Part human, part animal, Patricia Piccinini’s sculptures are uncannily familiar, yet alarmingly other. A major new exhibition creates a parallel universe in which viewers can encounter her work.
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.
Installation view Versus Rodin: bodies across space and time.
Art Gallery of South Australia, 2017
The Art Gallery of South Australia has created something special with Versus Rodin. Works by 65 contemporary artists, surrounded by the gallery’s Rodin collection, take on a wonderful glow.
An internationally renowned jeweller, now based in Germany, Helen Britton is inspired by the landforms of Western Australia. A new exhibition of her work is captivating.
The V&A’s current exhibition, Revolution, highlights that all is not rosy from the vantage point of 2016.
Detail from Shenae & Jade, 2005, Petrina Hicks.
Courtesy of the artist and THIS IS NO FANTASY + dianne tanzer gallery, Melbourne and Michael Reid, Sydney
A new exhibition exploring the relationship between birds and humans is variously gaudy, delightful and disturbing. We sent two ecologists along to review the show.
The Dobell is a celebration of drawing. And the work in this year’s show, from Noel McKenna’s beautifully rendered drawings of dogs to Richard Lewer’s depictions of states of mind – is first rate.
The exhibition includes the kind of art not held in any Australian collection.
Sir Edwin Landseer, Rent-day in the wilderness, 1868. Trustees of the National Galleries of Scotland
Anyone who has even a passing interest in art exhibitions or how culture can define a country should allocate a good few hours to contemplating these riches from the National Galleries of Scotland.
Popular in the 18th century were events at which mummies were dissected by doctors and passed around the audience to be touched, smelt and tasted. Mummymania installation view.
Jodie Hutchinson
Egyptian mummies have fascinated Europeans since the 5th century, but a new exhibition considers the more recent role they have played in medicine, art and popular culture – and the ethics of their display in museums.
Lucy Kemp-Welch, Horses bathing in the sea, 1900. Oil on canvas. Estate of Lucy Kemp-Welch.
National Gallery of Victoria
The Horse, currently on display at the National Gallery of Victoria, celebrates the pivotal role the horse has played in the evolution of civilisation.
A detail from the north wall of Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry.
Diego Rivera, 1932. Detroit Institute of Arts
A new exhibit at the Detroit Institute of Arts highlights a controversial mural commissioned during a period fraught with social unrest.
Drawings by male warriors – like Black Hawk’s ‘Dream or Vision or Himself Changed to a Destroyer or Riding a Bufalo Eagle (1880-1881)’ – often depicted visions perceived during meditation and fasting.
New York State Historical Association, Fenimore Art Museum/John Bigelow Taylor
Kazimir Malevich unveiled his now iconic pared down painting of a black square on a white background in 1915. This was a moment that not only represented a turning point in art, but in politics too. This…
The Sheaf (La Gerbe), 1953. Maquette for ceramic (realized 1953).
MoMA
On October 12, New York City’s Museum of Modern Art unveiled its exhibition of Henri Matisse’s cut-outs. This came on the heels an exhibition of the cut-outs at the Tate Modern in London, which displayed…
A new exhibition at New Norcia in Western Australia sheds new life on the extraordinary life of the historic township’s founder.
New Norcia Museum and Art Gallery
Driving from Perth to New Norcia to see a new exhibition devoted to the township’s founder, Bishop Rosendo Salvado, takes about two hours. It’s an enjoyable trip, cutting through the wide expanse of countryside…
We hear a great deal about China’s future – but how is it treating its past? Sangzhutse Fortress in Shigatse, Tibet – after restoration work.
Photo: Tongji University
For most Australians, mention of China probably does not evoke preserved buildings and landscapes in the way the English countryside does or the Italian centro storico. But a new exhibition, Envisioning…
Opening this week, Art Gallery NSW’s latest exhibition, Australian Vernacular Photography, explores the Australian photographic landscape of the late 20th century. Hal Missingham, photographer and director…
Modern Australian exhibitions, like the recent “Turner from the Tate” exhibition, shows just how spoilt Australian audiences are.
J.M.W. Turner's Regulus, 1828, reworked 1837. AAP Image/Supplied by the Art Gallery of South Australia
When visitors come to the Turner from the Tate exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia, the experience is to travel through time and space to early 19th century Britain. It was a time of social…
Monet’s Garden has already proved popular but why does it take so long for “new art” to be accepted and understood?
AAP Image/David Crosling
As the curtains rise on the National Gallery of Victoria’s (NGV) latest blockbuster, Monet’s Garden, it is a good time to reflect on a connection between this acclaimed modernist painter and the art world…
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne