Tag: photography
Fiona Tan, Jon Lewis & Kate Geraghty
Saturday, May 1st, 2010 Art Column,Fiona Tan is almost the perfect multicultural artist. Born in Indonesia of Australian and Chinese parents, brought up in Melbourne, she now resides in the Netherlands. Last year she was the Dutch representative at the Venice Biennale, where her video, Disorient, was one of the best received exhibits in a largely disappointing show. Would it […]
Dennis Hopper & the New Hollywood
Saturday, April 10th, 2010 Art Column,When Dennis Hopper read the script of David Lynch’s 1986 film, Blue Velvet, he is reputed to have called the director and said: “You have to let me play Frank Booth because I am Frank Booth.” Nobody who has seen Blue Velvet could ever forget Hopper’s performance: a blue-eyed psychopath puffing pure oxygen from a […]
Maitland Regional Art Gallery & Danny Huynh
Saturday, August 22nd, 2009 Art Column,Having grown up in the coalfields of the Hunter Valley, I never thought I’d see the day when those prosaic towns would manifest a love of art. That was before last weekend when Maitland confounded all expectations by opening a spectacular new gallery. The Maitland Regional Art Gallery is a clever meshing of old and […]
Photography as Art
Monday, December 31st, 2001 General Art Essays,“Photography is the art of comparison,” says the garrulous, omniscient narrator in Murray Bail’s novel, Eucalyptus, who sounds suspiciously like the author. “Anyone can take a photograph. The ‘art’ has already been composed by the subject itself, even when it’s a brick wall – really, the word ‘art’ here is an amazing pretension, since it […]
Pride and Passion – Photographic Portraits of Fairfield by Danny Huynh
Monday, March 19th, 2001 Australian Art,Multiculturalism isn’t folk dancing, it’s the stoning of adulterers. Anthony Daniels. ‘Multiculturalism’ is one of the most contested terms in our modern liberal democracy. For some commentators it represents a sentimental dream of folk dances, national costumes and ethnic cuisine. Others see it as a mask for religious extremism and intolerance, age-old vendettas, and barbaric […]
From Bondi to Broken Hill
Friday, May 1st, 1998 General Art Essays,It was in the middle of a London winter that I first became aware of the great, abiding seductiveness of Sydney. The occasion was a trip to the movies on one of those typically grey days when a little watery sunshine appears at about 10 o’clock and is gone by half-past three. The air was […]