Tag: aboriginal art
Biennale of Sydney 2020. Part 1
Wednesday, March 18th, 2020 Art Column,Every morning in Sydney we wake to news of cancellations and closures because of the rapidly spreading coronavirus. By the time this column appears there may be few major (or minor) venues that remain open, but – following that perennial advice about keeping a cool head in a crisis – I’m going to proceed as […]
Perth Festival 2020: The Art
Thursday, February 20th, 2020 Art Column,Sydney and Melbourne may consider themselves the nation’s cultural powerhouses but when it comes to the annual festivals Perth now has a greater commitment to the visual arts than any other city. In the years I’ve been attending the Perth Festival it’s never disappointed. First-time director, Iain Grandage, a composer, has put together an exceptional […]
Tarnanthi 2019
Thursday, October 24th, 2019 Art Column,Since its inception in 2015, Tarnanthi has rapidly become one of this country’s essential art events. The word, in the Kaurna language of the Adelaide Plains means “to rise, come forth, spring up or appear,” but a more appropriate verb might be: “to mushroom”. The major attraction of this sprawling festival of indigenous culture is […]
How the Yolngu Do It
Friday, August 16th, 2019 Blog,One hot August night in Darwin, every year, all the tribes gather on the lawn of the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, for the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards. Most of those tribes are overwhelmingly white: the dedicated collectors of Aboriginal art, the curators and gallery directors, the art […]
Newsletter 299
Monday, August 12th, 2019 Newsletter,My run of extreme work has continued unabated this week, with one unintended consequence – namely the sorry fact that I missed filing the art column by a couple of hours. I was unaware of the draconian deadlines that now apply for the chronically short-staffed weekend supplement. On a four & a half hour flight […]
Danie Mellor
Saturday, August 3rd, 2019 Blog,NATSIAA may not be the most mellifluous of acronyms but it generates an incredible amount of excitement, as finalist Danie Mellor can attest. In 2009 Mellor won the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, which is held every year at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, in Darwin. It’s good […]
Old Masters in Shenzhen
Thursday, May 2nd, 2019 Art Column,Thirty years ago Australia began to export Aboriginal art to major venues in the United States and Europe. Unlike earlier international forays, Dreamings (1988) and Aratjara (1993) were framed as art exhibitions, not as collections of ethnographic artefacts. Nowadays, with China unassailable as our largest trading partner, the National Museum of Australia is repeating the exercise with […]
Ronnie Tjampitjinpa – Utopia Art, Sydney
Saturday, April 27th, 2019 Good Weekend Art Column,Artist: Ronnie Tjampitjinpa Lives: Alice Springs Age:around 76 Represented by:Utopia Art Sydney (no Melbourne representation) Her thing.Classic western desert paintings by an old master of the Papunya Tula movement Our take.Ronnie Tjampitjinpa was one of the original group of men who began painting with acrylic on boards at the Western Desert settlement of Papunya Tula […]
The National 2019: New Australian Art
Thursday, April 25th, 2019 Art Column,In its second “edition”, The National: New Australian Art, is just as hard to love as its predecessor of 2017. A collaboration between the Art Gallery of NSW, the Museum of Contemporary Art and Carriageworks, the show is intended as an overview of the best and the brightest work being produced in Australia today. It’s […]
Hassall Collection
Thursday, March 7th, 2019 Art Column,Last week I had occasion to reflect at length on that strange beast, the art collector. The immediate stimulus was a talk at Artspace during a private view of the Michael Hobbs Collection. The late Michael Hobbs was a mainstay of the Sydney art scene for many decades, and his children are honouring his legacy […]