Cinema Alley: Sydney's Chinatown hosts one-night street cinema event

An open-air street cinema will pop-up in the hub of Sydney’s Chinatown district as 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (4A) presents the third annual one-night only Cinema Alley event on Friday 11 February 2011.

Coinciding with the City of Sydney’s 2011 Chinese New Year Festival, Cinema Alley celebrates contemporary Chinese video art with the screening of five significant short films by Asian artists and filmmakers in an open-air street cinema located on Parker Street, Haymarket in the heart of the Chinatown district.

Initiated in 2009, Cinema Alley is an annual free event that is open to the public, although due to its popularity and the 500-person seating capacity, you'll need to book here, and quickly. 

For the first time in 2011, 4A has partnered with uber-cool Sydney bar Grasshopper to host Cinema Alley Bar that will offer guests food and drinks from 7pm in advance of the 8pm film screenings.

Curated by 4A Director Aaron Seeto, Cinema Alley features a selection of short film and video-based art works by five leading contemporary Asian artists: Chen Cheih-Jen; Jun Yang; Ou Ning and Cao Fei; Wang Qingsong; and Yuan Goang-ming. The films explore the artists’ different perceptions of their cities, transformation, experiences of alienation and the effects that history and tradition place on the individual.

Dani Marti and some kitchen scourer love...

This stunning amorphous work by artist Dani Marti is featured at BREENSPACE in Waterloo as part of a group exhibition that will launch the 2011 calendar for the Waterloo based gallery.

Barcelona-born Marti divides his time between Sydney and Glasgow and is responsible for numerous public art and architecture commissions throughout Australia, including, most recently, a site specific installation on the exterior of the new Westfield City building in Sydney's CBD.

Created from hundreds of common metal kitchen scourers (these particular ones are all copper in colour) the work has turns an object of banality into an art work of unexpected beauty.

Artist draws inspiration from online dating experiences

Sydney-based contemporary artist Silke Ratze drew inspiration from her experience of the modern day phenomenon that is online dating when creating her latest 'Mayflower' series of work.


The Mayflower series is included in the new exhibition 'Hands On: Craft in Contemporary Art' showing at the Hazelhurst Regional Gallery & Arts Centre until 29 January 2011, curated by Cash Brown. 'Mayflower' was the online dating name used by the artist and her works explore her experiences both online and in person as she embarks on different dating situations. 


The full series can be viewed here and includes tongue-in-cheek references to 'Mr Options Open', 'Mr Men' and 'Mr Quick Exit'. 

Winners announced for 15th Redlands Westpac Art Prize

Fiona Foley and Eric Bridgeman have been announced as the winners of the 15^th annual Redlands Westpac Art Prize at an opening event at Mosman Art Gallery on Friday 19 November 2010.

Fiona Foley was awarded the $20,000 prize for the main artist category for a large-scale inkjet print on Hahnemuhle paper titled Bearing Witness #1 2009 whilst Eric Bridgeman was awarded the $10,000 emerging artist prize for Black Beauty 2010, also a photographic print work.  


Curator Lindy Lee (pictured with Fiona Foley's work) accepted the prize monies on behalf of the artists who were in Queensland and Papua New Guinea respectively and unable to attend the opening.

The two winning art works will be acquired into the Redlands permanent art collection once the Prize exhibition closed on Sunday 5 December 2010.

Install begins for Redlands Westpac Art Prize

The 15th annual Redlands Westpac Art Prize is underway as submitted artworks by 18 established and 18 emerging contemporary artists from around Australia presenting new work across a range of mediums. 

Renowned artist and curator of the 2010 Prize Lindy Lee selected the established artists who in turn each invited one emerging artist to submit work for the Prize.  Pictured is an image of a sculpture by artist Lionel Bawden made entirely from graphite and coloured pencils. Bawden invited emerging artist Luke Thurgate to enter the Prize. 

The total Prize pool of $31,000 will be announced Friday 18 November. For a full list of artists presented in the prize view here.

Emerging artist Nathan Taylor sells out first major solo Sydney exhibition weeks before opening

Young Australian painter Nathan Taylor has pre-sold every work in his upcoming Sydney exhibition at Michael Reid at Elizabeth Bay to be presented from 3 November until 3 December 2010.

Hobart-based Taylor has also accumulated a long waiting list for his exquisitely detailed paintings that feature the detritus of modern society’s consumer culture. The exhibition titled ‘Dead to the world’ represents Taylor’s first major solo exhibition in Sydney.

 Taylor’s paintings explore the disposable culture and unhealthy recreational consumption habits of today’s society. The detritus left behind from fast food and takeaway packaging provide the basis of the tension in the works, in which beauty and aesthetic attraction also reference darker notions of social failure and questionable social norms.

Artistic output for Taylor is painstakingly slow, with each painting taking him up to eight weeks of painting six-days a week to complete.

The waiting list for Taylor’s works has grown steadily with every work the artist has created over the past couple of years being secured by an art collector.  Taylor produces no more than ten paintings per year and the waiting list for this new exhibition already exceeds exhibited works by more than three-fold.

International artist duo to host workshops in Sydney

From 11 - 14 November 2010, internationally renowned Korean artist duo YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES will travel to Sydney to conduct workshops with local residents based around individual's personal stories. 

The artist duo will guide workshop participants in a series of computer workshops using FLASH animation techniques to form artworks out of their stories. 

These workshops will form the basis of a new artwork created by the artists to be presented in the Edge of Elsewhere exhibition in 2011 at Campbelltown Arts Centre and 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art in Sydney's Chinatown.   

The exhibition is part of the official program of the Sydney Festival 2011.