The COFA Blog

Artist Run Initiatives are dynamic and often experimentally based cutting-edge arts projects that are organised and coordinated by predominantly emerging artists. These projects range from galleries, art spaces, studios, publications and temporary events and are seen as spaces for the incubation and development of artists’ practices in the early stages of their professional careers. COFA graduate Leanne Shedlezki and sister Naomi Shedlezki launch ART MAP: a guide to Sydney’s artist-run galleries and projects. It is a free art map and guide to 26 artist run initiatives (ARIs) in Sydney’s inner city and inner west. The Sydney ARI Guide introduces 26 of these ARI projects through a handy map and website, unearthing a web of cultural and artistic activity happening within the Sydney arts community.

What: Art Map launch
When: Saturday 28 March, 2009  5-7pm
Where: At The Vanishing Point – Contemporary Art, 565 King Street Newtown NSW 2042

What: Free guided ARI walking tours
When: Sat 21 March Redfern/Alexandria 2pm & Sat 28 March Newtown/St.Peters 2pm
Afternoon Tours gaining insights into Sydney’s diverse Artist Run Initiatives. Join in to visit ARIs and meet the artists that run them as they introduce their ARI project.
To register for tours and for further information go to www.matchboxprojects.com/AriTourRegistration.php

Patrick Hartigan, Country Album c. 1950’s (detail), 2008, pencil on paper, 36 elements, 17 x 23.4 cm. Image courtesy the artist and Darren Knight Gallery Sydney © the artist

Four COFA Fine Arts graduates, Patrick Hartigan, Gordon Hookey, Jess Johnson and Tim Silver, are included in the Museum of Contemporary Art exhibition I walk the line: new Australian drawing. The exhibition celebrates the renaissance currently being enjoyed by drawing in contemporary Australian art. Drawing has always been considered the cornerstone of artistic practice because of its immediacy in recording thought and gesture. This exhibition examines new approaches to drawing and the reinvigoration of the practice by a mostly younger generation of Australian artists who have spear-headed its resurgent popularity. On display are many works that remind viewers that drawing is a verb, as well as a noun: they lay bare the processes and gestures of drawing. From performative works featuring the production of marks, to animation, collaborative and three-dimensional drawing, the exhibition explores a range of different approaches to contemporary drawing. Curator Christine Morrow.

Where: Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
When: 17 March - 24 May 2009

George Gittoes, The Yellow Room (Afghanistan), oil on canvas, 1999.

Australian artist George Gittoes has for many years explored the interior and emotional consequences of war and conflict. He travels extensively to the world’s international hot spots to observe their harsh reality first hand; in this way Gittoes has himself become the scarred witness to the conflicts of our time. In 1997, he was awarded an Order of Australia, AM for his services to the arts and international relations.
The artists whose work most closely relate to Gittoes are not found in contemporary Australia, but in Germany in the 1920s and 30s, artists such as Max Beckmann and Otto Dix. Mayen Beckmann, a distinguished German curator and grand daughter of Max Beckmann, will talk on the importance of Gittoes’ work in this tradition.
COFA would like to thank the Goethe Institut for bringing Ms Beckmann to Australia

Mayen Beckmann
Mayen Beckmann is the grand daughter of iconic German Expressionist painter Max Beckmann. She studied art history and trained as paper-restorer. In 1994 she joined Galerie Pels-Leusden, Berlin, where the main focus was German Expressionism and post war German art. Since 2001, Mayen Beckmann has been compiling the catalogue raisonné of the pastels and watercolors of Max Beckmann, published in 2006.

When: Tuesday 31 March, 6:30pm
Where: COFA, Main Lecture Theatre (EG02)

FREE

For details on how to get to COFA and to navigate yourself around the campus, please visit: www.cofa.unsw.edu.au/about/location/

Amsterdam Zaishu Project

Footprints is an exciting new initiative that celebrates young artists and designers from around Australia who are passionate about responding to environment issue through their work. Footprints is a collaborative effort between Oxfam Australia’s Youth Engagement Program and COFA graduate and lecturer Trent Jansen.
Footprints aims to promote sustainability and environmental awareness while encouraging people to think about their own carbon footprint, with the title referring to one’s ecological footprint as well as the new notion of an individual’s carbon footprint. During the one day event public viewing at the MCA, the floor of the Harbour Terrace will be covered with around 2000 newspaper tulips, each standing no more than 40cm away from the nearest tulip. As visitors navigate through the tulips in order to view the work on display, they will be forced to think about where they are placing their feet- tiptoeing through the tulips.
The launch of Footprints on March 22 will be a live art activity, the Footprints Zaishu Project to be held on the MCA lawn. Using an international collaborative design approach Zaishu Studio creates innovative, sustainable, collectable artworks that also function as Zaishu seat/ tables. The completed Zaishus will then be available for sale at Blank Space during the weeklong exhibition, with all proceeds supporting Oxfam’s work to help communities around the world find sustainable ways to overcome poverty.
Works in the exhibition include illustration, painting, photography, furniture, jewellery, fashion, sculpture and short films, and will also feature interactive artworks that those visiting the exhibition will be able to participate in.

One Day Event Public Viewing:
Where: The Harbour Terrace, Level 6, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney- 140 George Street The Rocks
When: March 22 from 12pm- 4pm, 2009

Week long exhibition:
Where: Blank Space, 374 Crown Street Surry Hills
When: March 26 – April 1 2009. Opening night 6pm to 8 pm Thursday 26 March 2009

Christopher Dean, Middle Age Hard Edge Abstractionist from St Marys seeking same, Oil on canvas, 45 x 45cm, 2007. Photo credit: Adam Hollingworth and the Blacktown Arts Centre.

COFA graduate and artist, Christopher Dean, will exhibit his paintings at Marrickville gallery Factory 49.
Factory 49 is an artist run Showroom that presents contemporary abstraction (non-objective) art, showcases solo shows, changes every 2 weeks. Openings Wed 6-8 pm.

When: 26 March 2009 to 4 April 2009
Where: Factory 49, 49 Shepherd Street Marrickville Sydney

Paraskavedekatriaphobia is the phobia of Friday the 13th. This year, 2009, actually has three Friday the 13th’s occuring, the next one falling this Friday. The Workshop Showroom is holding a one night only exhibition loosely inspired by a phobia of the infamous date. The Workshop Showroom artists will present new art work and launch a new year of projects in the space. This is one-night-only event, an opening/closing party, an opportunity to stake out good fortune and art, presented by Priscilla Bourne, Michaela Gleave, Kathryn Gray, Cecelia Huynh, Jessica Olivieri, Leigh Rigozzi and Jessica Tyrrell.

COFA graduate, Micheala Gleave, is a visual artist living and working in Sydney, Australia. In 2008 Gleave completed a directorship at Firstdraft Gallery in Sydney and is currently a resident artist at Workshop Showroom.  She is a board member of runway magazine and a member of the artist collective The Free Association.

Where: Workshop Showroom, 9 Edith Street St Peters
When: Friday 13 March, 6-9pm

Tanya Baker invitation

COFA Master research student, Tanya Baker, will be exhibiting at Gaffa Gallery. Baker’s photographic work explores themes of choice in the face of time and the arbitrary nature of existence. The current series explores the choice between individuation and loss of the self. With reference to an Apollonian vs Dionysian way of life, the work reflects upon the balance or imbalance of work and play, duty and freedom in the every day.

When: Thu, 12 March - Tue, 24 March. Exhibition opening night: Thursday 12 March 6 to 8pm
Where: Gaffa Gallery

Del Kathryn Barton, You are what is most beautiful about me, a self portrait with Kell and Arella, 2008, acrylic, gouache, watercolour, pen on polyester canvas, 280 x 180 cm. Winner of the 2008 Archibald Prize. Courtesy of the artist and Kaliman Gallery, Sydney.

Held just days after the winner of the 2009 Archibald Prize is announced, Why go for the Prize? will be a lively panel discussion between the 2008 winner, Del Kathryn Barton, Guy Warren, who won in 1985, and Kerrie Lester who has entered many times, but is yet to take home the prize. These three distinguished artists will examine the impact on individual artists of winning the prize, or even being hung.

Del Kathryn Barton became a household name last year after winning the Archibald Prize. Recently she exhibited in two major exhibitions: Neo Goth at the University of Queensland Art Museum and GOMA’s national survey show, Optimism, in Brisbane. Barton is a COFA graduate.

Guy Warren is one of Australia’s most respected senior artists. He has been exhibiting for over 5 decades. Warren has won 24 awards and prizes, including the 1985 Archibald Prize, and has been awarded two honorary doctorate degrees and a Medal of Australia.

Kerrie Lester’s work is held in numerous public and private collections including the National Gallery of Australia. Her portraits have been hung in the Archibald sixteen times and she won the Packing Room Prize in 1979. She is also a COFA graduate (then Alexander Mackie).

When: Tuesday 10 March, 6:00pm
Where: COFA, Main Lecture Theatre (EG02)

FREE

For details on how to get to COFA and to navigate yourself around the campus, please visit: www.cofa.unsw.edu.au/about/location/

Stephen Dupont Kill Em All US Marine, 2ND Battalion, Echo CO, at Watapoor Village, Kunar Province, Afghanistan, September 2005, courtesy the artist

Proposing that the legacy of George W. Bush’s presidency is a new world disorder, Bushwhacked features artists from Pakistan, the United States of America, Europe and Australia, whose practices range from time-based art and photojournalism to feminist masked vengeance. Bushwhacked explores the effect and affect of the Bush Administration on the world, individually, globally, philosophically and economically, and asks the crucial question where do we go from here?