Dale Frank: Growers and Showers is on at
The National Art School in Sydney's Darlinghurst. Photograph courtesy of The National Art School. Dale Frank: Growers and Showers
The National Art School
Australian conceptual artist Dale Frank has enjoyed a successful international career since the 1970s. Best known for his wonderfully animated abstract paintings and colourful varnishes Frank’s disciplines actually span into sculpture, drawing, performance, film, and installation. An exhibition looking at the past 12 years of Frank’s practice is currently on show at The National Art School in Sydney’s Darlinghurst, featuring some of those wonderfully colourful works (with equally colourful titles such as “Cynthias hot profile was a hit on Tinder… 2023”) while the upstairs room is filled with tactile displays of horse hair, sex toys, underwear and a large scale mural.
“His career is more than 40 years, but this exhibition’s really looking at work produced in the last 12 years and also the diverse materiality of his expanded painting practice,” gallery manager and senior curator Katrina Cashman tells T Australia.
“He’s really well-known and loved as an artist who makes these epic, heroic, abstract paintings and this lovely gestural abstraction. He’s very much about the push and pull and the lyrical action of painting.”
156 Forbes St, Darlinghurst
Ends 1 June
Alex Seton’s “Reality is Fabulous”
Sullivan+Strumpf
Multidisciplinary artist Alex Seton’s work incorporates photography, video, sculpture and installation. He is perhaps best known, however, for his marble sculptures which combine refined craftsmanship with unexpected forms.
“Reality is Fabulous” features many of these sensual sculptures. “’Reality is Fabulous'” is about us contending right now with an information age that has a lot of disinformation,” he tells T Australia. “How do you navigate that? Can you trust your senses?”
The artist invites viewers to touch the works. “I’ve created a lot of illusions within the exhibition that you have to navigate and choose for yourself how to perceive them,” he says.
107-109 Rupert Street, Collingwood
Ends 1 June
Diana Baker Smith, This Place Where They Dwell
Penrith Regional Gallery
Located on the bank of the Nepean River in Emu Plains, Penrith Regional Gallery was once the home and studio of two of Australia’s most accomplished post-war modernist artists, sculptor Gerald Lewers and painter Margo Lewers. A major new commission inspired by Margo, Diana Baker Smith’s “This Place Where They Dwell“, is currently on display bringing a celebration of colour, light and movement to the space.
Baker Smith has engaging dancer Lizzie Thomson and composer Jane Sheldon as collaborators and “This Place Where They Dwell” is a contemplative portrait of Lewers and her home. Each room of the house contains its own unique colours and video performance filled with beautiful refracted light, colouring the spaces in which the Lewers lived and inviting viewers to take a minute to reflect on their own lives and domesticity.
“I hope you walk into this space and feel things of your own experience: intimate moments in a domestic space, of moving through a house, of loss, of letting go, of privacy, all of those things should be what one feels in the space, ideally and what I hope for the work,” says Smith.
86 River Rd, Emu Plains
Until 4 August
Hair Pieces
Heide Museum of Modern Art
“Hair Pieces” explores the complex significance of hair in contemporary culture and encompasses painting, photography, video, installation, sculpture and recorded live performance.
It looks at how hair has been a resonant and compelling site of meaning, transmitting ideas about gender, mythology, status and power, the body, psychology, feminism and notions of beauty – all while being at once radiant and repellent.
Ana Mendieta’s landmark performance Untitled (Facial Hair Transplant), 1972, (above) was created in collaboration with her friend, writer and poet, Morty Sklar. “It involved Mendieta methodically transferring individual strands of Sklar’s beard to her body, fastening them with glue to the skin on her upper lip in a gesture employed to question gender constructions and stereotypes,” senior curator Melissa Keys tells T Australia.
Another piece by Chunxiao Qu titled “Wig Shoes” is a comment on the exploitation of animals as a result of the harvesting and commodification of animal skin and fur within the fashion industries,” says Keys. “What if these types of products were made from you, Qu challenges us to think, what if it was your hair and your skin?”
7 Templestowe Rd, Bulleen VIC
Until 6 October
Vivid Sydney
Various locations
Everyone’s favourite light festival is back in Sydney in May and June featuring not only glittering lights galore but foodie events and musical performances from international guests. From the spectral synth beats of The Knife, Swedish avant-garde alchemist Karin Dreijer – aka Fever Ray – will make their long-awaited Australian debut, performing two shows for Vivid LIVE.
24 May until 15 June
Catch it next year: The Other Art Fair
White Bay Cruise Terminal
The Other Art Fair is an annual event presented by Saatchi Art that brings artists, buyers and collaborators together to support creativity and the arts. This year’s fair was held at White Bay Cruise Terminal and drew 9,000 attendees over its three days. Fair organisers confirmed more than 1500 art works were sold by the 130 artists who chose to exhibit.
