A community art group that has never had a permanent home, but has worked for decades to shape and confront Canberra’s contemporary art scene, is staging its 60th anniversary art exhibition from 17 to 27 April.
Andrew Sayers, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, will officially open the Canberra Art Workshop 60th Anniversary Members’ Exhibition at 6.30pm on Thursday 17 April in the M16 Artspace, 16 Mildura Street – near the Fyshwick Markets. The show will run from 12 to 5pm Wednesdays to Sundays.
The 2008 winners of the exhibition’s prizes will join august company as, in 1957, Clifton Pugh’s painting Before Summer won the 2nd Canberra Art Club Prize – the forerunner of the Canberra Art Workshop 60th Anniversary Exhibition of Members’ Work.
Canberra Art Workshop (CAW) is a lively, self-funded, not-for-profit community art organisation with about 250 members that has fundamentally shaped Canberra’s contemporary art scene since it was formed by local artists in 1948.
Over the years, CAW, which originally was called the Canberra Art Club, brought to Canberra as its teachers and exhibitors many icons of Australia’s art world including John Coburn, Clifton Pugh, John Brack, Margo Lewers, Alistair Morrison, Joshua Smith and Lloyd Rees.
The club has never had a permanent home, moving from one temporary studio to the next throughout its history – often only a step ahead of the bulldozers. In the 1950s the club created the grandly-named Riverside Gallery – in disused commonwealth hostel huts in the Kingston-Barton area.
The club’s fibro huts became an art hub for Canberra society and the diplomatic corps. In one of its exhibitions, the club hung 18 paintings from the prestigious Blake Prize, including now famous works by Donald Friend, Eric Smith, and Lawrence Daws.
The club was active in making representations for a National Art Gallery, appearing before the Senate Select Committee on the Development of Canberra in 1955. (The Australian National Gallery finally opened nearly 30 years later).
The club also pushed for creation of the city’s school of art. Eventually, the Canberra Art Club’s invited artists went on to form the nucleus of the Canberra School of Art.
Today, the workshop welcomes new members of all ages to join its day- and night-time work groups, which include experimental painting, portraiture, life drawing, printmaking and plein air painting days held in the mountains, farms and scenic locations around Canberra.
Phone Cynthia Watsford on 6286 3652 to inquire about membership and available work group spots.
