National Art School announces three recipients of fellowships

The National Art School, based in Sydney, announced that three veteran Australian visual artists would be honoured with fellowships. The school has never awarded the honour three times in any single year before. The recipients are sculpture and mixed-media performance artist Ken Unsworth; painter Ann Thomson; and Sydney-based moving-image artist Susan Norrie.

Director Michael Snelling describes the fellowships, roughly the equivalent of an honorary doctorate, as the highest honour the school can award its alumni. The fellows are chosen based on their relationship to the school and how their work relates to the students of the school. There is no money awarded to the fellows and the awards are intended to honour the recipients and inspire NAS students. 

Sydney Fringe Festival celebrates six years and announces new Festival Village

Sydney Fringe Festival, now in its sixth year, has announced its largest and most dynamic program yet. The largest independent arts festival in NSW will be presented from 1 to 30 September. This year’s iteration will see Sydney Fringe install a Festival Village, to be based in Erskineville and feature a range of pop-up spaces, shop fronts and street activations.

The sixth instalment of Sydney Fringe will breathe creative energy into the streets of the Inner West, with five cultural villages based in Newtown, Erskineville, Marrickville, Redfern and Surry Hills. More than 300 productions will be staged at 50 venues, including parlour games, magic shows, late-night libraries, comedies and music.  The festival will be celebrating local talent and encourage audiences to experience the independent arts of Sydney. 

Kaldor Public Art Projects announces 12 Australian artists to undertake live-in residency mentored by Marina Abramović

Artist duo Clark Beaumont, one of the resident artists announced

Internationally renowned pioneer of performance art Marina Abramović will mentor 12 Australian artists during an intensive live-in Artist Residency Program for the 30^th Kaldor Public Art Project. The program will take place as part of Marina Abramovic: In Residence, presented at Pier 2/3 in Sydney’s Walsh Bay from 24 June until 5 July 2015.

The Australian artists will undertake their live-in residence on the top floor of Pier 2/3, each day exploring the Abramović Method and their own creative practice. They will work with Marina Abramovic and Abramović Method trainer Lynsey Peisinger, as well as participating in an extensive public program.

Abramović personally selected the Residents from an original list of 65 performance practitioners suggested by Kaldor Public Art Projects. The selected participants are: Nat Abbott (Melbourne); Frances Barrett (Sydney); Clark Beaumont comprised of Sarah Clark and Nicole Beaumont (Brisbane); Lottie Consalvo (Newcastle); Nicola Gunn (Melbourne); George Khut (Sydney); Sarah Jane Norman (Berlin and the Blue Mountains); Sarah Rodigari (Sydney); Christian Thompson (London); and Zin, comprised of Harriet Gillies and Roslyn Helper (Sydney).

Sydney Contemporary Fair Director curates video art exhibition for Sydney Film Festival

The 62nd Sydney Film Festival and Sydney Contemporary art fair have announced a jointly presented exhibition of video art to be presented at the Festival Hub in Town Hall from Thursday 4 June until 14 June, timed to coincide with the 2015 Sydney Film Festival.

Curated by Barry Keldoulis,  Sydney Contemporary Fair Director, the exhibition showcases works from 12 video artists from leading Australian and international galleries: Josh Azzarella (USA), Heath Franco (AUS), Deborah Kelly (AUS), Christian J. Heinrich (AUS), Juan Pablo Langlois (Chile), Nicolás Superby (Chile), Jess MacNeil (AUS, UK), Baden Pailthorpe (AUS), Cameron Robbins (AUS), Joan Ross (AUS), Allison Schulnik (USA) and Grant Stevens (AUS).

The Other Art Fair, UK's largest artist-led fair, set to launch in Sydney

The United Kingdom’s largest artist-led fair, The Other Art Fair, will launch into the southern hemisphere this September with an inaugural event presented in Sydney from 10 until 13 September 2015, following eight successful editions presented in the United Kingdom between London and Bristol over the past four years.

Showcasing new work by 100 of Australia’s leading emerging artists, the Fair has a unique model that connects buyers directly with emerging artistic talent. The four-day event will be supplemented with a dynamic program of workshops, immersive theatre, live music and performance art.

Representing a pioneering platform for uncovering emerging artistic and ambitious talent, The Other Art Fair aims to make art accessible to everyone, offering artworks for sale from as little as $100.

The Other Art Fair  was established in 2011 by Fair Director Ryan Stanier the Fair has grown rapidly to become a favourite on London’s art calendar. The most recent presentation of the Fair in London in October 2014 attracted more than 13,000 visitors and featured high profile artists including internationally renowned Tracey Emin who created a series of  limited edition works exclusively for the Fair.

Carriageworks & BresicWhitney commission Sam Hodge to create series of photographic works inspired by #redfernlife

Samuel Hodge Tin Mask 2015

Carriageworks, together with visual arts program partner BresicWhitney, have commissioned Sydney-based contemporary artist Samuel Hodge to create a series of 30 photographic works celebrating the diverse communities and unique character of inner-Sydney’s Redfern. The commissioned works will be shared as part of an Instagram competition encouraging people to share their own images inspired by Redfern with the hashtag #redfernlife.

The initiative marks the first collaboration between Sydney-based lifestyle property group BresicWhitney and Redfern-based Carriageworks, Australia’s most ambitious contemporary art and cultural precinct. BresicWhitney are the inaugural Carriageworks visual arts program partner supporting a range of Australian and international art projects throughout 2015.

One of world's leading architects Amanda Levete to design second annual MPavilion

Award-winning British architect Amanda Levete of London-based studio AL_A will design the second annual MPavilion, to be presented free to the public from 6 October 2015 until 7 February 2016 in Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Gardens. Amanda Levete has created a practice widely regarded as laying down the agenda for architecture in the twenty-first century.  Projects include the highly anticipated expansion of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Stirling Prize-winning Media Centre at Lord’s Cricket Ground and Comme des Garcons stores in New York, Paris and Tokyo. 

Amanda Levete commented: "The brief from the Naomi Milgrom Foundation is a great opportunity to design a structure that responds to its climate and landscape. I’m interested in exploiting the temporary nature of the pavilion form to produce a design that speaks in response to the weather. Rooting the pavilion in its parkland setting, I am seeking to create the sensation of a forest canopy in the heart of the city that gives shelter to a program of events.”