Please join us and the artist to celebrate the opening of this exhibition on Saturday 8 September, 1-3pm.


Present Tense reveals a documentarian’s eye for the events that shape us, and a deeply felt empathy towards people passing through our lives. 

Ackland’s latest works represent her own observations of the world - a blend of global, public events from the news and the comings and goings of her own daily life - a man playing bagpipes in a tunnel, the discarded remains of ride-share bicycles abandoned on the street. As a suite of works they offer a glimpse into the quiet reception of the everyday, interspersed with pivotal events from world politics.

Margaret Ackland: Speaking in ‘present tense’

An artist’s studio is always insightful and a useful stepping-off point for any exploration of their practice. Margaret Ackland’s, like her work, is contradictory. The black-and-white-squared lino floor brings a sense of order and fixity to a scene that otherwise appears in dramatic flux. There are some small paintings of silvery dresses in flight, as if animated by ghostly spirits, against dark backgrounds – agitated but somehow benign; an elegant still life with a pair of lady’s dress gloves draped over the frame, perhaps painted under this persona; and a number of doubled Rorschach portraits in watercolour from 2014, twinned and uncanny, that prompted the artist’s current pursuit.

Over the last three years I have been ‘looking back’ over my 50-year body of work, initially prompted by two exhibitions Suzanne Archer: The Alchemy of the Studio at Macquarie University Art Gallery in 2016 followed by Moving Forwards, Looking Back at Nicholas Thompson Gallery in 2016/17 and in preparation for a book about my work due for release in 2019.

I work thematically, and at the end of my recent subject of China I was ready to move on. This retrospective view of my own work ironically inspired me to revisit the landscape of Wedderburn NSW, the theme that I had focused on when I moved to the area in 1987 and which I had continued working on into the early 1990’s.

This landscape is made up of rugged bushland with scraggly gum trees with their gnarled and grid-forming branches and deep gorges with rock pools. We are visited by king parrots, rock wallabies and koalas. The sounds are of cicadas, bird calls and ‘the whispering of leaves’.

Suzanne Archer 2018

Suzanne Archer was born in Surrey, UK and trained at the Sutton School of Art (1964). She arrived in Australia in 1965 and is based in the Wedderburn region of New South Wales. Archer has exhibited regularly since the late 1960s and is a recipient of the Wynne Prize (1994), the Dobell Prize (2010) and the Kedumba Drawing Prize (2010). She has undertaken residencies at Greene Street Studio, New York; Power Studio at Cite Internationale, Paris and Redgate Residency, Beijing. A career survey was held in 2016 at the Macquarie University Art Museum, Sydney. Archer’s work is held in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Artbank as well as significant regional and tertiary institutions.

Happy Birthday to Kevin Connor who turned 86 years old last week! 

It is a cliche to say that an artist of Connor's age is still painting as well as he ever has, so instead, we invite you view the compelling works of Kevin Connor. Drawing is the core of Connor's work. His paintings come from the first hand sketches of places and people. Nothing in his work has been mitigated from the human experience. The artist does not use photography for reference or composition. Nor is the imagery  constrained by the camera lens, instead the pictures evolve from memory and the process of painting itself.

Kevin Connor (b.1932) is one of Australia’s most important urban expressionistic painters, known for his ability to capture the vibrancy and dynamism of inner city scenes and its inhabitants. We are delighted to present this new body of work. The exhibition runs until 29 August.

It is refreshing to discover Evan Salmon’s paintings of Port Kembla which have such undeniable verve and authenticity. Forged in lively pastes of oil paint on wood or linen, colour modulated to suit the time of day or quality of light, each one is bold in composition and carefully considered. Most of his paintings and drawings of Port Kembla harbour and its smoke stacks are small or made ‘to scale’ in keeping with painting ‘on-the-spot’ or plein air, which he undertakes in all weathers and seasons.

It is since moving to Port Kembla 4 years ago that he began painting his subject on-the-spot instead of relying on photographs (which is common practice for many artists). As he stated candidly in a recent issue of Artist Profile magazine:

It wasn’t until I moved to the area, however, that I really started to see the potential of this landscape as a subject for painting. Up until this point I had always been a studio-based artist … I have become very fond of the landscape of Port Kembla and its surrounds, in particular the steelworks with its multitude of pipes and stacks which emit steam and flames. Together they create a dramatic haze against the backdrop of the Illawarra escarpment. Everything seems to be painted iron red or olive green and has an industrial grey patina, with the occasional patch of BlueScope blue.

Blackman was one of the last of his generation, best known for his paintings that riffed on Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.

His son Auguste paid tribute to his father this morning as the most generous of artists.

"He painted our dreams. He painted the dreams of everyone," he said.

"I've never met such a man who could channel emotion the way Charles did in the paint.

"We have this wonderful legacy, it belongs to everyone, it's an incredible thing for one man to have achieved, that level of communication."

.Blackman was born in Sydney in 1928 to an alcoholic father and a gambling-addict mother. He and his three sisters grew up in and out of children's homes.

After leaving school at age 13, he worked as a newspaper illustrator. In the 1950s he was living in Melbourne where he mixed with the Heide circle of artists.

He later came to be defined by his membership of the so-called Antipodean movement, with Arthur Boyd, John Brack and others.

In 1959, the group signed an "Antipodean Manifesto", which was a statement protesting the dominance of abstract expressionism.

Blackman was best known for his Alice in Wonderland series, painted in 1956 and 1957, depicting his wife Barbara as Alice.

Sotheby's Australia chairman Geoffrey Smith described Blackman as "one of the heroes of the history and development of Australian art in the twentieth century".

"Blackman will be remembered most for the emotional content of the imagery," Mr Smith said.

In 1977 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to Australian art.

"Charles Blackman brought a distinct vision to Australian art," said Deborah Hart, head of Australian art at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra.

"His sense of poetry and ability to capture the poignancy, emotion and richness of the everyday urban landscape remains unrivalled. His legacy will live on."

In 2010 two of Blackman's children, Auguste and Christabel, accused the Art Gallery of NSW of ignoring their father's work.

At that time, the gallery did not have any of his pictures on display nor did it own one of the coveted Alice paintings.

The National Gallery of Victoria, in contrast, has a solid Blackman collection and staged the landmark 1993 exhibition Schoolgirls and Angels.

After it was called-out, the Art Gallery of NSW hung Blackman's brooding, almost monotone Angry Young Girl portrait in its Australian galleries where it remains on display.

About a quarter of a century ago, alcohol abuse led Blackman to suffer a series of medical complications that left him with Korsakoff syndrome, a form of dementia.

He required full-time care and this year moved to a nursing home.

Blackman is survived by three ex-wives and six children.

He was married to poet Barbara Blackman for 27 years. They had three children: Auguste, Christabel and Barnaby.

She divorced him because of his drinking and not long after he married Genevieve de Couvreur, who at the time was the 19-year-old friend of his daughter Christabel.

De Couvreur and Blackman had two children, Felix and Bertie, but divorced after eight years.

He was married to his third wife, Victoria Bower, for a short period and they had a son, Axiom.

(Source: abc.net.au/news)
(Author: Michaela Boland)

You are working towards an exhibition at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT); how is the planning going? What can we expect from this exhibition?
The survey exhibition, A thousand miles from everywhere, is being curated by Glenn Barkley and organised by the excellent team at MAGNT. Everything is going to plan and it has been great fun revisiting the past in order to evaluate the future. The show spans almost 30 years of practice encompassing printmaking, painting and sculpture and will be accompanied by a comprehensive publication.
Your location has had a big impact on your work. What is it about the Northern Territory that most interests you?
People interest me the most. Their cultural backgrounds, views on life, motives, fears, aspirations and so on. And also how these elements necessarily help shape history and events. I often feature elements of the Territory to speak about the vitality of my own experiences living here and how this part of Australia is simply a microcosm that reflects all of humanity. “Same but different” as we say in the North.
You are an enthusiastic supporter of the Territory’s art scene. What do you see as the major benefits for artists working here?
Living in relative isolation is definitely a bonus. It allows you to find your own voice, unwind and concentrate on your practice. A smaller populace also creates a more intimate and supportive community.
It also poses challenges; what adjustments have you made?
With the extreme humidity of the wet season followed by the dry season you definitely have to adjust your materials and practice. Mould can be a problem when working with ink, paint and paper and it’s good to have some pre-emptive conservation skills. You also have to adjust your clothing. In the peak of the wet season there is no need for shirts or shoes in the studio.
Your interest in social justice originated from your French parents?
During the May 1968 Paris riots my mother was a uni student and pregnant with me, and my father was a union delegate. They emigrated to Australia because of their political beliefs, to a country which they deemed more progressive than France at the time. My father’s tertiary qualifications were never recognised here and so he ended up being a manual labourer for most of his life. In Darwin during the 1970s, my mother, as a welfare officer, helped numerous French-speaking Vietnamese refugees relocate, followed by the next wave of Portuguese-speaking Timorese. Politics, religion and philosophy were always dinner table topics.
Your works often present serious matters in a humorous manner, is this a way of engaging a wider audience?
That is partly the reason. When dealing with serious political issues I find that humour mitigates against being overtly moral. It’s a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. A sense of humour also goes a long way to survive in an often harsh, outpost, frontier town like Darwin.
Historic and archival objects, images and ephemera inform your work. Is there a large amount of research that goes into each work or have you accumulated a collection of sources to draw from?
My work is a form of urban archaeology. I often go to lawn sales, op shops, the tip shop, local historical sites, sifting through to find the detritus of Northern Territory history – scraps and objects imbued with a story that I can use in my artwork. I often find objects on eBay or in antique stores when I travel. Friends who know what a mad collector I am also bring me treasures occasionally. I have an extensive library of historical and art publications to research from and the local archive is only a 15-minute walk from my studio.
Types, fonts and lettering are also important to your works. What impact do such choices have on the message you are depicting?
Typography is indispensable for good graphic design. You need to able to get your message across quickly and simply. Certain fonts are evocative of historical epochs or movements and we can use these to great effect when they are already part of the collective, popular conscience. At this point you are simply building on tradition … or you can have some fun by totally debunking that theory!
You have facilitated a number of printmaking workshops in remote communities. What led you to this?
In 1994 I joined Leon Stainer and George Watts at Northern Territory University to help out with a few Indigenous printmaking workshops for Injalak, Tiwi Designs and Ernabella. I had been a part-time printmaking lecturer and technician for a few years prior. Over the next two years the three of us convened many workshops and gained a national reputation. These workshops later became Northern Editions at the newly named Charles Darwin University and I went on to start of my own venture, Red Hand Prints.
The traditional practices of different communities influenced the techniques you taught them. An important aspect of collaborative printmaking is understanding how to get the artist’s vision from idea to realisation. Tiwi artists have a strong tradition of woodcarving and so lino-cut and wood-cut prints are an obvious starting point. Artists from Injalak Arts have an immediate lineage to painting in rock shelters and so stone lithography comes to mind. Rover Thomas liked painting directly onto etching plates and so I would mix up batches of sugar lift in his favourite earth colours from pigments in the ceramics studio.
Has working with Indigenous artists influenced your practice in any way?
Absolutely. When I was a kid I saw some Tiwi artists carving a log and to this day I can see the influence in my sculptures. Carving difficult, dense timbers like iron wood, you realise that the material dictates the form, and the artist has only a bit of a say in the matter. The mark-making and overlaying of colours I employ in my own painting practice has also been influenced by Indigenous artists.
You established Red Hand Prints in 1996; what benefits did this have for the community and your personal practice?
Ultimately we wanted to create a vibrant, thriving arts community in an environment which, at the time, had absolutely no support from the various tax-funded organisations and institutions established specifically to support local arts. We also wanted to create a voice for our socio/political concerns that was not filtered or tampered with by the usual prescribed channels for commentary. For our own practice that meant total freedom. For the community? I think they had fun coming along for the ride.

What do you like best about printmaking?
I like the fact that it is relatively inexpensive to produce multiples and therefore affordable to make and collect. Ideas can be immediately transmitted within a short time span. I also love the aesthetics that are particular and unique to all the printmaking mediums.
Do you approach your prints differently to your paintings and sculptures in terms of planning and production?
Not really, although the physical making of the object is different in the production phase, the planning stage is quiet fluid and intuitive across mediums. It’s difficult to articulate but I guess after 30 years of practice I don’t really think about it anymore. It just happens.

Franck Gohier is represented by Mitchell Fine Art

(Source: artistprofile.com.au)
(Author: Bridget Macleod)

Sally Gabori was born around 1924 on Bentinck Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria, a small island of the Kaiadilt people. Her tribal name, Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda, means ‘dolphin born at Mirdidingki’. Gabori lived her first twenty-three years according to an unbroken ancestral culture, uninfluenced by the encroachment of Europeans. Yet in 1948, following severe drought and a tidal wave that struck Bentinck Island, the Kaiadilt people were moved to the Presbyterian Mission on nearby Mornington Island. Here Gabori bore eleven children, raising them along with several others of her husband’s children to other wives, as is Kaiadilt tradition. Although she spent most of her life away from her country, Gabori maintained Kaiadilt culture, singing its songs with family and community, fishing and gathering bush foods. She remained on Mornington Island until the 1980s, when some of the Kaiadilt people began to return to their ancestral country after the Land Rights movement saw small outstations erected on Bentinck.

Gabori didn’t hold a paintbrush until she was in her eighties. She was first introduced to painting materials in 2005 while at the Mornington Island Arts and Crafts Centre. Her immediate love of paint and raw talent triggered an outpouring of artistic expression as Gabori instinctively engaged with a full spectrum of colour to visualise the glories of her country. Mixing wet paints on canvas to create tonal shifts and gestural brushstrokes, she evoked geological and ecological flux on Bentinck. Bold, hard-edged forms and sharp colour contrasts describe enduring natural structures such as ancient rock-walled fish traps, or the cliffs meeting the ocean.

Gabori’s unique aesthetic vision captured the imagination of the art world. Brisbane art dealer Simon Turner, of Woolloongabba Art Gallery, was the first to recognise her talent and show her work commercially, followed by Beverly Knight of Alcaston Gallery in Melbourne, leading to a string of exhibitions and awards.

In Issue 10 of Artist Profile, 2010, Owen Craven wrote about Gabori’s extraordinary fluency with paint, commenting, ‘what is remarkable is the maturity of her fascination with colour, expressing herself through what would be viewed in Western Art terms as abstraction. On close inspection, one appreciates the intimacy with which the works are produced. The works identify the woman behind their making—who she is and from where she comes.’

Gabori spoke little English, only her native tongue the Kayardild language, and never learnt how to read and write. Instead she communicated the ancestry and geography of her people across an exceptional output of over two thousand paintings. One of the last surviving keepers of Kaiadilt language, traditions, stories and culture, Gabori represented a living connection to pre-colonial indigeneity. Today just a handful of Kaiadilt people still speak their traditional language. Gabori’s paintings harness the colours and textures of Kaiadilt country and the vibrancy of her memories. They represent a culture of seeing, providing insight into the unique ways the Kaiadilt see their world.

This valency of ‘seeing’ forms the thematic kernel of the exhibition ‘Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori: Kaiadilt Eyes – The Art of Seeing’ at Alcaston Gallery, which features recently released paintings from the Estate of Sally Gabori. Among the works exhibited is Dibirdibi Country, 2010, a masterpiece measuring 456 x 196 cm that adds further dimension to the artist’s mastery of form and colour. The exhibition reminds us that the heart of art is seeing; something Gabori had mastered across a lifetime.

Shortly after Gabori’s passing in February 2015, the executor and beneficiaries of her estate (her children) appointed an agent to manage the remainder of the estate paintings and apply the funds from future artwork sales and royalties to a Foundation in the artist’s honour. Funds have been set aside for a monument marking Gabori’s grave on Mornington Island, which will incorporate images of her artwork and her totem, the dolphin. This is scheduled for later in 2018, upholding local tradition whereby a period must pass between a person’s passing and the unveiling of their headstone. In addition to gifting fourteen works to Queensland Art Gallery, Gabori’s family has invested future income to support the education of all lineal descendants of the artist, while income from art sales is used by her children to support themselves and their relatives.

Ultimately, the paintings poured forth by this remarkable nonagenarian in her last decade embody Gabori’s enduring wish, Ngada marraaju kilwanmaruthu ngijinju dulku – ‘I want to show you all my country.’

Source: (artistprofile.com.au)

Liverpool Street Gallery is proud to announce a new exhibition by Sydney artist Kevin Connor (b.1932).

Kevin Connor is one of Australia’s most important urban expressionistic painters, known for his ability to capture the vibrancy and dynamism of inner city scenes and its inhabitants.

Connor has traveled extensively and painted and studied in London, Paris, New York, Spain, Egypt, Europe, the Middle East, Canada and the United States of America. Connor has exhibited widely and consistently in galleries throughout Australia

Connor’s work is represented all the major national, state, regional and university museums and galleries. His work is in private collections throughout Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.

Opening: Saturday 4 August (2-5pm)
All Welcome