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William Yang: Seeing & Being Seen
April 5, 2021William Yang is a Sydney institution but a Queenslander born and bred. Last week he was reclaimed by his state of origin for a retrospective at the Queensland Art Gallery that allows us to read one artist’s career as a tale of social evolution. Even allowing for the wrong turnings of the present day, over […]
Sydney Morning Herald Column
Clarice Beckett: The Present Moment
March 30, 2021On a rainy day in Sydney it feels completely appropriate to be writing about Clarice Beckett. She was an artist for whom the ideal atmospheric conditions were overcast, a bit misty. Her work is all about the weather. As a subject it couldn’t be more commonplace but it transports us into a realm of indistinct […]
Sydney Morning Herald Column
Papunya Tula: 50 Years 1971-2021
After 50 years the Papunya Tula Art Movement has carved out a deep niche in Australian art history, but the settlement itself was a desolate place born from a long history of misunderstandings and misguided policies. The one and only time I visited Papunya, roughly 240 kms north-west of Alice Springs, it was almost deserted. […]
Sydney Morning Herald Column
Margel Hinder
March 16, 2021When Margel Hinder told an interviewer in 1972 that she was “terribly thrilled by all the television towers” it may have sounded like a joke about Sydney’s suburban sprawl, but she was probably quite sincere. Hinder drew inspiration from both natural and mechanical forms, being as fascinated by a spider web as by a metal […]
Sydney Morning Herald Column
Bill Henson
March 13, 2021A new exhibition by Bill Henson is always an event – an eruption of the extraordinary into the fabric of everyday life. That hyper-productive philosopher, Slavoj Žižek, suggests that for most people the fundamental earth-shattering event is falling in love. Why would we describe this process as a “fall” if it wasn’t in some way […]
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April 14, 2021
Guy Warren 100 not out
Australia’s oldest artist, Guy Warren, is getting tired of being asked: “What’s the secret of a long life?” His answer is very simple: “You just have to keep living.” When Warren gets down to detail he says it’s a matter of “good genes, good luck and a whiskey every night.” Beyond that he doesn’t know […]
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The Trial of the Chicago 7
April 9, 2021This year’s Academy Awards is shaping up as an unusually open event. From the eight nominees for Best Picture there are three by female directors, three more made for streaming platforms, with only a limited theatrical release. The directors are French, English, African-American, Korean-American and Chinese-American, with only three fitting the standard white male template. […]
Film Reviews
The Father
April 2, 2021One rarely hears the adjective “Pinteresque” any more but it came surging to mind as I watched The Father. The edginess of Harold Pinter’s plays owed much to the way he incorporated elements of the Theatre of the Absurd (to use Martin Esslin’s wellknown term), without ever losing touch with plausible reality. In adapting his […]
Film Reviews
French Exit
March 26, 2021How you feel about French Exit will largely come down to your feelings about Michelle Pfeiffer – one of those timeless screen beauties with an army of rusted-on admirers. Pfeiffer dominates Azazel Jacobs’s offbeat comedy so completely that even when she isn’t on screen her presence can still be felt. Yet the cost of this […]
Film Reviews
Judas and the Black Messiah
March 20, 2021“Fred Hampton” may not be a name that rings any bells, but after watching Shaka King’s Judas and the Black Messiah you wont be forgetting it quickly. This historical drama of the 60s is driven by a memorable performance by Daniel Kaluuya in the role of the youthful Black Panther supremo. King’s theme, needless to […]
Monet: Larger & Lighter
April 2, 2021There are worse ways to spend an hour than being surrounded by gigantic projections of Impressionist paintings while listening to the greatest hits of the Belle Époque, but don’t imagine that Monet & Friends – Life, Light and Colour is an art exhibition. This audio-visual extravaganza is a spectacle with one foot in the past, […]
Blog
Santiago Sierra: Union Flag
March 26, 2021If Santiago Sierra had decided to go to Charlottesville, Virginia, and soak the Stars and Stripes in native American or African American blood he would have had the most explosive artwork in the world. In the United States the flag is a sacred talisman for nationalist groups, including every form of extremist. Can one begin […]
Blog
Botticelli to Van Gogh
March 9, 2021Why Botticelli? In an exhibition in which the first room includes remarkable paintings by Titian, Tintoretto and Savoldo, Botticelli’s Four scenes from the early life of Saint Zenobius (c.1500) is not exactly a highlight. The painting belongs to a class of decoration called spalliere – a long, horizontal panel that was inserted into a wall […]
Blog
Fare thee well, Liz Ann
March 6, 2021Retiring after 22 years at the helm of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Liz Ann Macgregor still inspires mixed feelings. She arrived in 1999 in a burst of Scottish exotica, a veritable blur of tartan, and says she is now returning from whence she came. Possibly Macgregor’s most notable achievement was to steer the institution […]
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 […]