A major exhibition of Jenny Watson’s work at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art spans 40 years in the creative life of a rule-breaking Australian artist.
Detail from Katsushika Hokusai, The great wave off Kanagawa (Kanagawa oki namiura), (1830–34), from the Thirty-six views of Mt Fuji (Fugaku-sanjū-rokkei)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Felton Bequest, 1909 (426-2)
Hokusai’s Great Wave is the enduring image of Japanese art. Less well known is the story of its primary pigment - Prussian blue - which was created in a lab accident in Berlin and sparked ‘blue fever’ in Europe.
A robot sculpts a recreation of the Ancient Greek work Laocoon and his Sons, which was exhibited in Linz last year.
Ars Electronica/Flickr
Artists invented the word ‘robot’, but now robots are becoming artists, or at least assistants, themselves. As robots get smarter, artists will find more and more uses for them, particularly in sculpture.
Four Seasons of the Canadian Flag, painted by Maxwell Newhouse for John Burge.
(Maxwell Newhouse)
Composer John Burge speaks of his drive to create a musical piece to mark Canada’s 150th year of confederation and to capture our collective experiences.
Anthropologist Percy Leason thought he was painting the extinction of Victoria’s Indigenous people in the 1930s. He was wrong, but his portraits, part of a new exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, are surprisingly sympathetic.
Jim Dine and other pop artists like Andy Warhol took everyday things and transformed them into magical objects. In his prints a robe could become a self-portrait, a president, or a hero.
A close up from Michael Jensen’s Pintupi and Anmatyerr artists in Men’s Painting Room (circa August 1972).
Michael Jensen
The Men’s Painting Room - a Nissen hut in the government settlement of Papunya - is Australian art’s most important atelier. A new form of creative expression happened here.
Untitled (all), Hans-Jörg Georgi, 2010–15, Courtesy of The Museum of Everything.
Moorilla Gallery, Courtesy of Atelier Goldstein and The Museum of Everything (installation by Lutz Pillong)
MONA’s latest exhibition draws on the work of people - patients, housewives, hermits - who were compelled to create, raising age-old questions about how we define art.
The acclaimed Museum of Old and New Art is located in one of Tasmania’s most disadvantaged municipalities. But new research has found that locals have mixed feelings about the gallery.
Today, the idea of a male artist making a major series of paintings about schoolgirls, or any sort of children, sits uncomfortably with the public. But these were memorable and original works when painted in the 1950s.
Fractals are patterns that repeat at increasingly fine magnifications. They turn up in the natural world and in artists’ work. Research suggests they contribute to making something aesthetically appealing.
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.
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne