At this year’s Melbourne Art Fair Gow Langsford Gallery will exhibit work by New Zealand painters Sara Hughes and Judy Millar, alongside internationally renowned sculptors Tony Cragg (Britain) and Bernar Venet (France). This will be the ninth Melbourne Art Fair Gow Langsford Gallery has participated in.

Sara Hughes is known for her use of complex and optical patterns which relate to the technologically immersed world that we live in today. Warped geometric shapes float and collide with each other on the canvas, painted in lively colour combinations. The slick digital appearance of the imagery is contrasted by the intensive application of colour, built up by hand-painting a multitude of thin layers of acrylic paint. Hughes has exhibited extensively in both Australia and New Zealand. In 2005 she completed an installation at the Darling Island Apartments in Sydney, and in 2006 was included in the travelling exhibition Pattern Recognition, curated by Rhana Devenport at Object Gallery, Sydney. In 2005 Hughes was awarded with both the 2D Norseweart Award and the Paramount Prize of the Wallace Art Awards in New Zealand. An article of Hughes’ recent accomplishments was featured in the April/May 2006 issue of Monument magazine.

Judy Millar is primarily based in New Zealand, but has also held residencies in Berlin and New York. She has exhibited in Europe for the past three years with her work being well received by both critics and collectors, most recently at the 2006 Vienna Art Fair. In 2005 a solo exhibition curated by Robert Leonard was held at the Auckland Art Gallery. Millar produced her largest-scale works to date, with canvases measuring up to 8 metres long. Her works are created in the grand tradition of action painting - the physicality of the painting process emphasised by the looping shapes formed by her hand, wrist and arm movements.

Tony Cragg is one of a strong generation of sculptors to emerge out of Britain in the 1980's to international acclaim.  His work is distinguished by his experimental approach, agility with materials, and reinvention of form. In 1988 Cragg was awarded the Turner Prize for his exhibition as the British representative at the Venice Biennale.  And in 2003 Cragg’s significance was affirmed by a major retrospective, Tony Cragg: Signs of Life, at the Kunst und Usstellungshalle der BDR, Bonn, Germany. Gow Langsford Gallery will exhibit a work from Cragg’s recognised series of pillars that flawlessly morph organic and figurative forms in the one sculpture.

French born Bernar Venet has based himself between both Europe and New York City since 1967. His works have been shown in major museums across Europe, the USA and Asia. Public sculptures have been commissioned and installed in equally as many varied locations including Cologne, Japan, Norway, Luxembourg and Chicago, among many others. Venet’s minimalist sculptures stem from his academic investigations into science and mathematics, which are translated into large-scale steel forms: arcs, angles, poles and twisted lines, all precariously balanced. This exhibition will include works weighing up to 4 tonnes. In early 2005 Venet was awarded France’s highest decoration, Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur, for his enhancement to the reputation of France through arts.

Gow Langsford Gallery will also have works at the Melbourne Art Fair available for viewing by gallery artists: Shane Cotton, Dick Frizzell, Karl Maughan and John Pule.