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OPENING: Dobell Drawing Prize #23 // Laura Baker ‘Corrugated Town’
September 1 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Bathurst Regional Art Gallery (BRAG) is excited to present the Dobell Drawing Prize #23, a National Art School Touring Exhibition, and Laura Baker’s Corrugated Town.
Join us for a night of live art, music, drinks, canapes, and more!
The Dobell Drawing Prize is Australia’s leading prize for drawing, an unparalleled celebration of technique, innovation, and expanded approaches to drawing by acclaimed and emerging drawing practitioners. The biennial prize began 30 years ago at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1993 as the Dobell Prize for Drawing and is now presented by the National Art School in partnership with the Sir William Dobell Art Foundation.
The Dobell Drawing Prize #23 touring exhibition showcases over 45 finalist artworks that respond to the Prize’s fundamental question: what is drawing? The answers are compelling, challenging, and exhilarating, in an astonishing array of mediums and materials, from traditional pencil and graphite on paper to salt, staples and rust; from resin, fibreglass, enamel and wood to intricate three-dimensional wire objects; bodily video performance to sculptural forms built with tea bags and bamboo. The exhibition is a vital tribute to the human ingenuity and imagination that arises from the simple act of making a mark and represents a singular gauge for the breadth and dynamism of current drawing practices in Australia.
+ Laura Baker’s Corrugated Town opens in our Foyer Exhibition Space
Laura Baker is an Australian visual artist working in the medium of paper cutting.
Laura was born in the Central West region of NSW and completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the College of Fine Arts (now UNSW Art & Design). Laura spent several years living in Sydney and Melbourne whilst working in the independent book industry, before completing post-graduate studies in Arts & Cultural Management. She now lives in childhood hometown of Blayney NSW.
Starting with unmarked paper, Laura uses surgical cuts to explore the qualities, detail, and shape of the Australian landscape. Forms appear from the negative space as images are ‘drawn’ with the blade. A tension exists between the pull of metal through paper and the delicate strands left behind. This reflective process both imitates the larger, devastating cuts by human hand to the environment, and restores a humble product of such exploitation, the piece of paper, back to a remnant of what once was. The final pieces are as much as about the paper imagery, as the emptiness and the faint shadows cast beyond the work.
Image: Dobell Drawing Prize #23 Opening at National Art School, artworks by Iluwanti Ken (back left) and Joanna Gambotto (front right). Photo: Peter Morgan.
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