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The Historical Expression of Chinese Art
April 11, 2019Look no further, we have a winner for the competition for this year’s least sexy exhibition title. The Historical Expression of Chinese Art: Calligraphy and Painting from the National Museum of China, at the National Museum of Australia, will take a lot of beating. Perhaps it sounds better in Mandarin, but this is only too […]
Sydney Morning Herald Column
Art Basel Hong Kong 2019
April 3, 2019“They really exhibit all the nice stuff here,” said Amy Lo, Head of Wealth Management at UBS Hong Kong, by way of justifying the Swiss bank’s continuing sponsorship of Art Basel Hong Kong. That statement might serve as a succinct review of this year’s fair, but it’s actually a bit more complicated. In the whirlwind […]
Sydney Morning Herald Column
Hans and Nora Heysen
March 29, 2019There’s a study to be written on artists who are the son or daughter of an already famous artist. In Australia there are many examples but the best story is that of Hans Heysen and his fourth daughter, Nora. This relationship is explored in Hans and Nora Heysen: Two Generations of Australian Art, at the […]
Sydney Morning Herald Column
Janet Laurence: After Nature
March 21, 2019“What need has nature of thought, of care?” asked Confucius in the 5thC. BCE. “Plenty” is the answer he’d receive today, as we struggle with the effects of global warming, deforrestation, salination, loss of species and habitat. In the so-called ‘Anthropocene’ era nature needs all the help it can get. Having worked so dilgently to […]
Sydney Morning Herald Column
Quilty
March 13, 2019It’s often said that having a lot of enemies must mean you’re doing something right. Ben Quilty discovered long ago that the price of fame for an artist is the undying enmity of a large proportion of one’s peers. This hasn’t put the brakes on his glorious ascent but neither has it left him unscarred. […]
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Sydney Morning Herald Column
April 18, 2019
Suzanne Archer: The Song of the Cicada
Suzanne Archer’s career as an Australian artist began in a blaze of publicity in 1969. Her first solo exhibition at Sydney’s Clune Gallery was written up in the papers, and splashed on radio and TV. It helped that Archer was young and glam, and that the local gallery scene was limited to a handful of […]
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Burning
There are few genuine auteurs in today’s cinema but Korea’s Lee Chang-dong is one of them. It’s a word favoured by French new wave critics when referring to a director whose work has its own distinctive artistry. Only a true artist could have made films such as Secret Sunshine (2007) and Oasis (2002), filled with scenes that have […]
Film Reviews
The Aftermath
April 10, 2019‘British reserve’ may be a cliché, but clichés have an alarming habit of reasserting themselves over and over. James Kent is an experienced director for British television whose 2014 debut feature Testament of Youth, was based on Vera Brittain’s famous memoir of World War One. That movie was a highly professional production but a lukewarm […]
Film Reviews
Galveston & Woman at War
April 3, 2019We’re in the slow season for high-profile new releases but there are plenty of worthwhile films that never make it to the big cinema complexes. Two such movies are Galvestonand Woman at War, which I’ll review this week as a double feature. Galveston is directed by Mélanie Laurent, better known for her work in front of […]
Film Reviews
Us
March 29, 2019Every great horror film acts as a metaphor for some underlying truth, but Jordan Peele’s Us is one long metaphor. In his well-received debut, Get Out, (2017) Peele gave us a horror-comedy in which an Afro-American protagonist discovered that his white girlfriend’s parents and their friends were colonising the bodies of younger, healthier black people. […]
Sandy Rower, Calder’s grandson
April 11, 2019Sculpture just sat around waiting to be admired until Alexander Calder (1898-1976) came up with the idea of the mobile– a set of forms suspended in mid-air that move gently as viewers walk past. On the eve of the first-ever Australian exhibition of this revolutionary artist’s work at the National Gallery of Victoria, I visited […]
Blog
Edmund Capon 1940-2019
March 22, 2019Death was certainly not in Edmund Capon’s plans when he retired as the longest-serving Director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales at the end of 2011. For the following six years he kept up a busy schedule of public speaking, leading tours, and being generally open to all possibilities. When we met for […]
Blog
Fang Lijun: Facial Recognition
March 8, 2019A shaven head sends a message but it’s an ambiguous one. The shaven heads of prisoners or monks tell us they belong to an order of humanity removed from the social mainstream. The shaven head of a soldier, a footballer, or indeed a football hooligan, is a badge of aggressive intent. When a businessman shaves […]
Blog
Charles Blackman 1928-2018
August 23, 2018It’s a cliché when the death of an artist also represents ‘the end of an era’, but the death of Charles Blackman draws a line under a heroic generation of Australian figurative painters. Although it represents only a small episode in a long career, Blackman was the last of The Antipodeans – a group brought […]
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 […]