Tag: International Art
Shadow catchers
Thursday, July 2nd, 2020 Art Column,In Adelbert von Chamisso’s gothic tale, Peter Schlemihl, the hero sells his shadow to the devil in exchange for a purse perpetually filled with gold, but all the wealth in the world is not enough to compensate for the horror he inspires when his lack of a shadow is noticed. For “shadow” we might read […]
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 […]
Some Mysterious Process
Friday, June 5th, 2020 Art Column,When an art museum celebrates 50 years of its own collecting with an exhibition called Some Mysterious Process, it doesn’t suggest a highly developed sense of irony. One might imagine such a show would stress the insights and knowledge of the curators, the strategic planning involved in tracking and purchasing key works. To say it’s […]
Solitude
Friday, May 15th, 2020 Art Column,A successful artist needs more than talent. There has to be a taste – perhaps a need – for solitude. The movies portray artists as great Bohemians who carouse in bars and cafés, have fierce arguments about art and embark on passionate, doomed love affairs, but this is only what they do in their spare […]
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 […]
Can Indigenous be International?
Thursday, April 2nd, 2020 Art Column,This year sees the first ever Biennale of Sydney with an exclusively indigenous theme. It’s not the only large exhibition to have taken this approach – the Havana Biennial has been devoted to ‘the developing world’ since its inception in 1984 – but it’s probably the most high-profile. It’s an irony that such a globalised […]
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 […]
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 […]
Sculpture By the Sea 2019
Friday, November 1st, 2019 Art Column,Proof arrived this week that climate change is real and urgent. The standard beginning of Sculpture by the Sea (SXS) sees visitors plodding around the coastal trail between Bondi and Tamarama in the pouring rain, but the first day of this year’s show was a scorcher. When the magical rain-bringing powers of this event are […]