Tag: art

The Kenyan painter Michael Armitage makes ravishing paintings of everyday life in Nairobi. Past and the present, heroes and villains meet in pictures that recall Goya as seen through an especially painterly kaleidoscope. I profiled Armitage for The Saturday Paper while he was in Sydney for his show The Promised Land a couple of months […]

  I can’t imagine ever being able to figure out how the world works for women without the conversations I’ve had with my best friends. But it’s only after interviewing post, a theatre collective featuring performers Mish Grigor, Nat Rose and Zoe Coombs Marr that I started rethinking the ways in which we’re conditioned to […]

When I was growing up in Perth in the nineties, few artists summed up — or skewered — the surreal nature of suburban Australia with as much as wit as Reg Mombassa, who, along with designing for MAMBO, is also an incredible landscape painter. Had a lot of fun chatting with Mombassa in his Glebe […]

First published in The Collective, June 2017 Woollahra, the neighbourhood that was once home to artists and writers such as Patrick White, Banjo Paterson, Dame Joan Sutherland and Margaret Olley, has helped shape Sydney’s legacy of culture, design and art. That’s why Hotel Centennial, a heritage building on a block that’s lined with plane trees, […]

First published in BROAD magazine, March 2017.  Linda Jackson can see into the future. Although the iconic artist and fashion designer, who made a generation fall in love with the dazzling shades and dramatic shapes of the Australian landscape, came of age decades before we trawled Instagram for inspiration, she’s long believed that the images […]

First published in VAULT, issue 17 The Star Hotel, a spangled extension of Sydney’s flashiest casino is usually no place for anything but a deep sense of nihilism unless, of course, you happen to be in the company of the American artist Nick Cave. In his presence, gilt-plated surfaces and marble walls and even the […]

First published in VAULT, issue 15.  Lisa Yuskavage isn’t afraid of being too much. The New York artist, who has spent the last quarter of a decade painting a universe peopled by feminine subjects, whose bombshell physicality – legs splayed, breasts swollen – cloak the tawdry thrill of finding an old Penthouse, tucked under your […]

First published in VAULT, Issue 16. Tal R believes that craft is overrated. The Tel Aviv-born, Denmark-raised painter, whose palette of dirty pinks, jewel greens and schoolbus yellows manages to endow a parade of supine women, street scenes and carnivalesque spaces with an interior life that transcends their inanimate origins, says that intent always trumps […]

First published on Daily Life, July 2016  It’s a little absurd to think the idea that becoming an artist should mean foregoing financial security still informs our lives now, when it’s 150 years out of date. In 1851, Henri Murger, a little-known French author, wrote a book called Scènes de la vie de Bohème, based on a group of […]

First published on Daily Life, July 2016  It’s a little absurd to think the idea that becoming an artist should mean foregoing financial security still informs our lives now, when it’s 150 years out of date. In 1851, Henri Murger, a little-known French author, wrote a book called Scènes de la vie de Bohème, based on a group of […]

First published on Daily Life, July 2016  It’s a little absurd to think the idea that becoming an artist should mean foregoing financial security still informs our lives now, when it’s 150 years out of date. In 1851, Henri Murger, a little-known French author, wrote a book called Scènes de la vie de Bohème, based on a group of […]

Is motherhood really incompatible with creativity? Neha Kale speaks to three artists with children to find out if being a mother can deepen the ability to realise artistic ambitions and live a creative life. Joan Didion regularly told her daughter Quintana, “shush, I’m working.” Josephine Baker choreographed performances involving her 12 adopted kids. Patti Smith […]

First published in VAULT magazine, February 2016.  Laden with pastiche, symbols and signifiers, the work of shapeshifting British artist Grayson Perry transports us to the edge of self-awareness while preventing us from plumbing its darkness and depths.  There are two Grayson Perrys. The first makes ceramic pots, tapestries and etchings that wrap winking takedowns of […]

First published in The Collective, February 2016.  Will Cotton owes a debt to the gods of real estate. When the New York artist, whose lush oil paintings conjure cotton-candy wonderlands that feel like long-forgotten figments of our wildest childhood fantasies, moved into a loft equipped with an oven, he never could have guessed that his […]

Sam Leach’s paintings might be known for an oil-slick glossiness but his preference for sheen over substance is a visual trick. The Melbourne-based artist, who won the Archibald and Wynne prizes in 2010 and recently showed at Time Space Existence, a collateral event of the Venice Biennale, combines flat surfaces with landscapes that recall the […]

First published in Daily Life, August 2015 Three decades before we learned how to adjust our arms in front of a smartphone screen and commit our most winsome angles to Instagram, Cindy Sherman turned the selfie into high art. One late seventies summer, the American photographer started taking the Untitled Film Stills, a series of grainy black-and-white […]

First published in Vault magazine, April 2015  Clinton Ng might not play favourites with his art collection but he can’t conceal his enthusiasm for the pieces that light him up. When I quiz Ng about why A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, Vik Muniz’s freewheeling riff on the Manet masterpiece, currently takes centre stage in his […]

First published in i-D May 2015  In the past decade, acclaimed New Zealand artist Judy Millar‘s varied work has filled a German gallery with Technicolor tidal waves and unspooled wild brushstrokes across the walls of a Renaissance church for the 53rd Venice Biennale. Always a fan of an enveloping spectacle, her latest show Reverse Cinema at Sydney’s Sullivan + Strumpf draws […]

First published in Vault magazine, April 2015.  To be a painter at the start of the 21st century is to find yourself in thrall to the technical overtures of those that have come before you but Kaye Donachie prefers the kinetic to the aesthetic. When the Glasgow-born artist talks about her process, it’s with an […]

First published in Daily Life, November 2014.  Australian art history has an alarming tendency to conflate notoriety and originality. The shiny allure that inspires cult biographies and mass hysteria among collectors, like in the case of Adam Cullen or Brett Whitely, isn’t just down to talent – it’s also about the ways in which the […]

First published in Broadsheet, November 2014  Infinex III, a new exhibition by iconic Australian painter Sydney Ball, is the work of a colourist at the top of his game. “They’re almost stupid-looking,” the artist Sydney Ball says laughing as he gestures toward a sequence of stark vector panels. Their blues, reds and oranges shimmer with […]

Published in Broadsheet July 2014 Sydney artist Meg Minkley hopes to change the conversation about sexual violence, one drawing at a time. For Meg Minkley, drawing is as much spiritual lifeline as it is a form of self-expression. When this Sydney artist and illustrator was raped by a hostel owner while travelling in Mexico a […]

First published in Vault Issue 6, April 2014  For Romanian artist and activist Dan Perjovschi, drawing engenders freedom. Dan Perjovschi is in the grip of post-travel euphoria. The Romanian artist and activist, best known for covering museum walls with urgent sketches that double as witty political takedowns, has just returned from a week at a […]

There are some parts of Melbourne that remain untouched by the tyranny of cool. High Street, Thornbury, with its mix of kebab outlets, tyre shops and non-ironic bikie bars, is one of these places. Sure, the odd café and vintage store nods at what might come, but the area still feels like it sits on […]

Published in Scoop Homes & Art, Summer 2013/14 The search for quality Chinese pieces is growing harder, as collector interest reaches its peak  The London suburb of West Ruislip feels half a world away from South Kensington, home to fabled auction house Christie’s – the unofficial epicenter of the global art world. But in November […]

War Is Over (If you want it), a MCA survey charting the work of artist and performer Yoko Ono, is proof that the relationship between art and activism is as poignant as ever. For Yoko Ono, the only history that matters is the kind you write yourself. The 80 year old musician, artist and activist […]

First published in Vault, November 2013 Known for his famed 100 Chairs in 100 Days project, Italian-born designer Martino Gamper broaches the collision of forms, the collusion function and the cultural symbolism of materials in his unique recasting of domestic furniture.  Martino Gamper trades in joyful collisions. In 2007, the London-based furniture designer spent 100 […]

Published in Broadsheet, Spring edition 2013 The Fukutake House Asia Art Platform – a collaborative exhibition that unfolded in Japan as part of this year’s Setouchi Triennale – saw food and contemporary art bridge the gap between the local and global. The Seto Inland Sea might only be four-and-a-half hours by shinkansen from Tokyo, but […]

There’s a faintly dystopian air to the part of Regent Street between Cleveland and Broadway. This pocket of Sydney is a postcard-perfect slice of urban decay, a strip of boarded-up facades and abandoned warehouses that hints that something subversive might be brewing just below the surface. It comes as little surprise that this stretch of […]

Published in Broadsheet  Jeff Wall’s survey exhibition at the MCA is proof of his talent for bringing unrealised narrative moments to life. In literature, the subjunctive mood is a technique that assigns meaning to something that hasn’t yet happened, rather than what is actually been described. In doing so, it creates moments that owe their impact […]

Published in Broadsheet, January 2012  Curious and irreverent as ever, MONA’s Festival of Music and Art returns to Hobart with a star line-up and a festival experience that is anything but ordinary. You would be forgiven for mistaking a subterranean art lair built by a collector with a thing for gambling, an ex-bassist turned Zen […]

Published in Broadsheet, March 2013 Dissolve brings the work of celebrated street artist Vhils to Sydney for the first time. In the last few years, street art has gone hand-in-hand with bankability. Although figures such as Banksy, Shepard Fairy and Space Invader may have once mounted their cultural critiques from the shadows and alleys, their work […]

Published in Broadsheet, January 2013 Anish Kapoor’s new exhibition at the MCA proves that the pull of irony is no match for the power of poetry. There’s a brand of contemporary art that can make you feel clever just by being in its presence. The kind of cool, cloying work that helps you master your […]

Published in Broadsheet, Summer edition 2013  Sydney’s ode to contemporary Chinese art is a compelling blend of serendipity, inclusiveness and imagination. In Alice in Wonderland, Alice’s first glimpse of the white rabbit sparks a strange shift in her consciousness. When the creature materialises, it pulls at the threads of her reality and what follows serves to […]

Published in Broadsheet, Spring edition September 2012 Contemporary dance was included in the Biennale of Sydney’s artistic program for the first time this year, with Carraigeworks unveiling a compelling new work of equal parts art, dance and spectacle. For most of us, music offers a soundtrack to our lives, imbuing the best moments with greater meaning […]

Published in Broadsheet Dane Lovett’s latest exhibition at Sullivan + Strumpf is a mature take on teenage dreaming. In Dane Lovett’s world, the still life is anything but static. His depictions of plant matter and pop culture ephemera shift between personal and universal orientations, in the way you’re never quite sure if your love for […]

Published in Broadsheet If artistic exploration is about the unknown, then geometry – with its sharp edges and measurable angles – might seem its antithesis. But if you visit the latest exhibition by Sydney artist Criena Court, you’d be inclined to disagree. Angles + shapes + geos + space, which opened at the Robin Gibson Gallery […]

Published in Broadsheet Melbourne-based collaborators Design & Other explore the relationship between travel and memory with their debut Australian exhibition at Perimeter Books. Our experiences of place can often be more powerful in retrospect. Sometimes creating an image or telling a story can evoke a technicolour version of the past, bringing new depth to old travel […]

Published in Broadsheet A new North Melbourne cafe combines good food and coffee with hopes of giving new exposure to local creatives. When you live in the type of city that elevates its coffee to high art, the pleasures of caffeine consumption can get a little lost in the process. That’s why the Sketch & […]

Published in Broadsheet  Michelle Hamer’s large, hand-stitched tapestries of urban signs set out to explore the currency of the suburban dream in the wake of the GFC. Mundane and often unremarkable, urban signs point to the ‘nothing’ moments in our existence – the dead ends, wrong turns and roadblocks that go by unnoticed. But signage […]

Published in Broadsheet  A new artis-run contemporary art space in the Paterson Building on Smith Street is driven by the possibilities of transience. Smith Street’s Paterson Building sits somewhere between Fitzroy’s working class past and its redeeming present as the heartland of the Melbourne art world. The former 19th century furniture warehouse has been part […]

Published in Broadsheet Too often, beauty is associated with a lack of substance. It’s easy to look at something beautiful and debate its worth, but its power is often a symptom of something much bigger and more elusive. On a sunny day, Sydney Harbour has this slightly perplexing effect. Its beauty is so arresting, you […]

Published in Relative magazine A few weeks upon my return from an extended overseas foray, I found myself at an event that halted the driving force behind the extended overseas foray. The event was a launch of a street press so obscure, so purposefully underground that it did not take the form of paper but […]