PAUL ADAIR 'CIRCLE JERKS'

12 - 29 June 2013
Bus Projects
Collingwood VIC

In his latest solo exhibition, Paul Adair continues to test the parameters of truth with a series of life size replica balls produced from pigmented polyurethane resin. Adair deliberately confuses our assumptions and teases our perceptions by evolving the relationship between sculpture and photography.

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'LINES, MARKS, AND DRAWINGS: THROUGH THE LENS OF ROGER BALLEN'

19 June - 9 February 2014
The Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art, Washington DC, USA

Roger Ballen is the focus of an exhibition opening in June at The Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art. 'Lines, Marks, and Drawings: Through the Lens of Roger Ballen' traces the artist's use of line and drawing in his photographs over the past four decades, ranging from twisted coat hangers, electrical cords and wall stains, to graffiti-like drawings. Developed by guest curator and artist Craig Allen Subler, 'Lines, Marks, and Drawings' offers a fresh perspective on Ballen's body of work.

Ballen's recent music video collaboration with South African rap-rave group Die Antwoord for the song "I Fink You Freeky" has taken him in new directions, featuring glyph-like images. "I Fink You Freeky" has attracted more than 30 million views on YouTube, introducing a much larger audience to Ballen's inimitable style; a complex juxtaposition of people, animals, objects and drawings.

Roger Ballen's Die Antwoord series will exhibit at Stills Gallery 4 September - 5 October 2013.

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POLIXENI PAPAPETROU ‘A PERFORMATIVE PARADOX’

24 May - 14 July 2013
Centre for Contemporary Photography, VIC

This exhibition focuses on the performative in the work of Polixeni Papapetrou, from her early documentary work through to her directorial work with her children since 2002, regarded internationally as some of the most powerful and provocative works in the field of perfomative photography.

Papapetrou's enduring interest is in how the ‘other’ is represented and how the ‘other’ performs in reinforcing our own identity. Her images are informed by her own experience as ‘other’, growing up as a Greek immigrant in a white, Anglo-Saxon, male-dominated culture in Australia in the 1960s and 1970s.

Marilyn Monroe impersonators, Elvis Presley fans, body builders, circus performers and drag queens have all taken their turn in front of Papapetrou’s camera. All of these people are, one way or another, performing identities.

In 2002 Papapetrou turned her focus to the experience of childhood, using her children as the performers in her pictures. There is a challenging confusion between fantasy, mythology, archetype, animism and theatricality present in these works, ranging from the playful to the transgressive, wrangling with the question of identity and stressing the embodied nature of experience.

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PAT BRASSINGTON ‘À REBOURS’

1 June - 18 August 2013
Australian Centre for Photography, NSW

'À Rebours' is a major survey of one of Australia’s most important and influential photo-based artists, bringing together significant works from Pat Brassington’s thirty-year career.

Brassington was one of the first artists to recognise the potential of digital photography, all the while referencing the tradition of surrealist photography.

Her body of work is hauntingly beautiful, deeply psychological and sometimes disturbing. Recurring motifs usually include interior and domestic spaces and strange bodily mutations that take place within the human, predominantly female, form.

The exhibition was first shown as part of ACCA’s ‘Influential Australian Artist Series’, which celebrates the works of artists who have made a significant contribution to the history of Australian art practice.

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WARWICK THORNTON in ‘MY COUNTRY, I STILL CALL AUSTRALIA HOME: CONTEMPORARY ART FROM BLACK AUSTRALIA’

1 June - 7 October 2013
Gallery of Modern Art, QLD

Acclaimed indigenous artist and filmmaker Warwick Thornton will be included in ‘My Country, I Still Call Australia Home: Contemporary Art from Black Australia’, set to become GOMA’s largest exhibition of contemporary art by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists to date. The exhibition explores three central themes — presenting Indigenous views of history, responding to contemporary politics and experiences, and illustrating connections to place.

From paintings and sculptures about ancestral epicentres to photographs and moving-image works that interrogate and challenge the established history of Australia, to installations responding to political and social situations affecting all Australians, the thread that binds these artists is their collective desire to share their experiences and tell their stories.

Warwick will also be included in ‘My Life As I Live It: First People’s and Black Cinema’, presented in conjunction with ‘My Country, I Still Call Australia Home’. This survey of first peoples and black cinema from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, United States and United Kingdom, aims to present a history of Indigenous Australian cinema shown alongside works that resonate internationally addressing themes of identity, culture and rights.

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‘BRENDA L CROFT’

6 April - 8 September 2013
Art Gallery of New South Wales, NSW

A survey of the work of Brenda L Croft is on display at the Art Gallery of New South Wales for the gallery winter season. Brenda is a Gurindji/Malngin/Mudpurra artist who works closely with her family, friends and Indigenous community members to create her images. Her works are often biographical and are drawn from her experience of growing up in the suburbs with a white mother and an Aboriginal father who was taken from his family at less than two years of age under the government policy that allowed the removal of Aboriginal children from their parents.

Croft’s works explore issues faced by many Aboriginal people today, including the ongoing effects of the ‘Stolen Generations’, preconceptions of who is actually of Aboriginal heritage and what an Aboriginal person is supposed to look like in contemporary Australian society. Her works serve to present a realistic portrayal of contemporary Aboriginal life – a positive image from an insider’s viewpoint.

Join Brenda for a panel discussion with the subjects of her photographs as part of NAIDOC week, Wednesday 10 July, 6:30 – 7:00pm, Central Court, Art Gallery of NSW. Brenda will also give a 30 minute paper for Modernist bodies: annual photography symposium on Saturday 27 July, Domain Theatre, Art Gallery of NSW.

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WILLIAM YANG: MY GENERATION - the film

8 June @ 7pm 2013, Dendy Opera Quays, NSW
16 June @ 10:30pm 2013, ABC1

Well known for his live 'slideshow performances', William Yang has long been subverting this format more often encountered in boardrooms or lecture halls, to tell stories of his friendships with creatives such as Brett Whitely, Nobel Prize-winning author Patrick White, director Jim Sharman and fashion designers Linda Jackson and Jenny Kee.

Yang's presentation has now been adapted for the moving screen, and with his trademark frank, deadpan style he takes us on a journey through Sydney's emerging artistic, literary, theatrical and queer circles in the 1970s and '80s; a decadent and colourful era of drug-fuelled parties, outrageous fashion, the AIDS crisis, and a bursting-out-of-the-gate sense of liberation.

Sydney Film Festival, in partnership with ABC TV Arts, presents William Yang: My Generation at 7pm on Saturday 8 June at Dendy Opera Quays cinemas; followed by William Yang: In Conversation at the Museum of Contemporary Art, hosted by Vivid LIVE. The film will also be broadcast at 10:30pm on Sunday 16 June on ABC1's Sunday Arts Up Late.

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ROBYN STACEY: GUEST RELATIONS

29 April to 30 June 2013
Sofitel Melbourne on Collins

Robyn Stacey's new body of work, Guest Relations, is inspired by her three week Artist-in-Residence at Sofitel Melbourne on Collins in February 2013.

Guest Relations reflects on the transient nature of the hotel room as a place of waiting; waiting for the next thing to begin, or waiting to go home. Using camera obscura, one of the earliest forms of photography, Stacey seamlessly weaves hotel guests into the urban Melbourne cityscape. The upside down, reversed image of the external world is projected onto the hotel room ceiling and walls, creating a surreal and inward-directed space in which her waiting figures appear.

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WARWICK THORNTON MOTHER COURAGE

5 February to 23 June 2013
Australian Centre for the Moving Image, VIC

Mother Courage is an immersive film and sculptural installation that offers a striking and poetic perspective of Indigenous life in Australia. Based upon Bertolt Brecht's play Mother Courage and Her Children, it explores cultural displacement and the tensions between contemporary urban and traditional Indigenous lifestyles. It debuted at the prestigious art festival dOCUMENTA(13) in June 2012 and was co-commissioned by ACMI and dOCUMENTA(13) as part of the ACMI Commissions Series.

Acclaimed filmmaker and artist Warwick Thornton is a previous winner of the Cannes Film Festival's Camera d'Or for his debut feature Samson and Delilah (2009). He has exhibited Stranded (2011) at the Samstag Museum of Art during the Adelaide Film Festival and at Stills Gallery in 2011.

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POLIXENI PAPAPETROU in FOTOGRÁFICA BOGOTÁ 2013

7 May - 15 June 2013
Fotográfica Bogotá, Colombia

In 2013 Polixeni Papapetrou will represent Australia in Fotográfica Bogotá, reputedly the largest photo biennale in Latin America. The exhibition will be curated by Alasdair Foster at the prestigious Fundación Gilberto Alzate Avendaño, central Bogotá. Previously featured artists from outside Latin America include Chuck Close, Nan Goldin and Martin Parr.

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