Tag: politics
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 […]
Oppenheimer
Friday, July 28th, 2023 Film Reviews,No figure stands more squarely at the crossroads of 20th century science and politics than J. Robert Oppenheimer, forever known as “father of the atomic bomb”. An epic story requires an epic film, and Christopher Nolan has given Oppenheimer the treatment he demands, in a three-hour bio pic that manages to balance a portrait of […]
proppaNOW & Tennant Creek Brio
Tuesday, July 18th, 2023 Sydney Morning Herald Column,With the greatest Aboriginal art it’s often the skill and refinement that’s impressive. One thinks of the hypnotic rhythms of Western Desert painting, the infinite patience with which John Mawurndjul applies thin lines of ochre to a piece of bark. There are the stories that hark back to a time of spirits and mythical beings, […]
Frida & Diego: Love & Revolution
Saturday, July 8th, 2023 Sydney Morning Herald Column,Diego Rivera must have had extraordinary charisma. A fat man who wore his trousers Harry Highpants style, with a face regularly compared to a frog, (even by himself), Rivera was a legendary womaniser. His list of conquests included a long line of celebrated beauties – actresses, artists, writers – they all succumbed to his charm. […]
Reality & Driving Madeleine
Friday, July 7th, 2023 Film Reviews,Reality is a film that lives up to its title, with a script taken word-for-word from one woman’s experience of an actual FBI search. The protagonist is a young civil servant with the rather surreal name of Reality Winner (Sydney Sweeney) who arrives home from the supermarket to find two men waiting for her outside […]
Newsletter 494
Monday, June 5th, 2023 Newsletter,It’s time for another look at the Powerhouse Museum saga. I know current management has dispensed altogether with the idea of a museum, and is now calling the institution simply “Powerhouse” – like “Tate” or “Sting” or “Prince”. Being an old-fashioned kind of guy, I can’t help thinking of the place as a museum, even […]
Philip Guston Now
Tuesday, May 30th, 2023 Sydney Morning Herald Column,We are forever hearing about artists whose work is “challenging” and “subversive”, usually in the context of some prestigious museum survey. In the pageant of contemporary art, the oppositional artist has become a stock figure. He, she, or they know exactly what buttons to push to win the esteem of institutions that passionately need to […]
Cairo Conspiracy
Friday, May 12th, 2023 Film Reviews,It would be fascinating to make a study of films that have rendered their makers persona non grata in certain countries. Cairo Conspiracy would certainly do the trick for Swedish-born filmmaker, Tarik Saleh, whose father was Egyptian. A ban, however, would be superfluous, because Saleh has been barred from returning to Egypt since 2017, when […]
Tár & Babylon
Friday, January 27th, 2023 Film Reviews,Last week I thought Michelle Williams was unbeatable for Best Actress at this year’s Oscars, but after watching Tár, it’s hard to see Cate Blanchett coming second. Todd Field’s film about a musical genius who falls for the seductions of fame and power, is a classic Faustian tale. Blanchett’s Lydia Tár doesn’t exactly sell her […]
Richard Mosse: Broken Spectre
Tuesday, October 18th, 2022 Sydney Morning Herald Column,It may seem remarkable that anyone would view their short-term profits as more important than the survival of humankind, but this is the simple reason we’re losing the battle against Global Warming. The complex reason is slightly trickier. In the words of British philosopher, Timothy Morton, the warming of the planet is a “hyperobject” – […]