A new Science Gallery Melbourne exhibition offers a set of reflections, calculations and speculations that engage with ideas about the perfect body, mathematical precision, quantum physics and a post-human world.
As a bushranger in the Kelly gang, Steve Hart took to dressing as a woman and riding side-saddle to avoid detection. Sidney Nolan’s painting captures Hart’s adolescent cockiness, bravery, and foolhardy bluster.
The lively reconfiguring of the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman exhibitions means it is harder to work out which paintings the judges are considering as potential winners.
Clay Stories, a travelling exhibition, showcases ceramic art from Indigenous artists across the country. It is a triumphant display of specific stories and Dreamings, standing against cultural and political amnesia.
The paintings in Del Kathryn Barton’s new show at NGV Australia are visually stunning and painstakingly executed. But the women depicted are often de-personalised objects or headless cauldrons of destructive passion.
The quest to create a robot that is indistinguishable from humans has become all-consuming for some scientists, engineers and technicians. The consequences could be both beneficial and catastrophic.
Many great artists died in 2016: Bowie, Prince, Leonard Cohen, Paul Cox, Shirley Hazzard. It was a year of creative foment and as always, intense debate about the importance of the arts to a thriving, democratic society.
Indian artists such as Bhupen Khakhar may be gaining international acclaim, but more is needed to help build and maintain a strong infrastructure for artists at home.
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne