John Wolseley The Overburden Dump, Hazelwood Power Station 1979 oil on board 14.7 x 60.9 cm
John Wolseley: The Quiet Conservationist
2 December 2023 – 18 February 2024
Gippsland Art Gallery
70 Foster Street Sale VIC
This exhibition focusses on those works created in the four years that John Wolseley was living and working in the region (1976–1979) following his emigration to Australia in 1976 to join the teaching staff of the Gippsland Institute of Advanced Education (GIAE) in Churchill.
An unconventional artist in many respects, Wolseley shuns traditional approaches to depicting landscape. He engages instead in an organic visual dialogue with a location, which takes into account its history, geology, topography, flora and fauna. The viewer is treated to an engaging narrative of diary notes, sketches, watercolour studies and tracings—often combined into a single artwork.
Curated by Dr Tony Hanning (who himself graduated from the GIAE in 1972 and went on to become Director of the Latrobe Regional Gallery, Morwell, from 1972 to 1982), John Wolseley: The Quiet Conservationist surveys Wolseley’s pioneering art through the lens of his unique approach to conservation themes, which are often embedded within his sprawling autobiographical work.
The exhibition presents an affectionate and intimate portrait of a special period in the story of the region’s art, and places works created by Wolseley during his Gippsland period within the greater context of his environmental conservationism.
Individual works have been drawn from state and national collections, alongside other regional and private collections and Gippsland Art Gallery’s own permanent collection, which has recently been bolstered by the generous donation of nine works by Wolseley through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program. For further information visit the Gippsland Art Gallery website here
To view a selection of available John Wolseley works from Australian Galleries, including the beautiful etchings Amen to the Australian coastline I & II (above), pop in to our Stock Rooms in Melbourne, or visit John Wolseley’s artist page at our website
Image: John Wolseley Amen to the Australian coastline I & II 1980 etching edition 30 37 x 42 cm
John Wolseley The life of inland waters – Durabudboi river (detail) 2015 – 2018
watercolour, graphite and woodcut on paper
Essays on Earth is a collaboration between multidisciplinary artist Brodie Ellis, painter and printmaker John Wolseley and poet Paul Kane, uniting the work of three leading artists of the Bendigo region.
Across three gallery spaces, Ellis and Wolseley’s focused observations of the natural world, expressed through photography, sculpture, painting and moving image, are arranged in dialogue with the elemental themes and poetic reflections of Kane’s recent series of ‘verse essays’, titled Earth, Air, Water, Fire (2022).
Grounded in a deep ecological awareness, Essays on Earth conjures complex systems of nature and their interconnectedness with human experience, inspiring wonder and appreciation for the delicate beauty and mysteries of the natural world from the minuscule to the vast.
Essays on Earth
Bendigo Art Gallery
42 View Street Bendigo
Current until 14 Jan 2024
Image above: Sue Anderson Swift 2022 multi coloured lithograph edition 12, 59 x 42cm unframed
The Victorian Forest Alliance recently held a fundraising art auction, ‘Art for Forests’, to raise funds for forest protection.
Established in 2021, the Victorian Forest Alliance brings together more than 38 grassroots organisations that are actively protecting native forests across Victoria.
Artists Sue Anderson, Petrus Spronk, Thornton Walker and John Wolseley each donated a work to the cause.
This year, Art for Forests raised close to $30,ooo.
John Wolseley Australasian Grebes on the the Witjibar River with Lacustrine Insects 2018-2022 etching and watercolour edition of 15 58 x 45 cm unframed
John Wolseley The life of inland waters – Durabudboi river (detail) 2015 – 18 watercolour, graphite and woodcut on paper
Essays on Earth Tales from the field: A talk by John Wolseley
Visit Bendigo Art Gallery for a performative talk by artist John Wolseley, presented in conjunction with a collaborative exhibition by John Wolseley, multidisciplinary artist Brodie Ellis and poet Paul Kane AM.
Learn about Wolseley’s working processes and the various ecosystems that inspire his artworks. Discover more about his travels across Australia and contemplate the distinct role landscapes have played in shaping his practice throughout the duration of his decades long career.
11am – 12pm Saturday 23 September
La Trobe Art Institute 121 View Street Bendigo
Members $10 | General public $15
Book tickets here
Above: John Wolseley The Language of Lizards (detail) 2007-2008 charcoal, graphite and watercolour on paper. Courtesy of Bendigo Art Gallery. Photography: Leon Schoots
Essays on Earth Exhibition – John Wolseley, Brodie Ellis and Paul Kane
Essays on Earth is a collaboration between multidisciplinary artist Brodie Ellis, painter and printmaker John Wolseley and poet Paul Kane, uniting the work of three leading artists of the Bendigo region.
Across three gallery spaces, Ellis and Wolseley’s focused observations of the natural world, expressed through photography, sculpture, painting and moving image, are arranged in dialogue with the elemental themes and poetic reflections of Kane’s recent series of ‘verse essays’, titled Earth, Air, Water, Fire (2022).
Ellis’ sculptural field studies and digitally hand-coloured experiments in botanical and mineral microscopy focus on local ecologies, magnifying the strange beauty of natural forms, including seed pods, and cross-sections of rocks and plants. In contrasting scale, Wolseley’s nature paintings and woodcut prints, populated with plants and animals, carbon traces and geological rubbings, capture the pulse of vibrant and sprawling ecosystems in diverse landscapes across Australia. Employing a combination of scientific processes and artistic exploration, each artist immerses themselves in the landscape, engaging directly with the features and materials that embody the energies and stories of their chosen sites.
At the heart of the exhibition is an expansive video installation inviting deep listening and reflection. Fusing poetry and image, Ellis’ experimental microscopy and macro photography of Wolseley’s paintings unfold across the gallery in a meditative flow, united by the resonant tones of Paul Kane reciting his elemental poem. Grounded in a deep ecological awareness, Essays on Earth conjures complex systems of nature and their interconnectedness with human experience, inspiring wonder and appreciation for the delicate beauty and mysteries of the natural world from the minuscule to the vast.
Essays on Earth
Bendigo Art Gallery
42 View Street Bendigo
9 September 2023 – 14 Jan 2024
L – R: John Wolseley, Brodie Ellis and Paul Kane
Essays on Earth installation image.
John Wolseley presents a collaborative multichannel video installation, Essays on Earth, with artist Brodie Ellis and poet Paul Kane, to be exhibited at the 2023 Castlemaine State Festival.
“The Goods Shed plays host to this multichannel video installation, which slowly unravels around the internal walls like a Japanese scroll.
“Essays on Earth is built around Paul Kane’s sonorous reading of his epic poem on the themes of earth, water, fire and air. The unfolding images use macro photography of paintings by John Wolseley filled with pond life, birds, carbon traces and geological rubbings.
“This is the perfect match for the experimental microscopy of Brodie Ellis, whose work investigates the ethics of how our limited natural resources are being used.”
Essays on Earth: Brodie Ellis, Paul Kane & John Wolseley
2023 Castlemaine State Festival
Castlemaine Goods Shed, 21 Kennedy Street, Castlemaine Vic 3450
Various dates & times between 1 – 9 April 2023.
Exhibition Opening: Saturday, 1 April 2-4pm
Preeminent landscape painter and printmaker John Wolseley has been interviewed in his studio by Elli Walsh and published in Artist Profile Issue 61.
“There is something decidedly circulatory about his work – respiratory, even – with each ventifact breathed in and out by the land, riding the ripples of its heartbeat.”
For Artist Profile 61, Principal Writer Elli Walsh spoke with the inimitable John Wolseley ahead of solo exhibitions with Australian Galleries, Melbourne, and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney. In her essay, Walsh delves into Wolseley’s collaborations – both with other artists, including Mulkun Wirrpanda, and with nature itself – his childhood and flight from England in 1976, and his extensive library of scientific, philosophical, and poetic texts.
You can find Walsh’s article in Artist Profile 61 in bookstores, newsagents, gallery shops, and art supply stores – or order it for delivery via this link.
Australian Galleries is thrilled to announce John Wolseley’s forthcoming solo exhibition in Melbourne
22 November – 10 December 2022.
Please email enquiries@australiangalleries.com.au for further information.
Over the last three years John Wolseley has been following the water courses of the Wimmera in Victoria – the Banyena/Richardson and the Kurakibiyal/Avon rivers.
He has moved between the ephemeral pools – painting them as he goes – often bivouacking overnight, He has carried etching plates in his rucsac on which he has inscribed birds fish and water insects. On several of these copper plates he had already drawn various insects and plants as he was documenting the ‘chain of pond systems’ on Bibberinga farm in the Riverina. He was then making work for the Earth Canvas show celebrating regenerative farming which will end its tour of regional galleries at the Museum of Australia in August 2022.
John says that his interest in aquatic insects and especially Mayflies can be traced back even further to his teenage years and his obsession with fly fishing. Hence the names of the insects one can see in these etchings – Pale Morning Duns, Blue winged Olives and Green Drakes – reflect the times he spent as a boy tying those imitation flies as he followed the watercourses and chalk streams of the West Country in England.
