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.
French-born/Belgium-based Laure Prouvost animates her first major Australian survey with her hallmark absurdism. ‘Oui Move In You’ is showing now at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.
Kamilaroi/Bigambul artist Archie Moore has won the Golden Lion for Best National Participation at the Venice Biennale for his monumental work, kith and kin. It marks the first time Australia has won the award in the event’s 130-year history.
Endlessly inventive, the work of Hong Kong-born, Melbourne-based artist Scotty So spans photography, painting, video work, and drag performance. With a dual exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ballarat, So talks about pageantry, begonias and queens.
In a rare interview, alongside her showing in the 24th Biennale of Sydney, Tracey Moffatt talks about her penchant for the staged and surreal, going beyond identity, growing up in Brisbane and moving to New York in her thirties, and the importance of imagination.
Nan Goldin’s influential photography can now be seen by Victorian audiences with Nan Goldin: The Ballad of Sexual Dependency showing at the Art Gallery of Ballarat. View, in pictures, this iconic, intimate 1980s series that shows how photography and social purpose has defined the artist’s 50-year career.
Belinda Winkler and Kevin Perkins AM use the southern Tasmanian landscape as inspiration for a series of works that contrast curve and plane, which are now showing at Bett Gallery.
