SYDNEY CONTEMPORARY 2018 'Always on the dancefloor' by Claudia Damichi at The Old Clare Hotel with Olsen Gallery, Sydney As part of Sydney Contemporary's 2018 program, Always on the dancefloor by Claudia Damichi is an installation of multiple adhesive fine art prints applied to The Old Clare Hotel entrance doorways. Always on the dancefloor is an exciting extension of Damichi's paintings that explore the intersection of art, architecture and design. This new installation work for the Sydney Contemporary is multi-modular in design and composed entirely in response to the site.  Always on the dancefloor carries on Damichi's long standing interest in the abstract work of Mondrian, Delaunay, Kandinsky and the relationship between colour and music. As a disco child of the 70s, her work pops and slides as it plays into the site, adding colour and movement, bringing a sense of the dance floor to the industrial building landscape.

Claudia Damichi will also present a new series of paintings and wall works at Olsen Gallery Annex in October. olsengallery.com claudiadamichi.com

Paul Davies work "Landscape in Open-plan" has been acquired by the Laguna Art Museum in California.

OLSEN Gallery wishes to congratulate Alan Jones for his work Painting 233 (The Fire Trail) that has been selected as a finalist in the Tattersalls Art Prize. Painting 233 was recently on display at the Olsen Gallery stall at Melbourne Art Fair. 

From objects to buildings Honora Shea and Danielle Rago of This X That help emerging designers and architects think big - and small. 

The Watermill Center held its 25th Annual Gala, TIME BOMB, at its headquarters Saturday night. Presented by Van Cleef & Arpels and honoring the late Pierre Berge, the aptly named evening featured an explosion of creativity. Over 1,000 guests strolled through the site, where the colorful theme, in tribute to Berge and the Jardins Majorelle, abounded.  The evening raised $2.2 million for the center...

 There were exciting works to be had at the silent auction, including recent pieces by Rachel Hovnanian, Leila Jeffreys, Hadieh Shafie, and many more. The live auction featured a trio of Keith Haring prints courtesy of the Tony Shafrazi Foundation, and works by Peter Beard, Nan Goldin, Roy Lichtenstein, Masako Miki, Duke Riley, Tseng Kwong Chi, as well as a Robert Wilson video.

Australian born artist Paul Davies investigates the relationship between built and natural environments in his atmospheric pantings, which often draw on historic modernist masterpieces. This painting, which mirrors nature with architecture, is a key work at DUMBO House, where the collection reflects the site's own staggering setting - specifically, its skyline views.

ART OF MUSIC is one of the most talked about fundraisers on the Sydney event circuit. ?There is no other like it.
Presented by Jenny Morris, ART OF MUSIC combines both visual arts and music. Held every two years, a group of Australia's top artists come together to create an original exhibition where each artist chooses an iconic Australian/NZ song to inspire a piece of artwork. ?The artwork is then auctioned during a gala dinner in the spectacular Grand Court of the Art Gallery of NSW. All proceeds go to Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy, an inspirational charity that use the power of music to transform lives.
Congratulations to Nicholas Harding on his participation in the event with his work : Private Universe (Neil Finn)?? 2018 oil on linen 112x107cm (featured)

Ornithologists and art aficionados alike find delight in Leila Jeffreys' winged works.

Conservationist, world traveller and fine art photographer, Leila Jeffreys, grew up in Perth, Australia. She experienced all the boundless travel and exposure to exotic wildlife required for an artist with her particular level of visual acuity. Among the many celebrities, who have taken her under their wing, Jonathan Adler, smartly featured the work of this emerging artist in 20 North American stores in 2010. As both a curator and interior designer, I adore the clean graphic quality of her work, and appreciate the memorable, emotional charge her subjects emit to their viewers. 

“I was walking down 5th Ave one evening and in the window of Bergdorfs was the most magical display of a photographers work with brightly festooned mannequins I had ever seen,” shares Carole Reed. “Searching up the artist immediatley I suddenly found myself obsessed by these bird portraits on Instagram, then they appeared behind the shoulder of Brooke Shields in a recent InStyle shoot, it seemed they were everywhere. As both a curator and interior designer I adore the clean graphic quality of her work while also appreciating the memorable emotional charge her subjects emit to their viewers.”

Fiona McMonagle
Contributing artists /

Born: 1977, Letterkenny, Ireland Works: Melbourne

So Fine exhibition showing from Friday 29 June until Monday 1 October 2018 at the National Portrait Gallery. The exhibition features new works from ten women artists reinterpreting and reimaging elements of Australian history.

Artist statement

Under Britain's child migrant scheme - operating from the 1920s through to the late 1960s - over 130,000 children were forcibly sent to ‘a better life' in former colonies, mainly Australia and Canada. Many were children of single mothers who had been forced to give them up for adoption, or had left them temporarily in British orphanages until they were fit to reclaim them.

With New York Gallery Olsen Gruin hitting the 18-months open mark, Emily Cones-Browne talks to Australian dealer and co-director Tim Olsen about going international.

Extract:
Olsen Gruin has hit the 18-month mark since opening its first doors. What are some of the winning hallmarks the gallery has experienced during the first 18 months ?
The surprising thing about the New York experience is that I had no idea it was going to happen. It was only because my sister was moving her business that we had the opportunity for a pop-up. What began as an experiment was such a resounding success, it felt as though we had a place in the New York art scene.

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.