With multiple Australian cities now in lockdown, and density limits still at play in other cities, we’ve curated a refined shortlist of online virtual galleries, videos and podcasts you can view, watch and listen to from the comfort of home.
Established only a couple of years ago and taking screen-based art beyond galleries and cinemas, Prototype is an exciting online platform for experimental video works. The 2021 program has seen an incredible array of video art released regularly (with a few more still to come), and there’s a very worthy backlog to keep your eyes and mind busy. Featuring both international and Australian artists, filmmakers and collectives, there’s forays into nature, ecology, migration and heritage.
Last year the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory created a virtual gallery for the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, and they’ve revived the concept for the 2021 award. In this online gallery space, you can walk through the 2021 NATSIAA to see the stunning breadth of this year’s finalists, from more traditional pieces to contemporary Indigenous art. With artists from across the country, the 2021 show includes Christian Thompson, Jenna Lee, Noŋgirrŋa Marawili and Pedro Wonaeamirri, among many others.
What is ‘home’? Curated by Sophia Cai, Home is more than a place considers home in a multitude of ways, from our internal lives to external space, aesthetic to social, political to personal. Hosted online by Hamilton Gallery, the exhibition pairs artwork from the gallery’s collection with contemporary Australian artists, creating a dialogue that includes Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, Howard Arkley, Atong Atem, Francis Bacon, John Bulunbulun, Chloe Caday, Makeda Duong, Hannah Gartside, Maggie Hensel-Brown, Kait James, Holly Macdonald, and Margaret Olley, among others.
The Sydney Opera House has plenty of content for streaming at any time on their aptly titled Stream service. You can watch Ziggy Ramo reinterpret Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody’s From Little Things Big Things Grow (featuring Paul Kelly), a performance by Bell Shakespeare, and Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’s 2019 encore performance at the Opera House. For foodies, there’s talks with Nigella Lawson and Yotam Ottolenghi, plus much, much more—and they’re also set to add new content next week.
Last year MAY SPACE gallery made the move to being online only—and they haven’t looked back. With new online exhibitions each month, July features two new shows: From a distance, a curated group exhibition of contemporary Tasmanian printmakers, as well as Artist in Focus: Mylyn Nguyen and Project: Iso Voyeur, by Anna Glynn.
With a plethora of European master exhibitions currently showing around the country (read Steve Dow’s recent, beautiful piece on why we’re so compelled toward the old masters), now’s the time to head to DocPlay (there’s a free trial) and brush-up on your knowledge of artists and museums like Monet, The Prado Museum and Klimt, as well as the series Masterpieces Unveiled, before venturing out to see them in real life once lockdown lifts.
And if you’re after more, to support their Australian Impressionism show She-oak and Sunlight, and the recently opened French Impressionism, the National Gallery of Victoria is hosting a mixture of free and low-fee, online resources—both current and upcoming.
Australia has an astounding range of arts podcasts, available at your fingertips. You can listen to the latest Art Guide podcast series The Long Run, where we speak with artists who’ve been creating for 60 years. Guests include John Wolseley, Gareth Sansom, Suzanne Archer, Mervyn Bishop, Wendy Stavrianos and Robert Owen—available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
If you’re after great yarns with painters there’s Talking With Painters, and if you’re interested in sound art the Liquid Architecture podcast is regularly updated, as is the podcast for Melbourne gallery ACCA, featuring a variety of talks and lectures. And there’s also AQNB’s bi-monthly Artist Statement podcast, with a great recent interview with Amrita Hepi.
Developed in 2022 by Artback NT as part of Apmere Mparntwe—the Australian Ceramics Triennale— touring exhibition Clay on Country, showing now at New England Regional Art Museum, showcases the diversity of ceramics in the Central Desert.
About Face is a smart piece of marketing. The new book on portrait painting from Australia and New Zealand has a mission to change buyers’ minds about the field. But as Jane O’Sullivan discovers, any sales pitch wears thin if it’s repeated often enough, and the close attention to how portrait painting is received by the market means that other important conversations fade to the background.
In Anmatyerr artist Elizabeth Mbitjana Pitijana’s first solo exhibition in Melbourne—which focuses on the Central Desert food source Arnwekety (bush plum)—the influence and love of her Country and culture is palpable. Elizabeth Mbitjana Pitijana is now showing at Niagara Galleries.
Curated by Lee Kinsella, Stuffed, Bolstered and Upholstered—on now at Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery—looks at how woven and fibre objects align with the human form, encompassing the practices of over thirty artists working across textiles, painting, ceramics, sculpture and installation.
For Lardil and Yangkaal writer and curator Maya Hodge, Archie Moore’s presentation at this year’s Venice Biennale is a powerful symbol of reckoning—one that asks the world to bear witness to the long shadows of colonial violence and clears space for possibilities ahead.
Natalya Hughes has a conflicted fascination with modernist men like Freud, Kirchner and de Kooning. Jane O’Sullivan takes a look at The Interior, the Institute of Modern Art monograph on her recent practice, and discovers difficult and provocative questions about not just the representation of women in art and culture, but also the careers of women artists in Australia.
