• IT’S the time of the year for what Carwoola artist Kerry McInnis calls “the upcoming portrait prize circus”. She means the Archibald Prize, and has entered a portrait of 2011 “CityNews” Artist of the Year, Michael Le Grand. McInnis has previously been hung in the Dobell Drawing Prize and the Archibald’s adjunct “Salon des Refusés.”

 

• AS autumn asserts itself, it’s also time for the “Weereewa: A Festival of Lake George”. Elizabeth Cameron Dalman’s Mirramu Dance Centre is running a residential weekend of workshops in dance, photography, tanka poetry and sculpting in nature and a concert finale. “Escape to the Lake,” Mirramu Dance Centre, Lake Road, Bungendore, March 23-25, bookings to www.mirramu.com “Dusk at Mirramu” (including “Jazz by the Lake” with the James Luke Trio) at Mirramu, 4pm-7pm March 25. In the event of very wet weather, the concert will be relocated to the Memorial Hall in Bungendore. Gate/door sales only.

 

• ARTISTS Karen Green and Gosia Orzechowska are celebrating women in an exhibition where Orzechowska focuses on women’s portraits, while Green explores womanhood, domesticity, and sexuality. At Yarralumla Gallery and The Oaks Brasserie, Weston Park Road, Yarralumla, seven days a week until March 30.

 

• QUEANBEYAN City Library will soon relocate to 6 Rutledge Street. Good news is that staff is seeking expressions of interest from artists living or working in the town for public artworks on the theme: “The word and its many expressions”. The maximum cost is $10,000. Contact Georgina Peri at 6285 6170 or georgina.perri@qcc.nsw.gov.au

 

• CANBERRA Concerto Orchestra String Quartet’s concert tour of Victoria and NSW winds up here next week. Led by cellist Charlotte Winslade, the ensemble has staged no-fee concerts for disadvantaged children in Melbourne and for International Women’s Day in Cootamundra. CCO, at the Tim Murray Theatre, Canberra Grammar School, 3pm, Sunday, March 18, tickets at the door.

 

• THE new 400kg bronze sculpture, “Lady with flowers”, by Dean Bowen was commissioned by the ACT Government though artsACT. It was project-managed by Canberra’s Beaver Galleries and modelled and cast in the Perrin Foundry in Melbourne and is next to the northbound bus stop on the corner of Flemington Road and Nullarbor Avenue in Harrison.