Locked into a 24/7 cycle of bad news, as so many of us are these days, it’s easy to forget that the internet has so much more to offer, including a multiplicity of ways to bring art right into your home! Here at Art Guide we’ve selected a range of uplifting, intriguing and edifying online experiences that promise a much needed respite from doom-scrolling, including videos, games for both children and adults, kids’ art making activities and several exhibitions.
Ganbu Gulin is a documentary that delves into the historic decision by Darebin council (in Melbourne’s northern suburbs) to stop celebrating Australia Day out of respect for Indigenous Australians. Screened as part of the FUSE online festival, the film also points out that January 26, known as a “day of mourning” since 1938, is now used by the local traditional owners the Wurundjeri people as an occasion to welcome new citizens on their own terms. Free online until 19 September.
Children aged two to five years old are invited to travel back to 17-19th century Japan and test their memories Edo style in this online NGV Kids activity. Kai-awaseis a game that used to be played using intricately painted gold lacquered shells.
Stories behind other traditional Japanese games held in the National Gallery of Victoria collection (and on show in Golden Shells and the Gentle Mastery of Japanese Lacquer) will also be told, and children will have the chance to create their own memory game using a supplied activity sheet. FREE but bookings are required. Various times on 16, 21, and 30 September.
Megalo Print Studio in Canberra are offering print lovers everywhere two current online exhibitions: Ligature a group show which highlights fruitful collaborations between master printmakers and artists who don’t normally work with the medium, and Intaglio which features the work of 30 international contemporary printmakers. They have also assembled an impressive array of online resources on all things printmaking from around the world including: tutorials, podcasts, libraries, journal articles and more.
In Sonata in b minor for unity, Akil Ahamat provides a respite from endless doom scrolling in the form of an ultra-zen game in an otherworldly digital garden. Accompanied by an eerie, yet calming, soundscape ‘players’ in this online world adopt the POV of a tiny dust mote floating through a field of towering daisies. It’s both strangely compelling and deeply relaxing to be so small, with the biggest decision looming a choice of which direction to aimlessly drift. Sonata in b minor for unity is the first Parramatta Artists’ Studios (PAS) digital artwork commission.
Dale Frank’s lush paintings may be abstract, but his infamously long titles read like micro-fiction. In his latest solo exhibition, The Omega Variant Show, these tiny stories veer towards the scatological and the sordid, while the paintings themselves provide oozy colourful pools in which to reflect. This online exhibition offers multiple ways to engage with the work, from a video fly-though of the uninhabited physical gallery to a range of still images (including the all-important titles) and written excerpts about the artist from the 1980s. Online at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery until 2 October.
65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art is an extraordinary account of the unique art of this continent, published alongside a landmark exhibition at the Potter Museum of Art. Necessary and urgent, it tells the story of Indigenous Australian art; a new art history unlike anything we’ve seen. For Jane O’Sullivan, it’s a remarkable and must-read book.
In a new series of illustrated postcards available as a free gift with purchase only at the Art Guide Bookstore, Oslo Davis takes on classic and contemporary art terms and genres and reimagines what they could be referring to.
With so much to choose from, we’ve rounded up the major summer exhibitions in each capital city, open all summer long. Spanning Yayoi Kusama, Magritte, the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, and many more.
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.
Heide Museum of Modern Art’s summer blockbuster exhibition is unveiling the breadth and beauty of Italian modernism through design. With over 170 objects spanning sixty years, Molto Bello explores the cultural impact of this period of creativity and invention.
un Magazine was conceived to champion courageous art criticism in an art world too often shaped by power and influence, a mission that still endures two decades on.
