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Tree of Life
May 11, 2021One 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 […]
Sydney Morning Herald Column
She-Oak and Sunlight
May 4, 2021Do we really need another survey of Australian Impressionism? It’s been 14 years since the National Gallery of Victoria’s previous overview of the field and one wonders what new breakthroughs have occurred since then. In 2007 it still seemed a novel idea that we might call this group of artists “Impressionists” in place of more […]
Sydney Morning Herald Column
The National 2021
April 20, 2021Conceived as “a celebration of contemporary Australian art”, The National has been a strange beast ever since its inception in 2017. One of the problems of this event – a biennial collaboration between the Art Gallery of NSW, the Museum of Contemporary Art and Carriageworks – is that it has occasionally seemed to be a […]
Sydney Morning Herald Column
Dobell Drawing Prize 2021
April 19, 2021If anyone should know about drawing it’s Guy Warren – he’s been doing it for about 90 years, although he only began taking lessons in his teens. When I spoke with Warren last week, as he was closing in on his century, he related drawing, and art in general, back to prehistoric times. “Making a […]
Sydney Morning Herald Column
William Yang: Seeing & Being Seen
April 5, 2021William 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 […]
FEATURED
Sydney Morning Herald Column
May 18, 2021
Home Of The Arts Opens
It’s been a long time coming but last weekend the Gold Coast finally opened its new gallery, modestly titled Home Of The Arts. A few minutes drive from the concrete heart of Surfers Paradise it’s virtually impossible to miss the building – the latest concoction by Melbourne postmodernists, Ashton Raggatt McDougall (ARM). A six-storey block […]
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Ema
May 14, 2021A traffic light suspended from a wire across a city street is on fire. As the camera pans back we see a figure in protective clothing holding a flame thrower. It’s clear from the first scene that Pablo Larráin’s Ema is going to be something special. Rules are going to be broken, conventions overturned. The […]
Film Reviews
De Gaulle
May 7, 2021Charles De Gaulle was an imposing figure, both physically and morally. Standing at 196 cms, he was a man almost everyone looked up to. As leader-in-exile of the French Resistance, the head of the provisional post-war government, and the nation’s dominant political figure of the 20th century, De Gaulle enjoyed an unshakable power and prestige. […]
Film Reviews
Academy Awards 2021
April 30, 2021It’s a sign of how radically the world is changing that China has remained silent about Chloé Zhao winning Oscars for Best Film and Best Director for Nomadland. One might expect that a movie about a class of poor Americans living in mobile homes would be highly congenial to a regime that wants to portray […]
Film Reviews
Promising Young Woman & Sound of Metal
April 23, 2021In preparation for this year’s Academy Awards I’ve already reviewed six of the eight films nominated for Best Picture. Today I’ll take a look at the two that remain. I don’t know why it’s taken so long to catch up with Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman, as it’s one of the most talked-about films of […]
The Past Returned in a Perfume Bottle
April 22, 2021A small, brown, glass perfume bottle with a neat gold trim is causing excitement at Sydney’s Jewish Museum. This piece, recently donated by heritage consultant, David Logan, becomes the first artwork in the museum that was taken from a Jewish private collection by the Nazis and subsequently restored to its rightful heirs some 80 years […]
Blog
Cultural death by a 1,000 cuts
April 17, 2021Should we be surprised the Berejiklian government is contemplating a sneaky cut to the operating budgets of major cultural institutions? By now we’re accustomed to those familiar patterns of secrecy, lack of transparency, and the reckless disregard for both public and expert opinion. The rule is: “We know best, so suck it up.” For a […]
Blog
Guy Warren 100 not out
April 14, 2021Australia’s oldest artist, Guy Warren, is getting tired of being asked: “What’s the secret of a long life?” His answer is very simple: “You just have to keep living.” When Warren gets down to detail he says it’s a matter of “good genes, good luck and a whiskey every night.” Beyond that he doesn’t know […]
Blog
Monet: Larger & Lighter
April 2, 2021There are worse ways to spend an hour than being surrounded by gigantic projections of Impressionist paintings while listening to the greatest hits of the Belle Époque, but don’t imagine that Monet & Friends – Life, Light and Colour is an art exhibition. This audio-visual extravaganza is a spectacle with one foot in the past, […]
John McDonald
For over thirty years he has been one of Australia’s best-known critics. He writes a weekly art column for the Sydney Morning Herald, a weekly film column for the Australian Financial Review, and contributes to a wide range of local and international publications.
Terror Nullius
March 8, 2019Satire invites us to become conspirators in a joke made at someone else’s expense. As the usual targets are figures of power and authority it’s reasonable to assume the invitation will be accepted. The satirist adopts the Robin Hood position – defending the powerless against the few who seek to impose their will upon the […]
Journals
Signature Art Prize 2018
March 7, 2019This year, for the fourth iteration of the Prize, 15 finalists were chosen from a field of 113 artists spread throughout the Asia-Pacific and – for the first time – Singapore’s cultural efflorescence over the past decade has been a source of wonder even to the Singaporeans themselves, who are forever celebrating their own progress. […]
Journals
The Tarnished Prizes
No nation on earth can match Australia’s enduring love of art prizes. It reflects our obsession with sport (which is something we can do as well as anybody), allied with the perennial Cultural Cringe (the sense that we suffer from a lack of Old Masters and ruined temples). The Cringe was named by A.A.Phillips in […]