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.
At the helm of the 21st Biennale of Sydney, artistic director Mami Kataoka dives into the archives, calls on her ‘brother’ and puts art activism into perspective.
Like many artists of his generation, Ian Howard was politicised during the Vietnam War. But to call his art anti-war is too simplistic, as Steve Dow discovers speaking to Howard while the artist prepares his latest exhibition.
A collaboration between Sydney’s Artspace and London’s Institute of Contemporary Art – Helen Johnson’s Warm Ties paints a confronting picture of Australia’s colonial legacy.
Ray Hughes was a legend of the Sydney art world with his loud ties, an assortment of hats, and a penchant for corduroy, as well as the services of a Beijing suit tailor of dubious taste.
Complex and committed, international art star Yayoi Kusama lights up Queensland’s Gallery of Modern Art with Life is the Heart of a Rainbow.
Spanning a 40 year career, Jenny Watson’s self-reflective blend of rebellion, nostalgia and symbolism comes to Heide Museum of Modern Art.
Embodying a performance art born in Sydney’s queer club scene, Justin Shoulder’s latest solo show, Carrion, stakes out post-human, apocalyptic terrain, drawing our attention to the present age of excess and environmental misuse.
Sound, public spaces, collaboration and inclusivity are common hallmarks of the separate artworks created by Julian Day and Sasha Grbich, the two recipients of the 2018 Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship from the University of South Australia.
Do light shows, fireworks and large-scale sporting events represent Sydney’s cultural offerings, or does the city punch above its weight and offer a unique Antipodean art experience? Steve Dow went looking for some answers.
Robert Klippel mixed with the greats and is regarded as one of their number. Here we see the humble face of the sculptor.
For the 12th Ballarat International Foto Biennale artistic director Fiona Sweet has brought almost 90 of David LaChapelle’s works to Australia as the centrepiece of the 2017 program.
For Mesiti, blending performance, dance and music is a way of exploring non-verbal communication, which can reinforce community and cultural traditions.
