CONTEMPORARY ART STOCKROOM Gina Kalabishis

*News Update*
Gina Kalabishis recently undertook an Artist-in-Residence at Umbi Gumbi, a 100-acre property nestled in spotted gum forest outside the township of Bermagui in NSW.

Gina Kalabishis’ practice pays direct homage to the beauty of Australia’s native flora and fauna. Finding inspiration in both her regular walks through the unruly, thick bushland of our National Parks, as well as from her everyday encounters with unassuming plants and animals within her local Merri Creek backyard in Melbourne, Kalabishis’ delicate paintings and drawings lovely replicate the earthy, wondrous textures of nature. Utalising a visual language that mixes still life and landscape techniques with intentionally dreamlike, surreal distortions, her images construct intimate narratives in which the human, emotive experience becomes enmeshed within the beauty of the natural environment.

I recently visited Gina's studio and stood in front of dozens of her paintings and drawings. I found myself wanting to stroke the bats' graphite fur, the pollen-filled fuzz of the bees' hind legs. I want to look at the gang gang with as much intensity as he looked at me.

Gina's birds and bats have a frank gaze and those of us who love cockatoos (despite their naughtiness), and the grey-headed flying foxes of Yarra Bend park know the truth of this; that these birds and bats are curious, chatty and playful. However, Gina also captures their sleepy private faces, their vulnerability. Bats (like birds, like butterflies) are being squeezed into diminishing habitats. Bats' leathery wings give them grief on hot days and flying fox colonies have been moving further and further south in a vain attempt to avoid heat waves. In these COVID times the flying fox has become associated with disease and is persecuted as a result.

Excerpt of essay by Sophie Cunningham, 2021

Gina Kalabishis’ work stares in stark wonder at the excess of nature [...T]he strict discipline of Japanese flower arrangement, and the extreme formalism of western still life, hint [...] at the pathology of these forms without denying their rapturous suppleness and fecundity. There is the clinician’s eye operating too, the perception of a scientific illustrator seeking art in description. She creates a visual field which is both very specific and filled with a painful joy of the moment, as if apprehension and understanding coincided sublimely[...] By these wires we hang in our history in nature, and in these ways Gina Kalabishis creates an art of the witness looking for beauty in his or her passing. Gina Kalabishis delicately interlaces the structures of the human body, as represented by medical illustrations, and the extreme formalism of the still life. Kalabishis cleverly hints at the pathology of both kinds of formalism without denying their beauty and seductive qualities.
Dr. Ron Southern, Historian

Gina Kalabishis holds both a Bachelor of Fine Art (Painting) and a Post Graduate Diploma of Visual Arts from the Victorian College of the Arts. She has exhibited extensively and has been the recipient of a number of prestigious awards including the Eutick Memorial Still Life Award (2017), the People’s Choice Award for the Bayside Acquisitive Art Prize (2017), the People’s Choice Award for the Bruny Island Art Prize (2016) and was the winner of the Rick Amor Drawing Prize (2014). Most recently she has been a finalist in the John Leslie Portrait Prize (2020, 2018), the ROI Art Prize (2019), the Kedumba Drawing Award (2016), the Eutick Still Life Award (2014), and the Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing (2014).

In 2019 Gina Kalabishis exhibited at Wayne State University, Detroit in THIS LAND IS…, a group exhibition addressing current and future environmental concerns. In 2017 she exhibited in the group exhibition Verdant Garden at Bundoora Homestead Art Centre and was also included in a group exhibition Romancing the Skull at the Art Gallery of Ballarat in the same year.

Her work has been featured in the award winning publication NATIVE: Art and Design with Australian Plants, written by Kate Herd and Jela Ivankovic-Waters (published by Thames & Hudson). In 2020 she was awarded a residency at NG Art Creative Residency Eygalières, Provence, Southern France and in 2021 undertook an Artist in Residence at Umbi Gumbi in Cuttagee, NSW. In both 2016 and 2017 Kalabishis was Artist Residence at the Bundanon Trust Studios, Illaroo NSW.

Her work is represented in major collections including the National Gallery of Australia and Gippsland Art Gallery, Sale. She has featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Australia, Spain, Asia and America.

DOWNLOAD BIO / CV (PDF)

Media Highlights

The Flying Gardeners 2021
ink and watercolour on paper, unframed
142cm x 106cm
$7,500 AUD

We are the same 2021
watercolour, ink and gouache on paper, unframed
124cm x 91cm
$5,500 AUD

I just can't get enough (after Depeche Mode) 2021
ink, watercolour and pastel on paper, unframed
123cm x 91cm
$5,500 AUD

See how they Love! If I am reborn, let me be a butterfly in the field (after Issa-Haiku) 2021
ink and watercolour on paper, unframed
124cm x 91cm
$5,500 AUD

The Pest Controllers 2021
ink and watercolour on paper, unframed
123cm x 91cm
$5,500 AUD

Pictures of you (after The Cure) 2021
ink and watercolour on paper, unframed
124cm x 91cm
$5,500 AUD

There Is Always Hope 2020
oil on canvas
38cm x 38cm
$2,000 AUD

Melbourne's Flying Fox No. 4 2021
ink and gouache on paper, unframed
104cm x 76cm
$4,000 AUD

The Magical Elixir 2021
ink and gouache on paper, unframed
104cm x 76cm
$4,000 AUD

Melbourne's Flying Fox No. 3 2021
ink and gouache on paper, unframed
76cm x 56cm
$2,500 AUD

You are my sunshine (after Elizabeth Mitchell) 2021
graphite and ink on Blue Lake paper, unframed
50cm x 39cm
$950 AUD

Melbourne's Flying Fox No. 2 2021
graphite and charcoal on paper, unframed
76cm x 56cm
$2,500 AUD

Melbourne's Flying Fox No. 1 2021
graphite and charcoal on paper, unframed
70cm x 50cm
$2,500 AUD

She is a Rainbow (after The Rolling Stones) 2021
ink and watercolour on Blue Lake paper, unframed
76cm x 56cm
$2,500 AUD

Love's many forms 2021
ink and gouache on paper, unframed
76cm x 56cm
$2,500 AUD

Ducking 2020
Ink and gouache on watercolour paper, unframed
69cm x 50cm
$2,400 AUD

The Times They are a Changin' (after Bob Dylan) 2020
ink & gouache on watercolour paper, unframed
75cm x 56cm
$950 AUD

Soeur Francaise no.2 (French Sister) 2020
Ink and gouache on Saunders Waterford watercolour paper 300gsm, unframed
75cm x 56cm
$2,500 AUD

Beyond the Sea No.3 2020
ink & gouache on watercolour paper, unframed
75cm x 56cm
$950 AUD

Happy Tears No.1 2020
oil on linen
61cm x 71cm
$3,800 AUD

Happy Tears No.2 2020
ink and gouache on watercolour paper, unframed
76cm x 56cm
$2,500 AUD

Madam Butterfly (after Malcolm McLaren) 2019
oil on linen
153cm x 122cm In artist's studio
$10,500 AUD

Bundanon Floor to Sky - You are always part of me now (after Van Morrison) 2018
oil on linen
215cm x 366cm (triptych)
IN ARTIST'S STUDIO
$36,000 AUD

Passing Pulpit Rock Distant Sky (after Nick Cave & Else Torp) 2017
oil on linen
86cm x 124cm In Artist's studio
$7,500 AUD

Bundanon anew - One more night (After Michael Kiwanuka) 2018
oil on linen
198cm x 152cm
IN ARTIST'S STUDIO
$12,500 AUD

Romeo & Juliet (after Dire Straits) 2018
oil on linen
153cm x 122cm In Artist's studio
$10,500 AUD

Breath in Blue Light 2017
oil on linen
152cm x 91cm
IN ARTISTS STUDIO
$6,500 AUD

Arete no2 2016
oil on linen
152cm x 87cm In artist's studio
$6,500 AUD