Tag: Art Gallery of NSW
Noŋgirrŋa Marawili – Alcaston Galleries, Melbourne
Saturday, February 2nd, 2019 Art Essays, Good Weekend Art Column,Artist: Noŋgirrŋa Marawili Lives: Yirrkala, Arnhem Land, Northern Territory Age:80 (b. c.1938) Represented by:Alcaston Galleries, Melbourne & Australia-wide Her thing. Innovative bark paintings and prints on traditional Yolngu themes. Our take.At the age of 80, or thereabouts, Noŋgirrŋa Marawili is emerging as one of the most dynamic indigenous artists at work today. This is usually a […]
Nongirrna Marawili
Friday, January 18th, 2019 Art Column,A talking point with the Tony Tuckson show at the Art Gallery of NSW is that the artist’s first solo exhibition came at the age of 48. Most of today’s art students would probably think anyone who leaves it so late must be doomed to failure. At nearly 50, surely one should be thinking about […]
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’ […]
William Kentridge: That Which We Do Not Remember
Friday, October 12th, 2018 Art Column,There is nobody in the upper echelons of contemporary art quite like South Africa’s William Kentridge. There may be artists with more natural talent. There are plenty whose works sell for greater sums. There are artists with a much better feel for colour or texture, or who draw with greater fluency. Kentridge’s works are not […]
John Russell: Australia's French Impressionist
Friday, August 10th, 2018 Art Column,If Australian art history were a jigsaw puzzle John Russell would be the piece that doesn’t quite fit. It’s now commonplace to talk of “Australian Impressionists” but Russell is the only artist who genuinely matches the description. Everybody else, from Streeton and Roberts to McCubbin and Fox, pursued a version of Impressionism that owed a […]
The Archibald Prize 2018
Friday, May 11th, 2018 Art Column,Well I got it completely wrong this year, although Vincent Namatjira got a “highly commended” as runner-up. Yvette Coppersmith’s Archibald Prize winner: Self-portrait after George Lambert wouldn’t have been in my top 20. After due consideration, it still wouldn’t be in my top 20. It seems to me like a stiff, mannered picture that bears […]
The Lady and the Unicorn
Friday, April 20th, 2018 Art Column,Towards the end of Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll stages a furious battle between a lion and a unicorn. The fight is based on an old nursery rhyme, which plays on the Royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom, in which the lion stands for England, the unicorn for Scotland. The lion and […]
Rembrandt & the Dutch Golden Age
Saturday, December 2nd, 2017 Art Column,“There is one work by Vermeer, the undoubted superstar, and six by Rembrandt, including two from the NGV’s permanent collection. Three portraits by Frans Hals give some indication of this artist’s remarkable flair and dash. After that, it is a pot-pourri of genres and tendencies…” No, I’m not writing about Rembrandt & the Dutch Golden […]
Salon des Refusés 2017
Thursday, August 3rd, 2017 Art Column,Every year I nurture a dim fantasy of a Salon des Refusés bristling with masterpieces rejected from the Archibald and Wynne Prizes by the Trustees of the Art Gallery of NSW. Every year I relinquish this thought almost as soon as I step into the S.H.Ervin Gallery. The Refusés was a great idea when it […]
The 2017 Archibald Prize
Friday, July 28th, 2017 Art Column,By the usual Archibald Prize standards 2017 is a low key year. There are plenty of neat, correct entries, a touch of quirkiness, a bit of thick impasto, but nothing to get the pulse racing with delight or indignation. Unless, perhaps, you’re a lunatic right-winger who starts to foam at the mouth at the merest […]