[CENSORED]
Friday, June 15th, 2018 Film Reviews,One of the most intriguing entries in this year’s Sydney Film Festival was a documentary called [CENSORED]. It consists of 63 minutes of footage stitched together from bits cut out of films by the Australian censorship office from 1958 to 1971. Director, Sari Braithwaite, rummaged through almost 2,000 clips preserved and digitised at the National […]
Patricia Piccinini: Curious Affection
Friday, June 15th, 2018 Art Column,In 2016 Patricia Piccinini became the most popular contemporary artist in the world – or so the statistics say. A free admission show in Rio de Janeiro attracted 444,425 visitors, propelling her to the top of the Art Newspaper’s annual rankings. It may be a moment to fly the Australian flag, but such statistics tell […]
White Rabbit: The Sleeper Awakes
Friday, June 8th, 2018 Art Column,H.G.Wells published his novel, The Sleeper Awakes, in 1910. The Russian uprising of 1905 had been put down, and the Revolution of 1917 was but a rumble on the horizon. It’s the story of a sleeper who wakes 200 years into the future – in 2100 to be precise – to find a world ruled […]
Ocean's 8
Friday, June 8th, 2018 Film Reviews,Everyone loves a good heist flick. At a running time of twelve minutes the very first Hollywood blockbuster was Edwin S. Porter’s The Great Train Robbery of 1903. In the 21st century the genre received a boost from Steven Soderbergh’s 2002 remake of the Rat Pack film, Ocean’s 11 (1960). Sequels were to follow in […]
The Blake Prize 2018
Thursday, May 31st, 2018 Art Column,It’s been seven years since I last wrote about the Blake Prize, which seemed to have reached a point where it couldn’t get any worse. The good news is that it hasn’t gotten worse: it’s just as bad as it was seven years ago. When it was founded in 1951 the Blake Prize was intended […]
Sydney Film Festival 2018: Fashion Documentaries
Thursday, May 31st, 2018 Film Reviews,This year the Sydney Film Festival turns 65 but has no thoughts of retirement. On the contrary, with more than 250 films being screened over a mere 12 days, the SFF is operating at the peak of its powers. Arriving at a time of year when good new releases are scarce it offers something for […]
The Field Revisited
Friday, May 25th, 2018 Art Column,No exhibition of Australian art has been more mythologised than The Field. Indeed, its only historical competition might be the 9 by 5 Impression exhibition of 1889, in which artists such as Tom Roberts and Arthur Streeton scandalised Melbourne by calling themselves “Impressionists”. The Field proved equally controversial when it launched the new St.Kilda Road […]
Solo: A Star Wars Story
Friday, May 25th, 2018 Film Reviews,If you’ve ever wondered what Han Solo did before the first Star Wars film, Solo: A Star Wars Story provides all the details. It seems he spent a lot of time flying spaceships and shooting at amazingly incompetent enemies with ray guns. Wow! That was a surprise. One never expects a Star Wars movie to […]
German Film Festival 2018
Friday, May 18th, 2018 Film Reviews,There have been occasions when the German Film Festival has chosen to kick off with an echte deutsche Komödie. This allowed many iterations of that lazy gag about German comedy being a contradiction in terms. This year the Germans have returned to more familiar territory: earnest dramas, with perhaps a touch of Olympian irony. This […]
Head On Photo Festival 2018
Friday, May 18th, 2018 Art Column,Head On is still not getting the attention it deserves. We make a big fuss about the Sydney Biennale, we go wild for Vivid, we swarm over the Sydney foreshores during Sculpture by the Sea, but after ten years the Head On Photo Festival survives on a fraction of the resources devoted to other events. […]
