2018 09 September ARTEFACT single Page Print res

INTO LIGHT:
19th and 20th century paintings from the
MUS’E DE LA CHARTREUSE, DOUAI
In the mid-nineteenth century, France was
the acknowledged centre of the art world,
as realist styles of painting were challenged
by Impressionism. With the advent of
photography many artists worked to imitate
nature, finding new ways of to celebrate light
and colour as spontaneous ‘impressions’.
This exhibition of treasures from the Musee
de la Chartreuse, the regional gallery for
Douai in northern France, traces these
developments. It ranges from the idealised
classical imagery of the late eighteenth
century, romantic seascapes and tranquil
landscapes depicting the mills and canals of
northern France, through to paintings which
celebrate the effects of pure light and colour,
and works which explore the lives of ordinary
people, rarely seen in earlier painting.
Renovations to the Chartreuse building have
created a unique opportunity for Australian
audiences to see sixty nineteenth and
twentieth-century gems from this outstanding
French gallery, alongside key paintings by
Australian artists working in France and
discovering the same traditions, and works
by French artists from Australian collections.
Special guided tours will be available
every Saturday and Sunday during the
run of the exhibition and for group visits by
arrangement.
through Sunday September 9
LOUISEANN KING
BOAA ART 2018
Louiseann King is a sculptor/installation
artist and academic based in Eganstown,
a physical and historical landscape which
is highly charged, complex and capable of
subtle and dramatic change. This exciting
project will see two exhibition spaces within
the Gallery reconceived with thematic
displays of work to explore depictions of
women and landscapes in the nineteenth
century, so that King’s sculptural installations
sit within them, providing points of contrast
and dialogue with works from the collection.
King is a maker and a collector of time
and place; her practice is one where she
works with nuance, subtlety, the liminal,
the forgotten and the lost. She collects,
salvages, collates, regroups, juxtaposes
and re-renders, creating works which cross
boundaries of time and place.
She is an oddity and, at times, a curiosity:
a woman artist working in bronze in a
field dominated by men, with a practice
which is inherently feminine and ‘other’.
In her practice, bronze is both inherently
monumental and heroic, and also deeply
seductive and sensual in its potential to
enable transformation.
In this exhibition, King will consider the
way the Gallery collection is displayed, the
spaces it occupies and how this generates
meaning and context. solis will feature new
sculptural installation works/interventions
and include a collaboration with sound
artist Philip Samartzis which utilises local
eco-acoustic recordings and the particular
acoustics of the Ferry and Crouch galleries.
MARLENE GILSON
BOAA ART 2018
Aunty Marlene Gilson is a Wathaurung
(Wadawarrung) Elder living on country in
Gordon, near Ballarat. A visual artist who
discovered painting later in life, Aunty
Marlene’s paintings explore Aboriginal myth
and stories of the goldfields.
Her work is marked by a naive style which
references her Indigenous and European
ancestry. She is a descendent of King Billy,
an Indigenous tribal leader of the Ballarat
region at the time of the Eureka Stockade
and his wife Queen Mary.
Aunty Marlene positions Koorie stories
within the context of these Precolonial and
Postcolonial times which are often absent in
the understanding of Australian history.
Gilson’s first exhibition was in 2012 at the
Art Gallery with her daughter Deanne Gilson.
She was a finalist in the Victorian Indigenous
Art Award in 2013, 2014 and 2015 and
she received the Koorie Heritage Trust
Reconciliation Award.
Her work has been shown at the Art Gallery
of Ballarat, Bunjilaka, Melbourne Museum,
ACCA, M.A.D.E and The Koorie Heritage
Trust. Her work is included in collections
including the National Gallery of Victoria,
City of Melbourne, Art Gallery of Ballarat and
Australian Catholic University.
26 September 2018 ARTeFACT Newsletter