Irene Hanenbergh

Exhibiting internationally since the late 1980s, Irene Hanenbergh has amassed a large body of work which the artist describes as ‘liminal portals’ into other worlds, and ‘windows of longing’, suggesting psychological and physical spaces that lie just beyond our grasp. Her evocative oil paintings are personal and contemporary renderings of the sublime in which scenes of primordial forests, lakes, mountains and oceans morph in and out of formation, infused with influences of the baroque, romanticism, and marginal fantasy genres. Exploring the slippage between contemporary and historic landscape painting, key styles and traditions including folk art, mystic and visionary practices, (faux) political histories and cults have been erased, repainted and spiritually charged, creating fantastical and otherworldly shifts as brushstrokes collide with impossible foliage, dark shadows and the spectre of history. Her works do not rely on narrative structures for the formation of content; rather they seduce or just invite the viewer to become immersed in another world, another time, another sensation.

Irene Hanenbergh‘s practice deals with concerns of disciplined immaterial sensibilities within (marginalized) Romantic, Visionary and Fantastic art genres. She uses various media including drawing, painting, sculpture and print media. Hanenbergh completed a Master of Fine Arts by Research at the Victorian College of the Arts (The University of Melbourne) in 2010. She holds as well a BFA (Hons) in Painting and Sculpture from The Academy of Fine Arts Minerva (1988, The Netherlands), a BFA (Hons) in Printmaking, from The Athens School of Fine Arts (1995, Greece) followed by 2 year Postgraduate Research at the same academy. Additionally she completed a Post Graduate Program at The Royal College of Art (1992, London). Intermittently over the last 25 years, she has spent considerable time on artist residencies & for the purpose of exhibitions, in various locations across Europe, Asia (Japan and Thailand) and the USA (NYC). Hanenbergh teaches Master of Contemporary Art at the VCA, University of Melbourne.

She has held solo exhibitions in Australia and internationally; amongst other ‘Mild Fantasy’ at Neon Parc, ‘Libertine, Celestine’, at Neon Parc, ‘House of Dandelion & Lohr (outperformance)’ at Hugo Michel Gallery, Adelaide; ‘Feldspar’ (with Storm Gold) at BUS Melbourne, ‘Argyle Dreaming (1863)’, a Black art project in Sydney; ‘Dada-Roman (4711)’, at Caves in Melbourne and collaborative exhibitions as Zilverster with Sharon Goodwin, at Sarah Scout Presents in Melbourne and in ‘Lurid Beauty’ at the National Gallery of Victoria. Zilverster is currently showing in ‘All the better to see you with (Fairy Tales transformed’ at the Potter Museum of Art in Melbourne, 2017.