Smith & Singer

Smith & Singer In the News

Call for entries | Bowness Photography Prize 2022

17 May 2022

We are delighted to again support the William & Winifred Bowness Photography Prize in 2022 through the Smith & Singer People’s Choice Award.

Over the last 16 years, the William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize has emerged as an important annual survey of contemporary photographic practice in Australia and one of the most prestigious prizes in the country. Entries are now open, and MGA invites artists to submit photographic work created over the last year.

The winning work will be awarded $30,000 and acquired into MGA’s nationally significant collection of Australian photographs. The Smith & Singer People’s Choice Award will again be voted by the public with the recipient receiving a generous $5,000.

In 2005 the MGA Foundation was established with the aim of supporting Monash Gallery of Art (MGA) and its significant collection, as well as its unique commitment to photographic art and in 2006 initiated the inaugural Bowness Photography Prize to promote excellence in photography and support contemporary artists working in the medium.

Important Dates

Entries open: Wednesday 11 May 2022
Entries close: 5pm (AEST) Wednesday 29 June 2022
Finalists announced: Thursday 28 July 2022
Exhibition dates: 29 September – 13 November 2022
Award announcement: Thursday 6 October 2022

Start your entry today by visiting: www.mga.org.au/bowness-prize

Image

PAULA MAHONEY
Jump on through (to the other side)  2021
from the series Dis/appear II
pigment ink-jet print
160.0 x 107.0 cm
© Courtesy of the artist
2021 Wai Tang Commissioning Award recipient

Girolamo Nerli - Important Australian Art for Private Sale

12 May 2022

GIROLAMO NERLI

Smith & Singer are honoured to offer Girolamo Nerli's The Red Bluff, Point Ormond (1888) for private sale.

In late 1885, when Girolamo Nerli arrived in Melbourne with fellow Italian painter Ugo Catani, they brought with them sketches by various contemporary artist friends.  Exponents of the Macchiaioli school of plein-air painting in Italy – so-called due to the macchie, or spots of bright colour that characterised their work – these artists further promoted the ideas and Impressionism with its broken brushwork and emphasis on mood and moment that influenced the younger generation of Australian artists.

Nerli’s The Red Bluff, Point Ormond (1888) remains one of the few landscape subjects in oil that the artist produced during his brief yet influential stay in Melbourne.  Other examples included, Beach Scene, Hobson’s Bay (1889, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney), Beach Scene, Sandringham (1889, Art Gallery of New South Wales) and The Beach at Port Melbourne from the Foreshore, St. Kilda (1889, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne).

We are particularly delighted to present Girolamo Nerli’s magnificent The Red Bluff, Point Ormond for Private Sale.  

 

For more information please contact:

Geoffrey Smith
Chairman
+61 (0)418 889 656 
[email protected]

Emily Walker 
Administrator, Art 
+61 (0)3 9508 9900 
[email protected]

Gary Singer
Chief Executive Officer & Director
+61 (0)418 337 788 
[email protected] 

David Mackay  
Gallery Manager   
+61 (0)2 9302 2402 
[email protected]

 
 
Pictured above 

GIROLAMO NERLI 1860-1926    
The Red Bluff, Point Ormond (1888)   
oil on board  
23 x 30.8 cm    
For private sale    

Exhibition Catalogue Announcement – John Kelly

10 May 2022

JOHN KELLY: THE LAZARUS SERIES

The digital catalogue for the upcoming selling exhibition  JOHN KELLY: The Lazarus Series exhibition at Smith & Singer is now available to view online

During the past two and a half decades John Kelly has developed a distinguished reputation in Australia and internationally for his work that combines his unique intellect and humour.  Bristol born, Kelly moved to Australia with his parents in 1965, the year of his birth.  Kelly now resides in West Cork, Ireland and has English, Australian and Irish nationality.  It was during his time in Australia that Kelly developed his affinity with one of his most recognised subjects, William Dobell’s camouflaged cows, created when, during World War II, Dobell was commissioned to make paper-mâché cows with the purpose of confusing enemy aircraft about the locations of Australian airbases. 

This significant exhibition will feature 16 major works by the artist and will be open to the public Monday–Friday, 10 am – 5 pm, 17 May – 10 June 2022 at 14-16 Collins Street, Melbourne.

To enquire about the availability of works in the exhibition please contact our specialists.

Important Australian Art for Private Sale

10 May 2022

JAMES GLEESON

Smith & Singer are honoured to offer James Gleeson's Prometheus Encyphered 1986 for private sale.

James Gleeson remains a colossus within the history and development of Australian art, primarily as an artist, but equally for his enormous contribution to our visual culture in his roles as author, art critic, arts administrator and advisor.  

For almost seven decades Gleeson practiced Surrealism and explored the realms and possibilities of the Surrealist creed, that sought to show that there exists, beyond the obvious and everyday, an alternative reality experienced through dreams, hallucinations, and differing mental states.  Rather than focusing on purely private fantasies, the most significant contributions made by Surrealist artists, including Gleeson, are the visionary and profound statements that comment on the human condition.

We are particularly delighted to present James Gleeson’s magnificent and magisterial Prometheus Encyphered for Private Sale.  

Arthur Boyd for Private Sale

28 April 2022

ARTHUR BOYD

Smith & Singer are delighted to offer Arthur Boyd's Nebuchadnezzar Eating Grass with Lion's Head on Fire (1968) for private sale.

Arthur Boyd’s epic and historical series of paintings on the theme of the banishment and punishment of the proud, cruel, and mercenary Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, were described by Ursula Hoff as ‘mesmerising’ and ‘a tribute to Boyd’s artistic culture, to his awareness of the art that surrounded him both in Australia and in the Old World, and to the heights to which he aspires.’  Although the iconography references the biblical text, Boyd’s compositions diverge to reference the Australian landscape as well as to the then current political anxieties of the Vietnam War and to the psychology of brutal dictators of the twentieth century.  These powerful canvases create an extraordinary impact through their use of agitated brushwork and a diverse, vibrant palette, ranging wildly from intense aggression to more delicate and muted tones.

Nebuchadnezzar Eating Grass with Lion’s Head on Fire remains one of the most dramatic and sumptuous within the comprehensive series and featured on the cover of Boyd’s solo exhibition at Arthur Tooth & Sons in London in 1969 and represents a rare opportunity to acquire a seminal work from one of Australia's most radical voices.  

 

For more information please contact:

Geoffrey Smith
Chairman
+61 (0)418 889 656 
[email protected]

Emily Walker 
Administrator, Art 
+61 (0)3 9508 9900 
[email protected]

Gary Singer
Chief Executive Officer & Director
+61 (0)418 337 788 
[email protected] 

David Mackay  
Gallery Manager   
+61 (0)2 9302 2402 
[email protected]

 
 
Pictured above 

ARTHUR BOYD 1920-1999 
Nebuchadnezzar Eating Grass
with Lion's Head on Fire
 (1968)  
oil on canvas
175 x 183 cm
For private sale 
© Arthur Boyd/Copyright Agency, 2022

Art sales up $30m year on year

21 April 2022

Financial Review  |  Gabriella Coslovich

The Australian auction market has enjoyed one of its strongest-ever starts to a year. Some $41 million worth of art has been sold so far, compared with $14 million in the year-earlier period. 

Frederick McCubbin painting unveiled for first time in 140 years

25 October 2021

The Age /Sydney Morning Herald | Kerrie O'Brien

A rarely seen painting by one of Australia’s pioneering impressionist artists, Frederick McCubbin, will go under the hammer for the first time in 140 years.

The 1884 painting The Letter is one of McCubbin’s earliest contributions to the late 19th-century art movement known as Australian Impressionism and has been long held by his family, known to exist by only a handful of scholars.

The work features McCubbin’s sister Harriet, an artist who modelled for him as well as his contemporary Tom Roberts, reading a letter, apparently deep in thought.

Measuring 45.5cm x 22.6cm, the piece will be auctioned by Smith & Singer in November with an estimated price range of $300,000-$400,000. But the auction house says there’s a chance it will sell for well above that, given the rarity of McCubbin’s work of this era and the degree of interest it is expected to generate.

Margaret Olley painting sells for almost $100,000 in hot Covid market

27 August 2021

The Australian  |  Stephen Lunn

It didn’t take long for Margaret Olley’s Still Life With Fruit and Flowers to find a buyer.

Art dealers Smith & Singer sent a note to those well-heeled members of its mailing list just after 10am on Thursday offering the painting for private sale. By 11.30am it had found a new home.

The buyer negotiated an undisclosed price understood to be just shy of $100,000, not a record for an Olley, but serious money.

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