Tag: Museum of Contemporary Art
Destination NSW vs. Yoko Ono
Thursday, August 22nd, 2019 Blog,Not many Australian bureaucrats would qualify as art experts but apparently this is no impediment to making pronouncements. And so we have Sandra Chipchase, the Chief Executive of Destination NSW, telling Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art that Yoko Ono is “a well-known celebrity” but not much of an artist. It’s a perfect example of that […]
Shaun Gladwell: Pacific Undertow
Friday, July 26th, 2019 Sydney Morning Herald Column,We all have our blind spots and Shaun Gladwell (b.1972) is one of mine. For almost two decades I’ve watched people getting excited about his slow-motion videos of a figure on a skateboard, on a BMX bike, on a motorbike, on a surfboard, on a train… As someone who has never had the slightest desire […]
Michael Armitage: The Promised Land
Thursday, July 4th, 2019 Sydney Morning Herald Column,Perhaps the most impressive aspect of Michael Armitage as both an artist and a person is his immunity to cynicism. This is no mean feat in a world dominated by political immorality and self-interest in which voters seem to have lost the ability to tell right from wrong. Among artists the vogue is to produce […]
The National 2019: New Australian Art
Thursday, April 25th, 2019 Sydney Morning Herald Column,In its second “edition”, The National: New Australian Art, is just as hard to love as its predecessor of 2017. A collaboration between the Art Gallery of NSW, the Museum of Contemporary Art and Carriageworks, the show is intended as an overview of the best and the brightest work being produced in Australia today. It’s […]
Janet Laurence: After Nature
Thursday, March 21st, 2019 Sydney Morning Herald Column,“What need has nature of thought, of care?” asked Confucius in the 5thC. BCE. “Plenty” is the answer he’d receive today, as we struggle with the effects of global warming, deforrestation, salination, loss of species and habitat. In the so-called ‘Anthropocene’ era nature needs all the help it can get. Having worked so dilgently to […]
David Goldblatt: Photographs 1948-2018
Friday, November 23rd, 2018 Sydney Morning Herald Column,“I was never interested in making propaganda for anybody,” said David Goldblatt, “and didn’t allow my photos to be used that way.” It’s an important point because even Goldblatt’s admirers tend to see him as a political photographer who drew global attention to the injustices of Apartheid. As this landmark retrospective at the Museum of […]
Sun Xun
Friday, September 7th, 2018 Sydney Morning Herald Column,It may be a legacy of those heroic efforts Chairman Mao demanded at the time of the Great Leap Forward, or perhaps it’s mainly down to pressure of competition, but the Chinese art scene has the most stupendous work ethic. Go to any exhibition at the White Rabbit Gallery and there will always be one […]
John Mawurndjul: I Am the Old and the New
Friday, July 27th, 2018 Sydney Morning Herald Column,This year’s best exhibition title is: John Mawurndjul: I Am the Old and the New. A landmark retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art, the show demonstrates the paradox of bark painting: as one of the oldest forms of artistic expression and something completely new. This was inconceivable to the organisers of the Cologne Art […]
Sun Xun: Shapeshifter
Friday, July 13th, 2018 Blog,“Whenever I find people putting a tag on my work I try to prove it untrue,” says Sun Xun. “I take pride in the fact that no-one can catch me. I will change the medium of my work or the style of my work. I’ll aim to be different every time, so that nobody can […]
John Mawurndjul: Bark Maestro
Friday, June 22nd, 2018 Blog,Here’s an art trivia question: “Who was the first Australian artist to be given a retrospective at two major European museums?” Answer: John Mawurndjul of western Arnhem Land, who in 2005-06 had his work shown at the Museum Tinguely in Basel, and the Sprengel Museum in Hannover. If you don’t remember seeing the exhibition when […]