Bark painting in Yirrkala is a tradition of antiquity – but it is constantly reinvented, as this stunning exhibition of contemporary women’s work attests.
Jeffrey Smart is admired for his carefully structured paintings of Tuscany and Rome. This National Gallery of Australia’s centenary celebration of his birth takes the viewer back to Adelaide.
Margel Hinder was responsible for some of Australia’s most significant public sculptures in the 1960s and 70s. A major exhibition now examines the totality of her career.
Australian surrealism has long been understood as if it was imported from Paris. This new exhibition places two Czech-Australian émigrés at the heart of the movement.
In its centenary year, the Trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales could not resist the symbolism of awarding the Archibald Prize to Peter Werner’s portrait of the 100 year old Guy Warren.
It’s 100 years since the Art Gallery of NSW first held the Archibald Prize. Though loathed by some critics, it is an annual snapshot of the kind of society we are, and who our heroes might be.
With travel bans and conservative limits on theatre capacities, this year’s Ten Days is a smaller affair than usual, placing community arts at its heart.
Known for her soft capturing of tonal shifts and poignant moments, painter Clarice Beckett’s legacy was almost lost to time and decay. Now her work is being celebrated in a major exhibition.
For over 60 years, Daniel Thomas has shaped and extended our understanding of Australian art. Sometimes cheeky, always erudite, Thomas’s writings are collected in a new book.
A major new exhibition presents a nuanced view of Arthur Streeton who, in his lifetime, was praised as being the artist ‘who has shown us our land as no one else has done’.
Works by eight artists in the Dobell Drawing Biennial draw on dreams, history and reality. But drawing has escaped the gallery and will scribe on despite less government support for the arts.
For the first time in its 99 year-history, the Archibald Prize has been won by an Indigenous painter. The Wynne and Sulman Prize winners also signal a time of change.
Decades of under-funding have left many Australian art schools in a perilous state. And the present political and intellectual hostility to the creative arts is threatening their very existence.
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne
Senior Lecturer in Indigenous Art and Culture, Head of the Wilin Centre for Indigenous Arts and Cultural Development, University of Melbourne, The University of Melbourne