Tag: International Art
Venice Biennale 2013: The Encylopaedic Palace
Saturday, June 8th, 2013 Art Column,Every Venice Biennale is a talk fest – a place for the beautiful people of the art world to exchange opinions and business cards at endless parties. Unfortunately most of the talk is of a very tawdry nature: “I just loved the Ruritanian pavilion!” “Oh yeah, I loved it too!” And so on, ad infinitum. […]
Art Basel in Hong Kong 2013
Saturday, June 1st, 2013 Art Column,Hong Kong is said to have got its name from the smell of incense stored in warehouses by the waterfront. Nowadays in “the fragrant harbour” the dominant smell is that of money, and it’s a perfume most residents find highly agreeable. There was a certain tang in the air last week, as the increasingly successful […]
Lars & the big poo
Tuesday, May 28th, 2013 Blog,At the end of another Hong Kong Art Fair – now rebranded as Art Basel in Hong Kong – one image stays in my mind. On an elevated platform stands Lars Nittve, executive director of the much-heralded M+ Museum, due to open in 2017. He is wearing a brown suit and giving a speech, in […]
White Rabbit: Smash Palace
Saturday, May 4th, 2013 Art Column,Every exhibition at White Rabbit, the Neilson family’s private museum of contemporary Chinese art, has featured at least one show-stopper. The tour-de-force in the current show, Smash Palace, is Cheng Dapeng’s Wonderful City (2011-12), a 9.6 metre-long 3D print. On a long, light-box table, Cheng has placed a scale model of a city overrun with […]
Setouchi Triennale 2013
Saturday, March 30th, 2013 Art Column,‘Revitalisation’ is the keynote to the second Setouchi Triennale, an exhibition that uses contemporary art to bring new energies to a region in decline. The Seto Inland Sea is one of the most picturesque parts of Japan, with a diverse cultural heritage spread across a series of islands, large and small. Today, as in so […]
Candice Breitz: The Character
Saturday, February 2nd, 2013 Art Column,It’s hard to stand out from the crowd in an exhibition such as the Venice Biennale, in which hundreds, possibly thousands of works are competing for the attentions of the cognoscenti. If you manage this feat, your career prospects as contemporary artist take a sharp turn to the north. Candice Breitz was born in Johannesburg […]
Anish Kapoor
Saturday, January 26th, 2013 Art Column,Some artists have greatness thrust upon them, others keep waiting but it never seems to turn up. Even if you are among that select group of the rich and famous, with every museum and collector clamouring for your latest creation, there is no guarantee it will make life easier. Material success has a strange tendency […]
7th Asia Pacific Triennial
Saturday, December 22nd, 2012 Art Column,Bad acronym of the year is undoubtedly QAGOMA. To spell it out that means: Queensland Art Gallery Of Modern Art, which is irredeemable. One hopes that vast sums of money have not been spent on the rebranding process, because this new title should be binned before too many people notice. It might be a first […]
Sculpture by the Sea 2012
Saturday, October 27th, 2012 Art Column,Sculpture by the Sea owes much of its appeal to its outdoor setting but the exposed location brings its own hazards. There have been years in which the narrow walking trail from Bondi to Tamarama was nothing but a procession of dueling umbrellas. This year the installation was impeded by strong winds that made it […]
Go Figure! Contemporary Chinese Portraiture
Saturday, October 13th, 2012 Art Column,There is a simple explanation as to why Chinese contemporary art is so relentlessly satirical: 27 years of ideological rectitude, including that final decade of Mao-induced madness known as the Cultural Revolution. From the time the Communist Party took over in 1949 there was nothing much to laugh about. The workers paradise had been achieved, […]