Populate or Perish!
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You can propagate your immigration policy all you like, Australia of the 1940s-70s, but sooner or later, an artist like Anja Loughhead will fashion an exhibition designed to uncover the sinister undercurrent in Australia's migration history. Loughhead's latest show is the culmination of a year-long residency with CCAS spent trawling through public archives and creating a visual survey of the Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre, which ran in Albury-Wodonga from 1947-1970.
"With a dry sense of humour, Loughhead's body of work is a never-ending sneer at the way in which Australia continues to record and transmit its history through publication," says the gallery.
Populate or Perish! by Anja Loughhead is showing at Canberra Contemporary Art Space, 19 Furneaux Street, Manuka, until March 15.
The Past, The Now and The Future
Of Thai jewellery, that is. A new show at the Canberra Grammar School Gallery features work by Puan Jiewthong, a traditional Khmer jeweller from Khwao Sinarin who has amassed his skills and knowledge through the practice of his ancestors – a practice that is at risk of dying out. The show also features the work of two contemporary jewellers, Siri Muenprasan from Khwao Sinarin, and Taweesak Molsawat, from Silapkorn University in Bangkok, who has responded to traditional jewellery through an academic approach.
The Past, the Now and the Future of Thai Jewellery from Khwao Sinarin opens at the Canberra Grammar School Gallery, 40 Monaro Crescent, Red Hill, on March 12 and runs until March 25.
Scariest of scary movies
Internationally-acclaimed Australian movie The Babadook is basically a story about a haunted kid's picture book, and it will scare the bejesus out of even the most hardened horror-fest viewers. The National Film and Sound Archive is presenting a special screening in its evocative Arc Cinema on Friday night, because it's the 13th, see?
The Babadook screens at 7pm at Arc Cinema, the National Film and Sound Archive on Friday March 13. Tickets $10.
Glassy talks on glassy things
There are two Maori weavers currently in residence at the Canberra Glassworks as part of its Honouring Cultures project bringing Indigenous glass artists together. Ruth Port and Mandy Sunlight will be giving a free talk about their work today, Saturday March 7, at 11am. And, later on the same day, guest curator Ivana Jirasek will be giving a floor talk on the current exhibition Diplomacy: translations in glass, along with some of the artists represented in the show, at 2pm.
Both talks are free. Phone 6260 7005 or visit canberraglassworks.com for more information.
Urban suburban
What's more suburban than urban Canberra? A fascinating new show opens at Canberra Museum and Gallery this weekend, comprising works from the gallery's art collection exploring urban and suburban Canberra. From black-and-white city photographs to depictions by contemporary artists, with a range of media including printmaking, painting and sculpture, the show "reveals the rituals and experiences that enrich life in Canberra, and discovers thematic links between the diverse works in the collection".
Urban Suburban opens today, Saturday March 7, at Canberra Museum and Gallery, Civic Square, and runs until June 21.
Hand Grenades Like Cartier Clips
I mean honestly, is that not the best title of a talk ever? Never mind that it's about Vogue model and war correspondent Lee Miller. Naming aside, Antony Penrose's talk this week about his amazing mother promises to be fascinating. "Appearing on the cover of Vogue magazine as a 19-year-old, the stunning Lee Miller became a model for fashion photographers in her home city of New York. Moving to Paris she collaborated with Surrealist photographer Man Ray and associated with the likes of surrealism artists Picasso, Eluard, Cocteau & Roland Penrose. Lee Miller's ensuing career as a photo journalist led her to be accredited as a war correspondent in the US Army in WW2, after which she took her distinctive style back home to New York to become a Vogue photographer."
Antony Penrose, director of the Lee Miller Archives and The Penrose Collection in the East Sussex farmhouse his family occupied in Chiddingly, will be presenting this lecture on Thursday March 12, 2pm at the Comfort Inn Airport International, 57 Yass Road, Queanbeyan. Entry for non-members: $25. Inquiries to Lucy Costas on 6299 1105 or lucyjvc@gmail.com.
Art Not Apart
It's only a week away, believe it or not. The intriguing and enticing Art Not Apart festival is happening next Saturday at NewActon, Westside, Acton Beach and Lake Burley Griffin, with over 200 artists presenting performances, exhibitions, installations, "strange interventions", street food and more, and it's all free.
Art Not Apart is on Saturday March 14 from 1pm-7pm. For the full program, check out artnotapart.com.
Tuggeranong Arts Centre turns 25
The TAC has a photographer, a textile artist, an abstract painter and three poets in da house this month to mark its quarter-century milestone. Brother-sister duo Adele Rae Cameron and Craig Cameron present Used, Drawn and Dyed, a show of contemporary paintings, textiles and sculpture, both using found objects and organic materials sourced close to home. Meanwhile, Margaret Kalms and a group of School of Music poets present Iconic Moon, "an opportunity to see the moon at her best and Canberra as it's never been seen before. Kalms will also launch the Iconic Moon book, a collaboration of poetry and photography, with images from her show paired with poems.
Both exhibitions are showing at Tuggeranong Arts Centre, 137 Reed Street, until March 28.