Australian Art
Australian artists tour China
Saturday, October 9th, 2010 Art Column, Australian Art, Chinese Art, General Art Essays,With each year China is exerting a greater attraction for Australian artists. This is not simply a reflection of the country’s status as this century’s coming super power, or the fact that the Australian economy is riding on the back of China’s insatiable appetite for resources. There is a pervasive energy in contemporary Chinese art […]
In the Balance
Saturday, October 2nd, 2010 Art Column, Australian Art,Can an issue be of overwhelming, global importance and not be a great subject for artists? After experiencing In the Balance: Art for a Changing World at the Museum of Contemporary Art, I’m almost inclined to write off the environmental movement as subject matter. This would be unfair, because I’m sure there have been significant […]
Slow Burn, Charles Blackman
Saturday, September 11th, 2010 Art Column, Australian Art,Hopefully it won’t be viewed as a sign of ingrained male chauvinism that I’ve taken so long to talk about Slow Burn: A century of Australian women artists from a private collection, at the S.H.Ervin Gallery. The exhibition, which is proving extremely popular, is due to run for another week. There has been a […]
Curious Colony
Saturday, August 7th, 2010 Art Column, Australian Art,In 1814, Newcastle was “a forlorn cluster of makeshift buildings whose sole purpose was to provide shelter and basic necessities for the inhabitants.” This assessment, by historian Elizabeth Ellis, is uncontroversial. For the 305 white settlers – including 249 convicts – who made their homes in this isolated outpost, perhaps the only solace was to […]
Shen Jiawei: the Art of Politics
Sunday, August 1st, 2010 Art Essays, Australian Art, Chinese Art, International Art,Shen Jiawei became an artist during the Cultural Revolution, making his first major works in the service of the state, embodied in the figure of the Great Helmsman, Mao Zedong. For roughly a decade, from 1966 onwards, every aspect of daily life in China was politicised in a way that seems to defy logic. It […]
Brett Whiteley: A Sensual Line 1957-67
Tuesday, June 1st, 2010 Australian Art, Book Reviews,Brett Whiteley: A Sensual Line 1957-67 By Kathie Sutherland Looking through a recent auction catalogue I was struck by the estimate given for a picture of a blue and white bird by Brett Whiteley. This attractive but undoubtedly minor work is expected to sell for $500,000-$700,000 – a ludicrous sum for a painting that would […]
Tommy Watson & the politics of the indigenous art market
Friday, January 1st, 2010 Aboriginal Art, Australian Art,Yannima Tommy Watson is said to have painted his first picture in 2001, in the community of Irrunytju, twelve kilometers south-west of the tri-border, where South Australia meets Western Australia and the Northern Territory. The white man’s borders don’t mean much to the inhabitants of this remote settlement, also known as Wingellina, but it is […]
Russell Drysdale
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 Australian Art, Book Reviews,Russell Drysdale By Lou Klepac Lou Klepac’s weighty monograph on Russell Drysdale was first issued in 1983, less than two years after the artist’s death in June 1981. I remember reviewing that volume for a student newspaper, regretting that I never had the chance to meet the artist. At that time the book seemed like […]
Gunybi Ganambarr
Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 Aboriginal Art, Australian Art,In many people’s minds there could be no art-form less open to change than bark painting. It is one of the world’s oldest living forms of artistic expression, probably dating as far back as those rock paintings done 40,000 years ago. Yet bark painting is also one of the abiding paradoxes of contemporary art, for […]
Sculpture By the Sea in Denmark
Saturday, August 1st, 2009 Australian Art, International Art,There was considerable trepidation leading up to the international launch of Sculpture by Sea in the Danish city of Aarhus. This prodigiously popular show, which has occupied the Sydney heads, from Bondi to Tamarama every year since 1997, had never previously been seen outside of Australia. Although the exhibitions at Bondi, and more recently at […]