Established | 2002 |
---|---|
Location | Tarrawarra, Victoria, Australia |
Coordinates | 37°39′34.7″S145°28′9.1″E / 37.659639°S 145.469194°E Coordinates: 37°39′34.7″S145°28′9.1″E / 37.659639°S 145.469194°E |
Type | Art museum |
Website | www |
TarraWarra Museum of Art is an art museum in Tarrawarra, Victoria, 45 kilometres northeast of Melbourne. Founded by philanthropists and art collectors Eva and Marc Besen, it is the first museum of art in Australia supported by a significant private endowment. [1]
TarraWarra Museum of Art Limited was registered in 2000. [2] The museum was then formally launched by Prime Minister John Howard on 24 April 2002 in a temporary location in North Melbourne, awaiting completion of a purpose-built museum in the Yarra Valley. [3] The Tarrawarra museum building, designed by Alan Powell from architecture firm Powell & Glenn, was opened in 2003. [4] The museum engages with art, place and ideas.
Eva and Marc Besen began collecting art in the 1950s. [1] When exhibited in the 1970s, their collection was considered "One of the country's finest collections of Modern Australian art." [5] In addition to the initial gift from the Besen's collection, TarraWarra has continued to acquire works. Artworks from the Museum’s collection are periodically featured in scheduled exhibitions. [1]
The collection includes works by notable Australian artists, such as Arthur Boyd, John Brack, Russell Drysdale, Rosalie Gascoigne, Dale Hickey, Susan Norrie, John Olsen, Patricia Piccinini, Clifton Pugh, Jeffrey Smart, Brett Whiteley and Fred Williams. [6]
The TarraWarra Biennial was established in 2006 "to identify new developments in contemporary art practice". [7] Vincent Namatjira's work, Endless circulation, which comprised a series of portraits of the seven Prime Ministers who had been in power in Australia during his lifetime until that point, was exhibited, [8] along with work by Vernon Ah Kee, Helen Johnson, Wukun Wanambi, Sarah crowEst and Agatha Gothe-Snape. [9]
The third Biennial, in 2012, Sonic Spheres, was curated by the museum's director Victoria Lynn. It brought together 21 pieces using music, sound and voice, and included leading Australian sound artists as well as artists more known for their work in other media. Two examples of the latter were Angela Mesti's Some Dance to Remember, Some Dance to Forget and Christian Thompson’s Dhagunyilangu – Brother, sung in the Bidjara language. [10]
The Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA), established as the National Gallery of South Australia in 1881, is located in Adelaide. It is the most significant visual arts museum in the Australian state of South Australia. It has a collection of almost 45,000 works of art, making it the second largest state art collection in Australia. As part of North Terrace cultural precinct, the gallery is flanked by the South Australian Museum to the west and the University of Adelaide to the east.
Janet Laurence is an Australian artist, based in Sydney, who works in photography, sculpture, video and installation art. Her work is an expression of her concern about environment and ethics, her "ecological quest" as she produces art that allows the viewer to immerse themselves to strive for a deeper connection with the natural world. Her work has been included in major survey exhibitions, nationally and internationally and is regularly exhibited in Australia, Japan, Germany, Hong Kong and the UK. She has exhibited in galleries and outside in site-specific projects, often involving collaborations with architects, landscape architects and environmental scientists. Her work is held in all major Australian galleries as well as private collections in Australia and overseas.
Tarrawarra is a locality in Victoria, Australia, 45 km north-east of Melbourne's central business district, located within the Shire of Yarra Ranges local government area. Tarrawarra recorded a population of 81 at the 2021 census.
Peter Booth is an Australian figurative and a surrealist painter, and one of the key late-20th-century Australian artists. His work is characterised by an intense emotional power of often dark narratives, and esoteric symbolism.
David Noonan is an Australian artist who lives and works in London.
Christian Andrew William Thompson, also known as Christian Bumbarra Thompson, is a contemporary Australian artist. Of Bidjara heritage on his father's side, his Aboriginal identity has played an important role in his work, which includes photography, video installations and sound recordings. After being awarded the Charlie Perkins Scholarship, to complete his doctorate in Fine Arts at Oxford University, he has spent much time in England. His work has been extensively exhibited in galleries around Australia and internationally.
John Zerunge Young is a Hong Kong-born Australian artist.
The Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA), formerly the Monash University Gallery, is a contemporary art museum on Monash University's Caulfield campus on Dandenong Road, Melbourne, Australia.
Robert Owen is an Australian artist and curator. He lives and works in Melbourne, Australia.
Kate Beynon is an Australian contemporary artist based in Melbourne. She was the 2016 winner of the Geelong Contemporary Art Prize for the painting, Graveyard scene/the beauty and sadness of bones.
Natalie King is an Australian curator and writer working in Melbourne, Australia. She specializes in Australian and international programs for contemporary art and visual culture. This includes exhibitions, publications, workshops, lectures and cultural partnerships across contemporary art and indigenous culture.
Vincent Namatjira is an Aboriginal Australian artist living in Indulkana, in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara in South Australia. He has won many art awards, and after being nominated for the Archibald Prize several times, he became the first Aboriginal person to win it in 2020. He is the great-grandson of the Arrente watercolour artist Albert Namatjira.
Jacqueline Mitelman is an Australian portrait photographer.
Yhonnie Scarce is an Australian glass artist whose work is held in major Australian galleries. She is a descendant of the Kokatha and Nukunu people of South Australia, and her art is informed by the effects of colonisation on Indigenous Australia, in particular Aboriginal South Australians. She has been active as an artist since completing her first degree in 2003, and teaches at the Centre of Visual Art in the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne.
Helen Johnson is an Australian artist producing large-scale paintings who also works as a lecturer, researcher and curator. Her artworks and practice reflect her views on colonialism, consumerism, the environment and personal accountability.
Heather B. Swann is an Australian contemporary artist known for her expressive surrealist sculptural objects, often combined with installation, performance and drawings. Her work draws on artisanal traditions, carving, modelling and tailoring materials to stretch, twist and manipulate her creaturely forms that are at once whimsical and darkly ambiguous. She has received numerous recognition for her work, and her pieces are held in prominent collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, Dubbo Regional Gallery and the Ian Potter Museum of Art.
" My work is a way of holding on to the world. My sculptures and drawings are figurative and modernist in expression, with curved forms, an insistent use of black and a marked surrealist accent."
Claire Lambe is a visual artist born in Macclesfield, England who lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. She was part of the National Gallery of Australia's 2021–22 Know My Name exhibition, and featured in the National Gallery of Victoria's exhibition, Melbourne Now.
Mandy Quadrio is a Brisbane/Meanjin-based contemporary artist of Palawa heritage.
Michaela Gleave is a Sydney-based Australian conceptual artist best known for her use of light and her monumental site specific art works engaging with space, time and matter. She was a 2012-2013 artist-in-residence at CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science and won a churchie award in 2015.
Marcus Besen is an Australian businessman and philanthropist. He is the co-founder of the Sussan Group, a fashion retailer, and has been involved in various philanthropic activities. In 2015 he was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia.