Seasons, stars, settler colonialism: the nations of the south – Australia, Argentina and South Africa – have much in common. And the 2003 Nobel laureate for literature, JM Coetzee, is helping reframe Australian writing within this southern context.
William Barak’s Ceremony has sold at auction to an unknown buyer.
Supplied
Can you repatriate a painting? Descendants of Aboriginal painter William Barak ran a crowdsourcing campaign to try to buy back the previously unknown artwork Ceremony.
Tom Roberts is an iconic Australian artist. Who does that icon represent?
Opening of the first parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, 9 May 1901, Tom Roberts, 1903. Courtesy of the NGA.
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.
Two exhibitions suggest a generational shift is taking place in Australian jewellery making. Lisa Furno, 2012 (detail), Mum’s going away dress (material, silk cord, sterling silver).
Emma Furno
Artist Mike Parr’s career might be best described as a series of alarming acts - he’s cut his legs with a scalpel and used his blood as paint. His latest act is erase his work by painting it white.
Khayamiya or Egyptian Tentmaker Applique provides a memorable introduction to Islamic art.
Photo by Timothy Crutchett Charles Sturt University
Islamic art in Australia is inaccessible and largely overlooked. It is rarely taught as a dedicated subject in Australian universities, and almost never seen beyond state capitals. Why?
It hovers uneasily between being a fine-art exhibition showing the diversity and sheer visual and sociocultural potency of contemporary Australian visual art practice, and an older-style ethnographic survey.
Ian North, 2015. Detail from East Antarctica 1915 no. 7. Charcoal on inkjet pigment print, c. 55x148cm.
Courtesy of the artist/ Greenaway Art Gallery.
The latest exhibition of photographer Ian North’s work, Antarctica 1915, demonstrates his uncanny ability to tap into the zeitgeist of our socially fractured and culturally fragmented times.
Saulal by Dennis Nona won the 27th Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Art Award.
Dennis Nona/Aboriginal Art Network
Indigenous artist Dennis Nona is currently serving a jail term for serious crimes. Should the work of the most significant artist to have emerged from the Torres Strait in the last 50 years be removed from gallery walls?
Betty Churcher, the former director of the National Gallery of Australia, has died, aged 84.
AAP Image/Alan Porritt
Betty Churcher, the first and only female director of the National Gallery of Australia, has died. Throughout her extraordinary career as an arts administrator, the art always came first.
In Crystal Romeo, artist Técha Noble presents a diverse body of work: etchings, experimental projections and costume, brought together by her own sophisticated version of camp aesthetics.
Alex Davies
A major photography retrospective opened at the Art Gallery of NSW on the weekend, but what does The Photograph and Australia tell us about our present and past?
Gladwell’s work will be displayed at the art school where he earned his Masters degree and the gallery where he was first represented.
Untitled – Murramarang Plank, 2014. Photo: Lucille Gladwell
Some 23 years after his death, Australian artist Brett Whitely’s vision continues to have resonance and will likely remain a defining representation of late 20th century Australia.
On the western edge of the continent there is a great deal to get the juices flowing.
Carnie Lewis
What is the future of Australia’s wealthiest state? The Conversation, in conjunction with Griffith REVIEW and Curtin University, is publishing a series of articles exploring the unique issues facing Western…
What mechanisms separate the art pantheon of Australia from the also-rans?
AAP Image/Sergio Dionisio
There are about 30,000 professional practicing visual artists in Australia today (see note). By professional, I mean exhibiting regularly in recognised commercial or public galleries and represented in…
The winner of this year’s McLelland Prize, Matthew Harding’s Void (2014). Stainless steel, 650.0 x 800.0 x 260.0
McLelland Prize
In Australia’s somewhat subdued public sculpture scene, the McClelland Sculpture Survey – which runs until July 19, 2015 – provides a rare opportunity for witnessing contemporary public sculpture. This…
Artists Dianne Ungukalpi Golding, Eunice Yunurupa Porter, Nancy Jackson, Winnie Woods and Melva Davies at Tjanpi Desert Weavers workshop, Warakurna, April 2011.
Photo Jo Foster, Tjanpi Desert Weavers, NPY Women’s Council
For over a thousand generations Aboriginal people made no distinction between art and craft. Art was, and still is, a way of life and as much about function as it is about beauty and form. Artistic forms…
Self-taught artist Stan Hopewell in his studio.
Photo: Frances Andrijich
This is an edited extract from Ted Snell’s book, Stan Hopewell: Facing the Stars. This is a love story! It is the story of Stan Hopewell and his beloved wife Joyce, a couple whose lives intertwined during…
The recent television series The Art of Australia presented by Edmund Capon, and its counterpart Hannah Gadsby’s OZ, offered a blinkered view of Australian art practice that ended at the 129th meridian…
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne