Art Guide Australia

David Fairbairn is painting ageing and companionship
David Fairbairn’s deeply felt, emotive portraits are a soulful meditation on ageing and companionship. For Drawn Together at the Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, Fairbairn has brought new dimensions to his ongoing study of intimacy.
Preview
Barnaby Smith
“From one painter to another, the silent communication was profound”: Caroline Zilinsky’s revisions of Russell Drysdale
Retracing Russell Drysdale’s 1944 journey to remote Australia allowed Caroline Zilinsky to confront a male dominated version of the outback. Zilinsky’s new show at Nanda\Hobbs responds to this visual history.
Feature
Briony Downes
“It’s about connectivity between people”: Bruce Munro illuminates time, memory and connection
Sunrise Road in Sydney’s Palm Beach was where the acclaimed English-Australian artist Bruce Munro was living when he began creating in the 1980s. Now, Munro is returning to the beginning with From Sunrise Road at Heide Museum of Modern Art.
Preview
Autumn Royal
Generating movement: Tuppy Ngintja Goodwin wins Hadley’s Art Prize
Congratulations to senior Pitjantjatjara artist Tuppy Ngintja Goodwin for winning the 2022 Hadley’s Art Prize for a moving and intricate painting depicting the ancient Maku Tjukurpa (witchetty grub) songline from Mimili. Goodwin is the first woman to win the prize since it began in 2017.
News
Autumn Royal
Chaos and composure: Olivia Colja’s Return to the Hook
There is an uncomfortable positioning of being both inside and outside the boundaries of control within relationships—and navigating such an in-betweenness drives Olivia Colja’s art at Kolbusz Space.
Preview
Autumn Royal
Catherine Rogers’s photography blurs the boundary between real and fabricated
“I am absolutely interested in making an image worth looking at.” The first survey of Catherine Rogers’s photography, Evidence and The Visible at ANU’s Drill Hall Gallery, looks at the allure of ‘unreal’ images.
Preview
Briony Downes

News

“A monumental sculpture”: Margaret Rarru Garrawurra wins the 2022 Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards

Congratulations to Margaret Rarru Garrawurra for winning the 2022 Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAA). Her award-winning work powerfully references her cultural identity and the long-lasting relationships between Yolŋu people and the people of Indonesia—and it’s exhibiting in Darwin alongside other NATSIAA winners and finalists.

Art Guide Australia

Preview

Jessica Loughlin on the virtues of stillness

Over the last 20 years, Jessica Loughlin has explored the idea of stillness through glass, creating moments for the viewer to pause and simply look. Of Light showcases Loughlin’s career as JamFactory’s Icon for 2022.

Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen

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Five women artists look at the ongoing legacy of activist Siva Singh

Bush Diwan takes as its departure point the remarkable life of Siva Singh. A Punjabi Sikh from India who migrated to Benalla in 1897, Singh left an immense legacy with his community leadership and civil rights activism. Five women artists at Benalla Art Gallery celebrate Singh’s life, alongside addressing wider social points.

Barnaby Smith

Feature

Rediscovering the art of Tracker Nat: ‘the Namatjira of carving’

On June 5 1960, the Darwin paper The Sunday Mirror reported: A tribal painter, said to be more famous than the late Albert Namatjira, has just died at Warrabri welfare settlement, near Tennant Creek. He was Nat Warano, of whose skill few white men had heard.

The Conversation

Interview

Food and art: 20 questions with Elizabeth Willing

Elizabeth Willing has transformed the way we think about food and contemporary art. Through sculpture, participatory events, performance, collages and installation, Willing has used materials from marzipan to sherbet to liquorice. Ahead of her upcoming exhibition at Tolarno Galleries, we asked Willing 20 insightful and fun questions.

Tiarney Miekus

Preview

Remembering the Wave Hill Walk-Off—and what it means today

In 1966 in the Northern Territory, 200 Gurindji workers pushed forward the land rights movement in Australia. Known as the Wave Hill Walk-Off, the strike protested Aboriginal land dispossession and worker exploitation. Now, Still in My Mind at Hervey Bay Regional Gallery and Gatakers Artspace examines this significant moment.

Louise Martin-Chew

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Chiharu Shiota and the intangible aspects of existence

Famous for her exquisite large-scale installations created from thousands of delicate red and black threads, Chiharu Shiota’s largest survey show to date is showing at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art.

Louise Martin-Chew

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A powerful alchemy

Featuring Aboriginal artists Judy Watson and Yhonnie Scarce, Looking Glass brings together beautiful objects with a sting in the tail.

Timmah Ball

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Sentimental to confronting: Sheree Dohnt’s depictions of motherhood

“Media puts an expectation on mums to always be positive”: Sheree Dohnt’s paintings at Bunbury Regional Art Gallery show the joys and challenges of motherhood, from measuring success to what women miss about life before children.

Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen

Preview

Annette Blair shows us the past lives of objects through glass

Annette Blair has been blowing, sculpting, carving, and painting glass for over 20 years—and now she’s exquisitely demonstrating this experience in her first solo at Canberra Glassworks, Quietly Spoken.

Zali Matthews

Feature

Open hands for healing art: Iluwanti Ken and Betty Muffler in pictures

Iluwanti Ken and Betty Muffler are both celebrated senior Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara artists and Ngangkari (traditional healers) for community and Country. Together, they join forces for a significant and powerful exhibition at Jan Murphy Gallery. View, in pictures, Ken and Muffler’s evocative and illuminating works.