Ian Strange’s suburban nightmares
Frank Lloyd Wright’s suburban dream of Broadacre City is the nightmare within which many of us in the developed Western world now seem to live.
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Frank Lloyd Wright’s suburban dream of Broadacre City is the nightmare within which many of us in the developed Western world now seem to live.
That unwieldy and shapeshifting beast, the artist-run initiative, comes in myriad forms and structures, all lumped into one handy pen for the ease of grant panels.
Coinciding with the Victorian College of Arts’ 150 year anniversary, Presence was a sparse selection of landscape paintings by six notable VCA alumni – Eugene von Geurard, Frederick McCubbin, Clarice Beckett, Fred Williams, Rick Amor, Louise Hearman – interrupted by a video work by Michael Riley, the late contemporary Indigenous photographer and filmmaker.
The Dark Matters seems less like a meditation on the dark things that actually do matter (although some artists do delve into this territory) and more like an exercise in good interior decoration. It is visually very harmonious.
ACE Across, part of Adelaide’s new contemporary art space ACE Open, is not quite finished in a way that perfectly accommodates Emmaline Zanelli’s solo show RIFE MACHINE.
Timing is everything. Viewed in April Fiona Hall’s solo show, Gateless Gate, reads like a meditation on the senselessness of war: the perfect antidote to the beer-soaked, jingoistic, flag-waving frenzy that often seems to accompany the more sombre rituals of ANZAC day.
Making and embellishing textiles used to play an important part in ordinary life. These days most people (in wealthy nations at least) buy their clothing, curtains and cushions readymade.
Claire Lambe weaves an uneasy narrative through a warp of found archives, personal records, films, studio documentation, architecture and design. In the formidable expanse of ACCA the installations in her solo show, Mother Holding Something Horrific, seem almost restrained.
In her solo show, The Choreography of Cutting, Sally Smart has effectively traced her ongoing commitment to an investigation into three seemingly disparate topics: the historical Avant-Garde, traditional Indonesian folk art and the act of cutting.
Nigel Sense explores the what ‘art is…’ idea within the context of his own life.
Patricia Piccinini may have made headlines with her Skywhale, 2013, or more recently with Graham, a sculpture used in education about road traffic accidents, but it’s her quieter works that make the biggest impact.
John Akomfrah’s immersive presentation of two major video works at John Curtin Gallery bears the weight and darkness of two different histories.
