WOMEN IN ABSTRACTION
ANZ Private Gallery, Melbourne VIC.
September 2 – October 28, 2022
Women in Abstraction presents work by contemporary female artists working across the various fields of abstraction. Featuring work by Australian and New Zealand artists, the exhibition spotlights the remarkable contributions of contemporary female abstractionists to antipodean art history – and, indeed, art history at large.
Artists: Angela Brennan, Eleanor Louise Butt, Leslie Dumbrell, Emma Coulter, Lara Merett, Judy Millar, Nuha Saad, Antonia Sellbach, Noël Skrzypczak, Wilma Tabacco, Kate Tucker and Rebecca Wallis
Curated by Camille Klose for James Makin Advisory
EXHIBITION ESSAY
Women in Abstraction (pdf)
By Laura Kirkham
Artwork details: Razzle Dazzle Chroma, 2022, Acrylic on wood, 126 x 38 x 30 cm
FUTURE UNIVERSE
Velvet Lobster Gallery, Sydney NSW
October 14 to November 1, 2025
Future Universe brings together works by Daniel Hollier, Suzie Idiens, Nuha Saad and Helen Smith, to explore what the future might look like or at least how it might feel. There are no flying cars here, but there is a lot of form, colour, reflection, and abstraction. The future, as this show suggests, might be less about science fiction and more about shifting perception, playful structure, and quiet transformation. (Michelle Chanique) More
Artists: Daniel Hollier, Suzie Idiens, Nuha Saad and Helen Smith
Curator: Michelle Chanique
ROUND
Wollongong Art Gallery, NSW
June 30 – September 17, 2023
Round is an artist-led exhibition by mid-career artists whose practices include painting, sculpture, construction, installation and video, incorporating diverse media, materials and colour. The artists’ work examines ‘roundness’—exploring interpretations of circularity, curvature, bending— through exploration of shape, space and colour. Round highlights the problems, questions and answers of individual art practice, whilst collectively reflecting broader themes and subjects of popular culture, current affairs and global politics.
Artists: Andrew Christofides, Richard Dunn, Lynne Eastaway, Daniel Hollier, Pollyxenia Joannou, Lisa Jones, Tom Loveday, Hilarie Mais, Dani Marti, Al Munro, Eugenia Raskopoulos, Jacky Redgate and Nuha Saad.
Coordinated by Lisa Jones and Tom Loveday.
EXHIBITION ESSAY
Round (pdf)
Artwork details: The Folly of Purple, Orange and Blue 2023
Acrylic on wood, 2 posts: 180 (h) x 25 x 25 cm & 160 (h) x 25 x 25 Photo credit: Richard Glover Photography
THE HOME
Hazelhurst Regional Gallery, NSW
August 29 to November 8, 2020
THE HOME is an exhibition of contemporary works that celebrate suburbia and the home. The Home has been curated to complement Art Deco from the National Collection: The World Turns Modern. The exhibition features the work of six contemporary artists whose works are influenced by architecture and suburbia and who were commissioned by Hazelhurst to produce new works responding to the theme of Art Deco.
Artists: Catherine O’ Donnell, Christopher Zanko, Kevin Mckay, Lucy O’Doherty, Nuha Saad, Tracey Clement
Curator: Carrie Kibbler
Exhibition Catalogue
The Home (pdf)
Artwork details: Above the Clouds (where all the colours are), 2019, Damask flock on foil wallpaper, acrylic on plaster ceiling roses, upholstery pins, coloured cord, 250 (h) x 212 (w) x 10cm; Ornamental Fancies III 2020, acrylic on turned posts
STOPPING BY THE COLOUR WHEEL (A Fabulation of Three Artists)
Grace Cossington Smith Gallery, Sydney NSW
May 15 to June 5, 2021
Artists: Nuha Saad, Sherna Teperson and Elefteria Vlavianos
In Stopping by the Colour Wheel (A Fabulation of Three Artists), Nuha Saad, Sherna Teperson and Elefteria Vlavianos take delight in responding to each other’s work — exploring the vibrational and sensate relationships between their specific art practices.
In this exhibition, the artists play with syntax and colour relationships that have evolved through considered juxtaposition, serendipity and play. While most works are authored individually, the installation is the result of many sessions of prior collaborative investigation. The architectural embellishments of the gallery’s four exhibition spaces have also played into this collaboration, and reveal surprising relationships between colour and form, as they also consider the material /immaterial porous boundaries within this exhibition.
THEN AND NOW
Nuha Saad + Michele Beevors
Articulate Projects, Sydney NSW
October 6 – 21, 2018
The exhibition Then and Now addresses the shifts in working methodologies over many years of encounters between two artists, Michele Beevors and Nuha Saad who met while sharing a studio at art college.
EXHIBITION ESSAY
Then and Now (pdf)
By Michele Beevors, Principal Lecturer, Dunedin School of Art Otago Polytechnic.
MEDIA
Artlink 09 Nov. 2018. Then and Now | Making : Memory
By Craig Judd
(Nuha) Saad employs the inescapable materiality of scale and proportion, the richly potent disjunction of hand-coloured architectural trim and flocked wallpaper in I Walk the Line III (1998–2018) as a riposte to Richard Serra’s Prop series (began 1969) and the masculinist bombast inherent in much of his work. The Colour of Dreams (2018) elegantly encapsulates how in the everyday we negotiate past and present, the handmade and machine-made, the demands of industrial-based standardised modes of living, and the continuing appeal of modernist ideals as represented by the miniature architectonic fantasy of pure colour and form… more
Artwork details: I Walk the Line III, 1998 – 2018, Acrylic on architectural trim, flock wallpaper, upholstered elements, acrylic on plaster ceiling roses
1717 PAINTING/NOT PAINTING
Galerie pompom, Sydney NSW
November 22 – December 16, 2017
The persistence of painting
In this era artists are no longer defined by their media, and often approach their choice of medium as part of a broader conceptual practice. Artists are therefore free to use the idea of paint, or the actual medium itself, in ways that challenge its presuppositions. 1717 Painting/not painting follows an interest in artists that use the idea of painting, or the application of paint, in new and unexpected ways. The seventeen artists included in this exhibition illustrate a process of enquiry that is the result of an ongoing dialogue with the medium.
Artists: Kevin Chin; Will Cooke; Fernando do Campo; Stefan Dunlop; Neil Haddon; Irene Hanenbergh; Brent Harris; Matthew Harris; Daniel Hollier; Belem Lett; Ollie Lucas; Tara Marynowsky; Nuha Saad; Kate Tucker; Megan Walch; Tricky Walsh and Ian Williams.
Curator: George Adams
EXHIBITION ESSAY
The persistence of painting (pdf)
By Melissa Loughnan Founding director of Utopian Slumps and author of Australiana to Zeitgeist: An A to Z of Australian Contemporary Art.
MEDIA
Altmedia 28 Nov. 2017. 1717 Painting/not painting
By Rita Bratovich.
Artwork details: Velvet Constellations, 2017, Flock wallpaper, acrylic, satin, 254(h )x 212(w) cm, plywood, acrylic on turned wooden elements
FABSTRACTION
Flinders Street Gallery, Sydney NSW
July 12 – August 4, 2018
The constructions and assemblages in FABSTRACTION are characterised by an improvisational sensibility and offbeat rhythm, the artists’ knowledge of materials merge with inventive studio experimentation resulting in energetic and idiosyncratic works. Grace Burzese, Sophie Clague, Michael McIntyre, Ali Noble and Nuha Saad share their personal dialogues with painting, steel, paper, fabric and wood, demonstrating that the possibilities of abstraction remain an open ended and dynamic conversation. (Ali Noble 2018)
Artists: Grace Burzese, Sophie Clague, Michael McIntyre, Ali Noble and Nuha Saad
Curator: Ali Noble
OUR HOUSE
Grace Cossington Smith Gallery, NSW
July 26 – August 16, 2017
A house contains and surrounds us. It provides both a physical space and a cultural space where we develop personal and social rituals and relationships. Tania Alexander, Victoria Lobregat and Nuha Saad explore the psychological complexities of our house through their interactions with colour, pattern and form.
Artists: Tania Alexander, Victoria Lobregat and Nuha Saad
Exhibition Co-ordinated by Lisa Jones
The exhibition was opened by Annalisa Capurro ‘Ms Modernism’ – Annalisa Capurro Interior Designer | Design Educator| Architectural & Design Historian| Architectural Photographer | Writer
EXHIBITION CATALOGUE
Our House (pdf)
ARTSPACE 24/25 : TWENTY FOUR ONE HOUR EXHIBITIONS
Artspace Sydney NSW
November 2008
Twenty-four one-hour exhibitions. Twenty-five years of Artspace. Twenty-four artists presented one-hour solo exhibition projects. Accumulatively Artspace 24/25 provided an opportunity to engage with a diversity of contemporary practices – installation, performance, moving image, sculpture, photography, new media and painting. In keeping with twenty-five years of commitment to artistic experimentation, Artspace 24/25 treated the gallery as an active working space, a place in which artists think, intuit, experiment and make.
Artists: Jim Allen, Brook Andrew, Denis Beaubois, Mark Brown, Katthy Cavaliere, Domenico de Clario, Julian Dashper, Elizabeth Day, Richard Dunn, Mikala Dwyer, Deej Fabyc, Matthys Gerber, Joan Grounds, The Kingpins, Derek Kreckler, Wade Marynowsky, Mike Parr, Eugenia Raskopoulos, r e a, Julie Rrap, Nuha Saad, Jill Scott, George Tillianakis, and Mark Titmarsh
Curator: Blair French
MEDIA
Contemporary Visual Art + Culture Broadsheet 38.1 2009 24 Exhibitions for 25 years (pdf)
By Bruce Barber
HARDWARE
University of Technology Gallery, Sydney NSW
September 11 – October 13, 2006
Artists: Paul Donald, John Nicholson, Nuha Saad, Huseyin Sami, Mimi Tong, Mark Titmarsh
Exhibition co-ordinated by Nuha Saad
Hardware brings together six Sydney artists working in the junction between sculpture and painting. These artists consider the relationship between the physical matter that forms a work, and the ‘matter’ (or idea) that informs it. Hardware investigates the role of materiality in the process of art making and tests the limits of what can be called painting.
EXHIBITION CATALOGUE
Hardware (pdf)
Essay by Mark Titmarsh, Lecturer, School of Design University of Technology Sydney
Artwork details: Modelscape 2006, Acrylic on architectural trim and wood, 180 x 240 cm
OUR LUCK COUNTRY
Hazelhurst Regional Gallery, NSW
Our Lucky Country (different) December 9, 2006 to February 4, 2007 &
Our Lucky Country (still different) December 8, 2007 to February 3, 2008
For Our Lucky Country, Saad has used her explorations of the relationship between colour, territory and cultural identity to consider what happened in Cronulla in December 2005. Colour is not only a racial signifier; it also plays a large role in designations of territory and identity, being one of the key elements of maps and, of course, national flags, where the emotive power of colour is mobilised with particular virulence. Saad brings all these associations together in her attempt to ‘re-map’ the site of the riots, to go over the territory, to symbolically shift the violent energies that had cathected onto those places that for many had held fond memories. Her large drawings, executed on tracing paper to capture the sense of a non-ending process of addition and erasure that can be approached from either side, represent a revised and revisited Cronulla, where the past is still visible but does not hold the future captive. Rendered in the colours of both the Lebanese and the Australian flags, Saad’s ‘map’ offers an alternative view of this territory, as a space of possibility and contingency. This Cronulla is a place where cultural identity is not fixed and instantly identifiable, but supple and nuanced, not unlike Saad’s own experience of growing up Australian.
(Dr Jacqueline Millner)
Artists: Ron Adams, Liam Benson and Manizé Abedin, Maria Cruz, Elizabeth Day in collaboration with Margaret Day, Sarah Goffman,
Michelle Hanlin, Newell Harry, Ruark Lewis, Adam Norton, Nana Ohnesorge, Anna Peters, Nuha Saad, Huseyin Sami, Soda_Jerk,
George Tillianakis, Mimi Tong
Curators: George + Ron Adams
EXHIBITION ESSAYS
Our Luck Country (different) 2006 (pdf)
By Daniel Mudie Cunningham
Our Lucky Country (still different) 2007 (pdf)
Edited by Daniel Mudie Cunningham, Essay by Dr Jacqueline Millner (Nuha Saad pg. 17)
INTERSECTING GEOMETRIES
Nuha Saad + Mimi Tong
Artspace Sydney NSW
March 3 – 26, 2005
Nuha Saad and Mimi Tong are artists who normally work independently, and are here working together for the first time. They share an interest in architecture or building details, or at least what can happen in or be made to happen to spaces. (Professor Richard Dunn)
EXHIBITION ESSAY
Nuha Saad + Mimi Tong: Intersecting Geometries (pdf)
By Professor Richard Dunn
MEDIA
Art Monthly May 2006. Shapes of inhabitation: Painting in the Expanded Field (pdf)
By Mark Titmarsh, Lecturer, School of Design University of Technology Sydney
GLACIER
RMIT Gallery, Melbourne VIC
September 13 – October 20, 2001
Glacier is an exhibition that presents a range imaginative ways contemporary artists are exploring new possibilities for painting such as using technology to explode traditional boundaries. The artist’s apply variable tools, including digital technology, sculptural paintings, photography and light to the traditional craft of painting.
NUHA SAAD’s work is developed specifically in response to the architectural details such as cornices or skirting boards which focus and shape the way we experience the interiors of buildings. In Victory Ace (2001) installed above the reception desk in the entrance to the RMIT Gallery she has used ordinary skirting boards painted in lurid orange, blue, purple and sari pink in an attempt to redefine the spatial coordinates of an area already heavily determined by the architect’s aggressive use of colour. (Prof. Linda Williams RMIT, From Catalogue Essay: Reflections and Reconstruction: New Directions in Australian Painting)
Artists: Chris Bond, Judith Duquemin, Craig Easton, Claire Firth – Smith, Juan Ford, Mark Galea, Helga Groves, Stephen Haley, David Harley, Kieran Kinney, Amanda Marburg, Mark Misic, Nuha Saad, Carmen Soraya, Darren Wardle, Irene Wellm and Wang Zhiyuan
Curators: Suzanne Davies and Darren Wardle
Artwork details: Victory Ace 2001, acrylic on wood, 4 semi circular panels 245 x 240 cm each
MNCBM
Artspace Sydney NSW
November 2 – December 20, 2000
Artists: Mimi Tong, Nuha Saad, Carmen Soraya, Beata Geyer and Monika Tichacek
Curator: Nicholas Tsoutas and Jacqueline Phillips
EXHIBITION CATALOGUE
MNCBN Catalogue Fluid Geometries (pdf)
Essay by Tanya Peterson
Artwork details: Pegasus Ace 2000, acrylic on skirting board, 5.2 x 3.6m each wall of colour
GRAVITY FAILS
First Draft Gallery, Sydney NSW
August 2 – August 12, 2000
Artists included: Beata Geyer, Nuha Saad, Yvette Linton Smith, Kay Wood
EARLY WORKS
