Issue 9
When we started Artist Profile magazine in 2007, our goal was to create a publication that gave readers insight into the private working lives of artists and put the best Australasian creative talent alongside their international contemporaries. Two years and eight issues later, the editorial team decided we were up for a new challenge.
Collaborating with leading British art materials producer Winsor & Newton, we invited 11 artists on a 10-day painting expedition through the North Island of New Zealand. We assembled some of the most respected painters working in Australia today over three generations, each with their own perspective on how to absorb, sketch and paint the experience.
Some have devoted their careers to divining nature through an artist’s vision; some rarely, if ever, paint outside their own studios; some reject the rarified notion of “landscape” painting; but each has a unique take on the promise of this stunning environment to yield material, aesthetic and philosophical challenges.
One mountain, 11 answers.
In Issue 9, we profile this extraordinary trip, the camaraderie that formed among the group and talk to each of the artists about their processes – from plein air to studio – as they head back to prepare work over the coming months for the forthcoming exhibition ON THIS ISLAND, MEETING AND PARTING – which will tour Australia, New Zealand and the UK in 2010/11.
Danish-Icelander Olafur Eliasson is the wunderkind of the public gallery experience. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, will soon be hosting the survey exhibition – TAKE YOUR TIME – giving Australians a chance to experience some of the magic that drew over 2 million people to bask in his apocalyptic sunlight at London’s Tate Modern in 2003. Gillian Serisier speaks to the enigmatic Eliasson about the philosophy behind his work.
This issue also has a fresh redesign and 32 more pages to give more space to interviews and art: we talk to American performance artist and filmmaker Patty Chang; Sam Leach previews new work from an Australian graduate of the Leipzig Arts Academy, Steven Black; and Joe Frost tackles one of the most vexing quations in contemporary art – how much value should we place on originality?
Visually, the work unfolds like a page from a storybook. Figures appear to stand together, perhaps even holding hands. Boe’s work references the proclamation boards...
Genuine reflection, the quiet, unresolved, sometimes uncomfortable kind, feels increasingly rare. We are seldom invited to sit with what we do not yet understand. This...
As the title Westwood | Kawakubo suggests, the National Gallery of Victoria’s (NGV) latest fashion exhibition plays to the idea that these two titans of...
Operating within a commercial framework yet not representing artists, Project8 allows for a greater sense of curatorial freedom, privileging thematic and carefully considered exhibitions over...
Ron Mueck’s shockingly alive sculptures hit us at many points along the pathway from birth to death. But it’s more than just mortal decay that...
Women Photographers 1900–1975: A Legacy of Light draws on more than 300 photographs and photomedia from the National Gallery of Victoria’s (NGV) collection and the...
Motet Fail, 2026, reshapes Artist Run Initiative, West Space into an immersive backgammon board that operates as a site of reflection, encounter, and quiet concert....
Carvings have been made for all time by Aurukun men. However, the more recent innovation to emerge from Aurukun are paintings. Vested in Country and...
A stone’s throw from the Illawarra escarpment at Campbelltown Arts Centre, the introduction to Draper’s ecosphere is a gathering of rainbow forms which, as an...