Feature
Chloé: how a 19th-century French nude ended up in a Melbourne pub – and became an icon for Australian soldiers
Chloé, the French nude by Jules Joseph Lefebvre, is an Australian cultural icon.
Melbourne’s RISING festival of art, music and performance is something of a fever dream, having been delayed from 2020 and then running for just one night in 2021 before again being impeded by lockdowns. Now taking place this June with over 200 events by 800 artists, it may be tricky deciding what to see—so here’s our top picks, with tickets still available.
For over three decades Sally Smart has gifted us her astounding assemblages. Smart talks about the inherent violence and restoration of her work, why structural change is needed for gender equity in the arts, and how her latest solo at Geelong Gallery is inspired by the Ballets Russes.
Congratulations to Blak Douglas who has won the 2022 Archibald for his exquisite, urgent portrait of Karla Dickens, aptly titled Moby Dickens. The winners of the Wynne and Sulman Prizes have also been revealed.
For those seeking refuge from the election, the 101st Archibald Prize is almost a politician-free zone. Unless you count Joanna Braithwaite’s amusingly titled McManusstan, a portrait of bird lover Sally McManus. Former Labor minister Peter Garrett painted by Anh Do is in the line up – but more accurately described as a rock star.
Confined 13 shows how art can change lives. With 400 works created by First Nations artists either currently in or recently released from Victorian prisons, the exhibition is a tribute to how artistic expression strengthens a person’s connection to their story and culture, while giving further artistic possibilities.
Chloé, the French nude by Jules Joseph Lefebvre, is an Australian cultural icon.
The son of Italian migrants, Steve Lopes explores how cultural and psychological identity can evolve and expand in an Australian environment, with its “intensity of colour and light”, as he puts it. His latest show is at Orange Regional Gallery.
Data is often described as the ‘new oil’ of the 21st century—it’s a sought-after asset in our hyper-connected world. But The Data Imaginary: Fears and Fantasies at FUMA is showing how data can also be a reparative force.
Solitude is a habit for Belynda Henry and, as an artist, immersion in the landscape drives her paintings. Her latest works at Edwina Corlette distil imagery which is vested in place, conveying its many moods and experiences.
Since the 1980s acclaimed American artist Kiki Smith has looked at mortality, sexuality, and nature. Showing magnificent tapestries in the current Biennale of Sydney, Smith has previously shown in five Venice Biennales, and in 2006 was one of the ‘TIME 100: The People Who Shape Our World.’ In our interview Smith talks about the process of making art and being patient in our chaotic world.
Richard Blackwell’s latest exhibition at Flinders Lane Gallery explores the places where the real and unreal intersect in our increasingly digitised world.
The finalists have been revealed for the 2022 Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes, while Claus Stangl has won the Packing Room Prize for his portrait of New Zealand writer and director Taika Waititi.
SIXTY: The Journal of Australian Ceramics 60th Anniversary 1962–2022 is both a celebration of the journal of the same name, but also an exhibition that shows the breadth of 22 makers and artists in this field. Across four years it will tour to every state and territory.
Known as one of Australia’s preeminent art collecting couples, South African emigres Gene and Brian Sherman’s private art collection “bears testament to our life and love as a couple”. Having collected over 900 pieces by artists including Janet Laurence and Ai Weiwei, Gene explains why some of this collection is going to auction—but amidst this is an even bigger conversation on art itself, migration, asylum seekers and posterity.
Ballarat-born now London-based artist David Noonan has a major new Australian exhibition Only when it’s cloudless at TarraWarra Museum of Art—and it’s inspired by defining moments of mise-en-scéne.
Wiradjuri artist S.J Norman recently won the 67th Blake Prize, which recognises achievement in spiritual art. Norman’s winning photograph documents the 147 incisions made on the artist’s back during a 2019 performance, which marks the 147 Aboriginal people who died in police custody in the preceding decade. Wiradjuri poet and artist Jazz Money sat down with Norman to discuss the significance of these images.
Painting since 2018, Carbiene McDonald Tjangala has already held three solo shows and won the 2019 Hadley’s Art Prize for landscape painting. His latest show at RAFT artspace in Alice Springs exhibits his paintings of Tjangala (Dreaming).
While the overarching theme of the upcoming PHOTO 2022 Festival of Photography is expansive—“being human”—the headline Helmut Newton exhibition is an intimate look at the artist’s life and trajectory, who’s known for his elegant 1950s fashion images.
“I decided that art essentially is a communication, so my basis of my work is conceptual,” says artist Bonita Ely, a pioneer in environmental art in Australia, in this episode of The Long Run, a podcast talking with artists who have 60-year practices.
Gareth Sansom talks about ambition, chance and mortality, and what changes over six decades and what remains the same.
Since the 1970s Margaret Dodd’s ceramic holden cars, which are pioneering feminist artworks, have forged pressing questions on femininity, masculinity, sexuality, capitalism and identity.
First held in 1990 at Araluen Arts Centre in Alice Springs, Desert Mob is the oldest of Australia’s thriving annual program of Aboriginal art fairs. With its 30th anniversary coming up in September 2020, Kate Hennessy looks back on Desert Mob 2019.
Robin Boyd’s 1960 book The Australian Ugliness is a seminal critique of both Australian architecture and culture. In After The Australian Ugliness, 20 architects, landscape architects, architecture and design academics, writers, social commentators, curators, historians, publishers, archivists and editors put Boyd’s work in a contemporary context.
In Truth Bomb: Inspiration from the Mouths and Minds of Women Artists, Abigail Crompton presents the work of more than 20 Australian and international artists that, in her words, tell a story of “resilience, tenacity, sacrifice and steely determination.”
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