Fiona Foley: In Conversation

Thursday 9 January 2020

6–8pm, NAS Gallery

Please join artist Dr Fiona Foley for an In Conversation event with curator Djon Mundine OAM. Discussion will focus on the themes and ideas in Foley’s major exhibition Who are these strangers and where are they going?

Tickets are $10 and include a glass of wine or soft drink – book your spot online through our Eventbrite.

About the exhibition

As part of the 2020 Sydney Festival, the National Art School proudly presents Who are these strangers and where are they going?, a 30-year survey of the work of Dr Fiona Foley, one of Australia’s most acclaimed, insightful and challenging contemporary artists, curated by Djon Mundine OAM. Running from January 8 to February 8 in the National Art School Gallery, the show premiered in August 2019 at the Ballarat International Foto Biennale in Victoria. The title comes from a new work, a soundscape based on the oldest known Aboriginal song documenting the first sighting of Captain Cook in 1770, by Foley’s ancestors the Badtjala people of K’gari (Fraser Island).

Image: Fiona Foley, The Oyster Fisherman 1, 2011, Ultrachrome print on paper edition of 15, 60 x 80cm © the artist. Courtesy the artist and Niagara Galleries, Melbourne.

NAS Gallery Curator Olivia Sophia leads a tour of the current exhibition Who are these strangers and where are they going? a 30-year survey of the work of Dr Fiona Foley, one of Australia’s most acclaimed, insightful and challenging contemporary artists. The title comes from a new work, a soundscape based on the oldest known Aboriginal song documenting the first sighting of Captain Cook in 1770, by Foley’s ancestors the Badtjala people of K’gari (Fraser Island).

Image: Fiona Foley, HHH #1 (detail)  2004, Hahnemühle Archival Inkjet Print, 76 x 101 cm. Courtesy the artist and Niagara Galleries, Melbourne

Leslie Rice was a professional tattooer for more than 10 years before visiting art school and realising that everything he once loved was awful. Completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours at the National Art School in 2006, he began to make paintings that exploited, mocked and critically examined his poor taste. He won the Doug Moran National Portrait prize in 2007 and again in 2012. Leslie is a painter, actor and lecturer in the NAS painting department. In this visual presentation he discusses his broad creative output and describes how all the pieces fit together.

Image: Portrait of Leslie Rice by Dylan River

Urban landscape painter Kevin McKay brings aspects of plein air (outdoor) painting and the flaneur, who explores the city as one would a natural environment, to his art practice. His paintings depict eerily empty architectural spaces, where the stillness of classical form and the drama of light is sometimes interrupted by crooked signs, a parked car, witches hat, or wayward wheelie bin. Kevin discusses his work, influences and processes in making potent images that engage with local history and memory associated with place.

Image: Kevin McKay, Flinton St corner, Paddington, 2019, image courtesy the artist

NAS Gallery Curator Olivia Sophia leads a tour of the current exhibition Who are these strangers and where are they going? a 30-year survey of the work of Dr Fiona Foley, one of Australia’s most acclaimed, insightful and challenging contemporary artists. The title comes from a new work, a soundscape based on the oldest known Aboriginal song documenting the first sighting of Captain Cook in 1770, by Foley’s ancestors the Badtjala people of K’gari (Fraser Island).

Image: Fiona Foley, HHH #1 (detail)  2004, Hahnemühle Archival Inkjet Print, 76 x 101 cm. Courtesy the artist and Niagara Galleries, Melbourne

Dr Maryanne Coutts is Head of Drawing at the National Art School; her artwork is an exploration of the relationship between drawing and time, based in a lively drawing practice that ranges from watercolour to animation. Each day since 2013 she has made a drawing in response to what she wears every day, and in this talk she discusses this project Dress Code.
She writes “Dress Code is a project which attempts to harness the ways that the days continue to follow each other, one after the other; unstoppable. It is a journal of what I wear each day – not in a ‘realistic’ or documentary way – but a fluid emotional extension of the creative activity of getting dressed in the morning; each morning, every morning.”

Image: Maryanne Coutts Dress Code, 8 January, 2016, image courtesy the artist

Relaxed Botanical Drawing
Sunday 26 January
NAS Gallery Foyer
11am-5pm, FREE
All materials provided
All ages welcome

In association with the current NAS Gallery exhibition, ‘Fiona Foley: Who are these strangers and where are they going?’ join us on Sunday 26 January for a free drop-in workshop to create small and simple illustrations of native natural materials as a gentle and quiet meditation on nature. In light of the bushfires it’s a moment to focus on the beauty of the Australian landscape that Aboriginal people have, and continue to care for. Using ink, watercolour, pencils and paper you can draw from materials we have collected, or find/bring your own.