I ride across town early on a Friday morning for a private viewing of Patrick Pound’s new exhibition at STATION Gallery in South Yarra. Private viewings are the only kind of physical viewing in the age of COVID-19 and after weeks of quarantine (in the midst of quarantine) it feels indulgent, luxurious even, to be […]

CuratorKendrah Morgan Joy Hester is the most intriguing of the Heide modernists and, until recent times, the least recognised. Whereas Nolan and Tucker rode off to fame hidden behind their masks to explore the Australian bush, Joy Hester remained at Heide. Rather than exploring Australian inland and myths in oils, she explored her feelings and […]

Sea-brown ships glide on heavy warm air, rising to the top floor of SEVENTH Gallery. On second examination the ship-like qualities are replaced by an answer to a more vital need: thirst. The ship plays a cardinal role in the colonial saga and it seems fitting that such heroic propaganda is undermined by Indigenous craft […]

Alpine Bogs and Associated Fens is Amanda Williams’ first solo exhibition with Sydney gallery The Commercial. Its seven-work hang feels to be the culminating gesture of the artist’s recent commitment to hand-printed mural format gelatin silver photographs. Although these immense and antiquated processes are tremendously laborious, Williams achieves a graceful givenness – or perhaps a […]

Curated by: Cristana Napoleone and Emergence Magazine Featuring: Alisha Anderson, Hattie Malloy, Terrain Projects, Adam Loften and Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee. Nestled amongst the industrial buildings of Fitzroy, Melbourne, lies Trees, a multisensory exhibition focused on the way humans interact with the natural environment. The exhibition provides a welcomed respite from the concreted environs it exists within […]

Curated by: Laura CouttieArtist: Shannon Lyons At first, it’s easy to completely miss Shannon Lyons’ Dark Kitchen installation in Heide Museum of Modern Art’s project space. So streamlined is the constructed wall with the gallery, that I almost strolled right on past. The tell-tale sign is the doorways hung with coloured plastic strips, a nod […]

I suspect the art world thinks I’m ugly — maybe. This is not about a lack of swipes on Tinder or an unreturned call, it’s something else. Well, I’m just going to say it: the thing is, there’s a local photographer that did not approach me at an impressionable age to pose on camera (the […]

Curators: Kathleen Linn and Sarah Hibbs Artists: Xanthe Dobbie, Clare Longley, Loc Nguyen, Nabilah Nordin / Nick Modrzewski, EJ Son and Sophie Takách Nestled amongst the corridors and storage units of Kennards Self Storage in Ultimo, Sydney — on Gadigal and Guring-gai land — lies Potential Space. Like a lung that breathes in and expands, […]

a body of assumptions a mind coerced into trusting your prescribed narrative has me flattening concealing trying to be loud though pillowy lips and building blocks reverse my progress it is these marks from which resurrection trembles Over the course of their emerging career, Felix Atkinson’s artistic practice has worked towards resisting dominant frameworks of […]

why must a gown either creep or caress & not slip into both These words, rendered delicately in pink and barely visible atop exposed aggregate and polished concrete flooring, graze my soles as I enter Hannah Gartside’s Fantasies at Ararat Gallery TAMA. Autumn Royal’s poetic response references a tag from a vintage nightie that Gartside […]

Curator: Maria Morata Artists: Suzanne Treister, Pinar Yoldas, Lu Yang, Marco Donnarumma, Renaud Marchand, Yvonne Roeb, Alan Warburton For those unfamiliar with the term ‘posthuman’, Maria Morata’s curatorial project Zoextropy. The Posthuman Beauty could suggest a world filled with monstrous dystopic creations. Perhaps one might envision a spectacle, something along the lines of enthusiastic technophilia, or visions of a […]

By virtue of the grid, the given work of art is presented as a mere fragment, a tiny piece arbitrarily cropped from an infinitely larger fabric. Thus the grid operates from the work of art outward, compelling our acknowledgement of a world beyond the frame. — Rosalind Krauss, 1979. Box of Stamps, a new solo […]

Artist. Innovator. Feminist. Lizard. Conversation-starter. What can I say about Marina Abromalizardvic in a thousand words that can’t be gleaned from spending even a few seconds in her presence? What could I attempt to articulate, that wouldn’t be dwarfed by the flood of unspoken understanding that one feels opposite her, gazing into a face that […]

Artists: Matt Arbuckle, Sean Bailey, Lucia Canuto, Rafaella McDonald, Jahnne Pasco-White, Laura Skerlj Curators: Daine Singer and Laura Couttie In 2009 Maggie Nelson published her cult hit Bluets, a book of prose poetry exploring grief, loss and suffering via meditations on the colour blue. Nelson’s oft quoted text stands as the curatorial and conceptual inspiration […]

Exhibiting artistsCeri Hann, Danielle Freakley, Eric Demetriou, Gabriella D’Costa, Jacqui Shelton (with Alice Heyward and Megan Payne), Jake Moore, Makiko Yamamoto, Mel Deerson and Briony Galligan, MP Hopkins, Simon Zoric and Steven Rhall. PerformancesAsh Kilmartin, James Rushford and Rachel Yezbick, Jacqui Shelton (with Alice Heyward and Megan Payne) Jake Moore, Kate Brown, Mel Deerson (with […]

Liam O’Brien’s recent screening of Empty Avenues (Best of Season 1) (2018) at Seventh Gallery was staged in a dim room with two armchairs, a wooden coffee table, a lamp and two portable heaters. As visitors entered this fabricated space, they were faced with a second living room, on screen. The set inside the film […]

It seems as though we are all creative now. The University hosts an event after the Christchurch terror attacks. The speaker offers ‘creative solutions’ to violence. My mind swivels. What does that even mean? A wry smile from across the table: yarn bombing? Let’s give that one a miss, eh? This article is a bit […]

Choreographer: Atlanta Eke Performers: Atlanta Eke, Ivey Wawn, Annabelle Balharry, Ellen Davies Music: Daniel Jenatsch It’s 1789 and 577 deputies of The Third Estate arrive at Versailles to find that their access to the Menus Plaisirs hall has been suspended. Though standing as representatives of all French citizens not granted membership to the first two […]

The heavy smell of earth greets us as we enter Abbotsford Convent’s recently opened Magdalen Laundries for Jill Orr’s performance of Dark Night for Dance Massive 2019. Carrying a heavy history of their own — once used as an asylum to ‘rehabilitate’ young girls and women — the walls of the laundries are caked with […]

An orchid edges its leaves up through the layers of peat moss, bark, nutrient rich soil, to take its first breaths in the fragrant air of the farm. Or, an orchid raises its first leaves up through the display screen, pushing through streams of data into pungent technicolour downloads. At AIRspace Projects, an orchid breathes […]

Under the canopy of a suspended length of silk, blankets, pillows and bundles are laid out, ready to cushion bodies that might be in need of rest. Pieces of cloth dyed shades of brown, bronze and orange, are stitched, knotted and folded to become bedclothes and soft furnishings — some carry imprints of leaves from […]

Artists: Hans Baldung Grien, Monika Behrens and Rochelle Haley, Naomi Blacklock, Eric Bridgeman, Giovanni Bendetto Castiglione, Albrecht Dürer, Mikala Dwyer, Emily Hunt, Clare Milledge, Judith Wright Witchcraft is in. From Lorde to YouTube sage-burning tutorials, Wicca and ritual have found a new home in contemporary culture, especially within online communities. Five decades ago, second-wave feminist […]

There’s a thing we, us humans, do. An authority we parade. An intricate and multi-layered authority that is assembled (just as a book may be compiled in a factory, or a village). The process is mostly unrecognisable but we really believe in it, take it as hadith. We mine history, nature, and space for knowledge. […]

Two poles protrude from the first-floor windows of Sarah Scout Presents. A long thin pennant flag hangs from each: HOUSE and WORK, their appliquéd letters read. The words are turned inwards to face each other like a double-page spread. Or two bodies in conversation. From outside these flags blend into the signage of Collins Street: […]