Ben Quilty is the first Australian artist to hold a solo show at the Saatchi Gallery in London. Opening last Friday and running until August 3, the exhibition is a big deal for Quilty, naturally, but also…
A new exhibition in Brisbane takes food as its subject and includes this work by Darren Sylvester. (‘The explanation is boring. It’s simple. I don’t care’, 2006. Lightjet print on paper, 120 x 160cm.)
Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art
In Rolf de Heer’s new film Charlie’s Country there are four food moments: deep-fried fast food; tinned and packaged food (abandoned when the car runs out of petrol); cooked-in-coals barramundi; and green…
An exhibition of the Fremantle realists sheds new light on the work of this pioneering group.
Ken Wadrop, Action painting , 1978, acrylic paint on canvas, 92 x 123.5 cm. Fremantle Arts Centre
There is a sense of elation when you see something familiar as if for the first time. Looking is one thing but seeing is something entirely different and for the three Western Australian artists identified…
Ben Quilty, Captain S, after Afghanistan, 2012, oil on linen, 140 x 190cm.
War art, like war, changes with time – but not as much as we might like to believe. So what is its function, and how has it evolved over time? Two current exhibitions – the travelling show Ben Quilty…
Installation view from Stan Hopewell: God is Love, Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, 2013.
Courtesy of Nic Montagu
In Talking Point, the Australia Council’s recently published “snapshot” of the Australian contemporary visual arts in 2014, it was surprising to find only one reference to the country’s 42 university based…
Bright lights, big city - in the 1950s lighting for productivity and security was overtaken by lighting for spectacle, mood and advertising.
Lighting the Sails - 59 Productions Vivid LIVE 2014.
If you’re in Melbourne or Sydney over the next couple of weeks, you can enjoy the nightly transformation of some familiar urban landmarks. How should we understand this growing global enthusiasm for spectacular…
A sense of unease that comes with visiting the past is palpable in several of the works on show.
Anna Carey, Costa Vista 2014, giclée print mounted on aluminium, Museum of Brisbane
Last year I re-read Johnno, David Malouf’s 1975 novel, with a group of students. I was intrigued to find out how young men and women living in Brisbane today would relate to a novel that has cast such…
This unconventional review of an exhibition, Jinjilngali, Kurlukuku Minpiya, Yirdingali, now on show at the Vivien Anderson Gallery in Melbourne, also constitutes a tribute to three Warlpiri women artists…
An exhibition on display in Ballarat charts the fortunes of the Scots in Australia in the 19th century.
John Glover, Ben Lomond, c1840. Oil on canvas 76.8 x 117.1 cm. Rex Nan Kivell Collection, National Gallery of Australia and National Library of Australia. Courtesy of Art Gallery of Ballarat
If there is one painting that shows the dilemma at the heart of For Auld Lang Syne, an exhibition devoted to images of Scottish Australia currently showing at the Art Gallery of Ballarat, it is John Glover’s…
Intervention by a conservator on an object has to be reversible.
IAEA Imagebank
Cultural conservation is concerned with how cultural material is preserved as it moves from the past, through the present and into the future. This material may be books in libraries, documents in archives…
A section of Robert Dale’s Panoramic View of King George’s Sound.
Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery
Often it is just one artwork that kindles the idea for an exhibition. Robert Dale’s extraordinary panorama of King George Sound, engraved by Robert Havell and published as A Descriptive Account of the…
Neville Wran had a reputation as a tough guy – but he was also a strong supporter of the arts.
AAP Image/Tracey Nearmy
In 1981, on a short trip back home to Australia from the UK, I saw a job advertised that I thought had been made for me. The Director, Women and Arts, according to the advertisement, was a special role…
Julie Shiels has been repurposing streetside detritus to artistic ends since 2005.
Julie Shiels
It all began with a muselet – the wire cage that holds a champagne cork in place. Flattened on the footpath, its complex pattern caught my eye. I began noticing others, and realised that every squashed…
Character drawings are encoded with cues to help animators understand how the character should move.
Courtesy DreamWorks Animation SKG
When I first started working as an animator on the South Park (1999) feature film in California, I found it remarkable that every Tuesday evening the studio would hold life-drawing classes. It seemed odd…
Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, one of many collaborators in Deborah Kelly’s most recent creation.
N.E. Skinner
You may have heard of Deborah Kelly, the well-known Sydney-based artist with a work in the 2014 Biennale of Sydney entitled No Human Being Is Illegal (In All Our Glory). The work features a suite of life-size…
The only surprising thing about the news that Sarah Lucas has been chosen to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2015 is that it has taken so long to happen. Immediate media response to the British…
Large media coverage and biennales tend to go hand in hand.
AAP Image/Quentin Jones
Although some doubted the 19th Biennale of Sydney would proceed after the split from founding sponsor Transfield, the country’s biggest contemporary art event opens this week in Sydney. Debate continues…
Audiences are invited to hop aboard Callum Morton’s Google Ghost Train as part of this year’s Biennale of Sydney.
AAP Image/Quentin Jones
Over its 41-year history the recipe for a successful Biennale of Sydney has remained remarkably consistent. There are three ingredients and all three need to work in harmony for the exhibition to properly…
It is infantile to pick on one holding company while ignoring the central role of the Australian government.
Eoin Blackwell/AAP Image
The Biennale of Sydney, which begins on March 21, has announced it will sever ties with its founding partner Transfield, following weeks of pressure from artists angered by the company’s links to Australia’s…
This is the contemporary art exhibition we’ve been waiting for. Works by Ben Quilty and Alex Seton at the 2014 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art.
Art Gallery of South Australia
This is the exhibition we have been waiting for. This is contemporary art as it was meant to be – warning that we are experiencing the dark night of the national soul. The country that once thought of…
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne