THIS WEEKEND ONLY - FILM/VIDEO SCREENINGS /  by Helen Grace

Serious Undertakings – Weekend Film Forum

When: Saturday 30 July & Sunday 31 July, 2pm - 4pm
Where: Project Lab, Wagga Wagga Art Gallery 
Cost: Free events - bookings essential

Do you like nothing better than a winter afternoon watching and discussing film?

Join us for a weekend of films by artist and filmmaker Helen Grace. Hear 10 local residents respond to Helen Grace’s work. Join the conversation with curator and writer Julie Ewington.

Over the last four decades artist and filmmaker Helen Grace has produced a body of moving image works, and includes film, video and animated photography works. These short films will be introduced by the artist in two open screenings. Ten local writers and creatives have accepted the invitation to provide a creative response to each of Helen’s films. What they have to say will surprise, delight and challenge.

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Helen Grace and Julie Ewington: Serious Undertakings at Wagga Wagga Art Gallery is the second of three two-week residencies spent working at Wagga Wagga between May and October 2022. During this extended engagement with the city’s creative communities, Grace and Ewington will show new and existing work at Wagga Wagga Art Gallery; will conduct artist’s and writing workshops; and will continue to engage with local creatives, discussing their own projects.

This second residency focusses on Helen Grace’s moving image works, and includes film, video and animated photography works made over the last four decades.

Queering the Frame: Community, Time, Photography, April 29 – 3 July, 2022 /  by Helen Grace

Helen Grace, And awe was all we could feel (1979/2020) Selenium-toned silver gelatin print, 38 x55cm

Queering the Frame: Community, Time, Photography

Happy to be in this show in such good company!

CCP, 404 George St, Fitzroy

“Presenting Australian LGBTQ+ artists across generations, this exhibition considers how the community narrate their histories—how voices are celebrated, how the queer community shift otherwise heteronormative readings of history and information.

Moving across generations, from the late 70s through to now, these artists come together in a celebration of queer community, and consider the ways in which stories are passed down, how lives are remembered.

From Amazon Acres, a female-only commune of the 70s and 80s, to capturing moments of queer Indigenous joy in the 90s and portraits of contemporary queer bodies, the exhibition reflects on the impact and ongoing importance of queer ancestors and connections across generations.

Please note this exhibition contains images of deceased people.”

UPCOMING SHOW: friends, relations, lovers and ancestors /  by Helen Grace

Image | Helen Grace, ‘Living Arrangements 1949–2019’ (Video still), featuring ‘An Artist Like A Soldier Without Politics Is An Assassin’, c. 1975-76 by Michael Callaghan, designed and co-printed with Ann Stephen. Courtesy of the artists.

friends, relations, lovers and ancestors
SCA Gallery x sydenham international
Opening: 6pm-8pm, Wednesday, 10 August, 2022
Exhibition: 11 August - 10 September 2022

Julie Rrap, Co-Director and Co-Chair of Sydney College of the Arts, warmly invites you to join SCA staff and students to celebrate the opening of the exhibition friends, relations, lovers and ancestors. 
This exhibition focuses on the work of Helen Grace, presenting a selection of her films, and centering her work in a conversation extended through other contemporary practices.

Works by five artists both connect to thematic concerns and technical approaches within Grace’s practice and allow us to circle back to consider her work from new perspectives.

This exhibition is staged simultaneously across SCA Gallery and sydenham international, a new experimental art space in Sydney’s Inner West. The project is part of SCA Gallery’s annual series partnering with an Artist Run Initiative that highlights the dynamic and collaborative activities of contemporary ARIs and connects the institution to independent projects.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of talks with artists and academics. Details coming soon. 

Artists: Helen Grace with Kay Abude, Sarah Rodigari, Grant Stevens, Leyla Stevens and Shan Turner-Carroll
Opening Details
• Date: Wednesday 10 August, 2022
• Opening: 6pm-8pm
• Location: SCA Gallery, Old Teachers' College, Manning Road, The University of Sydney, Camperdown.

SCA Gallery | Exhibition Details
• Date: Thursday 11 August - Saturday 10 September, 2022
• Exhibition Viewing Hours:
o Monday - Friday: 11am-5pm
o Saturday: 12pm-4pm
• Locations: SCA Gallery, Old Teachers' College, Manning Road, The University of Sydney, Camperdown.

sydenham international | Exhibition Details
• Date: Saturday 13 August - Saturday 3 September, 2022
• Exhibition Viewing Hours:
o Thursday - Saturday: 11am-5pm
• Location: sydenham international, 81 Sydenham Rd, Marrickville NSW 2204

SUSTAINING THE ART OF PRACTICE, LAWRENCE WILSON GALLERY, UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA /  by Helen Grace

Work included in this new exhibition

EXHIBITION WEAVES COMMON THREAD CONNECTING ARTISTS’
Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery at The University of Western Australia is delighted to reopen with a new exhibition,

Sustaining the art of practice, on display from 25 June- 20 August 2022.

Showing works from The Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art (CCWA) including new commissioned work to the collection and loaned works, this exhibition makes visible the many networks of support that sustain professional artists’ public practice.

The CCWA is the nation’s foremost public collection of art by Australian women and non-binary artists. A unique and idiosyncratic collection spanning works from the 1890s to present day, the CCWA includes notable works of still life, abstraction, early postmodernism, and second-wave feminism.

Featured alongside Sustaining the art of practice is a display of selected works from the Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art that highlight portraits. A key aim of the two exhibitions is to expand outwards from the CCWA holdings and place these in dialogue with contemporary narratives relating to place and identity.

The exhibitions’ central theme emphasises the importance of relationships - creative, professional, and personal – that enable artists to survive and flourish.

As Kinsella notes, Sustaining the art of practice was developed in response to the pandemic. “In difficult moments, we draw upon our support networks and personal relationships, particularly those of friends and family to sustain us. This exhibition attempts to make visible the threads that that connect relationships between artists and their ongoing support networks built over many years. These networks sustain the artists’ work in and around activism, writing, family, community, mental health, and other circles that reveal the interconnected nature of creativity.”

JUSTICE FOR VIOLET AND BRUCE (STILL!) /  by Helen Grace

WAGGA WAGGA ART GALLERY, NEW MEDIA PROJECT LAB,

June 3rd - July 17th, 2022

Curator, Julie Ewington

This project focusses on a group of archival photographs taken in 1980 and recently rediscovered. In the more than 40 years since the images were made, time itself has developed the pictures and now they seem current again.

In 1976 Violet and Bruce Roberts were convicted of the murder of Eric Roberts, Violet’s husband and Bruce’s father, at Pacific Palms near Taree in regional New South Wales. By 1980 the public outcry against the injustice of their imprisonment was spearheaded by a courageous Sydney activist group Women Behind Bars. Violet and Bruce’s release from jail on 15 October 1980 turned on the recognition of the defence of provocation in cases of murder where there had been long-term domestic violence and it led to changes in the New South Wales Crimes Act.

I photographed many of the public events staged by Women Behind Bars between May and October 1980 drawing attention to the Roberts case. The campaign included vigils, marching through the streets of Sydney carrying a continuous scroll with thousands of signatures petitioning Parliament for their release and a presence in Macquarie Street outside Parliament House. Several times, arrests were made of the protesters - an opportunity for the women to meet with women prisoners in gaol.

See: Ashleigh Adams, Art Monthly, July 14th, 2022