CONTEMPORARY ART STOCKROOM Gina Kalabishis

Upcoming Exhibitions

The Flying Gardeners

*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.

‘Bundanon Floor to Sky’ Gina Kalabishis exquisitely highlights the human connection to the landscape through her bold, immersive artworks that explore the Australian bushland with a visual poetry and scientific eroticism. Her anthropomorphism of the landscape profoundly draws us back into the natural world with deep desire and intrigue. The traces of technological glitches, the merging of seasons and the distortion of scale combine to present a dreamlike timelessness and beautiful warping of reality. Her emotive realism juxtaposes against our growing disconnect and blindness to the ecotopia of nature.'
Excerpt of essay by Dr Ryan Jefferies 2018

The crisp, sharp detail of the botanical specimens contrasts with the out of focus landscapes behind. Both are subjects we commonly associate with sunlight—certainly within the Australian artistic tradition (think only of Streeton’s ‘Golden Summers’)—but here become otherworldly and ethereal. These are potent hearths for the imagination to flare; they double as memento mori for the natural environment, under threat from the agencies of man, and serve as a warning of what we stand to lose. Kalabishis is at once the funnel for the past traditions of art to coalesce, and a prophet of its demise. The inverted landscapes and suspended plants give rise to a sensation of imminent collapse.
Excerpt of essay by Simon Gregg, Curator, Gippsland Art Gallery 2015

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.

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Media Highlights

Wake Me Up Before You Go No.2 2020
charcoal and pastel on paper
56cm x 37cm unframed
$550 AUD

There Is Always Hope 2020
oil on canvas
38cm x 38cm
$2,000 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
76cm x 56cm , unframed
$2,500 AUD

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

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

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

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

Claim or Reclaim -Listening Wind (after Talking Heads) 2018
oil on linen
50cm x 35cm
$2,900 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

Madam Butterfly (after Malcolm McLaren) 2019
oil on linen
153cm x 122cm
SELECTED FOR JOHN LESLIE ART PRIZE 2020
$10,500 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
Finalist ROI Artprize
$10,500 AUD

Passing Pulpit Rock Distant Sky (after Nick Cave & Else Torp) 2017
oil on linen
86cm x 124cm
Winner EMSLA 2017
$7,500 AUD

One Fine Morning (after Bill Callahan) 2019
oil on canvas
37cm x 62cm framed
$2,600 AUD

Silence in a Painting (after Marcel Marceau) 2019
oil on linen
52cm x 42cm framed
$2,500 AUD

Arete no2 2016
oil on linen
152cm x 87cm
$6,500 AUD

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

Adventure Bay, Bruny Island (study) 2019
oil on linen
30cm x 40cm
IN ARTIST'S STUDIO
$2,000 AUD

A Little Study of Silence 2019
oil on panel
25cm x 20cm
$550 AUD