For many years the British government resisted requests for the UK’s National Gallery to tour its collection, one of the world’s greatest. Now 61 of these works can be seen in Canberra.
Asking Australians about their favourite art and artists reveals divides between those who like traditional versus contemporary forms. But Indigenous art transcends such categories.
The Body Electric features ground-breaking photography and video from the 1960s, 70s and 80s, alongside more recent work from Australian and international artists.
Hugh Ramsay’s Two girls in white, was painted just two years before he died at the age of 28 in 1906. It is the central work in the National Gallery of Australia’s survey exhibition.
Dorrit Black, Grace Cossington Smith and Grace Crowley were some of many talented modernist women artists. But only with the advent of second wave feminism in the 1970s was their work properly acknowledged.
The 1973 purchase of Jackson Pollock’s abstract expressionist painting – at a record price for the time – was a controversial moment in Australian art. Was it worth it?
A 20th-century image of an anonymous ‘Aboriginal Chief’ becomes an investigation of power, colonialism and queer sexuality in the hands of Brook Andrew.
TV shows such as Versailles and Reign dwell on sex. But the French royals were preoccupied with life’s intimate moments, from bodily emissions to the crowds that gathered to watch the queen give birth.
The research libraries attached to Australia’s art galleries are one of the nation’s great cultural assets. But the National Gallery of Australia’s library is losing crucial staff as ‘efficiency dividends’ hit home.
Donald Trump has a Versailles-inspired apartment. There’s a popular TV series and now, a new exhibition of treasures from the palace. A glittering symbol of aristocratic frivolity, Versailles was, in fact, a place of awesome royal power.
Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles is one of Australia’s most famous cultural acquisitions. When Mike Parr lay supine before it, streaked with his own blood, he offered a new way of looking at the act of painting.
Is the National Gallery of Australia’s exhibition of Tom Roberts’ really ‘for all Australians’? A recent national survey finds a racial divide in Australian art appreciation.
James Turrell is a veteran Californian artist who throughout a career spanning almost half a century has employed light as a vehicle through which to manipulate the viewer’s perception of space. The Turrell…
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne