Tag: Australian art
Sculpture By the Sea 2019
Friday, November 1st, 2019 Art Column,Proof arrived this week that climate change is real and urgent. The standard beginning of Sculpture by the Sea (SXS) sees visitors plodding around the coastal trail between Bondi and Tamarama in the pouring rain, but the first day of this year’s show was a scorcher. When the magical rain-bringing powers of this event are […]
River on the Brink
Thursday, October 3rd, 2019 Art Column,When your Prime-Minister is admiring a McDonalds in Ohio while other world leaders are attending a United Nations summit on climate change, it gives a pretty clear indication of the importance this government assigns to environmental policy. The PM likes to present himself as a real Aussie bloke and his solution to global warming could […]
Aida Tomescu – Fox Jensen Gallery, Sydney
Thursday, September 26th, 2019 Good Weekend Art Column,Artist: Aida Tomescu Lives: Elizabeth Bay, Sydney. Age: 63 Represented by: Fox Jensen Gallery, Sydney; Fox Jensen McCrory, Auckland (no Melbourne representation) Her thing: Vigorous abstract expressionist canvases with a palette of white and crimson. Our take. Watching the development of Aida Tomescu’s work over the years has been a thrilling experience. With each new […]
Savanhdary Vongpoothorn: All That Arises
Thursday, September 19th, 2019 Art Column,How dreary Australian culture would be if it wasn’t for refugees. In every generation since the Second World War there have been significant artists who came to this country because of conflict or persecution in their homelands. This is worth remembering at a time in which xenophobia and insularity are making a comeback, aided by […]
Sydney Contemporary Art Fair 2019
Thursday, September 12th, 2019 Art Column,Ask any art dealer and they’ll tell you the market has gone flat, as collectors brace themselves for a Trump-led recession. Ordinarily this should put a cloud over an event such as the Sydney Contemporary Art Fair, now in its sixth iteration, but the atmosphere and sentiment is absurdly up-beat. When I visited Carriageworks last […]
Nusra Latif Qureshi & Adam Chang
Thursday, September 5th, 2019 Art Column,Before moving to Melbourne in 2001 at the age of 27, Nusra Latif Quereshi was trained as musaviripainter in her birthplace, Lahore. The term refers to a type of Islamic and Indian miniature painting that requires a high degree of skill and patience. Before moving to Australia in 1997, aged 37, Adam Chang studied painting […]
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 […]
Barbara McKay & Hadyn Wilson
Friday, August 9th, 2019 Art Column,In May the National Gallery of Australia launched a campaign called Know My Name, which aims to raise awareness of the work of Australian women artists. Call me a cynic, but when a leading institution takes up the cause of a supposedly neglected minority, one may assume the battle is already over. Historically-speaking there’s no […]
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 […]