Category Archives: ARTLIFE +

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.

The Arts Show

I recently spoke with Alex McCulloch from The Arts Show about the next season of Avec Pleasure Art tours.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.