Artist: Torbjørn Rødland. Years ago I encountered an image of a caged child online. A pair of jeans lay crumpled on the top of the cage, which was flanked by a discarded tube of moisturiser and a single yellow earplug. The sweet, shirtless boy peered out gleefully from his wire enclosure, his cherubic face illuminated […]
Artists: Alex Selenitsch (ATMOSPHERES) and Joseph Kosuth (A Short History of My Thought). A series of neon phrases are arranged like notes along a staff, in a staggered sequence across the gallery walls. And the words hum, with the prolonged electric buzz one hears from streetlights during the night. One step past a glowing red […]
Artists: Alex Selenitsch (ATMOSPHERES) and Joseph Kosuth (A Short History of My Thought). A series of neon phrases are arranged like notes along a staff, in a staggered sequence across the gallery walls. And the words hum, with the prolonged electric buzz one hears from streetlights during the night. One step past a glowing red […]
Artists: Rebecca Thomas and Meredith Turnbull, with contributions by Fiona Abicare, Kay Abude, Damiano Bertoli, Terri Bird, Ross Coulter, Sarah crowEST, Andrea Eckersley, Debris Facility Pty Ltd, Christopher L G Hill, Jenny Hector, John Meade, Mascha Moje, Spiros Panigirakis, Sean Peoples, Lisa Radford, Masato Takasaka, Salote Tawale, Sarah Ujmaia, Manon van Kouswijk and Behn Ja […]
Artists: Tony Albert, Archie Barry & Max Milne, Liam Benson, Get to Work, Angelica Mesiti, Echo Morgan and Angela Yu Curator: Grace Partridge Engender is an exhibition about many things: gender, race, self-representation and power – essentially an exploration of identity. Amidst the constant news feed from the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ campaigns in the lead […]
Artist: Robert George “Imagine, though, that the makers of Fourth Cinema come to accent whanaugatanga or wairua or aroha in their productions” Barry Barclay Death, like life, is one moment intrinsically linked with the human experience. While we all have different ways of seeing, understanding and functioning in this world, the event of leaving life […]
Artists: Raj Kumar, Sonia Leber & David Chesworth and Adeela Sulamen. Curators: Mikala Tai and Kate Warren. I don’t want to be there when it happens takes its title from a work by Adeela Sulamen, and forms a statement of intent for this exhibition at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. The exhibition features the […]
Artist: Warraba Weatherall In August I was invited to preview the exhibition InstitutionaLies by Warraba Weatherall at Metro Arts Brisbane. Warraba and acting curator Llewellyn Millhouse walked Brisbane-based Quandamooka curator Freja Carmichael and I through the exhibition. We were both left speechless. I am familiar with Warraba’s work, having followed his mural and street art […]
For Issey Miyake-clad curators the world over, 2017 has marked a unique alignment of the stars, a once-a-decade overlapping of Documenta in Kassel, The Venice Biennale and Münster Skulptur Projekte (SPM). While it is safe to say that Venice and Documenta were directed squarely at the art illuminati, SPM was as close to an antithesis […]
Artists: Paul Gorrie, Neil Morris, Carly Sheppard, Kuan-Hsiang Liu, Sojugang, Alice Skye, Meriki Onus and Dtarneen Onus Williams. Curator: Nayuka Gorrie ‘Black people are experts at surviving,’ announces curator and emcee Nayuka Gorrie, a Kurnai, Gunditjmara, Wiradjuri, and Yorta Yorta writer. She is standing on a stage lined with Australian plants, between curtains emblazoned with […]
Artists: Tony Albert, Rushdi Anwar, Sophie Cassar, Tabita Rezaria and Liz Linden. Curators: Georgie Meagher. Is it a measure of resilience to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick biosphere?[^1] Within a biosphere subject to an entanglement of hyperobjects – white supremacy, patriarchy and climate change, just to name a few – finding ways to […]
August is a time of year I really look forward to. It’s not the icy winds and rain of Narrm (Melbourne) or those short days when the sun seems to go to sleep at 4.30pm. It is because I look towards the north and pack my bags for Larrakia country, Darwin. August is a vibrant […]
Artist: Nástio Mosquito We sit in the middle of the front row to watch the thundering that was Nástio Mosquito’s Respectable Thief in late July as part of Season 2 (2017) at the Arts House in the North Melbourne Town Hall. A large shadow appears from behind a screen wall, singing an acapella gospel song. […]
Artists: Hannah Brontë, Skawennati, Esther Ige, Lisa Reihana, Salote Tawale and Leafa Wilson & Olga Krause Curators: Abby Cunnane and Charlotte Huddleston There is a sea change in the Ōtautahi arts scene. I can only speak to some of it, being Pākehā, but there is definitely change afoot and space is being made. This city […]
Artist: Luke Willis Thompson Within the context shaped by a musket barrel, is there any ethical responsibility besides silence, resistance and cunning?[^1] In the face of brutal violence, survival can be a radical form of resistance. Acting with poise and immediacy, Diamond Reynolds used her smartphone to record and broadcast, via Facebook Live, the moments […]
Artists: Francis Alÿs, Brook Andrew, Del Kathryn Barton, Farida Batool, Vivienne Binns, Leigh Bowery, Destiny Deacon and Virginia Fraser, Christine Dean, Kelly Doley and Diana Baker Smith, Ella Dreyfus, Regina José Galindo, Amala Groom, Samuel Hodge, Geumhyung Jeong, Kate Just, Samson Kambalu, Deborah Kelly, Barbara Kruger, Radha La Bia, Pat Larter, Richard Larter, Leigh Ledare, […]
Artists: Anang Saptoto, Bambang “Toko” Witjaksono, Cinanti Astria Johansjah, Cut and Rescue, Handiwirman Saptura, Iwan Effendi, Julia Sarisetiati, Kokok P. Sancoko, Krack, Priyanto Sunarto, and R.E. Hartanto. Curator: Grace Samboh Featuring 13 artists from Jakarta, Yogyakarta and Bandung, this is an uneven but energetic exhibition of Indonesian paper works curated by Grace Samboh. Her curatorial […]
Artist: Georgina Cue In the midst of geometric wooden structures, plush velvet drapery and other theatrical paraphernalia, a woman sits in an exaggerated stance, sheathed in a turban and cascading gown emblazoned with striking painted pleats. Beneath her, champagne satin shrouds a make-shift cardboard floor. Her face is painted a creamy ivory, the contours of […]
Artists: Abdul Abdullah, Andrew Christie, Mona Ibrahim, Sonia Leber & David Chesworth, James Nguyen, Pet Projects, Tom Polo, Keren Ruik, Damien Shen, Salote Tawale, Shevaun Wright and 110% Curator: Megan Monte Looking at me through you is a self-reflexive exhibition that responds to Campbelltown, a rapidly changing and developing suburb 50 kms south-west of Sydney’s […]
Artists: Zach Blas and Jemima Wyman, Megan Cope, Gabriella Mangano and Silvana Mangano, Archie Moore, Raquel Ormella, Keg de Souza and Tintin Wulia Curator: Aileen Burns and Johan Lundh In 1986 Peter Cripps, who was then Director of the Institute of Modern Art (IMA), curated Recession Art and Other Strategies.[^1] The exhibition hinged on the […]
Artists: Vicki Couzens, Julie Gough, Genevieve Grieves, Dianne Jones, r e a Curator: Genevieve Grieves In the simplest terms, the history of colonialism is a history of erasure. The Australian colonial project sought to violently erase Indigenous lifeworlds and at the same time, to conceal this erasure. Authors of colonial history had a vested interest […]
Artists: Olga Bennett, Lily Benson, Fernando do Campo, William Daniels, Naomi Eller, Andrea Jewell, Annika Koops, Alex Pittendrigh, Daniel Sinsel, Ross Taylor, Michelle Ussher, Anna Varendorff, Rudi Williams, Zilverster (Sharon Goodwin & Irene Hanenbergh) Curators: Storm Gold and Kez Hughes It would be hard to talk about the CAVES off-site project, curated by Directors Storm […]
Artists: Melanie Bonajo, Pony Express, Benjamin Forster, Karen Kramer, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Alexandra Navratil, and Rachel Pimm with Lori E. Allen Curator: Laura McLean Attentive to the ecological devastation that marks the present, The Conversational Cosmos aims to produce a site for shared experience across species and disciplines. It disrupts the invented hierarchical culture-nature divide, […]
Artists (listed in established-emerging pairings): Zanny Begg and Shivanjani Lal; Damiano Bertoli and Anna Higgins; Jon Campbell and Kenny Pittock; Barbara Cleveland and Get to Work; DAMP and Pitcha Makin Fellas; Diena Georgetti and Spencer Harvie; Agatha Gothe-Snape and Ella Sutherland; David Haines & Joyce Hinterding and Niall Robb; Laresa Kosloff and Jessie Bullivant; Nicholas […]