ASsPEN Island Justin Andrews, Julia Gorman, Melinda Harper, Bianca Hester, Clement Meadmore, Calum Stirling and Jan Van Der Ploeg Neon Parc, Melbourne 26 October – 19 November 2011 When abstraction first appeared in the early part of the twentieth century, the use of simple geometric forms and broad expanses of uninflected colour was conceived as an idealisation of […]

Gertrude Contemporary Art Space’s walled-up front window feels like a rebuff to my bad habit. When the traffic is quiet I sometimes idle my engine, forget the road and superficially consume the front space like a teenager cruising down Chapel Street on a Saturday night. I admit my drive-by window-shopping is not qualitatively dissimilar to browsing […]

Isabelle Graw is a Berlin-based art critic and author of High Price: Art between the market and celebrity culture, published in 2009 by Strenberg Press. She is the co-founder of art journal Texte zur Kunst in Berlin and professor at Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste (Städelschule). Liang Luscombe — What were the circumstances and motivations […]

As a retrospective, Kusama — showing currently at the Tate Modern — satisfies the standard requirements for historical span and conceptual consistency across material and spatial frameworks. However, these paintings, sculptures and installations seem so directly transmitted from the artist, it’s difficult to assess what kind of dialogue they’ve participated in over the decades. Stepping […]

This year’s annual Kinetica Art Fair, hosted by the Kinetica Museum in London, attempted a balanced representation of analogue and digital art practices. In this way, the 2012 event marked a break with Kinetica Art Fairs of years past, which have traditionally privileged the display of digital media. For Kinetica Art Fair 2012, ‘kinetic art’ was […]

Having pedaled across the Yarra one Saturday morning in October 2011, I found my friend amongst a cluster of people waiting in the foyer of the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. A few weeks prior, Julie had forwarded me an email invite to an art field trip to ‘investigate the influence of Australian farmer Percival Alfred […]

Agatha Gothe-SnapeFour PartsKalimanrawlins, Melbourne4 February – 2 March 2012 Agatha Gothe-Snape is something of an anti-hero in a line of work defined by individualism. An artist whose work has almost always been commemorative, she has long been concerned with acknowledging artists in Australia and contemplating their collective worth. Drawing on and drawing in her precursors […]

Angela De La CruzTransferAnna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne4 February – 17 March 2012 Angela De La Cruz’s monochromatic compositions begin at the site of the Minimalist object which attempts to represent nothing beyond itself. From this sense of presence, De La Cruz speaks toward Otherness through the receptivity of chance and uncertainty, allowing the beauty of […]

Like all productive collaborations, Open Archive is a discussion — a swirling, organic (a word used many times during our conversations), epistemic questioning, where utterances may stall and waver, and ideas are picked up later, the formation of ideas denying a definitive full stop. Jared Davis and Helen Grogan share an interest in performance, so […]

The editors of Fashion and Art (F&A), Adam Geczy & Viki Karamininas, would agree with Lisa Phillips, director of the New Museum, New York, who claims that any distinction between fashion and art is ridiculous, ‘Fashion at its highest level is an art form!’.[^1] However, as the editors of F&A note, if fashion really aspired […]

Ross Manning Spectra Milani Galleries, Brisbane 9–25 February 2012 At the time of writing, some Android users were eagerly awaiting the over-the-air release of Ice Cream Sandwich — an operating system update for their mobile phones and tablets. One of the features most anticipated in the update is the enhanced support for live wallpapers, owing […]

In an otherwise straightforward ­discussion of her curatorial practice, what stood out in Ute Meta Bauer’s presentation at the State Library of Victoria in March, was an improvised series of comments on the state of contemporary art.[^1] These comments followed a line of thought evident in a series of articles in e-flux journal published in […]

David Egan and Reece York Seria Ludo Galleria, Perth 2–24 December 2011 With an almost suffocating sense of winking irony, recently established East Perth ARI Galleria shares its name with one of the city’s most obnoxiously oversized megamalls. One can only hope that the long, tedious hours of gallery invigilation are periodically enlivened by Google […]

dogadobisangdo (design is design is not design) Gwangju Design Biennale 2011 2 September – 23 October 2011 Gwangju, South Korea Artistic Directors: Seung H‐Sang and Ai Weiwei With an almost suffocating sense of winking irony, recently established East Perth ARI Galleria shares its name with one of the city’s most obnoxiously oversized megamalls. One can […]

I’ve learnt that it’s dangerous to mention I spent the first twenty-something years of my life living in ‘The Emerald City’, for it invariably leads to the question that seems to fascinate Melburnians of all ages, races, genders and creeds: ‘how do the cities compare?’ An innocent enough question, perhaps, but it is typically asked with […]