Image: Jan Nelson, Black River Running #4, 2017. Oil on linen, 74 x 57 cm. Photo: Mark Ashkanasy. Courtesy the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery.

Anna Schwartz Gallery presents Black River Running, a solo exhibition by Australian artist Jan Nelson. The exhibition will run from 27 April to 26 May 2018.

For nearly two decades Jan Nelson has meticulously created paintings that concentrate deeply on the role of the visual in the construction and experience of an adolescent self. In contemporary times, this concern is more relevant as it has ever been. For her new series Black River Running, Nelson splices and cuts from various sources to create a simulation of the real, an exquisite corpse upon which our worldly anxieties are projected: nuclear blasts, the failure of capitalism, cyber attacks, metadata and the encroachment of the online into everyday existence.

In the age of the curated self-exemplified by; selfies, Instagram, Tumblr and Snapchat, the critical developmental phase of adolescent self-actualisation is now mediated by smartphone screens and subsumed into the online. Screens play a vital role in the crafting of Nelson’s distinctive aesthetic.  The monitor’s high-definition projection of her hybridised portraits, sets a perfectionist bar, which she then sets out to meet through the slowly evolving task of painting. This labour of human hand, Nelson perceives as a performative act, exposing the gap between the constant striving towards digitised perfection and the flawed reality of our idiosyncratic humanity.

Australia’s only Baroque opera company, the acclaimed Pinchgut Opera, will present a striking new production of Handel’s Athalia, at City Recital Hall Sydney, with four performances from 21 until 26 June 2018 marking the first time that the opera has ever been staged in Australia. Maestro Erin Helyard describes the composer as “a poet of the human heart” and the richly dramatic opera as “a hotbed of intrigue and devious characters”.

Directed by Lindy Hume, with design by Melanie Liertz, lighting by Matthew Marshall, and with Pinchgut Artistic Director Erin Helyard conducting from the harpsichord, this production reunites much of the phenomenal creative team from Pinchgut’s 2016 lauded production of Handel’s Theodora.Debuting for Pinchgut in Athalia are Australian-born soprano Emma Pearson in the title role, South African-born countertenor Clint van der Linde taking the role of Joad and thirteen-year-old Freddy Shaw as Joas. Other artists include Pinchgut favourites Miriam Allan, Brenton Spiteri and David Greco.

Thu 21 June 7pm | Sat 23 June 2pm | Sun 24 June 5pm | Tue 26 June 7pm | City Recital Hall Sydney

Image: Rose Nolan, Big Words – To keep going, breathing helps (circle work), 2016–17, installation view, The National 2017: New Australian Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. Photograph: Ken Leanfore.

The curators for the second edition of The National: New Australian Art 2019 were announced today by the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), Carriageworks and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA).

Staged concurrently at three of Sydney’s premier cultural institutions from 30 March 2019, The National: New Australian Art 2019 presents a joint curatorial vision of emerging, mid-career and established artists drawn from around the country, including Australian artists practicing overseas.

The curators for The National: New Australian Art 2019 are: Isobel Parker Philip, Curator of Photographs at the AGNSW; Daniel Mudie Cunningham, Senior Curator of Visual Arts at Carriageworks; Clothilde Bullen, Curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Collections and Exhibitions at the MCA; and Anna Davis, Curator at the MCA.