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Doug Aitken: New Era
November 30, 2021Doug Aitken, born and based in California, is one of the most globalised of all contemporary artists. He once told an intervewer that “home can be motion” and his work sets out to prove that proposition. His projects are often conceived on a grand scale, requiring teams of collaborators. He makes video, photography, sculpture, performance, […]
Sydney Morning Herald Column
Valerie Olsen, William Kentridge
November 16, 2021It would be wrong to say Valerie Marshall Strong Olsen waited a long time for her retrospective. Any suggestion of waiting disappeared with the artist’s death ten years ago. What makes this show at the National Art School’s Rayner Hoff Project Space so special is that it is also Olsen’s first-ever solo exhibition. Today, when […]
Sydney Morning Herald Column
Portia Geach Memorial Award 2021
November 9, 2021Entering this year’s Portia Geach Memorial Award at the S.H. Ervin Galley means being virtually assaulted by Janne Kearney’s There’s a rainbow after every storm (Tilly Baker, musician). There may be nothing subtle about this portrait but it sets the tone for a show that greets the end of Sydney’s lockdown with a loud hooray! […]
Sydney Morning Herald Column
The Way We Eat
In the western world we greet someone with the words: “How are you?” but in China they say: “Have you eaten?” It testifies to the central importance of food in Chinese culture – and perhaps the difficulties of getting enough of it over the past 5,000 years. The Way We Eat at the Art Gallery […]
Sydney Morning Herald Column
Dhambit Mununggurr, Karl Wiebke, Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Helen Eager
October 26, 2021Like all businesses in Sydney, the commercial galleries were quick to open their doors last week. Private and online sales have continued during lockdown but it must be reassuring to see flesh-and-blood customers again. First stop, for me, was Dhambit Mununggurr’s Durrk – I can fly, at the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery. Like so many talented […]
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December 7, 2021
Jeffrey Smart: Sketch for a Portrait
When an artist is said to be “traditional and progressive at the same time,” he can only be a great individualist. When this description comes from the director of the National Gallery of Australia, in his foreword to the catalogue of a major Jeffrey Smart exhibition, it suggests a good deal of uncertainty about where […]
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The Power of the Dog
December 3, 2021Don’t go along to The Power of the Dog expecting gun fights at the O.K.Coral. The setting is the rugged wilds of Montana (even though the movie was shot in New Zealand!), the characters are kitted out in chaps and cowboy hats. There’s even a brief appearance by a handful of tame, demoralised Indians. Beyond […]
Film Reviews
Last Night in Soho
November 26, 2021Every movie made by British director, Edgar Wright, feels like a classic hits compilation album. With pop songs of the 1960s and 70s being belted out at regular intervals it gives the impression the action has been tailored to match the soundtrack. Baby Driver (2017) took its title from a Simon and Garfunkel song, and […]
Film Reviews
Sydney Film Festival 2021
November 19, 2021It was a long intermission between June 2019 and this month, but the 68thSydney Film Festival finally made it to the cinemas – and came through with every sign of success. My own attendance was more sporadic than usual but the overall impression was bouyant. I’m not sure if this was because of the program, […]
Film Reviews
No Time to Die
November 12, 2021In almost every James Bond film our hero prevents a psychotic supervillain from realising his dream of world domination. For the makers of these movies world domination is an ambition fulfilled a long time ago. The trick nowadays is to maintain their iron grip on the hearts and minds of the viewing public. For a […]
Matisse: A First Look
November 22, 2021Henri Matisse burst onto the French art scene like a bombshell at the 1905 Salon d’Automne. Faced with paintings in vibrant colour, the public was scandalised. The 36-year-old Matisse and his colleagues were christened “les Fauves” – the wild beasts – and accused of being madmen and confidence tricksters. Although the show was an act […]
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Banksy: Love is in the Bin (Again)
October 14, 2021It may seem ridiculous that anyone would pay £1.04 million (AUD $1.95 million), for Banksy’s Balloon Girl in 2018, but it’s slightly nauseating that a half-shredded version, rechristened Love is in the Bin, should be selling for £4-6 million in 2021. One might go even further and say Banksy’s entire career is a gravity-defying absurdity, […]
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The NGA gives itself a birthday present
September 27, 2021Lest we forget, the price paid for Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles, was $1.3 million in 1973. A world record at the time, it was viewed as one of the keynote extravagances of the Whitlam government. Nevertheless, when the National Gallery of Australia opened in 1982 the painting was a major drawcard. It has since become […]
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Diana: Back in Bronze
July 17, 2021If the British Royal Family wished to underline their status as an antiquated institution, out of touch with the present day, they could hardly do better than commission a larger-than-life-size bronze statue of Diana, Princess of Wales. The bronze monument of The Great Man (and occasionally, Woman) is a throwback to Victorian times which implicitly […]
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.
Whiteley: the Opera
June 18, 2021Ever since John Adams gave us Nixon in China in 1987, the possibilities for opera have been limitless. Unlike the Greek tragedians who were obliged to set every play in a mythical age of Gods and heroes, contemporary composers have drawn subjects from the news cycle, and from the tawdry lives of latter-day celebrities. Elena […]
Journals
Patrick Hall
A popular way of praising an Australian artist is to proclaim that his or work should be better known overseas. It’s ironic that Hobart-based artist, Patrick Hall, is probably better known overseas than he is on the other side of Bass Strait. Steven Joyce of Despard Gallery has shown Hall’s work at the renowned Chicago […]
Journals
It All Started with a Stale Sandwich
This year is the 50th anniversary of the Kaldor Public Art Projects, a testament to the persistence of a Hungarian migrant who needed to share his obsession with an entire city, if not a country. The birthday celebrations will continue to spread the Kaldor gospel via an unorthodox retrospective at the Art Gallery of New […]