Sign up for news updates
Les Sculpture Refusées & Sculpture in the Vineyards – Wollombi Valley Sculpture Festival
October 27, 2020At this time of any other year Sydney is getting ready for its regular fix of Sculpture by the Sea (SXS), one of the most eagerly anticipated events on the cultural calendar. But like so many things in the era of COVID-19, the thought of hundreds of thousands of people rubbing shoulders on the trail […]
Sydney Morning Herald Column
Lindy Lee: Moon in a Dew Drop
October 20, 2020Lindy Lee grew up in Brisbane in the 1960s, the daughter of Chinese parents who left Guandong when the Communists came to power. She is ethnically Chinese but Australian born and bred, a duality that has coloured her entire life. She remembers being the only Chinese face in her classes at school, which meant she […]
Sydney Morning Herald Column
Salon des Refusés 2020
October 13, 2020There must be a limit to the industrial quantity of portraits served up annually to the Australian public. This year we’ve already had the Portia Geach Memorial Award at the S.H.Ervin; the Shirley Hannan National Portrait Award in Bega; the National Photographic Portrait Prize and the Darling Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery in […]
Sydney Morning Herald Column
Archibald Prize 2020: A Trilogy
October 6, 2020The Archibald Prize 2020: A First Look Scomo is out, but Albo is in. And so is Jacinda Adern. If the Art Gallery of NSW were not a steadfastly apolitical institution, one might imagine there is some comment intended in the selection of finalists for the 2020 Archibald Prize. In olden days a portrait […]
Sydney Morning Herald Column
Endeavour Voyage
September 29, 2020In the Bicentenary celebrations of 1970 Captain Cook was hailed as the discoverer of Australia. At primary school we received a special booklet telling us about the great navigator and his achievements. There were commemorative coins, badges and postage stamps. Every form of sporting competition had its dedication to Cook – from surf life-saving to […]
FEATURED
Film Reviews
October 29, 2020
Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm’
We know what to expect from a new Borat movie: The Worst. We know it will be stunningly vulgar, packed with stunts and gags that seem guaranteed to generate a violent response. The satire will be so broad it offends fans as well as foes. It will be kind of disgusting, with lots of moments […]
Sign up for news updates
Corpus Christi
October 23, 2020According to that famous former nun, Karen Armstrong: “The great sages of religion have always said that you don’t start out deciding metaphysical questions about the existence of God or the viability of the resurrection. You first live in a certain way.” Polish director, Jan Komasa, provides a dramatic illustration of this idea in Corpus […]
Film Reviews
Jean-Pierre Melville
October 15, 2020With Hollywood saving its blockbusters for better days the cinemas are turning to classic and foreign films to fill the void. This is not a stopgap, but a great opportunity. If only a small percentage of regular cinema-goers take the chance to broaden their horizons it would be marvellous thing for film culture in this […]
Film Reviews
On the Rocks
October 9, 2020Born into Hollywood aristocracy, Sofia Coppola was playing small roles in her father’s films while still in nappies. She made a promising directorial debut in 1999 with The Virgin Suicides, but it was her second movie, Lost in Translation (2003), that established her as a rising star. A beautiful, melancholy, funny film about an impossible […]
Film Reviews
St. Ali Italian Film Festival 2020
October 2, 2020This year the celebrations are slightly muted, but the Italian Film Festival is back. Normally the wine and coffee would be flowing freely, with a few glamorous movie stars on hand for premieres. In place of the usual demonstrative Italianisms, director, Elysia Zeccola, says audiences will have to be content blowing kisses to each other. […]
Brett Whiteley Catalogue Raisonné
September 30, 2020Last week the Brett Whiteley Catalogue Raisonné 1955-1992 arrived on my doorstep. When I bent down to pick it up, I thought I’d need a forklift. Lugging it inside I made straight for the bathroom scales, which registered 22.9 kilos. Upon opening the package I discovered a gleaming white case in which seven white volumes […]
Blog
Paul Higgs: Material Energy
August 25, 2020Art is revolution, improvisation, impetus, enthusiasm, record-setting, elasticity, elegance, generosity, superabundance of goodness, drowning in the Absolute, struggle against every hindrance, an aerial dance on the burning summits of passion… Filippo Marinetti “Scattering” in physics, is what happens when waves of energy are forced to change direction due to a collision with various particles. […]
Blog
The Murder of the Powerhouse Museum
June 26, 2020It’s not a museum. This is not a matter of opinion, it’s not a slander being spread by critics of the project. The proposed building in Parramatta the NSW government would like us to see as the home of a ‘relocated’ Powerhouse Museum will be nothing more than an entertainment venue stuffed with cafes and […]
Blog
Christo – His legacy in Australia
June 11, 2020Wrapped Coast, One Million Square Feet, Little Bay, Sydney, Australia. The most important piece of avant-garde art ever made in this country, or the the work of a madman? Both views got plenty of traction at the end of October 1969, when Christo and his wife, Jeanne-Claude (1935-2009), undertook the monumental task of wrapping part […]
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 […]