My mission is to excite the interests of a broad range of art enthusiasts and new collectors. ARTLIFE + is dedicated to introducing exhibitions and events as they happen across Melbourne and Victoria. We will also be looking at the exciting contemporary art practices happening nationally and internationally.

Artists’ Interviews and profiles related to upcoming or current exhibitions will be included in our posts. International reviews & interviews will also be referenced when AVEC PLEASURE is escorting our highly regarded ART TOURS to BERLIN, NYC, HONG KONG, NEW ZEALAND & AUSTRALIA.

The AVEC PLEASURE team has designed this blog to bring together an eclectic selection of today’s visual artists. We aim to cover highlights of cultural events inspiring theatre and performance art by utilizing links to digital resources and educational online programs.

Anne McGravie-Wright/Director Avec Pleasure Art Consultancy

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Message From Director: Anne McGravie-Wright

I am very excited to announce that a year on from establishing the Art Advocates & Collectors group we continue to accept many new and enthusiastic members to our women only group. I thought I would  mark our 1 year on anniversary with a brief over view of our Aims and also a few of our most recent successful events.

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How Do We Define an Art Collector in the Contemporary World

In my work as an art advisor, I have assisted a wide variety of collectors to find their unique path in the acquisition of Contemporary Art. Over many years of working in the Art field, I have observed a few interesting common denominators about the way people collect Art and what motivates them to become Art Collectors.

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Inspiring New Audiences

Last month, I taught another short 4 week course for the U3A, Melbourne City Campus. This year I offered: Contemporary Sculptors (Australian & International) and Their Art Practices.

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November / December News

Avec Pleasure’s November and December ‘Collector’s Club’ walk throughs of Heide Museum of Art’s exhibition, ‘Making Modernism’, have been very well attended and a delight to run.

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Avec Pleasure’s June visit to San Francisco

Last month, Avec Pleasure went to San Francisco for a week of art research. It was exciting to be there and personally plan and put into place the itinerary for our newest Avec Pleasure Art Tour ‘San Fran and the Bay Area’ to be run in May 2017.

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SFMOMA – Reopened

It is hard to believe that it has been three years now since the SFMOMA has been closed to allow them to undertake a major new extension and redevelopment. The original SFMOMA opened in 1935, later it built a post-modern building designed by Mario Botta.

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Exhibition Profile: Fiona Hall

Avec Pleasure took an Art Tour group to the Venice Biennale last September to view Fiona Hall’s exhibition and to see the recently finished Australian Pavillion in Venice’s Giardini.

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Farewell to Melbourne Sculptor Inge King

Inge King (née Ingeborg Viktoria Neufeld) was born in Berlin November 26th, 1915, the youngest of four girls from a wealthy Jewish Berlin family. It is important to consider her early life and art influences to fully appreciate her professional work.

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Seeking Those Moments of Transition

Today, just as I was finishing the final edit, I read the news of SYLVIA ANDERSON’s death at the age of 88. Sylvia was an intelligent, imaginative woman who had a profound influence on me in my youth and many other inquisitive children. Best known as the voice of Lady Penelope, Sylvia Anderson, along with her late husband Gerry Anderson, was the inspiration behind the much loved, visionary ‘THUNDERBIRDS’.

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Finding Your Creative Side Through Art Touring

We started offering our VIP Avec Pleasure Art Tours in 2009 as a complimentary service to run alongside our Avec Pleasure Art Consultancy services. Initially, we started small, with only one annual tour to HONG KONG, timed to take part in the exciting Hong Kong Art Fair.

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Melbourne ART News

With so many exciting art exhibitions in and around Melbourne, it is not possible to cover all in this blog so we will only highlight certain shows that we have been able to visit and choose to highlight by review.

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DESIGN… plus

Guest Review by Ms. Katherine Wilkinson. The genesis of this exhibition was a project instigated by London-based Martino Gamper. Collecting discarded and unused chairs he reassembled one chair per day for 100 days.

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The Arts Show February

Hope that you will take a moment to listen to my recent radio interview with Alex McCulloch on ‘The Arts Show.’ In this interview, I share the highlights of our recent Avec Pleasure art tours to The Frieze NYC art Fair May 2015, the Venice Biennale September 2015, and our two new Art Tours.

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Where does the creative life begin

When we are truly looking out at the life and art practice of an artist, what are we really doing? The answer to that depends so much on personal factors such as… who you are and how you are oriented towards the creative process.

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TWMA

The HOWARD ARKLEY (and friends…) Art Exhibition has been brilliantly curated by the director of the TarraWarra Museum of Art. Victoria Lynn and TWMA curator Anthony Fitzpatrick. It is currently showing at TWMA which is located one hour’s drive from central Melbourne in the beautiful wine-growing area of the Yarra Valley.

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My recent visit to the HOWARD ARKLEY (and friends…)

My recent visit to the HOWARD ARKLEY (and friends…) exhibition did not disappoint. It was so interesting that I managed to go out for a second look and to be there for their Public Forum: The work of Howard Arkley. The forum included personal observations and life stories by fellow Artists, students and friends of Arkley, as well as curatorial comments by TWMA director Victoria Lynn and Curator of the show Anthony Fitzpatrick .

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Live Theatre

The play Coranderrk: We Will Show The Country will be performed on the site of the former Aboriginal mission, an hour’s drive from Melbourne, for the first time on February 21. The unique theatrical performance is supported by Melbourne’s La Mama Theatre.

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Tour Dates

Avec Pleasure delivers a VIP experience which is planned around attending major Art Biennales, Art Fairs and International Art Symposiums. Join us on one of our upcoming Art Tours and discover why we have been so successful at designing ‘trips of a lifetime’ that will enrich you culturally and inspire a deeper understanding of Art practice.

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Wim Wenders

Avec Pleasure has chosen to highlight German artist, Wim Wenders on our website this month as we have admired his work as a cinematographer your years but have only recently come to appreciate his significant work as a photographer. We hope that over the holiday period you will take a moment to listen to the interview clip we have added and consider the premise from which he creates his art and enjoy…

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From the President of the Lauriston Arts Association

Due to high demand in First term, the Lauriston Arts Association asked Christine Honan to organise another one of her very popular Art Walks. Christine tailored the event to suit this busy time of year by holding the lunch, talk and gallery tour at the chic local Italian eatery and gallery Sagra. A group of Fine Art enthusiast parents were treated to a tour of Sagra’s gallery by one of the curators and then a fabulous antipasto lunch in a private dining room. We then enjoyed a very informative presentation on ‘Collecting & Investing in Art’ by Director of Avec Pleasure Art Consultancy, Ms. Anne McGravie Wright.

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VISIT TO @ LARGE : AI WEIWEI Alcatraz

Ai Weiwei is a Chinese artist who is Beijing-based. He is defined as both artist and activist and his work encompasses sculpture, installation, photography, film, architecture, curation, and social criticism. His works are collected Internationally and have been featured in major solo exhibitions including Ai Weiwei at Blenheim Palace, Woodstock, UK, 2014; Evidence at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, 2014; and Ai Weiwei: According to What? This show was organized by the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2009.

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Conserving The Swimming Pool

Explore the process of conserving Matisse’s The Swimming Pool, one of the artist’s most beloved cut-out masterpieces and a centerpiece of the Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs exhibition at MoMA.

Avec Pleasure is getting excited about our Art Tour to NYC in May 2015. We will be spending time at FRIEZE Art Fair & a private tour of MOMA’s Conservation Department.

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Adrian Doyle

Adrian Doyle has helped shape the culture of Melbourne contemporary art through his prolific and prize winning work. Doyle’s artwork is featured in prominent publications and national and international collections. Houses are a major influence on my aesthetics and imagery. Most of the important events in my early life were focused around our quarter acre block in the heart of suburbia. We had an outback toilet, complete with its own dunny man that came every week to change the bucket. We went through numerous above ground pools and sadly, many pets. My house was not really different than any other suburban house. Yet it was my world for many years, a curated world, in which I learnt social skills and perceived normality from my parents.

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Gosia Wlodarczak

Gosia Wlodarczak is an Australian artist of Polish origin who has lived and worked in both Perth, WA and now Melbourne. Her artwork examines and documents ‘the phenomenon of existence’ as a tangible body of lines, shapes and colour.

The artists experiences, perceptions and actions are channeled into her intensive work sessions as she… ‘maps out collages of overlapping segments of the present’. Her art practice has been described as: cross-disciplinary drawing, with drawing being used as a basis for exploration into performance, interactive situations, installation, sound and film. Wlodarczak’s recent solo exhibitions include: Between Wander & Settlement (Western Washington University, Bellingham USA 2012) and (Shepparton Art Museum, Shepparton 2012).

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Issues of Establishing Provenance

In some cases such as that of the controversial street Artist, Jean-Michel Basquait, who died tragically in NYC in 1988; in such cases when an Artist has a prolific output of works within a compact, time-frame and further, they created these works outside of the established market and Art Galleries… suddenly they die, the issue of provenance or proof of originality becomes a huge issue and impacts on values of their art work. Basquiat was a graffiti artist who originally signed his work as SAMO in the ’70s.

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Understanding Contemporary Art Practice

While it may be hard to classify emergent movements at the beginning of the process, Contemporary ART Practice has developed with a more socially conscious philosophy than many previous Art periods.

In general, Contemporary Art produced within the last 30 years has been directly connected to issues such as:
Climate Art, the AIDS Movement, the Peace Movement, Feminism, Multiculturalism and Globalization.

Avec Pleasure will help you to examine these areas of concern and begin to understand more about the focal points of many visual works produced by our Contemporary Artists.

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