A royal fling at the Museum
The National Museum is holding a fundraising event of royal significance on Thursday afternoon - an exclusive national preview of the new film celebrating the 60-year anniversary of the 1954 Royal Tour of Australia, When The Queen Came To Town. There’ll be a Q&A with the film's director Maurice Murphy, and producers Bettina Dalton and Harriet Pike, followed by a 1950s-style afternoon tea and raffle. All money raised from the screening will go towards conservation work on the museum’s 1948 Daimler landaulette that was used by the Queen during the 1954 tour. The museum has now raised $41,078.80 and aims to reach its $60,000 target by the end of June to complete the first phase of the project. When The Queen Came To Town is screening at 2pm, Thursday, June 12 in the Visions Theatre. Tickets $25, bookings at nma.gov.au/queenfilm. We have two double passes to the event to giveaway – just email arts.editor@canberratimes.com.au and tell us what it is you love about Queen Elizabeth II.
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And for more Queenie stuff …
Canberra chamber ensemble are presenting an all-English program in celebration of the Queen's Birthday long weekend, performing works by Charles Avison, Handel and Elgar, tomorrow at All Saints’ Anglican Church in Ainslie at 3pm. Tickets available at the door: $15/10/free for under 16s.
Contrasts at Bungendore
An interesting pair of artists are showing work at Bungendore Fine Art. “Helen Hewitt’s stylistic drawings (using a mechanical pen through a magnifying lamp), often with a story attached and a dash of fantasy added to the mix, contrast with the free application of colour, mostly on canvas, by Janette McGuffog.” Contrasts, by Helen Hewitt and Janette McGuffog, is showing at Bungendore Fine Art, 42b Ellendon Street, Bungendore, throughout June.
Paul McDermott for Canberra art!
Paul McDermott – need I even explain who he is? – has just been appointed Patron of the Arts 2014 for Capital Arts Patron Organisation (CAPO), the volunteer non-profit that supports the region’s artists through grants, fellowships and awards. The former Canberra boy is taking the reins from Michael Bryce (husband of former GG Quentin Bryce). From the man himself: “It’s wonderful to foster the arts, it needs to be fostered. CAPO started when I was a young man in Canberra. I know many recipients of their award. Working in the arts can be tricky, quite a hard road, no matter what age you are working in it. A lot of things have to go right for your work to work and be seen. What CAPO has done over the years, and will do in the future is quite extraordinary and we need it across all forms of the arts.” For more information about CAPO, visit capo.org.au.
Job vacancy at M16 Artspace
M16 Artspace, the arts hub of the Inner South, is looking to fill the newly-created position of executive director, after the departure of general manager Ren Pryor, who has resigned after nearly four years in the role. “Applications are invited from talented individuals experienced in arts management who relish working in a dynamic arts environment. The role is 35 hours per week and will initially be offered as a 12-month contract with the option to renew subject to performance.” In the meantime, there are three very different exhibitions currently showing in the galleries. One is a display of designs from the concept film The Rover Tiger & the Wood Ox, directed by Kate Llewellyn, and includes set design and scenery pieces, props, puppets and photography. In Internal – External, Andrew Grenfell has dark sculpture paintings that taken together are “a sinful harmony of manipulated form and aesthetic”. And in Hues and Harmonies, Jeni Hawes is showing encaustic works on panel and digital prints. All are showing at M16 Artspace, 21 Blaxland Crescent, Griffith, until June 15.
Polish Chopin rising starfriendsofchopin.org.au International Chopin Piano Competition, September 15-21 ANU School of Music.
Everything and nothing in Tuggeranong
Local artist Warwick Heywood has a show at Tuggeranong Arts Centre this month, of paintings each exploring diverse subjects and themes. “I like to create unique knots of meaning through form and content - a meaning which intentionally teeters between the grand, the prosaic and the absurd. For example, my work Tidbinbilla Deep Space Tracking Station centres on society’s ongoing quest for knowledge,” he says. Everything and Nothing, by Warwick Heywood, is showing at Tuggeranong Arts Centre, 137 Reed Street, Greenway, until June 27.
When it was ‘64
It is a significant anniversary this week – 50 years since the Beatles shook things up Down Under, and Shortis & Simpson are marking the date the best way they know how – with a new show! With behind-the-scenes Beatlemania stories and a look at the effect the tour had on a music chart filled with surf tunes, the year 1964 will be aptly evoked, culminating with the pair performing the full set-list from the Beatles show, with the help of the brilliant Fab Band. When it was ’64, by Shortis & Simpson, is on Friday June 13 at the Canberra Southern Cross Club, Woden. Dinner and show $64, 6.30pm. Show only $29, 8.30pm. Bookings 6283 7288.
Shallow Space
Brisbane artist Simon Degroot has a new exhibition at ANCA Gallery in Dickson, exploring space and construction in abstract painting. The show examines our perception of how a painting is constructed. “Some artists use collage as a starting point for a painting, but Degroot does the exact opposite,” says the gallery. “His bold and dynamic paintings explore shallow perspective, with transparent layers of vivid colour and fragmented shapes. From these, he produces - or rather reproduces - collages, which hang on the gallery wall opposite to his paintings.” Intriguing … Shallow Space, by Simon Degroot, is showing at ANCA Gallery, 1 Rosevear Place, Dickson, until June 22.
Dreams and illusions
Three exhibitions are running at PhotoAccess this month. Danny Wild’s Thought Cues is an interactive installation that “uses microcomputers to control audio, video, found and constructed objects in a comment on the dissociation of urban life”. In Circus Dreams, Christine Rufflet inhabits the “space between imagination and reality in a journey for the senses”, with photographs from a real circus in France and from Le Musée du Cirque et de l’Illusion. And young artist Sally-Forth Heaney-Garzoli has Shifted: scapes and figures, in which she “explores the way landscapes and figures are subtly transformed or shifted, by their relationship to one another. The landscapes she chooses occupy a space somewhere between wild and tamed”. The exhibitions are running at PhotoAccess in the Manuka Arts Centre, cnr Manuka Circle and NSW Crescent in Griffith, until June 29.
