Heide Museum of Modern Art presents En Route, an immersive exhibition by artists Wona Bae and Charlie Lawler from 9 November 2019 to 2 February 2020. Marking their first public museum presentation, these large-scale installations create an experiential journey within the iconic modernist building Heide II and encourages viewers to consider what the relationship between human activity and the environment might hold.

South Korean-born artist Wona Bae and Australian artist Charlie Lawler, founders of the acclaimed Loose Leaf Studio, are known for their concept-driven artworks that challenge conventional ideas about the landscape and navigate visceral and symbiotic connections between people and nature.

For En Route the artists respond spatially and temporally to Heide II’s spaces through a series of site-specific sculptures. Bae and Lawler have experimented with botanical material using a language of texture and reduction — deconstructing familiar forms and devising new landscapes to be considered and explored.

Image: Installation view, En Route: Wona Bae and Charlie Lawler 2019, courtesy of the artists, photograph: Sean Fennessy

This November, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery presents Wild Is The Wind, a new exhibition of work by Scottish contemporary artist and DJ Jim Lambie. Marking Lambie’s second solo exhibition at the gallery and presented for the first time in Australia, Wild Is The Wind will feature a new seven-screen video installation, and recontextualised sunglasses and doors as vibrant wall sculptures.

The artist takes humble materials and transforms them into bright and joyful work; with this exhibition including sunglass lenses, doors, clothing, jars, vinyl records and film, rendered them into surprising art works that pulse with the musical energy Lambie imbues in everything he makes.

Wild Is The Wind will be presented at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery from 1-23 November 2019.

IMAGE: Jim Lambie, Sun Rise (Meadow Lark), 2018

Australia’s biggest festival of modern Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art, Tarnanthi, has launched at the Art Gallery of South Australia. In addition to Tarnanthi’s main exhibition at AGSW, smaller exhibitions are presented at 30 partner venues across Adelaide, including a commercial art fair featuring work from 50 Indigenous art centres. Tarnanthi means to come forth or appear in the language of the Kaurna people, the traditional owners of the Adelaide Plains.

Image: Ngupulya Pumani, Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara people, South Australia, Antara, 2018, Mimili, South Australia

FOUR SITE-SPECIFIC ART INSTALLATIONS TO BE UNVEILED IN SUMMER 2020

Carriageworks will present four large-scale art installations by leading Australian contemporary artists that will be unveiled on 8 January, 2020 as part of Sydney Festival. Rebecca Baumann, Daniel Boyd, Kate Mitchell and Reko Rennie have been commissioned by Carriageworks to create immersive and participatory artworks at the Redfern-based multi-arts institution that will be accompanied by a public program of talks and workshops.

While each presentation stands as a solo entity, they individually address a number of broad thematic ideas which include the concept of time, the use of light as a medium, the contrast of monumentality versus immateriality, and our basic interconnectivity as humans, collectively, the site specificity of the installations will engage audiences with the unique history and architecture of the Carriageworks precinct.

IMAGE: Rebecca Baumann, Radiant Flux, 2020. Commissioned by Carriageworks. Image courtesy the artist and Starkwhite © the artist. Photograph: Mark Pokorny.

The Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize, presented by Woollahra Council, today announced Sydney based artist Merran Esson and her work Autumn On The Monaro as the winner of the 19th annual acquisitive $20,000 Prize. Sydney artist Benjamin Jay Shand was awarded the Special Commendation award valued at $2,000 and artists Kieta Jackson, from Norwich, England, and Jessica Leitmanis, from Torquay, received a special mention. The 2019 Mayor’s Award valued at $1,000 has been awarded to Adelaide artist Jane Price.

Professor Ross Harley commented on the 2019 winning sculpture: “Merran Esson has made a beautiful work that evokes the forms and atmosphere of the Monaro autumn. The winning work displays a masterful use of material, palette and form but at the same time it has a warmth of emotion which draws the viewer into its field.”

The winners were chosen from a finalist group of 43 emerging and established artists by three guest judges: Dean of the Faculty of Art & Design and UNSW Chair of Arts and Culture, Professor Ross Harley;  Chief Executive Officer, Sydney Opera House, Louise Herron AM, and Design and Architecture advocate, broadcaster, author and comedian, Tim Ross. All finalist works will be displayed as part of a free public exhibition from 12 October – 3 November 2019 at Woollahra Council in Sydney.

Image: Merran Esson, Autumn On The Monaro