Author Archives: Artist Profile
Carolyn V Watson
Watson’s mirror (a history of energies), 2021, is unsettling in its perfection, its unlikely and delicate resolution of opposing categories. The sculpture brings the ‘natural’ and the ‘artificial’ into a disconcerting coalescence: bone and earthy porcelain are overlaid with an intricate network of lace, and bio-organic forms (a human hand, cunicular ears) take on an eerie pallor […]
Posted in Contents, Exhibitions, Profiles
Tagged anthea polson, Carolyn V Watson, Let's Play Pretend
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George Gittoes
George Gittoes’ ‘Augustus Suite’ is a contemporary reincarnation of his earlier ‘Hotel Kennedy Suite’ begun in 1969 at a San Francisco YMCA while the artist was ill with Hong Kong Flu. Its immediate prompt has been Covid, but the links go deeper. Febrile, hallucinogenic, half-awake, Gittoes describes catastrophic visions that emerged as if of their own […]
Posted in Exhibitions, Profiles
Tagged George Gittoes, Mitchell Fine Art
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UNSEEN
To mark International Women’s Day 2021, Mason parked a car in Martin Place. The car resists observation, wrapped as it is in mirror film to obscure its surface, and reflect light. It can’t be registered; its number plate even reads ‘UNSEEN.’ Instead, we might think of this car as a vehicle through which we – or more […]
Ces McCully
I raise Sherman and Kruger here because in many respects Ces McCully is their direct descendant. Sherman, who utilised photographic self-portraiture, to question self-identity is relevant, I believe, because in many ways McCully’s work feels almost painfully like a form of self-portraiture. McCully is by no means a figurative artist, but her haiku-style texts more […]
Elizabeth Ann MacGregor OBE
Your first public appearance as Director of the MCA was to launch an exhibition at the Penrith Regional Gallery in 1999. You spoke about making contemporary art accessible. Looking back, what has Western Sydney meant for the MCA? There’s an untold story about how Western Sydney saved the MCA! In those days, when the Museum […]
Issue 53
<span data-mce-type=”bookmark” style=”display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;” class=”mce_SELRES_start”></span><span data-mce-type=”bookmark” style=”display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;” class=”mce_SELRES_start”></span> EDITOR’S NOTE If you’re a stranger to Teelah George – this issue’s cover artist – the quickest way to enter her changing world is to read Elli Walsh’s deeply thoughtful profile. Walsh explains the […]
Posted in Back Issues
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Laith McGregor
For ‘Tall Tale,’ at STATION Gallery, McGregor traces new conceptual horizons outwards from his established drawing practice, without losing sight of his sustained interests in storytelling and characterisation. In his work, text and pattern have become methods of figuration in themselves: paths of access to the minds, or the stories, of the subjects of McGregor’s […]
No Show
Carriageworks CEO Blair French notes that ARIs ‘run largely on the volunteered time and support of their community but operate at the heart of experimental and critical practice.’ Precisely this dynamic, in which artists labour, imagine, and build communities without guarantee of financial security for their efforts — and are yet venerated as crucibles of […]
Posted in Reviews
Tagged Ankles, ARTIST PROFILE, Boomalli, Carriageworks, Firstdraft, KNULP, No Show, Our Neon Foe, Pari, Prototype, Running Dog, Runway, Studio A, WAYOUT Artspace
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Andrew Christofides
Christofides’s new show ‘Parallel Universe: A Paradise of Images,’ at King Street Gallery, works between these modes of mark- and meaning-making. Christofides explores what it might be for a painting to ‘mean’ without having to ‘refer.’ Intensely interested in order, pattern, and slick, clean logics of spatial organisation, these new paintings enquire about the kinds […]
Posted in Exhibitions
Tagged Andrew Christofides, King Street Gallery, King Street Gallery on William
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Nicole Kelly
Certainly, a sense of wonder permeates many of these works. Pliable oils twist across the canvas, casting a glow of enchantment over the landscapes with which Kelly engages. Where the sun beats, for instance, runs blue-green tones down the descending face of a hill towards the viewer, their diagonal paths melting into a pool of warm affect […]
Philip Noakes
Philip Noakes’ new works have an extraordinary presence…
Gabriella Hirst
The title of Hirst’s new work, Darling Darling, is double-edged. We might call somebody ‘darling’ affectionately, of course – but repeat the phrase and the tone shifts to something either more like a taunt or a plaintive cry. Considering the uneven distribution of care, conservation efforts, and reparative work through the Australian landscape – and equally, through […]
Posted in Exhibitions, Profiles
Tagged ACMI, Darling Darling, Gabriella Hirst
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Timothy Cook
With Melville’s traditions as background, the eye roams over the delicate, fine lines and blizzard-like dots of Timothy Cook’s canvas’ surface.
Pimpisa Tinpalit
Responding to the loss of her father, Pimpisa Tinapalit’s upcoming solo at Grau Projekt, ‘Silence #1.5’, is a discussion of the beauty of death.
Steve Lopes
Asking where expressionist painting began is like asking who invented drawing. Historically, the Western expressionist artist is individualistic, the work not readily situated in specific art periods and countries: both El Greco and Bosch were expressionists. In the early twentieth century, artists embracing revolutionary ideals were given this label. Expressionism, using form and structure to […]
Eleanor Louise Butt
Eleanor Louise Butt talks about the ways in which her works ‘speak’ to each other, conversing and sharing expressions across multiple planes until a melody is formed.
Telly Tu’u
Tu’u’s new work is, indeed, an exploration of resolution: visually, chemically, and perhaps in a sense more greatly abstracted. Developing the abstraction of his earlier painting practice, he explores in this new material ideas of dissolution and accretion, impermeability and melt. He’s interested in the process of resolving these binary oppositions, but not necessarily in […]
Nyapanyapa Yunupingu
Intrinsic to Nyapanyapa Yunupingu’s practice is her innovative media and highly individual painterly expression that she describes as ‘mayilimiriw’ – meaningless.
Posted in Exhibitions, Profiles
Tagged Aboriginal art, indigenous art, Nyapanyapa Yunupingu
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David Griggs
David Griggs’ first solo show in Melbourne in eight years features a suite of painterly portraits responding to a socially and politically turbulent year.
Annabel Nowlan
Annabel Nowlan’s ‘Vernacular’ (2020) pitches linguistic and cartographic modes of meaning-making towards each other.
Posted in Exhibitions
Tagged Annabel Nowlan, Unfinished Maps, Wagga Wagga Art Gallery
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‘Til It’s Gone
‘‘Til It’s Gone’ brings together a trio of Australian artists each approaching themes of ecology, geomorphology, time and ruin…
Posted in Exhibitions
Tagged Eloise Kirk, Kai Wasikowski, Mona Foma, Tristan Jalleh
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Alana Wilson
As we enter lockdown again on the Northern Beaches, Alana Wilson’s work inspires us to look closer at nature and our immediate surroundings.
Adrienne Doig
‘Adrienne Doig: It’s All About Me!’, a comprehensive exhibition surveying three decades of the Blue Mountains-based artist’s practice…
