Tag: Art Gallery of NSW
Archibald Prize 2014
Saturday, July 19th, 2014 Art Column,Imagine if the Archibald Prize banned all portraits that relied on photographs. The number of entries would drop from 884 to something less than 100, while the exhibition would be dominated by amateurs and unknown artists. Even the subjects would be strangers to most viewers because it’s unlikely that anyone mildly famous could spare the […]
Theatre of Dreams, Theatre of Play
Saturday, July 12th, 2014 Art Column,We’ve become accustomed to the idea that various species of animal are in danger of extinction and need to be preserved, but cultural forms are subject to analogous pressures. Commercial logic dictates that a species of theatre or performance will exist only when there is a paying audience. Many traditional forms owe their longevity to […]
Bill Brown
Saturday, May 3rd, 2014 Art Column,Many years ago, when I was still a baby art critic, I remember Bill Brown at a party bawling drunkenly that he was the best painter in Australia. Having never seen his work I was in no position to argue. Shortly afterwards, Brown had a solo exhibition at the old Macquarie Galleries. If he was […]
Afghanistan
Saturday, April 26th, 2014 Art Column,“After Akcha,” wrote Robert Byron, in his legendary travel book, The Road to Oxiana (1937) “the colour of the landscape changed from lead to aluminium, pallid and deathly, as if the sun had been sucking away at its gaiety for thousands and thousands of years; for this was now the plain of Balkh, and Balkh […]
19th Biennale of Sydney
Saturday, March 29th, 2014 Art Column,Biennales thrive on controversy but there is a feeling of unease about this year’s headlines. No-one envisaged artists boycotting the Biennale because the founding sponsor has government contracts to manage detention centres. It was no cause for celebration when Transfield’s Luca Belgiorno-Nettis, one the few dedicated patrons of the arts in corporate Australia, felt obliged […]
Richard Goodwin
Saturday, March 8th, 2014 Art Column,If you have driven along the Gore Hill Freeway you have already experienced the art of Richard Goodwin. The abstract patterns incised on the concrete, sound-baffling walls are taken from designs by architect, Walter Burley Griffin; the transcriptions of Aboriginal rock carvings pay homage to the area’s first inhabitants. It’s a typical Goodwin project: scrupulous […]
Sol LeWitt
Saturday, March 1st, 2014 Art Column,“Soulless Twit!” was the verdict from one local art identity, when I mentioned Sol LeWitt: Your mind is exactly at that line, at the Art Gallery of NSW. It’s a harsh call because LeWitt may not be the most expressive of artists but his precise, geometric work has that appeal we associate with anything so […]
Sculpture City
Saturday, February 15th, 2014 Art Column,As proven by the annual Sculpture by the Sea exhibitions sculpture enjoys a widespread popularity, but this doesn’t translate into a thriving market. It remains much harder to sell a sculpture than a painting, as private buyers tend to view sculptures as large, cumbersome objects that have no place in the domestic environment. The pieces […]
2013: The Best & Worst of the Visual Arts
Monday, January 6th, 2014 Art Essays, Blog,My best art experience of the year happened on the other side of the planet, in a retrospective celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of Edvard Munch. The show, divided between the National Gallery and the Munch Museum in Olso, revealed an unrelenting intensity of vision. It featured the most complete collection of paintings […]
America: Painting a Nation
Saturday, November 23rd, 2013 Art Column,“Thus in the beginning,” wrote the philosopher, John Locke in 1689, “all the world was America.” He was referring to a primitive state of social organisation being rapidly improved by British colonialism. Nowadays Locke’s words seem just as true, but it is because America has colonised the rest of the world. For much of the […]