Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen is a Vietnamese-Australian writer and critic based in Naarm/Melbourne.
Melbourne’s RISING festival of art, music and performance is something of a fever dream, having been delayed from 2020 and then running for just one night in 2021 before again being impeded by lockdowns. Now taking place this June with over 200 events by 800 artists, it may be tricky deciding what to see—so here’s our top picks, with tickets still available.
Richard Blackwell’s latest exhibition at Flinders Lane Gallery explores the places where the real and unreal intersect in our increasingly digitised world.
An artist, curator and academic, David Sequeira’s multidisciplinary practice has spanned over three decades, with colour as its driving force. From his home studio in West Melbourne—where he creates across his house—he discusses his all-encompassing approach to art making, as well as his bold exhibition, All the things I should have said that I never said, and its relationship to his Indian background.
Dual theories of life’s beginnings inform Marikit Santiago’s work, showing at the newly reopened 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art.
The art of Léuli Eshrāghi is rigorous, beguiling and urgent: it’s searching for a future beyond the colonial present, and is showing at UQ Art Museum.
From her portrait of journalist and Manus Island detainee Behrouz Boochani to photographs of whistleblowers, Hoda Afshar gives us 21st-century images that speak to trauma, justice and humanity.
In Your choc-mint pelvik floor is so boring at Linden New Art, Anna Hoyle’s witty, colourful gouache paintings skewer advertising, self-help and consumer trends and culture.
Bringing together animation, painting, self-made footage and found images, Thao Nguyen Phan’s Becoming Alluvium is a mesmerising mixture of narratives.
Birds can tell stories of colonial movements, national identity and language.
Kunmanara Carroll has been honoured as the first Indigenous artist in JamFactory’s ICON series. Sadly, his exhibition Ngaylu Nyanganyi Ngura Winki had only been open for a short time when he passed away. He is now referred to as Kunmanara Carroll out of respect.
Rosella Namok’s Recent Paintings are about colour, alongside telling stories of Country and family from the Ungkum artist’s home in Far North Queensland.
In the group show PIVOT II at Onespace Gallery, artists make books that jump out of their bindings and on to the walls.
