Press Release: Rosemary's Garden - under the apricot tree

Eva Breuer Art Dealer is pleased to announce the opening of an exhibition of new paintings by Rosemary Valadon, Rosemary’s Garden - under the apricot tree. Following a sell-out show in 2009 of beautiful and delicate teacups, Valadon’s new paintings invite the viewer into her garden, which she describes as an "embracing environment for sharing with friends and family." Having gone through major health issues this year, Valadon has found "nourishment and solace in the things around [her]: the quiet moments in the garden, the fading light of the sunset, the tea ceremony, the call of the birds." Valadon established her garden in 2005 when she made Hill End her home. Boasting the "best apricots in town," under the apricot tree is a place for "meditative moments."

As part of the AGNSW prestigious Hill End Artists-in-Residence Program, Valadon spent a short time in a cottage once occupied by the artists Jean Bellette and Paul Haefliger. She continues the artistic legacy of Hill End which was established in the late forties by well-known artists including Donald Friend, David Strachan, Margaret Olley and Russell Drysdale.

Rosemary Valadon’s works are held in numerous public and corporate collections around the country including the National Portrait Gallery, Macquarie University, Muswellbrook Art Prize Collection and BHP Billiton. She has been a finalist in the Archibald Prize, Sulman Prize and Mosman Art Prize multiple times and has won the Portia Geach Memorial Award and Blake Religious Art Prize.

Press Release: Pam Sackville - New Work 2010

Eva Breuer Art Dealer is pleased to announce the opening of Pam Sackville’s exhibition, a collection of vibrant contemporary watercolours featuring colourful flowers such as Camelias, Roses, Hydrangeas and Poppies as well as still lifes of native plants and delicate studies of fruit and porcelain dishes.

In these beautiful large-scale watercolours Sackville captures the softness and fragility of flowers. She finds watercolour the perfect medium to express their beauty allowing her to depict a translucency, delicacy and explosion of colour.

The diaphanous petals in Poppies III demonstrate Sackville’s mastery of shading and tonality – pink, red, yellow, and orange pigments glow brilliantly against the muted sea-coloured wash in the background. Many of her subjects are romanticised, in Kale, the borecole appears to be a voluminous rose rather than a bulky cabbage with a fine purple outline fringing the edges of the green and yellow leaves.

Sackville has held solo exhibitions in Sydney and Melbourne since 1984 and her work is held in numerous private collections. Her works have been published in the Australian Arts Diary and illustrated in gardening books and manuscripts such as Australian Garden Guide and the ‘Flowers’ column in the Weekend Australian magazine.

Exhibition:
Pam Sackville: New Paintings 2010

Eva Breuer Art Dealer
83 Moncur Street Woollahra

Opening:
Saturday 24 April 2010
Drinks with the artist 3-5pm

Press Release: Wayne Eager - New Work 2010

Wayne Eager (b. 1957)
Exhibition opening Saturday 6 March 2010, 3-5 pm

Wayne Eager’s paintings are a careful consideration of the nuanced and changing Australian desert landscape. Whether a painting’s title denotes a specific place, such as Backyard View; one of the five senses, like Fragrance; or a time of day, being Early Morning, Eager’s work is characterised by an earthy awareness of his relationship to the environment. Collapsed picture planes pulse with the layered depth of interlocking primordial shapes evocative of stones, fossils, and foliage. A frenetic entangling of brush strokes might illustrate the dimensions of a man-made structure while an even spacing of varied squares might convey hectares of richly hued land or the view of a lone hill from the window of his studio. Irrespective of these differing subjects, Eager infuses all of his paintings with gravity and an unabashed appreciation for vibrant color and form that is reminiscent of twentieth century Western art movements such as Abstract Expressionism.

Beginning his art career as a founding member of the Melbourne-based art collective Roar Studios in the 1980's, Eager has continued to involve himself with the support of grassroots Australian art communities. The aim of Roar was to create a dynamic and collaborative environment in which young artists could paint freely without concern for the stifling constraints of the commercial art world. The ideologies adopted by Roar continue to motivate Eager’s artistic practice and are reflected in his preference for living in the desert bush far from Australia’s urban art centres. In the early 1990's he relocated with his wife, Marina, Strocchi ,to Haasts Bluff, Northern Territory to aid in the establishment of the Ikuntji Women's Centre. What was intended to be a few months stay became a five-year stint for Eager as well as the mark of a new dimension in his artwork. Eager subsequently became Field Officer for the Papunya Tula Artists, commuting regularly between Kintore and Kiwirrkkurra. Eager is currently affiliated with Ananguku Arts in APY Lands, South Australia, assisting several regional art centres. Additionally, he and Marina have curated an exhibition including painters from APY Lands and the Western Desert that will be on view at the Adelaide Museum in March of this year.

Eager has maintained a solitary approach to painting yet continues his involvement with neighbouring indigenous art centres. While he acknowledges a continued interest in landscape painting, he points out an evolutionary branch from his earlier works such as Untitled Yellow, 1992, in which there is a clear bifurcation between land and sky. Eager’s recent work is not overtly marked by this separation of the elements, but is rather more a testament to the integration of them in order to represent the concept of wholeness—an inextricable, multi-layered portrait of the environment.

Press Release: Brenda Humble

Brenda Humble's December exhibition includes paintings and sculpture from 1988 to the present. Humble's body of jewel-like still life's, abstracted in varying degrees are painterly, boldly colourful and beautifully simple. Her continuing motif; the silhouette of vase and flowers against an open window, is distinct and distilled to essential elements and colour blocks. Her palette is high keyed like Mattisse and in some of the still lives, the flatness and bold outline of shapes is somewhat reminiscent of Picasso.

Her sculptures share a similar simplification of form; Humble pares back the image to its most elemental lines, creating crisp linea images of quirky teachers, laughing horses, squinting love hearts and little Alice figures.

Humble won the 1982 Portia Geach Prize for her portrait of Virginia Hall, the American world war II spy. In August this year her work was honoured with a retrospective which explored her painting of the 1970's and 80's. Brenda Humble: Art as Activism coincided with History Week 2009 and the Kings Cross Library 50th Anniversary. The exhibition explored Brenda's involvement in the activism in the Kings Cross area during that period, her work on the Green Bans and the disappearance of Juanita Nielsen.

Having graduated from the national art school in 1960 Brenda Humble has been a major part of the Sydney art world for more than 50 years. She has had over 16 solo exhibitions in Sydney and was a finalist in the 1974 Wynne Prize, the 1982 Waverley Art Prize and the 1981 Mornington peninsula Drawing prize amongst others.

Brenda Humble is represented in the Artbank Collection, Parliament House, Canberra the Reserve Bank of Australia, University of NSW, the IBM Collection, Sydney, Mackay City Library, Queensland as well as private and corporate collections in Australia, Canada, Japan, UK and USA.

Press Release: Doreen Gadsby

Doreen Gadsby (b.1926) Travels 2009
Opening Wednesday 11 November 2009,6-8PM
To be opened by Professor Peter Pinson

Eva Breuer Art Dealer is pleased to announce the opening of Doreen Gadsby's Travels 2009.

Ms Gadsby has exhibited extensively both within Australia and internationally. After the passing of her late husband John Coburn in 2006 Ms Gadsby has dedicated herself to painting fulltime.

This recent body of work reflects Ms Gadsby's love of international travel, her passion for music and her love of nature. A number of paintings were developed from sketches drawn en plein-air recently in the south of France, Tuscany and from memories of her time living in Canada. Others celebrate Ms. Gadsby's love of the stunning views of Sydney Harbour from her North Shore studio such as Neon Lights 2009. Others are constructed from childhood memories and later memories of the loss of love. All have a vibrance and impressionist zeal which show a great love of the masters of 19th century painting and a joie de vivre which continues to burn brightly.

Ms Gadsby is represented in the Commonwealth Government Collection, ArtBank and private collections in the USA, Canada, Indonesia. She has been the recipient of numerous coveted awards including the 1961 Wentworth Art Prize, the 1962 WD&HO Wills Art Prize and was a finalist in the Wynne Prize in 1960, 1961, 1962 and 1964.

Press Release: Madeleine Winch

Madeleine Winch (b.1950)
Scenes from Life
Opening Saturday 24 October 2009,6-8PM
To be opened by Her Excellency Professor Marie Beshir AC CVO
Governor of New South Wales

Eva Breuer Art Dealer is pleased to announce the opening of Madeleine Winch’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, Scenes from Life 2009, on Saturday 24 October. The exhibition will be officially opened by Her Excellency Professor Marie Bashir, Governor of New South Wales.

Observing the unspoken emotions of everyday life remains the essence of Madeleine Winch's work. The figures in her current paintings, such as Thoughts Afar, Inner World and Soliloquy 2009 are portrayed in a more probing light, and are self questioning, contemplating new chapters in life. The "balancing act" has changed, from one of juggling the responsibilities of career, family, and motherhood, to the dilemmas of intimacy and solitude. The domestic interiors echo the inner world providing a sanctuary; a place to reflect on love and loss; to reassess and embrace the future.

Madeleine Winch has an extensive exhibition history both within Australia and internationally, in countries such as France, New Zealand and the United States of America. Madeleine Winch is represented in the following New South Wales collections: Wagga Wagga Regional Gallery, Orange Regional Gallery, New England Regional Gallery, Australia Post and Macquarie University, Sydney.

Press Release: Rosemary Valadon

Rosemary Valadon (b.1947)
Euphoria; The Tea Party
Opening Saturday 17 October 2009, 3-5PM

Eva Breuer Art Dealer is pleased to announce the opening of exhibition of new paintings by Rosemary Valadon, Euphoria; The Tea Party. The lush works depict richly painted floral teacups, and centre around the pleasures, comfort and ceremony of drinking tea.

Valadon has taken her inspiration for these works from a source most would consider disheartening rather than uplifting – the recent economic downturn. The half full/half empty cups invite the viewer to discover if they view the world in an optimistic or pessimistic way, while in some of the works such as Gypsy Rose the cups themselves seem to jut out of the picture plane, suggesting that one could jump into them and drown their sorrows. The richness of the exteriors of cups of Euphoria, American Beauty and Arcadia, amongst others, provide an antidote to recessional thinking, a quiet moment of lush beauty and excess. And, as the economy picks up, and spring arrives, the lone piece of lemon (which sometimes appears in the cup) is being joined by various spring blossoms – pear, apple, and nectarine.

Valadon, herself an indulgent tea drinker, has included teacups in her paintings for years and has always loved beautiful china. After commencing this series Valadon has been loaned and given favourite cups from many of her friends and family.

Rosemary Valadon’s works are held in numerous public and corporate collections around the country including that of the National Portrait Gallery, Macquarie University, Muswellbrook Art Prize Collection and BHP Billiton. She has been a finalist in the Archibald Prize, Sulman Prize and Mosman Art Prize multiple times, and has won the Portia Geach Memorial Award and Blake Religious Art Prize.

Press Release: Sam Wade

Samuel Wade (b.1979)
New Paintings
Opening Saturday 17 October 2009, 3-5PM

Following three successful exhibitions and his award of the Brett Whiteley Scholarship in 2006, Eva Breuer Art Dealer is pleased to announce the opening of Sam Wade's New Paintings 2009. This suite of recent paintings marks a return for the artist to the urban environment, the source of inspiration behind the artist’s first and second solo shows with Eva Breuer Art Dealer.

Wade explains his interest in the urban environment this way: “It interests me that the vast majority of Australians live in urban areas, yet historically we seem to have relatively few figurative painters of note who regularly reflect on this common experience.”

The works seek to recreate fleeting moments on station platforms or city parks. Wade uses the techniques learnt in his traditional art training to create these images, constructing a dialogue between commonplace existence and artistry. The iconic figures of mother and child or a figure exuding pre-Raphaelite beauty may appear on a station platform, for instance. Special care in the portrayal of atmosphere and time of day acknowledges the legacy of the impressionists, while the introspective possibilities offered by the tradition of portraiture are also explored.

Samuel Wade was the recipient of the Le Gay Brereton Drawing Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2001, the Alice Bale Traveling Scholarship in 2002, the Brett Whiteley Traveling Art Award in 2006 and was a finalist in the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize and Mosman Art Prize in 2009. Wade has also taught at the Julian Ashton Art School since 1998 where he was the youngest ever teacher.

Press Release: Judy Cassab & John Seed

Judy Cassab (b.1920) & John Seed (b.1945)
The Two of Us
To be opened by the Hon. Justice Michael Kirby AC CMG
On Wednesday 30 September 2009, 6-8PM

Eva Breuer Art Dealer is proud to announce the opening of The Two of Us, the first exhibition to pair Judy Cassab with her son, John Seed. Within a few short years of arriving in post-war Sydney with her family in 1951, Judy Cassab became Australia's most celebrated portrait painter winning numerous prizes including the Archibald and the Australian Women’s Weekly Portrait Prize. John, a sculptor has carried on her great artistic legacy with exhibitions at the Bonython and Holdsworth galleries in the 1960s and 1970s as well as at the Centre Prize Gallery in London, at that time exhibiting under the name John Kampfner.

Judy has always been fascinated by personal narratives – from her own teeming journals made public in Judy Cassab Diaries (1995) to the portraits she sows with the stories of her sitters. In Lou Klepac’s monograph on Judy from 1998, she explains her artistic process;

'I am passionately interested in people’s childhood, why they choose the path they are on…In our age of the short attention span, the only other place where one could talk about these things is the psychiatrist’s couch.’

It is fitting then that The Two of Us will explore one of Judy’s most intimate relationships, that with her son. Today, at 89 years of age, Judy spends many of her days at John’s studio, sketching him at work with his welding tools and steel sculptures. John laments that he is not a more figurative artist as he cannot return the favour and sculpt his famed mother. Yet they share many wonderful likenesses in their work – from the exotic present in Cassab’s Sphinx with Girl 2008 and Seed’s Hindu Yantras to the abstracted Australian landscape which both mother and son explore with a shared fervour.

The Two of Us will be opened by the Hon. Justice Michael Kirby AC CMG on Wednesday 30 September 2009. The exhibition will continue until Tuesday 13 October and will include many of Judy’s iconic paintings from 1955 until 2008, including Mother Holding Child 1995, a depiction of the unique and cherished relationship between mother and son.

Press Release: Tony Irving

Opening Saturday September 12, drinks with the artist 3-5PM

Eva Breuer Art Dealer is pleased to announce the opening of Tony Irving’s, Other places, other views Saturday 12 September.

Tony Irving is one of Australia’s leading contemporary realist painters whose devotion to realist painting extends across four decades. Irving is represented in the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Lady Potter Collection as well as numerous other public collections throughout Australia. He has held exhibitions in the UK, Indonesia and Singapore and in 1966 was awarded the coveted McCaughey Prize.

Other places, other views draws on the local architecture of Irving’s native Victoria, his extensive European travels and a love of the Old Masters. The large scale of works such as the monumental, Motel, forces the viewer to consider bland 1960’s architecture in a new context along side similarly large paintings of European side streets. Siesta in Constantina is precisely executed, as are all the paintings; every detail is paid acute attention from the faded stripes of a pedestrian crossing to the cast iron arabesques of street lamp brackets. Shadows in Time is based on a street in Castlemaine Victoria but brings to mind the vast Venice panoramas of Canaletto. Irving softens the seriousness of the size and detailed execution of these paintings with his characteristic humor – placing a squashed Mcdonalds cup on the tarmac in Shadows in Time, a lone dog pacing the street during siesta in Bar Gregorio or a cat at the window of a down and out Motel in Motel.

Tony Irving’s Other places, other views is on view from Thursday 10 September until Wednesday 23 September.

Press Release: Victor Rubin - The Small Masonite Paintings from Raine Street, Bondi Junction 1974-76

Opening Saturday August 22, drinks with the artist 3-5PM

Victor Rubin’s August show will be an important historical showing of some 44 1970’s paintings on masonite which have never been exhibited. Painted when Rubin was in his early to late 20’s the boards have been archived in Victor’s studio since they were painted. The period covers 1974-1976 with the majority of paintings from 1974-75 when he was living in Raine Street Bondi Junction in Sydney. This period of his work follows on from his involvement with the famous Yellow House in Macleay Street, Potts Point where he exhibited in 1971 at which point the Yellow House attracted the most cutting edge contemporary artists of the time including Brett Whiteley and others. The period is also marked by a strong influence from John Olsen who was Rubin’s teacher at the Bakery Art School and who remains a close friend.

This exhibition coincides with Rubin’s recent success as a finalist in the Sulman Prize this year for his painting of Patrick White and Monoly Lascaris, White and Manoly with Nellie. Patrick White and Manoly Lascaris were major collectors of Rubin’s work. They donated Victor Rubin works from their collection to the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1991.

Victor Rubin is represented in all major public collections in Australia including the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Queensland Art Gallery. His work has been collected by some of the most important private and corporate collections of Australian art including the Patrick White collection and the ICI collection.

Press Release: Zhong Chen - Beijing Girl

Opening Wednesday 5 August 2009, drinks with the artist 6-8 PM.

Eva Breuer Art Dealer is pleased to announce the opening of Zhong Chen’s Beijing Girl 2009. The twenty-six paintings in this show will continue Chen’s internationally sought after series of portrait and landscape paintings, which are now permanent fixtures in public gallery prizes such as the Archibald. Throughout his career Chen, having moved to Australia from China in 1989, at age twenty, has explored his transcultural identity through a melding of Eastern and Western influences such as in the monumental Huang Sisters (2009), finalist in the 2009 Doug Moran National Portrait Prize.

Both change and continuity are evident in this new work – while Chen’s approach has evolved to bold, gestural canvases, beyond the pixel paintings that brought him his earliest recognition, he has continued to work in the portrait and landscape genres and to explore historical and contemporary aspects of Chinese culture.

The Beijing Girl series considers the depiction of the female image in both contemporary and historical Chinese culture. The Girls series are often city or region specific, (the previous paintings were based on Guangzhou girls). In this show the new Beijing muse will be hung side by side with Zhong’s other major subject – the Australian landscape – many of which have been Wynn Prize finalists, and acquired by Macquarie Bank and other important collections.

Chen has been the recipient of numerous coveted awards including the 2009 Salon des Refusés People’s Choice Award, he was a finalist in the 2008 Sulman Prize, the 2007 and 2008 Archibald Prize and the Wynne Prize in 2006, 2007 and 2008. Chen was also awarded the Samstag Scholarship in 1998, allowing him to complete a Master of Fine Arts at the Chelsea College of Arts in London, two Australia Council grants (2001, 2006) and the SBS Federation Art Award. His works are held in numerous collections including the Art Gallery of South Australia, BHP and Macquarie University. He has exhibited internationally in New York, China, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong, including at the Hong Kong, Singapore and New York Asian Art Fairs.

Press Release: Don Rankin - Dead Calm

Opening Saturday 11 July 2009, drinks with the artist 3-5 PM.

Don Rankin brings a keen awareness of the historical achievements in painting to his work. He is intent on reuniting with tradition while taking modernism into account. As with his 2007 exhibition at Eva Breuer Art Dealer, this new series of paintings focuses on the genre of still-life but there is a new emphasis on flower paintings.

The flower paintings use devices borrowed from the history of still-life painting, particularly the theme of the transience of life. However, Rankin is more subtle – there are no skulls or clocks in his work. Instead, the flowers are often depicted as they near decay, retaining the essence of their former beauty even as they droop and contract, providing satisfaction and hope.

Consider “Iris (late afternoon)” for example: the fading rays of light through a Venetian blind illuminate a single iris whose petals are just beginning to wrinkle. The painting becomes a metaphor for the mortality of all living things, but in its faded beauty it presents as a positive, forward-looking image.

Other paintings in the exhibition depict fruit and objects often viewed from above resulting in a shallow pictorial space. It’s a bit like Mondrian meets Morandi.

Dead Calm is accompanied by a 16 page catalogue with 24 illustrations. The exhibition can be viewed from Wednesday 8 July until 21 July with an opening on Saturday 11 July from 3 - 5 pm.

(top left) Poppies (Baroque) #5, 2008, oil on canvas, 90 x 120cm
(top right) Still life with Persimmon, 2008, oil on canvas, 55 x 56cm
(bottom left) Oriental bowl with plums #2, 2008, oil on canvas, 45 x 60cm
(bottom right) Poppies (line-up), 2009, oil on canvas, 85 x 120cm

The composition is balanced and a common theme found throughout the collection is the exploration of texture. Wrinkled tablecloths to crinkled plastic bags produce stunning examples of his mastery of tone and colour.

Click here to view the podcast or download it on iTunes.

Press Release: Adriane Strampp - Mimesis

Adriane Strampp (born USA, education UK) is a Melbourne based artist presently completing a MFA by Research at Monash University. Her current body of work explores earlier concerns, pruned down to core elements both in subject and colour, examining the subtleties and nuances of memory and experience through poetic imagery and personal mythology. It is as much about what is left out as what is said. Current influences range from Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space to the writings and photography of Patti Smith.

A romantic and figurative painter working through series over long periods, Strampp tends to focus on a central image as a vehicle only for the underlying message. It is not about the subject, but rather that which it conveys. The figure is often felt, but remains in absentia. In early work (mid to late 1980’s) the subject was the horse, sometimes heroic, sometimes damaged, but always passionate. This work was largely influenced by both the new German Neo-Expressionists of the time, and by English artist John Walker, who was highly influential during his residency in Melbourne art schools at that time. From the late 1980’s the horse was slowly replaced by the dress, often set in similar backgrounds and landscapes, and this successful series continued until the late 1990’s. After a studio residency in Italy in 1998, and the final series of Renaissance inspired dress paintings, Strampp began to deconstruct earlier work, often reworking a smaller detail into a larger work in its own right, such as a textile detail from the dress, or a background detail into a major landscape.

Today Strampp’s new work takes another look at the horse and the landscape, in a quieter and more contemplative manner, together with the use of a limited palette. Her work continues to explore the intangible and evocative, that communicates before it is understood, and the importance of and relationship between scale, surface and the poetic image through a method of layering and reduction that reflects the experience of connection, through history on either a personal or broader level. Subject and shadow are indeterminate, and the viewer is drawn into the work to decide between what is ‘real’ and what is not. More importantly, it is hoped that the viewer will experience a connection of experience through the work.This new body of work will be exhibited later in the year as part of her Master’s degree submission.

Click here to view the exhibtion.

Images (left): Stags, 2009, oil on linen, 101.5 x 101.5 cm

(right): Winter, 2009, oil on linen, 152 x 152 cm

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Press Release: Carl Plate - Paintings and Collage from the 1970's

Eva Breuer Art Dealer is very proud to present Carl Plate collages and painting from the 1970's. This show is the first commercial showing of these late collages of Carl Plate. Although Plate worked prolifically in the medium of collage for over thirty years he never showed these works publicly, and for several decades after his death in 1977 they remained hidden from view. It was only by happy circumstance that the collages were rediscovered recently by his family.

Plate's collages can be read as an encapsulation of time spent. He crafted many of his collages whilst aboard ships travelling between countries (Plate preferred to travel to and from Australia by sea rather than by air.) Works like Dance with Boat (1975) perfectly exemplify the intense process of repetitious cutting and pasting which would have taken place in the confined cabins of these long distance vessels.

These collages come directly to the gallery from the estate of Carl Plate and have been recently exhibited at the Hazelhurst Regional Gallery as part of the first retrospective of Plate's collages.


The collages, fascinating works in their own right, are also an interesting window into Plate's creative process. The clear interplay between the collages and the other areas of Plate's creative practice is particularly self evident in paintings such as Homage to Dr C (1975) in which Plate composes the image to look like one of his 'strip collages.'

The show will be on view at Eva Breuer Art Dealer until the 22nd of June.

Plate's exhibition of collages will be on display at Eva Breuer Art Dealer from the 10th of June alongside a selection of his paintings. To view the exhibition click here.



(top) Untitled (1971), collage on magazine paper, 32.4 x 22 cm, no. 10593

(center) Dance with Boat (1975), magazine paper collage on card, 21.3 x 32.3 cm, no. 10565
(bottom) Homage to Dr. C (1975), PVA on vinyl bonded cotton, 51 x 81 cm, no. 10588


Click to view exhibition podcast or download it on iTunes.