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.