Tag: Museum of Contemporary Art
Isaac Julien: Once Again… (Statues Never Die)
Tuesday, October 22nd, 2024 Art Column,Dr. Albert C. Barnes was one of the greatest art collectors of the 20th century, and one of its most odious personalities. He made his fortune with eyewash – an antiseptic compound called Argyrol. Although he claimed to have invented this wondrous product, in reality he only marketed it. His career could serve as a […]
Hiroshi Sugimoto: Time Machine
Friday, August 23rd, 2024 Art Column,In a career of 50 years, Hiroshi Sugimoto (b. 1948) has worked to quietly and purposefully refute the idea that photography is a “second-class citizen” in the world of art. Although known as a photographic artist, Sugimoto is a polymath, with interests in science, history, philosophy, theatre, architecture and landscape design. He has been a […]
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 […]
2024 Biennale of Sydney: Ten Thousand Suns
Saturday, March 16th, 2024 Art Column,Ten Thousand Suns may be the most joyous theme we’ve ever had for a Sydney Biennale. Whether we think of the Pharoah Akhenaten trashing the entire pantheon of Egyptian deities in favour of the Sun God, Aton, or the last words of J.M.W. Turner, who allegedly muttered “the sun is God”, it’s axiomatic that the […]
Tacita Dean
Friday, January 26th, 2024 Art Column,It’s odd to think Tacita Dean was once lumped in with that motley group known as the YBAs – or Young British Artists. She had the mixed fortune of emerging at the same time as such headline-seekers as Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, and the Chapman Brothers, who saw notoreity as the superhighway to success in […]
The National 4: New Australian Art
Tuesday, April 25th, 2023 Art Column,Surveys of contemporary art are rarely smooth, coherent affairs and The National 4: Australian Art Now is no exception. In her catalogue essay, Jennifer Higgie tries to answer the unanswerable question: “What is Australian contemporary art?” and comes up with a long list of contradictory propositions. It’s not exactly revelatory, but it makes the point […]
23rd Sydney Biennale: A Brief Guide
Tuesday, March 15th, 2022 Art Column,Preparations for the 23rd Biennale of Sydney were well underway before somebody noticed this year’s theme – rīvus – was an anagram of “virus”. For director, José Roca, who has worked to assemble a vast international show in a locked-down world, it would have been impossible to ignore the pandemic. Roca is from Columbia but […]
Where to now for the MCA?
Tuesday, March 8th, 2022 Art Column,A change is always an opportunity, and Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art is set to begin a new chapter with the departure of longterm director, Elizabeth-Ann Macgregor and senior curator, Rachel Kent. Yet the transition has been complicated by two years of pandemic, and the impending opening of the Art Gallery of NSW’s Sydney Modern […]
Doug Aitken: New Era
Tuesday, November 30th, 2021 Art Column,Doug Aitken, born and based in California, is one of the most globalised of all contemporary artists. He once told an intervewer that “home can be motion” and his work sets out to prove that proposition. His projects are often conceived on a grand scale, requiring teams of collaborators. He makes video, photography, sculpture, performance, […]
The National 2021
Tuesday, April 20th, 2021 Art Column,Conceived as “a celebration of contemporary Australian art”, The National has been a strange beast ever since its inception in 2017. One of the problems of this event – a biennial collaboration between the Art Gallery of NSW, the Museum of Contemporary Art and Carriageworks – is that it has occasionally seemed to be a […]