Dandenong Ranges Open Studios Exhibition 
Tension

This exhibition is a unique opportunity to see and experience work from each of the artists in one gallery, making Burrinja a great place to start your studio tour.

Charitable Partnership
Burrinja and the Open Studios artists are donating 20% of all exhibition sales to the DRERS, a not-for-profit charitable organisation that assists people in the Dandenong Ranges facing difficulties, hardship and crisis.

Photos from the opening on Friday 5 April here.

For more information visit openstudios.org.au

Lajamanu: Early Paintings

This exhibition of rarely seen paintings by Warlpiri men and women takes the visitor back to the beginnings of the acrylic movement in Central Australia.

After initial resistance painting was taken up in Lajamanu with great enthusiasm and the on-going relationship with country and Dreamings presented as a sign of cultural strength. Drawn from private collections from across Australia.

Free Tours Thursdays and Saturdays @ 11am

45 minutes in duration, Bookings recommended via 9754 8723

Arlpwe: Spinifex Country

A group of artists from Arlpwe Artists in Ali Curung, north of Tennant Creek, N.T., is coming to Melbourne to present paintings, demonstrate artefacts and talk about their country: Arlpwe, the spinifex country.

Article on the visit by the group of artists avaliable here

VCE Creative Showcase

The VCE Creative Showcase was established to exhibit and celebrate outstanding work from top graduating visual art students across the Yarra Ranges Shire. The 2013 exhibition presents work by art students from eight local schools. It promises a challenging and rewarding visual art experience and a unique opportunity to see the world interpreted by young emerging artists.

Janet Flinn: Birds of the Yarra Ranges

An exhibition of original paintings of native birds.

www.janetflinn.com

Fashion meets Fiction: The Darnell Collection

Fashion meets Fiction is an exciting exhibition that brings together our love of popular fiction and its many famous colourful characters with high-end fashion.

In partnership with Eastern Regional Libraries and celebrating the National Year of Reading, this exhibition travels through time and the popular culture and fiction of the periods, drawing together the threads of character, period, fashion and finery.

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Andrew Chapman: Nearly A Retrospective

This exhibition features documentary work, spanning over 40 years, by Victorian photographer Andrew Chapman. Crossing a wide range of subjects and periods the exhibition offers a fascinating insight into Australian social and political life through the lens of one of Australia’s most-prominent documentary photographers.

A long time Dandenong Ranges resident, Andrew worked as a newspaper and freelance photographer for over 20 years on numerous assignments for Time, Business Review Weekly and The Bulletin. With more than a dozen Time covers to his credit, he has covered subjects as diverse as heroin dealers, presidents and celebrities.

Jus' Drawn : proppaNOW Collective

Jus’ Drawn is a touring exhibition of works on paper by eight of Australia’s most important urban Indigenous artists.

Known collectively as ‘Proppa NOW’ this Queensland-based group consists of urban Aboriginal artists who have already won individual acclaim, Richard Bell, Vernon Ah Kee, Gordon Hookey and Laurie Nilsen, as well as formidable emerging artists such as Jennifer Herd, Andrea Fisher, and Tony Albert. This group dispels the notion that indigenous art needs to be from a remote area to be ‘authentic’.

Memories - Contact with White People

Based on Patsy Lulpanda’s canvas painting with the same title comes an exhibition of artworks from the Burrinja Collection that explores the theme of contact with white colonisers from the Aboriginal perspective. Depictions of policemen, cattle, prison trees, massacre sites and nuclear test sites tell stories of dispossession, disempowerment and destruction, and yet their telling provides future hope.

The 60th Blake Prize

The Blake Prize was established 60 years ago as an incentive to raise the standard of contemporary religious art away from out-dated or imitative styles. This exhibition will feature 30-35 finalist artworks from the 60th Blake Prize, including the winning artworks.

The Blake Society, named after the visionary artist and poet, William Blake, implements and manages the annual prize and exhibition program for contemporary art and poetry exploring the themes of spirituality, religion and human justice.

Mary Tonkin: Home 2000-2010

Mary Tonkin paints and draws the lush forest near Kalorama in the Dandenong Ranges, where she was born and raised. Her work, colourfully exploring what it is to be present and pay attention in place, is produced through a plein-air process in the forest, and sings with vibrant colour and sensuous gestural paint. Mary Tonkin, born 1973, won the prestigious Dobell Drawing Prize in 2002. This exhibition will bring together a body of paintings produced since 2000.

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Stories of Song and Dance

Performance and the Burrinja Collection

Showcasing selected items from the Burrinja / Neil McLeod Gift Collection, this exhibition presents unique Malangan artefacts from New Ireland and New Britain in Papua New Guinea. These stunning objects were produced by master carvers Hosea Linge, Ben Sisia and Edward Sali and give an insight into local ceremonies and performances. On display are also rare Iniet stone carvings from the secret Tolai society on the Gazelle Peninsula and Aboriginal dance boards and paintings from the Kimberley by Jack Dale Mengenen and Rover Thomas Joolama.

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Stories of Ancestors

Western Arnhem Land works by the Nganjmirra family from the Burrinja Collection

This exhibition draws on works from the McLeod Gift Collection to explore and celebrate the unique artwork produced by Kunwinjku people in the Oenpelli community of the western Arnhem Land region.

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The Melbourne Reef Exhibition

A satellite of the worldwide Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef Project, created by Margaret and Christine Wertheim of the Institute for Figuring in Los Angeles.

This unique global community art project fused higher mathematics, crochet, environmental awareness and marine biology. Capturing the imagination of people all over the world, ‘Satellite Reefs’ have now being made on almost every continent. The Melbourne Reef is one such satellite reef.

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Bill Henson: Early Works from the MGA Collection

This exhibition provided audiences with the opportunity to view some of the most powerful and beautiful photographs made by one of Australia’s best-known contemporary photographers. It featured twenty-nine exquisitely printed examples from many of Henson’s major series from the 1970s through to the early 1990s, all drawn from the Monash Gallery of Art (MGA) Collection.

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Kathleen Boyle: Leitmotif

This exhibition profiled key drawings and monoprints from Kathleen Boyle. While Kathleen's broader body of work ranges across media from printing and drawing, to painting, collage and most recently wooden construction, this exhibition offers a short review of her more figurative drawings and prints. Even within this framework, however, Kathleen's adventurous approach to experimenting with various media and materials is evident in the various papers and surfaces she works on and the techniques she employs to express her vision.

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Heather Fairnie: Mapping - Territories and Landscape

This exhibition explored the intersections of mapping across Western and Indigenous art traditions, including the contrasts and synchronicities with 'mapping country' works from the McLeod Gift Collection and new work created by contemporary artist Heather Fairnie. The exhibition aimed to foster engagement with the process of mapping across cultural divides, enhancing the way audiences and artists perceive the place of Aboriginal art in a contemporary context.

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Diane Kilderry

A collection of old metal objects found at a country tip became the starting point for the abstract paintings and drawings in this exhibition. Inspired by the form and essence of these found objects, Kilderry's ghostly, meditative artworks create space for the viewer to move past the literal world to the subjective space beyond.

Local Belgrave artist Diane Kilderry has been exhibiting nationally and internationally for the past 20 years. Her work is held in many collections including the Australian National Gallery, G J Coles, and the Lefebvre Collection.

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Apmer Mwerrangker: Beautiful Country...Ever Present Past

Apmer Mwerrangker (pronounced: ‘ab mirrah’ ‘ma rung gara’) was the premier exhibition of the complete collection of 23 etchings produced at Ampiliwatja Aboriginal community in 1999-2000. The etchings were produced under supervision of Basil Hall of Northern Editions at the Northern Territory.

The exhibition features iconic works by some of the most highly regarded Aboriginal artists of the Sandover region, 200 knm North-East of Alice Springs, the Urapuntja Artists of Utopia

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Kudditji Kngwarreye

This retrospective exhibition presented significant works by Utopian artist Kudditji Kngwarreye from the Hank Ebes Collection.

Kudditji Kngwarreye was born circa 1928. For the majority of his life he worked as a stockman, like many other Aboriginal men, and resided on pastoral leases throughout Central Australia. Kudditji (pronounced Kubbitji) was one of the first established male artists in Utopia and is the younger brother of the late Emily Kame Kngwarreye.

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