Tag: contemporary art
Savandhary Vongpoothorn – Niagara Galleries, Melbourne
Tuesday, September 15th, 2020 Good Weekend Art Column,Artist: Savandhary Vongpoothorn Lives: Ainslie, Canberra. Age: 49 Represented by: Niagara Galleries, Melbourne (Martin Browne Contemporary, Sydney) Her thing: Abstract paintings informed by Buddhist traditions, combining minimalist geometry and calligraphy. Our take. Savandhary Vongpoothorn was eight years old when she and her family arrived in Australia as refugees from war-torn Laos. Vongpoorthorn quickly adapted to […]
Koo Bohnchang
Tuesday, September 15th, 2020 Art Column,“In matters of art,” wrote the erudite poet, Paul Valéry, “erudition is a sort of defeat.” The argument is that the freshness of first perceptions may be destroyed by specialised knowledge. Imagine, for example, an expert on ceramics standing in front of a great piece of pottery. There are questions about where and when the […]
Angus Nivison, Paul Higgs
Tuesday, September 8th, 2020 Art Column,If one had to nominate the most high-profile show in Sydney this week, it would probably be Patricia Piccinini’s The Gardener at Roslyn Oxley9. Touted as the most popular contemporary artist in the world in 2106, after two well-attended surveys in Brazil, Piccinini has become a favourite with the art museums. One might compare her […]
Khaled Sabsabi: A Promise
Wednesday, September 2nd, 2020 Art Column,After the Lebanese civil war an elegant apartment block in Beirut, known locally as the Yellow House, was left disfigured by gaping holes, every surface scarred by bullets. Scheduled for demolition it was saved by a 1994 heritage campaign. Today the building has been artfully restored and turned into a cultural centre called Beit Beirut […]
Paul Higgs: Material Energy
Tuesday, August 25th, 2020 Blog,Art is revolution, improvisation, impetus, enthusiasm, record-setting, elasticity, elegance, generosity, superabundance of goodness, drowning in the Absolute, struggle against every hindrance, an aerial dance on the burning summits of passion… Filippo Marinetti “Scattering” in physics, is what happens when waves of energy are forced to change direction due to a collision with various particles. […]
John R. Walker, Elisabeth Cummings, Ian Grant, Maria Kontis
Saturday, July 18th, 2020 Art Column,After months in lockdown memories of this season’s bushfire crisis have already begun to fade. People are so fixated on the moment, so ready to focus on present circumstances and forget past vexations, that the fires might have happened in ancient times rather than a mere six months ago. For our beloved Prime Minister that […]
Shadow catchers
Thursday, July 2nd, 2020 Art Column,In Adelbert von Chamisso’s gothic tale, Peter Schlemihl, the hero sells his shadow to the devil in exchange for a purse perpetually filled with gold, but all the wealth in the world is not enough to compensate for the horror he inspires when his lack of a shadow is noticed. For “shadow” we might read […]
White Rabbit: And Now
Thursday, June 18th, 2020 Art Column,As art in Sydney creeps back into the light, White Rabbit Gallery is embarking on its second decade. Over its first ten years, Judith Neilson’s private museum of contemporary Chinese art has charted the social, political and cultural changes in a turbulent country. The collection now includes more than 3,000 works by 700 artists, all […]
Back to the galleries
Thursday, June 11th, 2020 Art Column,One can look at a million artworks on-line but there’s no substitute for the real thing. It may sound obvious but it’s a point worth emphasising in a world in which the COVID-19 lockdown has transformed public and private galleries into digital showcases. Last week many of the commercial galleries began opening their doors again, […]
Some Mysterious Process
Friday, June 5th, 2020 Art Column,When an art museum celebrates 50 years of its own collecting with an exhibition called Some Mysterious Process, it doesn’t suggest a highly developed sense of irony. One might imagine such a show would stress the insights and knowledge of the curators, the strategic planning involved in tracking and purchasing key works. To say it’s […]