David Bromley Studio To Be Auctioned By Leonard Joel Melbourne

The iconic Chapel Street Studio and part-time residence of Melbourne artist David Bromley is going under the hammer this week. This magical space has stood out for well over a decade, as Chapel Street has grown much less glitzy, now filled with glass-covered modernity and prefab showrooms, Mr Bromley’s premises have remained a wonderfilled oddity :: Read the full article »»»»

Rodney Pople’s Martin Bryant Painting Wins Glover Prize

Australia’s most notorious mass murderer Martin Bryant is depicted in the work that has won Australia’s richest annual landscape painting prize. The Glover Prize is the richest annual prize for landscape painting in Australia. It is awarded for the work judged the best contemporary painting of the Tasmanian landscape. The winner receives $35,000 as well as handsome bronze maquette of colonial artist John Glover, Glover is regarded as the father of Australian landscape painting.

The Glover Prize 2012 was awarded to Launceston-born artist Rodney Pople for his landscape painting of Port Arthur showing Bryant in the foreground holding a gun.  The judges say the decision was unanimous and said it shouldn’t create controversy. Pople’s painting shows Bryant, holding a gun in the foreground. Bryant killed 35 people at Port Arthur in 1996. Pople accepted the award at a ceremony in the northern Tasmanian town of Evandale where The Glover Prize exhibition is held each year in March.

“It wasn’t painted to upset anybody, but if it does I hope that they see the painting was painted in the light that doesn’t glorify Martin Bryant,” Polpe said. ”He’s part of the landscape so why ignore it, people said to me ‘you should never do that if you’re painting’ and I said ‘well, I’m the sort of artist who doesn’t really pull any punches’, art through the ages to me that says anything cuts through the ice.”

Some of the finalists for the 2012 prize  include, Julie-Anne Armstrong-Roper, Raymond Arnold, Wendy Black, Nicholas Blowers and Bruno Leti. Check the Glover sites exhibition page for currnet hangings: www.johnglover.com.au/the_shows/

Former Art Dealer Ronald Coles Charged With $8m Artwork Fraud

A former Sydney art dealer has been released on bail after being charged over a multi-million dollar investment fraud. Police say 64-year-old Ronald Coles sold investors valuable artworks that had either already been on-sold to others or were already the property of others. More than 40 investors allegedly lost a combined total of more than $8 million. Coles was arrested by officers from Strike Force Glasson which was established in 2009 with Fraud and Cybercrime Squad detectives to investigate the alleged artwork investment fraud. Police say they began investigating in early 2009, with 400 paintings seized while officers established who legitimately owned them. Coles was arrested this morning at Gosford Police Station on the New South Wales central coast. The Ettalong resident has been charged with 77 counts of larceny and 10 counts of cheat and defraud.

Ronald Coles was one of Australia’s leading art dealer, under the crimes act Coles face 77 counts of Larcenya s a bailee and a further 10 counts of director/officer cheat or defraud. Coles specialised in fine art, and dealt with some of Australia’s most respected artist, including Sir Arthur Streeton and Brett Whitely. Read the full article »»»»

Louvre Cements It’s Place as The World’s Most-visited Museum

The Louvre has cemented its position as the world’s most-visited museum, with a record 8.8 million visitors making the trip to the Paris home of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and other masterpieces in 2011.

The Louvre saw a 5 per cent increase in visitors in 2011, after three years in a row in which about 8.5 million people had visited the museum, it said in a statement.

The museum said it enjoyed “a strong return of American visits and a more and more marked presence of visitors from emerging countries”.

Visitors from abroad accounted for 66 per cent of the museum’s attendees, led by tourists from the United States, followed by Brazil, Italy, Australia and China. Read the full article »»»»

Artist David Boyd Dies Aged 87

Australian artist David Boyd has died at the age of 87 after a short illness. Boyd, a celebrated painted and ceramicist, died earlier today in Sydney. One of the elder statesmen of the Australian art world, he was a member of the famously artistic Boyd family which also included his brother Arthur. David Boyd’s works – which span six decades - are held in collections around the globe. He was also known for creating works as early as the 1950s which concerned the mistreatment of Aboriginal people. In 1946, he worked with his brother Guy at the Martin Boyd Pottery in Sydney. He also established a pottery studio in London in the early 1950s and continued working mainly in pottery through to the mid-1960s. In 1956, Boyd and his wife became widely known as leading Australian potters. They introduced new glazing techniques and potter’s wheel use in shaping sculptural figures.

Boyd’s painting career began in 1957 with a series of symbolic paintings on Australian explorers that aroused much controversy at the time, focusing as they did on the tragic history of the Tasmanian aborigines.

. Read the full article »»»»