Julie Gough at Adelaide Festival

Deadly features newly commissioned works by eight leading Australian First Nation artists and collectives, including Julie Gough.  Curated by Fulvia Mantelli and Renee Johnson with Troy-Anthony Baylis, Nici Cumpston and Brenda L. Croft as advisors.  The Adelaide Festival is on from the 2nd to the 8th of March.  To find out more have a look at their website http://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/2012/visual_arts/deadly.

Raymond Arnold work acquired by The Parliament House Collection

Sediment & reflection 2004
screenprint on paper
100 x 70 cm, edition of 8

Bett Gallery announces the recent acquisition of Reflection & Sediment  2004, a screenprint on paper by Raymond Arnold, by the Parliament House Collection, Canberra.

Congratulations David Keeling

The Embassy of Australia Gallery in Washington DC, USA will showcase works by David Keeling  in the exhibition Lie of the Land: New Australian Landscapes. This exhibition looks at recent works by Australian artists that explore and complicate the character of Australia’s national landscape tradition.

Joan Ross animation acquired by Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery

BBQ This Sunday (flight paths) 2011, pigment print on premium photo paper
45 x 76 cm (paper size), edition of 5

Bett Gallery is thrilled to announce the acquisition of Joan Ross' digital animation, BBQ This Sunday, BYO,  from her recent exhibition BBQ This Sunday, BYO, by the Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery, Launceston.

Belinda Winkler & Joan Ross opening

Bett Gallery welcomes Joan Ross

BBQ this Sunday, BYO

Friday 6th of January to Saturday 3rd of March 2012 

Brave New Years 2011, pigment print on paper, 45 x 76 cm, ed. of 5

As a child I was fascinated by the fact that the important colonial painter Joseph Lycett was a forger. In a sense I am continuing his tradition of taking something and forging something new out of it.

One of the reasons for Lycett's fame lay in the fact he was one of the first to depicted the Aboriginal population engaged in traditional activities, and much of my work has on some level an element of the continuing dance of the races.

The mentality behind colonialism can manifest itself in many ways and the ongoing creep, nay, invasion of high vis yellow and fluoro orange are a modern-day example. I didn't vote for these colours, yet they are everywhere!

Joan Ross, 2011

I feel fine 2011, pigment print on paper, 45 x 76 cm, ed. of 5

Joan Ross questions assumptions of our cultural identity and being 'civilised'. Her materials include what we disavow in our personal lives - intense everyday neuroses like possessiveness, jealousy, and insecurity - and in our cultural identity as Australians - profound ambivalence towards the legacy of colonialism. At times her work can be unsettling and discomfiting, but they are also riveting, raucous and generous in their negotiation of emotional experience. Their economical composition adds to the intensity of their impact, while their materiality brings them with great immediacy into the realm of our everyday.

Since 1985, Ross has exhibited in contemporary galleries, at regional, state and the national gallery, as well as exhibiting internationally.  Ross has work held in major private in Australia, China and Britain, as well as corporate and public collections including National Gallery of Australia, Artbank, University of Sydney, University of Wollongong Art Gallery, Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, Gold Coast Regional Gallery, Newcastle Region Art Gallery, Campbelltown Art Centre and Macquarie Group Collection.


Exhibition available online on Thursday the 5th of January 2012

Belinda Winkler exhibition opens 6 January 2012

Align 2011, cast bronze
 5 objects: 12 x 65 x 12 cm (approx install)
edition of 3

Belinda Winkler’s sculptural forms hover at this moment of minimal and potential narrative. The tension, compression and distortion expressed in the curvature of edges and surfaces imply a history of the application of force and therefore the passage of time, but the work itself supplies nothing more than this. The viewer reads into the contraposto curves and twisting surfaces the strain of muscle and tendon, the tautness of stretched skin or the effects of gravitational force. It may be biophilic empathy that leads us to read these works as organism. The larger scale of Winkler’s rolled steel pieces, renders them anthropomorphic, suggesting the surfaces and actions of a human body.

Gravitate 2011, hand polished porcelain with glazed interior
3 objects: 8.5 x 30 x 30 cm (aprox install)

With her closed and semi-closed vessel formsWinkler explores her biotic minimalism in a different way. Their full, subtly asymmetrical shape alone renders them broadly biomorphic, especially when they are clustered as groups and pairs in implicit communion. Here, the silhouettes of the forms suggest specific relationships - intimacy, tension, need, maybe nurturing. The spaces between, where the surfaces draw infinitely close, sing with potential energy.   The openings in the forms, which we cannot help but read as mouths, extend this biomorphism, its size alone transforming their characters. Poised between organism and vessel, large openings suggest generosity or hunger, smaller ones perhaps disregard or sufficiency. Forming these openings with a precise, planar slice through the form, Winkler references Euclidean geometry and emphasizes the illusory nature of our biophilic readings.

Gravity #6 2011, hand polished porcelain with glazed interior
10 objects: 18 x 40 x 30 cm (approx install)

The smooth, perfect finish of Winkler’s work serves both to emphasise the skin-like qualities of the surfaces and to eliminate a competing narrative of fabrication. The life seemingly inherent in the curves and shapes of her forms is far from the anaemic, indeed Platonic, perfection of cyberspace. To achieve her minimum curvature Winkler’s methods are emphatically analogue; she experiments with metal, foam, creepy fabrics such as Lycra®, liquid-filled balloons and other materials; compressing, stretching, running them through industrial bending and rolling machines. At this stage, roughly cut plywood shapes bolted through sheets of foam, liquid-filled balloons distorted with string and scaly bands of rolled steel are far from the smooth, sensuous and sometimes erotic surfaces that Winkler achieves in the finished work. Yet it is these processes that, through experiment, repetition and serendipity, produce curves and surfaces with the spring and tension that gives them life.

Contrapposto #1 2011, steel & polyurethane
triptych: 60 x 500 x 30 cm (approx install)

Twentieth century Minimalist sculptors sought to eliminate the anthropomorphic and with it extraneous narrative from their work. At the edge of the minimal, Winkler’s work conducts a stripped down potential for narrative, exploiting our almost inevitable tendency to see meaning in form and life and movement in the curve.

Peter Hughes.

Senior Curator (Decorative Arts)

Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery

Belinda Winkler is a Tasmanian artist and is currently completing an Invitational Reflective Practice PhD through the RMIT School of Architecture and Design, having attained a Bachelor of Fine Arts (First Class Honours) and a Bachelor of Education, University of Tasmania. Winkler’s practice spans sculpture, public art and design. Her work is held in public and private collections nationally.

Exhibition available for online preview 5 January 2012

Happy Holidays

David Keeling, New room with feature wall 2011, oil on board, 40 x 40 cm

Bett Gallery wishes you the happiest of holidays and thanks you for all your support over 2011.

We will close on December the 24th and re-open on January the 4th 2012.

Always available by appointment.

Tributes to Dick Bett AM (1947 - 2011)

Order of Service, Hobart, Tasmania, 2nd of December, 2011

Speakers in celebration of Dick’s life

MC  - Raymond Arnold

Carol Bett

David Keeling

Hon Duncan Kerr SC

Richard Flanagan

Other tributes

Mercury, 29 November 2011

Leo Schofield, Mercury, 10 December 2011

Fae Robinson for Island Collection

Dick Bett AM Eulogies

Dick Bett sadly passed away after a long illness on the 28th of November 2011.  We have been inundated with requests for copies of the eulogies from the recent service for Dick.  We will publish these, and other tributes to Dick, on our website in the next couple of days so they can be shared with those who could not be there on the day.

2011 Bett Gallery Honours Award announced

Bett Gallery congratulates Lydia Evangelou-Oost, winner of the 2011 Bett Gallery Honours Award in conjunction with the University of Tasmania.  Watch this space for more about Lydia and her work....

Tasmanian Aboriginal shell stringing gains international recognition

The Premier, Lara Giddings, today congratulated two respected Tasmanian Aboriginal shell necklace makers whose work has been selected to appear in a prestigious exhibition in the United States.

Ms Giddings said works by Aunti Corrie Fullard and her daughter Jeanette James had been selected for the Forces of Nature exhibition at the Australian Embassy in Washington DC, which opens on 16 November 2011 and continues until February 2012.

“Curated by Melissa Keys, an Australian contemporary art curator currently living and working in the United States, Forces of Nature draws together the work of thirteen of Australia’s most significant artists working in the field of jewellery and small sculpture practice,” Ms Giddings said.

“The exhibition investigates the intricacies of land and sea, flora and fauna, while exploring the complex relationship between contemporary Australia and its unique natural environment.”

Aunti Corrie Fullard is a respected elder of the Tasmanian Aboriginal community and the tradition of shell stringing was passed down through many generations of her family, including to her daughter Jeanette.

The art of shell stringing is a valued Palawa cultural tradition that has remained intact and continued without interruption for many thousands of years. 

Ms James said the cultural and artistic aspect Aboriginal shell necklace stringing had been difficult to explain to some overseas countries.

 “Exhibitions such as this one help educate international audiences about Tasmania and the Aboriginal culture and practices.

“My mother and I were excited when we were invited by the curator to be a part of this exhibition and we are very honoured to be considered two of Australia’s most significant artist working in the field of jewellery and small sculpture.”

Ms Giddings described the pair as an inspiration to all Tasmanian artists.

“The recognition of Tasmanian Aboriginal shell stringing at an international level is incredibly significant and I commend Aunti Corrie and Jeanette for continuing to preserve this important traditional practice.”

Megan Walch at MOP Projects

 Lineage of Eccentricity Stage 2
10th November - 27th November 2011
Opening Thursday 10.11.2011   6 - 8 pm
 MOP Projects,   2 / 39   Abercrombie   Street   Chippendale  Sydney  NSW   2008 

What Goes Up’…. (detail)
Acrylic, enamel, oil paint, glitter on wood panel
70 cm x 280 cm,    

By placing pressure on painting’s traditions Megan aims to exploit the extreme plastic conditions of the medium to cross cultural as well as aesthetic boundaries of form.
‘Eccentric art’ has been a recognised category of Japanese art history since the 18th Century. Japanese Art Historian Tsuji Nobuo coined the term ‘Kiso no Keifu’ (The Lineage of Eccentricity) in his 1970 book of the same name.
Nobuo’s definition embraces unconventional notions of beauty in painting emphasizing the grotesque, a love of nature and the use of humour in imagery.
‘The Lineage’ is a new framework for Megan to develop an Australasian vision in art; one that prioritises a pan-Pacific diaspora.
The etymology of ‘eccentricity’ is rooted in the Greek for ‘off centre’ and it is at a distance from Europe and the US that globalisation’s cultural mutants result in new forms of expression.

Megan’s work has been exhibited in the United States and Australia, including Wilderness, curated by Wayne Tunnicliffe at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Kindle and Swag - The Samstag Effect, curated by Ross Wolfe, University of South Australia Art Museum, and Primavera 2000, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. Megan is a Samstag Scholar and an alumnus of the San Francisco Art Institute USA and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture USA. Megan has had residencies in the Space Program New York, in an Australia Council studio at Taipei National University for the Arts, and with Asialink at Khon Kaen University Thailand. She currently lives and works in Hobart Tasmania.

Amanda Davies in Shotgun 2011

CAST and project partner, Detached Cultural Organisation present the second edition of this annual early career artist exhibition and professional development opportunity. Shotgun provides a platform for promising early career artists based in Tasmania to develop new work for exhibition. This years artists are Andrew Harper and our own Amanda Davies.

Shotgun operates under a flexible curatorial model with selection of applications assessed through a committee process. This year sixteen artists from across Tasmania were invited to submit portfolios. From these submissions six artists were chosen for interview, and ultimately two were selected for inclusion in Shotgun.

SHOTGUN EXHIBITION OPENS AT CAST 28 OCTOBER, 2011

DISCUSSION EVENT SATURDAY 12 NOVEMBER, 2011

Tom O'Hern Artist Interview for Primavera '11

Imants Tillers acquired by Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery

In These Latitudes 2011
acrylic & gouache on 72 canvas boards
No. 90304 - 90375
226.5h x 284.5 cm (approx installation area)

Bett Gallery is thrilled to announce the acquisition of this significant Imants Tillers, from his recent exhibition The Journey South,   by the Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery.

Helen Wright wins Hutchins Art Prize

Congratulations to Helen Wright for taking out the 2011 Hutchins Art Prize with her work:

The Exquisite Corpse of Seaweed Man  2011
relief print
168 x 60 cm

Limited edition available from Bett Gallery.

Joel Crosswell Artist Talk

15 Soul Collectors, clay, wire and resin, 40 x 40 x 9 cm

"My sculptures and drawings are based around existence. I create a world based on ideas that already exist in mythology and shamanism as well as ideas that link closely with the everyday world in which we live. I am interested in ideas of what may be beyond death and how this relates to our sense of self. I use the figurative form of the body to portray this sense of vulnerability. My art practice involves a process of subconscious channelling where the art becomes metaphoric for past memories, feelings and personal stories."

Joel Crosswell, 2011

Joel will be speaking further about his work, this Saturday the 15th of October at 2pm in the gallery backspace.  Join us.

Welcome to The Valley Collection

Bett Gallery announces it's most recent art collecting group -  The Valley Collection.  Tasmanian based, and with a focus on collecting a major collection of contemporary Australian Art, we wish them all the best as they start on their collecting journey.

Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize

Gravity #4  2011,  cast bronze, 24 x 12 x 12 cm

Congratulations to Belinda Winkler who has been short listed as a finalist in the 2011 Woollhara Small Sculpture Prize. Announced Friday 21 October.