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RAFT artspace has unveiled a new body of work by Western Desert painter Carbiene McDonald Tjangala, highlighting a striking evolution in his practice. Committed to painting the four Tjukurrpa (Dreaming) stories inherited from his father, Snowy McDonald, the artist is known for his unwavering dedication.

Dallas Gold (director of RAFT Artspace) first noticed McDonald’s work through Papunya Tjupi Arts’s Instagram, a moment that led to the artist’s sell-out solo debut at RAFT in 2018. The 2022 exhibition builds on that success, revealing both continuity and experimentation. McDonald’s signature layered paint surfaces and square formations remain, yet the new works introduce subtle shifts in colour and structure that signal growing confidence and playfulness.

The exhibition is current at RAFT Artspace, Alice Springs, 29 April - 21 May, 2022.

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Installation image 'Carbiene McDonald Tjangala' at RAFT Artspace, Northern Territory

Art Guide has published a profile on artist Carbiene McDonald Tjangala from Papunya Tjupi Arts Centre.

'Papunya Tjupi Arts is an Aboriginal owned not-for-profit community art centre based in Papunya—located approximately 240 kilometres northwest of Mparntwe (Alice Springs). It’s also where McDonald first began painting. “All the young fellas were encouraging me to paint,” explains McDonald. “Now I’m painting, I’ve started working.”

With great movement in his practice, McDonald is committed to painting the four Tjukurrpa (Dreaming) stories inherited from his father Snowy McDonald. And this commitment is undeniable: “He’s the first one to arrive at the Papunya Tjupi and then last one to leave each day,” says Dallas Gold, director of RAFT artspace.

It was documentation of McDonald’s earlier work on Papunya Tjupi Arts’s Instagram that grasped the attention of many—including Gold—propelling McDonald’s first solo exhibition at RAFT artspace in 2018. It was a sell-out show. “There’s an inherited visual language in [McDonald’s] work but he’s also inventing a visual language,” explains Gold. “He’s inventing a language that alludes to something that he’s inherited without giving too much away.”

While McDonald’s new work at RAFT still has his signature iterative layers of paint and square formations, it also yields subtle yet meaningful shifts with colour and composition. Gold explains that McDonald is undoubtedly becoming more playful and dynamic within the structures of his work. The paintings demonstrate “strong statements informed by knowledge of Country and about Country—but they’re also inventing a language to allude to these knowledge systems, or they’re trying to reestablish this—so this is something that’s very new,” says Gold. As McDonald has explained, “I only paint my Country. I felt I had to paint this way, paint my homelands…in the future I’m going to keep making artworks of my Country.”'

- Autumn Royal for Art Guide, 2022

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CARBIENE MCDONALD
Four Dreamings 2021
544-21
acrylic on canvas
122 x 181 cm

‘Expanded Canvas’ is a major exhibition at Town Hall Gallery exploring the dynamic and innovative nature of contemporary painting. The traditional grid and 2D picture plane are replaced by modern surfaces, including drop sheets, sign vinyl, virtual space, and the gallery wall itself.

Bundit’s mural painting will be exhibited in the major exhibition ‘Expanded Canvas’, showing at Hawthorn Arts Centre, Victoria - 23 April to Saturday 2 July 2022.

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Congratulations to Eliza Gosse whose work has been included in a new exhibition at New South Wales parliament house 'National Art School in the NSW Landscape'.

The exhibit explores the relationship between people, land and culture across the state through artworks by 21 significant Australian artists who studied at the National Art School (NAS), which this year celebrates 100 years since moving into the former Darlinghurst Gaol site in inner-city Sydney. Featuring 27 major artworks in various media including tapestry, collage and ceramics, this show represents the enormous diversity of NSW’s landscape, environment and culture.

The exhibition is open at NSW Parliament House from 9 – 31 March 2022.

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The disparate textural layers of Aggregates in Construct blend the myriad forms and patterns of nature marked by the boundaries of human action. Ari Athans’ stacked, sculptural arrangements flow between the handmade, organic and industrial, marking the liminal points where the landscape rests upon and collides with the built world.

- Art Almanac, 2022

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Ari Athans

Ultra Surface 2022

ceramic, wood, vesicular basalt, acrylic paint

36 x 22 x 20 cm

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For more than twenty years ceramic artist Vipoo Srivilasa has created intricate and elaborate artworks that reflect his bicultural experience living between Australia and Thailand. He celebrates the intersections and overlaps between cultural, social, philosophical and environmental contemplations on life in a pandemic. VAULT asked Srivilasa to share some of his most beloved artefacts.

National Film and Sound Archive of Australia first major original exhibition in two decades opened to the public on Friday, bringing with it an insight into Australian films and film talent - both behind and in front of the camera. Curator Tara Marynowsky shares how this treasure trove of beloved cinema moments came to life.

Australians & Hollywood is both a celebration and a provocation to rethink Australian cinema today, at home, in Hollywood and beyond. Visitors will be taken on a journey through the pivotal moments in recent and contemporary Australian cinema, starting from the ‘70s.

- Tara Marynowsky

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Tara Marynowsky, image courtesy National Sound and Film Archive

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There is more to Miranda Skoczek’s paintings than immediately meets the eye. They are built intuitively and in layers, from colours, patterns and objects that she absorbs in her immediate home environment – and all over the world. They are often abstract, sometimes with figurative elements; they focus on paint and colour, process and time, to create a space that takes us somewhere other, outside the material world. Inspiration comes from art and antiquities, folk art and contemporary design – and through obsessive consumption of images. Skoczek describes herself as “a sponge,” confessing to VAULT: “I have 95,000 photographs on my phone.”

The mystical is evident in Skoczek’s hope that her paintings work like amulets for those who acquire them. Protective elements aside, in their sensual textures and influences, so powerfully evoked, these paintings emerge as poignant and poetic visual essays written to the past and the present."\

- Louise Martin-Chew, Vault Magazine

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Front Cover of Vault Magazine, Issue 37, 2022, featuring Miranda Skoczek's Dreaming of Betty (Woodman), 2018

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The main idea of this show is to speculate if Sydney, Australia, a sprawling conurbation of coastal and landlocked suburbs, has anything artistically in common with the metropolis of Los Angeles. I am also speculating that there is such a thing as Australian cool, which might reflect or correspond with a perception held that LA art is definitely cool. LA’s emergence as an important art city has been an ongoing matter for debate but has recently become cemented by the by appearance in LA of some major new art museums and international galleries.

Artists: Ron Adams, Polly Borland, Chris Dolman, Belem Lett, Adam Norton, Philjames, Genevieve Felix Reynolds

Durden & Ray, Los Angeles
19 March - 9 April 2022

Title: The River, 2022
Medium: oil, gesso, marble dust on aluminium composite panel
Size: 81 x 61 cm

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The Blake Prize is one of Australia's longest standing and most prestigious prizes which encourages conversation about religion and spirituality through art and poetry.

Belem Lett has been named as a finalist for the 67^th Blake Prize, 2022.

Title: Electric Dreams, 2021
Medium: oil on aluminium composite panel
Size: 152 x 150 cm

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