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Alison Kubler

@alikubie

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Editor @vaultartmagazine
Principal @renshawandkubler
Board of Trustees @qagoma
Board @australasiandancecollective

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Ahead of the opening at @nationalgalleryaus this week of Rosalie Gascoigne have a look at Issue 55 @vaultartmagazine
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#InsideVault 55 | ROSALIE GASCOIGNE
PLACE ESSENTIAL
Written by Courtney Kidd

“You’ve got to pull off something in your hand that isn’t in the palm of your hand before you started”, said Rosalie Gascoigne (1917–1999), a pioneering figure in Australian contemporary art. Her answer to the question, “How do landscapes influence the lives of those who live in their midst?” comes alive in her major retrospective at the National Gallery of Australia, arguably revealing her to be one of the finest artists of the 20th century.

Gascoigne developed her practice later in life, holding her debut exhibition in 1975 at the age of 57. She quickly rose to national prominence when she went on to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale in 1982... Her ability to reconfigure, at times dismantle and ultimately transform prosaic materials into poetic objects, and to isolate the everyday from its normal context, created a unique art: a kind of readymade.

And while the legacy of Duchamp, who coined the term readymade in 1913, tends to underpin much contemporary art discourse, the practice of this New Zealand-born master, who settled in the remote Mount Stromlo area on the outskirts of Kamberri/Canberra for over 20 years before moving into its suburbs, created a far more profound legacy...

Get your copy of Issue 55 of Vault today and read the full story!

@nationalgalleryaus @bundanontrust

Image credits:
1. ROSALIE GASCOIGNE ‘Monaro’, 1988-89
Art Gallery of Western Australia, Boorloo/Perth, purchased 1989
Courtesy Art Gallery of Western Australia
2. ROSALIE GASCOIGNE ‘Chatting up’, 1994
National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra, gift of Peter Fay 2005
3. ROSALIE GASCOIGNE ‘Metropolis’, 1999
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Gadigal Nura/Sydney, gift of the artist 1999
Image © Art Gallery of New South Wales
4. ROSALIE GASCOIGNE ‘Enamel ware’, 1974
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Gadigal Nura/Sydney, purchased 1976
Image © Art Gallery of New South Wales

© Rosalie Gascoigne/Copyright Agency by @alikubie

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“Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it.” (Andy Warhol) some dear old friends from the National Collection @nationalgalleryaus by @alikubie

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4 days ago

So proud of Leo, who won the David Stephenson Memorial Art Prize with his self portrait. Judge Colin Reaney spoke so beautifully- “Go Art!” 🙏 by @alikubie

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10 days ago

Women's Ball 🖤 taken in The Women's College within the University of Queensland by @alikubie

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11 days ago

Justene Williams’s @justenewilliams Once We Were Mudskippers is open now at @qagoma and it’s like the artist herself writ large - unruly, funny, strange, alive, joyful and much more. 🦄🦄🦄. Spanning 20 years of work, alongside a wealth of new pieces, the exhibition moves between video, sculpture, sound and installation, bringing together the many threads of her expansive practice.

Like the mudskipper, her work seems to exist between worlds: between the physical and virtual, beauty and grotesque, art history and contemporary life, ritual and the everyday.

I particularly loved the costumes from her imagining of the Russian Futurists Victory over the Sun, an opera that was part revolutionary manifesto, part proto-science-fiction saga, populated by time-travelling revolutionaries. The set and costume designs were created by Ukrainian-born artist Kazimir Malevich and included an early iteration of his now-iconic Black Square (1915), which she references.

There’s this great kind of DIY sensibility – there are a lot of synergies with the Henson show at QAGOMA, the stitching, sewing, suspension of disbelief. Plus humour alongside questions about our bodies, our ambitions, consumer culture, mortality and how we make sense of the strange world we inhabit. by @alikubie

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15 days ago

I am so behind with this post, as per usual, but I have thought about this exhibition so many times since I saw it. You only have until Sunday to see this sensational show, which is really beautiful, funny, melancholy and absurd.

I spoke with the Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson about Mercy, his first major exhibition in Australia at the NGV, and about painting, film, Rococo, music, repetition and why humour might be one of the best ways of dealing with difficult times. In particular he spoke about his childhood love for the movie Amadeus, which I also loved, and we shared our love of Fragonard who was sort of on the nose when I was studying art history.

“I really liked working with duration because it just takes the narrative out of things,” Kjartansson told me. “And things just become painterly or sculptural with repetition.”

He also reminded me that “nothing is beautiful unless it’s serious” — although, as he says, “you need humour to cope.”

It is a very good philosophy for both art and life.
Ragnar Kjartansson: Mercy is at NGV International until 4 October 2026.

My interview with him is online at VAULT, but go see the show! @ngvmelbourne by @alikubie

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20 days ago

OZ 🏛️ by @alikubie

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I’m so thrilled to have been involved with curating the fashion component of this exhibition @nationalgalleryaus opening in December. I’ve been delving into the Mugler and Moschino and Jeremy Scott archives and let’s just say the pieces that are coming are ICONIC. Who’s coming to Canberra? 🚗🚘🚙🏁🏎️ by @alikubie

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There are only a few weeks left to see Arthur Boyd’s Tapestries at the National Gallery of Australia @nationalgalleryaus a presentation of the complete cycle of 20 monumental tapestries depicting Boyd’s deeply personal retelling of the life of St Francis of Assisi. It’s a truly beautiful show.

Commissioned by Boyd from the Manufactura de Tapeçarias de Portalegre in Portugal and acquired by the National Gallery in 1975, the series is an extraordinary example of artistic collaboration and translation across media.

Each tapestry measures approximately 2.5 by 3.4 metres and contains between four and 8.5 million stitches, transforming Boyd’s source images into works more than 20 times their original scale.

It’s particularly fascinating to see the tapestries alongside the lithographs, pastels and drawings from which they evolved. It reveals something of Boyd’s intensely experimental practice, and the distance, both physical and conceptual, between an image conceived by an artist and one painstakingly realised through the labour of another medium.

Boyd’s engagement with St Francis was not simply religious, but part of his broader preoccupation with nature, humanity, spirituality, violence and redemption. These themes recur throughout his work, and here they are given an extraordinary material and monumental form.

It’s spectacular to encounter all 20 tapestries together for the first time. A remarkable piece of Australian art history, and an extraordinary testament to the possibilities of collaboration, craft and translation. Beautiful curating Adam Lindsay and Elspeth Pitt x by @alikubie

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a month ago

There’s so much to love about Make Believe Magic: The Worlds of the Jim Henson Company @qagoma and I’ll come back to that later but one of my favourite inclusions is the runway film @jeremyscott commissioned for his @moschino Spring/Summer 2021 collection. Scott transformed the traditional fashion show into a miniature theatre, creating marionette versions of the models and sending them down a tiny runway in exquisitely detailed couture Moschino looks. The production was made in collaboration with Jim Henson’s Creature Shop @jimhensonscreatureshop bringing together the worlds of fashion, puppetry, costume and performance.

Even the front row was recreated in miniature, complete with tiny fashion-world personalities.

At a time when the fashion industry had been forced into isolation and the conventional runway had become impossible, Scott created his own tiny fashion universe.

The extraordinary puppetry and hand-crafted costumes were a reminder of the labour and imagination behind both fashion and theatre. Scott has always understood fashion as spectacle, but here he took that idea literally: couture, caricature, performance and puppetry all collided.

Don’t miss it on your way to be terrified by The Dark Crystal. by @alikubie

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✨Special event 📕
Celebrate the art of art books and uncover how these unique time capsules champion art and artists, help us make sense of a world beyond gallery walls and, in the process, teach us about ourselves. Featuring the National Gallery of Australia’s Director, Nick Mitzevich and Head of Australian Art, Dr Deborah Hart. Hosted by Alison Kubler.

The event is presented in partnership with Canberra Writers Festival 2026.

At the Gallery
Sat 17 Oct 2026, 1pm
James Fairfax Theatre
Bookings link in bio by @alikubie

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a month ago

NINETEEN 🎈Swipe to see @olympiazavros being iconic 🥁 by @alikubie

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