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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. […]
Sydney Morning Herald Column
Hassall Collection
March 7, 2019Last week I had occasion to reflect at length on that strange beast, the art collector. The immediate stimulus was a talk at Artspace during a private view of the Michael Hobbs Collection. The late Michael Hobbs was a mainstay of the Sydney art scene for many decades, and his children are honouring his legacy […]
Sydney Morning Herald Column
Perth Festival Art 2019
February 28, 2019In 2018 the Art Gallery of Western Australia chose to opt out of the Perth Festival. This year AGWA has made an impressive comeback with Desert River Sea: Portraits of the Kimberley – the stand-out event in the 2019 visual arts program. It’s an exhibition that has been six years in the making, and the […]
Sydney Morning Herald Column
Heaven and Earth in Chinese Art
February 22, 2019Instead of asking: “How are you?”, the Chinese might greet you with words: “Have you eaten?” If ever one required confirmation of the Chinese love of food please note that the most famous and popular works in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, are two miraculous carvings: one of a cabbage, the other a piece of […]
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March 22, 2019
Edmund Capon 1940-2019
Death 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 […]
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Destroyer
March 21, 2019If you thought the make-up department had done a number on Margot Robbie in Mary Queen of Scots, wait until you see Nicole Kidman in Destroyer. At the first glimpse of her red-rimmed eyes and dry, blotchy skin, the word “ravaged” springs to mind. It’s very hard to recognise the aquatic princess from Acquaman, the […]
Film Reviews
Sometimes, Always, Never
March 13, 2019Bill Nighy is one of those actors who tends to polarise his audience. Some viewers can’t get enough of him, others find him mannered and irritating. After watching Nighy go through his paces on many occasions I can only conclude that the mannerisms are down to the man, not the role. His self-conscious blend of […]
Film Reviews
Alliance Française French Film Festival 2019
March 7, 2019Aside from the Indians, the French are probably the greatest talkers in the world. We Aussies, by comparison, are notably inarticulate. Perhaps that’s why we have such an inexhaustible affection for the annual Alliance Française French Film Festival, an event packed with movies in which characters babble on and on in a language which most […]
Film Reviews
Greta
February 28, 2019Few actors do “weird” as well as Isabelle Huppert. Whether she is playing a murderess, a swindler, a chilly business woman, an uptight teacher, or a rape victim who turns the tables, she remains aloof and self-contained. No matter what happens to her character in the course of a film she quickly recaptures her sangfroid. […]
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 […]
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Li Huayi: Fantasies on Paper and Enchantments in Gold
August 2, 2018Fantasies on Paper and Enchantments in Gold is a title that western audiences might view ironically, as a deliberately florid, over-the-top tease. For this we may thank an artist such as Jeff Koons, who has blurred the line between kitsch and fine art so successfully it’s no longer possible to draw the sharp distinctions that […]
Blog
Sun Xun: Shapeshifter
July 13, 2018“Whenever I find people putting a tag on my work I try to prove it untrue,” says Sun Xun. “I take pride in the fact that no-one can catch me. I will change the medium of my work or the style of my work. I’ll aim to be different every time, so that nobody can […]
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 […]