Shortlisted for an Art Prize

For the past 10 months I’ve been working on a new body of work: cutouts.

I redraw a section of an installation, a silhouette of grouped brush strokes, or the shape of the vinyl from a previous work. This provides the shape for an aluminium panel to be cut. Then I can react to the non-rectangular shape with my brush strokes.

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We packed up the car and took art to Sydney!

You may have already heard about my preparations for taking my work to show in Sydney, and if you did miss it, follow along on my Instagram back a few weeks. Now it’s all over and the dust has settled. I even managed to edit video documentation. More on that later…

One day in early July, we loaded up my little Toyota Corolla with art, bags, snacks, and road trip music/podcasts and started the long drive to Sydney. It is far, far away! I am a bit of a novice to long car trips, so that was an experience. It felt like a real achievement when we finally arrived.

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Studio Time: Preparation for an Exhibition in Sydney!

I set myself a goal for this year.

…to show my work somewhere outside of Victoria. I’m not a huge setter-of-goals, only informal ones. But I put out a few feelers and much to my delight, my proposal to exhibit was accepted by Gaffa in Sydney!

I’ll be showing an installation of vinyl and 6 works on aluminium panel from 6th to 17th July.

If you follow me on Instagram, you may have watched the work unfold. But in case you didn’t catch that, here are some shots (along with a few extra shots) of the work unfolding in the studio.

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Install @ Substation Contemporary Art Prize

Two Exhibitions Two Days

Two art exhibitions opened in two days last week – quite full-on, worse still* they were my exhibitions.

This has made for a super busy time, I shan’t bore you with words like ‘busy’ – let’s get right down to the pics and the stories of how these came to be. *actually it was exciting!

The exhibitions The Substation Contemporary Art Prize at The Substation and Sheen Slip at Alternating Current Art Space opened on 8th and 9th September respectively. Sheen Slip has been in the works for a few months now and I’ve been gradually preparing for it, working on most of the paintings in the show simultaneously. I like to work that way. For that I can partly blame drying time of enamel and partly just liking to multitask in colour.

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Developing Installations for Fast and Slow, Still at The Dirty Dozen

The Dirty Dozen is a space run by Creative Spaces (Melbourne City Council) and used to be known as Platform Art Space – a marvelous underground thoroughfare bedecked in heritage listed pink tiles and signs. It leads from Degraves Street in Melbourne’s city underground to the train platforms of Flinders Street Station. And it was mine, all mine, to do art to.

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Artists to follow on Instagram - Naomi Nicholls

10 Artists You Should Follow on Instagram

Instagram is pure instant gratification;
scroll scroll – great pic – double tap – scroll scroll.

As an artist I love it, love following other artists and seeing what people are making, their process, their workspace; love following design and all sorts of things.  So here’s my gift to you, my list of artists you should totally follow on Instagram. I’m pretty loose with the criteria here; they either use Instagram cleverly, post frequently or have really stunning work, or all three!

Enjoy!

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The Making of Vault for Immerse Exhibition Melbourne


Artwork that sits in public spaces gets me excited. People can feel estranged from art institutions and galleries, feeling it is not for the uninitiated. So this makes everyday places and public spaces a really interesting site to make art for. It might be a wall that’s passed by regularly or the corner of the local library where they study or meander of a Saturday morning.  For this reason, I often look out for opportunities to show work in these public places.

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Breaking Up with the Art Object

Breaking up with the Art Object: How I Decided Canvas was only Part of the story

Donald Judd sure did have some nasty things to say about painting.  Of course, it wasn’t personal, I know – he wrote the essay Specific Objects during the sixties when I wasn’t even a twinkle.  But a painter can become a bit defensive when you say stuff like “the composition must react to the edges [of the canvas] and the rectangle must be unified”!  Judd believed that there are only so many compositions possible on the flat rectangle of a canvas, he preferred the boundless dimensions available with scultpure, Judd’s medium of choice. In short, Judd thought painting was just so done.  I agree that painting on a canvas can feel limiting.  You must obey the rectangleObey!

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Installation goes International: Exhibition in Penang, Malaysia

Installation goes International: Exhibition in Penang, Malaysia

Showing work in an overseas exhibition, now that would be pretty fantastic. I would even settle for oversea instead of overseas to begin with, Tasmania notwithstanding.  It is a Strait after all, not a sea, but I have my sights set on you too Tassie. Friend and art school compadre, Eva Heiky Olga Abbinga curated a group of Australian artists, myself included, in a show in Penang this past month opening September 12. Eva’s goal was to create connections between art communities in Melbourne and Georgetown, Penang and she received some fantastic support through the Australia Council for the Arts and raised money from generous donors through the Australian Cultural Fund. With this in mind I began to consider the theme of the exhibition, colour.

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©2015 Naomi Nicholls Three-in-One Orbital

Lightboxes, a Peephole and Watercolours You Haven’t Seen Before

What’s as challenging as painting really large? That would have to be forcing grand scale ideas into a small box. That’s what I did earlier this year with fellow artists Larissa MacFarlane and Ilona Nelson. The Hobsons Bay City Council’s Orbital space consists of four light boxes and a tiny peephole. Working together with Orbital curator, Heather van Heerwaarden, we put together Three-In-One.

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