Tag: abstract art
Destination Sydney re-imagined
Thursday, January 31st, 2019 Art Column,In summer 2015 three of the city’s leading public galleries combined forces to stage an exhibition called Destination Sydney, bringing together work by nine prominent local artists, past and present. Although it would be hard to think of a less inspiring title the show seemed to work. At the very least it worked well enough […]
Tony Tuckson: The Abstract Sublime
Friday, January 11th, 2019 Art Column,In a review of Tony Tuckson’s second and final solo exhibition, held at Watters Gallery in April, 1973, James Gleeson spoke of a “rare, wild energy that is without parallel in Australian painting.” Four decades later that claim still holds true. Over the years there have been plenty of artists who qualify as ‘Abstract Expressionists’ […]
RAW: Wedderburn
Thursday, July 5th, 2018 Art Column,There is no fixed definition of an ‘artists’ colony’ although there are numerous examples spread across the globe. Some are run like businesses, others are no more than clusters of like-minded Bohemians. The prototype of the modern artists’ colony is probably Worpswede, 28 kms from Bremen in northern Germany, which has been a haven for […]
The Field Revisited
Friday, May 25th, 2018 Art Column,No exhibition of Australian art has been more mythologised than The Field. Indeed, its only historical competition might be the 9 by 5 Impression exhibition of 1889, in which artists such as Tom Roberts and Arthur Streeton scandalised Melbourne by calling themselves “Impressionists”. The Field proved equally controversial when it launched the new St.Kilda Road […]
Hilarie Mais
Saturday, September 30th, 2017 Art Column,One could hardly imagine a greater contrast between exhibitions than the current offerings at the Museum of Contemporary Art. On level two viewers can sample the shapeless paintings of Jenny Watson, structured only by virtue of the artist’s whims. On the entrance level there is a single large gallery devoted to the work of Hilarie […]
Salon des Refusés 2014
Saturday, August 9th, 2014 Art Column,So much has already been written about Sydney’s $9.3 million public sculpture proposals that I’m in two minds whether to comment or leave it alone. Nevertheless, it’s an issue that won’t go away. It’s depressing that the very idea of a city council spending money on art brings out the philistine in a large proportion […]
Roy Jackson, Savanhdary Vongpoothorn, Kirsteen Pieterse, Vika Begalska
Saturday, March 16th, 2013 Art Column,Last week I was reminded of the gulf that exists between the art world and the rest of the world, when ABC radio asked me to comment on the Mayor of Newcastle’s view that funding for a new regional gallery should come from selling works in the collection. His logic was: the holdings of the […]
J.W.Power Abstraction-Création Paris 1934
Saturday, December 1st, 2012 Art Column,Almost sixty years after his death, John Joseph Wardell Power is overdue for another look. Power is best known as the generous benefactor who provided funds for a department of art history at Sydney University and a collection that has since evolved into the Museum of Contemporary Art. It is not widely known that the […]
Ken Whisson: As If
Saturday, October 6th, 2012 Art Column,Ken Whisson says he has always enjoyed being “outside of the awful mainstream”, but it may be that he is about to redefine what is mainstream and what is marginal. Ken Whisson: As If at the Museum of Contemporary Art, is the most fascinating retrospective since the National Gallery of Australia’s George Lambert survey of […]
William Robinson, Aida Tomescu, Evelyn Kotai
Saturday, August 25th, 2012 Art Column, Art Essays, Australian Art,Fred Williams used to say that if you can’t paint a portrait then your art is in trouble. He would have been surprised to see so many portraits included in his recent retrospective, as they were only ever a diversion from his landscape paintings. For an artist there is always the danger that one day […]