Art Column
Len Lye, Screen Worlds & A Day in Pompeii
Saturday, September 26th, 2009 Art Column,Len Lye had charisma. The British poet, Alistair Reid dubbed him “the least boring person who ever existed,” and everyone who knew him seems to have fallen under his spell. Not bad for a working class boy from New Zealand who arrived in London in 1926 with no contacts and no money, sustained only by […]
Fred Williams & Victor Rubin
Saturday, August 29th, 2009 Art Column,There are many answers to the question: “What is a classic?” It may be a work belonging to a certain period with a taste for ideal forms; an emphasis on balance, stillness and harmonious composition. Another definition sees a classic as something of undying excellence – a work of art that always seems as vital […]
Maitland Regional Art Gallery & Danny Huynh
Saturday, August 22nd, 2009 Art Column,Having grown up in the coalfields of the Hunter Valley, I never thought I’d see the day when those prosaic towns would manifest a love of art. That was before last weekend when Maitland confounded all expectations by opening a spectacular new gallery. The Maitland Regional Art Gallery is a clever meshing of old and […]
White Rabbit
Saturday, August 15th, 2009 Art Column,Where would we be without China? Even allowing for recent tensions, Australia’s much-vaunted economic boom owed everything to China’s insatiable hunger for natural resources. Every Australian household is stuffed with goods made in Chinese factories, and for many years we have viewed Chinese food – in barely recognizable incarnations – with the fondness the British […]
Echigo-Tsumari Triennial 2009 & Niigata Water and Land Art Festival
Saturday, August 8th, 2009 Art Column,Last week I sat in a community hall in rural Japan, drinking sake and eating Australian beef. The local school choir sang, and toasts were proposed in honour of the friendship that exists between the Urata region and Australia. Around the walls stood local people wearing red aprons emblazoned with the word: “Aussie”. Unusually for […]
Charles Darwin 200th Birthday Exhibitions
Saturday, August 1st, 2009 Art Column,This year marks Charles Darwin’s two hundredth birthday, and exactly 150 years since he published his world-changing book, The Origin of Species. Predictably, the entire planet has been overwhelmed with Darwin exhibitions and publications. I once read that Jesus Christ was the most biographed individual of all time, with Leonardo da Vinci in second place. […]
American Impressionism and Realism
Saturday, July 25th, 2009 Art Column,“Balzac had described many cities,” wrote Henry James in his late novel, The Ambassadors, “but he had not described Woollett, Massachusetts.” Neither did Balzac get around to describing Brisbane, although to be fair, there was not much to describe in his day. “Woollett”, for James, was a bastion of New World earnestness, industry and ambition. […]
Intensely Dutch
Saturday, July 18th, 2009 Art Column,All curators at major institutions know that the witty, allusive, poetic titles they dream up for exhibitions will probably have to give way to something banal but comprehensible. What a clever title New Worlds From Old was – but nobody seemed to realise it referred to a show of Australian and American paintings from the […]
Ken Unsworth & Paul Selwood
Saturday, July 11th, 2009 Art Column,As a by-product of last year’s flawed Biennale, Sydney was introduced to an extraordinary new venue. Cockatoo Island is an old naval shipyard, an industrial fantasia, only fifteen minutes by ferry from Circular Quay. Over the past six months the island has been used as concert venue and as a drawing camp for students from […]
Doubletake: The Anne Landa Award
Saturday, July 4th, 2009 Art Column,It may enjoy a ‘cutting edge’ reputation, but too much new media art translates into an aimless, shapeless sequence of images grouped around one or two central ideas. These works are not valued for what they are, but for what they represent. Australia’s official contribution to the Venice Biennale provides an excellent example. To read […]