The Breaker Upperers
Saturday, July 21st, 2018 Film Reviews,The Breaker Upperers, which screened on opening night of this year’s Sydney Film Festival, got a riotous reception on an evening when everybody was in the mood for a party. Will it survive more sober assessments? It’s crude, vulgar and slapdash, so don’t go along expecting the Lubitsch touch. The film is a two-hander for […]
Sun Xun: Shapeshifter
Friday, July 13th, 2018 Blog,“Whenever I find people putting a tag on my work I try to prove it untrue,” says Sun Xun. “I take pride in the fact that no-one can catch me. I will change the medium of my work or the style of my work. I’ll aim to be different every time, so that nobody can […]
Riyoji Ikeda & Daniel Buren
Friday, July 13th, 2018 Art Column,Artists are forever striving to show us the world in a new light but not many can claim to be “probing the fundamental structure of the universe.” This is the domain of science and, more specifically, of CERN – the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, located on the border of France and Switzerland. In 2014-15, […]
The Gospel According to André
Friday, July 13th, 2018 Film Reviews,Those who watched The September Issue – the 2009 documentary that sparked a wave of fashion movies, will remember André Leon Talley as a larger-than-life presence in Vogue magazine’s inner circle. Loud, camp and flamboyant, Talley is the big black guy who seems to hang around the office doing nothing in particular. If Vogue’s uptight […]
Mary Shelley
Thursday, July 5th, 2018 Film Reviews,During her lifetime Mary Shelley (1797-1851) was considered a minor player in the colourful lives of the Romantic poets, but her literary legacy has overshadowed them all. For every contemporary reader who admires the poetry of her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, or their friend, Lord Byron, there are millions who have thrilled to the story […]
RAW: Wedderburn
Thursday, July 5th, 2018 Art Column,There is no fixed definition of an ‘artists’ colony’ although there are numerous examples spread across the globe. Some are run like businesses, others are no more than clusters of like-minded Bohemians. The prototype of the modern artists’ colony is probably Worpswede, 28 kms from Bremen in northern Germany, which has been a haven for […]
Salon des Refusés 2018
Friday, June 29th, 2018 Art Column,After the Trustees of the Art Gallery of NSW have plucked the choicest morsels from the Archibald and Wynne buffet, it’s left to the Salon des Refusés to clean up the leftovers. This time there was less to choose from, as the Incredible Expanding Archibald Prize had swelled to 59 finalists, removing many good options […]
Sicario: Day of the Soldado
Friday, June 29th, 2018 Film Reviews,If this were one of those reviews that run in a box at the side of the page it would read: “A relentlessly brutal and stupid film that does no-one any favours.” The chief difference between this sequel and the original Sicario of 2015, comes down to two significant absences. Canadian Director, Denis Villeneuve, has […]
John Mawurndjul: Bark Maestro
Friday, June 22nd, 2018 Blog,Here’s an art trivia question: “Who was the first Australian artist to be given a retrospective at two major European museums?” Answer: John Mawurndjul of western Arnhem Land, who in 2005-06 had his work shown at the Museum Tinguely in Basel, and the Sprengel Museum in Hannover. If you don’t remember seeing the exhibition when […]
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
Friday, June 22nd, 2018 Film Reviews,Spanish director, J.A.Bayona has made a horror film about a creepy old house (The Orphanage), a full-on disaster flick (The Impossible), and a monster movie (A Monster Calls). These must have seemed like excellent credentials to a Hollywood studio looking for someone to helm the fifth installment in their ever-popular dinosaur franchise. If only Bayona […]
