20 October – 6 November 2016
Holly Grace makes beautiful glass objects. Most are decorated with alpine foliage.Some are bowls and functional objects others are simply beautiful decorations. The exhibited objects in this show I liked the most were the glass houses with a light inside that projected versions of the houses on the walls. Strikingly beautiful and fascinating.
Below are some pics and gallery materials.
21 Sept – 29 Oct 2016
The exhibition at the city Contemporary Art Space of Dionisia Salas is very striking. She makes colourful abstract print based collages. The beaut thing about the city Gallery in Hobart Place is that the space is small and so is perfect to exhibit from a single artist and a single set. There are eight beautiful work on display. The web page is directly below.
http://www.ccas.com.au/exhibitions/she-walked-and-pulled-out-chair
2 September – 1 October 2016
Delve @ ANU School of Art Gallery
Helen Braund, Leah Bullen, Gosia Pilat, Lia Tajcnar, Tiffany Cole join this exhibition with a shared focus on the ocean. Canberra being about 100k from the ocean this is an unusual topic for an exhibition.
Gosia Pilat contributes fragile ceramic birds and other coastal life forms. Helen Braund has some wave forms in digital print that almost look like water coming out of a bucket when thrown they are so full of movement. Leah Bullen’s work is impressionistic and richly coloured seaside town life representations. Tiffany Cole has created plywood representations of seaside vegetation.
It was a wonderful collection of sea inspired artworks and there are a representative selection of pics below with the delightful gallery sheet and list.
Australian Sketchbook the Colonial Life and Art of S.T Gill
The National Library is amazing at documenting and exhibiting important features of Australian history. The current exhibition is awesome on both of those. S.T. Gill sketched and painted Australian cities and countryside.during the second half of the 1800s.
The works record society – both the wealthy and and the poor. The artist creates a sympathetic record of the indigenous population. Gill has created a vivid picture of the built form of the goldfield settlements as they were growing. There are vibrant portraits of social life, sporting events and other elements or colonial society.
The guy has a fun sense of human foibles and is able to show the flaws in all human beings. It is not a quick pop in type of exhibition, rather there is lots of details to absorb in both the images and the text on the wall. There are over 200 images that demonstrate Gill’s insight into his society.
There is a prohibition on photography in the room so I have included the website link below on which are embedded several sections and several of the pictures in each section.
http://www.nla.gov.au/exhibitions/australian-sketchbook
There is a great page for the National Museum of Australia on Gill with lots of pictures.
http://www.nma.gov.au/collections/highlights/australian_sketchbook
7-30 August 2015
University of Canberra Faculty of Arts and Design Staff Exhibition
The blurb is on the attached gallery shee. This show is varied in content and media. The sculpture, the photos, the paintings and the other styles carry some delightful creativity. I will include some samples below and also the gallery sheet.I like varied types of exhibitions like this one.
http://www.belconnenartscentre.com.au/exhibitions/tracesandhauntings.html
When I walked into this room I laughed out loud. The overall impression of this exhibition is warm, inviting, retro, and fun. I will leave you to read the gallery sheet below for all the detail but the heart of this exhibition is the use of a single image of a young bloke jumping in the air. The room is set up as the living area of a home. The image is reproduced on clocks, fabrics, cups, plates, a carpet, a jigsaw puzzle and all sorts of furniture and household items. Baker is playing with mass production and global consumerism. I was happy when I went in and even happier when I had digested everything in the room. 
The small gallery at the Australian National Botanical Gardens Information Centre often has suprise exhibitions. Right now there is a collection of works by people who share a love of painting with their experience of Parkinson’s Disease. The exhibition has a few works each for a set of painter along wit profile biography panels on the wall.
The works in this exhibition are abstract done in water colour. There is a similarity of style about many artists and that may be deliberate or a result of shared learning. They are a beautiful set.
Below is a set of the pics and a brochure on the group.
As part of the Design Canberra Festival the Gallery of Australian Design has put on an exhibition of the work of graphic designers. The subject matter of Do Good Graphics is a series of graphic services given to not for profits or community organisations to make their messaging and look more attractive.
The Malkara School in Canberra, a community program against speeding, Canberra Deaf Childrens Association and the Outward Bound program are just a few of the good work groups that have been helped through pro bono work done by a set of Graphic Design studios.
I really like the contribution GAD makes to the creative exhibitions in Canberra and this set were a fascinating insight into two intersecting communities in Canberra.
Imagine getting a diverse group of artists together and saying “We have a big pile of number plates from the Centenary of Canberra celebration”. “Guess what!” “We want you all to go and create great artworks all from these.” “THey did that!” and the artists have come through in a wonderful exhibition at the CraftACT gallery in Civic.
I walked in at a time when three of the artists were speaking about their work and so that was fun. I even got permission to take some pics of their work from the actual artists.
The first artist was Sam Cameron with his C100 Line Runner. It was a layered powerful looking remote racing car like device that has a flat Hexagonal tray on which to operate. On the tray is a map of Canberra around the CBD with London circuit done in Black. The racer made out of beautifully engineered number plate sections turns based on how its sensors pick up and respond to the black of London Circuit. Fun, beautiful and inventive.
Elizabeth Kelly with Stomachion after the Archemedies Palimpses was next. At first glance I thought this was an attractive geometric artwork with a collection of colours and surfaces in the metals including number plates. Then Elizabeth let us play with it. All the bits are on nylon boards and magnetised so you can move them around and make new shapes. Again this was a playful and yet serious piece of artistic invention. Great to look at and engaging to play with.
Ximeno Briceno went for An Uncu for a Wari Princess to use her number plates. She told us a great story about how she engaged people of her heritage in South America in producing the cloth and in forming the number plate discs including a near brush with quarantine in bringing her beautiful garment to the exhibition.
These three are part of a delightful collection of objects on display – each with a unique take and each with a radiant creativity about it.
Pics and gallery sheet below:
Moraig McKenna has created a set of beautiful functional pottery objects which are on display at CraftACT at present. They are functional featuring earthy colours and glazed textures. There is a no photograph policy so the only pics are the ones on the gallery sheet below.
stephenrrandall 