More things not to miss at Canberra Art Biennial
Posted on
Canberra Art Biennial is in full swing – the festival offering a unique opportunity to engage with and understand the layers of Canberra’s history through art.
The artworks and installations selected for the festival respond in some way to Canberra’s history, from 65,000 years to the present day. Here are more things you shouldn’t miss (catch the first 10 here).
‘Catch the Sun’ by Rosalind Lemoh
‘Catch the Sun’ is a newly commissioned sculpture, presented by Rosalind for the 2024 Biennial. Situated in Lake Burley Griffin, ‘Catch the Sun’ is a surreal, bright yellow mirage of perspex and powder coated steel that sits just off the shore of Lennox Gardens.
Towering like a temple in the reflective water, this abstract industrial imaginary responds to our human need to capture the intangible lucid quality of light.
Location: Lake Burley Griffin, off the shore of Lennox Garden
‘Only Country Lasts Forever’ by Jazz Money (Wiradjuri)
Through this commission for the 2024 festival, Jazz responds to the buildings and infrastructure of Canberra, asking viewers to consider the manipulation of Country that creates the landmarks of the nation’s capital.
Interrupting view lines across the Canberra line axis of the parliamentary triangle, the imposing text reminds audiences of the ever present, sovereign soil below their feet, and the simple truth that only Country lasts forever.
Location: Commonwealth Place
‘Found in the Forest’ by Luke Chiswell
This new artwork by Luke Chiswell is an 8-foot sculpture that encourages its audience to reconsider how nature is perceived and valued.
The cast aluminium sculpture is composed of gum trees and books, that highlight reimagining familiar materials in a new context. The sculpture looks natural but is not nature itself, prompting reflections on taking nature for granted and reconsidering its value.
Installed in the Canberra Arboretum forest, the sculpture interacts with its environment, blending in while emphasising the contrast between natural and artificial elements.
Location: The National Arboretum Canberra
‘Only Country Lasts Forever’ by Jazz Money. Photo: Kevin Miller.
‘to gather, to nourish, to sustain’ by Jenna (Mayilema) Lee (Larrakia)
Jenna presents to gather, to nourish, to sustain, at COX Gallery; an installation of 48 works on paper that celebrates and highlights the profound connectedness between the Gulumerridjin (Larrakia) language and the ecology of our Country.
This work focuses on three paper dilly bags as the physical objects used in acts of gathering, surrounded by extensive context that fills the space with words relating to their use, materiality, and purpose. Doing so restores these objects to their rightful context within our ecology.
Location: COX Architecture
‘Of line, of light’ by Bronte Cormican Jones
Presenting a new commission for the 2024 Biennial, Bronte Cormican-Jones creates a new sculptural installation for the grounds of NFSA.
This series of lighting interventions respond to the architecture of the site, and the formal considerations of shape, line, intersection, space and perception. Steel elements act as sculptural frameworks for neon lighting, which comes alive at night.
Large, curved structures reference the hemispherical Shine Dome, whilst a series of rectangular and rhombic prisms interlock through a repetition of shapes, drawing and cutting through space, both opening it up and dissecting it. The angular trapezoid balconies of the Ovolo Nishi Hotel are also echoed as structures on the lawn.
Location: National Film and Sound Archive
Al Fresco presents ‘Clay Pit’ a group show curated by Oscar Capezio
Showing ‘in fresh air’, Al Fresco presents a seasonal program of outdoor fine art exhibitions. Short-run projects grow slowly, are exposed to the elements, then documented and shared with a wider audience online.
“Clay Pit” is an installation of sculpture, assemblage and painting by Francis Carmody, Caspar Connolly, Bill Hawkins, Yvette James, and Katie Ryan. These artists cultivate material forms through an analysis of how the structure of the natural world influences human behavior, spawning the creation of complex processes of adaptation, invention, and extraction.
Through an exploration of the symbiotic structure of relationships between people and place, the past and the present, these artists work to reveal the tensions at play between realms of human and non-human experience, knowledge, and feeling.
Al Fresco is open 1pm – 6pm each Saturday and Sunday during the festival period.
Location: Mount Stromlo Observatory
‘Lodestar’ by Caro Pattle
Commissioned for the 2024 Biennial, Caro spent hours devotedly hand-weaving the plush blue velvet that makes ‘Lodestar’ – ostensibly a molten blue rock. The process of coil weaving enacts the slow accrual of geological stratum, amassing layer by layer.
The work confuses divides that we might perceive to exist between the organic and inorganic, between the alive and the lifeless. If we look to the future, what will our material legacies be? Will our inheritance be an anthropogenic dissolution of nature and culture, a white noise slurry of microplastics suspended in soil?
Location: The National Library of Australia
Find the full program at canberraartbiennial.com
Feature image of ‘Of line, of light’ by Bronte Cormican Jones by Kevin Miller
