William Kentridge – Annandale Galleries, Sydney
Saturday, October 6th, 2018 Good Weekend Art Column,Artist: William Kentridge Lives: Houghton, Johannesburg, South Africa Age:63 Represented by:Annandale Galleries (sole Australian representation) His thing.Large scale prints and drawings, small sculptures and maquettes relating to opera and multi-media performances. Our take.Over the past decade South Africa’s William Kentridge has become one of the world’s leading contemporary artists, known for an oeuvrethat ranges from […]
Newsletter 255
Saturday, October 6th, 2018 Art Essays, Newsletter,I’m not raving about anything this week, which doesn’t mean there are no subjects worth taking on, only that I’m short of time and energy. I’m back in Sydney but the current art column is set in Austria, more particularly in Graz, a city of extraordinary contradictions. The Steirischer Herbst(Styrian Autumn) festival has been going […]
The Seagull
Thursday, October 4th, 2018 Film Reviews,Although Anton Chekhov’s plays were considered radically naturalistic when first performed, they feel like period pieces today. The saving grace is that the period to which they belong was one of the most fertile in world literature, with Chekhov’s brief span of 44 years intersecting with the lives of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Leskov and Bunin, […]
Steirischer Herbst 2018
Thursday, October 4th, 2018 Art Column,In the words of Thomas Bernhard, Austria’s greatest novelist of the late 20th century, the city of Graz was “a nest of Nazis”. In a speech of last year, Georg Friedrich Haas, Austria’s foremost living composer, reeled off a list of Nazis that had remained faithful to the Führer in post-war Graz, including his own […]
Stu James – Australian Galleries, Melbourne
Saturday, September 29th, 2018 Good Weekend Art Column,Artist: Stu James Lives: Brunswick, Melbourne & Rosebud, VIC Age:51 Represented by:Australian Galleries (Melbourne & Sydney) Her thing.Painting meets sculpture in images of the coastline, its birds and fish. Our take.Some artists wear a mask of bloodless objectivity, but with Stu James’s work one can feel the keen pleasure derived from the act of making. […]
Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot
Thursday, September 27th, 2018 Film Reviews,Consistency is not a word to be used too freely in relation to Gus Van Sant. Like Steven Soderbergh he has oscillated between arthouse and mainstream, so one never quite knows what’s coming next. For every bleak, existential drama such as Last Days (2005), there’s a heart-warmer like Good Will Hunting (1997). One of Van […]
Contemporary Istanbul 2018
Thursday, September 27th, 2018 Art Column,Having left Sydney while one art fair was winding up, I arrived in Istanbul on the eve of another. Shortly afterwards came the news that Sydney Contemporary had secured $21 million in sales, an increase of $5 million on last year’s total. This comes at a time when dealers complain about declining visitation and how […]
Helen Eager – Utopia Art, Sydney
Saturday, September 22nd, 2018 Good Weekend Art Column,Artist: Helen Eager Lives: Alexandria, Sydney Age:66 Represented by:Utopia Art (No Melbourne representation) Her thing.Vividly coloured geometric abstractions arranged in an artful installation Our take.In a catalogue note for her exhibition, Satellites, at Utopia Art, Helen Eager writes that her father used to work in a planetarium. She remembers how the Russians put a dog […]
6 Artists, 7 Days: The AWC Newhaven Exhibition
Thursday, September 20th, 2018 Art Column,Cute kittens and puppies have been used to sell all sorts of products, but the Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) is testing whether small marsupials can sell contemporary art. Check out the AWC website and you’ll find pictures of the Mala, AKA. the Rufus Hare-wallaby, a miniature fur-ball with dark eyes, big ears, whiskers and tiny […]
Ladies in Black
Thursday, September 20th, 2018 Film Reviews,“Rarely, rarely, comest thou, Spirit of Delight!” lamented Shelley. He wasn’t referring to the Australian film industry but his words could hardly be more apposite. The number of local films I’ve watched in recent years that inspired even the faintest twinge of delight might be counted on the fingers of one hand. Finally, the drought […]
