Review by Gina Fairley at Arts Hub:
WAYFARING / PAINTING / UNDERTOW
BETT GALLERY, opening Thursday 1.8.24
Good Grief
Friday June 14th - 5:30–11:00pm One night only art exhibition & birthday shenanigans. Food/DJ’s/Art.
Nothing a human heart has loved will be lost (for HG Wells), 2024, acrylic on canvas, 70 x 65 cm
Everything Else, 2024, acrylic on canvas, 165 x 132 cm
They asked me for a one-night stand. How thrilling, I thought:
(a moment of pleasure, vivid connection versus lasting impression,
desire and regret, the immediacy of the present, and the undertow of the past).
Before he died, H.G. Wells wrote, "Nothing a human heart has loved will be lost."
So, I took an old painting and partially erased it.
Then I took an old canvas, painted it black, and added everything else.
Nothing and everything, for one night only.
O R B I T
This Is No Fantasy
Nothing a Human Heart (for H.G. Wells) No. 4, 2023
ＯＲＢＩＴ
18 MAY - 10 JUNE 2023
JOHNATHON WORLD PEACE BUSH | CHRIS BOND | SIMON DEGROOT | BADRA AJI | YHONNIE SCARCE
ALI TAHAYORI | PHUONG NGO | JUAN FORD | JILL ORR | JO PLANK | VINCENT NAMATJIRA | EZZ MONEM
PETRINA HICKS | BENJAMIN AITKEN | JANELLE LOW | ALEXANDRA STANDEN | OLIVER WATTS | NEIL HADDON
_____________
#thisisnofantasy
This Is No Fantasy 2023
When the smoke clears
This Is No Fantasy, 16/3/23 to 6/4/23
‘Entering Macquarie Harbour (the smoke was so thick), 2022, oil, acrylic and lacquer on aluminium panel, 140 cm x 130 cm
Entering Macquarie Harbour (the smoke was so thick)
Finalist in the Hadley’s Art Prize 2022, 23 July – 21 August, Open 10am – 4pm daily, Hadley’s Orient Hotel
Nothing a human heart (for H.G. Wells), 77.5 x 62 cm, acrylic, pen and lacquer on aluminium panel
Sulman Prize 2022, Art Gallery of New South Wales
Neil Haddon
Nothing a human heart has loved (for H.G. Wells)
Oil, acrylic and lacquer on aluminium
The Happy Turning by British writer H.G. Wells was published in 1945, the year before he died. In this short book, perhaps in anticipation of his demise, he writes: “nothing a human heart has loved will ever be lost”.
I first read Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1898) decades ago as a boy in a dusty school room back in England. The introductory pages of this book, set in the leafy green environs of my upbringing, mention Tasmania (where I now live) and the decimation of Aboriginal peoples by invading Europeans.
I understand Wells’ sentiment about the human heart, and I don’t, in equal measure.
Neil Haddon, 2022
We Will Bring Our Own Views (and our own plans), 2018-2021,
oil and digital print on aluminium panels, 180 cm x 240 cm
D i s a p p e a r i n g
Tasmanian Writers, Tasmanian Painters engage with what is lost and what endures
Disappearing
We’ve long had a secret here.
Disappearing : to cease to be seen; vanish from sight; to cease to exist or be known; pass away; end gradually.
In our islands, their past, the land, seas, the movement of air, its peoples, the cadence of life and in the place itself is something unfathomably beautiful. You sense it as much as see it. It’s about connection and time not the here and now. It’s a secret that has been closely held, cherished, sustaining our soul.
Entwined with that secret has been a hope that one day Tasmania would be recognised, acknowledged and able to stand on its own two feet. This has been elusive but now we are told that perhaps it is so close as to be reckoned by the beads on the accountant’s abacus.
Then again, perhaps not. Is the price we are paying a disappearing, a disappearing of the very stuff that sustains us? Or, is it a more complex story, shedding a skin as part of the inexorable march of renewal?
Disappearing.
We are at a unique time in our life on these islands of Tasmania; forced to pause, reflect, revaluate, to consider, to reset, to look again at where we live with new eyes.
Over the last few decades Bett Gallery has explored what it means to live or have lived in this place we now call Tasmania in a series of important exhibitions including Future Perfect, South of No North and six Poets and Painters exhibitions.
It is time to again look deeply into this place.
A group of Tasmanian artists and writers were invited to join curators Carol Bett, Gerard Castles and Pete Hay to explore the idea of what it means to be Tasmanian, our island and who we are and might be as islanders at this moment in our unfolding story.
Exhibition dates: 13 March to 31 March 2021
Join participating writers as they read in the gallery
Saturday 13 March, 2021, 2.30pm - 4pm
$5 entry to be donated to Hobart City Mission to support those facing hardship and homelessness
Entry numbers will be COVID capped
Participating artists and writers in conversation
Wednesday 24 March, 2021, 6pm - 7.30pm
$5 entry to be donated to Hobart City Mission to support those facing hardship and homelessness
Entry numbers will be COVID capped
Bett Gallery thanks:
Heather Rose and Michaye Boulter
Simon Bevilacqua and Tim Burns
Rachel Leary and Helen Wright
Greg Lehman and Brigita Ozolins
James Dryburgh and Richard Wastell
Ben Walter and Tom O’Hern
Danielle Wood and David Keeling
Katherine Johnson and Amanda Davies
Leigh Woolley and Neil Haddon
Carol Patterson Amber Koroluk -Stephenson
Jenny Weber and Matt Coyle
Level 1 / 65 Murray Street
Hobart Tas 7000
T: +61 (0) 3 6231 6511
E: info@bettgallery.com.au
Sawtooth ARI fundraiser auction
I have some work in the auction to raise funds for Sawtooth ARI. Jump online and have a look.
The Fruit (no.8), 2020, acrylic paint on paper.
The Ruins of London, 2019, acrylic, oil, enamel and digital print on aluminium.
Review of 'the shore, the race, the other place'
Many thanks to Phantasm Gallery for this review of ‘the shore, the race, the other place’ at Bett Gallery back in November. https://phantasmgallery.com.au/haddon/
The Painters Guild of Hobart presents Hackable Animals
Neil Haddon, Robert O’Connor, Megan Walch
Good Grief Studios, Hobart
https://www.hackableanimals.net
https://www.facebook.com/events/1522162067939071/
Art Guide Preview - Briony Downes
https://artguide.com.au/the-shore-the-race-the-other-place
the shore, the race, the other place
Neil Haddon at Bett Gallery, Hobart, Tasmania 15.11.19 to 7.12.19
http://www.bettgallery.com.au
Hadleys Art Prize 2019
Our Rocky Shore has been selected for the Hadley’s Art Prize 2019. The painting will be on display from 20.7.19 to 18.8.19
Our Rocky Shore, 2019, oil, enamel, vinyl and digital print on aluminium panel, 130 cm x 122 cm
Sunshine Coast Art Prize
We will bring our own trees has been selected for the Sunshine Coast Art Prize and will be on view at the Caloundra Regional Gallery from 24.7.19 to 15.9.19
We will bring our own trees, 2019, oil, enamel and digital print on aluminium, 122 cm x 150 cm
Mona foma: Art of the body
Three paintings at the Academy Gallery, Launceston in conjunction with Mona Foma, 2019
Neil Haddon, 2018, All that a heart, enamel paint, marker pen, lacquer and digital print on aluminium, each panel: 78 cm x 65 cm
Another Rocky Shore, 2018, oil and enamel paint, vinyl and clear coat on aluminium panel, 120 cm x 110 cm
Tidal 18 at Devonport Regional Gallery
Pleased to be included in this exhibition with some very good fellow Tasmanian artists.
Keep Your Eyes on the Money
Sunshine Coast Art Prize, 2018, Caloundra Regional Gallery
Keep Your Eyes on the Money, 2018, 135 cm x 122 cm, acrylic and digital print on canvas
https://gallery.sunshinecoast.qld.gov.au/Art-Prizes/Sunshine-Coast-Art-Prize/Finalists-2018
2018 Hadley's Art Prize winner, Neil Haddon picture with his winning artwork titled "The Visit". Photo: Jessica King.
Hadley's Art Prize 2018
We are excited to announce the 2018 Hadley's Art Prize has been awarded to Neil Haddon, winning $100,000 for his depiction of British author H.G. Wells cycling through a nominal ‘Tasmanian’ landscape.
Haddon’s winning piece, titled The Visit, is a textural painting on contrasting surfaces, layered with meaning, alluding to Wells’ infamous science fiction novel, The War of the Worlds, as well as colonial artist, John Glover, and French artist, Paul Gauguin, to explore contact history.
Judge Jane Stewart said the judges were united in their decision to award Haddon the Prize.
“There is no doubt that his painting, The Visit, is a complex and accomplished painting that raises many questions about landscape, custodianship and contact history,” Ms Stewart said.
https://mailchi.mp/hadleyshotel/announcing-the-2018-hadleys-art-prize-winner-ojjilydmae?e=20ef753d10
A short interview...
Alan Young interviews Neil Haddon for the Contemporary Art Tasmania newsletter...
https://mailchi.mp/4a80d237c335/members-newsletter-april-2018?e=d4cbe5a35c
and here's a link to the painting Vestigial (40), in the NGV collection:
