A section of Hoda Afshar, Westoxicated, from left-right, #3, #9, #5, #1, #7 (Under Western Eyes series) (2013-2014), digital prints, 105 x 92cm (each).
Courtesy the artist.
The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries, woven around 1500, have been called the ‘Mona Lisa of the Middle Ages’. While they make for breathtaking viewing, their threads are encoded with much meaning.
An Instagram post from Gerhard Richter’s exhibition at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art.
Instagram/@gracie_yu
While it may have a reputation for narcissism, Instagram is being embraced by the art world, with Insta-friendly works and exhibitions.
Mezzo soprano Eve Klein performed two compositions while a medical laryngoscope, inserted into her throat, revealed the movement of her vocal chords.
Jesse Hunniford
How is it that contemporary painting has dug its heels in, so to speak, and refuses to look like a painting anymore?
An installation view of Country & Colony, Lady Sheila Cruthers Gallery, Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, The University of Western Australia. The Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art is the only dedicated public collection of art by Australian women.
Lyle Branson
Gender bias is an ongoing problem in the visual arts. Change is needed at every level to tackle it.
In This Here. Land, a performance by Filipino and Australian artists in Sydney, the audience is asked to participate in a recreation of one of the Philippines’s drug killings.
Jade Cadeliña
Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte’s ‘War on Drugs’ is estimated to have led to more than 13,000 killings. Artists - both in the Philippines and beyond - are helping communities work through their trauma.
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.
Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn ‘Self-portrait as the apostle Paul’ 1661 (detail)
Rijksmuseum, de Bruijn-van der Leeuw Bequest, Muri, Switzerland
Rembrandt & the Dutch Golden Age, a major new exhibition, is the first of its kind to visit Sydney. The title is something of a misnomer – the centrepiece is a stunning work by Vermeer.
Poppies at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
katatrix/shuttershock.com
The wildflowers that WWI soldiers encountered in Europe become symbols of remembrance and the fragility of life. The red poppy in particular is a powerful motif in Australian war art and photography.
Installation view: Yayoi Kusama: Life is the Heart of the Rainbow at the Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, 2017.
Natasha Harth, QAGOMA
Yayoi Kusama, arguably Japan’s most famous living artist, has been making art for 65 years. A new exhibition traces her output: from her dazzling mirror and polka-dot infused installations to paintings and sculptures.
Detail from Little Big Woman: Condescension, Debra Keenahan, 2017.
Designed and made by Debra Keenahan, Photograph by Robert Brindley.
For centuries, women with dwarfism were depicted in art as comic or grotesque fairytale beings. But artists are challenging these portrayals and notions of beauty and physical difference.
Zora Kreuzer, Arcade (2017)
Liebler Facade, Fremantle.
James Whineray
The artists in this inaugural event have created works within, on and around the buildings of an old port town.
A detail from Mirka Mora’s Perth Festival Mural 1983; synthetic polymer paint on tin, 6 panels, each 120 x 280 cm (approx.)
Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, gift of Paul Swain, 2015.
In 1983, Mirka Mora painted a 21-metre mural in the forecourt of the Perth Concert Hall. The story of this remarkable painting’s creation is fascinating.
Detail from Divide 2011 by Sam Jinks. Mixed media, 86 x 60 cm,
collection of the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra
The quest to create a robot that is indistinguishable from humans has become all-consuming for some scientists, engineers and technicians. The consequences could be both beneficial and catastrophic.
To fix the world’s ecological crises we’ll have to make some tough choices, particularly living with less stuff. Art can play an essential role in imagining and communicating a more sustainable future.
Paul Uhlmann, Batavia 4th June 1629 (night of my sickness), 2017, oil on canvas (detail, one of three panels).
Courtesy of the artist
The shipwreck of the Batavia and subsequent murders of 115 men, women and children have inspired many retellings. A new exhibition combines art and science to find new angles on an old tale.
Detail from Rowan Conroy, Paphos Theatre Full Moon, April 2006.
Archaeologists have a long tradition of taking artists along on their expeditions. A new exhibition in Cyprus aims to revive the practice.
Detail from NigeI Milsom (Australia, 1975–), Judo House Part 6 (The White Bird), 2014–15 oil on linen, 230 x 194 cm.
Reproduced courtesy of the artist and yuill|crowley, Sydney. Photo: Art Gallery of New South Wales
The Ecstasy of St Teresa is the point of departure for a new exhibition examining ecstasy in all its guises, from the sexual to the spiritual to the banal.
A new exhibition features more than 50 works by Fred Williams, centred on the You Yangs peaks, west of Melbourne. They illuminate a breakthrough moment in Australian art.
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne