Tag: contemporary art
Yayoi Kusama: She always knew she’d be famous
Wednesday, October 16th, 2024 Blog,One morning last year in New York City, a queue formed at the entrance to the David Zwirner Gallery. As the day progressed, the line grew longer and longer, until it extended around the block. The occasion was the opening of a commercial exhibition by Yayoi Kusama, and the chance to spend 30 seconds in […]
White Rabbit: Laozi’s Furnace
Monday, October 14th, 2024 Art Column,Transformation is a fundamental goal of art – base materials are transformed into things of beauty, dull objects become receptacles for daring ideas. This process extends from the work to the audience itself. As the poet, Rilke said, the work of art commands us: “You must change your life.” I’m not sure anyone will be […]
Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses
Friday, September 20th, 2024 Art Column,When you’re born in the same town as Hieronymus Bosch, it’s a hard act to follow. In the Prado in Madrid, visitors stand transfixed in front of Bosch’s triptych, The Garden of Earthly Delights (1490-1510), with its outlandish visions of heaven and hell, the former packed with exotic animals, the latter a nightmare scene of […]
Sydney Contemporary 2024
Thursday, September 5th, 2024 Art Column,Sydney Contemporary has quickly found its niche in a city in which the most probing critical analysis of a work of art is usually: “How much did you pay for that?” Variations on a theme include: “Why would anybody pay that much?” and “They must’ve seen him coming.” In Melbourne, art aficianados are more likely […]
Hiroshi Sugimoto: Time Machine
Friday, August 23rd, 2024 Art Column,In a career of 50 years, Hiroshi Sugimoto (b. 1948) has worked to quietly and purposefully refute the idea that photography is a “second-class citizen” in the world of art. Although known as a photographic artist, Sugimoto is a polymath, with interests in science, history, philosophy, theatre, architecture and landscape design. He has been a […]
Hadley’s Art Prize 2024
Saturday, August 10th, 2024 Art Column,This year Hadley’s Orient Hotel in Hobart is celebrating its 190th anniversary. An icon of Tasmania’s colonial era, this veteran will never be competing with the more glamorous, expensive establishments that are springing up around town, but it has history on its side. Stay at Hadley’s and you’ll find a plate with a picture of […]
Six Ways of Looking at Newhaven
Friday, July 26th, 2024 Art Column,Seven years ago, I spent a few days in Newhaven, a property on the edge of the Great Sandy Desert, owned and administered by the Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC). Last week I returned, in company with a group of artists who had seven days to make sketches and observations in preparation for an exhibition in […]
Laura Jones is the Winner
Saturday, June 8th, 2024 Blog,This year’s Archibald Prize announcement will remain etched in my memory for the peculiar way one of the speakers pronounced the name of the venue. Forget about “Naala Badu”, from now on I shall always think of the place as the Art Gallery of Nudist Whales. The other striking memory will be director, Michael Brand, […]
Cutting Through Time: Cressida Campbell, Margaret Preston and the Japanese Print
Sunday, June 2nd, 2024 Art Column,Cutting Through Time is an artful title for an innovative exhibition at the Geelong Art Gallery that explores affinities between Cressida Campbell, Margaret Preston, and the great Japanese printmakers of the Ukiyo-e school. It’s yet another instance in which a Victorian gallery is surveying the work of artists firmly associated with Sydney. At the opening, […]
William Kentridge & Sydney Biennale
Saturday, May 4th, 2024 Art Column,Contemporary art is a gigantic billboard for political platitudes, but if there is one artist who consistently transcends the overwhelming shallowness, it’s William Kentridge. As a South African who lived through the fall of Apartheid this may have given Kentridge a more complex understanding of history and politics than so many of his mono-dimensional peers. […]