Art Gallery of NSW: 2012 exhibitions

Venue: Art Gallery of NSW, The Domain, Sydney
See the AGNSW website for more details

With its blockbuster Picasso exhibition in full swing, the Art Gallery of New South Wales has announced its 2012 exhibition program, which promises something for just about everybody in a jam-packed year.

It kicks off in February with Making sense: contemporary LA photo artists (11 Feb – 13 May).  This exhibition presents 13 works from the Gallery’s collection by Uta Barth, Miles Coolidge, Shannon Ebner, Christina Fernandez, Ken Gonzales-Day, Anthony Hernandez, Sharon  Lockhart, Catherine Opie and Mark Wyse – artists based in Southern California whose work deals with relations between landscape and architecture, high and low culture, representations of the body, politics and irony, word and image.

A dynamic and popular annual exhibition, ARTEXPRESS 2012 (22 Feb – 22 Apr) features a selection of outstanding student artworks developed for the artmaking component of the HSC examination in Visual Arts 2011. It includes a broad range of approaches and expressive forms, including ceramics, collection of works, drawing, painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture and video.

Then comes the big one, with the exhibition and announcement of the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes (31 Mar – 3 Jun). The Archibald Prize is one of Australia’s oldest and most prestigious art awards. Since its inception in 1921, the prize has been awarded to some of Australia’s most important artists, including George Lambert, William Dobell and Brett Whiteley. The Wynne Prize is awarded to the best landscape painting of Australian scenery in oils or watercolours or for the best example of figure sculpture, by an Australian artist. The Sir John Sulman Prize is awarded for the best subject painting or genre painting or mural project by an Australian artist.

May sees the opening of Australian Symbolism: The Art of Dreams (11 May – 29 Jul). The late 19th century is enduringly popular with audiences in Australia. It was also a time when the Symbolist movement in literature, music and visual arts flourished, particularly in France.

This exhibition – the first to focus on Symbolism in Australian art – provides a fresh context for the work of some of the era’s most well-known Australian artists, with over 80 paintings, sculptures, decorative art objects and works on paper from private and public collections. It investigates two main streams of Symbolist art: those artists, such as Rupert Bunny, Bertram Mackennal, Arthur Loureiro, Bernard Hall and George Lambert, who trained or worked overseas and drew directly from European Symbolist genres; and those working here, such as Charles Conder, Arthur Streeton, Tom Roberts and Sydney Long, who referenced Symbolism to define a local experience.

Sydney-based Jacky Redgate is one of Australia’s leading photographic artists, with a career spanning nearly 30 years; and is the subject of Jacky Redgate: the logic of vision (2 Jun - 9 Sep). Since the 1980s, Redgate has explored the interplay of systems  of perception and representation, particularly in relation to photography and what occurs when three-dimensional ‘things in the world’ are translated into two-dimensional images. In turn, Redgate has created sculptural objects which are either impossible to photograph or which are optical or perceptual conundrums.

Kamisaka Sekka: master of modern Japanese art and design (21 Jun – 26 Aug) marks first time that such a comprehensive display of the exemplary Japanese sense for design will be shown in Australia. Consisting of around 100 paintings, ceramics, lacquer works, textiles, woodblock prints and drawings gathered from numerous collections, the exhibition focuses on the multi-faceted oeuvre of Kamisaka Sekka (1866-1942). One of the leading Japanese artists, designers and art instructors of the first half of the 20th century, Sekka is considered a master of the longstanding Japanese decorative tradition, Rinpa.

To demonstrate the enduring allure of Rinpa-style arts, and Sekka’s art in particular, works by emerging and internationally renowned artists – such as Yamaguchi Ai, Yamamoto Taró, Sydney-based fashion designer Akira Isogawa and Kyoto-based textile artists Kenzo and Hiromu Takao – will also be included.

A busy June also sees the 18th Biennale of Sydney, with the AGNSW contributing All our relations (27 Jun – 16 Sep). Under the creative direction of Catherine de Zegher and Gerald McMaster, the 18th Biennale of Sydney intends to focus on inclusionary art practices of generative thinking, such as collaboration, conversation and compassion. Working from a collaborative framework, this will be a departure from previous Biennale of Sydney exhibitions – the theme will increasingly become apparent through the process rather than being imposed on artists and audiences at the beginning.

Fans of photography won’t want to miss Eugène Atget: Paris 1898–1924 (24 Aug – 4 Nov). Eugène Atget (1857–1927) is considered a starting-point for 20th-century documentary photography, inspiring artists and photographers such as Brassaï, Cartier-Bresson, the Surrealists and Walker Evans among many others. His vision of photography was an astonishingly modern one, although the equipment and techniques he deployed link him to 19th-century photography.

Organised by the Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney, Fundaçion MAPFRE, Madrid, Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam, Musée Carnavalet, Paris and Paris Musées, this is the first comprehensive exhibition of Atget’s work to be seen in Australia. The more than 200 photographs in this exhibition come primarily from the collection of Musée Carnavalet, Paris, with the important inclusion of Atget’s work, as compiled by Man Ray, from the collection of George Eastman House, Rochester, USA.

The year rounds out with Francis Bacon: five decades (17 Nov 2012 – 17 Feb 2013), the first major exhibition of Francis Bacon’s painting ever held in Australia. It is particularly timely as 2012 marks the 20th anniversary of the artist’s death.

Bacon is widely acknowledged as the outstanding figurative painter after Picasso, who was an early influence, as was Australian artist Roy de Maistre who encouraged Bacon to take up painting. In turn, Bacon’s impact on a younger generation of artists, including Brett Whiteley and David Hockney, was considerable.

Surveying Bacon’s life and work, this exhibition will present some 50 paintings as well as archival material from the artist’s studio, including ephemera, films and photographs, which helped to fuel his painterly process. It is structured around five decades, which correspond loosely to key themes in Bacon’s development.