Steve Dow

Writer

Steve Dow is a Melbourne-born, Sydney-based arts writer, whose profiles, essays, previews and reviews range across the visual arts, theatre, film and television for The Saturday Paper, Guardian Australia, The Monthly, the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Sunday Life, Limelight and VAULT.

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Tomás Saraceno’s web of life

From working with spider diviners to creating solarpowered hot air balloons, Tomás Saraceno’s exquisite art shows what we can learn from nature to rethink everything from climate change to wealth inequality.

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Bruno Booth is rethinking access in an ableist world

“People are interested in what I want to say, and how I want to say it,” says Bruno Booth, who makes art that challenges the ableist world—but he’d rather you call him a ‘con artist’ than a contemporary artist. He’s also a current finalist in the 2022 John Stringer Prize at John Curtin Gallery.

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Sol LeWitt’s musical waves return to Australia alongside First Nations art

When iconic conceptual artist Sol LeWitt visited Australia in 1977 and 1998, he found an affinity with Indigenous art. Now, for the first time in 45 years, LeWitt’s work will return to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, alongside new musical collaborations and First Nations art—all for the next Kaldor Public Art Project.

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The tricks and abstractions of memory and empathy

With her parents migrating to Australia in 1984, Adelaide-born artist Allison Chhorn uses film to explore migration, displacement and intergenerational trauma—all with highly empathic affect, as showing at ACE Open.

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Gene Sherman on collecting art, migrating to Australia and progressive politics

Known as one of Australia’s preeminent art collecting couples, South African emigres Gene and Brian Sherman’s private art collection “bears testament to our life and love as a couple”. Having collected over 900 pieces by artists including Janet Laurence and Ai Weiwei, Gene explains why some of this collection is going to auction—but amidst this is an even bigger conversation on art itself, migration, asylum seekers and posterity.

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The ‘stage art’ of David Noonan is back in Australia

Ballarat-born now London-based artist David Noonan has a major new Australian exhibition Only when it’s cloudless at TarraWarra Museum of Art—and it’s inspired by defining moments of mise-en-scéne.

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Ponch Hawkes on women, ageing and art

Forging a photographic practice throughout the 1970s feminism movement, Ponch Hawkes is now turning to a feminist issue of the moment: the ageing female body. With works currently showing in the National Gallery of Victoria’s QUEER exhibition, Hawkes will soon unveil her solo at Geelong Gallery.

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Grappling with freedom in the 2022 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Free/State

With a lineup of intergenerational artists, the 2022 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Free/State is opening this weekend and is grappling with the state’s colonial origins, alongside questions of freedom and displacement.

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A bright future and interesting past: Rockhampton Museum of Art is reopening

The reimagined $33 million Rockhampton Museum of Art is promising greater interaction with local Darumbal people. But the museum’s permanent collection—including Arthur Boyd, Sidney Nolan, Jeffrey Smart and Margaret Olley—holds the story of a mayor with a personality and a $500k art-collecting scheme.

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Dreaming of hydraulic insects with James Capper

UK artist James Capper is bringing his insect-like, walking hydraulic sculptures to Hobart’s Mona, heralding an art practice of engineering, design and biology—all for a more sustainable future.

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The story behind Australia’s most famous—and unsolved—art heist

In 1985, the National Gallery of Victoria purchased Picasso’s Weeping Woman for $1.6 million, the most a public gallery had spent on an artwork. On year later, the painting was stolen and held ransom. Now, this unsolved mystery is being explored in the new SBS series FRAMED.

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Doug Aitken on synthetic realities and if art can change minds

“I think we’re going to see a revolution in what creativity and culture can be,” says American multidisciplinary artist Doug Aitken ahead of his first Australian survey show, New Era.

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Steve Dow

Writer

Steve Dow's Articles

Tomás Saraceno’s web of life

Bruno Booth is rethinking access in an ableist world

Sol LeWitt’s musical waves return to Australia alongside First Nations art

The tricks and abstractions of memory and empathy

Gene Sherman on collecting art, migrating to Australia and progressive politics

The ‘stage art’ of David Noonan is back in Australia

Ponch Hawkes on women, ageing and art

Grappling with freedom in the 2022 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Free/State

A bright future and interesting past: Rockhampton Museum of Art is reopening

Dreaming of hydraulic insects with James Capper

The story behind Australia’s most famous—and unsolved—art heist

Doug Aitken on synthetic realities and if art can change minds

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