Tag: National Gallery of Victoria
Yayoi Kusama: She always knew she’d be famous
Wednesday, October 16th, 2024 Blog,One morning last year in New York City, a queue formed at the entrance to the David Zwirner Gallery. As the day progressed, the line grew longer and longer, until it extended around the block. The occasion was the opening of a commercial exhibition by Yayoi Kusama, and the chance to spend 30 seconds in […]
How the ancient Egyptians found an afterlife in the British Museum
Thursday, July 18th, 2024 Blog,In terms of sheer longevity, writes Egyptologist, Toby Wilkinson, the 3,000-year reign of the Pharaohs represents “the greatest political and religious system the world has ever known.” It was, however, a fiercely hierarchical affair that bestowed wealth and luxury on the king and the elites, while condemning the poor to a life of drudgery. Ramses […]
Pharaoh
Saturday, June 22nd, 2024 Art Column,Until the Eiffel Tower came along in 1889, the Great Pyramid of Giza, built by the Pharaoh, Khufu (c.2,600 BCE), was the tallest building on earth. Not many world records have stood for 4,000 years, and no great civilisation lasted so long as Pharaonic Egypt. It began with the reign of Narmer (c. 3,000 BCE), […]
Climate Artists: Franziska Furter & Julian Charriere
Tuesday, April 16th, 2024 Blog,“My interest in the weather started twenty years ago in Edinburgh,” says Swiss artist, Franziska Furter. “It was my first overseas residency, and I was so surprised. You wake up and it’s raining. You have a shower, the sun is shining. You have breakfast, it’s snowing. Then you go out and it’s raining again. I […]
Makoto Azuma
Friday, February 16th, 2024 Blog,Makoto Azuma is the Indiana Jones of florists. He has fired flowers into the stratosphere and plunged them to the bottom of the ocean. One of his favourite tactics is to preserve specimens at their moment of maximum beauty, in blocks of clear resin, which is how visitors to this year’s NGV Triennial at the […]
NGV Triennial 3
Saturday, February 10th, 2024 Art Column,Over the past decade I’ve had so many positive things to say about the National Gallery of Victoria that I get accused of favouritism. My response to such charges is very simple: Put in the work and reap the rewards. The NGV owes its success to a busy, dynamic exhibitions program and an unwavering focus […]
Sheila Hicks
Saturday, October 14th, 2023 Blog,Not many people get asked by the Louvre to deliver a lecture on tapestries. It seems a reasonable request of an artist who has dominated the field of fibre art for decades, but it’s left Sheila Hicks feeling slightly awkward. While her own star has never been higher, the prestige and authority of the famous […]
Liam Young: Planetary Redesign
Saturday, September 30th, 2023 Art Column,Climate anxiety is the neurosis of our age. According to a recent study, one in ten Americans report symptoms of anxiety because of global warming. For those between the ages of 16-25, the number jumps to an alarming fifty percent. In Australia, a survey of last year found that 38 percent of young people were […]
Rembrandt – True to Life
Tuesday, June 27th, 2023 Art Column,When the exhibition, Rembrandt: A Genius and His Impact, was shown in Melbourne at the end of 1997, viewers were surprised by the quality of the loans. It was widely assumed that leading museums would never lend us major works by the Dutch Master, but this did not take into account the negotiating skills of […]
Bonnard
Tuesday, June 20th, 2023 Art Column,Matisse and Picasso, those twin towers of modern art, had one serious point of disagreement: Pierre Bonnard. In her tell-all memoir, Life with Picasso, Françoise Gilot recounts her former husband’s scathing opinion of Bonnard: “That’s not painting, what he does. He never goes beyond his own sensibility. He doesn’t know how to choose… The result […]