A trio of new exhibitions – featuring drawings from the NERAM collections, works from Colombian-born artist Maria Pia Mosquera and abstract artist Catherine Cassidy – will be opening at NERAM this week.
The free opening night will be held tonight September 27 from 6pm – 8pm with an artist talk on Saturday September 28 at 10.30am.
A highlight of the new exhibitions will be Drawing from the Collection – that features works sourced from the NERAM collections from sketches and studies, to fully realised still lifes, portraits, and landscapes.
Drawing from the Collection highlights the variety and skill of more than 35 artists including Judy Cassab, Margaret Coen, Elisabeth Cummings, Nora Heysen, Lionel Lindsay, Angus Nivison, Lloyd Rees, William Robinson, Desiderius Orban, Guy Warren, and Margaret Woodward amongst others.
“From preliminary sketches to fully realised and complete works, drawing is a vital part of the artistic process and is often understood as the foundation of making art,” said NERAM director Rachael Parsons.
“Drawing is one of the key disciplines that teaches us to observe the world around us and to communicate what we see through marks on a surface.
“We have some outstanding examples of drawings in the NERAM collections, and this exhibition is a wonderful opportunity to highlight them.”
The two other solo exhibitions opening include a new body of work by abstract artist Catherine Cassidy – called All the Excellent Dolphins – that demonstrates her current focus on the long history of mark-making by generations of humans and Women and Other Demons with works by Maria Pia Mosquera, a Colombian-born artist based in Sydney.
Rooted in the aesthetics of medieval and Latin-American colonial art, Maria’s work wryly re-imagines the contemporary world through the lens of religious iconography, mythology and folklore, vestiges from a time when the power of the supernatural to intervene in our lives was taken to be self-evident.
“We have two vastly different solo exhibitions opening, which highlights the immense diversity of practice found in contemporary art,” said Ms Parsons.
“From the macabre figurative work of Maria Pia Mosquera to the abstract canvases of Catherine Cassidy, audiences are being offered a varied visual feast.”
Something going on in your part of the region you think people should know about? Send us a news tip or email newsdesk@netimes.com.au.