Category: Arts Writing
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The Saturday Paper | Review: Frances Barrett’s ‘Meatus’ at ACCA
The body’s wordless vocalisations – the labour of breathing, the sound of gurgles, gasps of desire or fear – have a power that can be dangerous, erotic and disturbingly intimate. They escape the limits of language and permit something else to pour out. For the exhibition Meatus, Frances Barrett has transformed the Australian Centre for Contemporary […]
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Art Guide Australia | Interview: Kiki Smith about being patient in the uncontrollable
Since the 1980s acclaimed American artist Kiki Smith has been creating multidisciplinary works on mortality, sexuality, nature and embodiment. From sculptures of the body, to drawings based on mythology and fairy tales, to incredible tapestries—which are showing for the Biennale of Sydney—Smith has pushed at the boundaries of form, creating works that are beguiling in […]
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Art Guide Australia | Interview: Mikala Dwyer on mysticism, daydreaming and ‘not-knowing’
Vivid yet mysterious, Mikala Dwyer’s installations connect a range influences and curiosities including the mystical, occultism, constructivism, Dada, Bauhaus, memory and sexuality. Often using materials like textiles, plastic, plywood and plants, the artist creates highly experiential, affective spaces. With a four-decade practice, and a new exhibition on avian life, Dwyer talks about the mystical, daydreaming, […]
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The Age | In a world of wonder, Piccinini asks us to value more than beauty
Newly dusted off, the deserted ballroom above Flinders Street Station is an arresting and quietly emotive space to encounter Patricia Piccinini’s hyper-real creatures. Accessible to the public after 25 years of closure, the venue is wondrous – as is the art. And wonder, which shouldn’t be mistaken for escapism, is something we need right now. […]
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Disclaimer | Iterations: John Nixon
Not far from where St Kilda beach forms a firm line against the land, inside the Palais Theatre, which is suspended in the throes of young energy and blatant desire, housing the new strutting contempt of rock’n’roll, John Nixon is watching the Rolling Stones. It’s 1965 and he’s fifteen years old, sitting in the second […]
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The Age | An unfinished landscape: She-Oak show sheds new light on classics
She-Oak and Sunlight: Australian Impressionism Among plenty of paintings of the Australian landscape there are unexpected, flooring moments: one is a young toddler, dressed in her pink Sunday best, wobbling along, puffy arms floating for balance, a facial expression of soft surprise. This painting, by female Australian impressionist Iso Rae, is one of many emotive […]
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Art Guide Australia | Interview: Matthew Harris on camp, class and culture
From repetitions of flowers to grim reapers riding unicorns to cartoon devils gleefully inflicting pain on their enemies, the paintings of Matthew Harris hang between amusing and provoking; the cute and the uncanny; the absurd and the vulgar. Painted in a flattened yet buoyant style, Harris’s work finds easy company in camp aesthetics – yet […]
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The Age | ‘I’m trying to crack a code’: mum’s brain injury inspires artist
Jennifer Arnold’s words unfold, like inscrutable clues, across her daughter’s paintings. Written in a flowing script, the phrase “déar Dé-light” hovers atop a floating envelope. In another work, words are painted in a lightly flourished style, delivered with a curious logic that’s difficult to relay in print, but works brilliantly pictorially: “we be ed-it! 1970’s […]
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Art Guide Australia | Interview: Anne Wallace on realism, motherhood and creating tension
Drawing upon passing scenes from life, and filled with allusions to pop culture, Anne Wallace’s realist paintings deliver images that flitter between intimate and suspenseful. Reminiscent of those moments when lived experience feels tinged with the cinematic, Wallace’s three-decade practice is a glance into personhood, womanhood, glamour and desire. Tiarney Miekus: I understand you grew up […]
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The Age | Seeing like Jeffrey Smart: how empty streets gave me a new insight
There was both rain and sunshine; buildings and roads appeared brighter than the darkened clouds. In a strange stillness, I was the only figure walking through an awkward meeting point of freeways and overpasses in South Melbourne. It felt entirely real, and unreally cinematic. I thought of two images: the first was a girl in […]
Tiarney Miekus 