The Pilbara is known as Western Australia’s ‘mining powerhouse’, but this is changing. Bringing together 70 artists across the Pilbara, Tracks We Share at the Art Gallery of Western Australia shows the manifold stories and art of the region.
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.
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.
With a current exhibition at Anna Schwartz Gallery and upcoming performances at the Sydney Opera House, artist Lauren Brincat talks to writer and curator Anador Walsh about curtains, going backstage, David Bowie, and the collaboration process.
Frank Morris’s paintings in Rock, Paper, Scissors, Sigh are an exercise in formal innovation, showing at Art Collective WA—where his art is open to multiple, perhaps endless, meanings
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.
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.
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.
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.
Richard Blackwell’s latest exhibition at Flinders Lane Gallery explores the places where the real and unreal intersect in our increasingly digitised world.
Porcelain and sound waves do not immediately come to mind when thinking about textiles, yet these are the materials some artists are using to produce their textile-based work. Casting a wide net for Pliable Planes at UNSW, co-curators Karen Hall and Catherine Woolley specifically looked for artists whose practice expanded the creative parameters of contemporary textiles.
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.
“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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