The Australian arts is so deflated that celebration ensued when the current Labor government merely recognised artmaking as worthwhile labour. Although we can now call art “work”, it doesn’t mean the battle for fair working conditions is over—as Madeleine Thornton-Smith explains.
“Jeff Koons says ‘embrace your past’,” cites Michael Zavros. “I think I’m good at that.” Brisbane-based Zavros, arguably one of Australia’s most celebrated artists of the last decade, has been dissecting his personal and artistic history his survey The Favourite at Queensland Art Gallery.
Congratulations to Shea Kirk, who has won the 2023 National Photographic Portrait Prize for his portrait Ruby (left view), of friend and fellow-artist Emma Armstrong-Porter.
Art is often cited as one of the few places left in Western culture to have shared reflections on death and mourning—and this is being given form by 11 contemporary artists in One foot on the ground, one foot in the water at Pinnacles Gallery.
Although Mia Boe only began painting full-time three years ago, her startling scenes of elongated figures in landscapes, politically motivated for speaking to colonial histories, are now exhibiting across the National Portrait Gallery to the National Gallery of Victoria.
Yasmin Smith examines plants as time-honoured witnesses of Country, story and people. Mosman Art Gallery is showing a collection of her works, highlighting the interconnectedness of Smith’s archive, as well as our human relationship to nature.
From Spring1883 to Sydney Contemporary to Darwin Festival, we’ve rounded up an array of festivals and fairs across the rest of 2023—happening in almost every state and territory.
Featuring Aboriginal artists Judy Watson and Yhonnie Scarce, Looking Glass brings together beautiful objects with a sting in the tail.
Interviews with artists offer invaluable insights—but exhibiting these is another story. Curator Julie Ewington talks through creating a show at the State Library of Queensland Gallery centred on recorded dialogues with artists from Anne Wallace to Vernon Ah Kee to Fiona Foley.
Since the 1990s, American photographer Catherine Opie has been internationally renowned for capturing friends and family, queer domestic life, and defining political moments. Entwining identity and sexuality, kinship and community, Opie’s first Australian survey is at Heide Museum of Modern Art.
The Jewish Museum of Australia is exploring the lesser-known areas of Marc Chagall’s prolific and varied career: his printmaking, poetry, publishing, and public art, while also asking contemporary artist Yvette Coppersmith to respond with her own works.
“I guess that is the thread, that I am very open to influences that come into my life, you know, and I respond to them,” says Suzanne Archer in The Long Run, Art Guide’s latest podcast series featuring interviews with artists who have 60-year practices.
Gareth Sansom talks about ambition, chance and mortality, and what changes over six decades and what remains the same.
