Art Column
Afghanistan
Saturday, April 26th, 2014 Art Column,“After Akcha,” wrote Robert Byron, in his legendary travel book, The Road to Oxiana (1937) “the colour of the landscape changed from lead to aluminium, pallid and deathly, as if the sun had been sucking away at its gaiety for thousands and thousands of years; for this was now the plain of Balkh, and Balkh […]
19th Biennale of Sydney (Part 2)
Saturday, April 19th, 2014 Art Column,In a dream I’m walking through a vast international exhibition with Juliana Engberg, director of the 19th Biennale of Sydney – You Imagine What You Desire. We both have notepads on which we list those works we find especially interesting. Strangely enough we never stop in front of the same work. The things I like, […]
Roger Brown
Saturday, April 12th, 2014 Art Column,In a week in which former President George W. Bush revealed his secret passion for painting it’s a neat coincidence that the Hughes Gallery is holding a survey of Roger Brown (1941-97), a Chicago artist with a fascination for politics. Having spent much of his working life in an era in which New York was […]
Genius and Ambition: The Royal Academy
Saturday, April 5th, 2014 Art Column,If there is one issue that divides the art of the past from the art of today it is how we assess quality. A primary motivation for the founding of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1768 was to establish standards of excellence by which artworks may be judged. The members of the R.A. formed […]
19th Biennale of Sydney
Saturday, March 29th, 2014 Art Column,Biennales thrive on controversy but there is a feeling of unease about this year’s headlines. No-one envisaged artists boycotting the Biennale because the founding sponsor has government contracts to manage detention centres. It was no cause for celebration when Transfield’s Luca Belgiorno-Nettis, one the few dedicated patrons of the arts in corporate Australia, felt obliged […]
White Rabbit: Reformation & ACAF: Degeneration
Saturday, March 22nd, 2014 Art Column,As the Biennale of Sydney opens, having severed ties with its founding sponsor, Transfield, it’s appropriate that the White Rabbit Gallery has launched a new exhibition called Reformation. From its beginnings, five years ago, the Nielsen family’s private museum of contemporary Chinese Art has presented a striking alternative to the big public art institutions. It’s […]
Dark Heart: 2014 Adelaide Biennial
Saturday, March 15th, 2014 Art Column,Before heading south for this year’s Adelaide Biennial I saw Opera Australia’s production of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. Pushkin’s famous character is the archetypal ‘dark heart’. Onegin humiliates the young Tatiana, who has confessed her love for him. He plays a nasty joke on his best friend, and keeps going long after he should have stopped. […]
Richard Goodwin
Saturday, March 8th, 2014 Art Column,If you have driven along the Gore Hill Freeway you have already experienced the art of Richard Goodwin. The abstract patterns incised on the concrete, sound-baffling walls are taken from designs by architect, Walter Burley Griffin; the transcriptions of Aboriginal rock carvings pay homage to the area’s first inhabitants. It’s a typical Goodwin project: scrupulous […]
Sol LeWitt
Saturday, March 1st, 2014 Art Column,“Soulless Twit!” was the verdict from one local art identity, when I mentioned Sol LeWitt: Your mind is exactly at that line, at the Art Gallery of NSW. It’s a harsh call because LeWitt may not be the most expressive of artists but his precise, geometric work has that appeal we associate with anything so […]
Perth Festival 2014
Saturday, February 22nd, 2014 Art Column,On the sandy banks of the Swan River, Do Ho Suh’s Net-Work gleams in fierce sunlight. The piece is a tightly woven mesh made from thousands of tiny gold and silver figurines joined at the hands and feet. Draped across a metal frame it forms a walkway through which visitors can look at the sky […]