Sydney Morning Herald Column
Spowers & Syme
Tuesday, January 24th, 2023 Sydney Morning Herald Column,Spowers & Syme may sound like a firm of accountants, but we’re dealing with an entirely different order of creativity. Ethel Spowers (1890-1947), and Eveline Syme (1888-1961), were groundbreaking Australian artists at a time when women found it difficult to make any impression on an art scene dominated by self-confident and self-serving males. A touring […]
Aotearoa Art
Tuesday, January 17th, 2023 Sydney Morning Herald Column,A handful of big international art fairs are obligatory annual destinations for the world’s major collectors. Only among the second-tier fairs is there real competition, as cities compete to attract wealthy art tourists looking for something a bit different. All these fairs dream of getting the world’s über-galleries to participate, but the real interest lies […]
2022 and Beyond
Monday, January 2nd, 2023 Sydney Morning Herald Column,There’s been plenty to think about in 2022, including war in the Ukraine, a looming global recession and floods along the north coast, but if one had to nominate Australia’s most momentous event of the year it would have to be the change of government. Whether this was equally momentous for the visual arts remains […]
Alexander McQueen: Mind Mythos Muse
Monday, December 26th, 2022 Sydney Morning Herald Column,“I don’t see fashion as curing cancer or AIDS – or anything else for that matter,” said Alexander McQueen. “At the end of the day they are just clothes.” This statement, like so many others uttered by this prodigiously talented designer, testifies to the contradictions that defined his career and character. For McQueen (1969-2010), fashion […]
Sydney Modern Revisited
Tuesday, December 13th, 2022 Sydney Morning Herald Column,“Campus” is word of the week. It seems to be a particular favourite of Art Gallery of NSW Director, Michael Brand, who kept using the term during the Sydney Modern launch. “My vision,” he writes in the book associated with the new gallery, “has been for the Sydney Modern Project to transform the Art Gallery […]
Sydney Modern Opens at Last
Tuesday, December 6th, 2022 Sydney Morning Herald Column,According to Premier, Dominic Perrottet, Sydney’s newest cultural attraction is set to be not only the greatest gallery in Australia, but the greatest in the world. Forget about the Louvre, the Met or the Prado, here’s Sydney Modern! This informed and thoughtful opinion was largely echoed by the other speakers at the media preview, with […]
Do Ho Suh
Tuesday, November 29th, 2022 Sydney Morning Herald Column,Never at any time in history have more people been displaced, uprooted, obliged to learn a new language and a new set of values. It’s not only those refugees from war and persecution, but millions who have taken themselves to another part of the world to find a different, hopefully better, life. South Korean artist, […]
Who Are You
Saturday, November 19th, 2022 Sydney Morning Herald Column,No country in the world is more passionate about portraiture than Australia. We have more portrait prizes, more prize money, and an ongoing case of amour fou for the Archibald Prize, which is viewed as a national institution, when it would be a very minor affair in most other places. In the past, Australians saw themselves […]
Bangkok Art Biennale 2022
Tuesday, November 15th, 2022 Sydney Morning Herald Column,During the pandemic most of the world’s major art events were put on ice, but this was not the case for the youthful Bangkok Art Biennale. Unwilling to lose momentum after a successful debut in 2018, the organisers hosted a huge international exhibition in 2020 that was seen only by local audiences. This year, the […]
Singapore Biennale 2022
Tuesday, November 8th, 2022 Sydney Morning Herald Column,A town called Alice, a fish named Wanda, a hurricane known as Ian, and now, a Biennale that answers to the name, Natasha. I originally thought this was a unique example of Singaporean humour, but because only one of the four curators of the seventh Biennale of Singapore is a local, that thesis is not […]