LAST FRIDAYS: The light fades
Free event, bookings required.
All welcome!
Last Fridays brings you a unique art experience after hours. Featuring local DJ Wanjun Carpenter, photographic projections by Women of the Hunter in Photography (WH!P), as well as activations in the Gallery’s own architectural void space led by contemporary artist Nicole Monks.
Enjoy afterhours access to the Gallery’s latest exhibitions and BILL HENSON: The light fades but the gods remain and VOID. Pop-up bar from 5:00 - 8:00pm.
About the artists:
Nicole Monks is a trans-disciplinary artist of Yamatji Wajarri, Dutch and English heritage. Living and practicing in Redfern, Monks is informed by her cross-cultural identity and her work takes its focus from storytelling, as a way to connect the past with the present and future. Her designs take a conceptual approach, often embedded with narratives, and aim to promote cross-cultural understanding and communication. A designer by trade, Monks crosses artforms to work with furniture and objects, textiles, video, installation and performance. Across these varied forms of contemporary art and design, her work reflects Aboriginal philosophies of sustainability, innovation and collaboration. With adeptness and sensitivity, Monk’s practice weaves together Aboriginal history and philosophy with contemporary Western thought and resonates with a wide Australian audience.
Jun Wan has been around the block a few times. For the past 10 years he’s been playing shows and running parties featuring likes of The Hacker, Jensen Interceptor, CC:DISCO, Andy Garvey, Fishing, Roland Tings, Luke Million, Kato, Folamour, and Motorik Vibe Council - many in conjunction with Palace, which has been a dance-music staple in Newcastle for years. His style traverses the terrain between genres and decades presenting a fusion of the influences acquired through his years of dedication to the world of electronic music. He is our guest DJ this month for LAST FRIDAYS: The light fades.
WH!P (Women from the Hunter in Photography) is a collective of Hunter based professional photographers. Their photographic projections Home is more than a physical space to be inhabited. Home can be a longing, a taste, a feeling. It is the watery embrace of the sea, it is the entanglements of intimacy and domestic life. It is the colourful heartbeat of family, it is the slow emotional landscape of a body, it is the small vignettes of our existence within the expanse of the natural world. What happens when we show our images together? How can we give the space to allow our images to speak to one another; to weave, dance and open new narratives and connections? This first curation from the members of WH!P explores these questions as the group delve into the universal, and at once deeply personal, subject of home. What emerges is a crystalline form of ‘looking’, that embraces a poly-vocal and collective reimagining of the idea of home.
About the exhibitions:
VOID presents a multifaceted concept that brings together contemporary Aboriginal artistic practice from across the country. An exhibition curated by Emily McDaniel, in conjunction with UTS Gallery and Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, presented nationally by Museums & Galleries of NSW. This project has been assisted by the Australian Government’s Visions of Australia program, and through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.
BILL HENSON: The light fades but the gods remain showcases two key series which explore the suburb of Glen Waverley, where the artist grew up. A Monash Gallery of Art (MGA) travelling exhibition. Curator: Pippa Milne.
Images: Nicole Monks (pictured) courtesy of Stephen Mylonas; Wanjun Carpenter (pictured) courtesy the artist; courtesy the artist Claire Weeks.
