TarraWarra Museum of Art

Last updated

TarraWarra Museum of Art
Australia location map.svg
Red pog.svg
Location within Australia
Established2002
LocationHealesville, Victoria, Australia
Coordinates 37°39′34.7″S145°28′9.1″E / 37.659639°S 145.469194°E / -37.659639; 145.469194
Type Art museum
Website www.twma.com.au

TarraWarra Museum of Art is a public art museum in Healesville, Victoria, 45 kilometres northeast of Melbourne, on Wurundjeri Country. Welcoming audiences since 2003, TarraWarra is a leading not-for-profit art gallery that features inventive and stimulating exhibitions and programs about twentieth and twenty-first century art. The Museum has built a reputation for presenting a unique program of exhibitions curated to inspire curiosity and support emerging and established artists to make new work.

Contents

TarraWarra Museum of Art Limited was registered in 2000. [1] 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. [2] The Museum building, designed by Alan Powell from architecture firm Powell & Glenn, was opened in 2003. [3] Founded by philanthropists and art collectors, the late Eva Besen AO and Marc Besen AC, it was the first museum of art in Australia supported by a significant private endowment. [4] They not only gifted the award-winning purpose-built Museum designed by the late Allan Powell, they also donated nearly 600 works of Australian art from their private collection

Collection

Eva and Marc Besen began collecting art in the 1950s. [4] 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 occasionally featured in scheduled exhibitions. [4]

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]

TarraWarra Biennial

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]

Inaugurated in 2006, the TarraWarra Biennial has presented the works of over 200 artists over the course of eight exhibitions to date. Providing a significant platform for each of its seven guest curators to identify and respond to new trends in contemporary Australian art, each iteration has had a distinctive and independent curatorial lens.

TarraWarra Biennial 2006  Parallel Lives: Australian Painting Today  

4 August –12 November 2006   Curated by Victoria Lynn  

TarraWarra Biennial 2008   Lost & Found: An Archeology of the Present  

1 August – 9 November 2008  Curated by Charlotte Day

TarraWarra Biennial 2012   Sonic Spheres  

5 August – 9 December 2012   Curated by Victoria Lynn  

TarraWarra Biennial 2014   Whisper in My Mask  

16 August – 16 November 2014  Curated by Natalie King and Djon Mundine

TarraWarra Biennial 2016   Endless Circulation  

19 August – 6 November 2016   Curated by Helen Hughes and Victoria Lynn

TarraWarra Biennial 2018   From Will to Form  

3 August – 6 November 2018   Curated by Emily Cormack

TarraWarra Biennial 2021Slow Moving Waters  

27 March – 11 July 2021   Curated by Nina Miall

TarraWarra Biennial 2023   ua usiusi faʻavaʻasavili  

1 April – 16 July 2023   Dr Léuli Eshrāghi

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joy Hester</span> Australian artist (1920–1960)

Joy St Clair Hester was an Australian artist. She was a member of the Angry Penguins movement and the Heide Circle who played an integral role in the development of Australian Modernism. Hester is best known for her bold and expressive ink drawings. Her work was charged with a heightened awareness of mortality due to the death of her father during her childhood, the threat of war, and her personal experience with Hodgkin's disease. Hester is most well known for the series Face, Sleep, and Love (1948–49) as well as the later works, The Lovers (1956–58).

Dale Hickey is an Australian artist.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christian Thompson (artist)</span> Indigenous Australian artist

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.

Kate Beynon is an Australian contemporary artist based in Melbourne.

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 APY lands in South Australia. After being a finalist for the Archibald Prize three times, he became the first Indigenous artist to win the prize in 2020 for his work Stand strong for who you are, and his work selected as a finalist or winning entry in a number of other significant art awards. He is the great-grandson of the famous Arrente watercolour artist Albert Namatjira.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mikala Dwyer</span> Australian sculptor (born 1959)

Mikala Dwyer is an Australian artist born in 1959 in Sydney. She is a contemporary sculptor who was shortlisted with fellow artist Justene Williams to represent Australia at the 2019 Venice Biennale.

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.

Elizabeth Gower is an Australian abstract artist who lives and works in Melbourne. She is best known for her work in paper and mixed-media monochrome and coloured collages, drawn from her sustained practice of collecting urban detritus.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michaela Gleave</span> Australian artist

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 was a Romanian-born Australian businessman, philanthropist, and Holocaust survivor. He was the managing director of fashion retailer Sussan from 1951 to 1980, and he was involved in various philanthropic activities. In 2015, he was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ash Keating</span> Australian visual artist (born 1980)

Ash Keating is an Australian contemporary visual artist.

References

  1. ↑ "About Us". TarraWarra Museum of Art. 22 July 2014. Retrieved 18 May 2018.
  2. ↑ "ParlInfo - Transcript of launch, north Melbourne: Tarrawarra Museum of Art". parlinfo.aph.gov.au. Retrieved 18 May 2018.
  3. ↑ "Project Overview: TarraWarra Museum of Art by Powell & Glenn / TLP". The Local Project. 27 May 2017. Retrieved 18 May 2018.
  4. 1 2 3 Thomas, Sarah (Spring 2006). "TarraWarra Museum of Art: A private vision made public". Art and Australia. 44: 14–16.
  5. ↑ "LIFE STYLE TV-ARTS-ENTERTAINMENT Modern-art display". Canberra Times (ACT : 1926 - 1995). 4 March 1976. p. 18. Retrieved 18 May 2018.
  6. ↑ "Collection". TarraWarra Museum of Art. 22 July 2014. Retrieved 18 May 2018.
  7. ↑ "TarraWarra Biennial (Australia)". Biennial Foundation. 23 July 2014. Retrieved 7 April 2020.
  8. ↑ "Vincent Namatjira". This Is No Fantasy. Retrieved 7 April 2020.
  9. ↑ "Prime Ministers Series: TarraWarra Biennial 2016". This Is No Fantasy. Retrieved 7 April 2020.
  10. ↑ "in the loop sept 5: quick picks & opportunities: tarrawarra biennial 2012: sonic spheres". RealTime. 4 September 2012. Retrieved 16 April 2020.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.