Art Column
Julia Margaret Cameron
Friday, September 25th, 2015 Art Column,Imagine photographs that “electrify you with delight and startle the world,” and one does not automatically think of Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-79). Nevertheless, she was the author of both the photographs and the rave review. Today we are more likely to be startled by Cameron’s brazen self-confidence than by her portraits and ‘literary’ fancies. The […]
Robert MacPherson
Saturday, September 19th, 2015 Art Column,If Robert MacPherson (b. 1937) were a character in a novel he would test the reader’s credulity. It’s hard to believe in the idea of a conceptual artist raised in a Queensland country town, who left school early to work in a cannery and then as a musterer at a cattle station. By the age […]
David Bowie is
Saturday, September 12th, 2015 Art Column,David Bowie is one of those rare artists who have helped define a decade. That decade was the 1970s – an era when world economies were sent into a spin by an oil crisis, and fashion went AWOL. Those were the years that saw the downfall of Richard Nixon, the rise of Margaret Thatcher, the […]
After Utopia
Saturday, September 5th, 2015 Art Column,Irony has never been a big feature of life in Singapore, but perhaps it’s catching on. Of all nations on the planet, Singapore is arguably the closest thing to a social laboratory, where economic and cultural programs are dreamt up by a paternalistic state and broadly accepted by the population. This centralised control has made […]
Aleks Danko and Haines & Hinterding
Saturday, August 29th, 2015 Art Column,There are many exhibitions that must have been fun for the artist but leave viewers in a state of mild perplexity. The Museum of Contemporary Art has two such shows at the moment – shows that can be broadly appreciated, but not loved. Energies, the survey by David Haines and Joyce Hinterding, is almost over, […]
Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale 2015
Saturday, August 22nd, 2015 Art Column,In the courtyard of the Satoyama Museum, in Tokamachi City, a mountain has been born. Covered in dense forest, with clouds of mist and even a waterfall, the towering monolith sits in a shallow pool of water. The courtyard is surrounded by a ring of helicopters, battleships, submarines and patrol boats – 100 small models […]
Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great
Saturday, August 15th, 2015 Art Column,Following the death of Prince Grigory Potemkin in 1791, Catherine the Great wrote her own epitaph. Potemkin had not only been Catherine’s most trusted advisor, statesman and general, but the undisputed love of her life. Feeling her own mortality, she set down how she would like to be remembered. Catherine, by her own estimation, had […]
Salon des Refusés 2015 & Stars + Stripes
Saturday, August 8th, 2015 Art Column,Archibald season demands to be taken seriously because it’s the only time of the year most of the public feel motivated to visit the Art Gallery of NSW and associated venues. During the Archibald Prize the AGNSW is full of people – a surge in visitation that has become more crucial than ever. With both […]
A Retrospective of Chinese Archibald Finalists
Saturday, August 1st, 2015 Art Column,When the Archibald Prize was first awarded in 1921 it was a strictly Caucasian affair. There was not much colour to the artists or their paintings – mostly brown pictures of men in suits. The riotous creations currently lining the walls at the Art Gallery of NSW would have seemed like bad jokes to the […]
Treasure Ships
Saturday, July 25th, 2015 Art Column,Treasure Ships: Art in the Age of Spices may be the most fascinating exhibition to be seen at an Australian public gallery this year. The bad news, from a purely local perspective, is that it will be shown only in Adelaide and Perth. It is the brainchild of James Bennett, Curator of Asian Art at […]