Doug Moran National Portrait Prize judge, Wendy Sharpe, described Tim Storrier's 2017 winning painting of fellow Australian artist McLean Edwards as "an arresting, intriguing image at once both disturbing and playful". Storrier's portrait of his friend in The Lunar Savant (Portrait of McLean Edwards) indeed presents such a contrast.

Congratulations to Zoe Young who has been awarded the Pirtek Prize for Still Life Painting at the Bowral Art Gallery for her work Apples for tea, which will be a part of her upcoming show Winter Soundtrack at Olsen Gallery. 

Extract: 'Beyond the Veil’

Through July 8. Olsen Gruin, 30 Orchard St., Manhattan; 646-613-7011, olsengruin.com

Who gets to narrate history? Who gets to represent whom? These questions have been roiling the American art world lately, but they are nothing new in Australia — especially in regard to its indigenous population, who faced official efforts to erase their culture well into the 20th century through forced assimilation. Visual art has provided a crucial tool to help redress these erasures, and at this New York outpost of a Sydney gallery, the paintings by five women from central Australia, and one collaborative group, testify to the vibrancy of Aboriginal Australian art and the necessity of speaking for yourself.

The Approval Matrix - Our deliberately oversimplified guide to who falls where on our taste hierarchies...

BRILLIANT - The breathtaking small survey of Aboriginal art "Beyond the Veil" at Olsen Gruin gallery.

So, there is something that holds true in a show like this, which presupposes a different way of looking at society because of the long reach of the West's current obsession with money. Clearly, affluence is not a major interest of the women in this show, who live in the central desert of Australia and who work on paintings that, despite their abstraction, remain close to their lives. This is a different cry by far from the recent dot paintings of Damien Hirst, whose probable appropriation-we are not certain this is true-looks like very much like the theft of a venerable art coming from a culture some 100,000 years old. Hirst's borrowings do tend to look facile in light of the greater gravitas of the indigenous women's works, which can be understood by Western viewers-albeit on a level likely more superficial than the paintings themselves. In any case, the controversy raises real issues about the appropriation of other cultures-a hallmark of Western art practice since the beginnings of modernism, when Picasso made use of African masks for his work Les demoiselles d'Avignon.

BEYOND THE VEIL CURATED BY ADAM KNIGHT
May 16 – July 8, 2018
OLSEN GRUIN NY
-Jonathan Goodman

Experience Dramartistry with Mclean Edwards as presented by the Sydney Art Quartet at Yellow House. Deep, rich & stormy music fuses with psychological portraiture when Mclean Edwards joins the Art Quartet. Sink deep into sound while McLean Edwards depicts an inner world - all in his darkly humorous & magnetic style. Your own sketch kit is welcome to add to the drama for these unique concert experiences.
Yellow House Sydney 57-59 Macleay St Potts Point NSW 2011

Very Special Kids' presents the Art with Heart auction. Very Special Kids is a children's charity that helps more than 900 families across Victoria who have a child with a life threatening condition with on going support from diagnosis all the way through bereavement. Julian Meagher will be participating in the charities Art exhibition and auction for exceptional fine paintings and sculptures from leading contemporary artists. See Julian's featured work below.

Very Special Kids presents Art With Heart auction. Andrew Taylor? and Matthew Johnson will? be participating in the charities Art exhibition and auction for exceptional fine paintings and sculptures from leading contemporary artists. See Andrew and Matthews featured works below.   

To coincide with several big art fairs and last week’s massive auctions, many larger galleries mounted shows of their bigger artists. So let’s read the tea leaves on the upper end of the food chain.

Extract:  Beyond the Veil
Curated by Adam Knight
Olsen Gruin

No doubt many of the bigwigs in town for all the art stars, megagalleries and super-auctions, missed maybe the best secret show in New York at the moment, this six-artist exhibition of Australian Aboriginal women painters curated by the president of the Aboriginal Art Association of Australia — a show that gives us a breathtaking small survey of what critic Robert Hughes (who in almost every case except this I disagreed with) called “the last great art movement of the twentieth century.”

Olsen Gruin is currently hosting a group exhibition titled "Beyond The Veil."

Until July 8, 2018, Olsen Gruin will host an exhibition that celebrates Aboriginal Australian artistic practices. “Beyond the Veil” features a group of contemporary Australian artists. It has been made possible by the gallery’s collaboration with the Aboriginal Art Association of Australia. The group show will be on view at the gallery’s New York venue.

This group exhibition of Central Desert Paintings has been curated by the President of the Aboriginal Art Association of Australia, Adam Knight. The anticipated show features select works by Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Evelyn Pultara, Gabriella Possum Nungurrayi, Gayla Pwerle, Polly Ngale, and the Women’s Collaborative comprising Beverly Cameron, Kathy Marinkga, Imitjala Curley, and Tjangili George.

Featured: Untitled 1993 Emily Kame Kngwarreye Synthetic polymer paints on Belgian linen 23.6 x 35 inches (59.9 x 88.9 cm)

Laura Jones has created a work for the "Art of Music" charity which is held at the Art Gallery of NSW. The charity raises money for Nordoff Robbins Music Therapy. To read more about the charity click here.      

Olsen Gruin is pleased to present Beyond the Veil, a group exhibition of Central Desert Paintings curated by the President of the Aboriginal Art Association of Australia, Adam Knight. The anticipated show features select works by Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Evelyn Pultara, Gabriella Possum Nungurrayi, Gayla Pwerle, Polly Ngale, and the Women’s Collaborative comprising Beverly Cameron; Kathy Marinkga, Imitjala Curley, and Tjangili George, and will be on view from May 16 – July 8, 2018.

Olsen Gruin is pleased to present Beyond the Veil, a group exhibition of Western Desert Paintings curated by the President of the Aboriginal Art Association of Australia, Adam Knight.

The anticipated show features select works by Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Evelyn Pultara, Gabriella Possum Nungurrayi, Gayla Pwerle, Polly Ngale, and the Women's Collaborative comprising Beverly Cameron; Kathy Marinkga, Imitjala Curley, and Tjangili George, and will be on view from May 16 - July 8, 2018.

Nell Frizzell interviews George Byrne in this months issue of The Guardian. George speaks of a moment whilst on a road trip from Los Angeles to Philadelphia.
"At a time of Islamophobia in the western world, it was a moment of connection,"
To read the full article please click here .

An interview with Claudia Damichi features in Domain Prestige in The AFR this week. "The work jams strong palettes up against each other. It jumps out at you, but the longer you stay with these works, the more they give." For more details on Claudia Damichi's upcoming show, please click here. 

Through the touch of this gifted Sydney artist, some of lifes most ordinary elements become extraordinary works of art.

Laura Jones's painting has been featured in this months issue of Vogue Living.

Artwork details: 

 Space Dahlias 2018

 oil on linen

122 x 102cm

Australian artists and dealers claim ‘uncanny’ similarities between Hirst’s ‘Veil Paintings’ and landscapes of the late Emily Kame Kngwarrey.

Damien Hirst’s ‘Veil Paintings’ works – recently on show at Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles (ranging from USD$500,000 to $1.7 million) – have come under fire for their similarity to the work of female Aboriginal artists, including Emily Kame Kngwarreye, who died in 1996.