Sunday Arts Magazine

As Australian musicians continue the long road to recovery through the continued COVID-19 crisis, thousands of devoted music-lovers are showing their support through Melbourne Recital Centre’s Local Artist Appeal.

The Centre is on track to raise a staggering $1 million for local Australian artists this year, with over $480,000 received since the Appeal launched.

The fund ensures artists are guaranteed performance and commissioning fees for their work, despite an uncertain and ever-changing environment, where arts venues have been forced to close their doors multiple times. More than 190 artists have benefitted from the Local Artist Appeal already, with over $320,000 of the total raised distributed so far.

This vital support is enabling local artists to keep performing at Melbourne Recital Centre, sharing their music with audiences who are equally passionate about it. Over 198 different activities have been supported including live concerts, digital broadcasts, outdoor DJ sets, recording sessions, open rehearsals, outdoor stage performances, projections and Learning and Access programs to help bring music into the lives of Victorians of all ages who are experiencing disadvantage.

Artists who have benefitted inclu

Melbourne-based artist Diena Georgetti

has been awarded the 2021 Geelong

contemporary art prize for her painting

AMPERSAND 2020.

The selection panel included eminent

art historians and curators, Jenepher

Duncan and Grazia Gunn and Geelong

Gallery Director & CEO, Jason Smith,

who were drawn to AMPERSAND for its

conceptual poise and eloquent formal

composition.

The painting extends Diena Georgetti’s

idiosyncratic approach to picture-making

as she assembles and juxtaposes

abstract images and references to

art historical precedents, along with

modernist aesthetics, including design

and fashion. These reference points

are drawn from books, archives and the

internet, and function as Georgetti’s

eclectic image-bank, but her sources

remain elusive. It is a creative process of

sampling that reworks real and archival

fragments in the spirit of historical

collage while exploring the literal and

metaphorical ways in which images are

framed for the viewer.

AMPERSAND is an enigmatic and

compelling work, melding formal

painterly references to both analytical

and synthetic Cubism, with a fugitive

figuration that recalls the Classical nude

pose and the enfolding pathos of Henry

Moore’s sculpture and drawing. The

central configuration of this painting

reflects the inward twist and turn of its

title AMPERSAND, that archaic sign for

notating the endless possibilities of

the word ‘and’ to a thought or narrative.

Above all, the judges agreed that a

relevant contemporary humanism

pervades AMPERSAND, opening-up this

precisely constructed but poetic image

to many readings and interpretations.

The judges also wish to acknowledge

the contemporary relevance and

excellent quality of the works of

the twenty-eight finalists who were

selected from an Australia-wide field of

over 600 entries, and who are among

the country’s finest established and

emerging artists.

The announcement of the the Prize

will be made by Geelong Gallery on

Monday 31 May at 5.00pm. Follow

@GeelongGallery on Facebook,

Instagram or Twitter for more.

Geelong Gallery wishes to thank the

Dimmick Charitable Trust for generously

sponsoring this signature event.

The Prize is acquisitive and assists

the ongoing growth of the Gallery’s

collection, while also promoting

Australian painting and contemporary

artists.

Due to Government and health authority

advice, Geelong Gallery is temporarily

closed until at least Friday 4 June. The

Gallery will re-open when government

health authorities deem it reasonable

to do so, with the 2021 Geelong

contemporary art prize on display until

Sunday 22 August.

About the artist

Diena Georgetti was born in Alice

Springs and currently lives in Melbourne.

Victoria’s writers have the opportunity to enter the renowned Melbourne Prize

for Literature and Awards – one of Australia’s most prestigious and valuable literary prizes.

Promoting Melbourne as a lively UNESCO City of Literature, a prize and awards pool

valued at over $90,000 will offer significant opportunities to published Victorian authors,

across all literary genres, through the Melbourne Prize for Literature 2021 and Awards.

This year marks the 17th year of the annual Melbourne Prize, which runs in a three-year

cycle providing significant opportunities to Victorian musicians, writers and sculptors.

Through community investment partnerships, the Prize program recognises and rewards

excellence and talent and inspires creative development to enrich public life.

Running for THREE SHOWS ONLY at the Meat Market Stables this June, The Regina Monologues is an engaging

new interactive theatrescape from 24 Carrot Production’s Director/Writer, Sharmini Kumar. A celebration of

some of our strongest and most powerful women across history, this premiere event features an intriguing array

of stories from the past that illuminate how we live today.

Performed by a 13 strong cast of fresh and diverse actors from the local arts community, The Regina Monologues

offers Melbourne’s art and history lovers the chance to immerse themselves in an evening where everyone has

the potential to experience a different show. From Persephone and Queen Njinga to Princess Sophia Duleep

Singh and Eleanor of Aquitaine; who will you choose to meet?

Holding court across three rooms at the same time, The Regina Monologues is a series of solo performances

based on royal women from varying times and places. These are not your Disney Princesses – they’re more com-

plicated and less virtuous, they don’t all learn lessons, and they don’t all get happy endings.

“A friend of mine suggested I write a piece about some of England’s early Queens, so started researching them

and realised how fascinating they were.” explains Sharmini Kumar. “Then I began looking at other royal female

figures throughout history, and this event is the result of that. I think I’ve had the most fun with the characters

that aren’t well known; learning about them and discovering things about these women that are incredibly relata-

ble. Also, as the pieces are running concurrently across three different rooms, the audience will have some control

over which monologues they see but it’s not possible to see everything, so they’ll need to choose carefully. I really

like the idea of challenging an audience to make decisions so each person has a unique experience.”

Formed by theatre and filmmaker Sharmini Kumar with a view to re-imagine and re-invigorate our most loved

classics for contemporary audiences, 24 Carrot Productions has been creating new works since 2011. Past pro-

ductions include 2 Gentlemen, The Complete Works of Shakespeare, The Importance of Being Ernest, Shakespeare

in Therapy, The Margins of Persuasion and the ever-popular annual Austen Con.

Their latest offering, The Regina Monologues sees thirteen Queens delve into conversations about gender and

power, with humour and heart.

Monet, Renoir, Pissarro and more: 100+ masterpieces of French Impressionism come to Melbourne direct from Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts 

French Impressionism | NGV International | 4 June – 3 October 2021 | 

In an international exclusive, the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) will present a major exhibition of more than 100 masterworks of French Impressionism in partnership with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), an institution renowned world-wide for its rich holdings of Impressionist paintings. Opening in June 2021 as part of the Melbourne Winter Masterpieces exhibition series, French Impressionism will feature works by Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, Mary Cassatt and more – including 79 that have never-before-been exhibited in Australia. These important loans from the MFA’s iconic collection provide the rare opportunity to see a significant grouping of Impressionist masterworks in Australia.  

French Impressionism will chart the trajectory of the late-nineteenth century artistic movement, highlighting the key milestones and figures at the centre of this period of experimentation and revolution in modern art. Through an arresting display of paintings and works on paper that showcases the breadth of the movement, the exhibition will evoke the artistic energy and intellectual dynamism of the period by placing emphasis on the thoughts and observations of the artists themselves, revealing the social connections, artistic influences and personal relationships that united the group of radical practitioners at the centre of this new art movement. 

Presented thematically across ten sections, the exhibition will open with early works by Monet and his forebears, Eugène Boudin and painters of the Barbizon School, illustrating their profound influence on Monet’s use of the then radical method of painting outdoors en plein air (‘in the open air’) to capture changing conditions in nature. 

The growth of the movement in subsequent decades is mapped through an exploration of the favoured subjects and ideas of the Impressionists. Moving through an immersive exhibition design, audiences will experience the hallmarks of Impressionism, including distinctive brushwork, unique points of view, arresting use of colour, as well as places dear to the artists, such as Paris, Fontainebleau Forest, Pontoise, Giverny, the Normandy coast and the South of France. Many artists also placed equal weight on recording movement and change in urban and domestic realms. Still life paintings, intimate interiors and street scenes by such artists as Manet, Renoir and Gustave Caillebotte will also feature.

These broader themes are punctuated by focused sections of the exhibition that examine significant moments and characteristics in the practices of a selection of artists, including Renoir and his experimentation with pictorial effects in the 1880s, as well as Pissarro and his role as mentor to a number of other artists.

An exhibition highlight will be a breathtaking display of sixteen canvases by Claude Monet, arranged in an immersive display reminiscent of the distinctive, oval gallery Monet helped design for his famous Water Lilies at the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, between 1922 and his death in 1926. Painted over a thirty-year period, these paintings depict many of Monet’s most beloved scenes of nature in Argenteuil, the Normandy coast, the Mediterranean coast and his extraordinary garden in Giverny. Together, these paintings demonstrate the full scope of the artist’s immeasurable contribution to the Impressionist movement. 

MFA Boston’s significant collection of French I...

Stephen talks to David about the latest films.

 

Over a year in the making, Gorman and Arts Project Australia have come together to create a line showcasing the creative vibrancy inherent to both organisations.

“This collection is a celebration of the talented individuals and the APA community more broadly, with who my team and I have worked alongside to develop this range,” says Gorman founder and creative director Lisa Gorman.

The work of APA artists Georgia Szmerling, Rebecca Scibilia, Robin Warren, Julian Martin, Robyn Doherty, Anthony Romagnano, Robert Brown and Fiona Longhurst appear at Gorman’s 40 stores across Australia and their online store

From Aussie classics to contemporary concept cars, Dream Factory takes a tour through almost 60 years of design by way of rarely seen drawings, models, photographs, film and memories from key designers, showcasing one of Australia’s most important industrial design studios, the Technical Centre, at Fishermans Bend.

City Gallery, Melbourne Town Hall – 17 May to 31 August 2021

Jia Jia Chen – Dream my Monaro, 2020 (City of Melbourne Art and Heritage Collection)

“Dream Factory is a celebration of form and function and demonstrates how the successful design and production of complex industrial objects put Australia on the post war global stage of

automotive design”, says curator Harriet Edquist.

Opened in 1964 and scarcely known outside the world of GMH, the Technical Centre was a powerhouse of design and one of the most successful industrial design studios in Australia. 

The drawings on display represent the work of nine designers covering a span of more than 50 years. Accompanied by quotations about style, technique and intent, the exhibition explores the activity of design and Australia’s industrial design history.

Some of GMH’s most significant and recognised cars are represented – the HK and HQ Monaro (Wheels Magazine’s Car of the Year in 1968), the LC and LJ Torana, the Statesman, the VN and VT Commodore, the Bathurst TR-X Torana and the eye-catching Hurricane concept car, on display as a scale model (on loan from the GMH).

Dream Factory also features a commissioned work by ceramicist Jia Jia Chen, Dream my Monaro.  The scale model is both a homage to those who lovingly embellish their cars, and an envisioning of Jia Jia’s own ‘dream machine’ fabrication.

The Fishermans Bend studio is emblematic of the area’s strong history of research, design and technical innovation, determining what came off the production lines in Melbourne and other GMH production centres in Australia.

It was one of only three GM design centres in the world, the other two located in Detroit, the home of GM and in Rüsselsheim am Main, Germany.

The launch of the Technical Centre in June 1964 coincided with the opening in Germany.  On launch day, the public were allowed to visit the buildings, to walk freely among its exhibits, then from that day on, the studios were forever closed to the public.

The Technical centre was an integral part of Australia’s booming post-war manufacturing sector, demanding new plants, specialised facilities and head offices. Melbourne based architects Stephenson & Turner were commissioned to design the Technical Centre in their well-tuned idiom of rationalist modernism.  Plans for the building and interior artwork are also on display.

The City of Melbourne is proud to present Dream Factory in the City Gallery, to shine a light on the highly successful and important era of design excellence nationally and internationally, all from within the city perimeter.

The City Gallery is a small exhibition space in Melbourne Town Hall which features central Melbourne-themed exhibitions. It commo

Launch of Sofia Chapman’s first book in print, Todd in Venice, with scenes played by Alex Beyer as the young and beautiful gay boy Todd and Sofia as the transitioning character Agnes, and live accordion music.

Launch of Sofia Chapman’s Todd in Venice, which premiered at La Mama in 2017, including scenes played by Alex Beyer as the young and beautiful gay boy Todd and Sofia as the transitioning character Agnes, with live accordion music.

Tez Frost is a Guinness World Record holder and award winning director known for The Whistleblower (2019) starring Tang Wei. Tez has also served on the Disney writing team in China.

His films have screened at international festivals such as Frameline: San Francisco International Film Festival and Adelaide International Youth Film Festival and has won film awards including the Jury Prize at the Las Vegas International Film Festival. Tez is based in his home country Australia.