Drowning Not Waving
We are living in urgent times courtesy of the climate crisis, with people from Pacific islands suffering more acutely than most.
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We are living in urgent times courtesy of the climate crisis, with people from Pacific islands suffering more acutely than most.
Writing about the act of writing – or more specifically, to write about the field of what we commonly call ‘arts writing’ and to ponder what this might mean – is perhaps setting a thorny task for myself here.
The selection of Fiona Foley and Liu Bolin as the ‘headline’ artists for this year’s Ballarat International Foto Biennale in many ways beautifully sums up the spirit of this regional festival of photography.
Channels launches this year on 24 August with a showcase exhibition including artist Reko Rennie from Australia, London-Istanbul pair Noor Afshan Mirza and Brad Butler, and Almagul Menlibayeva who is based in Germany and Kazakhstan.
Along with being an independent curator, Butler is a Filipino-Australian writer and artist who continuously looks at the dynamics of power, systemic racism and racial hierarchies within a contemporary art context.
Other Suns is an ode to an idea of the future that has fallen into the past, a fond rear-ward glance at the aesthetics and cultural detritus of an age that was obsessed with, and optimistic about, outer space and frontiers.
Elaine Campaner’s photographs of multilayered dioramas reward intense viewing.
There is a concern for decolonisation, the environment and putting forward Indigenous perspectives, and championing a closer and more caring relationship with nature.
Wurundjeri and Dja Dja Wurrung woman Stacie Piper has been appointed as First Peoples Curator at the TarraWarra Museum of Art as part of the Yalingwa initiative.
The exhibition features Henson’s series Untitled 1985–86– informally known as ‘the suburban series’ – and a new body of work commissioned by Monash Gallery of Art for its 25th anniversary, Untitled 2018–19.
Invisible Threads places emphasis on Kotai’s more recent fabric collages, a technique she happened on by chance in the early 2000s.
In two new projects, Julie Gough continues her excavation of Tasmania’s First Nation history and the impact of colonisation.
The paintings of Betty Kuntiwa Pumani form a part of a larger, living archive on Antaṟa, her mother’s Country. More than maps, they speak to ancestral songlines, place and ceremony.
A presentation of works by Robert Mapplethorpe curated by the British editor Edward Enninful, Enninful x Mapplethorpe, at the 2025 Ballarat International Foto Biennale, finds resonance in opposites while turning binary thinking on its head.
Auckland-born and raised artist Lisa Reihana is ever the optimist, creating two new works signifying social cohesion to hang outside two Australian arts venues—Ngununggula, and Sydney Contemporary at Carriageworks —just as dark divisions seek to undermine the value of migration and Indigenous sovereignty.
Mitch Cairns’s latest solo exhibition Restless Legs, now showing at the Wollongong Art Gallery, draws on symbols—from literature, mythology, nature, and home life—to find new pathways into painting.
Over 70 fabulous garments of exquisite craftsmanship – some made of silk with gold and silver embroidery and dazzling designs – have been assembled within a context of over 150 paintings, posters, wood block prints, magazines and decorative arts. Although many of the items have never been previously exhibited in Australia, most are now in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, with many specifically acquired for this exhibition.
For Listening Acts at the Now or Never Festival, the music and performance company Chamber Made invited artists to interrogate the intersection between the body, listening and technology.
