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.
Anador Walsh reviews Ivan Cheng’s performance exhibition NP at Monash University Museum of Art—a three-day project, made in collaboration with a group of Year 11 students, that explores the loss of childhood innocence and role of documentation in performance.
Madjem Bambandila: The Art & Country of Kelly Koumalatsos is a community approach to storytelling. A testament to living culture, the new monograph published by Museums Victoria centres on a cultural activist and artist known for reviving possum skin cloak making in the South East of Australia.
Artist books are sometimes treated like exhibition postcards and not much more than mementos, but they grapple with intriguing questions about what to document, and how. Jane O’Sullivan reviews three artist monographs from Elizabeth Newman, Kate Tucker and Louise Haselton, and finds some very different strategies.
Video and time-based art is a mutant medium with a disjointed history. Jane O’Sullivan reviews Outside the Frame: Art and the Moving Image, which takes a snapshot of contemporary practice through 21 recent moving image commissions.
Welcome to the first iteration of our monthly book review series, where we share the latest curation of titles straight from the Art Guide Bookstore. With each instalment, we’ll celebrate what’s on offer in the world of Australian art book publishing.“Creativity is never an individual competitive practice.” Jane O’Sullivan reviews CoUNTess: Spoiling Illusions Since 2008, a recent book exposing the data on gender inequity in the arts.
In the group show Void, curator Emily McDaniel from the Kalari Clan of the Wiradjuri nation in central New South Wales invoked the void as a space occupied by Indigenous knowledge, stories and meaning.
Co-curated by SAM’s Anna Briers and Rebecca Coates, Craftivism features 18 Australian artists who share an affinity for craft-based art with political gestures.
Lauded by almost everyone, the Biennale has been called “confrontational” and “consequential,” often followed by the fact that it’s the first time the event has been curated by an Indigenous director; artist Brook Andrew.
These paintings have the qualities of modernism but with zing.
Sydney-based Worimi artist Dean Cross joins a long line of artists for whom the car is a semi-scared symbolic object, both totem and omen.
Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland-based artist John Vea’s show at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art is both provocative and elegant.
