Join Blacktown Arts for our digital school holiday program. This program focuses on keeping kids and young people busy and creative during their school holiday break.
Explore untold histories and discover works by some of Australia’s most exciting artists via Blacktown Arts’ first virtual reality tour – Terra inFirma.
Join First Nations artists, Judy Watson and Venessa Possum, as they discuss their art practice and the significance of 2020, the 250th year since James Cook’s arrival in Australia. The audience will see the Terra inFirma exhibition artists in conversation and have the unique opportunity to ask questions about their practice and the themes of the exhibition. Tune in for this engaging and lively conversation with two significant contemporary artists.
When: Thursday 4 June at 1 pm – 2 pm
Where: Zoom
We are inviting Blacktown locals to help us create a virtual wall of isolation portraits shared online called the Isolation Selfie Chain.
If you are from the Blacktown area or have attended our workshops before, please request to join the Facebook group
To be a part of the chain, draw or paint a self-portrait, take a photo of it, post it to the ‘Blacktown Arts open studio’ group and tag two others to continue the chain.
Blacktown City Art Prize is our much loved art prize exhibition showcasing the work of finalists from across the country. Final works for the 2019 display include paintings, drawings, sculptures, ceramics and mixed media.
Enjoy viewing the 112 diverse artworks on display and the Young Artists Prize exhibition featuring works by local children.
Click here to vote for the People’s Choice Prize.
Exhibition | 2019 Blacktown City Art Prize
30 November 2019 – 25 January 2020
Summer Workshop Program
This summer we are offering a range of engaging and creative workshops with artists for children, families and adults.
Click here for more information
This summer we are offering a range of engaging and creative workshops with artists for children, families and adults. While you are at the Leo Kelly Blacktown Arts Centre, you will have the opportunity to visit the Blacktown City Art Prize and the Young Artists Prize exhibitions, get to know our friendly staff, and learn new skills!
December
Drop in workshops with Patrice Wills
Join experienced artist educator Patrice Wills for a series of drop in workshops throughout December and January at the Leo Kelly Blacktown Arts Centre. Drop in to check out the Blacktown City Art Prize and stay to make your own masterpiece or work on that creative idea you’ve been stuck on for a while. Come for five minutes or three hours, it’s up to you!
Date: Wednesdays 4, 11, 18 December
Saturdays 7, 14, 21 December
Time: 10am -1pm
Cost: $5 on the day to cover materials
Children 12 years and under require a parent/caregiver present.
Wednesday 4 December: Drawing Portraits
Pitch in and contribute to the creation of a frieze of faces representing the many visitors to the art centre. All abilities welcome.
Sat 7 December: Young Artists Workshop
Painting the natural world: In line with the environmental theme of the Young Artists Prize, children are invited to paint mini boards inspired by natural elements; bugs, bees, and leaves.
Wednesday 11 December: Drawing Portraits
Pitch in and contribute to the creation of a frieze of faces of the many visitors to the art centre. All abilities welcome.
Saturday 14 December: Young Artists Workshop
Pastel Pets! Young artists can draw their own pet or a favourite animal and learn to use pastels.
Wednesday 18 December: Watercolour Christmas cards
Handmade cards are always a treasure. Join us and create your own beautiful cards to keep or gift.
Saturday 21 December: Painting Postcards Workshop
A painted postcard is the perfect gift or memento. Take home a few painted gems after a painting session at the art centre. All abilities welcome.
Drop in workshops with Patrice Wills: Open studio
Date: Wednesdays 4, 11, 18 December
Saturdays 7, 14, 21 December
Time: 2 – 4 pm
Cost: $5 on the day to cover materials
Children 12 years and under require a parent/caregiver present
On Wednesday and Saturday afternoons, visitors are invited to join in on open studio sessions to realise their own artistic goals with the expertise of artist educator Patrice Wills. Continue something you have already begun in a prior workshop or start that new project you’ve been thinking about for too long! All levels are welcome: beginners to advanced.
2019 Blacktown City Art Prize Launch
Saturday 30 November
2 pm – 4 pm
The Leo Kelly Blacktown Arts Centre
Young Artists Prize Launch
Saturday 7 December
11 am – 12 pm
The Leo Kelly Blacktown Arts Centre
Photo credit
Image 1: Joshua Morris
Image 2: Gerrie Mifsud
The Leo Kelly Blacktown Arts Centre
78 Flushcombe Rd, Blacktown, 2148
Tuesday – Saturday, 10 am – 5 pm
(02) 9839 6558
artscentre@blacktown.nsw.gov.au
Everyone is welcome and attendance is free.
2019 Blacktown City Art Prize
Blacktown City Art Prize is our much loved art prize exhibition showcasing the work of finalists from across the country. Final works for the 2019 display include paintings, drawings, sculptures, ceramics and mixed media. Click here to see the list of finalists.
Enjoy viewing the 112 diverse artworks on display and the Young Artists Prize exhibition featuring works by local children.
Please join us for this very special event which will include drinks and light refreshments. Councillor Tony Bleasdale, OAM, Mayor of Blacktown City, will present the prizes for the exhibition.
Join us for the opening of the 2019 Blacktown City Art Prize.
Click here to RSVP for the launch on 30 November 2019.
Young Artists Prize
The Blacktown City Art Prize celebrates the creativity of local young people with an environmentally-themed Young Artists Prize.
The theme of the Blacktown City Young Artists Prize for 2019 is Repair & Restore, asking young artists to respond to:
Countries around the world have declared that climate change is a real emergency. As our climate becomes hotter, what positive things can we do to cool our homes, cities and natural environments?
This section is open to 5 – 15 year olds who live or go to school in Blacktown City.
Please join us for the launch of the Young Artists Prize exhibition featuring artworks by local children.
Click here to RSVP for the launch on 7 December 2019.
See the art, make the art.
We are offering a range of creative workshops and open studios for adults, young people, and kids in collaboration with the artists and makers from the 2019 Blacktown City Art Prize.
Drop into the Leo Kelly Blacktown Arts Centre to unleash and explore your creativity and immerse yourself in the new work of contemporary Australian artists!
The 2019 Blacktown City Art Prize exhibition will be open from 30 November 2019 – 25 January 2020.
2019 Blacktown City Art Prize Launch
Saturday 30 November
2 pm – 4 pm
The Leo Kelly Blacktown Arts Centre
Young Artists Prize Launch
Saturday 7 December
11 am – 12 pm
The Leo Kelly Blacktown Arts Centre
The Leo Kelly Blacktown Arts Centre
78 Flushcombe Rd, Blacktown, 2148
Tuesday – Saturday, 10 am – 5 pm
(02) 9839 6558
artscentre@blacktown.nsw.gov.au
Everyone is welcome and attendance is free.
Photo credit
Jennifer Leahy
Wendy Murray is a Sydney-based artist and arts-educator. She was artist-in-residence at the Leo Kelly Blacktown Arts Centre from 4 July to 31 August 2019, running a pop-up studio called The Poster Centre, where visitors could come in and learn more about poster-making and printmaking processes.
I sat down with Wendy in The Poster Centre to chat and collaborate on a poster. Here’s what I learnt about the artist and her practice.
Firstly, tell me a bit about yourself and your practice.
I’m a poster-maker and I love drawing. I also run community workshops, teach, and sell my posters. I love screenprinting, and you could say my practice is diverse. I don’t think that’s by choice, it’s just the way things are. Making a living as a full time artist, it helps to have quite a diverse practice.
What attracted you to printmaking originally?
When I did my undergraduate design degree at Wellington Polytechnic, now Massey University, I had a class project for a typographic class and it was about engaging the audience. I worked with one of my professors in the screenprinting lab for the first time. I thought, ‘I could do a screenprinted poster, this will be amazing!’ He guided me through that process, but the access to those facilities was limited. That was in the late nineties. I did a residency at Megalo Print Studio in 2010 that coincided with the change in legislation on carrying spray cans and pens. I’d done a lot of street art and stencil work previously, and then I did my residency at Megalo Print Studios with Alison Alder, one of the Redback Graphix crew. I didn’t know anything about Redback Graphix. I’d seen the posters, but I didn’t really understand the history. Meeting Alison, and then having access to the incredible print facilities there, was a game-changer. Before that, I’d only done some rudimentary printing in my studio. I wouldn’t call myself a printmaker; I’m a poster-maker and screenprinter. I’ve tried other printmaking techniques but screenprinting is the one for me.
What connects your printmaking practice with your drawing practice?
It’s connected through necessity. If I need a drawing, it’s amazing that I have the skill that I can use if the drawing is required. In my series of ‘Sydney We Need To Talk’ posters from 2018, I used drawing in conjunction with letter-press processes. I wanted to reflect the human element in our urban environment. If the poster is done with Letraset text or letter-press text you don’t get that sense of personality and people. It’s about displacement of people and homelessness, ideas that can be quite cold sometimes, especially when you want to engage an audience that hasn’t been homeless. You engage them with a beautiful drawing, a line that seduces them, so they look at the message that way. The drawing isn’t a massive component. However, I did a commission with the Australian War Memorial Museum last year which was a large-scale drawing turned into paper-cut stencil poster. That was all about the drawing and the brush marks; in the same way that the Soviet TASS window posters were made. That process of making posters is something I’d really like to pursue. I have this whole suite of tools including Letraset and letter-press; I can just pick up whatever is appropriate for that particular work.
What role does printmaking and poster-making play in social justice movements and protest?
It’s the immediacy of screenprinting and paper-cut stencils. I’ve been fortunate enough to have seen some of these at the Center for the Study of Political Graphics (USA). The centre gave me access to their folder of posters. They are remarkable. And what’s so awesome about them – which is lost when you look at the reproductions in the book – is the immediacy of them. They’re technical, but they’re simple and they’re imperfect. Here in The Poster Centre, you can make a poster with me and you can do it so quickly, it’s very rewarding and accessible.
What led to you wanting to facilitate a space such as The Poster Centre at the Leo Kelly Blacktown Arts Centre, where people can come in and make posters with you like they did at Garage Graphix in the eighties and nineties?
My dream would be to have my own space that was like this – where three days a week I might be working on my own projects and working alongside other artists, and then one day a week I’d have the space available to whoever wants to come in and collaborate. I could also have a day when other artists can come in and make their own work. How fantastic would that be?
Would you say that the process of making a poster is as important as the end result?
No. I think a poster can communicate without a lengthy process. If someone has a message, the question might be: ‘Do you want to learn to screenprint or do you have a message you want to disseminate?’ If you come to me and say, ‘I’ve got a message’, we might set some Letraset on an A6 sheet and go straight to the photocopier and not pull any ink for your poster. It’s a question of weighing up the message and the process. I think this adds to that immediacy. You can make a poster any way you like. You could just go out there now, rip some posters off the wall in the street, collage them up, and reattach them to the street, using a Stanley knife and some wheat paste. You don’t necessarily need to go through the complicated process of photo stencil screen-printing. A poster can be a single object; it doesn’t have to be a multiple. It just depends on what your message is and how you want to say it with your poster.
What’s your favourite part of the printmaking and poster-making process?
Working in The Poster Centre allows me to do what I enjoy most: being a conduit, by facilitating other people’s ideas and helping them distil down what they want to say in the poster. Working with the Sydney Pacifica group from 10am until 3pm for two days was a really fantastic collaboration. I introduced them to methods of quickly making posters. We got down to the nuts and bolts of their poster ideas: How did they feel about global warming? How does it affect their island communities? We drilled down to their honest and open opinions about it and then transformed the ideas into simple graphics that could be communicated in a poster format. It seems I am able to help people communicate how they feel about an issue or idea. The ‘See It’s Rising’ poster was a collaboration with one of the young artists from the group. I can do the process on my own, but it’s so much more satisfying, interesting and exciting when you’re working with other people.
Finally, what advice would you give to someone wanting to get into printmaking or poster-making?
Just do it! With screenprinting, you can sit around and say ‘Okay, how am I going to get access to a studio?’ I think there are two access studios in Sydney. All you need for screenprinting is screens and hinges – not an exposure unit. If you’d like to start printing, make a basic table-top set up. If you don’t feel like you want to get into screen, do some drawings and turn them into posters or, make some posters with a photocopier. Some of artist Alex Latham’s street posters poked fun at Sydney’s lock-out laws. They were digital drawings which he colour printed and pasted up on the street. Beautifully drawn, low-fi, A3 size, but big on impact. It’s about doing it, and then the more you do it the more you can get a sense of how you can make bigger prints or increase your quantities. Just make a start and get into it any way you can: photocopy, collage; give it a go. There are so many options. It doesn’t have to be highly technical, a photocopier is a printer. So use that tool, whatever tool you’ve got.
By Beth Sorensen
The Poster Centre ran from 4 July to 31 August 2019. To follow Wendy Murray’s journey, follow her on Instagram at @busymakingposters and @drawingacrowd or visit her website.
Photo credit
Wendy Murray by Josh Morris
114 artworks have been selected for the 2019 Blacktown City Art Prize!
The winners will be selected from this list of finalists, and announced at the official opening on Saturday, 30 November 2019.
Walter Auer
The Secret Manifesto 1
Walter Auer
The Secret Manifesto 2
Ray Monde
Dryandra Street
Kara Wood
“Why?”
Joy Ivill
‘After Basquiat’
Joshua Muir
KING
Jolon Larter
Push-Button Warfare
Louis Pratt
Regret
Bree Cribbin
The Centre
Barbara Newton
Always there
Liz Cameron
Bulada Dreaming – Snake Creation
Judy Panucci
the scream
Freya Jobbins
Fingerpointing Series #3
Renee Henzell
Come Closer, Now Back Off
Nicole O’Loughlin
View of kunanyi / Mount Wellington from South Hobart Tip
Harry Rothel
Heaven Sent
Peter Kafer
MAARRA
Kelly-Anne Love
I don’t want your hope
Alexandra Colvin
Contemplation
Wataru Tamanaha
The Circle of Dream: Martin Luther King JR
Carmel Mackie
White Cockatoo
Carmel Mackie
Monstera Leaf
Jamie Eastwood
Blacktown Native Institution 1823-2018 Then and Now
Paul Handley
Redesigning Sovereignty #5 (Hong Kong)
Daniel Sherington
Artist As… (Obsequious)
Leonie Fisher
Portrait
Clayton Micallef
Australian Figaro
Jasmine Mansbridge
THE DIVIDE OF THOUGHTS AND TIME
Minka Gillian
Rogue Cell
Minka Gillian
Down by the Singing Sea
Tanika Meeks
Sunset Dreaming
Craig Handley
We are particularly fond of the outdoor space
Songshi Li
Chinese Garden in Blacktown
Jian Hua Qian
Big Eyes
Eddie Abd
A Hazelbrook Woman Dressed in Her Finery # 1 (With the help of the British Museum).
Hyun Hee Lee
Winter Letter
Max Berry
Church & olive tree
Laura Bright
What If I Could Be Myself
Morgan Veness
Birds of Extinction a Bird of Paradise
David El-Melky
Yearning for Youth
Gilbert Riedelbauch
Ambiguity black (on red base)
Nick Ferguson
Meeting by the river
Florek Stan
Cloud
Deirdre Boeyen-Carmichael
Artefacts of the Anthropocene
Chee Yong
Life Is Short. Don’t Waste It Chasing Ghosts
Adrian Elmer
Tim
Yang Qiu
The wonderland shoe
Sima Alikhani
I can walk by myself
Em Deusien
The Ancient Ones
Basia Nowacki
Facing the Unknown
Billy Bain
Game Day
Tracey-Maree Smith
I will try not to breathe
Jody Graham
Craving – Australian Butcherbird
Tina Barahanos
Driving home from a friend’s place
Tina Barahanos
Driving along Tamboura Ave
Belinda Sims
It was a well (the phoenix of Seven Hills)
Martin Claydon
BnE and Doin’ Badness
Annie Shin
Habitants Emerge
Jayanto Damanik Tan
Ritual Tortoise Cakes
Alma Studholme
Chasing Fibonacci No. 2
Laura Nolan
Fallout
Mei Feng Wu
Harmony
Paula do Prado
Sangre/Blood
Rebecca Trajkovski
Home
Paula do Prado
Guidai/Moon
Brian Robinson
Ai Baud
Poppy Williams
‘Are you sure we are on the right track’
Peter Rush
Blacktown Mall
Tamara Pavlovic
Valerie
The Bankstown Koori Elders Group
Ghost Gum Dreaming
Mandy Francis
Wildflowers and Crazy Cuttings
Linda Joyce
Road Trip 1960
Samuel Massey
Shoebox tied with a ribbon of red
Salvatore Gerardi
Shadow Lines
Sergio Hernandez Merchan
Untitled (oysters)
Alexander Smith
Warped Worlds #4
Amber Hearn
Tea Time Mountain’
Merran Esson
Shadow Play
Sara Sohrabian
I am in a relationship with the sun.
Eunjoo Jang
Conjuntion of old and new
Catherine Leung
Above It All
Hiromi Tango
Full Moon – Sakura’s Will
Ala Paredes
Domus Divinus (Divine Home)
Vanessa White
Ettore’s Yellowface
Hilary Sims
Allowah Day
Ryan William Daffurn
Consonance
Daniela Cristallo
Desert Rose Rain
Travis De Vries
She wasn’t kicked out, she left
Blak Douglas
We know we cannot live in the blast, but the blast lives in us
Jane Aliendi
Still Life with Cat (after Bonnard)
Linda Brescia
Common ground
Yvette Tziallas
Petri Dish 3
James Lai
Toward Lake Lyell
Catherine Lees
Amoeba III
Samia Khan
The Need to Matter
Fozia Zahid
The show must go on …
Annarie Hildebrand
Banksia Whispers
Rew Hanks
Josephine’s Ark
Damian Dillon and James Birch
Captain Thunderbolts Lament
Emily Portmann
Australia has a Black History: The Battle of Bathurst
Kristone Capistrano
Thirst
Emma Noakes
Waratah Rain
Karen Andrews
Leonard
Alan Schacher
You Don’t Know Me From a Bar of Soap
Yvonne Boag
Pulling Time
Jane Coquillon
Over it
Julie Sol Lee
Pillow Talk
Kenneth Lambert
Relic in Black Particles
Andrew May
The Madness (Musician)
Erik Shahmoradian
Fighter
Olivia Godbee
Vanitas
Kirtika Kain
Stone Idols
Sam Doctor
The will to contain what cannot be contained
Sarah Eddowes
Static
Artwork Delivery for Selected Works
Dates | Friday 15 November 2019 or Saturday 16 November 2019
Time | 10 am – 5 pm
Location | The Leo Kelly Blacktown Art Centre at 78 Flushcombe Rd Blacktown
SOFT PEDAL is a night of electronic and experimental sound work curated by artist George Tillianakis and featuring performances by artists David Haines & Joyce Hinterding, Peter Blamey, Del Lumanta, and Chris Petro.
Performances will experiment with various forms of technology to generate sound and imagery, through diverse and abstract expressions. Our performers will experiment with abstract expressions to create immersive sound and imagery through new technology.
George Tillianakis is a Sydney based multidisciplinary artist, exhibiting primarily as a video performance artist, composer, and musician. George has been active in the arts for 20 years, exhibiting and performing in galleries internationally, most notably in New York City.
Book now! Don’t miss out on this rare opportunity to experience the immersive and transformative work of established electronic and experimental sound artists. Click here to book.
Image: George Tillianakis
Image credit:
George Tillianakis