Congratulations Helen Wright

Congratulations to all the winners in this year's Waterhouse Natural History Art Prize, especially our own Helen Wright who took out 2nd place in the Works on Paper category with her wood cut print titled The Exquisite Corpse of Seaweed Man .
 
The Waterhouse Natural History Art Prize is a prestigious art award that celebrates our intricate and complex global biodiversity and encourages excellence in natural history art within Australia and around the world.

The prize was established by the South Australian Museum in 2002 to honour its first curator, the eminent zoologist Frederick George Waterhouse. Now in its tenth year, the Waterhouse is Australia’s richest prize for natural history art. It has proudly contributed over one million dollars to the arts community since its inception.

The enduring popularity of the prize is testament to the unique opportunity it gives artists to interpret the beauty and fragility of our natural world.

The exhibition of finalists' artworks are on display at the South Australian Museum until 9 September 2012.

Annika Koops featured in current Australian Art Collector magazine p.122-129

Melbourne Art Fair 2012

Heather B Swann wins Swan Hill Drawing Prize

Cloud, ink on paper, 100 x 150 cm

Congratulations to Heather B Swann, having just won the Swan Hill Drawing prize, judged by Roger Butler from the National Gallery of Australia.  Bett Gallery are thrilled to announce a drawing exhibition by Heather B Swann in it's upcoming program.  Watch this space...

For the diary

Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery acquire David Keeling work

Slow walk, coastal track, oil on linen, 184 x 138cm

Bett Gallery are thrilled to announce the recent acquisition by the Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery of David Keeling's major work, Slow Walk, Coastal track.  This work is currently on show at Bett Gallery as part of David's most recent exhibition Views from the Dream Palace. Exhibition continues to 30 June 2012.

Julie Gough featured in 2nd Indigenous Triennial

From May to July 2012, the National Gallery will celebrate the second National Indigenous Art Triennial, unDisclosed. Over autumn and winter, Gallery visitors will have the opportunity to experience the dynamic visual expression of contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art. 20 artists have been selected for their commitment to excellence and their daring to explore new fields of practice and artistic vision, these artists both inform and redefine contemporary Indigenous art as we presently know it.

The twenty artists featured in UnDisclosed: 2nd National Indigenous Art Triennial are: Tony Albert, Vernon Ah Kee, Bob Burruwal, Michael Cook, Lorraine Connelly-Northey, Nici Cumpston, Fiona Foley, Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori, Gunybi Ganambarr, Julie Gough, Lindsay Harris, Jonathan Jones, Danie Mellor, Naata Nungurrayi, Maria Josette Orsto, Daniel Walbidi, Christian Thompson, Alick Tipoti, Lena Yarinkura and Nyapanyapa Yunupingu.

The exhibition’s theme, ‘unDisclosed’, alludes to the spoken and the unspoken, the known and the unknown, what can be revealed and what cannot. It captures the duality of the disclosed and undisclosed embedded within the works and the exhibition as a whole. Viewers are invited to unearth the layers of hidden and subtle meanings and to place them alongside those that are conspicuous.

Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery acquire Amanda Davies

Incapacity  2011, oil on linen, 198 x 244 cm

We are pleased to announce the recent acquisition by TMAG of Amanda Davies work Incapacity, exhibited at Shotgun, Contemporary Art Space Tasmania, Hobart and Cross Art Projects, Sydney.

Congratulations Imants Tillers

Winner of the 2012 Wynne Prize with his work Waterfall (after Williams).   Imants says of the work:

This painting is my version of Fred Williams’s Free copy of Eugene von Guerard’s Waterfall, Strath Creek, 1862. Von Guerard’s celebrated painting hangs in the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Williams’s work was a gouache executed in 1970. However, he went on to paint several significant original oils of this iconic subject. In my work, the waterfall somehow embodies the fleeting and mysterious nature of life. The waters of Strath Creek, after all, come from the catchments around Mount Disappointment [in Victoria].

Super-imposed over the ever-changing movement of water, I have quoted the sentiments of a famous Indian sutra:

The fleeting self
Like a beam
Like a vision
Like a bubble
Like a shadow
Like dew
Like lightening   

Jane Burton 'other stories' opens Thursday 5th of April 2012

 Other Stories is a collection of photographs that are intended to be experienced as a series of impressions: loose associations rather than determined narratives.  Structured with five chapters like a fairy-tale collection, each series is toned in a different colour. These tones, reminiscent of old photographic processes and hand-colouring techniques, have been selected to bring particular associations of atmosphere and emotion to the images.

La Bête #1 2011 pigment print on paper, 40 x 54 cm

Each series, or chapter, can be viewed as unique and self-contained, though elements from each thread through from one to another, creating symbolic associations and unconscious links between chapters.

The atmosphere common to all the stories is cinematic and dreamlike. Saturated with colour (peach-sepia, red, viridian green, lavender, and blue), each series has its own emotional pitch and temperature; the ‘story’ is non-linear, non-literal, falling instead between remembrances, hallucination, and fantasy.

Limbo #7 2011 pigment print on paper,
60 x 40 cm

Whether depicting a figure, landscape, interior, or object, the photographs are imbued with a weight of meaning and emotional intensity. The landscapes for example, are rendered as symbolic, psychological – places imagined, felt, remembered, rather than actual or specific locations.  The female figure depicted, as both woman and child, is like a character that moves through the stories, an animating presence but more ghost than a definitive persona. As in a dream scape, she shifts through temporal zones, locations, scenarios and a variety of roles; an embodiment and psychological reflection of these and other stories.

This exhibition features a selection of photographs from Jane's recently published book – Other Stories. This book is one of three published under the title 3 Books, comprising three separate photographic monographs by three contemporary Melbourne artists - Jane Burton, Darren Sylvester, and Simon Terrill.  The books are designed by Darren Sylvester, edited by Helen Frajman and published by M.33, Melbourne.

Sleep has his house #10 2011 pigment print on paper

Jane Burton is one of Australia’s most renowned mid-career artists working in the photographic medium. Born in Brisbane in 1966, she studied at the Tasmanian School of Art before undertaking the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris - Lloyd Rees Travelling Scholarship and Residency in 1993 and then moving to Melbourne. Since that time Burton has exhibited extensively throughout Australia with numerous solo and group exhibitions. In 2008 she was included in Trace Elements: spirit and memory in Japanese and Australian photomedia at the Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, Japan and in 2012 will undertake the 24HR Art Beijing residency. Her work has been critically acclaimed and resides in numerous public and private collections including the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, the Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne, the Sovereign Art Foundation, Hong Kong and London and the National Gallery of Victoria.

Burton’s work has gained considerable critical and curatorial attention over the last 15 years. Often described as an investigation into the feminine, her oeuvre has also explored landscape and the architectural. The world of Jane Burton’s photography is a morass of mystery, nostalgia, film noir, potential threat, sense of place, spirituality and sexuality; a world of dread and desire, beauty and melancholia.


View exhbition online http://www.bettgallery.com.au/artists/burton/otherstories/index.html

David Stephenson works acquired by National Gallery of Australia

The Zinc Works & Mt Wellington  2004, type c colour photograph

We are thrilled to announce the NGA's recent acquisition of Light Cities: Hobart and The Zinc Works & Mt Wellington by David Stephenson.  Light Cities: Hobart will be a feature work in David's upcoming exhibition Light Cities opening in the main gallery, 4 to 28 May 2012.

Light Cities: Hobart 2010, fine art ink-jet print

Josephine Ulrick & Win Schubert Photography Award

Congratulations to Anne MacDonald & Bronek Kozka, both finalists in the 2012 Josephine Ulrick & Win Schubert Photography Award.  Announced 31 March.

Wynne Prize Finalists

Congratulations Neil Haddon, Imants Tillers & Philip Wolfhagen, all finalists in the 2012 Wynne Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Tricky Walsh 'science fictions' opens Friday 9th of March 2012

The quartz crystal piezoelectric generator (detail) 2012

Science Fictions is Tricky's debut exhibition with Bett Gallery.   This exhibition explores Tricky's fascination with the inner workings of things. Sculptural works, faux - museum type displays of instruments and gadgetry, constructed of timber and found objects  are accompanied by detailed renderings of diagrams and drawings in ink and gouache, that replicate both the scientific and fantastical. Incredible work. 

Congratulations Kurilpa Collection

 The Kurilpa Collection celebrated reaching the half way mark of their collecting period with an exhibition of their work collected so far, a dinner and a forum.  Carol and Emma Bett were delighted to be invited to take part in the celebrations. The group found it valuable to be able to assess their collection after 5 years and now go on invigorated for the next 5.  The forum was a great success with panel members including Carol Bett (Bett Gallery), Emma Bett (Bett Gallery), Michael Schwarz (Acacia Collection, Melbourne), Jon Cattapan (artist) and Jen McLennan (Kurilpa Collection).  The gallery was packed to capacity with people interested in learning more about Bett Gallery Art Collecting Groups.  For more information on these groups go to:
http://www.bettgallery.com.au/collections/collections.html

Pat Brassington & Richard Bell at 2012 Adelaide Biennale of Australian Art

Across four physical platforms, Parallel Collisions presents 21 commissioned works by some of Australia’s leading artists, including Pat Brassington and Richard Bell.  Curated by Natasha Bullock and Alexie Glass-Kantor the 2012 Adelaide Biennial explores the ways in which ideas emerge, converge and re-form through time. From a floating island of 2000 cut-glass objects to an explosive light installation that clocks in real time human births, deaths and dying stars, this Biennial considers the temporality of the present as it parallels and collides with the past.

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.