Bonita Ely
| Bonita Ely | |
|---|---|
| Born |
1946 Mildura, Victoria |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Education |
Caulfield Institute of Technology Prahan College of Advanced Education St Martin's Art School, London Sydney College of the Arts, Sydney University University of Western Sydney |
| Notable work |
C20th Mythological Beasts: at Home with the Locust People (1973-75) Murray River Punch (1979) Dogwoman Makes History (1983) |
Bonita Ely (born 1946) is an Australian multidisciplinary artist who lives in Sydney. Ely established her reputation as an environmental artist in the early 1970s through her work on the Murray Darling rivers.[1] She has a diverse practice across various media and has often addressed feminist, environmental and socio-political issues.[2]
Her work has been internationally exhibited, including at Chisenhale Gallery, London, Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Harbourfront, Toronto, the 18th Street Arts Centre, Los Angeles, USA and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea.[3]
Ely’s experimental artworks are in international collections, such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, and has been selected for significant contemporary art events such as Fieldwork, the opening of the Ian Potter Centre for Australian Art, Federation Square, Melbourne. She has also produced three public sculptures for the City of Hue, Vietnam (1998, 2002, 2006).[4]
Art career
Ely’s first exhibition was in London in 1972, but recognition of her artwork in Australia effectively started at the Mildura Sculpture Triennial of 1975.[4] Her interdisciplinary installation, C20th Mythological Beasts: at Home with the Locust People (1975) had its beginnings in New York where Bonita Ely lived from 1973 to 1975.[5]
Her performances of the 1970s and 1980s were concerned primarily with environmental and political issues. For instance in her work Jabiluka UO2 [1979] she explored issues surrounding Aboriginal Land Rights.[6]
In her work Breadline (1980) themes of womanhood and pregnancy were examined. Ely moulded shapes of her body in bread dough, then baked and served it as she washed off in a bath of milk, as a critique on woman as a consumable product of culture.[7] Murray River Punch (1980) is one of Ely's most well known and significant performances.[8] The work was first performed at Melbourne University’s George Paton Gallery in June 1980 as part of a week of performance titled Women at Work.[9] In this work the artist set up a cooking demonstration in the university’s Student Union foyer at lunchtime and assumed the role of a cooking demonstrator who narrates the recipe for a ‘punch’ drink, the ingredients coming from pollutants in the Murray River.
In Dogwoman Communicates with the Younger Generation (1981), and Dogwoman Makes History (1983), the anthropomorphised fascination with another species was documented, alongside the gendered construction of history, using images of dogs in the art of Berlin museums, documented whilst artist in residence at Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin.[10]
References
- ↑ Navdeep, Shergill. "Bonita Ely". Design and Art Australia Online. Retrieved 8 March 2015.
- ↑ van Wyk, Susan (2012). Gellatly, Kelly, ed. 101 Contemporary Australian Artists. National Gallery of Victoria.
- ↑ Barkley, Glenn (2011). Tell Me Tell Me: Australian and Korean Art 1976-2011. Sydney: Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney.
- 1 2 "Bonita Ely". Scanlines. Retrieved 8 March 2015.
- ↑ "Bonita Ely". Australian Video Art Online. Retrieved 8 March 2015.
- ↑ Marsh, Anne (1993). Body and Self: Performance Art in Australia 1969-92. Melbourne, Australia: Oxford University Press. p. 143.
- ↑ Engberg, Juliana (1999). "Breadline: Women and Food". Artlink. 19 (4).
- ↑ "Murry River Punch". National Gallery of Victoria. Retrieved 8 March 2015.
- ↑ Burke, Janine (1990). Field of vision: a decade of change : women's art in the seventies. Ringwood, Vic., Australia: Viking. p. 94. ISBN 0 670 835862.
- ↑ Marsh, Anne (1993). Body and Self: Performance Art in Australia 1969–92. Melbourne, Australia: Oxford University Press. p. 146. ISBN 9780195535068.