Free Drawing Sessions

Once again this year, the National Art School is holding free drawing sessions for anyone interested in trying their hand at life drawing, as part of the City of Sydney’s Art & About Festival.

Dates:
Wednesday, 15 October, Taylor Square North - 12noon-2.30pm
Friday, 17 October, Circular Quay, AMP Forecourt - 11am-2.00pm.

No bookings required, just turn up and join in!
Materials supplied.

National Art School Open Day Saturday

As part of the City of Sydney’s Art & About Festival, the National Art School will be open to the public on Saturday 25th October, 10am-4pm.
Come in and see the works of our Honours students at the NAS Gallery, hear them talk about their work and experience at the School (1pm), visit open studios, or take a History Tour of the campus that was once Darlinghurst Gaol.
Tours run at 11am and 2pm.

Job Opportunity

The National Art School Drawing Department is seeking to appoint an outstanding and innovative lecturer with an extensive knowledge of the Drawing discipline, both contemporary and historical, and a distinguished exhibitions record. Experience in art education and relevant tertiary qualifications are also essential.


Applications will be accepted up to 24 October 2008

For further information and to apply click on link below

https://jobs.nsw.gov.au/JobDetails.asp?JobAdvertId=76281

Rodney Pople wins The King's School Art Prize

Rodney Pople, Lecturer with the NAS Painting Department, has won The King’s School 2008 Art Prize, valued at $15,000.

This acquisitive prize was established in 1994 and is held annually with The King’s School Art Show. Past winners include Aida Tomescu, Lyndal Brown and Charles Green, John Olsen, Peter Churcher, Ben Quilty and Geoffrey De Groen.

In presenting the award, guest judge Anthony Bond, Director of Curatorial Services at The Art Gallery of New South Wales, likened Rodney’s work Crystal Clear II to that of Yves Klein, one of his most revered artists, who “spent his life trying to picture the void”. “…Rodney is capturing something like what I imagine this immaterial sensibility could feel like” said Bond. “In this exhibition Rodney in particular stands apart from the fast food aesthetic of fashion and there is every chance that his unusual, sometimes incomprehensible, illuminations will survive the vagaries of history”.

Rodney Pople has an exhibition coming up at Australian Galleries, Glenmore Road, Paddington from 4 September 2008. Opening night is 5 September.

New NAS Drawing blog

Lynne Eastaway, Head of Drawing, has been busily developing a new Drawing blog for NAS students - but the links and news would be useful to anyone with an interest in the subject. Soon to be accessible via a link from the National Art School's website, you can go there right now: http://nasdrawing.blogspot.com Contributions welcome!

Middle Head Landscape Project

On campus exhibition of 2nd Year student works, opened by Bernard Ollis, Director at 5.30pm Wednesday 28 May 2008, in Building 25, National Art School.

The exhibition is based upon the 2nd Year Landscape Project at Middle Head and displays the process involved in making a painting, from the original study on site to the finished studio painting. The project is made possible with the cooperation and support of the National Parks and Wildlife Service.

Exhibition dates: 27-29 May 2008 Opening Hours: 10am-4.30pm

NATIONAL ART SCHOOL CERAMICS STAFF EXHIBITIONS

AUSTRALIAN WOODFIRE CERAMICS 3 April - 12 May John Freeland Gallery 120 Glenmore Rd Paddington.
Group exhibition including staff: BILL SAMUELS, SANDY LOCKWOOD,DON COURT & TANIA ROLLOND

STURT WOODFIRE CONFERENCE 18-21 APRIL at the Sturt Contemporary Craft Centre in Mittagong.
SANDY LOCKWOOD is a presenter.

KEY PRESENTERS 26 March-21 April
Sturt Gallery, Mittagong
Group Exhibition including SANDY LOCKWOOD

THE MASTERS 14 -21 April
Sturt Contemporary Craft Centre, Mittagong Group exhibition including BILL SAMUELS

A TASTE OF WOODFIRING 16-21 April
Sturt Contemporary Craft Centre, Mittagong Group exhibition including staff DON COURT

BOTANICALS: 5 April - 15 June
OBJECT GALLERY, Bourke Street, Darlinghurst Group exhibition including staff TANIA ROLLOND

MERRAN ESSON 15 April – 17 May at
Stella Downer Gallery 2 Danks Street, Waterloo

EAST WINDS 21 March - 5 May
Cudgegong Gallery, Gulgong
Group exhibition including staff WON SEOK KIM.

Scumbag

Scumbag - Ella Dreyfus

Exhibition Opening at Stills Gallery on Wed 9 April 6-8pm
Exhibition 9 April to 10 May 2008
Artist Talk Saturday 12 April 2pm

36 Gosbell Streeet, Paddington NSW 2021

Doug Moran National Portrait Prize

Among the finalists in this year's Moran prize for portraiture were NAS lecturer Noel McKenna and alumni Seth Birchall, Cherry Hood, and Guy Maestri.

Congratulations to all!

Images of all finalists' work are available at the Moran Prizes website.

Rodney Pople wins Sulman!

Congratulations to NAS lecturer Rodney Pople on winning the 2008 Sulman Prize with his work Stage fright.

An image of the work and details of the exhibition are available at: http://www.thearchibaldprize.com.au/winners/sulman

Archibald, Wynne and Sulman finalists

National Art School staff, students and graduates feature in this year's Archibald, Wynne and Sulman prizes at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Finalists in the Archibald are Joanna Braithwaite, Rodney Pople and Leslie Rice.
Finalists in the Wynne are Euan Macleod and Rodney Pople.
Finalists in the Sulman are Vilma Bader, Yvonne Boag, Janet Haslett, Rodney Pople and Aida Tomescu.

Announcement of the winners will take place on Friday 7 March 2008 at 12 noon.

The exhibition will be on display at the Art Gallery of NSW 8 March - 18 May 2008.

Salad Days: Justin Balmain, Deidre Brollo, Catherine Fox, David Wills

In 2007 The National Art School selected four talented young artists to undertake residencies within the fields of drawing, photography, painting and printmaking. After a year of working in their studios on campus, teaching and sustained interaction with students and faculty, The National Art School is presenting an invigorating exhibition defined by fresh new ideas inspired by the art school environment. The exhibition features work by the artists Justin Balmain, Deidre Brollo, Catherine Fox and David Wills. Salad Days is an exciting and diverse exhibition that is the manifestation of a years’ work for these four artists. The title Salad Days plays with the idiomatic expression used to refer to the days when we are young and relatively inexperienced and idealistic, but can also mean a time when we are at the peak of our abilities.

Justin Balmain’s abstract paintings and drawings playfully embrace ornament, pattern making and shifting perspective often creating striking optical effects. His work questions the material parameters of two dimensional works, and incorporates blankets, wallpaper, rubber, and graffiti along with traditional media of paint and ink. David Wills’ photo-media based work examines the nature of consumer society and mass-consumption. His mass accumulation of photographs look at both images of luxury and the abject that make up our daily intake of visual information. Catherine Fox’s large and small scale oil paintings evoke both traditional and contemporary representations of the nude and self-portraiture. Deidre Brollo is a printmaker with a particular interest in artists' books. Using various printmaking techniques she creates familiar images of unfamiliar places as a means of evoking ideas of place and the uncertainty of memory.

Salad Days will take the format of a group exhibition with an evolving project space that will be utilised by three of the artists for a period of 6 days each over the duration of the overall presentation. This allows for a continuous display of work and evolving solo presentations by the artists.


Salad Days: Justin Balmain, Deidre Brollo, Catherine Fox, David Wills
National Art School 2007 Artists in Residence

21 February – 29 March 2008
National Art School Gallery
10am – 4pm (Closed Sundays & Public Holidays)


EVENTS

Midweek Social
Thursday 6 March, 6 – 9pm
David Wills invites you to an evening of board games, refreshments, entertainment and prizes
Dress Code: Cocktail/Cruise

The Weekly Bus-Rail Ticket: Noel McKenna

Service Station, Paddington (1988)



From 21 February – 29 March 2008 the National Art School Gallery will present The Weekly Bus-Rail Ticket: Noel McKennaa selection of little or never before seen works by McKenna that he made as a young man after moving from Brisbane to Sydney in the late 1970s. These early watercolours, drawings and prints convey the human dimension in the modern city, depicting the familiar and changing terrain of Sydney from Darlinghurst, Surry Hills, Centennial Park and beyond. In these delightful images of the city we see the pleasure of the artist as he explores his new home, from the camaraderie of friends playing football in Centennial Park, a solitary urban figure in an apartment complex in Surry Hills or the thrill of the ferris wheel at Luna Park and the monumental presence of the Harbour Bridge.

McKenna’s work shows a wry and subtle sense of humour without ever being cloying or sentimental. His ongoing interest in depicting flat, spare images are seen in their earliest incarnation in these works on paper from 1976-1989. The portable nature of works on paper inherently convey the nature of his trajectory as he moved about Sydney turning his incisive eye on the ordinary, the everyday, the ‘crapola’ as he calls it. This is part one of a two part presentation, McKenna will be showing works from his 2007 travels through Sydney at Darren Knight Gallery later this year.

The Weekly Bus-Rail Ticket: Noel McKenna

21 February – 29 March 2008

National Art School Gallery
10am – 4pm (Closed Sundays & Public Holidays)


Public Programs

Art Forum Series 5 March, 1 PM FREE
Join artist Noel McKenna and Katie Dyer, NAS Gallery Curator, for a discussion on the selection of works in the exhibition and McKenna’s intriguing narrative works about the city which he has made over the last three decades.