Image:
Clarice BECKETT
Spring morning 1925
oil on canvas laid down on composition board
55.3 x 48.7 cm (canvas); 70.7 x 64.5 cm (frame)
BenaIla Art Gallery Collection
Ledger Gift, 1988
1988.04
Monday 1 August, 10-11AM
Presenter: Jason Smith, Director & CEO, Geelong Gallery
Coinciding with Benalla Art Gallery’s display of Clarice Beckett’s Spring morning within The Ledger Collection, join Jason Smith on the first Monday in August as he explores the artist’s life and practice.
Beckett received little recognition during her lifetime. However, nearly forty year after her death, there was renewed focus on her work when around 2,000 paintings were discovered in an open-sided shed near Benalla. Many works were in such a state of disrepair that they could not be salvaged. Those that were able to be identified and restored helped piece together the story of one of Australia’s most important landscape artists.
Clarice Beckett is currently the subject of research at Geelong Gallery, where a major exhibition of her work titled Atmosphere will be presented from April 2023. Smith explains the exhibition will “encompass Beckett’s singular modernist painting of the fleeting effects of atmosphere, as she saw and felt them at the water’s edge, on the street and in the landscape.”
Jason Smith Bio:
Jason Smith has been the Director & CEO of Geelong Gallery since April 2016. He was curator of the survey Fred Williams in You Yangs and he was the initiating curator and member of the international curatorial team for the acclaimed touring exhibition Making Modernism: O’Keeffe, Preston & Cossington Smith. He was previously Curatorial Manager of Australian Art at the Queensland Art Gallery / Gallery of Modern Art; Director & CEO of Heide Museum of Modern Art; Director of Monash Gallery of Art; and Curator of Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Victoria. Since 1995 he has individually and collaboratively curated over 50 solo, group and thematic exhibitions including major surveys of the works of Howard Arkley, Peter Booth, Louise Bourgeois, Gwyn Hanssen Pigott, Stephen Benwell and Kathy Temin. He has written on the works of more than 150 artists for a range of publications.
Registration essential: T 03 5760 2619 or gallery@benalla.vic.gov.au
Cost: $2
