Ben Apfelbaum

THE NATIONAL 2021 : ARTISTS WITH THEIR ARTWORK

Abdullah M I Syed – Drawing Memories, A Life In a Day
Agatha Gothe Snape – Appaitonal Surge
Betty Kuntiwa Pumani – Antarai
Cameron Robbins – Oenograf
Caroline Rothwell -Carbon Emission 5, Constructivist Rococo
Judith Wright – Nature, Nurture
Lauren Berkowitz – Plastic Topographies
Mulkun Wirrpanda Tribute
Sally Smart – The Artist’s Ballet
Sancintya Mohini Simpson – kuli kubani
Sarah Rodigeri – On Time

A major survey of contemporary Australian art, The National 2021: New Australian Art, opens today across three of Sydney’s leading cultural institutions, the Art Gallery of New South  Wales (AGNSW), Carriageworks and Museum of Contemporary  Art Australia (MCA), presenting 39 new commissioned projects by established, mid-career, emerging artists and artist collectives from across the nation. 

The third iteration in a series of biennial surveys, originally launched in 2017, The  National 2021 showcases the varied and vital work being made by Australian artists,  in urban and regional centres, as well as remote communities, by artists of different generations and cultural backgrounds.  

Three distinct exhibitions have been developed by four curators, Matt Cox and Erin  Vink (AGNSW), Abigail Moncrieff (Carriageworks) and Rachel Kent (MCA Australia).  Each exhibition invites collective dialogue about the ideas and concerns mobilising some of Australia’s most significant contemporary artists.  

The National 2021 at AGNSW presents a diverse selection of works from 17 artists and cultural practitioners, including five Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists from the Zendath Kes (Torres Strait Islands), Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara  (APY) Lands in South Australia, Brisbane, and Canberra. 

“Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists in this exhibition present works that exist between moments of categorisation and form, relying on and claiming Indigenous and non-Eurocentric forms of knowledge. Significant commissions include two large-scale nocturnal, healing landscapes by Betty Muffler and Maringka Burton, a daguerreotype installation reclaiming Kaurna place names by James Tylor, and large fibreglass sculptural forms of sea creatures by Alick Tipoti,” said AGNSW Co-curator Erin Vink. 

AGNSW Co-curator, Matt Cox said: “The exhibition harbours a tension between sorrow and hope. The sites of grieving in the work of Fiona Hall and Gabriella Hirst, which respond to the devastation of the bushfires and the Barka Darling River system, are buoyed by an undeniable joy and promise of alternative futures in the performative installation of Justin Shoulder,” added Cox.  

A deep sense of questioning and responsiveness lies within the works presented at  Carriageworks. Interrogating ‘who is speaking’ and ‘what is being said when we speak’  the works contain both messages and warnings. The cry of Guwayi bird warns of a  turning tide in Vernon Ah Kee and Dalisa Pigram’s work, while the Karrabing Film  Collective use filmmaking to interrogate the conditions of inequality for Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory and to retain connections to land and their Ancestors.  Alana Hunt turns her lens on colonial aspirations of leisure, tourism and development that underpin contemporary life. The material complexity of Isadora Vaughan and  Lorraine Connelly-Northey’s sculptures speak to a sense of place and history while  Sarah Rodigari’s performance installation draws from conversations with casual staff at Carriageworks, providing a new reading of the site and its relationship to labour.  

Carriageworks Curator, Abigail Moncrieff said: “Collaboration, kinship and sociality threads throughout the work of the 13 artists and artist collectives at Carriageworks,  with each work navigating the measure and texture of our actions and engagement with the world around us. These urgent voices from around Australia speak to our  complicated and fractured present, and within this, offer hope for a renewed future.” 

The National at the MCA presents the work of 13 artists who consider diverse approaches to the environment, storytelling, and intergenerational learning. Their works incorporate natural materials and processes, as well as found objects and detritus, to explore notions of planetary caretaking and our relationship to place in an era of dramatic change. 

MCA Chief Curator, Rachel Kent said: “For me, symbiosis in nature is an enduring and meaningful exhibition motif. It is expressed in the art of Mulkun Wirrpanda,  whose bark paintings demonstrate the ways that diverse animal communities cohabit harmoniously, in the termite mounds of north-east Arnhem Land. Her works reveal  intricate patterns of connection and the balance of all things in the natural world.” 

Art Gallery of NSW

26 March – 5 September 2021

Carriageworks 

26 March – 20 June 2021  

MCA Australia 

26 March – 22 August 2021 

Featured image : Alick Tipoti – Dhangal Madhubai, Baydham

https://www.the-national.com.au/.  

 

Published by Ben Apfelbaum

My photography began when my father handed me the proverbial brownie box camera as a child. As cameras developed I went through Fujica and Olympus range finders graduating to my first single lens reflex camera, the Minolta SRT101, the latter being the greatest facilitator to my growth as a photographer. Digital photography has only added to this. I was a regular contributor to Camera Craft magazine (Australian Camera ) for over three years. During Australia’s Bicentennial year (1988) I made it a personal project to document the celebrations. This culminated in the creation of a book of my photos which was published in 1989. The book was called CELEBRATING AUSTRALIA and came with an accompanying calendar. My works have appeared in a number of publications including the coffee book entitled MY AUSTRALIA (1989), publisher Robertsbridge Severn. This book had a preface by the then Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke. I was a co-photographer on a book entitled SYDNEY- DISCOVER THE CITY with text written by Robert Treborland. Major Mitchell Press was the publisher. Also for two years I was the photographer for calendars celebrating Sydney’s multicultural communities. The two calendars were entitled MULTICULTURAL SYDNEY. My work appeared in a group exhibition held at Sydney’s Town Hall pertaining to the diversity of life in South America to raise money for orphanages there. I have over one hundred photos stored in the New South Wales State Library archive. I had a solo exhibition held in 2007 entitled Ben’s Lens at the Sydney Jewish Museum which celebrated the vibrancy of the Sydney Jewish community. Some of these photos are on the Museum’s permanent display. I have exhibited internationally firstly at the Spruill Gallery in Atlanta Georgia, united states, and in an exhibition entitled Kosher and Co at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Currently I am a regular contributor to J-Wire and this esteemed publication.