2004 EXHIBITION PROGRAM

Likan'mirri – Connectivity: Art from the AIATSIS Collection

19 February – 28 March

This exhibition is of art from the collection of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS). Many of the works are extremely rare and of major historical and cultural significance. A large number have never been on public display.
The collection includes paintings, drawings, photographs, posters, sketchbooks, and three-dimensional objects such as sculptures, bark baskets, ceremonial objects, and weavings.
Curated by Wally Caruana, the exhibition is a collaborative project of AIATSIS and the ANU Institute for Indigenous Australia.

Ruth Prowse collection

1 April – 16 May

Ruth Prowse has for many years run Gallery Huntly, one of Canberra's first commercial art galleries. This exhibition provides the public with a rare opportunity to view art works that she has acquired for her personal collection.
The works include sculptures and prints by well-known European artists such as Aristide Maillol, Käthe Kollwitz and Picasso. Her collection also encompasses the work of many important and interesting Australian artists. Among these artists are Clarice Beckett, Fred Williams, Ian Fairweather, Roy de Maistre and Grace Cossington-Smith.

Hilarie Mais Retrospective

20 May – 4 July

Hilarie Mais has made a significant contribution to Australian sculptural practice. She works with sculptural forms that are often provocative, alluring and enigmatic. This retrospective exhibition comprises a selection of works produced in England, the United States and Australia from 1973 to 2004.
While her early sculptures used quintessentially simple and powerful forms such as spirals, Mais' later pieces display the development of her interest in three-dimensional art that interacts with the wall plane. Her work of the last two decades has focused on an exploration of the symbolic and aesthetic possibilities of the relief grid.

Drawing Biennale

8 July – 15 August

The Drill Hall Gallery initiated The Drawing Biennale exhibitions in 1996 in order to promote drawing as a fundamental skill for artists, and to demonstrate the diversity and calibre of artists working in the medium.
Drawing is often regarded as a preliminary or preparatory tool, but for many artists it is of prime importance to the creative process because it enables them to act on their impulses, respond readily to their environment, and push the boundaries of artistic enquiry.

Geoffrey Bartlett

19 August – 26 September

Geoffrey Bartlett is a major contemporary sculptor living in Melbourne. This exhibition is of the artist's recent work, which is distinctive in the way the forms perform gravity-defying arabesques in space. His sculptures are notable also for the way he juxtaposes different materials such as metals and wood. Each element brings to the work its own colour, texture and association. Surfaces are enriched with meticulous and intimate detail and yet the works retain overall cohesiveness. His work is inspired by seashore objects as well as by the images and artefacts of Europe such as angel wings and the riveting of armour.
This exhibition will include free standing sculptures, a series of small wall-hung pieces, and a body of drawings that will help the viewer to better understand the sculptor's creative process.
Visit Geoffry Bartlett's website.

Virginia Coventry

30 September – 7 November

Virginia Coventry is a Sydney-based painter and photographer. This exhibition brings together Coventry's significant works from the 1960s through to 2004.
Coventry is particularly interested in the decision-making process involved in painting as performance and the way traces of those decisions are retained by the painted surface. In her recent works, Coventry explores these ideas in terms that are applied to both colour and sound – such as tone, key and pitch. These vinyl and acrylic paintings on linen, that include micaceous and metallic pigments, have been painted so as to shimmer or subside in response to the flow and ebb of light.

Chinese Political Posters

30 September – 7 November

This exhibition is drawn from Professor Jon Sigurdson's superb collection of Chinese political posters acquired over the period of 1962 through to 1981. These decades encompass an era of great internal change, during which China was almost closed to the outside world. In the 1960s, Mao Zedong's cultural revolution questioned and rejected much of China's own cultural past as well as influences from abroad. The posters depict not only the impact and ideals of the cultural revolution, but also a society's developing confidence in the role technology could play in modernisation. Chinese Political Posters is curated by Professor Sigurdson, visiting fellow at the ANU Humanities Research Centre (HRC). This exhibition is presented in association with the HRC in support of its focus on Asia in 2004.

Visit China Posters - The Cultural Revolution

ANU Art Collection

11 November – 19 December

This exhibition features a selection of works collected by ANU within the last ten years. The selection, curated by the Director of the ANU Art Collection, Nancy Sever, includes Robert Campbell Jr, Gordon Bennett, Judy Watson, Emily Kngwarreye, Juan Davila and Imants Tillers.