Tag: indigenous art
Darwin 2024
Friday, August 16th, 2024 Art Column,Darwin at the beginning of August is one of the essential experiences on the Australian art calendar. The main attraction is the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAA), often called “the Telstras”, after the major sponsor, but there are enough exhibitions and activities to keep visitors busy for a week. Along with […]
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 […]
2024 Biennale of Sydney: Ten Thousand Suns
Saturday, March 16th, 2024 Art Column,Ten Thousand Suns may be the most joyous theme we’ve ever had for a Sydney Biennale. Whether we think of the Pharoah Akhenaten trashing the entire pantheon of Egyptian deities in favour of the Sun God, Aton, or the last words of J.M.W. Turner, who allegedly muttered “the sun is God”, it’s axiomatic that the […]
Jonathan Jones & Imants Tillers
Friday, January 19th, 2024 Art Column,“We promised at the election that we would preserve the Wran legacy and keep the Powerhouse open. We are doing just that,” said NSW Arts Minister, John Graham, in a press release of 2 September, last year. In direct contradiction of that election promise, the Minns government is now planning to close the Powerhouse […]
Fearless & Parlour Parlëur
Tuesday, October 10th, 2023 Art Column,There are lots of people who acquire a few trendy works and call themselves “art collectors”. To all those aspirationals, who may well go on to greater things, I would ask them to take a look at Fearless: Contemporary Indigenous Women in the Hassall Milson Collection, at the S.H. Ervin Gallery, to see what can […]
Ramsay Art Prize 2023
Tuesday, June 13th, 2023 Art Column,To the best of my knowledge, until late last month there had never been a major Australian art prize awarded to a performance piece. It had to happen eventually, and the breakthrough moment came at the Art Gallery of South Australia, where local girl, Ida Sophia, took out the $100,000 Ramsay Art Prize, for her […]
The Wynne Prize 2023
Tuesday, May 23rd, 2023 Art Column,Although the Wynne Prize for landscape (and very occasionally, figurative sculpture) is twenty years older than the Archibald Prize, the portrait show gets all the headlines. It seems local audiences agree with Clement Greenberg, the champion of late modern Abstraction, who said landscape was “overrated”. Not being an Aussie, he did not proceed to transfer […]
Julia Gutman is the Winner
Friday, May 5th, 2023 Blog,This year’s Archibald Prize is a victory for youth. A 29-year-old artist has painted – or rather stitched – a portrait of a 27-year-old pop star. It’s not the worst work in the show, but I wouldn’t have called it as the best. My first impression of this year’s selection was that it was exceptionally […]
Museum Dreaming
Friday, April 7th, 2023 Blog,When it comes to cultural matters, Australia is the land of wishful thinking. The entire rationale behind the Art Gallery of NSW’s Sydney Modern Project, valued at $344 million, was “build it and they will come”. After three months this is already looking like a pipe dream. The former NSW Government’s planned destruction of the […]
Ever Present in Singapore
Sunday, September 4th, 2022 Art Column,Not so long ago, Aboriginal art was fighting for a place in the mainstream, trying to shake off the anthropological baggage that allowed sceptics to dismiss its claims to contemporary relevance. White fellas made ‘art’, blackfellas made artefacts. It wasn’t all that different to a once-popular distinction between men who made art, and women who […]