From the Archibald to the Mona Lisa to the selfie, portraiture is a ubiquitous genre of our time. Yet it has an urgent social undercurrent of whose image we value, and what that image speaks to—which contemporary artists like Blak Douglas, Atong Atem, Peter Drew, Yvette Coppersmith and Kate Beynon are questioning with stunning effect.
From Nick Cave to KAWS to Patricia Piccinini, artists in Freedom of Movement: Contemporary Art and Design from the NGV Collection look at the ever-blurred lines of design and art, capturing everything from the stuff we buy to fantastical realms.
The long-awaited new Sydney Modern campus, opening 3 December, will transform the Art Gallery of New South Wales—making it the largest cultural investment in Sydney since the Opera House.
Once called ‘Unaustralian’ by their own previous funders, Soda Jerk’s latest film at Samstag Museum of Art centres the moments that have defined the last six years: a pandemic, the Trump era, QAnon, the war in Ukraine and climate disaster.
As we move toward the end of 2022, another year of many changes and adjustments, one thing for certain is that Australia holds strong in celebrating art and culture. Here’s seven new gallery spaces to visit this summer.
The history of breastfeeding reveals uncomfortable truths about women, work and money. An unlikely place where the history of nursing is clearly visible is in Impressionist paintings.
Known for his dynamic paintings created from reused materials, Bruce Reynolds is now making award-winning sculptures. It’s a busy time for Reynolds, with a survey exhibition at Brisbane’s Artisan gallery and work also showing across Canberra, Sydney and Rockhampton.
Known as one of Australia’s iconic landscape artists of the 20th century, Fred Williams’s showing at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia is an unprecedented collection of his drawings as a young artist in London—capturing everything from city workers to acrobats.
Tamara Dean has been capturing the intimate relationship between people interacting with the environment for over a decade. In her first monograph, published by Thames and Hudson, the artist offers generous insight on her critically acclaimed practice. Here, David Wenham reflects on Dean’s captivating work.
The Amazon is reaching a tipping point. Once a proportion of the rainforest is lost, it will no longer be able to hold the necessary moisture to create the rainfall to sustain itself. Massive dieback will occur with a devastating release of carbon into the atmosphere with a major global impact on climate change.
How does one make an artwork about this? One that possesses a dazzling beauty and, at the same time, has the ability to stop you in your tracks and shock you into action?
The ground-breaking and historic Melbourne Fringe Festival is being celebrated in a major exhibition at the State Library of Victoria. The show reflects on 40 years of Fringe while also looking 40 years ahead.
One of Australia’s most regarded living artists with a 60-year practice, Elisabeth Cummings creates captivating paintings that move in and out of abstract interiors, landscapes and still life. View, in pictures, Cummings’s enthralling new work at King Street Gallery on William.
