The Merri-bek Summer Show is a much-loved annual exhibition celebrating local artistic talent. Each year, local artists are invited to submit an artwork that explores a chosen theme. This year’s Merri-bek Summer Show theme is ‘A Climate for Change’.

The Counihan Gallery is pleased to present the 7th Noel Counihan Commemorative Art Award. The Award celebrates an artist whose work explores the exhibition theme and engages with social, political, or environmental ideas. All exhibitors in the Merri-bek Summer Show are eligible for the Award. The Award recipient will receive $3000 towards their professional development. This prize is generously sponsored by Merri-bek City Council.

This year we are thrilled to introduce the ‘Climate for Change Award’, which celebrates an artist who champions environmental justice and activates for a greener future. The ‘Climate for Change Award’ recipient receives a $250 CERES voucher. We also have a Highly Commended Award, which is a themed book pack to the value of $250, generously sponsored by local bookshop Brunswick Bound.

Voting is now open for the People’s Choice Award. Vote for your favourite artist using the People’s Choice Award voting form on the SnapForms website. The artist with the most votes will receive a cash prize of $1000, generously sponsored by the Sydney Road Brunswick Association.

Curated by Nicola Bryant

The CEAC artists-in-residence program gives artists, designers, architects, curators, writers, and composers a place where they can develop ideas, experiment and produce new work. The CEAC advises artists on how to produce their work outside their studio and shares with them a large network of local artists, companies, and work sites to enable them to implement their projects in the best possible way. The CEAC stimulates cultural and intellectual exchange between residents, local artists, and students of Xiamen University. Residents can be invited to give lectures or presentations about their work and guest seminars and workshops for students.

In November 1999, the Chinese European Art Center (CEAC) was founded as a joint venture with the Xiamen University Art College. The foundation was initiated by Mrs. Ineke Gudmundsson from the Netherlands with the cooperation of Prof. Qin Jian from Xiamen University Art College.

Since then, the Chinese European Art Center has hosted and premiered international artists from all over the world. The CEAC is widely known for pioneering in China as a non-commercial art space. Today it plays a central role in southeast China’s cultural landscape. We present contemporary artists, art, and ideas to local, national, and international audiences by providing an environment for research, experimentation, creativity, and cultural exchange. At our art center we provide a varied program of exhibitions, events, and activities for a wide range of audiences. We create an easily accessible and welcoming social, intellectual, and artistic place for reflection and creativity. With an artists-in-residence program, the CEAC offers excellent guidance for artists conducting research and producing their art at work sites and factories in China.

Based in the Netherlands, the European branch of the CEAC regularly presents the research results of CEAC residents at various locations to an interested audience. In addition, the European branch of the CEAC strives to promote an exchange of knowledge and collaboration with fellow specialists and artists in other disciplines.

Conceived by the visionary collaboration of a businessman, a leading art curator, and a well-known printmaker, the program invites top artists from across the world for 3 weeks at the ‘By the Peach Blossom Pool Arts and Holiday Riverside Resort‘.

The beautiful riverfront land where The Peach Blossom Pool Arts and Holiday Riverside Resort has been built is a place of great cultural significance to Chinese people. One of the greatest Chinese classical poets Li Bai (701 – 762) was invited by the local governor of Jing County, Wang Lun, to live and work in Tao Hua Tan, as a poet in residence. Li Bai wrote some of his most celebrated poetry there, including the seminal poem Peach Blossom Pool, which gave the name to the resort.

Tao Hua Tan Art Residency emphasizes the importance of meaningful and multi-layered cultural exchange and immersion into another culture while exploring the link between the traditional and contemporary aspects.

DRIFT, the Mornington Peninsula’s annual festival of art, music and celebration is returning for its second year.

For 10 days in April, DRIFT will bring the Peninsula’s venues, places and spaces to life with art of all disciplines, including performance, music, visual arts, film, public art installations, multimedia and projections, writing and literature and local food and wine, offering exciting new opportunities to experience the best of the region.

DRIFT is more than just a vehicle for creativity. It’s the visible patterns on our vast land and seascapes, and on its people. Drift reveals the energy of movement; a state of constant change that draws inspiration from the past and points to the future, finding new patterns among the old, and providing unique and memorable experiences for each moment in time.

DRIFT aims to nurture and celebrate our shared identity as well as our differences. It honours our creative community while also bringing fresh new talent into our region to inspire creative and artistic practices and broaden our perspectives. It’s the optimal backdrop to explore our incredible region, and a timely call to action for participation and connectedness.

Come and immerse yourself in this continuity of history. Come and drift with us. Friday 21 April – Sunday 30 April.

DRIFT is brought to you by Mornington Peninsula Shire.

Curated by Rebecca Owens

Arte Laguna Prize opens the doors of the Arsenale Nord of Venice for the Finalists Exhibition of the 16th and 17th Edition – 240 works from all over the world will take you on a journey through Contemporary Art.

The brainchild of Cultural Association MoCA, Arte Laguna Prize is an international art competition dedicated to the visual arts, in particular painting, sculpture, photography, video art and performance, virtual and digital art. It was created to give the opportunity to art talents, more or less young, to emerge, to be noticed by the general public and by the jury composed of important names in the contemporary art scene, as well as to allow a democratic comparison between international artists.

The goal is to create an increasingly authoritative and influential system in the world of contemporary art by involving new players from year to year. Since 2006, a virtuous circuit has been created that sees many diversified realities as actors: Foundations, Museums, Galleries, Residences and spaces for art, Made in Italy companies, and international brands, with which special projects were designed, then transformed into concrete opportunities for growth and momentum for the professional career of artists.

Visit these breathtaking spaces from March 11 to April 16, 2023.

Jury for the 16th Edition: Kobi Ben-Meir, Louise Fedotov-Clements, Pasquale Lettieri, Alka Pande, Danilo Premoli & Alisa Prudnikova.

Jury for the 17th Edition: Mohamed Benhadj, Raphael Chikukwa, Giulia Colletti, Paul Di Felice, Chloe Hodge, Dick Spierenburg & Xiaoyu Weng.

The Merri-bek Summer Show is a much-loved annual exhibition celebrating local artistic talent. This year, Cr. Mark Riley, Mayor of Merri-bek City Council, will officially launch the exhibition.

We are also pleased to be joined by Mick Counihan, from the Noel Counihan Estate, who will announce the recipient of the Noel Counihan Commemorative Art Award.

The Noel Counihan Commemorative Art Award celebrates an artist whose work explores the exhibition theme and engages with social, political, or environmental ideas. The Award recipient receives $3000 towards their professional development.

We are also pleased to present the People’s Choice Award, a cash prize of $1000 generously sponsored by the Sydney Road Brunswick Association. This year one artist may also receive a Highly Commended Award: a book pack valued at $250, generously sponsored by our local bookshop Brunswick Bound.

Curated by Victor Griss

BAR BLEU is a mediation concept developed by the Gleis70 Gastatelier team, to activate our artists-in-residence program archive. We invited curators to organise an exhibition with the artists’ works from our archive around a pop-up bar (yes, a bar) we have designed.

The first contribution will be by Sophie Mauch, while Esther Eppstein is developing a concept for the second set of events.

THE ARCHIVE
Over the course of over ten years, the Gleis70 guest studio has hosted some thirty artists from around the world. Their contributions form the basis of our archive, around which the curators develop a concept and select the artworks accordingly.

Curated by Sophie Mauch

Spanning from 1588 to 1672, the Dutch Golden Age was a period of great prosperity for Dutch trade, science, art, and writing. Economic, religious, and geographical influences provided the basis for a cultural bloom. Art reflected the growing middle and merchant class, celebrating Dutch life and identity.

While a period of prosperity, natural disasters, and military conflicts halted this era. River and coastal flooding, cattle plagues, and an outbreak of molluscs that threatened the literal foundations of the Republic saw a period of decline. Multiple wars left costly and mournful burdens on the Republic. While provoking widespread suffering, the Dutch response showcased strength and resilience in the face of catastrophe.

Considering parallels between the Dutch Golden Age and contemporary historical events, West End Art Space invites artists to celebrate Australian life in the face of adversity. A focus on the perseverance of daily living in the face of disease, disaster, and war will underpin the exhibition.

The show will centre around the aesthetics of Dutch Genre paintings, with a focus on still life compositions and portraiture, and an emphasis on symbolism and iconography. Curation will consider artworks that reflect the past two years of isolation with focus on the domestic space. Reimaging the life of lockdown through the visual language of the Dutch Golden Age, West End Art Spaces hopes to inspire a show of beauty and perseverance.

Curated by Anna Prifti

Welcome to Cementa22

Director’s Message

After the fires, after the floods, after the pandemic, after all the hardship and uncertainty, after all the cancellations, delays, and postponements, the festival comes. Cementa welcomes you to join over 40 artists for four days and four nights of contemporary art and culture spread across the post-industrial town of Kandos. Video, installation, sound, photography, painting, performance, and participatory events and workshops responding to and exploring the context of its exhibition.

This year the festival offers a raft of works that quietly take part in the intimate life of Kandos, inviting audiences to participate in the craft culture that is endemic to the country town, and listen to the stories that locals usually only tell to each other. You will find poems generated on the streets of Kandos, witness stories of death in shop windows, and at the local museum the ghosts of the women who lived in the margins of the town’s history are remembered and Djon Mundine and Dabee descendants embellish the mural testifying to the Aboriginal heritage of the country. Carnival Catastrophe will cast the shadow of the bushfires that threatened us at the last festival and Tina Stephanou will conjoin us in the human capacity to combine our voices in a single tenuous expression that extends across the town and into the distances of our social being.

These are just a few of the themes that will thread their way through the streets of Kandos as we gather together after a year of social isolation. At the heart of the festival will be the same spirit of anarchic inclusion for which Cementa is so well-loved, the social atmosphere in which artists and community commingle and experience our difference and the cultures that connect us across that difference.

You can expect all the old favourites of the festival: the Welcome to Country at the NE Wiradjuri Centre, The Cementa Salon Opening at our newly purchased WAYOUT Artspace, The performance Night featuring The Shammgods: Live, and an array of local and imported music and performance and the ever disturbing Sound Night, curated by Trevor Brown.

The festival will close on its final day with Whinangarra Gamarra (Listen, Hear Think Awaken), a First Nations communal ceremony, re-awakening the site’s ancient Songlines, whose connections to surrounding Aboriginal Nations have been disrupted by colonisation.

(Creative Director Alex Wisser)

Curated by Alex Wisser, Nina Stromqvist & David Ryan

A Willoughby City Council curated exhibition exploring contemporary notions of landscape and our changing relationship with nature.

Parallel Wanderings 双行游 explores how contemporary Australian artists with Chinese cultural roots reinterpret and draw from Chinese landscape traditions, and present the notion of ‘landscape’ through the contemporary mediums of sculpture, photography, installation and performance art. Through their different mediums, this group of artists reflect on the importance of nature and their own personal connection to the natural world. As the parameters around contemporary art practices continue to expand, the landscape genre continues to adapt with it, highlighting present-day issues, including Climate Change and urbanisation.

ARTISTS: Thomas C. Chung, WeiZen Ho, Karen Lee, Pamela Leung, Ruth Ju-shih Li, Dapeng Liu, Jayanto Tan, Laurens Tan, Catherine Woo and Tianli Zu.

Curated by Cassandra Hard Lawrie