IMAGE: Samuel Hodge

In May 2017, seven artists and one architecture studio took up residence in The Clothing Store – situated within the Redfern-based multi arts precinct. Starting in August 2017, Carriageworks presents a community focused workshop program and extends an invitation to the wider community to engage with the space in an innovative series of lectures and creative workshops for artists, creatives, families and community.

The program features a range of activities from yoga to gardening to creative workshops and runs until December 2017. There’s a mix of paid and free workshops, however all places must be reserved in advance: http://carriageworks. com.au/clothing-store- workshop-program/

Image: Peter Greig

Kaldor Public Art Projects today announced a suite of free public programs as part of the 33rd Kaldor Public Art Project, a world-premiere installation by internationally celebrated French-Albanian artist Anri Sala. Presented free to the public from 13 October until 5 November 2017 within the historic parkland setting of Observatory Hill, Anri Sala’s The Last Resort represents the first time the artist has created a major work for an Australian audience.

Positioned on Sydney’s highest natural viewpoint, set against 360-degree vistas of the city and harbour, Observatory Hill Rotunda provides a dramatic location for Sala’s astonishing new work comprising sculpture and sound. The Last Resort is presented over three weeks, free to the public from 10am to 6pm daily, with extended opening hours every Wednesday until 7:30pm, giving visitors an opportunity to experience this multisensory project against spectacular harbour views at sunset.

Audiences can make a day of their visit, joining one of the many free public programs on site, or spread a picnic blanket for a relaxing afternoon of art in the sunshine. Learn more about the artwork with free, daily staff-led floor talks, or participate in engaging weekend programs, including family workshops, stimulating panel discussions and lunchtime talks.

Festival highlights include the unveiling of an architect-designed contemporary mosque in Punchbowl, tours of Sydney’s iconic Brutalist buildings and a Western Sydney hub

The 2017 Sydney Architecture Festival heads west for its 11th annual edition, presented over the long weekend from Friday 29 September until Monday 2 October, with talks, tours and exhibitions delving into our city’s architectural highlights.

This year, the Festival focuses on building Sydney’s future heritage in Western Sydney with a hub in Parramatta and the unveiling of a contemporary, architect-designed mosque in Punchbowl. A series of events will unearth Sydney’s enduring love affair with concrete, showcasing its Brutalist buildings, and the lasting influence of this powerful movement in architecture.

For further details and the full program for the 2017 Sydney Architecture program please visit www.sydneyarchitecturefestival.org

Artspace, in partnership with Printed Matter, Inc., New York and Perimeter Books, Melbourne, today announced 77 local and international publishers who will exhibit at VOLUME 2017 | Another Art Book Fair.

Building upon the success of the inaugural 2015 edition — which welcomed over 6,500 visitors over four days — VOLUME 2017 will welcome a rigorously selected line-up of exhibitors from across Australia and the world, including Hong Kong, South Korea, Colombia, France and the United States. The second edition of this biennial event will take place from 13 – 15 October at Artspace in Sydney’s Woolloomooloo.

In addition to an international line-up of publishers, artists, collectives, galleries and distributors at VOLUME, Artspace will present a free program of talks, artist-led workshops, book launches, readings and performances. These will be presented alongside the key public program titled Book Machine: a community-led bookmaking initiative organised by Paris-based onestar press together with Artspace, in which emerging designers partner with the visitors to the Fair to generate and produce more than 200 artist books over five days.

Full list of exhibitors and updated details on the public programs for VOLUME, please visit: http://vaabf.com/exhibitors/

Carriageworks has commissioned renowned German artist Katharina Grosse to create a spectacular, site-specific installation in Australia as the third in the Schwartz Carriageworks series of major international visual arts projects.  To be unveiled at Carriageworks on 6 January as part of Sydney Festival 2018 and running until 8 April 2018, this exciting new work will respond to the unique industrial architecture and grand scale of the heritage building.

Working directly on site at Carriageworks, Grosse will envelop the Public Space in more than 8250 square metres of suspended fabric—draped, knotted and hung across and through the architectural elements of the building—using a palette of raw colour to create a vast painting over the layers of folds. Visitors will be able to enter this total environment and experience the transformation of Carriagework’s historic structure.

Image: Ngaiire

The Sydney Fringe Festival has revealed the line-up for its launch party FRINGE IGNITE, supported by APRA AMCOS and the Kensington Street Precinct. They will celebrate the opening of the Festival on Saturday 2 September with a series of live music gigs and performances from 4pm until 8pm at Kensington St Chippendale.

Curated by one of Australia’s most dynamic vocalists NGAIIRE, FRINGE IGNITE will see performances scheduled across the day in shops, bars and restaurants along the street, converting them into free pop-up venues filled with live music and performances, set times to be announced late August.

FRINGE IGNITE invites audiences down to Kensington St from 12pm for food, drinks, live performances and an In Conversation with Ngaiire presented by APRA AMCOS from 2pm – 4pm. The official program then kicks off at 4pm across nine stages, featuring dynamic performances from Australian acts including synth pop trio Froyo, Kaiit, Billie McCarthy, WALLACE, spoken word by L-FRESH The LION plus many more. At sunset, audiences will be treated to digital animations and projections courtesy of UTS.

Image: Prue Stent and Honey Long, Membrane

Underbelly Arts Festival 2017 has announced artistic program highlights for its 10th anniversary program being presented for the first time at the National Art School in Darlinghurst from 7-8 October. Highlights include immersive inflatable structures, a public complaints service, a waterfront seagull apocalypse, a six-hour internet binge, and weird and wonderful artist souvenirs

Showcasing 21 ambitious new projects, the Festival will host 116 artists from around Australia for a two-week Lab period onsite at the National Art School from 25 September until 6 October as they develop their works for the Festival.  Public tours will be offered at 6pm each evening during the Lab, allowing ticket holders the rare opportunity to see artists develop new work.

This September, Carriageworks and Ensemble Offspring present three world premieres of new music by internationally renowned composers, showcasing US-based Australian soprano Jessica Aszodi. Featuring an international co-commission by Lisa Illean, Unsuk Chin’s classic Acrostic-Wordplay and a theatrical work by Jennifer Walshe, Who Dreamed It? will be performed at Carriageworks at 2pm on Saturday 23 September.

Following the success of Arc Electric, presented as part of All About Women Festival 2017 (Sydney Opera House) and Seven Stories, presented as part of Vivid Sydney 2017 (City Recital Hall), Who Dreamed It? continues Ensemble Offspring’s commitment to devote their entire 2017 artistic program to music composed by women.

Dreams, fairy tales and fate provide the inspiration for this phantasmagorical concert, billed as ‘the soundtrack of a sleeping mind’. A suite of surprising and beguiling works will lead the listener down unmapped byways of their imagination.

This Thursday 10 August 2017 at 5.30pm the Lord Mayor of Sydney, Clover Moore will unveil Australian artist Agatha Gothe-Snape’s new artwork located in Wemyss Lane in Surry Hills, Sydney. The permanent public artwork titled Here, an Echo forms part of City of Sydney’s growing City Art Collection.

Sydney-based artist Gothe-Snape (b.1980) is highly regarded for her conceptual practice, and has exhibited her work extensively, both nationally and internationally. Gothe-Snape describes this new artwork as a ‘choreography for the city’. The Biennale of Sydney and City of Sydney last year awarded her the second Biennale Legacy Artwork Project, and the project was developed during 2016 as part of the 20th Biennale of Sydney: The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed, curated by Stephanie Rosenthal. The extended period of research, which included performances, walks and conversations informed the development of the 14 phrases that now appear in perpetuity in Wemyss Lane.

Image: Hiromi Tango (Courtesy Sydney Contemporary)

Australasia’s premier international art fair, Sydney Contemporary (7-10 September) has announced details of Sydney Art Week (4-10 September) and Talk Contemporary 2017, including artist takeovers around the city, and a program of talks and panel discussions featuring some of our most inspiring thinkers, artists, media personalities, collectors and creatives. Sydney Art Week this year includes an immersive kids play-scape created by Japanese-Australian artist Hiromi Tango at the Fair, an artist takeover of Chippendale’s The Old Clare Hotel and Barangaroo, plus the popular ‘Night Cap’ series of late-night talks
hosted by artists.

Further information: https://sydneycontemporary.com.au/program-2017/

Image: The view from below Underwood Ark (photo by Steven Siewert)

In a CBD laneway, a tree has been tipped on its side and suspended 10 metres above ground as a tangible connection to Sydney’s colonial and Indigenous past. The mature eucalypt with massive root ball attached has been trucked and craned into the city from a south coast timber yard, part of a unique collaboration between the National Art School and property developer Mirvac. The trunk is attached by cable and bracket to three land bridges. At one end the branches sit and at the other the root ball, conveying a sense of awe in nature among the soaring office towers. Underwood Ark, to be officially opened Wednesday, is the work of visual artist and National Art School graduate Michael McIntyre, who was selected from a group of four student artists to develop an art installation that would enliven Underwood Street.

By Linda Morris. Full story in Sydney Morning Herald (published 2 August 2017): www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/sydneys-underwood-street-grows-a-tree-of-awe-and-wonder-20170728-gxkvis.html

Image: Abdul Syed M I, Moneyscape III (Imaginable Landscape series)

The Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize, Australia’s pre-eminent national award for small sculpture presented by Woollahra Council, today announced 47 finalists for the 2017 Prize, selected from 675 entries, the second highest number of entries in prize history.

Selected by 2017 guest judges – curator, writer, artist, activist and first Indigenous judge for the Prize Djon Mundine, OAM, Executive Director, Artspace, Sydney and Curator, Encounters, Art Basel | Hong Kong Alexie Glass-Kantor, and gallerist and benefactor Roslyn Oxley, OAM – this year’s finalists include well-known artists such as winner of the 2009 Archibald Prize Guy Maestri, Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, Louis Pratt, Rodney Pople and Tracey Deep who will be exhibited alongside emerging artists.

The 2017 finalist artists are: NOT (NSW); Abdul-Rahman Abdullah (WA); Sally Blake (ACT); Lauren Brincat (NSW); Angela Butler (NSW); Penny Byrne (VIC); Peter Cooley (NSW); Selena de Carvalho (TAS); Tracey Deep (NSW); Mariana del Castillo (NSW); Lynda Draper (NSW); Mark Dubner (NSW); Merran Esson (NSW); Emma Fielden (NSW); Stevie Fieldsend (NSW); Trevor Fry (NSW); Natalie Guy (NZ); Lizzie Hall (NSW); David Hamilton (TAS); Michael Harrell (NSW); Tevita Havea (NSW); Sergio Hernandez (NSW);  Bianca Hester (NSW); Alison Hill (QLD); Phil James (NSW); Michelle Kirk (NSW); Mike Kitching (NSW); Rene Kulitja (NT); Claire Lambe (VIC); Guy Maestri (NSW); Sanné Mestrom (VIC); Dan Moynihan (VIC); John Nicholson (NSW); Karin Olah (NSW); Kenny Pittock (VIC); Rodney Pople (NSW); Louis Pratt (NSW); Madeleine Preston (NSW); Julia Robinson (SA); Giles Ryder (VIC); Huseyin Sami (NSW); Michael Snape (NSW); Andrew Southall (VIC); Abdullah Syed M I (NSW); Richard Tipping (NSW); Mark Titmarsh (NSW); Peter Vandermark (ACT).

Image: Joan Ross, Colonial Grab, 2014

A new exhibition titled Grounded: Contemporary Australian Art  features the work of artists Mitch Cairns, Karla Dickens, Newell Harry, Jumaadi, James Nguyen, Addison Marshall, Joan Ross and Justine Varga who have all studied at the National Art School. The exhibition is on display, free of charge, at NAS Gallery from 18 August until 14 October 2017.

Curated by Judith Blackall Grounded is presented across both floors of the NAS Gallery. The artists have responded generously to the invitation to present a range of work in NAS Gallery’s distinctive spaces: some have produced ambitious new bodies of work, others have chosen to re-present important and rarely seen works that, presented in new contexts, bring fresh insight to the artist’s process and studio practice. In some cases sketchbooks and working drawings are included, providing further insight into the importance of drawing, a discipline at the core of the National Art School’s approach to learning and creativity.

Image: Pedro Greig

Carriageworks and Sydney Dance Company, in conjunction with The Balnaves Foundation, announce five up-and-coming Australian choreographers commissioned to create new works for the acclaimed New Breed initiative that supports Australia’s next generation of dance-makers.

Co-presented by two of Australia’s most dynamic arts organisations – Carriageworks and Sydney Dance Company – with the generous support of The Balnaves Foundation, New Breed 2017 will provide Australian choreographers Melanie Lane (Melbourne/Berlin), Tyrone Robinson (Perth), Petros Treklis (Melbourne), Cass Mortimer Eipper (Melbourne) and Nelson Earl (Sydney) with an invaluable opportunity to work with Australia’s finest contemporary dancers on a newly commissioned dance piece.  Cass Mortimer Eipper and Nelson Earl will present the first New Breed co-creation. The four new works created by the New Breed 2017 choreographers will be presented at Sydney’s premier multi-arts precinct, Carriageworks, from 30 November to 9 December 2017.

More info: http://carriageworks.com.au/events/new-breed-2017/