Binding Ties is the first Australian survey exhibition of Catherine Opie, one of the world’s leading photographic artists, at the Heide Museum of Modern Art in Melbourne.
Cerise sequin sari from the spring/summer 2023 collection.
Courtesy of Ashish Shah
In Cold Enough for Snow, the award-winning author’s careful attention to detail, precise language and sympathetic sensibility animate a reflection on intimacy and intergenerational tensions.
Wheel by Hiromi Tango and Dr Emma Burrows (2021)
Science Gallery/Alan Weedon
When the future is clearly changing but we can’t focus on tomorrow, should we just keep dancing? Pamela Rabe anchors the absurdity of The Cherry Orchard.
Street artist Rone’s return to his home town gallery is sure to draw crowds — but his definition of ‘beauty’ is conventional and narrow.
Clarice Beckett, Australia, 1887 - 1935, The red sunshade, 1932, Melbourne, oil on board; Gift of Alastair Hunter OAM and the late Tom Hunter in memory of Elizabeth through the Art Gallery of South Australia Foundation 2019, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide.
AGSA
Known for her soft capturing of tonal shifts and poignant moments, painter Clarice Beckett’s legacy was almost lost to time and decay. Now her work is being celebrated in a major exhibition.
Eryn Jean Norvill in STC’s inventive adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s 1890 novel.
STC/Dan Boud
Actor Eryn Jean Norvill’s portrayal of all the characters in The Portrait of Dorian Gray triumphantly illustrates Oscar Wilde’s notion of the self as a form of performance.
While the name of the season - now online - suggests breaking through opera’s glass ceiling, the violent imagery fits the context of ecological disaster, inequality, mental illness, and dystopia.
Bush Fire At Top Yalgamungken 2015. Collection: Art at Swiss Re.
Image courtesy: Martin Browne Contemporary
Though galleries have since closed their doors, this reviewer got to see Mavis Ngallametta’s works in all their glory. Their birdseye view of Country provides a perspective we’re missing right now.
Ibrahim Mahama’s No Friend but the Mountains (2020). Installation view at Cockatoo Island.
Photograph: Zan Wimberley
The 22nd Biennale of Sydney is testament to the capacity of art and exhibitions to move beyond reflection to lead dialogue, especially at times of crisis and cancellations.
Two girls in white (1904) is a composite study of three of Ramsay’s sisters, who cared for him before his death from tuberculosis.
Art Gallery of New South Wales
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.
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne