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Now in its third year, the Environmental Art & Design Prize brings together a community of creatives to highlight our environmental concerns and hopes across the nation.  The works selected present fresh perspectives on our global climate crisis and sustainable life on earth.  They will be on show in an outstanding exhibition of art and design from 4 – 27 August at Manly Art Gallery & Museum, Curl Curl Creative Space and Mona Vale Creative Space Gallery. '

Thanks for listening 

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Many thanks to Simone for your time.

We so enjoyed talking to you, you can find out more about Simone on her website

https://www.simonedouglas.info/biography

or on her social media https://www.instagram.com/simonedouglasstudio/

Simone will be talking at National Art school this Wednesday at Art Forum.

You can out more about Simone's last exhibition in Sydney at Artreal her in this link  https://artereal.com.au/online-exhibition/an-ocean-in-your-hand/

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Henry Curchod is a fabulous story telling artist who we have long admired who works predomentially in oil stick - we had a chance to chat with him over zoom https://www.henrycurchod.com as he is currently living in UK. You can find out more about Henry on his website instagram account. https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=henry+curchod+instagram&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Henry is an eclectic and interesting artist who is a keen user or multiple perspectives inspired by Persian miniature art - also the inventor with his Uncle of the new art movement 'Monobrowism' - a combination of work that is high and low brow.  The manifesto is written on to toilet paper its on Henry's instagram.

Check out his social media to find out where and when Henry is showing his work. He currently has a work in the Sulman and will be at the Ramsay show from 27 May - 27 August https://www.agsa.sa.gov.au/whats-on/exhibitions/ramsay-art-prize-2023/henry-curchod

Many thanks Henry for your time. 

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Kirsteen Pieterse is a sculptor who grew up near the mining pits of Glasgow and lived and worked in the bustling industrial city of Hong Kong, resulting in her amazing sculptures which integrate and contrast brutalist architecture with organic form.

‘The Scottish sculptor Kirsteen Pieterse, who is an artist in the Romantic tradition, draws upon the precarious relationship between man and built environments in her work....she draws attention to the regard we hold for our environment and how easily we might forget the power of nature. Modern architecture and engineering represent, in many ways, the epitome of humankind's 'taming' of the natural world, however, as Pieterse infers in her sculptures, the ramifications of such endeavours should not be neglected."”

- Kate Bryan - Deconstructing Landscape, World Sculpture News, Volume 15 No 4, p. 42 – 45, 2009

She is represented by Utopia Art Gallery in Sydney. 

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Many thanks to Anthony white for a great chat over Zoom all the way from France.

His upcoming show -

OPENING/PRIVATE VIEW:SATURDAY 15 JULY
12PM-4PM
FLOOR TALK WITH DR PETER HILL SATURDAY 15 JULY EXHIBITION CONTINUES 30 JULY 2023 MELBOURNE AUSTRALIA
 Please note this event is free but booking is advised: [email protected] or +61 409 409 239
Lennox St. Gallery presents Manifestation, an exhibition of new works by Paris-based artist Anthony White. Marking a new direction for the artist, Manifestation consists of a series of 10 paintings responding to Sidney Nolan’s 1966 Eureka Stockade mural in which White reclaims the painterly gesture as a form of dissent. This is White's third solo show with the gallery, his first in the new space as Lennox St. Gallery and his first body of work made as a response to a single work of art.
White draws on new research into the 1854 Eureka Rebellion (Australia’s only ever armed civil uprising), the personal papers of Sidney Nolan and recent protest events in France, highlighting the increasing importance of his engagement with material, concept and history. Painted in France during a period marked by widespread public protests, these ten new works continue White’s wider thinking around the painterly gesture as a form of dissent, as well as the act of civil disobedience, or, in French, Manifestation – a protest, public event, action, or object which embodies an idea.
Following White’s recent creative fellowship at the National Library of Australia, Canberra,
 Manifestation responds to the anti-colonial spirit in Sidney Nolan’s Eureka Stockade mural which White spent time with in Canberra at ANU’s Drill Hall Gallery. Commissioned by the Reserve Bank of Australia, the mural depicts the pivotal event of the Victorian gold rush – a crucial point in Australia’s democratic history. White’s research into the papers of Sidney Nolan at the National Library, uncovered correspondence which reveals Nolan’s response to the only first hand account of the Eureka rebellion written by the Italian revolutionary Rafaello Carboni. Manifestation considers Nolan’s engagement with that European vision of the event, the legacy of Eureka and the development of a
 particular Australian psyche typified by a defence of democratic values.

 Each work incorporates an event or individual element from the Eureka battle as depicted in the Nolan mural: Hotham incorporates imagery resembling mounted policemen; Eureka Hotel and the largest work Manifest (After Eureka) 125 x 235 cm [shown above] depict the epic destruction of Bentley’s Eureka Hotel caused by a fire started by rioting miners on the 12th of October 1854. In each work White finds equivalent ways of harnessing the energy and dissenting spirit of the battle.
“I went to the Nolan archive to capture this anti-colonial spirit inherent in some of the images of the mural to emphasize the sense of dissent but what struck me was the ethnic diversity of the period in Victoria. What I found was Chinese, Italian, African Americans, Jewish and Irish migrants revolting against the colonial government. It manifested as the Eureka Rebellion which became a crucial part of Australia’s engagement with democracy”
 In the current moment we are seeing the increasing relevance of civil disobedience in movements such as The Yellow Vests in France and groups like Extinction Rebellion protesting for climate change, increasing class inequalities or retirement ages. In my mind there is no doubt that the power of democracy is diminishing internationally and I feel we need to voice our discontent with government policies that infringe on personal liberty, especially the right to protest peacefully.” – Anthony White

You can find out more about Anthony on his website 

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This weeks podcast is a short ramble wrapping up the season before we have a short break over the school holidays. Julie's daughter, Flo, asks us questions about Fionas experience at art school, our work, and our upcoming exhibition at Woollahra gallery at Redleaf opening July 26th 6-8pm.

Woollahra Gallery 

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Glenn Barkley is a busy man! He has written a brilliant book on Ceramics, 'Ceramics: An Atlas of Forms', (published by Thames and Hudson), a global cultural study of the history of ceramics, sharing the stories of over 100 objects, honouring the artists who have left their mark on this timeless practice. This coincides with the curation of an upcoming show at the AGNSW, brick vase clay cup jug, a look at the Gallery’s collection - July 1 2023 - Jan 2024. 

'Barkley was previously senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (2008–14) and curator of the University of Wollongong Art Collection (1996–2007).

He was a finalist in the 2017 Sidney Myer Ceramics Award and is held in numerous collections both nationally and internationally, including the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Shepparton Art Museum and Artbank, Sydney.'

He is represented by Sullivan and Strumpf. 

Congratulations Glenn, so great to meet you and find out all about you and your work. Cant wait to read your new book....

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This week we spoke to artist Ida Lawrence, who Fiona heard giving a lecture at NAS and asked if we could speak to her back in Berlin over zoom. Ida has spent time in Indonesia, Australia and now Germany practising as an artist. She is a really interesting artist and we hope you enjoy listening to her stories. 

'Ida Lawrence is a visual artist who weaves stories through her art and education projects.

My narrative paintings combine text and images to tell stories of (mis)understanding, (dis)connection, generosity, failure and surprise. They make a big deal out of small observations, tiny gestures and little feelings I’ve experienced or imagined.

I enjoy playing with the ‘visual language’ of painting — how images can have multiple meanings and how the ways a painting is made including its ‘abstract’ and painterly qualities can contribute to or subvert the story being told. While each work contains its own visual logic, many of my paintings let their own construction process (or illusion of it) remain visible: patterns disintegrate through imperfect repetition, mistakes are crudely crossed out, a work might be painted on the floor allowing elements to be painted at all angles, and images on the one canvas might be portrayed through a variety of techniques and degrees of detail.'

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Antonia Perricone Mrjak invited us to interview herself and fellow studio mates so we said yes! We focussed on shared studio space as the theme. It was a really interesting chat about what they love and hate about sharing a space. A shared studio space creates a community for artists, a source of inspiration and a support network. Of course we wanted to move in y the end of the conversation.

We recorded the interview at Nanda Hobbs so thanks to Ralph Hobbs and staff.

list of artists interviewed -

Antonia Perricone Mrjak
Marissa Purcell
Graziela Guardino
Michael Simms
Annalisa Ferraris
Caroline Zilinksy

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Thanks to Catherine O'Donnell for speaking to us in her lunchbreak from teaching at the National Art School. We spoke to Catherine about her drawing practice, coming to art later in life, judging an art prize, and her love of the fibro shack! 

She has an exhibition coming up at Campbelltown Arts Centre in July and at Dominik Mersch in August. 

'Essentially my artist practice is about the beauty of the uncelebrated and ordinary.

My drawings an exploration of the architecture, culture and history in the everyday-ness of the urban environment. I see the suburbs as full of connection and disconnection, sameness and difference; in short, my drawings examine suburban living as a site of complexity. I am particularly interested in the way that the vernacular architecture and general street scapes of the places we regularly inhabit become recessed into our minds like wallpaper -they are at once visible and invisible.

It is the architecture of the suburban landscape which is the subject in my drawings. The absence of the representation of people in the drawings encourages viewers to consider the architecture from their own view point, perhaps igniting their own memories of suburban living. My drawings whilst uninhabited still capture traces of human intervention with narrative elements embedded in the commonplace structures: an open window; a door ajar.

My drawings are clearly representational but the realism in my work is not merely a reproduction of the visible. It is the elevation of the abstract form, the underpinning geometry and the distillation of the spatial composition that interests me. To this end I extract the building from its surroundings, deleting extraneous information, in order to emphasize the simplified form and obtain the final image. I use representation as a catalyst to ignite the imagination of the viewer and invite them to look beyond the mundane and banal. To revisit these spaces imaginatively and find the aesthetic poetry embedded within in the suburban landscape, while at the same time disrupting cultural prejudices which prevent people from seeing the underlying elegance of these simple buildings.'