silver gelatin photographs. Director: Ellie Young.

By appt. 700 James Lane, Trentham East 3458.

T: (03) 5424 1835; E: ellie@goldstreetstudios. com.au; www.goldstreetstudios.com.au

woodend • Woodend Art Group Easter Market WOODEND ART GROUP are holding an Easter Market on the 7th,8th and 9th April, 2012 featuring original works by leading artists of the area including RICHARD CHAMERSKI, who will be doing a demonstration on Saturday 7th at 1pm. Gold coin donation. Hours 10am to 4pm.

Woodend Railway Station Precinct, High Street Woodend. www.woodendartgroup.org.au

• Dawn Robinson & Helen Cottle Art Gallery Artists DAWN ROBINSON and HELEN COTTLE have lived and worked in the Macedon Ranges for over 20 years. Their new gallery features all original artwork, paintings in watercolour, oil and acrylic, sculpture, glassware, hand crafted glass jewellery and more. Open Thurs-Sun 10am-4pm and most public holidays. After hours gallery visits are available by special arrangement. 42B Anslow Street, Woodend. Dawn: 0411 025 445 E: dawn@ muddyduckdesigns.com; www.muddyduckdesigns. com Helen: 0407 679 339 E: helen@helencottle. com.au; www.helencottle.com.au

EASTERN VIC gippsland • KW Abstract Art KERRIE WARREN, Abstract Expressionist opens her studio on the 1st Sunday of every month. A great opportunity to view and purchase large works on canvas and stoneware ceramics. Visit the website for details... www.kerriewarren.com.au

• Gecko Studio Gallery Freestone Printmakers - prints from FREESTONE PRESS printmakers, Briagolong. 25 March to 21 April. ABIGAIL VAN ROOYEN - Black Dog, paintings and printmaking. 22 April to 19 May. Opening Sunday 22 April from 2-5pm.Gecko Studio Gallery, 15 Falls Road, Fish Creek, Vic 3959 E: framing@geckostudiogallery.com.au T: (03) 5683 2481, www.geckostudiogallery.com.au Open 10 – 5pm, Thur to Mon.

• The 7th Great Southern Portrait Prize 2012 Presented by Prom Coast Arts Council Inc with assistance from South Gippsland Shire Council. The subject of the portrait must be a Gippsland resident but the artist can be from anywhere. One entry per artist. Open Section 1st Prize $1000, 2nd Prize $500, Popular Choice $500; Junior 1st $100, Popular Choice $100.

Exhibition held at Stockyard Gallery, Foster between April 19 and May 5. Public forum on portraiture at Fish Creek Town Hall, evening of Sat April 28. Announcements Sun April 29 at 2.30pm at Stockyard Gallery. More info at www. promcoastarts.org.au or www.geckostudiogallery. com.au IMAGE: Waiting by Cassandra Rijs (detail), Open section winner in 2011.

healesville • TarraWarra Museum of Art 25 February – 27 May 2012 BRIAN CASTRO, KHAI LIEW, JOHN YOUNG: Passages. Passages is a collaborative project which presents an enticing combination of thought-provoking literature, elegant design and fine art. In bringing together the writings of Brian Castro, furniture of Khai Liew, and paintings of John Young, fresh dialogues and dynamic correspondences emerge and are exchanged between these divergent creative practices. SUE SAXON and JANE BECKER: All that is solid melts into air.

A site-specific project conceived as a response to ‘a prevailing anxiety and uncertainty in the natural and socio-political spheres - an increasing awareness of our vulnerability to uncontrollable destabilising forces’. CHIHARU SHIOTA: State of Being. This internationally acclaimed artist has transformed the Vista Walk at TWMA, weaving a dense network of black yarn which proliferates in countless layers throughout the space. Before the imperative of scale: Selected works from the TWMA collection. Featuring works by the giants of modernism of the 1950s and 1960s the exhibition explores a period when Australian artists tended to produce works on a smaller scale. For public programs and events at TWMA please visit website. TarraWarra Museum of Art, 311 Healesville-Yarra Glen Road, Healesville VIC, 3777; www.twma.com.au Image: Chiharu Shiota, State of Being (installation detail) 2012, double bass, violin and black wool © Chiharu Shiota.

MURRAY RIVER mildura • The Art Vault To 9 April: TERRY MATASSONI On the River main gallery; DONNIE BYRNE Skulls & Flowers small gallery; 11 – 30 April: GRAEME PEEBLES Miniature Mezzotints small gallery; ANNE SPUDVILAS The Unknown Wearer main gallery.

Artists in residence: JULIAN TWIGG; NATASHA DANILOFF; GRAEME PEEBLES; ANNE SPUDVILAS. Image: Graeme Peebles, Abalone 2010, mezzotint, 20h x 26cm.

• Mildura Arts Centre Until 4 June 2012, Picturing Mother and Child: The Cunningham Dax Collection. Venue: Sunraysia Mallee Ethnic Communities Council, 38-40 Madden Avenue, Mildura. Open Mon Fri: 9am-5pm. Mildura Arts Centre Regional Gallery is closed while the Centre undertakes an exciting redevelopment of Mildura’s arts and cultural precinct. For details on Mildura Arts Centre Outreach projects, see our website for more information. 199 Cureton Avenue, Mildura VIC 3500. T: (03) 5018 8330; F: (03) 5021 1462; www.milduraartscentre.com.au Image: Barrie Bales at the ABC OPEN workshop.

swan hill • Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery Swan Hill Print and Drawing Acquisitive Awards 2012, 13 May – 8 July. Horseshoe Bend, Swan Hill 3585. www.swanhill.vic.gov.au/gallery; T: (03) 5036 2430

Swan Hill Print & Drawing Acquisitive Award 2010 Winning Print: Deborah WIlliams, Pause 2009, engraving and roulette intaglio, 71 x 89 cm.

benalla • Benalla Art Gallery Of Love and War, Australian War Memorial Touring exhibition 5 April to 10 June. Bridge Street, Benalla, Victoria, 3672. Opening hours 10am-5pm. T: (03) 5760 2619. E: gallery@ benalla.vic.gov.au; Please check the website for details: www.benallaartgallery.com

NORTHERN VIC

• Wangaratta Visitor Information Centre 2 – 29 April 2012, A Little Black Dress – A Display of Young Talent in Textiles - Wangaratta Visitor Information Centre, 100 Murphy Street, Wangaratta. Free entry. Open daily 9am to 5pm, Centre Coordinator: Wendy Heddle, Exhibition Coordinator: Erin Ritchie, T: (03) 5721 5711, T: 1800 801 065 F: (03) 5721 9867. E: tourism@ wangaratta.vic.gov.au

ararat • Ararat Regional Art Gallery Town Hall, Vincent Street. Mon, Wed to Fri 10am – 4.30pm, w/ends 12 - 4pm. T: (03) 5352 2836 facebook.com/araratgallery

hamilton • Hamilton Art Gallery Wine Labels from the Cassidy Collection. Until 3 June. Collector ANNE CASSIDY donated her collection of silver wine labels to the collection in 2011. The size of this collection gives a clear image of the evolution of wine and sauce labels in an era when we no longer use or make this staple of the silversmiths production. 107 Brown Street, Mon - Fri 10am - 5pm, Sat 10am - 12pm and 2 - 5pm, Sun 2 - 5pm. T: (03) 5573 0460, E: info@hamiltongallery.org, W: www. hamiltongallery.org Image: Sherry Label, 183940, sterling silver. Reily & Storer, London.

WESTERN VIC

horsham â&#x20AC;˘ Horsham Regional Art Gallery Until 15 April, TIM HANDFIELD: Fascinated.

Contemporary images by a leading exponent of New Colour Photography since late 70s, through his engagement in cutting edge digital technology. 21 Roberts Ave, Horsham. TuesFri 10am-5pm, Sat-Sun 1-4.30pm. T: (03) 5362 2888; E: hrag@hrcc.vic.gov.au; www. horshamartgallery.com.au

natimuk â&#x20AC;˘ Goat Gallery A new show every month featuring the widely ranging skills of local artists. 87a Main Street.

Weekends 1 - 4pm and by appointment.

M: 0418 997 785 www.goatgallery.com.au

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