Jo Higgins is an arts writer, museum worker and researcher living on unceded Bidjigal and Gadigal Country in Sydney. She has written for publications including Artlink, ABC Arts, The Sydney Morning Herald and Art Collector.
In its 34th year, Primavera—the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia’s annual survey of Australian artists 35 and under—might be about to age out of itself, but with age it seems, comes wisdom and perspective.
Drawn from the Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art at the University of Western Australia (UWA), Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery’s show Place Makers, reframes the artists—who just happen to be female.
Marking the Newcastle Art Galleries reopening with a large-scale commission for the windows on Derby Street, Maggie Hensel-Brown’s new commission is on display from 26 September.
Arwin Hidayat’s TERNYATA AKU MASIH BERBAHAS (It Turns Out I’m Still Breathing) at Mitchell Fine Art, presents a lifetime of visual storytelling, experimentation and curiosity.
Step inside Monica Rani Rudhar’s space at Parramatta Artists Studios, where she works across ceramics, sculpture, video, performance, and latterly, public art. Rudhar is working towards her solo exhibition at Martin Browne Contemporary, while reflecting on the value of play, how imitation leads to authenticity, and why she’d be lost without her sketchbook.
With works from Tuppy Ngintja Goodwin, Betty Pumani and Robert Fielding, Aboriginal-owned Mimili Maku Arts’ first exhibition with Ames Yavuz is an opportunity to celebrate the milestone of their 20 year anniversary, as well as the ways of working that are integral to the centre and Aṉangu culture.
In his first commercial presentation in Australia, one of Mexico’s most acclaimed contemporary artists uses his architectural background to create poetic, finely calibrated sculptural investigations of spatial perception, balance and equilibrium. Jose Dávila’s Physics of Uncertainty is now showing at COMA Gallery.
Tina Havelock Stevens likes to feel the wind in her hair, which probably goes some way to explaining the generous punk spirit that infuses her multidisciplinary practice, the subject of the exhibition Now is a Beginning at Bathurst Regional Art Gallery.
Buoyed by rich feminist histories, the multifaceted work of Zanny Begg, who is now showing at the Western Plains Cultural Centre, reveals the possibility of paths not taken and the way age-old legacies persist.
Material concerns such as housing can determine an artist’s wellbeing and sense of possibility—an idea that is often overlooked by romantic ideas of art making that are out of sync with our current reality. How can artists navigate a society in which reliable shelter is elusive? And can art itself help us reimagine what it means to achieve secure footing in an increasingly volatile world? Jo Higgins investigates.
