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?
Nike Savvas: Purple Haze presents intimate screen prints and immersive large-scale installation and video work by Savvas from 2005–2026, each evocative of different places and...
Although physically he is of modest stature, Zofrea has devoted much of his life to grand projects that have been conceived and executed on a...
Through a multidisciplinary collaboration between Rotterdam-based curators, architect Paul Cournet of CLOUD and artist-designer Sabine Marcelis of Studio Sabine Marcelis, the exhibition explores the interplay...
Artificial intelligence will be used by young artists who started using it as kids on their phones. They will see it as a natural extension...
This year’s Biennale arrives under more complex circumstances than most. It is shaped by the profound loss of its curator, Koyo Kouoh (1967–2025), whose exhibition...
No artist creates in isolation. Every painting carries traces of the conversations, places and histories that shaped it, preserving within its surface a particular moment...
The weekend markets at Fairfield Showground have been one of Western Sydney’s great institutions for more than fifty years. Fresh fruit and vegetables, children’s clothes,...
In recent times, Yorgos Lanthimos has shifted toward photography, noting in a Guardian interview, 2026, that he needs respite, saying, “it might be a couple...
In Australia, political cartoons were altered by several events during the 1960s: the arrival of Les Tanner’s (1927‒2001) instinctual wit at The Bulletin, Bruce Petty’s...