NEWS

East/West Exhibition London 2012

2nd - 20th May 2012

Stephanie Burns, Christine Ann Richards, Richard Rowland
The Millinery Works Gallery
87 Southgate Road, Islington
London, N1 3JS UK
Tel: +44 (0)207 359 2019
Fax: +44 (0)207 359 5793

Stephanie Burns lives in the Eastern States of Australia. Reflecting on her father’s recent passing Burns began to think of the time they spent living in the north west of Western Australia. The beaches and rocks of the Exmouth area and the incredible colours of the landscape, the intense red/brown colour of the sand, the fabulous aqua waters and the spectacular salt lakes inspire these aerial views. Although elements of the paintings are remembered the paintings are of actual places, particularly Shark Bay and Lake Carnegie.

Burns’ Australian landscape paintings in the forthcoming exhibition in London are within the tradition of the genre but combine her knowledge of Aboriginal art with the vision of artists working in the European tradition.

An artist opens her garden and studio to the public.

Stephanie Burns will be arranging a sneak peak of her paintings for the upcoming Sydney exhibition Living with Water.

Living with Water is an exhibition of Australian landscape paintings by Burns that are within the tradition of the genre but combine Burns’ knowledge of the art of traditional owners with the vision of artists working in the European tradition. The paintings in the exhibition depict aerial views of Sydney Harbour and seascapes that are highly romantic portrayals of a modern concern for Australia’s coast in an age of climate change. The aerial view perspective of the paintings adds a sense of voyeurism and intrigue.

At first the paintings were of specific places. Over time the artist’s imagination and somewhat hazy memory has combined particular beaches and rocky outcrops to form these new landscapes that appear to be real places. Not unlike a Mandelbrot inspired landscape, Burns has used visual and geometric intuition to form these new seascapes that don’t exist but if they did would exist in Australia.

Prior to the exhibition the paintings can be viewed at an Open Garden and Studio event at the artist’s seven acre property in Yass where Burns and her husband, Stephen Hooper, have been creating a sculpture park for the last five years. There are many walks and environments in this garden; native gardens and forests dominate interspersed with cottage gardens, orchard, vegetable patch, and avenues of nuts, Manchurian pears, cypress and claret ash. Family members, still lives combining fruit, vegetables and cloth, animals and flowers have all been immortalised in bronze by Stephanie over her career as an artist. Over the last twenty years Stephanie’s sculptures have been exhibited from London and Perth to Sydney. Many of the first editions of these bronzes finding a resting place in this sculpture garden, often forming the centre piece of planned garden rooms.

At the front of the property there is a fish carved from Silky Oak from a tree that Stephanie had cut down in Sydney twelve years ago. Other pieces from the same tree form seats by the ponds up at the studio; resting places to sit and listen to the frogs and the birds that make the oldest River Red Gum their home.

Viewing the paintings in the studio prior to the exhibition in Sydney with the sculptures in the gardens gives the public a chance to see a large body of work by this Australian artist who is so well known to many of Australia’s finest artists, writers and curators.

Main Event
Living with Water
Paintings by Stephanie Burns
24 November –12 December 2011
Charles Hewitt Gallery
335 South Dowling Street, Darlinghurst NSW 2010
(02) 9331 4988     gallery@charleshewitt.com.au     www.charleshewitt.com.au

Prior Events
Open Gardens Australia
29 - 30 October 2011. 10am-4.30pm. entry $6.00.

CLASSIC YASS, YASS ARTS TRAIL
5 – 6 November  2011. 10am-4.30pm. entry $6.00.

Address; 17 Archer Close, Yass NSW 2582

Contact

Charles Hewitt Gallery
335 South Dowling Street
Darlinghurst NSW 2010
(02) 9331 4988    
gallery@charleshewitt.com.au    
www.charleshewitt.com.au

or

Stephanie Burns
17 Archer Close
Yass NSW 2582
Australia
ph 02 6226 2244
info@stephanieburns.com.au

Dates

24 November – 12 December 2011
29 - 30 October 2011
5 – 6 November  2011

Winner of the Waverley Acrylic Art Prize 2010

Stephanie Burns has won the Waverley Acrylic Art Prize sponsored by Matisse Derivan, the sponsors provide the winning artist with their choice of $1000 worth of their paints, which has allowed Stephanie to order colours she has never used before and will greatly inhance the visual effects of her paintings.

Winner of the Waverley Art Prize 2009

Stephanie Burns has won the Waverley Art Prize in two categories with one painting. The painting “Table Tennis” won the Open Prize of $5000, sponsored by Waverley Council and the $1000 Works on Paper Prize sponsored by Charles Hewitt Gallery. Both prizes are acquisitive causing a dilemma for the organisers, as no one has won two prizes with the same painting before.

Table Tennis 2009
Acrylic on arches aquarelle, 53 x 74 cm

Commonwealth Valuer

The Secretary to the Department of communications, Information Technology and the Arts has approved Stephanie Burns from 8 April 2008 to undertake valuations for the Cultural Gifts Program run by the Australian government, in the following classes of property:
Australian paintings, sculptures, ceramics, drawings and prints after 1900;
and artists and writers archives after 1950.
The Cultural Gifts Program encourages gifts of significant cultural items to public art galleries, museums and libraries by offering donors a tax deduction for the market value of their gifts. The Secretary to the Department of Communications and the Arts appoints valuers to participate in the program. Valuers are required to carry out valuation work with diligence and competence and act at all times with honesty, integrity and impartiality.

Editor of Art Influence

Stephanie Burns has launched a new online art magazine, www.artinfluence.com , with her son and co-editor, Laurence Fuller; the magazine is run by the Peter Fuller Memorial Foundation. The Peter Fuller Memorial Foundation changed leadership recently. Stephanie Burns was the founder of the British charity in 1991 and widow of the esteemed critic Peter Fuller. She heads the new board of Trustees with Fuller’s children, Laurence Fuller and Sylvia Turner. Together they are bringing the focus of the foundation back to concentrate on the work and ideas of Peter Fuller, one of Britain’s great art critics, starting with the launch of Art Influence, a quarterly online magazine.

Art Influence, www.artinfluence.com , is a premier international forum for critical debate on the arts. It includes writing by eminent people on culturally and politically significant events and will also include an archive of the annual lectures hosted by the Peter Fuller Memorial Foundation at the Tate Gallery in London, over the last two decades and reprints of Peter Fuller’s writing.

For all enquiries please contact Stephanie Burns at info@stephanieburns.com.au