University Gallery Archive

COMMONPLACE

12/2/2020

BETH GEORGE AND MICHAEL CHAPMAN
9 JANUARY - 21 MARCH 2020

CLOSING EVENT
THURSDAY 19 MARCH 2020 FROM 5:30PM

Commonplace is an exhibition of collaborative drawing projects by Beth George, Michael Chapman and others. The drawings explore the relationships between empathy, embodiment, memory and architectural space and will be undertaken in the gallery space over the course of the exhibition.

Currently lecturing into UON’s School of Architecture and Built Environment, Michael Chapman (Professor) and Beth George (Senior Lecturer) have worked collaboratively on interdisciplinary art-architecture projects that explore the notion of creative practice as a research.

The gallery will become an interactive atelier space with workshops, discussions and an opportunity to observe research in real time and space over the summer months. We will conclude the exhibition with a closing event at the University Gallery on Thursday 19 MARCH from 5:30pm.

Image courtesy of Beth George and Michael Chapman.

WATERLINES

14/11/2019

3RD YEAR ARCHITECTURE: FINAL EXHIBITION
OPENING FRIDAY 22 NOVEMBER FROM 5:30PM

A showcase of work by third year architecture students, who, in their final Architecture Design Studio course, were prompted to craft designs that respond to the dynamic threshold between land and water in Newcastle.
Join us for a celebration of the graduating student’s successes and see the strength of UON’s School of Architecture and Built Environment.

20 NOVEMBER - 6 DECEMBER

REIMAGINING THE CANON

17/10/2019

A gender-inspired lens frames Reimagining the Canon, an exhibition that celebrates women artists and their contribution to and disruption of the ‘master’ narrative of western art.

An interdisciplinary and cross-border approach to practice has meant that the group’s identity is inclusive of professional artists at all stages of their careers. The cohort of performers, historians, writers and academics is curated for the exhibition by Annemarie Murland and offers a huge range of subject matter and media that illustrates self-expression from their individual zones of demarcation. The thematic conditions that surround the purpose and function of the group is simple: everyone’s story matters and should be told.

Image: Courtesy of Artists

STEEL LIFE

16/9/2019

MURRAY MCKEAN
24 September - 19 October

Please join Chancellor Paul Jeans for the exhibition launch at the University Gallery
Tuesday 24 September from 6:30pm

Murray McKean's Steel Life presents a collection of striking photographs that document the closure of the Newcastle steelworks, following on from Harold Cazneaux (1878 – 1953) and David Moore's (1927 – 2003) vivid documentation of the site in decades prior. At the turn of the century, Murray McKean’s photographs showed the site post closure in a state of ruin. Detritus from the steelworks is sprawled across the landscape in a kind of wreckage that documents the monumental scale and emotion of that time in Newcastle's history. The residual materials, and the evidence of absent workers, and workers as they clear the site, will remain tangible for many. Using the texture of the abandoned architecture of the site, Murray has preserved this period of our city's history with a series of poignant images that offer critical commentary on our collective memory twenty years on.

image: Steel Life number 14, 2001, silver gelatine prints shot on 6 x 7 mm 100 iso film using Mamiya RB 67 camera. Image courtesy of Murray McKean

BY THE GOOD GRACE

27/8/2019

VICKI HAMILTON
28 August - 14 September 2019

Please join the artist for the exhibition launch at the University Gallery
Saturday 31 August from 2:30pm

This PhD research is an investigation into the human-dog relationship, tracing the threads of understanding through philosophy and ancient ideas, to contemporary issues. The manipulation of both behaviours and the styles of dogs have been made by, and for, the benefit of humans over many centuries. The results of these societal ideas and values have also been reflected throughout the canon of art history, where artists have represented the status of these domesticated animals in the fashion of their time.

By the Good Grace explores the love, hate and indifference shown towards domesticated dogs historically. The broader aim of this research is to challenge people’s perceptions around the capacity of dogs to suffer when ill-treated, often as a result of dogs being purchased for fashion or illegal activities, rather than a deeper relationship.

IMAGE ABOVE: Vicki Hamilton, Fifi - Dogs Bodies 2019, porcelain, brocade fabric, mixed media, dimensions variable

Oh what a night! Newcastle Music Festival events a huge success!

15/8/2019

The University Gallery was thrilled to partner once again with the Newcastle Music Festival this year for two incredible nights at the gallery celebrating music and art, with sold out crowds.

This August the Music Festival launched at the University Gallery alongside the launch of the Erasure exhibition on 6 August, with fantastic jazz performances from Jacob Neale and Jarrod Gibson, responding to to the theme of erasure in the works of artists Mazie Turner, Dan Nelson, Annemarie Murland, and Katrina Holden. Check out the fantastic images of the night here. Courtesy of the NMF.
The follow up event Flamenco! was held on 13 August with wonderful performances by Bandaluzia featuring ARIA nominated guitarist Damian Wright. What an incredible night of Spanish music, dance and art! See the images of the night here. Courtesy of the NMF.
Thank you to everyone who contributed to the success of these events, including staff at the Newcastle Music Festival and the University Gallery, the incredible performers and artists, and of course, everyone who attended!
Erasure continues until 23 August at the University Gallery. Don't miss this beautiful exhibition!

ERASURE

9/7/2019

MAZIE TURNER | DAN NELSON | ANNEMARIE MURLAND | KATRINA HOLDEN

17 July - 24 August 2019

Please join us for the opening and performances Tuesday 6 August from 7:30pm.
Pianist Jacob Neale and bassist Jarrod Gibson will play Jazz in response to the artist’s work and the theme of erasure.

Erasure is never simply a matter of making things disappear: there is always a remainder that comes about in the aftermath, some mark on the surface from which a word or image or note has been removed. Whether crossed out, written-over or rubbed away, the forsaken item has a habit of returning, like a spectre: if only in the marks that assume its place and assert its passing.

IMAGE ABOVE: Dan Nelson, Fire path 2019, oil on canvas

Please join us for the follow up event and performances Tuesday 13 August from 7:30pm.
Sangria, paella and Flamenco! with Bandaluzia featuring ARIA nominated guitarist Damian Wright, for exceptional Spanish music and dance.

IMAGE ABOVE: Mazie Turner, Out of Darkness - Violet Cloud 2009, oil on belgian linen,
152.5 x 183 cm
Donated by the artist to the University of Newcastle Collection through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program

During the 1960s, a growing number of artists and writers in different locations around the world and largely unaware of one another, adopted the process of erasure and effacement. In New York, Doris Cross started painting over dictionary pages; Tom Phillips in London began to partially obliterate pages from an obscure Victorian novel; the Austrian concrete poet, Gerhard Rühm used India ink to largely obliterate a newspaper and in Belgium in 1968, Marcel Broodthaers crossed out selected words in a painting that resembled a blackboard.

Erasure was just one of a number of methods used by Conceptual artists in the 1960s, and was frequently employed to break with tradition and instigate new forms of art making that appeared to be detached from the artist’s own hand. But perhaps the most famous artwork featuring the act of erasure is Robert Rauschenberg’s work, ‘Erased De Kooning Drawing’, 1953. Since then, many artists have reprised Rauschenberg’s influential act of erasure, imbuing it with different meanings, created primarily through the question of what is being erased, as well as the circumstances under which such a cancellation is performed. Erasure is an exhibition of four women artists who have used and continue to interrogate this strategy in their work.

IMAGE ABOVE: Annemarie Murland, Erasure 2# 2019, mixed media

IMAGE ABOVE: Katrina Holden, Kinship 2019, acrylic on canvas, 40 x 51 cm

RESPONSE exhibition on now @ Hunter Region Botanic Gardens

27/6/2019

‘Response’ is a collaboration between the Hunter Region Botanic Gardens and the University of Newcastle’s staff, students and alumni from creative arts in which they respond to the natural environment of the HRBG. The exhibition creates an evocative space for creative freedom in concert with a respectful engagement with the sub-tropical rainforest area in the gardens and provides a new interpretation for visitors.

Sculpture has long held a dialogue with spaces – architectural and natural. ‘Response’ offers participating artists the opportunity to embed an artwork in an important regional environment. The artists chosen for this project have all worked with sculptural form as a non-invasive practice that respects the landscape in which it is sited. The works are placed without machinery, or other interventions that may harm the environment. Many of these works are of an ephemeral nature, with an intended gentle deterioration of the work over the duration of the exhibition.

Artists include Stela Brix, Andy Devine, Megan McCarthy, Michael Garth, Louisa Magrics, Brett McMahon, Kris Smith, Braddon Snape, Andrew Styan, Peter Tilley, Annika Thurbon, and Gavin Vitullo.
Response is a partnership between the University Gallery at the University of Newcastle and the Hunter Region Botanic Gardens, and runs from 22 June until 4 August 2019 at the Hunter Region Botanic Gardens.
Hunter Region Botanic Gardens
2100 Pacific Highway
Heatherbrae 2324
W www.huntergardens.org.au
OPENS 9 - 4 PM DAILY

School of Creative Industries | Honours 2019 Bachelor of Fine Art

11/6/2019

SCHOOL OF CREATIVE INDUSTRIES
BACHELOR OF FINE ART HONOURS 2019
12 June to 6 July 2019
Join artists Michelle Wellham and Lolita Manukian for the exhibition launch at the University Gallery
Friday 14 June from 6pm
Guest Speaker: Laureate Professor Roger Smith

SCATTERED
LOLITA MANUKIAN
The Armenian Genocide in 1915 forever changed Armenian history and the landscape of migration in the twentieth century. 104 years later issues of displacement and trauma still bind Armenians from all over the world through a thread of collective memory and the eternal quest for identity and belonging. Scattered is an installation that explores Armenian symbolism to tell a narrative of journey and diversity whilst portraying the universal struggle of acknowledging the past.

ABOVE IMAGE: Lolita Manukian, Scattered 2019 (detail), white earthenware paper clay

FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING
MICHELLE WELLHAM
Through a series of figurative ceramic sculptures, Michelle Wellham's research considers that violence of a domestic nature is closely connected with the way that gender is constructed and performed. It uses theatrical tableaux to contrast tropes of masculinity with feminine forms presented as subordinate in order to present a non-verbal testimony of abusive experience.

ABOVE IMAGE: Michelle Wellham, Figuratively Speaking 2019 (detail), mixed media

Kathryn Jeanes PhD Exhibition launches this week

25/4/2019

Opening this week at the University Gallery is Biloela: afore and beyond by Kathryn Jeanes.

Uncovering the repressed history of three nineteenth century public schools for “wayward” working class girls, Biloela: afore and beyond has developed out of research by University of Newcastle PhD candidate Kathryn Jeanes into local histories and institutionalised abuse. Through this installation, Jeanes makes public her research into the incarceration of abandoned girls at Newcastle Military Barracks, Biloela on Cockatoo Island and the Parramatta Industrial School for Girls. Motivated by the fact that there are no visual records or photographs of the girls, she has created her own archival works that attest to their traumatic experiences. By bringing to light this particular gap in Australian history, the exhibition exposes the brutality of these institutions.

Please join us for the exhibition opening at The University Gallery Friday 26 April from 2pm. Exhibition until 18 May.

Image: Kathryn Jeanes, Bilolea: afore and beyond 2019, concertina artist book, dimensions variable

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COMMONPLACE

WATERLINES

REIMAGINING THE CANON

STEEL LIFE

BY THE GOOD GRACE

Oh what a night! Newcastle Music Festival events a huge success!

ERASURE

MAZIE TURNER | DAN NELSON | ANNEMARIE MURLAND | KATRINA HOLDEN

17 July - 24 August 2019

Please join us for the opening and performances Tuesday 6 August from 7:30pm.
Pianist Jacob Neale and bassist Jarrod Gibson will play Jazz in response to the artist’s work and the theme of erasure.

RESPONSE exhibition on now @ Hunter Region Botanic Gardens

School of Creative Industries | Honours 2019 Bachelor of Fine Art

Kathryn Jeanes PhD Exhibition launches this week

Archives

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MAZIE TURNER | DAN NELSON | ANNEMARIE MURLAND | KATRINA HOLDEN17 July - 24 August 2019 Please join us for the opening and performances Tuesday 6 August from 7:30pm. Pianist Jacob Neale and bassist Jarrod Gibson will play Jazz in response to the artist’s work and the theme of erasure.

Archives

MAZIE TURNER | DAN NELSON | ANNEMARIE MURLAND | KATRINA HOLDEN

17 July - 24 August 2019

Please join us for the opening and performances Tuesday 6 August from 7:30pm.
Pianist Jacob Neale and bassist Jarrod Gibson will play Jazz in response to the artist’s work and the theme of erasure.