This beloved Aboriginal artist's first major solo exhibition will debut in Canberra this summer
Born in Mparntwe/ Alice Springs, Whiskey is best known for winning the Art Gallery of New South Wales' 2018 Sulman Prize for her work 'Kaylene TV'. Drawing inspiration from her life in rural Central Australia, she creates her pop-culture-meets-country masterpieces at Iwantja Arts in the remote Indulkana Community. Since her Sulman Prize win, Whiskey's star has only risen: her now-famous 2020 work 'Dolly visits Indulkana' was projected onto the Sydney Opera House as part of Badu Gili: Wonder Women, she teamed up with MECCA for a nationwide holiday campaign in 2023, and she created a larger-than-life walk-in TV installation for the 2024 Biennale of Sydney.
Drawn from both public and private collections, Super Kaylene Whiskey will bring together works from the artist's colourful 15-year career, showcasing paintings, video work, installation and a newly commissioned portrait. In true Whiskey style, pop culture icons will share the stage with strong kungkas (women), uniting two very different cultures and generations. These heroic figures come to life in remote desert community landscapes as they hunt, collect bush tucker, cultivate mingkulpa (native tobacco plant), with Coca-Cola, TV screens and cowboy hats commingling in the background.
Super Kaylene Whiskey will debut at the National Portrait Gallery in the heart of Canberra from November 15, 2025 to March 6, 2026. Tickets are $18 for adults, with free entry for mob and kids. You can find out more here.
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Time Out
3 days ago
- Time Out
This beloved Aboriginal artist's first major solo exhibition will debut in Canberra this summer
No one paints pop culture quite like Kaylene Whiskey. A proud Yankunytjatjara woman and one of Australia's leading contemporary Aboriginal artists, she's renowned for her vibrant, joy-filled landscapes that celebrate traditional Aṉangu culture alongside depictions of her self-envisaged heroes – Cher, Tina Turner, Wonder Woman and of course, Dolly Parton. This summer, you can brush shoulders with Whiskey's star-studded icons at her first major solo exhibition, Super Kaylene Whiskey, coming to the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. Born in Mparntwe/ Alice Springs, Whiskey is best known for winning the Art Gallery of New South Wales' 2018 Sulman Prize for her work 'Kaylene TV'. Drawing inspiration from her life in rural Central Australia, she creates her pop-culture-meets-country masterpieces at Iwantja Arts in the remote Indulkana Community. Since her Sulman Prize win, Whiskey's star has only risen: her now-famous 2020 work 'Dolly visits Indulkana' was projected onto the Sydney Opera House as part of Badu Gili: Wonder Women, she teamed up with MECCA for a nationwide holiday campaign in 2023, and she created a larger-than-life walk-in TV installation for the 2024 Biennale of Sydney. Drawn from both public and private collections, Super Kaylene Whiskey will bring together works from the artist's colourful 15-year career, showcasing paintings, video work, installation and a newly commissioned portrait. In true Whiskey style, pop culture icons will share the stage with strong kungkas (women), uniting two very different cultures and generations. These heroic figures come to life in remote desert community landscapes as they hunt, collect bush tucker, cultivate mingkulpa (native tobacco plant), with Coca-Cola, TV screens and cowboy hats commingling in the background. Super Kaylene Whiskey will debut at the National Portrait Gallery in the heart of Canberra from November 15, 2025 to March 6, 2026. Tickets are $18 for adults, with free entry for mob and kids. You can find out more here.
Times
3 days ago
- Times
My ancestor was a scandalous Victorian celebrity. Now she's back on stage
I was 11 years old when my father first took me to the National Portrait Gallery — and straight away led me to a painting called Choosing by George Frederic Watts. It depicts a woman in profile, nestled in between camellias and violets, the deep reds of the petals providing a contrast against the golden strands woven through her auburn hair. As I stood for a photograph, my father pointed out the similarity between our hair colouring. I smiled proudly and posed for the picture. The resemblance isn't accidental — in Choosing Watts painted my great-great-great-grandmother, Ellen Terry, one of the greatest actors of the Victorian era. Today, fewer people recognise the name Ellen Terry. Recently I went with a friend to Tate Britain, where we stood in front of another portrait of Terry, John Singer Sargent's Lady Macbeth, where she is in the costume and character of Shakespeare's murderous queen. I told my friend that was my great-great-great-grandmother. She looked at me, bewildered. 'Esme, you do know Lady Macbeth wasn't real.' Now my extraordinary ancestor is being rediscovered for a new generation of theatregoers. David Hare's hit new play, Grace Pervades, which had its premiere in Bath this year and will be transferring to the West End in April next year, explores Terry's partnership with the actor Henry Irving. Miranda Raison plays Terry opposite Ralph Fiennes as Irving. I went to see the play with some apprehension — curious but also a little scared that it would somehow overwrite my own perceptions. To our family Terry exists through all the books and pictures we have of her, and the anecdotes we share. My father showed me Marguerite Steen's own copy of the biography she wrote of Terry, A Pride of Terrys. Though falling to pieces, the book gives a beautiful insight into Terry's life and packed within the pages are tiny mementoes from her career such as pressed flowers from the bouquets she received after her many performances. • Read more theatre reviews, guides and interviews Among our family, we each possess a variety of Terry mementoes. In the hall hangs a signed playbill from her performance in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale and we have the miniature portrait of her son Edward Gordon Craig encased in a delicate box decorated with a brass plaque engraved 'my boy'. I've been told she was never without this. A favourite of mine is one of Terry's costume belts. As a child I would hold it around my waist so as to imagine myself as an actress on the Victorian stage. I've created my own idea of what Terry might have been like. She had a pet monkey that liked to sleep on her foot as she sat by the fire, her home on the Kings Road in west London housed a friendly ghost, and her son Edward (my great-great-grandfather) supposedly halted a departing train at Marylebone station just by shouting that he was Terry's son and demanding it wait for him. She was born into a family of actors. Her theatrical debut came aged nine in A Winter's Tale. At 16 she was introduced to Watts. Bewitched by her beauty, the artist became intent on removing her from the sinful world of theatre. Asking first if he could adopt her, he was told she was too old, so instead, 30 years her senior, he married her. While trapped in this ill-fated marriage, Terry found the love of her life in the architect Edward Godwin with whom she had two children out of wedlock, Edward and Edith. Divorcing Watts was a slow and scandalous process that left her ostracised from society and rejected by her family. Soon even her relationship with Godwin foundered and financial ruin followed. Poverty forced Terry back onto the stage. I met Raison at the Theatre Royal in Bath to talk about playing Terry. Late in life, the actress did actually make recordings to capture her craft. 'The old recordings sound ludicrously dated,' Raison says, 'but to audiences at the time she was incredibly modern.' I've listened to these too — they sound more like a comical Shakespearean parody than an insight into an actress known for her rare capacity to speak Shakespeare as if it were her first language. According to family lore Terry herself laughed at them and mocked her own voice with impersonations. My grandfather sensibly likes to remind us how alien recording devices must have felt at the time; there would undoubtedly be a nervousness and self-consciousness from the speaker. For Raison, becoming Terry therefore required finding a modern-day equivalent. 'David Hare said right from the beginning she was the equivalent of Judi Dench now.' Raison refers to Dench's ability to shift effortlessly into a role, something that Terry was also known for. But while comparisons are useful and sometimes critical, Raison contends that 'in the modern day there aren't really equivalents. Maybe Tom Cruise? [Her fame] was extraordinary.' She points me to one of her favourite parts of the play. 'He [Henry Irving] says people want something serious to think about in the evening and Ellen says: 'Do you think? I disagree. No one needs to be told life is terrible — they know it already. Our job is to give them a source of joy. Tragedy is for people that don't understand life and need it explained to them; comedy is for those who already know.'' For Raison, 'Ellen wanted to be the person to make people smile. I just think that's priceless.' I ask her what she most admires about Terry. 'Her humour, her fallibility, her love, her loyalty and the roles she played.' Of course, two hours and 30 minutes could never do justice to the entirety of Terry's career, particularly when interspersed with depictions of the lives of her children. Hare's script fixates on Terry as Irving's theatre wife and puts less attention on depicting her power and independence. Yet alone Terry was a societal force with a long and successful career that continued well beyond Irving's death. At the age of 66 she toured Australia and New Zealand to perform her much-celebrated Shakespeare lectures, but Hare avoids dwelling on these accomplishments. His drama moves swiftly from Irving's death to an elderly Terry longing to be reunited with Irving in heaven. Hare's play will make others want to know more about Terry's life, which can only be a good thing. I'd also wave a flag for those in our family who followed her into the arts world. Edward Gordon Craig's fame as a theatre designer has, since her death, in many ways surpassed Terry's. He was an artistic visionary and large collections of his work can be found in leading institutions across the world from Eton College to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas. His son Edward Carrick (my great-grandfather) became an art director for film, though he is also remembered for writing the definitive biography of his father. As a child I longed to follow in Terry's footsteps, although it turns out that just being related to a renowned actress does not guarantee that you'll be any good. But we have all found ourselves pulled to artistic pursuits. Since that first visit to see Terry at the National Portrait Gallery, I've learnt more about why Watts's portrait is named Choosing. The violets represent innocence while the camellias represent vanity. Terry is depicted leaning towards the camellias, signifying her choice to embrace the empty vanity of theatre, a temptation that Watts hoped to rescue her 'choice' is a common theme running throughout the various portrayals of Terry. Is she the epitome of grace and beauty or the 'scarlet woman of the Lyceum'? Her flirtation with bohemianism sat oddly comfortably alongside her respectability, a dichotomy that Terry skilfully straddled until the day she play gets its title from a double-edged compliment in a review by Charles Reade — 'grace pervades the hussy'. Over the course of time Terry has often been depicted as either grace or hussy, neither of which fully capture the whole truth. I was pleased to see Raison not letting my complex great-great-great-grandmother sit in just one of these categories. Her elegant performance of Terry favours charm over power — but thankfully the hussy still Pervades is at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, London, from April 2026. Tickets will be available from September. For more information, visit
BBC News
01-08-2025
- BBC News
Rare Brontë portrait on display in writer's Bradford home
A rare portrait of the writer Emily Brontë has gone on show in West Yorkshire for the first time in almost twenty years. The oil painting was created by her brother Branwell and was last displayed at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth in is on loan from the National Portrait Gallery as is part of the museum's Bradford 2025 City of Culture programme. Experts believe the work was painted in about 1833 and is the only surviving fragment of a lost group portrait that included her siblings Anne, Charlotte and Branwell. Ann Dinsdale, the museum's principal curator, said there was a lot of "excitement" surrounding the loan of the painting which officially went on public display on said: "The museum has been buzzing. All the staff have been coming in to look at it."There's a real feeling of excitement here and I do know that we are going to get a lot of extra visitors who are going to take advantage of this opportunity."The portrait was discovered at the same time as another sibling group portrait, the Pillar Portrait, which is also in the National Portrait Gallery's collection. Rebecca Yorke, the museum's director, said: "It's actually quite emotional to think this is where it was painted."It was painted by Branwell, Emily's brother, and they both lived here and it's come back home to where it all began."I think what's really fascinating is that he didn't actually make himself very successful as a portrait painter."But the portrait of Emily Brontë, along with the Pillar Portrait, is one of the most popular in the National Portrait Gallery." The museum is in the former Brontë family home where the sisters spent most of their lives and wrote their famous novels in the 19th can see the portrait until 31 to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.
