In her solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Raquel Caballero imagines L Frank Baum’s wonderful world of Oz in full, glittering technicolour.
In our ongoing series, Shelf Portraits, Art Guide writers recommend the books—recently published or deserving of more attention—that shed new light on an idea that has long simmered in the art world or has helped them see a familiar medium in a different light.
In our ongoing series, Shelf Portraits, Art Guide writers recommend the books—recently published or deserving of more attention—that shed new light on an idea that has long simmered in the art world or has helped them see a familiar medium in a different light.
Examining the documentary photography of the 1950s to 1980s might seem like an exercise in looking back, but as Jane O’Sullivan discovers, Imagining a Real Australia calls loudly to the present. It’s full of arresting works on subjects that still speak to us today, from land rights to war and feminism.
Consuelo Cavaniglia’s sunny studio in an industrial area of Sydney’s inner west reflects the artist’s fascination with light. Her recent glass works, now showing at Chau Chak Wing Museum, play with apertures, shadows, reflections and transparencies.
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.
The growing cultural interest in art books reflects the enduring power of the printed word. Jane O’Sullivan takes a closer look.
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.
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.
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.
