The Watermill Center Celebrates Its 25th Anniversary With TIME BOMB, A Creative Explosion

The Watermill Center held its 25th Annual Gala, TIME BOMB, at its headquarters Saturday night. Presented by Van Cleef & Arpels and honoring the late Pierre Berge, the aptly named evening featured an explosion of creativity. Over 1,000 guests strolled through the site, where the colorful theme, in tribute to Berge and the Jardins Majorelle, abounded.  The evening raised $2.2 million for the center...

 There were exciting works to be had at the silent auction, including recent pieces by Rachel Hovnanian, Leila Jeffreys, Hadieh Shafie, and many more. The live auction featured a trio of Keith Haring prints courtesy of the Tony Shafrazi Foundation, and works by Peter Beard, Nan Goldin, Roy Lichtenstein, Masako Miki, Duke Riley, Tseng Kwong Chi, as well as a Robert Wilson video.

Southampton Welcomes Fine Art Photographer Leila Jeffreys

Ornithologists and art aficionados alike find delight in Leila Jeffreys' winged works.

Conservationist, world traveller and fine art photographer, Leila Jeffreys, grew up in Perth, Australia. She experienced all the boundless travel and exposure to exotic wildlife required for an artist with her particular level of visual acuity. Among the many celebrities, who have taken her under their wing, Jonathan Adler, smartly featured the work of this emerging artist in 20 North American stores in 2010. As both a curator and interior designer, I adore the clean graphic quality of her work, and appreciate the memorable, emotional charge her subjects emit to their viewers. 

Photographer Leila Jeffries Exhibits Exotic Wildlife Works In New Salon Series

“I was walking down 5th Ave one evening and in the window of Bergdorfs was the most magical display of a photographers work with brightly festooned mannequins I had ever seen,” shares Carole Reed. “Searching up the artist immediatley I suddenly found myself obsessed by these bird portraits on Instagram, then they appeared behind the shoulder of Brooke Shields in a recent InStyle shoot, it seemed they were everywhere. As both a curator and interior designer I adore the clean graphic quality of her work while also appreciating the memorable emotional charge her subjects emit to their viewers.”

ART COLLECTOR GLOBAL: Q&A WITH TIM OLSEN

With New York Gallery Olsen Gruin hitting the 18-months open mark, Emily Cones-Browne talks to Australian dealer and co-director Tim Olsen about going international.

Extract:
Olsen Gruin has hit the 18-month mark since opening its first doors. What are some of the winning hallmarks the gallery has experienced during the first 18 months ?
The surprising thing about the New York experience is that I had no idea it was going to happen. It was only because my sister was moving her business that we had the opportunity for a pop-up. What began as an experiment was such a resounding success, it felt as though we had a place in the New York art scene.

Review - Unmasking the portraiture of McLean Edwards

Doug Moran National Portrait Prize judge, Wendy Sharpe, described Tim Storrier's 2017 winning painting of fellow Australian artist McLean Edwards as "an arresting, intriguing image at once both disturbing and playful". Storrier's portrait of his friend in The Lunar Savant (Portrait of McLean Edwards) indeed presents such a contrast.

What to See in New York Art Galleries This Week

Extract: 'Beyond the Veil’

Through July 8. Olsen Gruin, 30 Orchard St., Manhattan; 646-613-7011, olsengruin.com

Who gets to narrate history? Who gets to represent whom? These questions have been roiling the American art world lately, but they are nothing new in Australia — especially in regard to its indigenous population, who faced official efforts to erase their culture well into the 20th century through forced assimilation. Visual art has provided a crucial tool to help redress these erasures, and at this New York outpost of a Sydney gallery, the paintings by five women from central Australia, and one collaborative group, testify to the vibrancy of Aboriginal Australian art and the necessity of speaking for yourself.

The Approval Matrix

The Approval Matrix - Our deliberately oversimplified guide to who falls where on our taste hierarchies...

BRILLIANT - The breathtaking small survey of Aboriginal art "Beyond the Veil" at Olsen Gruin gallery.

Beyond the Veil at Olsen Gruin

So, there is something that holds true in a show like this, which presupposes a different way of looking at society because of the long reach of the West's current obsession with money. Clearly, affluence is not a major interest of the women in this show, who live in the central desert of Australia and who work on paintings that, despite their abstraction, remain close to their lives. This is a different cry by far from the recent dot paintings of Damien Hirst, whose probable appropriation-we are not certain this is true-looks like very much like the theft of a venerable art coming from a culture some 100,000 years old. Hirst's borrowings do tend to look facile in light of the greater gravitas of the indigenous women's works, which can be understood by Western viewers-albeit on a level likely more superficial than the paintings themselves. In any case, the controversy raises real issues about the appropriation of other cultures-a hallmark of Western art practice since the beginnings of modernism, when Picasso made use of African masks for his work Les demoiselles d'Avignon.

BEYOND THE VEIL CURATED BY ADAM KNIGHT
May 16 �?? July 8, 2018
OLSEN GRUIN NY
-Jonathan Goodman

Three Sentence Reviews of Marlene Dumas, Dan Colen, and 11 Other Art-World Big Shots

To coincide with several big art fairs and last week’s massive auctions, many larger galleries mounted shows of their bigger artists. So let’s read the tea leaves on the upper end of the food chain.

Extract:  Beyond the Veil
Curated by Adam Knight
Olsen Gruin

No doubt many of the bigwigs in town for all the art stars, megagalleries and super-auctions, missed maybe the best secret show in New York at the moment, this six-artist exhibition of Australian Aboriginal women painters curated by the president of the Aboriginal Art Association of Australia — a show that gives us a breathtaking small survey of what critic Robert Hughes (who in almost every case except this I disagreed with) called “the last great art movement of the twentieth century.”

Beyond The Veil at Olsen Gruin, New York

Olsen Gruin is currently hosting a group exhibition titled "Beyond The Veil."

Until July 8, 2018, Olsen Gruin will host an exhibition that celebrates Aboriginal Australian artistic practices. �??Beyond the Veil�?� features a group of contemporary Australian artists. It has been made possible by the gallery�??s collaboration with the Aboriginal Art Association of Australia. The group show will be on view at the gallery�??s New York venue.

This group exhibition of Central Desert Paintings has been curated by the President of the Aboriginal Art Association of Australia, Adam Knight. The anticipated show features select works by Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Evelyn Pultara, Gabriella Possum Nungurrayi, Gayla Pwerle, Polly Ngale, and the Women�??s Collaborative comprising Beverly Cameron, Kathy Marinkga, Imitjala Curley, and Tjangili George.

Featured: Untitled 1993 Emily Kame Kngwarreye Synthetic polymer paints on Belgian linen 23.6 x 35 inches (59.9 x 88.9 cm)

Beyond the Veil

Olsen Gruin is pleased to present Beyond the Veil, a group exhibition of Central Desert Paintings curated by the President of the Aboriginal Art Association of Australia, Adam Knight. The anticipated show features select works by Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Evelyn Pultara, Gabriella Possum Nungurrayi, Gayla Pwerle, Polly Ngale, and the Women’s Collaborative comprising Beverly Cameron; Kathy Marinkga, Imitjala Curley, and Tjangili George, and will be on view from May 16 – July 8, 2018.

Beyond the Veil x Adam Knight

Olsen Gruin is pleased to present Beyond the Veil, a group exhibition of Western Desert Paintings curated by the President of the Aboriginal Art Association of Australia, Adam Knight.

The anticipated show features select works by Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Evelyn Pultara, Gabriella Possum Nungurrayi, Gayla Pwerle, Polly Ngale, and the Women's Collaborative comprising Beverly Cameron; Kathy Marinkga, Imitjala Curley, and Tjangili George, and will be on view from May 16 - July 8, 2018.

Did Damien Hirst Rip Off Aboriginal Australian Artists's Work?

Australian artists and dealers claim �??uncanny�?? similarities between Hirst�??s �??Veil Paintings�?? and landscapes of the late Emily Kame Kngwarrey.

Damien Hirst�??s �??Veil Paintings�?? works �?? recently on show at Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles (ranging from USD$500,000 to $1.7 million) �?? have come under fire for their similarity to the work of female Aboriginal artists, including Emily Kame Kngwarreye, who died in 1996.

Is Damien Hirst's Latest Series a Ripoff of an Aboriginal Australian Artist? See the Works Side-by-Side

Damien Hirst's new work looks a lot like the paintings of famed Aboriginal artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye.

Damien Hirst Denies Ripping Off Female Aboriginal Artists Was "Unaware" of Their Work

Lots of art looks (and sounds and reads) like other art, which is why fine artists and musicians and authors periodically lob accusations of �??stealing�?� at one another.

View works by Kathy Maringka "Tali Ngura - Sandhill Country " and "Tjulpuntjulpunpa " featured in the Olsen Gruin 2017 exhibition "Sharing Country ". 

Stephen Ormandy Only Dancing

Stephen Ormandy “Only Dancing”
Olsen Gruin
OPENS: March 7
The Lower East Side gallery presents a collection of new abstract oil on linen paintings and resin sculptures by Australian artist Stephen Ormandy, co-founder/creative designer of Dinosaur Designs.

ANNA-WILLI HIGHFIELD | OLSEN GRUIN

Christopher Hart Chambers reviews Anna-Willi Highfield‘s exhibition Spirit Faces at Olsen Gruin Gallery in New York City.

Up front by the gallery's storefront window on the Orchange Street strip on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, which is now perhaps the premier location for current fine art, stands a construction of sheet brass shards, with straight, think brass rods projecting outwards in all directions, extending like rays of light or exclamation points.

Spirit Faces: Anna-Wili Highfield's First Show at Olsen Gruin Gallery NYC

After a 10-plus year hiatus, Australian artist Anna-Wili Highfield has returned with a collection of mixed media sculptures. Titled ‘Spirit Faces’, the sculptures are currently being shown at Olsen Gallery’s New York City outpost, Olsen Gruin.

The show is Anna’s first fully conceived body of work in over a decade and follows on from the gallery’s calendar of other strong shows representing some pretty excellent Australian artists: Stephen Ormandy, George Byrne, Leila Jeffreys, and the super cool TV Moore.

Anna-Wili Highfield: Spirit Faces at Olsen Gruin Gallery

"Olsen Gruin is pleased to present Spirit Faces, an installational exhibition of new sculptures by Australian artist Anna-Wili Highfield (b. 1980, Sydney). Highfield's first fully conceived body of work in a decade, Spirit Faces gathers a celebratory mélange of animals, body parts, and self-portraits. Virtuosic and playful, Highfield's mixed media sculptures reach new heights of exuberance and material imagination.

Anna-Wili Highfield's Spirit Faces

A selection of thought-provoking, mixed media sculptures.

After the clean and minimal photographs of sunny LA which provided a vibrant glimpse into the urban landscape of California, New York-based gallery Olsen Gruin presents the work of a strikingly different artist. Anna-Wili Highfield‘s Spirit Faces exhibition features mixed media sculptures that create an intriguing collection. Made of a blend of glamorous materials, brass, and spray painting finishes, the intricate artworks draw the viewer closer. Animals and body parts combine in carefully shaped sculptures that often remind of a self-portrait.