Pictured above and below: preliminary views of Other, 2024, linocut, 15 x 10 cm, edition 40. The work is part of Ways of Being, my impending solo exhibition at Stephen McLaughlan Gallery, Melbourne, running from December 4-21.
Photo credit image 1: Tim Gresham.
Top: pictured alongside my linocut I Wished on the Moon at last night’s lively opening of WINDMILLS OF YOUR MIND 2024, an exhibition of 25 women artists at One Star Gallery, Melbourne.
Curated by Mariella Del Conte and Katy Beale, the exhibition’s point of departure is the 1968 song standard The Windmills of Your Mind. This is their third women’s group show as co-curators (the others were INTO ME SEE, 2021 and BLUE PERIOD, 2023) and the third one I’ve been part of.
What a fine way to end the working week. It was great catching up with many old friends and the exhibition is terrific. Thank you for having us, Katy and Mariella.
WINDMILLS OF YOUR MIND 2024 continues to October 19.
For further information, including a list of participating artists, scroll down to my previous post
My linocut I Wished on the Moon has been included in the upcoming exhibition Windmills of Your Mind 2024 at One Star Gallery, Melbourne. I’m delighted to be exhibiting with such a stellar group of artists and warmly thank its curators, Mariella Del Conte and Katy Beale, for inviting me to be part of it.
WINDMILLS OF YOUR MIND 2024
A themed group exhibition by 25 women artists curated by Mariella Del Conte and Katy Beale*
AMANDA FLORENCE, ANDRÉE VAN SCHAIK, ANN HOLT, ANNA WHITE, CAMILLE HANNAH, DEBORAH KLEIN, DINAH MACLAREN, DONNA MCRAE, DONNA WALSH, ELVIS RICHARDSON, JANE BURTON, JESSICA KRITZER, KALINDA VARY, KATRINA BEALE, MARION HARPER, MELODY WOODNUTT, MELYNDA VON WAYWARD, MOYA DELANY, PATTIE BEERENS, RHONDA DREDGE, SARAH FAULKNER, STEPHANIE JOOK, TIFFANY TITSHALL, VICTORIA HARTCUP, VIOLETTA DEL CONTE-RACE, WENDY JOY MORRISSEY
OPENING FRIDAY OCTOBER 4th, 6pm - 8 pm
One Star Gallery
301-303 Victoria St, West Melbourne 3003
All welcome
Exhibition dates: 3rd - 19th October 2024
*’’The curators took inspiration from the classic song The Windmills of Your Mind to create an exhibition which delves into the labyrinth of thoughts, dreams, memories, and emotions that shape our consciousness: the internal life on the edges of words, thinking and the senses, which is often best expressed in art by the surreal, the abstract, psychological landscape, symbolism and magic realism.
Artists have been invited to interpret the theme in a way that resonates with their unique creative vision and their own inner workings.”
The Windmills of Your Mind (Excerpt)
Round, like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheelOne Star Gallery
301-303 Victoria St, West Melbourne 3003
Gallery hours: Thur-Fri 3-7pm, Sat 1-7pm, Sun 1-5pm
Or by appointment: Ph. 0432357537
Process views of the lino block for the title page of Decorated Women, a small artist book that has been in development since 2023. For additional views and information, visit our sister blog, Moth Woman Press HERE.
Many thanks to Lesley Duxbury for these photos of two of my early linocuts, currently on exhibit at Gippsland Art Gallery, Sale, one of my favourite regional galleries.
Pictured top: Sometimes Jenny took long and lonely walks along the long and lonely beach, 1988, from the Pirate Jenny Prints suite of linocuts (1987-88). The point of departure for the work was the titular character in The Threepenny Opera, a jazz-influenced opera by Bertolt Brecht (book and lyrics) and Kurt Weill (music). It premiered at Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin in 1928. Ostensibly set in Victorian London, the opera is a savage satire of Germany’s Weimar Republic. In this series, I took Jenny out of London/Berlin and placed her in the red light district of my home town, St Kilda. (It has been done since, in 2010, as a theatre production with the great Paul Capsis as Pirate Jenny, but as far as I know, I was the first to do it)!
On the easel, top: Acanthus, 2024, acrylic on canvas board, last seen on June 1 as part of Decorated Women, two giant projections towering over Ballarat’s wet and wintry streets* in White Night Ballarat 2024.
Pictured above and below: Alice B. Cat hitches a ride on Shane Jones for a closer look at a selection of my recent paintings laid out on the work table.
Oh, MIFF 2024, how I’ll miss you.
Pictured top: Shane Jones and I on the red carpet at our beloved Forum Cinema - two interlopers standing in the spot ordinarily reserved for visiting dignitaries. (On the other hand, if a lifelong love of film - and seeing it in the cinema, as it should be seen - is also a pre-requisite, then hell, we couldn’t be in a more appropriate setting).
Pictured below: interior views of the Forum, the Capitol Cinema and three snapshots taken at the screening of the documentary Dory Previn: On My Way to Where at the Kino Cinema.
On the mezzanine of the Forum Cinema, Shane checks his MIFF sessions
All in all, Shane and I saw 20 films at MIFF 24. I won’t list them all, but my personal favourites, in no particular order, were: Close Your Eyes (dir. Víctor Erice), My Favourite Cake (dir. Maryam Moghadam and Behtash Sanaeeha), Tuesday (dir. Daina O. Pusić), Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger (dir. David Hinton), Dory Previn: On My Way to Where (dir. Julia Greenberg and Dianna Dilworth), Most Precious of Cargoes (dir. Michel Hazanavicius), All Shall Be Well (Dir. Ray Yeung), and last, but very far from least, Flow, (dir. Gints Zilbalodis), which I was thrilled to learn has just been awarded the Bright Horizons Special Jury Award:
(MIFF 2024 newsletter, Sunday August 25 2024).
My greatest personal MIFF highlight was meeting Julia Greenberg and Dianna Dilworth, co-directors of Dory Previn: On My Way to Where at the Kino Cinema bar after the Q&A that followed a screening of their film.
The music and lyrics of Dory Previn have been a hugely significant part of my life since I first discovered her work in the early 1970s. I was well aware of this recently completed crowd-funded documentary, but was beginning to despair of ever having an opportunity to view it. Imagine my surprise and delight to discover it was included in the Music on Film category at this year’s MIFF.
Over the years I’ve been saddened to see Dory Previn’s unique, deeply personal, yet in so many ways, universal and infinitely relatable work, slip into relative obscurity. The primary aim of Dory Previn: On My Way to Where is to rectify this. I can’t begin to thank the filmmakers enough, and thanks to MIFF 24, was able to tell them so myself.
Melbourne International Film Festival ran from 8-25 August.
In recent happy news, thanks to the incredible generosity of a private collector, my linocut, Lace Face, 1996, is now part of the permanent collection of QAGOMA (Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art).
A pivotal work in the Tattooed Faces and Figures series of the mid-late 1990s, Lace Face is a direct descendant of the Decorated Women, my current series of paintings.
It seems the Tattooed Faces and Figures are currently having a moment (well, anyway, two of them are). In other recent news, at the Art Gallery of Ballarat, Queer Views: New perspectives on the collection has been extended to October 4, due to popular demand. The exhibition includes my linocut, Eyes Everywhere, 1996.
For more about Queer Views, go HERE.
Last Saturday’s bus trip to Geelong, organised by local group Ballarat Arts Alive, was so engrossing, I completely forgot to take any photos. These shots of me talking about two of my early linocuts in the permanent collection of Geelong Gallery* were snapped by Shane Jones towards the end of a jam-packed day.
