Author Archives: Artist Profile
DISCOVERY: Bronte Cormican-Jones
Cormican-Jones is often away from home, the practical realities of her artmaking. After graduating in 2022 with first-class honours from Sydney College of the Arts, she has participated in many residencies both locally and internationally including at JamFactory, Tarndanya / Adelaide; Canberra Glassworks, Kamberri / Canberra; and the Pilchuck Glass School in Washington State, USA. […]
Posted in Exhibitions
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Cézanne to Giacometti: Highlights from Museum Berggruen / Neue Nationgalerie
The Stülerbau West, the historical part of Museum Berggruen in Berlin, has been undergoing a substantial renovation since autumn 2022. A selection from the Berggruen collection has gone on international tour to Tokyo, Osaka, Shanghai, Beijing, Venice, Paris and now Canberra. Later it will travel to Madrid. It is not unusual for an art collection […]
Posted in Reviews, Uncategorized
Tagged Art, Cezanne, Klee, nga, Sasha Grishin
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A Difficult Artist
MIRRORSCAPE, by French artist Théo Mercier, is the first presentation of his work in Australia. MIRRORSCAPE is a sculpture delicately and masterly carved from tonnes of compressed Tasmanian sand into debris by four sculptors: Enguerrand David from Belgium, US based Sue McGrew, the Italian Leonardo Ugolini and Australian sculptor Kevin Crawford. The sculpture is installed […]
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Thirty years of Defiance
Campbell’s full-strength, unrestrained character exemplifies his artistic idioms when it comes down to doing serious art business. The naming of Defiance matches too, his ideological traits, as Campbell recently told me, “Anyone saying it can’t be done, you just watch.” Notable artist Ann Thomson, who shows with Defiance, tells me that the gallery has “always […]
Posted in Essays
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William Mackinnon
William Mackinnon has just flown into Melbourne from Spain, where he spends half his life. He is en route to Lorne on the Great Ocean Road where he has a large beachside house that allows him to indulge his twin passions for surfing and painting. He currently has one major exhibition in Madrid at […]
Posted in Profiles
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Careful What You Wish For
Hi Desirée, Last Friday evening at the Intensive Care Café was a blast. So many up-and-coming artists together in one place at one time. Darting from topic to topic. The sting and itch of irritating ideas. There was a buzz about that pesky infestation of bugs you mentioned last week—the Grave-hoppers. Why do they hover […]
Parlingarri Amintiya Ningani Awungarra: old and new at Jilmara Arts UNSW Galleries
Within a mix of translucent paintings, etchings and lithographs, “The Queen of Jilamara” (as Kantilla was affectionately known), is accompanied by Taracarijimo Freda Warlapinni’s quivering marks including an exceptional bark in gritty red and yellow ochre. Both artists passed away in 2003 and held an esteemed place in the art centre at Milikapiti; through their […]
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Betty Kuntiwa Pumani: maḻatja-maḻatja (those who come after)
Driving into the imposing landscape of Bundanon’s arts precinct, visitors are immediately enveloped in the environment. Dramatic cliffs abound and a serpentine river that features so impactfully in the works of the benefactor of the site, artist Arthur Boyd, frame the landscape. In this world, visitors drift between the sublime natural view that embraces them, […]
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Chutzpah: Spirit. Recollection. Self.
Hebrew is not merely the language of the Jews. Jewish people trace their lineage to Abraham, the first Hebrew—Ivri—a word derived from traversing to the other side of a river. However, rather than a strictly oppositional phenomenology, Ivri is a perplexing and sacred non-positionality. It is the fluidity between homeland and here, wherever “here” may […]
Posted in Exhibitions
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The Intelligence of Painting
How do these artists’ lone works fair at representing contemporary painting in Australia today? With this abridged exhibition it might be difficult to draw any substantial conclusions, but collection hangs often feature just a single painting or work by an artist to illustrate their contribution to a movement, style, or school of art. With a […]
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Why? —after Bob Flanagan and Sophie Cassar
Because a theatre is nothing without an audience. Because fasting before an operation is a form of compulsory savings. Because of polyester surgical sutures. Because it costs a lot of money to be sick and you cannot afford the alternative. Because of mountainous landscapes. Because during the time it takes for Orlan to express that […]
Posted in Poems
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Turner & Australia: The Possibilities of Vision
Curated by Gippsland Art Gallery director Simon Gregg, Turner & Australia navigates the enduring influence of J.M.W. Turner on Australian landscape painting, commencing with Turner’s Australian contemporary, the English born John Glover (1767-1849). The exhibition will present the three Turner oils and eight watercolours held by Australian institutions, as well as six prints from the […]
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Tagged Gippslands Art Gallery, Turner & Australia
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Adriana Māhanga Lear
In the final weeks of her PhD thesis deadline, Adriana is generous with her time and her words. She speaks fluently about her interdisciplinary practice, which is motivated by aims of decolonisation, Indigenous self-determination, and social justice across Moana Oceania (the Pacific). Interested in the intersection of sound and visuals as equal conduits of meaning […]
Posted in Profiles
Tagged Adriana Māhanga Lear, Artist Profile Magazine
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Joe and Chanelle
A kite consists of wings, tethers, and anchors. The wings glide against the air when in flight and the tethers connect the span of those wings in order for the kite to be airborne. Two things working together to keep an idea off the ground. But what of the anchor? Who is at the end […]
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Frida Kahlo | In her own image
Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) is perhaps best known for her intimate self-portraits exploring pain, love, and loss, replete with potent symbolism and social commentary. She gained global popularity for her defiant style that challenged prescribed gender norms and embraced the pleasure of self-adornment. Per the curatorial premise, Frida Kahlo enriches viewers with a wealth of materials […]
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Reg Mombassa | Simpliticism
O’Doherty captures the zeitgeist in a distilled format and direct way that is uniquely his own. Understated in scale, his prints, paintings and drawings are wry observations and absurd imaginings of the social and political landscapes around us. As the exhibition title suggests, the world is put through the Mombassa cranium, processed and reimagined, and […]
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What happens next!
A lifetime of working with clay provides you with an ease of association and a comfortable familiarity that greatly helps with confidence at the beginning of a working sequence. My early years of practice in the 1970s were dominated by the pragmatism of the functional ceramic form. With the benefit of an excellent training in […]
Posted in Process
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THE JOURNEY
I began working on my The Journey, 2017-25, painting about eight years ago when I returned to the Yellow House Afghanistan after being in London with Julian Assange while the Archibald Documentary was being made. It came back rolled up with the second triptych portrait of Julian, Locking Horns and my Orange Lobster painting of Donald Trump. […]
Posted in Ukraine
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REVIEW: Are we not all colonisers and migrants?
The story of humanity or modern humans (homo sapiens) is explained by various creation myths across different religions and cultures. Many of these myths have striking similarities with the story of Adam and Eve. For instance, the three great monotheist religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, each hold that man and woman were created by their […]
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Tribute | Laurens Tan
Laurens of the restless soul, that constantly dragged him up from dinner tables with thoughts, plans, and new ideas. Laurens with the restless energy that took him around the world to restless cities, to Beijing, to Las Vegas, but always back home to the restless ocean cliff-edge landscapes of Wombarra [Wollongong, New South Wales]. Laurens […]
Posted in Essays
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The vision of Emily Kame Kngwarreye
Led by curator Kelli Cole, Emily Kam Kngwarray at the Tate is a continuation of the retrospective Emily Kam Kngwarray: Alhalkere—Paintings from Utopia curated by Cole and Hetti Perkins at the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) in 2024. The lasting impact of Emily Kame Kngwarreye (c.1910–1996) on the international art world has been great despite […]
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Stop Making Sense
I approached the exhibition Thinking Together: Exchanges with the Natural World with caution, thinking it might be a problematic and questionable foray into collaborative exchange. It’s a popular phrase that gets bandied about in the art world. Overall, I was pleasantly wonderstruck and left believing that the works selected by Sophie O’Brien were more akin […]
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A sense of place in the art of Tina Stefanou
Based in the peri-urban region of Wattle Glen, in Victoria, her practice is informed by the Greek heritage of her immigrant family and their working-class experiences. There is an unmissable diasporic perspective and class sensitivity that transpires through her projects. Although the focus of her work is directed towards the possibilities of fellowship, the building […]
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Ildikó Kovács | The Infinite Line
Kovács was born in Sydney, a first generation Australian from immigrant parents fleeing war-torn Hungary. Her upbringing was very much as part of the Hungarian diaspora. Homelife embraced traditional food and music, and Magyar embroidered motifs. The stories told were often melancholic with a longing for the life and loved ones left behind. At age […]
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