Tag: contemporary art
6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art
Saturday, December 12th, 2009 Art Column, Uncategorized,Has it been fifteen years already? In its sixth installment the Asia Pacific Triennial at the Queensland Art Gallery shows no signs of settling into a predictable pattern. On the contrary: the APT is the most dynamic contemporary art exhibition in Australia and quite possibly the world. It may not be the biggest of shows, […]
Rebecca Horn and Medicine & Art
Saturday, December 5th, 2009 Art Column,It’s appropriate that the Tokyo Museum of Contemporary Art is staging Japan’s first-ever Rebecca Horn retrospective at the same time the Mori Art Museum is hosting the show, Medicine and Art. Of all those who dwell in the upper echelons of international contemporary art, no-one has been more dedicated than Horn when it comes to […]
Sculpture by the Sea & The Miniature Show
Saturday, November 14th, 2009 Art Column,Sculpture by the Sea is thirteen years old and – judging by its current incarnation – still in the throes of puberty. Aside from long-running institutions such as the Archibald, or the Mosman Art Prize, most annual competitions and group exhibitions never last for a decade. The most dramatic example must be the one-and-only Melbourne […]
40 Years: Kaldor Public Art Projects
Saturday, October 31st, 2009 Art Column,Ever since Christo and Jeanne-Claude put Little Bay under wraps in October 1969, John Kaldor has enjoyed a reputation as one of Australia’s most innovative art patrons. The current exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW is both a survey and a celebration of the projects that Kaldor has initiated over the past four decades. […]
Museum of Contemporary Art: Making it New
Saturday, October 10th, 2009 Art Column,“Have you noticed that maps are like newspapers, shirts and obsessions? Once you’ve unfolded them there’s no way you can get them folded up again.” Fred Vargas ‘Maps and obsessions’ could serve as a subtitle for the range of work currently on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art. On the top floor one finds Louisa […]
Echigo-Tsumari Triennial 2009 & Niigata Water and Land Art Festival
Saturday, August 8th, 2009 Art Column,Last week I sat in a community hall in rural Japan, drinking sake and eating Australian beef. The local school choir sang, and toasts were proposed in honour of the friendship that exists between the Urata region and Australia. Around the walls stood local people wearing red aprons emblazoned with the word: “Aussie”. Unusually for […]
Doubletake: The Anne Landa Award
Saturday, July 4th, 2009 Art Column,It may enjoy a ‘cutting edge’ reputation, but too much new media art translates into an aimless, shapeless sequence of images grouped around one or two central ideas. These works are not valued for what they are, but for what they represent. Australia’s official contribution to the Venice Biennale provides an excellent example. To read […]
53rd Venice Biennale
Saturday, June 20th, 2009 Art Column,Making Worlds – Fare Mondi is the theme for this year’s Venice Biennale, the 53rd installment of the world’s leading contemporary art exhibition. In the words of Daniel Birnbaum, the Swedish-born, Frankfurt-based director, the title expresses a wish “to emphasise the process of creation.” This may sound a very modest ambition but Birnbaum does have […]
Sculpture by the Sea in Denmark
Saturday, June 13th, 2009 Art Column,Denmark is a glorious place on a sunny day, and the week leading up to the Sculpture by the Sea launch in Aarhus was especially pleasant. Alas, by the day of the media preview, Thor, the ancient God of thunder, finally lost patience with the protracted installation process. While a large part of the Australian […]