AIDA TOMESCU: Paintings and Drawings

1 October–8 November

Over the last ten years the character of Aida Tomescu's paintings has grown to resemble the freshness, attack and open forms of her drawings.  This exhibition follows the development of Tomescu's work bringing together a coherent series from the last decade in which unexpected relationships occur across a variety of media.  The fascinating aspect of this particular show is that it gives the viewer an opportunity to see Aida Tomescu's explorations as they unfold through painting as a gradual construction towards a state of stillness, with its density and the artist's desire to transform it into an illusion of radiance; and the mixed media work with its eruptive energy and transparency. For Tomescu, drawing and painting are both journeys through layers. Her paintings are intensively worked, scrapped back repeatedly and re-configured, looking for something that is unified, full and ordered. Although profoundly abstract, her work is imbued with fragments of lost languages, not just verbal, but also signs, graffiti, and jotted and scrawled notations from disparate language systems from which an independent identity arises.  Tomescu's work comes from the history of painting and drawing which obviously involves the development of abstraction. Her paintings always retain the tracks of process, but there is a point when the work achieves a hard-won inevitability.

Image: Aida Tomescu studio view, photo: Jenni Carter.

ANU INDIGENOUS ART COLLECTION

12 November–20 December

The Australian National University has been pioneering in its support of indigenous culture. With its 1978 award of a Creative Arts Fellowship to Narritjin Maymuru from Eastern Arnhem Land, the ANU was one of the first public institutions in Australia to so actively encourage indigenous artists. The university has continued to engage with this rich and important art through initiatives such as the School of Art Print Workshop's collaborative print editions, through its acquisition policy and through commissions such as the Pukamani poles by Benny Tipungwuti. This exhibition is a selection from the ANU's now extensive collection of sculptures and paintings, including bark paintings, and prints.

Curated by Nancy Sever.

Image: Julie Dowling, Idawong (star), 2008, acrylic, polymer and ochre on canvas, 91 x 71 cm. ANU Art Collection.