A special screening of the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival entrant, D’Art is being held at Cinema Nova, Carlton this Sunday 7th February at 11am, including a post-screening Q&A session with filmmaker Karl von Moller, along with Robert Clinch and Jeff Brown.
Intertwining exhaustive technical investigation and countless hours of fastidious hand-painting, the goal is to produce a truly unique objet d’art. The D’Art project is an amusing, uplifting and engaging film.
Listen to Zhou Xiaoping talking about his unique artistic practice on The Art Show as aired this morning on Radio National, explaining how he draws on his experience of Chinese inks and rice paper, combined with with western art concepts, including the use of oils and canvas, as well as drawing on the influence of his travels in the north of Australia, particularly Arnhem Land and his connection with Aboriginal people and culture, including the use of ochres. As Xiaoping states, his career demonstrates “cross-cultural artistic practice and brought together the influence of Chinese, Western and Aboriginal culture and art concepts. In this practical process, I realised how important cultural reconciliation and civilisational exchange are. … Looking back at my artistic creation process in Australia, I feel that I followed the path of “learning from nature” from the traditional Chinese culture that I accepted when I was young, then followed that path from China to the world of the Australian Aborigines.” The discussion starts about 1/2 hour into the program (30:36).
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/the-art-show/13115660
The inclusion of women in the story of art history is being more widely recognised and celebrated around the globe, as explored in the following article from ABC news.
View our current exhibition (in person! or online) to read more about artwork created by Innovative Australian Women.
We wish to acknowledge NAIDOC Week (8 – 15 November) with this year’s theme ALWAYS WAS, ALWAYS WILL BE. We encourage you to support and celebrate NAIDOC Week events near you. For further details go to www.naidoc.org.au
NAIDOC Week celebrations are held across Australia each July to celebrate the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. NAIDOC is celebrated not only in Indigenous communities, but by Australians from all walks of life. The week is a great opportunity to participate in a range of activities and to support your local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community.
NAIDOC 2020 invites all Australians to embrace the true history of this country – a history which dates back thousands of generations. The very first footprints on this continent were those belonging to First Nations peoples. Always Was, Always Will Be. recognises that First Nations people have occupied and cared for this continent for over 65,000 years.
Charles Blackman is one of Australia’s most celebrated and significant figurative artists and was an exceptional draughtsperson. His use of pen and ink, charcoal and pencil – from quick sketches to large sized works on paper – was a constant throughout his life. His drawings bear evidence of the personal nature of his art, used to record ideas, capture daily life, and explore composition in an expressive manner. There is, of course, an immediacy to drawings, particularly black and white images with no distractions other than the dark line across a page.
The 1960s saw Blackman complete a number of strong graphic works, many depicting his family, particularly with the arrival of his son Auguste in 1957 and daughter, Christabel, in 1959. In 1960 Blackman was awarded the Helena Rubenstein prize and selected to exhibit in the Whitechapel Gallery in London, where the Blackman family moved before returning to Australia in 1967, when this drawing was completed.
Portrait of a Young Girl with a Bow in her Hair is a direct and sweet work, full of love and the innocence of childhood, with the child directly engaging the viewer. There is a calm and gentleness to the drawing, perhaps emphasized through the use of charcoal with its richness of texture and softer edge than pen or pencil. As McCulloch noted when the work was exhibited in 1994, “Interesting to contrast is 1967’s Young Girl with a Bow with 1984’s Beatrice Drawing on Herself – both drawings of his two daughters at the same age. The latter has a saccharine sweetness absent in the earlier, more direct but equally delicious work.” (Susan McCulloch, ‘The bush characters’, Herald Sun, Melbourne, 20 April 1994, p. 7)
Blackman is represented in the National Gallery of Australia and in all state galleries, as well as numerous regional and university galleries, in addition to private and corporate collections throughout Australia and internationally. He was awarded an OBE in 1997 and honoured with a survey exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, Schoolgirls and Angels, in 1993.
Further information:
Read more about this artwork
Charles Blackman Biography
Charles Blackman artworks in the stockroom
“There is something immensely exhilarating when tall white gums tower into the blue heavens – the subtle quality of the edges where they meet the sky – how mysterious.”
Carrol, A., North, I., and Treganza, J., Hans Heysen Centenary Retrospective 1877 – 1977, Art Gallery Board of South Australia, 1977, p.12
This striking watercolour highlights the majesty of the Australian gum tree rising even beyond the picture plane and is typical of Heysen’s celebrated landscapes, many painted around his home in Hahndorf where his conservation efforts continue to be enjoyed at The Cedars today. Heysen had a passion for depicting such ancient trees, especially with a glow filtering through the branches, providing a contrast between light and shadow. The resting figure and quiet horses lend a calm atmosphere and give perspective to the heroic trees.
Read more about Hans Heysen and Morning Break.
We are really excited that indigenous artist Genevieve Kemarr Loy has been selected as a finalist in this year’s Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize, an annual prize that was launched in 2017 to advance art and opportunity for emerging and established female artists in Australia. It is the highest value professional artist prize for women in Australia.
The current global situation has meant a delay in the exhibition which is now scheduled to open 27 November, showing until 12 December at the Ravenswood School for Girls, Gordon, NSW. As their website mentions, although up to 70% of art school graduates are female, women artists make up less than half of represented artists in exhibitions and prizes around Australia, with State museums showing 34% of female artists amongst their collections. This is something many galleries are continuing to address. The Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize provides a platform to promote female visual artists, assisting in career development, providing opportunities for greater connections and inspiring current students.
Genevieve follows the tradition of her grandmother, Nancy Kunoth Petyarr and was taught to paint by her father, Cowboy Loy Pwerl, an indigenous elder in Utopia and custodian of the Bush Turkey Dreaming. On a superficial level Genevieve’s paintings often depict the tracks the Bush Turkey makes as it searches for seeds and other ‘tucker’ and makes its way to the waterhole. Genevieve’s complex and detailed paintings are characterised by a beautiful and careful handling of paint; a harmonious sense of colour; and great control of the delicate spidery marks that make their way across her canvas. Her meticulous lines can be difficult to read in a digital reproduction and are best understood and appreciated in person.
Read more about Genevieve on our site or view available works in the Stockroom. Please contact the Gallery for any further details. Lauraine Diggins Fine Art is currently open by appointment.
Congratulations to all involved in making the D’art movie, a rollicking ride resulting in a vintage Goggomobil Dart car painted in artist Robert Clinch’s signature paper darts. Filmmaker Karl von Möller is deservedly recognised with the work’s inclusion in the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival for 2020, opening 30 June. Enjoy watching from the comfort of your own home, as the Festival will be online this year, with possible screenings scheduled for December.
Things are already off to a great start with US site Documentary Drive exclaiming:
“From its opening sequence, “D’art” commands your attention with its zappy swing music and montage of fine artist Robert Clinch launching paper darts into the air as collector Jeff Brown puts on a fire retardant suit and whooshes down a racetrack.
You know their two worlds are about to meet. You don’t know how or why but you know it’s going to be a sensational adventure and you want to come along for the ride.
Directed by Karl von Möller, “D’art” raises the bar on what a film about art can be.”
For now, we hope you enjoy watching the film online; explore more about the D’art exhibition or peruse Robert’s paintings and works on paper.
The Gallery is currently open by appointment and we look forward to showing you Robert’s work.
We are delighted that the recent Queen’s Birthday honours saw Yvonne Audette awarded the AM (Member of the Order of Australia) for her significant services as one of Australia’s leading abstract artists.
Audette undertook early studies in Sydney at the Julian Ashton School with Henry Gibbons and then from 1951 with John Passmore, who was to inspire her with his grater emphasis on colour and building a composition through geometric building blocks, influenced by Cezanne. She furthered her academic learning at the East Sydney Technical School with Lyndon Dadswell, as well as drawing sessions with Godfrey Miller, his abstract focus entwined with a personal mysticism. On the completion of her studies, Audette travelled and, unlike the traditional European tour, she started in America, living in New York at a time when abstract expressionism was just coming to the fore through the work of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky and Mark Tobey, among others. In 1955, Audette travelled to Europe, settling in Italy where she remained for more than a decade, taking in the influence of European abstraction and developing her own unique language based on a wide variety of experiences, including encounters of contemporary art as well as diverse periods from both east and western art history through her extensive travels.
A dedicated artist, Audette actively sought to surround and expose herself to contemporary art sources, experiences and teachers in order to absorb and redefine her own unique oeuvre. Her creative output undergoes rigorous examination, with later work referring to and reenergised by earlier constructions. Her abstraction is complex, deliberate and carefully constructed, although there is an element of intuition, with the formal construct often based on capturing the essence of a sensation, season or place. Much of her drawing and painting relates to music, a natural fit being a synthesis of discipline and creativity. Yvonne continues to paint, draw and teach, inspiring students with her experience and enthusiasm.
The 2014 monograph about Audette’s work summarises her artistic development as a “peripatetic journey that began with an ambitious young student going between her distinctively different, somewhat misanthropic but always inspiring teachers. Then there was her shift from Sydney to New York, and the maturation of her work in Italy, a cultural environment beautifully encrusted by the past yet enlivened by modern panache. In mid-career she uprooted herself from all this to return to her city of birth, only to abandon it again for the high pocket of forest growth that became the private space that nurtured her later work.” (Heathcote & Bruce, 2014, p. 173)
Lauraine Diggins Fine Art is proud to include Yvonne’s artwork in our current exhibition of Innovative Australian Women and looks forward to showcasing an exhibition of her work planned for later this year.
September screenings of D’ART The Artist, The Collector and a Goggomobil Dart as the canvas
Following this unique and intriguing project resulting in a painted art car, unveiled at our exhibition in 2017, relive the excitement and watch the project come to life with a new documentary movie created by Karl von Möller.
The iconic Goggomobil Dart car painted with distinctive painted paper darts by artist Robert Clinch created a unique objet d’art. Classic car collector Jeff Brown, son of renowned art dealer Joseph Brown, whose collection is a highlight of the National Gallery of Victoria, collaborated with Clinch to conceive the project. The paper dart has become a recognised feature throughout Robert’s hyper-real paintings and works on paper depicting urban Melbourne. No two darts on the car are the same, and narratives present themselves through the various groupings, telling a multitude of stories over the surface of the car.
The Goggomobil was named and designed by Bill Buckle in the 1960s who thought ‘Dart’ summed up the streamlined little sports car. The sense of flight and fun implied by paper darts is a perfect fit for the Dart car.
The Goggomobil – spelt G-O-G-G-O – became a household name through a memorable advertising campaign featuring Tommy Dysart.
These key figures in the history of the Dart and the realisation of the remarkable art project, feature in the movie.
SCREENING in MELBOURNE Sunday 8th September 2pm at Cinema Classic Elsternwick with Q&A session and the D’art car on view
SCREENING in SYDNEY Sunday 22nd September 6.30pm at Cinema Ritz Randwick with Q&A session
Featuring: Robert Clinch, Jeff Brown, Bill Buckle, Tommy Dysart, Joan Brockenshire, David Thomas, Lauraine Diggins, Gerard Vaughan, Annie Brown, Bill Hemming, Paul Faulkner, Michael Schoenfeld and Beverley Clinch.
Director: Karl von Möller
Click here to see artworks by Robert Clinch.
