Tag: contemporary art
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 […]
Art Dubai 2024
Friday, April 5th, 2024 Art Column,For the second year in a row, I’ve come away from Art Dubai with the feeling that it’s distinctly different from every other international art fair. Even as I write, one of the biggest of all fairs is getting ready to launch. Art Basel Hong Kong remains Asia’s premier commercial art event, despite challenges from […]
White Rabbit: A Blueprint for Ruins
Saturday, March 2nd, 2024 Art Column,On a first visit to Suzhou, years ago, I was looking forward to seeing this city of historic canals and gardens. Arriving at night, I wasn’t prepared for the long approach to the CBD, down a boulevard lined with massive buildings, or the skyscrapers that dominated the skyline. I wasn’t prepared, but I should have […]
Fairy Tales in Art and Film
Saturday, February 24th, 2024 Art Column,Most fairy tales were written for adults. When Charles Perrault (1628-1703) was compiling the stories we know today as Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and Puss in Boots, the very idea of “childhood” was relatively new. Or so we understand from French historian, Philippe Ariès, whose influential book Centuries of Childhood (1960), has dominated our […]
Jacobus Capone
Thursday, February 22nd, 2024 Blog,In 2007, at the age of 21, Jacobus Capone took a scoop of water from the Indian Ocean, walked across Australia, and emptied it in the Pacific. The journey took five-and-a-half months and killed off any relationship he ever had with his native country. “That was my last university project,” he recalls. “I was very […]
In Our Time: Four Decades of Art from China and Beyond. The Geoff Raby Collection
Saturday, February 17th, 2024 Art Column,Many who have lived and worked in China over the past 30 years, have stories about the painting they could have bought for a few hundred dollars that is now worth hundreds of thousands. Geoff Raby, who was Australia’s ambassador to China from 2007-2011, had more opportunities than most, inhabiting a social circle that extended […]
Makoto Azuma
Friday, February 16th, 2024 Blog,Makoto Azuma is the Indiana Jones of florists. He has fired flowers into the stratosphere and plunged them to the bottom of the ocean. One of his favourite tactics is to preserve specimens at their moment of maximum beauty, in blocks of clear resin, which is how visitors to this year’s NGV Triennial at the […]
NGV Triennial 3
Saturday, February 10th, 2024 Art Column,Over the past decade I’ve had so many positive things to say about the National Gallery of Victoria that I get accused of favouritism. My response to such charges is very simple: Put in the work and reap the rewards. The NGV owes its success to a busy, dynamic exhibitions program and an unwavering focus […]