Ten New Sydney Art Exhibitions for September to Help You Ring in Spring
We see your bursting flower buds and baby spring animals, and raise you ten must-see art exhibitions.
Ten New Sydney Art Exhibitions for September to Help You Ring in Spring
We see your bursting flower buds and baby spring animals, and raise you ten must-see art exhibitions.
It's the perfect time of year to be exploring art talent that Sydney has to offer. But with so much going on, deciding how to spend these precious days can require a lot of brain-power.
So we've picked out a diverse list of art tours, galleries and performances that are being shown around the city this month, and all are bound to strike a chord. This year there's everything from philosophical contemporary art and dream-inspired performances, to tours of Sydney through the lens of brutalist architecture, and Justine Varga's 'cameraless photography'. All you need to do is show up.
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Artist Rochelle Haley is unveiling her new performance work at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Art Centre, and you are officially invited to get involved. Taking place from September 23-24, Afterglow presents a rare opportunity to physically engage with an artwork, as it explores Haley’s interest in movement patterns across both choreography and painting, and the possibility of interdisciplinary communication.
Working this time with textile artist Kate Scardifield and choreographer Brooke Stamp, Haley will create both an art installation and a space for 20 dancers to perform alongside it. Their costumes will deliberately echo the colours and shapes of the abstract installation, which explores movement’s ability to baffle the eye and “disguise objects in plain sight”. Expect reflective shapes, metallic surfaces, coloured lights and movable walls.
Wondering where you come in? Well, when you arrive you’ll be given “cape-like wearables” akin to that of the dancer’s, sweeping you along with them into the moving compositional elements of the installation. It sounds pretty fluid and just-see-what-happens: Haley is keenly interested in experimenting with the ideas of containment and escape in relation to the division between audience and performer. .And no, you don’t get to keep the cape.
Afterglow lasts 15-20 minutes and takes place every hour from 10am to 5pm.
Image: Rochelle Haley, Afterglow rehearsal with Angela Goh and Ivey Wawn, 2017, photo Jessica Maurer
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Underbelly Arts is in its tenth year, and what better way to celebrate than with a new festival director, 21 brand spanking new commissioned artist projects and a new home at the National Art School?
If you’re a first-timer, this is how it works. First up: the Arts Lab. Artists spend a two-week residency working on what will become their exhibited festival work(s). You can visit the Lab for a behind-the-scenes glimpse into their progress (6pm tours will run Tuesdays to Thursdays from September 25 – October 6). The lab fosters collaboration between the artists and simultaneously opens up the artistic process to the public. Next is the festival (October 7 – 8), where all is revealed — and you get to spend blissful hours wandering around incredible contemporary, experimental art and having the occasional snack.
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Bundanon Trust’s annual SITEWORKS is back, with this year’s theme, The Birds & The Bees, bringing together a motley crew of environmentalists, scientists and contemporary artists for an unusual weekend. Held over a full day and night on Saturday, September 23 at Bundanon Homestead (former home and studio of iconic Australian artist Arthur Boyd), you can spend the daylight hours exploring the quirky festivities on offer and then camp overnight on the historic property.
So what exactly will you be doing? First, the art: select invited artists have created site-specific works exploring this year’s theme, turning the Homestead into a giant hive filled with sonic interpretations, installations and live performance. If you find yourself similarly inspired, there’ll be life drawing sessions, a candle-making workshop and the opportunity to sculpt birds from natural and foraged materials.
It’s potentially eccentric but guaranteed to be one of the most original weekends this year. Check out the full program here.
Image: Deborah Kelly, The Birth of Beenus (remix), 2017, commissioned by Bundanon Trust specifically for Siteworks, The Birds & The Bees
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Artereal Gallery are hosting a new series designed to fill in the gaps in your contemporary art knowledge. You can now head along to the Rozelle gallery every Saturday at 11am for their free event, Contemporary Art 101: A Beginner’s Guide to Understanding Contemporary Art.
Basically it’s a chance to get a guided tour through the current exhibition (in September you’ll see Points of Interception, the latest show from Sydney-based artist Yioryios) followed by a Q&A where you can pick the brains of a resident art aficionado. The aim is to remove “the intimidation factor” and cover everything you need to know about new and experimental mediums like video art, installation and new media art. The curators will also discuss online sales, art fairs and – for the aspiring collectors in the crowd – how to best navigate them to acquire contemporary art.
So mosey over and learn some stuff. Then you can head to lunch feeling smug with all your new art knowledge. Maybe buy a beret.
Image: Sam Holt, Suspension of Hope, 2017, oil and acrylic on Belgian linen, photo by Zan Wimberley
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In her first solo exhibition at the Australian Centre for Photography, Justine Varga invites viewers to experience a large-scale installation that immerses them in photography’s unique means of production.
A deeply thoughtful artist who uses analogue techniques, sometimes with a camera and sometimes without one (oh, what, you didn’t know cameraless photography was a thing?), Varga is interested in complicating a viewers experience of both time and ‘looking’, inviting them to join her in interrogating the photographic process itself.
In Photogenic Drawing this process is put on display through a dense layering of test strips – incomplete pieces of a photo that the artist explains as ‘not quite photographs’. The result is a rare insight into the decisions made in a photographer’s studio and lab, where photographs are ‘tested, transformed, rejected, reprinted, found wanting and destroyed’.
Intrigued? Head along to the ACP between September 8 and October 21 for an insight into the parts of a photographer’s work that aren’t usually given public exposure.
Image: Installation view (cropped), Memoire, Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide, September 2016. Photo: Steph Fuller. Courtesy of the artist and Hugo Michell Gallery.
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Artist Luke Cirsky used to dream vividly, and then stopped. Why, he wondered? Too much sugar? Sleeping too deeply? An over-developed prefrontal cortex? He didn’t get an answer, so he did the next best thing: he made a show about it.
The collection of oil paintings in Visions of Graceful Absurdity is, Cirsky says, about “reclaiming those dreams, weaving them into a semi-coherent setting with fanciful ideas and beauty”. Showcasing what the Gaffa Gallery describes as the artist’s “almost bi-polar” style – one that combines painstaking brushwork with looser, experimental strokes, chiaroscuro and a love of patterns – the exhibition includes everything from still lifes to landscapes to the odd portrait.
Fans of surrealism should definitely check this one out, with the Sydney-based artist’s brand of “warm surrealism” embracing all the whimsy and weirdness of the movement. Guaranteed to stimulate your senses and who knows, maybe inspire the odd Dali-esque dream that night.
Image: Luke Cirsky, Welcome to Leadlight Land, Oil on Canvas, 2017
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Taking place as part of The Big Anxiety festival, Eco-Anxiety at The Japan Foundation gallery explores the ideas of ecological empathy and the growing tide of shared human anxiety in the face of a changing environment.
Showcasing five Japanese and Australian designers and artists, the show uses the Australian landscape as an inspirational jumping-off point. Hiromi Tango and Ken and Julia Yonetani’s works explore the “an empathetic dialogue of breath” between landscape, plants and humans – and if you caught Tango’s Healing Chromosomes earlier this year at Sullivan + Strumpf, you’ll no doubt be keen as mustard to see her latest work.
Performance artist Yumi Umiumare draws on butoh references in AnxieaTEA Pop UpTearoom, inviting audiences to engage with existential contemplations over a calming cup of tea. Kosuke Tsumura’s FINAL HOME, meanwhile, takes a design response to environmental emergency, creating personal survival garments designed to work in tandem with an evacuee’s essential “kit” of food, ID documents and personal mementos.
Image: Hiromi Tango, Insanity Magnet #4, 2009
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The Sydney Architecture Festival is back for its 11th incarnation and, this time, the event is focusing on the west. Between Friday, September 29 and Monday, October 2, you’ll be treated to talks, tours, exhibitions and parties celebrating the city’s most beautiful, unusual and controversial buildings — from Punchbowl’s new contemporary mosque to The Rocks’ Sirius, which was recently saved from demolition.
To be among the first Sydneysiders to learn about the former, head to Punchbowl, on Saturday, September 30 at 11am. There, Harry Seidler Award-winning architect Angelo Candalepas, who designed the building, will be launching it to the public. He’ll also be chatting about the “Aussie mosque” and the role of architecture in increasing cross-cultural understanding with a panel of commentators. Tickets, which include lunch, are free, but online bookings are essential.
The festival is running brutalist history tours, starting at the festival hub — in the new Peter Shergold Building at Western Sydney University in Parramatta — and finishing at Millers Point. Along the way, you’ll be led by architect Glenn Harper and comedian Tim Ross, as you take in Sirius, the Surry Hills Police Centre and the Masonic Centre, among other buildings. Tickets are $25 and can be booked online.
Check out Missing Middle, an exhibition happening at the hub, where you’ll see a bunch of solutions to population growth dreamed up by various architects. It’s free and open every day during the festival.
The launch party takes place on a river cruise, departing King Street Wharf on Friday, September 29 at 430pm, and landing in Parramatta. Between drinks, you’ll be invited to partake in a forum about sustainable and affordable development in Sydney’s west, featuring experts in planning, government, community and design. Tix are available here.
And closing proceedings on Monday, October 2 will be the World Architecture Day Oration, delivered by Kristien Ring, a Pittsburgh-born architect, curator and author now living in Berlin, who’ll be discussing a citizen-led housing model, which has the potential to reduce Sydney’s housing prices by 15-30 percent. If you’re curious, tickets are $25 and include lunch provided by OzHarvest.
Images: Steven Siewert.
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If you think Sydney Contemporary — an international art fair held at Carriageworks — is only for art lovers with Chanel suits and investors with hedge funds, think again. Sure, more than 90 respected galleries from all over the world will be exhibiting (and selling) some of the best contemporary art money can buy, but you will also find an entire program of more affordable (and just as impressive) art on offer.
It’s made even more accessible by the presence of Art Money, an art loans program for works priced between $750 and $20,000. Not that commerce has to dictate your experience — wander through the installations, enjoy four days of free panel discussions and conversations, catch an array of works by video artists, and watch performances within Carriageworks and the Redfern Precinct.
When Sydney Contemporary takes place between September 7 and 10, it’ll do so in a big way, and not just because of its program. Usually a biennial event, 2017 marks the start of its switch to annual runs. Yes, that means more art more often from this year onwards. To give you an idea of the size and scope, more than 60,000 visitors in total attended in 2013 and 2015.
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White Rabbit Gallery‘s spring/summer exhibition Ritual Spirit promises to transport you to a world that’s half-godly and half-human — that in-between place where the afterlife and the spiritual meet the earthly.
The works of more than 20 artists from China and Taiwan, both young and old, will feature. Among them is Geng Xue, who was shortlisted for Young Artist of the Year 2017 in China. She sculpts in bronze and ceramics, among other materials, and her recent solo show explored Mount Sumeru, which, for Buddhists, is the centre of the universe: physically and spiritually.
In addition, there’s Yu Hong, who’s known for her powerful, intimate figurative paintings; Tianzhuo Chen, whose multimedia works combine colour and kitsch to comment on celebrity, fashion, drugs, hip hop, New York vogue, Japanese Butoh and London raves; Cheng Ran, who explores philosophical issues, such as identity and dying, through video; and Xu Bing, whose installations and print mix images with text.
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