Sydney Morning Herald Column
Karl Wiebke, Ebony Russell, Lea Ferris & Dave Teer
Tuesday, November 24th, 2020 Sydney Morning Herald Column,It’s almost impossible to imagine ‘pure’ abstraction in art but Karl Wiebke takes us to the brink. His Seven Paintings at Liverpool Street Gallery avoid all the usual associations we habitually attach to an abstract work, being not suggestive of landscapes, figures, or architectonic details such as doors or windows. So what do we see? […]
Joshua Yeldham, Dagmar Cyrulla, Indonesia Calling 2020
Tuesday, November 17th, 2020 Sydney Morning Herald Column,“I’ve always been interested in how the eye is the trail to the soul, and how my soul projected can look like a painting,” says Joshua Yeldham in a short film he has made for his exhibition, Providence, at Arthouse Gallery. There’s a popular belief that artists are unworldly beings who live in their own […]
Michael Zavros, Gunybi Ganambarr, Li Jin
Tuesday, November 10th, 2020 Sydney Morning Herald Column,Michael Zavros is a very 21st century artist. Known for a fastidious, hyperreal style of painting and a preoccupation with fashion and luxury goods, he would have been anathema in those days when the avant-garde strove to make art that was not a marketable commodity. Marketability is Zavros’s great and abiding theme, although he comes […]
The Wynne Prize 2020
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2020 Sydney Morning Herald Column,A visitor to the Art Gallery of NSW has written to me, saying that after living through last year’s horror bushfires on the south coast, he was surprised at the lack of fire paintings in the Wynne Prize. He was also disappointed that the Salon des Refusés seemed to ignore the bushfire crisis, although it […]
Les Sculpture Refusées & Sculpture in the Vineyards – Wollombi Valley Sculpture Festival
Tuesday, October 27th, 2020 Sydney Morning Herald Column,At this time of any other year Sydney is getting ready for its regular fix of Sculpture by the Sea (SXS), one of the most eagerly anticipated events on the cultural calendar. But like so many things in the era of COVID-19, the thought of hundreds of thousands of people rubbing shoulders on the trail […]
Lindy Lee: Moon in a Dew Drop
Tuesday, October 20th, 2020 Sydney Morning Herald Column,Lindy Lee grew up in Brisbane in the 1960s, the daughter of Chinese parents who left Guandong when the Communists came to power. She is ethnically Chinese but Australian born and bred, a duality that has coloured her entire life. She remembers being the only Chinese face in her classes at school, which meant she […]
Salon des Refusés 2020
Tuesday, October 13th, 2020 Sydney Morning Herald Column,There must be a limit to the industrial quantity of portraits served up annually to the Australian public. This year we’ve already had the Portia Geach Memorial Award at the S.H.Ervin; the Shirley Hannan National Portrait Award in Bega; the National Photographic Portrait Prize and the Darling Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery in […]
Archibald Prize 2020: A Trilogy
Tuesday, October 6th, 2020 Sydney Morning Herald Column,The Archibald Prize 2020: A First Look Scomo is out, but Albo is in. And so is Jacinda Adern. If the Art Gallery of NSW were not a steadfastly apolitical institution, one might imagine there is some comment intended in the selection of finalists for the 2020 Archibald Prize. In olden days a portrait […]
Endeavour Voyage
Tuesday, September 29th, 2020 Sydney Morning Herald Column,In the Bicentenary celebrations of 1970 Captain Cook was hailed as the discoverer of Australia. At primary school we received a special booklet telling us about the great navigator and his achievements. There were commemorative coins, badges and postage stamps. Every form of sporting competition had its dedication to Cook – from surf life-saving to […]
James Rogers
Tuesday, September 22nd, 2020 Sydney Morning Herald Column,Some artists make their best impression in a group exhibition, others need a showcase to themselves. James Rogers is a sculptor who always seems to have one of the standout pieces in Sculpture By the Sea every year. I felt I knew his work pretty well, but his mid-career survey at the Drill Hall Gallery […]