In 2017, Dani McKenzie’s work was imbued with a strange nostalgic melancholy. She was undertaking a residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris and her paintings, which were based on found photography, were infused with mystery as neither

When I relocated to New York in 2014 for further study, I learnt that I was invested in the particular way that I encountered non-human companions. I learnt that the colonially introduced birds around me made me feel at home in a new place. This affi

In 2017, Angus and his wife, artist Liz Linden, decided to leave New York and move to California. “It was a period of consolidation, and I didn’t make a lot of work. I started a fairly intense renovation of a beautiful but terrifying Victorian house

When pondering the form of opera, the collective imagination conjures resplendent images of a chorus dressed in gold tassels, and vast crinoline vitrines enveloping a soprano soloist who is a third of their size. However, this is a depiction arising

Michael Snape is probably best known as a sculptor. But he is, in fact, an artistic polymath – a painter, a writer, and an assiduous blogger, writing articles, reviews, poetry, and opinion pieces. His new exhibition Here at Australian Galleries, Sydn

“Look, I hate opening up like this,” Peter Godwin says. “It’s not that I find it difficult, but it’s like Matisse said: ‘Painter’s tongues should be cut out at birth’.” I’m glad that Godwin still has his tongue. I’m glad because, while the artist may

Plastered across the press release for this survey show is a quote: “Every artist has their language – any halfdecent artist has their particular handwriting, as Margaret Olley used to say – and it’s showing people how to see your vision of the world

Gaga Aesthetics: Art, Fashion, Popular Culture, and the Up-Ending of Tradition Vicki Karaminas and Adam Geczy Bloomsbury Academic, 2022 RRP $170 AUD This is not really a book “about” Lady Gaga, and it’s certainly not a book about Lady Gaga’s lyrics.

To bring together the work of Aboriginal, diasporic Australian and international artists is a formidable task: How to give visibility to the complexity of lived experience without homogenising or universalising? Cementa was founded in Kandos in mid-2

Ryan Presley’s work is full of symbolism, but I also like to think of it as testing the line between iconography and insignia, directing viewers to consider rank and responsibility, status and standing. Presley, who has both Aboriginal and Scandinavi

Archibald Prize winner Del Kathryn Barton ventures beyond the artist’s studio to direct her first full-length film that takes us into the real and imaginary worlds of twelve-year-old Blaze in a harrowing coming of age tale. I really wished I had not

I squint at my creased map from a clearing in the Karlsaue Park. In an attempt to escape the sting of the sun, I’d decided to take a shortcut to the “compost heap” – the location of La Intermundial Holobiente’s installation – but there are more track

Clad in uniform sheets of fibrous cement (fibro) arranged as a grid, with a surface trim that clearly defines the framework, the reduced form of the fibro house has long been a favoured subject for Australian artists including Christopher Zanko, John

Mythos of the Island examines cultural ecologies associated with lost and stolen artefacts within the Al-Jazira region, the area between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers also known as Mesopotamia. The work is a tangible visual memory of sculptural dei

In Australia there is an ongoing tradition of landscape painting that goes back for more than two centuries. There is also another tradition in Australian art that can be termed “painting country” that goes back millennia and is still thriving today.

The owners of Moss Vale’s newest accommodation, Moss Manor, Louella and Tony Grattan-Smith, first met Defiance Gallery director Campbell Robertson-Swann at a dinner years ago, where they began an enduring friendship. Moss Manor is the result of this

In 2015, Park made Garden, a site-specific mixed-media installation which fused an imagined archaeological site with a consideration of the histories embedded in material culture. Free from the constraints of the gallery environment, Park embedded Ga

All elections bring forth a tumultuous change in the Australian society, as the old order is thrown out like confetti from a departing ship of fools and a new course is set for a journey charting turbulent and dangerous waters of the minds, hearts, a

The term “biophilia” was first coined by psychologist Erich Fromm in 1964 to describe “a passionate love of life and all that is alive.” Human beings have a profound drive to connect with the natural world which seems ingrained in our DNA to survive

Audrey Newton delves into the subconscious. Her creative process, she tells me, often begins with “extracting ideas from altered states, such as dreams, meditation, or any trancelike state, and giving them a physical form.” This may be as an installa

Ken Whisson, who died at his Sydney home in the final week of February, seemed in recent years to be defying the natural course of ageing, creating pictures that conveyed an undimmed enchantment with life. Giving no indications of ill health, the nin

Amber Wallis is in the middle of preparations for her upcoming exhibition at Sydney Contemporary with Nicholas Thompson Gallery. She works quickly and lightly across three large artworks in her small studio in Northern New South Wales. A few images a

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Here we are. Backwards or forwards in time to a moment when we slip through the teeth of the world us humans have made, and feel a relaxed sense of place and connection with the nonhuman. I went to the desert once, and while trying to drink up its gl

The 59th Venice Biennale, the world’s most prestigious art exhibition, opened this past April with a year’s delay due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The biennale, which includes exhibitions in national pavilions and an all-important central exhibition, ta

Without compromise, for the last forty years Waanyi artist Gordon Hookey has held a metaphorical mirror to himself and his work. Hookey makes work about the past and the future. His drawings, paintings, prints, sculptures, and installations speak to