CONTEMPORARY ART STOCKROOM Gina Kalabishis

Gina Kalabishis has been announced as a Finalist in Gippsland Art Gallery's 2018 John Leslie Art Prize

Melbourne based painter Gina Kalabishis explores the feeling of love in all its permutations. Utilising the motifs and mythology of Australia’s native flora, and creating compositions inspired by ikebana arrangements, she constructs intimate interior/landscape narratives in which the human experience becomes enmeshed with the beauty of nature.

‘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

Kalabishis' career to date has seen her take out the title of Winner for 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 the Rick Amor Drawing Prize (2014). She has been a finalist in the John Leslie Portrait Prize (2018), Kedumba Drawing Award (2016), the Eutick Still Life Award (2014), and the Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing (2014). She exhibited in the group exhibition Verdant Garden at Bundoora Homestead Art Centre in 2017 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 both 2016 and 2017 Kalabishis was Artist Residence at the Bundanon Trust Studios, Illaroo NSW.

Kalabishis holds a Post Graduate Diploma of Visual Arts, Bachelor of Fine Art (Painting) from the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne University and an Advanced Diploma of Arts (Electronic Design and Interactive Multimedia) from Victoria University. 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.

CATALOGUE ESSAYS
Bundanon Floor to Sky, by Dr Ryan Jefferies 2018
You & Me, by Melanie Caple 2016
Heartland, by Simon Gregg 2015

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Past Exhibitions

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The Littlest Birds are Listening to You (after the Be Good Tanyas) 2018
oil on linen
214cm x 152cm Shortlisted for John Leslie Art Prize 2018
$14,000 AUD

Romeo & Juliet (after Dire Straits) 2018
oil on linen
153cm x 122cm
$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

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

Storm 2016
oil on linen
125cm x 72cm (in artist's studio)
$5,900 AUD

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

The Littlest Birds are Listening to You (after the Be Good Tanyas) 2018
Canson rag photo 310gsm fine art print
59cm x 42cm limited edition of 12. 8 remaining.
$500 AUD

Bundanon anew - One more night (after Michael Kiwanuka) study 2018
charcoal on paper
77cm x 70cm unframed
$500 AUD