Tag: contemporary art
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. […]
Adelaide Biennial 2024
Wednesday, April 24th, 2024 Art Column,It’s rare one comes across a survey exhibition that feels so personal, so achingly sincere, as the 18th Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, subtitled Inner Sanctum. Guest curator, José Da Silva, has put heart and soul into his choices and gone to great pains to explain them in the catalogue, writing at length on every […]
Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale 2024
Friday, April 19th, 2024 Art Column,After Rain, the theme of the second Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, refers to that moment when a storm has passed, and the desert comes alive. It’s a moment Australians who live in the Outback know well, when flowers spring up out of nowhere and animals go partying. In a world growing hotter and drier, this […]
Climate Artists: Franziska Furter & Julian Charriere
Tuesday, April 16th, 2024 Blog,“My interest in the weather started twenty years ago in Edinburgh,” says Swiss artist, Franziska Furter. “It was my first overseas residency, and I was so surprised. You wake up and it’s raining. You have a shower, the sun is shining. You have breakfast, it’s snowing. Then you go out and it’s raining again. I […]