Tag: Installation Art
White Rabbit: Laozi’s Furnace
Monday, October 14th, 2024 Art Column,Transformation is a fundamental goal of art – base materials are transformed into things of beauty, dull objects become receptacles for daring ideas. This process extends from the work to the audience itself. As the poet, Rilke said, the work of art commands us: “You must change your life.” I’m not sure anyone will be […]
Nicholas Mangan: A World Undone
Saturday, May 11th, 2024 Art Column,Few artists are so well informed as Nicholas Mangan in diverse fields of knowledge. In Mangan’s survey exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, A World Undone, one can’t help but be impressed by the breadth of his interests and the thoroughness with which he pursues them. In the first essay in the catalogue, Amelia […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Elmgreen & Dragset
Friday, December 22nd, 2023 Blog,Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset met in a Copenhagen nightclub in 1994. Elmgreen, a Dane, was writing and performing poetry, while Dragset, a Norwegian, was involved in the theatre. Somehow, they decided to combine forces and make art. (“It’s can be good not to learn how to do things in a ‘correct’ way,” says Dragset.) […]
Louise Bourgeois
Monday, December 11th, 2023 Art Column,It’s only taken a year, but Sydney Modern is hosting its first genuine exhibition. Until now, all we’ve had in this much-hyped building are rearrangements of the permanent collection, but Louise Bourgeois: Has the Day Invaded the Night or Has the Night Invaded the Day? is a most elaborate first venture. Australia has seen Bourgeois’s […]
Jordan Wolfson: Body Sculpture
Sunday, December 10th, 2023 Blog,Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Jordan Wolfson’s Body Sculpture goes through an elaborate range of gestures in a half hour cycle, from the sexually suggestive to the suicidal. The National Gallery of Australia has invested $6.67 million in this work and waited five-and-a-half years for it to be delivered. Conscious of the magnitude of the gamble […]
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 […]