Tag: Installation Art
Christo – His legacy in Australia
Thursday, June 11th, 2020 Blog,Wrapped Coast, One Million Square Feet, Little Bay, Sydney, Australia. The most important piece of avant-garde art ever made in this country, or the the work of a madman? Both views got plenty of traction at the end of October 1969, when Christo and his wife, Jeanne-Claude (1935-2009), undertook the monumental task of wrapping part […]
Tales from the Woods
Friday, April 17th, 2020 Blog,From Goya’s The Third of May, 1808 (1814) to Picasso’s Guernica (1937), to countless, politically correct projects by contemporary artists, the modern era has used art as a megaphone for speaking the truth to power. Yet it remains hard to think of a single instance when a work of so-called ‘political art’ has had any […]
Biennale of Sydney 2020. Part 2
Thursday, March 26th, 2020 Art Column,Another week, another avalanche of statistics about infections and fatalities. As I write, the Biennale of Sydney, which has made heroic efforts to remain open, has just announced it will be switching to a digital platform. This is a poor substitute for the first-hand experience of works of art but it’s better than a total […]
Biennale of Sydney 2020. Part 1
Wednesday, March 18th, 2020 Art Column,Every morning in Sydney we wake to news of cancellations and closures because of the rapidly spreading coronavirus. By the time this column appears there may be few major (or minor) venues that remain open, but – following that perennial advice about keeping a cool head in a crisis – I’m going to proceed as […]
Christian Louboutin: The Exhibitionist
Saturday, March 14th, 2020 Art Column,This weekend sees the launch of the 22nd Biennale of Sydney, the first ever to showcase the work of indigenous artists from around the world. I’ll be taking a look at the Biennale next week, while keeping my fingers crossed. I’ve learned in the past that it’s best not to go into this event with […]
Perth Festival 2020: The Art
Thursday, February 20th, 2020 Art Column,Sydney and Melbourne may consider themselves the nation’s cultural powerhouses but when it comes to the annual festivals Perth now has a greater commitment to the visual arts than any other city. In the years I’ve been attending the Perth Festival it’s never disappointed. First-time director, Iain Grandage, a composer, has put together an exceptional […]
Water
Tuesday, January 7th, 2020 Art Column,As Australia burns it seems almost callous to call an exhibition Water. When this show was being planned the curators at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art could hardly know it would coincide with one of the worst bushfire seasons of all time. They were more likely motivated by the drought that has dragged on since […]
Cornelia Parker
Friday, November 15th, 2019 Art Column,A good deal of contemporary art is wilfully opaque but the work of Cornelia Parker is distinguished by a consistent, lucid intelligence – which is not to say there aren’t plenty of puzzles. I’ve never been a fan of wall labels that explain a work but with the survey Rachel Kent has put together for […]
Newsletter 307
Monday, October 7th, 2019 Newsletter,From the ‘Wet Tropics’ of Far North Queensland my travels have brought me to Klagenfurt, Austria, where I just saw a forest planted in a football stadium. The ambitious installation, For Forest, was dreamt up by Swiss curator, Klaus Littmann, who took years to organise and fund the project. The idea sprang from a 1970/71 […]
Indonesia: Contemporary Worlds
Thursday, July 11th, 2019 Art Column,When the Reformasi era began in 1998 Indonesian art burst out like a tightly-coiled spring released from its bonds. It wasn’t just artists that rejoiced in their newfound freedom – the entire population was now able to imagine itself as a citizenry of the world rather than subjects of Suharto’s corrupt, oppressive regime. Matters would grow […]