Art Column
In Our Time: Four Decades of Art from China and Beyond. The Geoff Raby Collection
Saturday, February 17th, 2024 Art Column,Many who have lived and worked in China over the past 30 years, have stories about the painting they could have bought for a few hundred dollars that is now worth hundreds of thousands. Geoff Raby, who was Australia’s ambassador to China from 2007-2011, had more opportunities than most, inhabiting a social circle that extended […]
NGV Triennial 3
Saturday, February 10th, 2024 Art Column,Over the past decade I’ve had so many positive things to say about the National Gallery of Victoria that I get accused of favouritism. My response to such charges is very simple: Put in the work and reap the rewards. The NGV owes its success to a busy, dynamic exhibitions program and an unwavering focus […]
Ann Thomson & Ian Gentle
Saturday, February 3rd, 2024 Art Column,Reaching the age of 90 and remaining young is reason enough for us to celebrate Ann Thomson, but for Terence Maloon, curator of the artist’s survey at the S.H. Ervin Gallery, it’s not just a sentimental occasion. He argues forcefully that Thomson’s work “has never stood still, never lost its momentum or intensity, and has […]
Tacita Dean
Friday, January 26th, 2024 Art Column,It’s odd to think Tacita Dean was once lumped in with that motley group known as the YBAs – or Young British Artists. She had the mixed fortune of emerging at the same time as such headline-seekers as Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, and the Chapman Brothers, who saw notoreity as the superhighway to success in […]
Jonathan Jones & Imants Tillers
Friday, January 19th, 2024 Art Column,“We promised at the election that we would preserve the Wran legacy and keep the Powerhouse open. We are doing just that,” said NSW Arts Minister, John Graham, in a press release of 2 September, last year. In direct contradiction of that election promise, the Minns government is now planning to close the Powerhouse […]
Ramses and the Gold of the Pharaohs
Friday, January 12th, 2024 Art Column,In Sydney this summer there is one exhibition drawing bigger attendances than all the other shows combined. Ramses & the Gold of the Pharoahs at the Australian Museum feeds on a fascination with ancient Egypt which hasn’t dimmed since 1988, when a previous blockbuster named Gold of the Pharoahs was shown in Brisbane, Perth, Sydney […]
Miwatj Yolngu: Sunrise People
Friday, December 22nd, 2023 Art Column,Yolngu country, in the gulf of Carpentaria, draws its identity from the everlasting rendezvous of salt water and fresh water. The same daily drama takes place in the Shoalhaven, in a vast estuary near Nowra. As with Yirrkala, where the Yolngu live, Bundanon, the property gifted to the nation by Arthur Boyd and his family, […]
Emily Kam Kngwarray
Saturday, December 16th, 2023 Art Column,Emily Kame Kngwarreye, as she was known when she left us in 1996, was Aboriginal art’s original megastar. Not since Albert Namatjira had an artist captured the public imagination in the way Emily did. Twenty-seven years later, that reputation continues to grow, with no Australian artist being more eagerly sought after by overseas museums and […]
Louise Bourgeois
Monday, December 11th, 2023 Art Column,It’s only taken a year, but Sydney Modern is hosting its first genuine exhibition. Until now, all we’ve had in this much-hyped building are rearrangements of the permanent collection, but Louise Bourgeois: Has the Day Invaded the Night or Has the Night Invaded the Day? is a most elaborate first venture. Australia has seen Bourgeois’s […]
John R. Walker: Journeys and Return
Wednesday, December 6th, 2023 Art Column,“Inspiration” is a word we use in the most casual fashion, but it originally meant being under the direct influence of God. For the artist, John R. Walker, it has retained that significance. As a practising Christian, Walker believes there are paintings that are divinely inspired, the breath of God having touched something in the […]