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Joshua Yeldham, Dagmar Cyrulla, Indonesia Calling 2020
November 17, 2020“I’ve always been interested in how the eye is the trail to the soul, and how my soul projected can look like a painting,” says Joshua Yeldham in a short film he has made for his exhibition, Providence, at Arthouse Gallery. There’s a popular belief that artists are unworldly beings who live in their own […]
Sydney Morning Herald Column
Michael Zavros, Gunybi Ganambarr, Li Jin
November 10, 2020Michael Zavros is a very 21st century artist. Known for a fastidious, hyperreal style of painting and a preoccupation with fashion and luxury goods, he would have been anathema in those days when the avant-garde strove to make art that was not a marketable commodity. Marketability is Zavros’s great and abiding theme, although he comes […]
Sydney Morning Herald Column
The Wynne Prize 2020
November 3, 2020A visitor to the Art Gallery of NSW has written to me, saying that after living through last year’s horror bushfires on the south coast, he was surprised at the lack of fire paintings in the Wynne Prize. He was also disappointed that the Salon des Refusés seemed to ignore the bushfire crisis, although it […]
Sydney Morning Herald Column
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 […]
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Sydney Morning Herald Column
November 24, 2020
Karl Wiebke, Ebony Russell, Lea Ferris & Dave Teer
It’s almost impossible to imagine ‘pure’ abstraction in art but Karl Wiebke takes us to the brink. His Seven Paintings at Liverpool Street Gallery avoid all the usual associations we habitually attach to an abstract work, being not suggestive of landscapes, figures, or architectonic details such as doors or windows. So what do we see? […]
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David Byrne’s American Utopia
November 20, 2020In the liner notes to his 2018 album, American Utopia, David Byrne reflects on the title. “Is this meant ironically? It is a joke? Do I mean this seriously? Am I referring to the past or the future? Is it personal or political?” These questions, which echo the lists of questions in wellknown songs such […]
Film Reviews
American Dharma
November 13, 2020Steve Bannon is not stupid, he can even be charming, but he is not the kind of guy you’d like to see loitering-with-intent in the corridors of power. In American Dharma, Errol Morris brings us an extended interview with the man Time magazine called “the Great Manipulator”, interspersed with excerpts from Bannon’s favourite films. Morris, generally […]
Film Reviews
Kajillionaire
November 6, 2020Miranda July made a big splash with her debut feature, You, Me and Everyone We Know in 2005. She may not have challenged the superhero flicks at the box office, but she became an overnight sensation on the Indie circuit. A performance artist, actor and novelist, July is an all-round creative personality who treats her […]
Film Reviews
Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm’
October 29, 2020We 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 […]
Know My Name: A First Look
November 19, 2020If the phrase Know My Name makes you think of the theme song of a James Bond movie, you’re a prime candidate for the National Gallery of Australia’s new survey of Australian women artists, 1900 to the present. You might even draw a twinge of masculine panic from Chris Cornell’s lyric: The odds will betray […]
Blog
Streeton: A First Look
November 13, 2020When the title of a show is simply the artist’s surname it sends a message. If you don’t know who Streeton is, well… you should. It’s like saying “Picasso”, rather than “Pablo Picasso” or “Rembrandt” rather than “Rembrandt van Rijn”. The unattended surname signifies greatness. It’s a warning you’ll miss out on an essential Australian […]
Blog
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. […]
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 […]