Big Talks | Artists in Conversation
11:00am - 12:15pm Sat 7 July 2018
Join artists from the exhibition From Here to There: Australian art and walking: Lauren Brincat, Noel McKenna, Rebecca Gallo and Dean Brown as they discuss their work with Daniel Mudie Cunningham, Senior Curator, Visual Arts, Carriageworks
Free, booking not essential
In partnership with Arts Northern Rivers 
CURATOR BIOGRAPHIES
SHARNE WOLFF
Sharne Wolff is an art historian, arts writer, critic and artist mentor. For the past seven years she’s written on art for numerous publications including Art Monthly Australia, Art Guide Australia, The Guardian Australia, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Art Life. Sharne is Associate Editor for Byron Arts Magazine. Her curatorial projects have included assistant curator on the Westpac Landscape Prize, and co-curator of ‘All New Home’ for Northern Rivers emerging artists (with NSW Visual Arts Prize winner, Heath Franco) – both held at Northern Rivers Community Gallery in Ballina.
Prior to her current preoccupation with art, Sharne spent more than 25 years as a legal academic and solicitor – working in legal practices in Sydney, London and Lismore. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Economy, Bachelor of Laws, Bachelor of Arts (Honours in Art History), a Masters of Research, and is a PhD Candidate at Macquarie University, Department of Music, Media, Communication and Cultural Studies. For the past 2 years her research project has focused on walking in Australian contemporary art. Her Masters thesis ‘The art of walking in Australian contemporary practice’ was recently completed at Macquarie University.
JANE DENISON
Jane Denison is an art historian, freelance arts writer, artist and curator based in northern New South Wales. Jane is a regular contributor to The Journal of Australian Ceramics, Byron Arts Magazine, Verandah magazine (online) and the Opus Oracle of the Mosaic Association of Australia and New Zealand (online). Jane holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours in Art History) from the University of Queensland. Supervised by Prof. Rex Butler, her thesis topic was A Greek Ideal: The art of Michael Zavros.
Jane has over 25 years involvement in the arts in the Northern Rivers. As director of Brooklet House art publishing in the 1990s, Jane curated monthly exhibitions at Brooklet House in Byron Bay. Her most recent curatorial experience was the emerging artists’ exhibition (with NSW Visual Arts Fellowship Winner, Heath Franco) ‘All New Home’ with Sharne Wolff at Northern Rivers Community Gallery in Ballina. Her most recent exhibition as an artist was ‘Following the Juice: Mosaic Artists of Byron Bay’ at Lone Goat Gallery, Byron Bay. Jane's current projects include establishing an artist residency at Villa Rustica Byron Bay, being a member of the organising committee for the Byron Easter Arts Classic and researching the life of her great uncle, Australian artist John Peter Russell.
ARTIST PROFILES
LAUREN BRINCAT
Lauren Brincat (born 1980 Sydney) is an artist who works in a variety of media, including video documentation of ‘actions’, typically performed by the artist in solitude. Brincat’s practice is largely guided by the early performance art of the 1970s. She holds a Masters of Visual Arts, College of the Arts, University of Sydney and a Bachelor of Visual Arts, Honours 1st class, College of the Arts, University of Sydney.
Her videos often portray the artist undertaking performances in relative solitude. The artist is known for a series of ‘walking pieces’ occurring in vastly different contexts, from empty fields, to busy urban cities, and the ocean. Her recent work is sculptural, working with textiles to create malleable forms that can be activated by participants. Brincat’s latest work is also further engaged with politics and history, taking the form of blank banners and creating sculptures out of sailcloth, invoking the sea and borders.
Recent exhibitions include: No Performance Today with Bree van Reyk & the NSW Police Marching Band for Sonic Social, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Molto Echo, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; The Substation Contemporary Art Prize, The Substation, Newport, Australia; Woollarhra Small Sculpture Prize, Woollahra Council, Sydney; 20th Biennale of Sydney, Carriageworks, Sydney;
She was awarded one of the Australia Council’s inaugural Creative Australia Fellowships for Young and Emerging artists. Brincat’s works can be found in the collections of the Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney), the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (Sydney), MONA / Museum of Old and New Art (Hobart), as well as private and corporate collections.
Brincat was part of Lismore Regional Gallery’s Splendid initiative, and presented two works at Splendour in the Grass in 2010 as part of this project.
NOEL McKENNA
Noel McKenna was born in Brisbane in 1956. Currently, he lives and works in Sydney. He studied architecture briefly at the University of Queensland, before attending Brisbane College of Art (1976-78) and Alexander Mackie College, Sydney (1981). He has been exhibiting since the early 1980s, and has had numerous solo exhibitions in both Australia and New Zealand. His work has been included in many group and touring exhibitions, and he is represented in many state, corporate and private collections.
His work reveals the world through the suburban familiar in watercolours, etchings or oil on canvas board, a world most of us pass through because it is not a place we easily claim as our own, for reasons more complicated and numbing than mere alienation.
Recent exhibitions include: The Interior at Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide 2016; The Curragh at Niagara Galleries Melbourne 2015; Brisbane: my home Heiser Gallery Brisbane 2014; A Walk From One Tree Hill to Half Moon Bay at Two Rooms Auckland 2014.
REBECCA GALLO
Rebecca Gallo is an artist and art writer based in Sydney, Australia.
In her material practice, discarded and manufactured objects found through walking are combined into assemblages, mobiles and carefully catalogued collections. These works are explorations of material culture, or a kind of archaeology of the present that investigates the use and tactility of everyday objects. Read more about Gallo’s work here.
Together with Connie Anthes, Gallo is one half of the artistic collaboration Make or Break. Since 2015, Make or Break has worked across gallery, institution, festival and nightclub contexts to produce a range of process-based art projects. These have included creating experimental economies that address precarity and privilege; using galleries as live work spaces; performing personal admin for an audience; co-writing texts; circulating fictional currencies; making books; celebrating the invisible labour of strangers; and facilitating conversations and workshops as alternatives to traditional forms of research. Make or Break is passionate about exposing the role and visibility of labour, process and the artist/audience relationship in ways that question and challenge the social and political systems that surround us.
Gallo completed a Bachelor of Fine Art at the National Art School in 2006 and a Master of Art at UNSW Art & Design in 2015. From 2014-15 she was a co-director of Archive_ ARI, an artist-run space in inner city Sydney, and the editor of RAVEN Contemporary, a national online platform for contemporary art.
Gallo’s writing has been published across print and digital platforms including Art & Australia, Vault Magazine, Art Guide Australia, The Art Life, Sturgeon, Runway: Australian Experimental Art and Look Magazine. Catalogue essays include Not a Solo Show at Verge Gallery, Aberrant Play at Grafton Regional Gallery and Paintings by Mum at Airspace Projects.
DEAN BROWN
Painter and printmaker Dean Brown (born 1981 Sydney) completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours at the National Art School. He also holds a Diploma of Design, TAFE, Sydney, and from 2000-07 studied Classical drawing and painting at the Julian Ashton Art School Sydney.
His work explores themes of individuality and alienation by depicting commuting urban figures removed from their larger group context. Brown’s work has been included in group exhibitions in Sydney, Melbourne, Alice Springs, Fremantle, the Gold Coast and internationally in Korea. He was awarded the Storrier Onslow National Art School Paris Studio Residency at Cité International des Arts, Paris in 2011.
Recent solo exhibitions include: ‘Reveille’, Gallery Ecosse, Exeter, NSW; ‘The End Has No End’, Australian Galleries, Derby Street, Melbourne; ‘Alone Together’, Australian Galleries, Glenmore Road, Sydney; ‘Drive On’, Gallery Ecosse, Exeter, NSW , Law
.png)
smnall_web.jpg)
_web_small_2.png)
