Tag: contemporary art
Nicholas Harding 1956 – 2022
Friday, November 11th, 2022 Blog,When Nicholas Harding was awarded the 2022 Wynne Prize for landscape, one sensed it wasn’t simply a vote for a single painting, but for a lifetime’s achievement. This is not to detract from that winning canvas, Eora, a vast bushland scene, almost 2 by 4 metres – a scale that might have intimidated most artists, […]
Singapore Biennale 2022
Tuesday, November 8th, 2022 Art Column,A town called Alice, a fish named Wanda, a hurricane known as Ian, and now, a Biennale that answers to the name, Natasha. I originally thought this was a unique example of Singaporean humour, but because only one of the four curators of the seventh Biennale of Singapore is a local, that thesis is not […]
Portia Geach Memorial Award 2022
Tuesday, October 4th, 2022 Art Column,There was a fizz to last year’s Portia Geach Memorial Award for female portraitists, but this time the show feels slightly flat. A display is only as good as the entries submitted, and many artists seem to have settled on smaller, less ambitious works. Should size matter? Look at art long enough and you’ll find […]
Vivienne Binns: On and through the surface
Thursday, September 22nd, 2022 Art Column,For one reason or another, it’s taken me a long time to get around to Vivienne Binns: On and Through the Surface, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, but it’s an exhibition that reveals a lot about the way a reputation is built. Nowadays Binns (b.1940) is virtually a national living treasure, but she has […]
Sydney Contemporary 2022
Tuesday, September 13th, 2022 Art Column,It’s been three long years since the last Sydney Contemporary, and the market is more of a puzzle than ever. During the pandemic, when predictions of doom and gloom abounded, many local art dealers enjoyed surprisingly good seasons. It’s widely believed this was because wealthy collectors who had got into the habit of purchasing work […]
Ultra Unreal
Tuesday, August 9th, 2022 Art Column,Things have been quiet at the Museum of Contemporary Art this year, but Ultra Unreal aims at a reboot. It’s an exhibition that pushes beyond the contemporary, drawing us into virtual realms, both futuristic and animistic. These imaginary worlds have been created by new technology and populated with supernatural beings. It all sounds breathlessly exciting. […]
The Hadley’s Art Prize 2022 & MONA
Tuesday, August 2nd, 2022 Art Column,Unlike Errol Flynn and Douglas Mawson, I’d never stayed at Hadley’s Orient Hotel in Hobart – until it hosted an art prize. Established in 1834, Hadley’s is one of the oldest hotels in Australia, and it trades lavishly on its historical connections. There are plenty of hotels that are more up-to-date and luxurious, but not […]
White Rabbit: I Loved You
Tuesday, July 26th, 2022 Art Column,Anybody who has seen the Marriage Market in Shanghai’s People Park will never imagine the Chinese as a nation of desperate romantics. Every weekend the Market is swarming with parents eager secure an advantageous match for their son or daughter. One gets the impression that marriage is primarily an economic transaction, with love being a […]
Robert Wilson: Moving Portraits
Tuesday, July 19th, 2022 Art Column,Germany’s all-time literary giant, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, once suggested to Caspar David Friedrich he should paint landscapes that systematically depicted each type of cloud identified in a famous treatise. Friedrich, by all accounts, was horrified at the suggestion. Being atttracted by the freedom and mutability of clouds, he resisted the idea of placing them […]
Chiharu Shiota: The Soul Trembles
Tuesday, June 28th, 2022 Art Column,Chiharu Shiota: The Soul Trembles, at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art, is a daring but necessary exhibition for an Australian art museum. Daring, because local audiences have grown so accustomed to a diet of ‘masterpiece’ shows it’s difficult to imagine them flocking to see the work of a contemporary Japanese artist whose name will be […]