Tag Archives: artist

Women’s Work: Celebrating the Female Contribution To The Arts

This year to celebrate the RQAS’s legacy of strong female artists we are holding our augural Women’s Work Exhibition and fundraiser!

Dates: 27thFebruary till 17thMarch 2019

 

Gala Opening Event:  6pm – 9:30pm Saturday 2ndMarch 2019

Tickets $10

 

Panel Discussion Women in the Arts: 2pm – 4pm Saturday 10thMarch 2019

Tickets adult- $10 student – $5

 

This International women’s day in conjunction with women’s charity – Share the Dignity, the Royal Queensland Art Society’s Petrie Terrace Gallery will be celebrating our legacy of strong female artists by holding the inaugural Women’s Work exhibition and fundraiser.

The RQAS has a long history of strong female artists in our organisation, over the years we’ve been lucky to count Caroline Barker, Vida Lahey, Daphne Mayo, Irene Amos, Ada Richardson, Margaret Olley among our membership. We currently have a female President – Margaret Thomas and two female gallery directors – Rochelle Lindquist and Vashti-Sita Bardsley.  If you scroll to the bottom of this post you can see some archival pictures of some of our celebrated female members.

This exhibition will bring together a diverse range of work, more than 100 pieces will be displayed by over seventy artists working across different mediums and disciplines.  Our artists will deliver work that responds to the following themes; the female contribution to art, equality in the workplace and the concept of Women’s Work.

The gala opening event will include a speech by the founder of Share the Dignity Rochelle Courtenay, live music and the auctioning off of an artwork by celebrated Brisbane artist Sarah Hickey, all funds raised from this auction will go to Share the Dignity along with half of the ticket sales from both events.

The Auction

Share the Dignity

This beautiful piece ‘Merged’ by Sarah Hickey was completed following her residency in Tweed River Regional Gallery. This Gaia inspired, mixed media piece balances a raw, passionate technique and palette with subtlety and softness, the juxtaposition of these opposing elements leave the viewer at once confronted and comforted by the work. Sarah has generously donated this piece to be auctioned off at the opening the full proceeds from this auction will go to Share The Dignity.

Sarah Hickey is our featured artist for this exhibition, she has been good enough to donate her time, her expertise and her work to this show. Sarah discusses why this show is important to her below.

“I am passionate about women reaching parity in a number fields, including the Arts. Women are central to my practice – their images in the contemporary world of painting, their depiction throughout history, the mythology and archetypes surrounding them, an understanding of myself as a woman in the world and an exploration of female empowerment and strength dating back to Pagan times. On the one hand, gender is a flexible, fluid concept and shouldn’t restrict creative expression, success, equality and respect. However when you read about the statistics particularly in regards to pay and working conditions, it is glaringly obvious we still need to do the work under the gender category of ‘Women’.” Sarah Hickey.

You can get your tickets for the opening night here.

The Panel Discussion

Our Panel Discussion Women in the Arts will bring together key figures in the Brisbane art world to discuss the multi-faceted issues faced by women in the art world. Panelists include Sarah Hickey and Emily Devers, there are still a couple of panelists to be confirmed await our updates.

Sarah Hickey – artist and art teacher.

Bio: Hickey’s series of female idols are inspired by images of women from a variety of contexts, histories and worlds. The complex layering of imagery and patterns depict beauty, spiritual iconography and the feminine.

After completing bachelor degrees in fine arts and education, and then five years of teaching art in Queensland high schools, Sarah Hickey started to produce art professionally after a long hiatus from her own creative practice.

Hickey has held eleven solo shows and participated in over thirty group shows. A finalist in the Redland Art Awards, Xstrata Percival Portrait Award, Clayton Utz Art Award, Marie Ellis OAM Drawing Prize, The Mandorla Art Award, Kenilworth Painting Prize, Lethbridge 10000 Art Award and $20, 000 Metro Pearls Competition; her work was featured in Curvy magazine.

Emily Devers – Gallery Director and Artist.

Emily Devers is a Brisbane based contemporary painter who develops pertinent and timeless concepts through both her gallery work and large scale murals. As well as a painter, she is the Director of annual public art festival Sea Walls Australia, Facilitator on the Flying Arts Touring Team, and Owner / Director of contemporary Art gallery The Third Quarter. After graduating from a Fine Arts degree at QUT, Emily has been participating in the Brisbane Arts scene for 10 years as Artist, Facilitator, Mentor, Industry Professional and now Curator. You can see Emily’s large scale artworks across Australia in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Tasmania, and internationally in San Diego, Mexico, Hawaii, Morocco and New Zealand.

You can get your tickets for the panel discussion here.

Make sure you get along to these events and support this fantastic cause!

And now for your enjoyment here are a few archival photos of some of the best and brightest women to grace the RQAS with their presence.

An article in Queensland Newspaper featuring several members of the RQAS

The River City Shares It’s Secrets

Opening event: Wednesday 21st November 7pm

Exhibition Dates: 20th November till 2nd Dec

Petrie Terrace Gallery is thrilled to be hosting “Brisbane Secrets” a solo exhibition of paintings and drawings by Robyn Bauer.

Brisbane Secrets follows on from her 2016 exhibition “Brisbane Stories” and delving deeper into the life of the river city. Bauer’s colourful paintings lead the viewer to hidden spots around the suburban landscape. These Brisbane scenes though sometimes unknown to the viewer conjure a familiarity and sense of nostalgia, capturing perfectly the sleepy humidity and lingering summer light of Brisbane’s inner-city suburbs. Bauer’s work translates this mood so perfectly that when gazing upon the paintings you can almost smell the petrichor.

As well as a variety of Brisbane scenes in and around the inner-city suburbs Bauer will be displaying work from her 100 Churches Project which started out as a simple visual record of various local churches but grew into a much more elaborate project combining research and documentation stretching to every corner of the urban environment.  Bauer speaks with passion on the project saying “I was fascinated by how each building where people congregated, fit into its individual landscape, with its own topography, vegetation, light and weather effects, and the ambience of urban life and shared experience. I aimed for an honest record of how that location appeared on that particular day, rather than a picturesque depiction of its “best face”. The aim of this approach was to allow a more universal experience.”

Robyn Bauer with one of her iconic Brisbane scenes.

Brisbane based artist Robyn Bauer is an institution in the Queensland Art Scene.  Besides being a celebrated artist within her own right, she is also a gifted art historian and educator taking up key positions at Queensland Art Gallery, Queensland University of Technology and the Brisbane Institute of art. Robyn is also active in the artistic community of Brisbane involved with Urban Sketchers, The RQAS and Sculptors Queensland.

Join us for the opening event on Wednesday 21st November 7pm. The exhibition continues till 2nd December and will be open 10am – 4pm every day.

For a private viewing outside of hours please contact our gallery director Rochelle Lindquist on (07) 3367 1977.

Modernism: Fast not Fleeting

Image: “Adelaide Nightscape” By Mike White to be featured in the RQAS Modernism Exhibition Opening on Wednesday 8th August 7pm.

 

We often say now that life moves fast, our world is ever-changing from fashion trends to technology and industry and it can be hard to keep up. If you have ever wondered when western society started to put the pedal to the metal it can traced back to the age of modernity. Following the period of enlightenment in the early 19th century, the age of modernity began and with it the innovations of industry and technology that have lead us to today.

In the art world Modernism as a movement can be traced back to 1860s. The movement began with Manet and proto-impressionism and culminated in Abstract Expressionism and Jackson Pollack’s drip paintings of the 1950s. In a way this timeline can be seen as a gradual flattening of the picture plane and reduction of subject matter. In Clement Greenberg’s famous words “Realistic, naturalistic art had disassembled the medium, using art to conceal art; Modernism used art to call attention to art.” In essence by the time Jackson Pollack was pouring and flicking his brush on larger than life canvas, paintings were no longer of people or places, paintings were of paint.

To understand that progression we must take a step back to the first Modernist painters – Manet and his school of impressionists. These artists rejected mimesis and the idea of the painting as a window into another world, the techniques they used evolved and became painterly. They played with perspective rendering the picture plane illogical.  But that was not all, for the first time in art instead of subject matter drawn from mighty Greek mythology or religious rhetoric, they pursued subjects of modern life; the Flaneur on the streets, the gentlemen and ladies strolling in the public gardens or the underbelly of the Parisian nightclub scenes. Their choices in style, technique and subject matter revolutionised the art world and the term “Impressionists” initially coined by a journalist and intended as an insult now reminds us of the subtle beauty of the Monet’s Lilies, or the muted melancholy of Degas’s Absinthe Drinker.

And thus Modernism began with a bang disrupting centuries old traditions and much like the locomotive of the same vintage took off going faster and further than anyone could have predicted. Impressionism was followed by post-impressionism, Art Nouveau, Symbolism, Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism, Dadaism, The Avant Garde, Surrealism, De Stijl, Colour Field Painting and Abstract Expressionism.  With the same velocity the world changed and evolved giving way to new technologies and industries. From industrialism to electricity to photography, film and automobiles, aeroplanes and radio, it really was a time of rapid change and with this change shifts to societal perception, attitudes and art.

Modernism is without a doubt one of the fastest shifting and most influential periods of art history and yet each movement contained with the kaleidoscopic sphere of Modernism though fast was not fleeting, the mass appeal of Impressionism, Cubism or Surrealism continues to thrive finding a new audience with each generation of art lovers.

The RQAS’s Petrie Terrace Gallery is holding its first Modernism Exhibition opening on Wednesday 8th August 7pm. Come along and meet the artists and discuss why this period of art is still so captivating today.

“Cutting Both Sides of The Line”

Pictured: Wayne Singleton works in his studio.

Exhibition Dates: 17th July til 29th July

Official Opening: Sunday 22nd July 12pm – 4pm

Artist Demonstration and Q and A: Saturday 28th July 12pm

 

Award-winning Brisbane printmaker Wayne Singleton has mounted his solo show “Cutting Both Sides of the Line” at Petrie Terrace Gallery this week to an enthusiastic reception from members and art-lovers alike.  The show includes over 50 original prints and multiple editions along with a small selection of sculptures by acclaimed glass artist Jo Bone.

Pictured: Wayne Singleton printing at Brisbane Grammar School.

The self-described printmaker finds an interesting balance bringing a softness and subtlety to an often stark and strong medium usually regulated to the decorative arts or technical arts.  Wayne says of his practice “I find myself both facing the world and withdrawing to the meditation space of my studio. I can’t conceive of myself living an authentic life without a balance of both. My wellbeing and prints are a by-product of a curious life lived in that balance. Is it Art? Does it matter? Not to me, but they are prints and I am the printmaker.”

The show will be officially opened this Sunday 22nd July at 12pm by Brisbane Grammar’s Head of Art Angela McCormack, we hope to see you there. If you can’t make the opening why not pop by for the artist demonstration and Q and A event in the gallery on Saturday 28th July at 12pm.

Find the artist online –

website: www.waynesingleton.com.au

Facebook: www.facebook.com/WayneSingletonPrintmaker/

Instagram: www.instagram.com/waynessingleton