Newsletter
Newsletter 281
Tuesday, April 9th, 2019 Newsletter,After a few days in Hong Kong for the annual Art Basel events I’m convinced the world is getting both dumber and richer. But how are the two connected? Do you have to be really shallow to make obscene amounts of money, undistracted by any other concerns? Or do you just have to be born […]
Newsletter 280
Saturday, March 30th, 2019 Art Essays, Newsletter,Well it’s all over bar the blood-letting, and that will be strictly on one side of the fence after the NSW Labor Party crashed and burned in the last week of the state election campaign. With pinpoint timing the Coalition released a video of Labor leader, Michael Daley, making a foolish statement about “Asians with […]
Newsletter 279
Saturday, March 23rd, 2019 Art Essays, Newsletter,It’s the NSW State elections this weekend and the arts lobby has finally been baring its teeth, although in political terms you should think hamster rather than tiger. We’re always hearing what great communicators the arts people are, but for the most part the conversations occur within small cliques, not in the public arena. For me, […]
Newsletter 278
Saturday, March 16th, 2019 Art Essays, Newsletter,After a week in New York I feel like I’ve been away for a month. Perhaps it’s the result of going from heat to cold and back to the heat – and first day back was really hot. It might also be due to my rather desperate NY gallery-going, as I tried to see everything of […]
Newsletter 277
Saturday, March 9th, 2019 Newsletter,Well the great week has finally arrived: the website has been redesigned! But before you all start emailing and pointing out various issues, I’m aware there are a lot of teething problems that need to be resolved. I could reel off a long list but it wouldn’t be a very productive use of a newsletter. […]
Newsletter 276
Saturday, March 2nd, 2019 Newsletter,This website may be dedicated to the visual arts and cinema but I’m always tempted to use the newsletter to sound off on politics or other topical themes. Aside from the spectacle of Cardinal George Pell’s fall from grace, the story that stuck in my mind this week was Peter Fitzsimmons’s report in the Sydney […]
Newsletter 275
Saturday, February 23rd, 2019 Newsletter,This week I’ve been in Western Australia for my annual installment of the Perth Festival. The Sydney Morning Herald is generally happy to run one art column per year from W.A., and the Festival has a dedicated visual arts program that puts the eastern states to shame. While Perth’s range of theatrical and musical events […]
Newsletter 274
Saturday, February 16th, 2019 Newsletter,There was a lot of feedback last week about the website derailment, for which I can only apologise, while blaming the unknown gremlins of the Internet. I’m still closing in on the long-awaited redesign, which should boost security, and allow scope for more content, including the small Good Weekend pieces I’ve been writing and an […]
Newsletter 273
Saturday, February 9th, 2019 Newsletter,This has been one of those weeks in which I’ve done dozens of small tasks and seem to have achieved nothing. I’m sure you know the feeling. One of the problems was a mass of website glitches which I’m trying to cure once & for all with a major overhaul. As I know as little […]
Newsletter 272
Saturday, February 2nd, 2019 Art Essays, Newsletter,Although Australia often seems to ape the United States in the most abject fashion there are a few significant points of difference. This may not have occurred to our buffoon of a Prime Minister who thinks that wearing a baseball cap and eating a meat pie will make him look like a man of the […]