Events & Exhibitions

Max Dingle is giving a presentation called, ’Tis an unweeded garden that goes to seed’. In Max’s words, “I decided that I would no longer compete with the standard garden expectations and would set up a gardening and cooking challenge by growing things that were not available, at least not available on a regular basis, and concentrate on indigenous eatable plants, and then, due to a lack of regular garden maintenance or possibly sheer laziness, I added weeds to the menu.” The 24th Symposium is exploring happiness, community and the future in a gastronomic context. Incorporating the Aboriginal concept of the six seasons of sustainability, it will also provide opportunities to explore the fields of fermentation and preservation, exemplifying cultural traditions around seasonal foods and sustainable approaches to nutrition.

An exhibition and conversation with Max Dingle exploring his thinking, enjoyment and pet hates to do with food, nutrition and lifestyle trends; thinking which seems to have migrated into his artworks along with influences by the Dada art movement with its subversive, confronting surreal elements and the appropriation of found images.

Max Dingle and Natalie McDonagh are working with artist, Grace Burzese, to bring this 30 year survey exhibition and associated catalogue to the Shoalhaven. Grace Burzese works in the fields of painting, drawing, sculpture and ceramics. Her process based art making is inspired by the exploration and play of colour, materials and form. Abstraction for Grace allows for an open identification with how one relates to being. In the questioning of self, feelings and perceptions are reduced to colour, mark and form – a language and sensibility which does not identify with known or understood imagery, but rather how something is sensed and embodied. “My paintings reference a continuum of layering of the paint and structure, as well as the felt experience. Recognising time abiding and past, the physical present and the anticipation of ongoing movement.” Image: Lines of Violet, 1997. Acrylic on linen 59x58cm.

There is something strange surfacing in the Shoalhaven … This is a rare opportunity to experience one of Dingle and McDonagh’s unorthodox arts events. Magical mixes conjured from: visual arts; sculpture; photography; installation; textiles; costume; performance; a mezzo-soprano voice; a classically trained saxophonist; poetry and the unpredictable marvels that happen when all the artists and performers are in residence. Immerse yourself is all sorts of strange and enchanting stuff and discover what the body knows (but may have forgotten). Image: George Grosz. Remember Uncle August, the Unhappy Inventor, 1919. Centre Pompidou, Paris.

Curated by Max Dingle, Death + Love = Art is a major exhibition bringing together artistic responses to death across time and cultures. With works borrowed from large collecting institutions and contemporary collections it will offer an expansive survey of the many ways artists and communities respond to the concept and reality of death. Death is inevitable, yet is also the ultimate unknown, and as such has provided inspiration to artists across the centuries. Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, the late Spanish American philosopher and poet, wrote, ‘There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval. The dark background which death supplies brings out the tender colours of life in all their purity.’ Despite the inevitability of death, it is often depicted in terms of tragedy and devastation – the grief, trauma, loss and hurt caused by the death of a loved one, or the concept of death – your own or that of a legend or fictional figure – has inspired some of the greatest art produced across genres. Love, entwined with death is seen as the ultimate sacrifice. Image: Still from video. Bill Viola, Ocean Without a Shore, 2008. NGV Collection.