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
Laure Prouvost meets the real with the ludicrous
French-born/Belgium-based Laure Prouvost animates her first major Australian survey with her hallmark absurdism. ‘Oui Move In You’ is showing now at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.
Josephine Mead
Archie Moore wins Golden Lion Award
Kamilaroi/Bigambul artist Archie Moore has won the Golden Lion for Best National Participation at the Venice Biennale for his monumental work, kith and kin. It marks the first time Australia has won the award in the event’s 130-year history.
Briony Downes
Talking pageantry with Scotty So
Endlessly inventive, the work of Hong Kong-born, Melbourne-based artist Scotty So spans photography, painting, video work, and drag performance. With a dual exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ballarat, So talks about pageantry, begonias and queens.
Amelia Wallin
Mai Nguyễn-Long is reclaiming her heritage
Mai Nguyễn-Long’s latest exhibition at Wollongong Art Gallery takes influence from her Vietnamese heritage and living in a modern Australian setting—speaking to the trauma experienced by the diaspora.
Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen
The rise of atmospheric painter Clarice Beckett
Working en plein air, Clarice Beckett’s tonalist paintings capture not only the likeness of a place, but how it felt to be there. Revisit our preview of the historical artist, who is now showing at Cairns Art Gallery with work from the 1920s and 30s.
Briony Downes
How we remember tomorrow considers the sea as memory
An exhibition at UQ Art Museum centres the relationship between culture, tradition and the ocean, and illuminates how intergenerational storytelling, tied to oceanic themes, might subvert settler-colonial narratives.