Criterion’s Neil Haddon and Meg Walch will be in Primed New Painting in Tasmania curated by Catherine Wolfhagen. Opening Wednesday 25th August, Academy Gallery, School of Visual and Performing Arts at UTAS in Launceston.

James Newitt’s Dreams has won the 2010 City of Hobart Art Prize in the digital category.  In the video Dreams, four street performers are connected through a series of beautifully tragic performances.

Futility and failure seem ever-present during these isolated and introverted performances, which are enacted in public spaces in the evening. The performers seem to be responding to their immediate environment, marking their presence in the city. Subtly extraordinary actions permeate the pulse of the city and everyday space becomes aestheticised and cinematised: a puppet dances to an unknown rhythm, a man hypnotically drums the street and surrounding structures, a clown waits for something to happen and a man softly hums folk songs over the din of relentless traffic. These performances introduce a human dimension to an indifferent urban landscape. Dreams was filmed in Los Angeles in 2008.

Dreams
2008-09
2 channel HDV installation
7:30 mins
Stereo sound

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James Newitt’s work is being showcased at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney from 20 August. He is one of the artists selected for Primavera 2010, and his video work Passive Agressive, 2009, is included in In the Balance: Art for a Changing World.
James has also won the City of Hobart Art Prize for his work Dreams, a two channel HDV work.

Passive Aggressive, 2009
video still

A Generosity of Spirit - Recent Australian Women’s Art from the QUT Art Collection is a travelling exhibition curated by Stephen Rainbird. The exhibition acknowledges the generosity of Betty Quelhurst, whose donation enabled the establishment of a fund for the purchase of major works by leading Australian women practitioners.

The exhibition features such key figures as Pat Brassington, Cressida Campbell, Julie Dowling, Fiona Foley, Janet Laurence, Lindy Lee, Sue Lovegrove, Gloria Petyarre, Robyn Stacey and Judith Wright. The exhibition will be held at QUT from 2 July to 3 October and then travel to the Samstag Museum of Art in South Australia from 22 October to December 2010.