Artist Profile acknowledges the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the traditional owners of the land on which we work.
EDITOR’S NOTE
In Artist Profile’s sixty-ninth issue there are many articles that delve into the artists’ nature, their understanding of materials, but mostly their courage to reveal the uneven. There is continuing interest in our essays and reviews which support new critiques on current visual arts exhibitions. An outstanding essay by Alan Cruickshank is concerned with the future of the Biennale of Sydney, deriving from the feeling that a significant proportion of the visual arts community believes that art scholarship is being undermined by activism.
Ron Robertson-Swann is this issue’s cover artist. His influence on Australian painting and sculpture is deep and impressive. After teaching and exhibiting in the United Kingdom in his twenties and early thirties, Robertson-Swann accepted Gough Whitlam’s invitation in 1973 to be an inaugural member of the Australia Council for the Arts, Visual and Plastic Arts Board (now Creative Australia). In Robertson-Swann’s time, the Board was mostly dominated by artists who were painters and sculptors while other members came from senior leadership positions in public and private galleries. While Creative Australia has changed the artform boards, Robertson-Swann has remained uncompromising to form and content in his painting and sculpture.
Peter McKay examines the social subjects at the core of Yuriyal Bridgeman’s practice. Earlier this year, I saw an outstanding solo exhibition of Bridgeman’s work at Cassandra Bird Gallery in Sydney. The works revealed the uneven social norms between cultures and genders. Bridgeman’s first survey exhibition with monograph is being held this summer at Griffith University Art Museum, Brisbane. Haus Yuriyal is part of the 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art at the Gallery of Modern Art.
Sarah Contos: Eye Lash Horizon is definitely in my top five exhibitions of the year. This exhibition has a strong curatorial structure (as we have come to expect from UNSW Galleries, Sydney) that unleashes Contos’ ideas and masterful control of her medium. Jack Howard’s review of Contos’ exhibition in this issue is well considered, as is his use of the word “pareidolia.”
Pat and Richard Larter were artists that used their high energy, experimental art to confront uneven power. Susie Burge’s informed essay on Richard’s two new exhibitions, at Utopia Art Sydney and the Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra, recognises Pat’s eternal presence in Richard’s work, as well as his “enduring fascination for the material qualities of paint . . .”
Diana Wood Conroy has written a confronting essay on the monumental loss of her public artworks amongst the disturbingly uneven management of public and private commissions’ years after their installation.
Deborah Ely writes an elegant tribute to the unforgettable Rosemary Laing.
Thank you for your ongoing support of Artist Profile.
Kon Gouriotis
Editor
CONTENTS
ISSUE
Can’t Be Found: Tracing Lost Tapestries in the Public Domain by Diana Wood Conroy
COVER FEATURE
Ron Robertson-Swann by John Vallance
PROFILES
Adriana Mahanga Lear by Elli Walsh
Catherine Murphy by Justin Paton
Yuriyal Bridgeman by Peter McKay
Eva Rothschild by Erin McFayden
Dylan Sarra by Louise Martin-Chew
Sara Maher by Lucy Hawthorne
Robert Eadie by Brad Buckley
INSIGHT
POEM Why?—after Bob Flanagan and Sophie Cassar by Autumn Royal
ESSAY Rosemary Laing by Deborah Ely
ESSAY 30 Years of Arthouse by Kathleen Linn
ESSAY Ten Thousand Shadows: A History of the Biennale of Sydney by Alan Cruickshank
ESSAY Richard Larter by Susie Burge
ESSAY Russell Storer by Sarah Hetherington
REVIEW Sarah Contos: Eye Lash Horizon by Jack Howard
REVIEW Cementa24 by Fiona Kelly McGregor
REVIEW Su san Cohn & Eugenia Raskopoulos: (SC)OOT(ER)ING around by Mimi Kelly
REVIEW Khaled Sabsabi by Madeleine K. Snow
REVIEW Namedropping by H.R. Hyatt-Johnston
REVIEW Peter Godwin: Space, Light and Time by Gillian Serisier
REVIEW Francis Bacon: Human Presence by Steve Lopes
REVIEW Tony Hanning: Into the Light by Sasha Grishin
REVIEW Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize by Rhonda Davis
BOOK REVIEW Reg Mombassa—Hypersonic Realism by Ruth Waller
FILM REVIEW Daaaaaalì by Aleks Wansbrough
POSTER Ray Beattie
DISCOVERY Lisa Gipton by Andrew Harper
SHORT STORY Coming and Going by Nola Farman
