Tag: video art
White Rabbit: Laozi’s Furnace
Monday, October 14th, 2024 Art Column,Transformation is a fundamental goal of art – base materials are transformed into things of beauty, dull objects become receptacles for daring ideas. This process extends from the work to the audience itself. As the poet, Rilke said, the work of art commands us: “You must change your life.” I’m not sure anyone will be […]
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 […]
Ultra Unreal
Tuesday, August 9th, 2022 Art Column,Things have been quiet at the Museum of Contemporary Art this year, but Ultra Unreal aims at a reboot. It’s an exhibition that pushes beyond the contemporary, drawing us into virtual realms, both futuristic and animistic. These imaginary worlds have been created by new technology and populated with supernatural beings. It all sounds breathlessly exciting. […]
White Rabbit: I Loved You
Tuesday, July 26th, 2022 Art Column,Anybody who has seen the Marriage Market in Shanghai’s People Park will never imagine the Chinese as a nation of desperate romantics. Every weekend the Market is swarming with parents eager secure an advantageous match for their son or daughter. One gets the impression that marriage is primarily an economic transaction, with love being a […]
Robert Wilson: Moving Portraits
Tuesday, July 19th, 2022 Art Column,Germany’s all-time literary giant, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, once suggested to Caspar David Friedrich he should paint landscapes that systematically depicted each type of cloud identified in a famous treatise. Friedrich, by all accounts, was horrified at the suggestion. Being atttracted by the freedom and mutability of clouds, he resisted the idea of placing them […]
White Rabbit: Big in China
Tuesday, February 22nd, 2022 Art Column,It seems that everything is big in China apart from the Olympic flame. In a country in which the number of people and the staggering pace of development are overwhelming, it was surprising that the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Winter Olympics ended with two athletes placing a teensy-weensy flame into a giant-sized snowflake. I […]
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, […]
Thresholds
Friday, February 19th, 2021 Art Column,Thresholds is the very model of an underground art exhibition. Between 2016-19 Julia Davis and Lisa Jones explored the subterranean spaces near St. James Station, taking photographs, shooting video and making unconventional large-scale drawings. The results of their investigations are displayed at the Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney University. There’s an intrinsic fascination in such a […]
Biennale of Sydney 2020. Part 2
Thursday, March 26th, 2020 Art Column,Another week, another avalanche of statistics about infections and fatalities. As I write, the Biennale of Sydney, which has made heroic efforts to remain open, has just announced it will be switching to a digital platform. This is a poor substitute for the first-hand experience of works of art but it’s better than a total […]
Biennale of Sydney 2020. Part 1
Wednesday, March 18th, 2020 Art Column,Every morning in Sydney we wake to news of cancellations and closures because of the rapidly spreading coronavirus. By the time this column appears there may be few major (or minor) venues that remain open, but – following that perennial advice about keeping a cool head in a crisis – I’m going to proceed as […]