Carriageworks has announced that chef, restaurateur and pioneer of distinct Cantonese-Australian cuisine, Kylie Kwong, will curate the Night Market with a line-up of over 60 stalls from Australia’s best chefs and producers on Friday 15 February 2019. The event is designed to showcase creative responses to themes presented by renowned American artist Nick Cave’s installation UNTIL, Carriageworks’ largest installation to date. The Night Market will feature a program of live music, DJs and cooking demonstrations and celebrate locally-sourced dishes inspired by diverse global communities and story-telling.

‘Part of my responsibility as an artist is about how do I engage Community. It’s not something that I even think about anymore, it’s just part of my practice and I think that is because I can’t do it by myself. I need the Community to help me deliver the message.’ Nick Cave.

Chef and curator Kylie Kwong was invited by Nick Cave to participate in a one-day Call and Response workshop last month alongside musicians, poets, artists and writers. The Night Market is Kylie’s unique creative response to his monumental work and she has encouraged each participating restaurant and bar to bring its own creative response via the dishes and drinks they will serve.

Image: Kylie Kwong by Dan Boud

Renowned for his iconic photographic works featuring Weimaraners in contemporary and historical compositions, costumes and poses, William Wegman is the subject of a major solo exhibition at National Gallery of Victoria. Presented by the NGV and the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography until 17 March 2019, William Wegman: Being Human is the artist’s first major exhibition in Australia and will survey more than 30 years of Wegman’s prolific career.

Since 1970, Wegman’s work has centred on photographing his pet Weimaraners, including Man Ray, Fay Ray, their various offspring, relatives and companions. Being Human explores Wegman’s rich archive in depth, it features 100 works, chosen in close collaboration with the artist, and includes fifty photographs which are being shown publicly for the first time.

Image: William Wegman, Constructivism, 2014 pigment print. Collection of the artist.

Carriageworks and Mirvac announced that Sydney-based visual artist Nell, working together with design collective Cave Urban, has been commissioned to create a new public artwork at South Eveleigh, previously known as Australian Technology Park.

Eveleigh Tree House will consist of a series of interconnected pods created out of hundreds of individually forged steel gum leaves.  The tree house pods will be nestled amongst the existing gum trees at Eveleigh Green located within South Eveleigh, a 14-hectare multi-use precinct being developed by Mirvac.

Eveleigh Tree House is part of an ongoing, broader public art program at South Eveleigh facilitated by Mirvac and its consortium partners AMP Capital and Sunsuper. The program has been curated by Carriageworks and will include sculptural and botanical interventions, landmarks and meeting places at South Eveleigh created by a number of local artists.

Nell was inspired by the history and character of the nearby Eveleigh Locomotive precinct and wanted to pay homage to the Gadigal land on which the site stands. The work also embodies a personal connection to the site for the artist, whose great-grandfather worked as a boilermaker at Eveleigh from 1931-1952.

‘The Tree House will capture the essence of what we as adults remember tree houses to be —a place of imagination, observation and retreat from the world,’ explained Nell.

Bundanon Trust has announced that six Australian composers have been awarded the Prelude residencies at four historic houses during 2019. Prelude is a national network of long-term residencies for Australian composers, housed in historic buildings and providing time and space for the creation of new work. In 2019 the six composers in-residence will be Sarah Blasko, Tim Dargaville, William Gardiner, Chris McNulty, Thomas Meadowcroft and Ngaiire. The historic houses are located in Perth WA, Adelaide SA, Sydney’s Paddington and the NSW Southern Highlands.

Prelude is based on the sentiment expressed by Peggy Glanville-Hicks in 1958 that, “It is apparent that leisure and silence are absolute prerequisites for composers if they are to engage fully the many forms of awareness involved in creative activity.” Prelude is in its third year and is managed by Bundanon Trust, which runs the largest artist-in-residence program in the country from its home on the NSW south coast.

In 2019 the programme builds on the established residencies at Peggy Glanville-Hicks House in Sydney, Gallop House in Perth and Beaumont Cottage in Adelaide, by expanding to include Golden Vale Homestead in Sutton Forest NSW. The successful applicants are provided with sole occupancy of the houses as well as a stipend to cover living costs and travel.

Image: Gallop House river view Dalkeith. Courtesy Bundanon Trust.

Hany Armanious, one of Australia’s foremost artists, will take up the position of Head of Sculpture at the National Art School from the beginning of the 2019 academic year.

The official artist for the Australian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2011, Armanious’ work is held in numerous Australian and international public collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego.

A warm, experienced and inspirational educator, Hany Armanious has been teaching in the higher education context since 1998, as a lecturer at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney, the College of Fine Art, UNSW and most recently as a full-time permanent lecturer at Queensland College of Art, Griffith University. At QCA he has been responsible for the design and implementation of a new sculpture curriculum, expanding the understanding of the role of sculpture in contemporary art, with an emphasis on merging skills and material possibilities with conceptual rigour.

Represented by Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Hany Armanious’ most recent exhibition for the Gallery was held in 2018.  Since 1991 he has held more than 30 solo exhibitions in Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, France, Italy and Germany. In 2001 his work was the subject of an exhibition curated by Connie Butler at the Armand Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, with a further solo exhibition held in 2008 at the Contemporary Art Museum, St Louis, curated by Anthony Huberman. In 2007 an extensive survey exhibition was held at The Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, which toured to the City Gallery, Wellington in 2008.

Image: Hany Armanious. Courtesy National Art School.

The Ideal Home exhibition and public programs seeks to explore Australian experiences of home across the past 100 years, encompassing domestic architecture, design, and technology, alongside contemporary social issues which threaten the fabric of our intimate lives: domestic violence, homelessness, housing affordability and the notion of Australia as refuge.

Penrith Regional Gallery with partner institution the Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences (MAAS) are examining various experiences of home and family life in a new exhibition titled The Ideal Home, on display from 1 December 2018 to 24 March 2019. The Ideal Home features 70 objects from the MAAS collection and a number of newly commissioned artworks exploring the Australian experience of home over the last century, encompassing themes of design and technology together with contemporary social issues such as domestic violence, homelessness, housing affordability and the notion of Australia as refuge.

The exhibition has taken over the entire Penrith Regional Gallery site, as well as extending to a satellite exhibition of modernist art and design at MAAS venue the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, with each space enabling a different consideration of exhibition ideas and themes.

Image: eX de Medici’s The Ominous Domestic, 2018