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Guan Wei
November 8, 2019This is Guan Wei month in Sydney, with the Museum of Contemporary Art displaying its holdings of this popular Chinese-Australian artist; the University of Western Sydney hosting an exhibition at its Parramatta South Campus, and Martin Browne Contemporary showing new work. Not many artists can say they’ve had three exhibitions running sumultaneously in the same […]
Sydney Morning Herald Column
Sculpture By the Sea 2019
November 1, 2019Proof arrived this week that climate change is real and urgent. The standard beginning of Sculpture by the Sea (SXS) sees visitors plodding around the coastal trail between Bondi and Tamarama in the pouring rain, but the first day of this year’s show was a scorcher. When the magical rain-bringing powers of this event are […]
Sydney Morning Herald Column
Tarnanthi 2019
October 24, 2019Since its inception in 2015, Tarnanthi has rapidly become one of this country’s essential art events. The word, in the Kaurna language of the Adelaide Plains means “to rise, come forth, spring up or appear,” but a more appropriate verb might be: “to mushroom”. The major attraction of this sprawling festival of indigenous culture is […]
Sydney Morning Herald Column
De Chirico
October 19, 2019Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978) had no doubts as to his own greatness. “I am an exceptional man,” he writes in his Memoirs, “who feels and understands a hundred times more strongly than others.” In the 1940s de Chirico began signing his works: “Pictor Optimus” (‘The best painter’). It was a riposte to an Italian art […]
Sydney Morning Herald Column
Steirischer Herbst 2019: Grand Hotel Abyss
October 10, 2019Welcome to the Grand Hotel Abyss. The phrase was coined in 1933 by Marxist literary critic, György Lukacs, as a put-down of another group of Marxist intellectuals – the so-called Frankfurt School, whose ranks included luminaries such as Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse and Jürgen Habermas. Lukacs argued that the Frankfurt School practised a form of […]
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Sydney Morning Herald Column
November 15, 2019
Cornelia Parker
A good deal of contemporary art is wilfully opaque but the work of Cornelia Parker is distinguished by a consistent, lucid intelligence – which is not to say there aren’t plenty of puzzles. I’ve never been a fan of wall labels that explain a work but with the survey Rachel Kent has put together for […]
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Ford v Ferrari
In Rush (2013) Ron Howard turned the rivalry between racing car drivers into an engrossing portrait of two uncompromising personalities. In Ford v Ferrari James Mangold has stepped up a few gears, giving us a movie about fast cars, larger-than-life personalities and corporate hubris. It’s also a buddy film, a celebration of the common man […]
Film Reviews
The Irishman
November 8, 2019Ah those good ole days! Whacking people for the mob, driving a truck full of guns bound for the Bay of Pigs, running a union for the Teamsters… the elderly Frank Sheeran has so many happy memories of a full and active life. Nowadays, sadly reduced by old age and infirmity, Frank resides in an […]
Film Reviews
Terminator: Dark Fate
November 1, 2019In the very first Terminator film in 1984 Arnold Schwarzenegger assured us: “I’ll be back”. Arnie has proven to be a man of his word, returning again and again as James Cameron and his pals crank out yet another Terminator sequel. We’re now up to number six – and counting. This time the director is […]
Film Reviews
The King
October 24, 2019It would be foolish to expect the cinema to accurately portray historical reality but some films leave one itching to get home and pick up a reference book – or more likely, ask Google. Whether your preferred route is paper or digital, David Michôd’s Netflix drama, The King, is a film that cries out for a […]
Japan Supernatural: A First Look
November 2, 2019Curators will often describe an exhibition as a labour of love, but Japan Supernatural is more like a labour of fun. Melanie Eastburn has enjoyed working on the show for about a year-and-a-half, but has been carrying the idea around for much, much longer. Over the past few decades the Japanese fascination with ghosts, demons […]
Blog
Destination NSW vs. Yoko Ono
August 22, 2019Not many Australian bureaucrats would qualify as art experts but apparently this is no impediment to making pronouncements. And so we have Sandra Chipchase, the Chief Executive of Destination NSW, telling Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art that Yoko Ono is “a well-known celebrity” but not much of an artist. It’s a perfect example of that […]
Blog
How the Yolngu Do It
August 16, 2019One hot August night in Darwin, every year, all the tribes gather on the lawn of the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, for the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards. Most of those tribes are overwhelmingly white: the dedicated collectors of Aboriginal art, the curators and gallery directors, the art […]
Blog
David Goldblatt: Photography & Truth
August 9, 2019David Goldblatt will always be known as the photographer who exposed the evils of Apartheid to the world, but to characterise him as a ‘political’ artist is to diminish the breadth of his achievements. This is something Goldblatt has in common with all great photographers who have found their subjects in war, poverty, hatred and […]
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 […]
Artist Profile
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. […]
Artist Profile
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 […]