Making art vs making ends meet, especially during a cost of living crisis, means making tough decisions, Oslo Davis discovers.
All illustrations by Oslo Davis for Art Guide Australia November/December 2023 print edition.
Suggested Reading
Life Cycles with Betty Kuntiwa Pumani
The paintings of Betty Kuntiwa Pumani form a part of a larger, living archive on Antaṟa, her mother’s Country. More than maps, they speak to ancestral songlines, place and ceremony.
Emma O'Neill
Seeing Double
A presentation of works by Robert Mapplethorpe curated by the British editor Edward Enninful, Enninful x Mapplethorpe, at the 2025 Ballarat International Foto Biennale, finds resonance in opposites while turning binary thinking on its head.
Amelia Winata
Looking Forward, Looking Back with Lisa Reihana
Auckland-born and raised artist Lisa Reihana is ever the optimist, creating two new works signifying social cohesion to hang outside two Australian arts venues—Ngununggula, and Sydney Contemporary at Carriageworks —just as dark divisions seek to undermine the value of migration and Indigenous sovereignty.
Steve Dow
From the archive: art and the environment
In the last 25 years, there have been few themes as omnipresent as the environment, especially when we look at Australian art. Join us as we revisit pieces from our archive that track artists’ ongoing fascination with the natural world and its changing landscape.
Art Guide Australia
Cerith Wyn Evans, Electrical Conductor
Language folds into form in the poetic yet monumental light sculptures of Welsh artist Cerith Wyn Evans, whose solo exhibition … in light of the visible is at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.
Emma O'Neill
Piercing the veil
A new exhibition at Buxton Contemporary finds a rich complexity in the shadowy terrain between life and death.