Bangkok Art Biennale
Friday, October 26th, 2018 Art Column,“Follow your bliss” was the signature pronouncement of Joseph Campbell, an American writer on comparative mythology who became a guru for many of his readers. Campbell took the idea from the Indian holy books, the Upanishads, in which the Sanskrit word for “bliss” is “ananda”. It may be pure coincidence that the inaugural Bangkok Art […]
Fahrenheit 11/9
Thursday, October 25th, 2018 Film Reviews,Godwin’s Law states that the longer an on-line discussion continues the more likely it is that someone will mention Hitler. In Fahrenheit 11/9 it takes Michael Moore an hour-and-a-half to invoke Der Führer, but when he does there’s no holding back. We get newsreel footage of Hitler addressing a rally, but the voiceover comes from […]
Halinka Orszulok – Flinders Street Gallery, Sydney
Saturday, October 20th, 2018 Good Weekend Art Column,Artist: Halinka Orszulok Lives: Jamberoo, NSW Age:40 Represented by:Flinders Street Gallery, Sydney (no Melbourne representation) Her thing.Easel-sized paintings in a photorealist style, featuring eerie, nocturnal landscapes. Our take.Halinka Orszulok hunts by night, tracking down her motifs with a camera. When she finds an image with the right degree of mystery and suggestiveness, she’ll spend months […]
White Rabbit: Supernatural
Saturday, October 20th, 2018 Art Column,At a time when the United Nations has just issued an alarming report about the impact of climate change a new show at the White Rabbit Gallery looks at the transformations of nature in contemporary Chinese art. It’s a subject that took a radical turn when the Communist Party came to power in 1949. Prior […]
A Star is Born
Saturday, October 20th, 2018 Film Reviews,One learns to mistrust the movie that is hyped to the skies – whether it be “critically acclaimed” or simply a “box office sensation”. The box office is the worst guide to quality because popular taste is fixated on superheroes, brain-dead action films, lame comedies and sentimental mush. As for the critics, they couldn’t stop […]
Newsletter 257
Saturday, October 20th, 2018 Art Essays, Newsletter,Apologies for the lateness of this week’s newsletter and posting. I’ve been in Bangkok for the city’s first-ever Biennale and – aside from an insanely busy schedule – I didn’t have a reliable Internet connection. In addition, the mail box associated with the site filled up for the umpteenth time and couldn’t be emptied. So […]
Ken Whisson – Niagara Galleries, Melbourne
Saturday, October 13th, 2018 Good Weekend Art Column,Artist: Ken Whisson Lives: Elizabeth Bay, Sydney Age:90 Represented by:Niagara Galleries (Watters Gallery, Sydney) His thing.Small to medium-size paintings and drawings, in which humans, animals and landscapes float in an abstract space. Our take.Ken Whisson must be tired of hearing he’s a “artist’s artist”. This effectively means other artists adore your work while the buying […]
Newsletter 256
Saturday, October 13th, 2018 Art Essays, Newsletter,This newsletter is being written on a bus, speeding through the night from Busan to Gwangju. It may not sound glamorous but the Korean bus network is super efficient and ridiculously inexpensive. Note to self: next time in Korea, give the trains a miss and take only buses. I’m here to see three Biennales, and […]
William Kentridge: That Which We Do Not Remember
Friday, October 12th, 2018 Art Column,There is nobody in the upper echelons of contemporary art quite like South Africa’s William Kentridge. There may be artists with more natural talent. There are plenty whose works sell for greater sums. There are artists with a much better feel for colour or texture, or who draw with greater fluency. Kentridge’s works are not […]
1%
Friday, October 12th, 2018 Film Reviews,On first impressions one wouldn’t imagine Matt Nable to be the literary type. Covered in tattoos, muscle-bound, mo-hawked, and prone to a bit of ultra-violence, Nable, who plays bikie leader, Knuck, in Stephen McCallum’s 1%, is also responsible for the screenplay. Although most of the dialogue is a stream of expletives, it’s more convincing than […]
