Tag: landscape
Zoe Leonard: Al río/To the River
Tuesday, September 26th, 2023 Sydney Morning Herald Column,Zoe Leonard’s Al río/To the River is an exhibition that will test local audiences. It’s a deeply serious, critically acclaimed project featuring many hundreds of black-and-white images, that took five years to complete. The show is accompanied by a two-volume Hatje Cantz publication, with parallel texts in English, Spanish and French, in which the artist […]
Elisabeth Cummings: Radiance
Sunday, September 17th, 2023 Sydney Morning Herald Column,It’s the supreme test of a great artist that their work never grows stale. Upon repeated viewings, conducted over years or even decades, there are paintings that retain their freshness, renewing themselves in front of one’s eyes. As it has been only six years since a survey of Elisabeth Cummings’s work at the S.H. Ervin […]
John Olsen, ‘Lake Alexandrina and Dirt Roads’ (1997-98)
Friday, June 16th, 2023 Journals,JOHN OLSEN Lake Alexandrina and Dirt Roads 1997-98 oil on canvas 199.0 x 183.0 cm signed and dated lower right: John/ Olsen/ 97-98 signed and inscribed verso: Dirt Roads & Lake John/ Olsen Provenance: Savill Galleries, Sydney Private collection, Melbourne Exhibited: John Olsen: Recent Work 1995-1998, Olsen Carr Art Dealers, Sydney, 7-25 April 1998, cat.13 (illus. […]
The Wynne Prize 2023
Tuesday, May 23rd, 2023 Sydney Morning Herald 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 […]
William & Jonathan Delafield Cook, Luke Sciberras, David Collins, Danelle Bergstrom
Tuesday, March 28th, 2023 Sydney Morning Herald Column,William Delafield Cook (1936-2015) was the perfect expatriate artist. He left Australia in the late 1950s, and would spend most of his life in London, where he blended in smoothly with the British art scene. His paintings, however, returned perpetually to Australia. In this, he was like Sidney Nolan, although their work was poles apart. […]
Idris Murphy
Tuesday, March 14th, 2023 Sydney Morning Herald Column,In this country some of our greatest artists, such as Drysdale and Dobell, faced a long struggle for institutional recognition, followed by a rush of success when everyone jumped on the bandwagon. In recent years there’s been a different pattern, with younger artists singled out as fashionable stars whose work is collected early by all […]
The Hadley’s Art Prize 2022 & MONA
Tuesday, August 2nd, 2022 Sydney Morning Herald Column,Unlike Errol Flynn and Douglas Mawson, I’d never stayed at Hadley’s Orient Hotel in Hobart – until it hosted an art prize. Established in 1834, Hadley’s is one of the oldest hotels in Australia, and it trades lavishly on its historical connections. There are plenty of hotels that are more up-to-date and luxurious, but not […]
Snowy Valleys Sculpture Trail
Tuesday, May 24th, 2022 Sydney Morning Herald Column,It’s said there are distinct personality differences between those who prefer the mountains or the seashore. While it would be hard to argue all beach lovers are extroverts while mountain people are introverts, it’s probably true that most of us harbour an innate preference for one or the other. For Sculpture by the Sea, the […]
Les Sculptures Refusées 2021
Tuesday, December 14th, 2021 Sydney Morning Herald Column,Of all the art events stifled by the pandemic, Sculpture by the Sea must be among the hardest hit. Until last year the annual stroll along the shore between Bondi and Tamarama had become part of Sydney life and a reliable tourist magnet. At its peak SXS has posted attendances of more than 500,000, a […]