Join Maisy Stapleton and Paula Towers and our special guests on Arts Thursday 12 November 2020 to explore three aspects of the visual arts – painting, drawing and photography.

Firstly, we speak to Jacqualine Breakspear and Samantha Tidbeck whose joint exhibition Observations and Venerations, opens this week at Project Gallery 90 in Paddington until 25^th November.

This is a figurative painting show, focussing on still life and depictions of the everyday world, in a range of media. In Observations, Jacqualine explores “even the most humble of subjects” – while Venerations explores a variety of ideas and metaphors – in Samantha’s much venerated subjects.

Then Anne Ryan, Curator of Australian prints, drawings and watercolours, joins us to discuss Real Worlds: Dobell Australian Drawing Biennial 2020 now showing at the Art Gallery of NSW. The exhibition presents the work of eight contemporary Australian artists who create extraordinary new worlds in drawings of great complexity and invention.

Anne will be speaking to us about the artists Martin Bell (Victoria), Matt Coyle (Tasmania), Nathan Hawkes (NSW), Danie Mellor (NSW), Peter Mungkuri (South Australia), Becc Ország (Victoria), Jack Stahel (NSW) and Helen Wright (Tasmania) and their processes and concepts, as well as the background to the Dobell Australian Drawing Biennial and the value of drawing.

The Program concludes with Sandy Edwards, a major force as a photographer and curator, with a career spanning over 50 years – and still going strong.

In the 1980s and 90s, Sandy was a stringer for Melbourne’s Age, commissioned to photograph the famous in Sydney. Her exhibition, Showing My Age: Photographic Portraits taken for The Age Newspaper in the 1980s / 90s is part of the Head On photo festival and can be seen at Tap Gallery, until 15^th November. The exhibition includes photographs of luminaries such as Johnny Rotten, Robert Cray, Jane Campion, Boy George, Ruth Park, Dylan and Gerard Depardieu; each photographed in black and white film and hand printed in Sandy’s darkroom, before being rushed to Melbourne in a pre-digital age.

There are many stories to tell, both of the photo shoots and of the celebrities themselves!