Terms like ‘preeminent’ and ‘renowned’ are applied liberally to artists’ bios – we can’t fault people in PR for doing their job but inevitably, those words do lose their lustre. Born in Melbourne in 1939, Gareth Sansom is one of the few artists that superlatives stick to, largely in part, says NGV contemporary art curator Pip Wallis, because “he has refused to adhere to any particular movement or style.” Rather, she continues, “he has moved lithely between influences from Francis Bacon to British pop art, from abstraction to figuration, and from weighty modernist themes to the cacophony of postmodernism.”
Sansom has had over 60 years as a practicing artist, and his work has largely appeared in the liminal space between two vast movements: modernism and postmodernsim. Says Wallis, he “closed one chapter and pre-empted another.”
The curators of this retrospective have abandoned linear chronology in favour of grouping works by their concerns. Gareth Sansom will be the first chapter in a series of five exhibitions dedicated to contemporary Australian artists at the NGV this summer, which will also feature Del Kathryn Barton, Helen Maudsley, Mel O’Callaghan and Louise Paramor.
Wallis describes Sansom in person as both provocative and exuberant, a former Dean of the School of Art VCA, he has an “energy for ongoing discussion and learning.” His artworks strongly reflect both his character and in particular, his philosophical inclination. Rowdy, surreal, layered, Wallis says, “Sansom the artistic alchemist does not subscribe to ‘truth’ and yet, paradoxically, he returns again and again to the eternal questions of life, mortality and religion.”
Gareth Sansom
NGV Australia
15 September – 28 January 2018
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.
In a new series of illustrated postcards available as a free gift with purchase only at the Art Guide Bookstore, Oslo Davis takes on classic and contemporary art terms and genres and reimagines what they could be referring to.
With so much to choose from, we’ve rounded up the major summer exhibitions in each capital city, open all summer long. Spanning Yayoi Kusama, Magritte, the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, and many more.
In a new exhibition at Australian Galleries, Kyoko Imazu’s intricate papercuts show worlds in miniature—Some of works are only 15 centimetres tall, yet their detail is meticulous.
Heide Museum of Modern Art’s summer blockbuster exhibition is unveiling the breadth and beauty of Italian modernism through design. With over 170 objects spanning sixty years, Molto Bello explores the cultural impact of this period of creativity and invention.
For Patrick Pound, whose new installation The Museum of Falling is on show now at the City Gallery, the arrangement of objects and images has long blurred the line between fact and fiction, jolting our perception in surprising and unusual ways.
