Tag: landscape
Les Sculptures Refusées 2021
Tuesday, December 14th, 2021 Sydney Morning Herald Column,Of all the art events stifled by the pandemic, Sculpture by the Sea must be among the hardest hit. Until last year the annual stroll along the shore between Bondi and Tamarama had become part of Sydney life and a reliable tourist magnet. At its peak SXS has posted attendances of more than 500,000, a […]
Salon des Refusés 2021
Friday, June 11th, 2021 Blog,When the Art Gallery of NSW moved the opening of the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes from September to June, it was bound to have consequences for the quality of the exhibitions. The 2021 Archibald season kicks off this weekend, less than five months after the closure of last year’s shows on 10 January. This […]
Tree of Life
Tuesday, May 11th, 2021 Sydney Morning Herald Column,One could hardly imagine a more universal subject than the tree. It’s one of the first things children draw, as a familiar lollipop shape. It lies at the centre of almost every major cosmology, from Adam and Eve’s misadventures in the Garden of Eden to Yggdrasil, the tree at the centre of the old Norse […]
William Yang: Seeing & Being Seen
Monday, April 5th, 2021 Sydney Morning Herald Column,William Yang is a Sydney institution but a Queenslander born and bred. Last week he was reclaimed by his state of origin for a retrospective at the Queensland Art Gallery that allows us to read one artist’s career as a tale of social evolution. Even allowing for the wrong turnings of the present day, over […]
Five Artists, Seven days
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2021 Sydney Morning Herald Column,It seems like an age ago but in September 2019 I travelled with five artists and a film crew to Mount Zero Taravale in far north Queensland, a property owned by the Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC). We spent a week in the bush preparing for an exhibition that has just opened at Defiance Gallery, Mary […]
Joshua Yeldham, Dagmar Cyrulla, Indonesia Calling 2020
Tuesday, November 17th, 2020 Sydney Morning Herald Column,“I’ve always been interested in how the eye is the trail to the soul, and how my soul projected can look like a painting,” says Joshua Yeldham in a short film he has made for his exhibition, Providence, at Arthouse Gallery. There’s a popular belief that artists are unworldly beings who live in their own […]
Streeton: A First Look
Friday, November 13th, 2020 Blog,When the title of a show is simply the artist’s surname it sends a message. If you don’t know who Streeton is, well… you should. It’s like saying “Picasso”, rather than “Pablo Picasso” or “Rembrandt” rather than “Rembrandt van Rijn”. The unattended surname signifies greatness. It’s a warning you’ll miss out on an essential Australian […]
The Wynne Prize 2020
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2020 Sydney Morning Herald Column,A visitor to the Art Gallery of NSW has written to me, saying that after living through last year’s horror bushfires on the south coast, he was surprised at the lack of fire paintings in the Wynne Prize. He was also disappointed that the Salon des Refusés seemed to ignore the bushfire crisis, although it […]
Pippin Drysdale – Sabbia Gallery, Sydney
Tuesday, September 15th, 2020 Good Weekend Art Column,Artist: Pippin Drysdale Lives: Fremantle, W.A. Age: 77 Represented by: Sabbia Gallery (Linton & Kaye, Perth; plus galleries in the UK, USA, Belgium, France, Germany & Switzerland) Her thing: Ceramic vases and marbles, incorporating the colours of the Australian landscape. Our take. Last year in New York City, Sotheby’s held an exhibition of works from […]
Angus Nivison, Paul Higgs
Tuesday, September 8th, 2020 Sydney Morning Herald Column,If one had to nominate the most high-profile show in Sydney this week, it would probably be Patricia Piccinini’s The Gardener at Roslyn Oxley9. Touted as the most popular contemporary artist in the world in 2106, after two well-attended surveys in Brazil, Piccinini has become a favourite with the art museums. One might compare her […]