Year: 2013
Thérèse Desqueyroux & Hammer Horrors
Saturday, April 13th, 2013 Film Reviews,William Eggleston, whose work is showing at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art, is known for introducing colour into contemporary art photography. It was not a popular innovation among his peers who were devoted to the medium of black-and-white. The unspoken wisdom is that the world seems far more profound when photographed in black-and-white, and irredeemably […]
13 Rooms
Saturday, April 13th, 2013 Sydney Morning Herald Column,In 1969 a young, enthusiastic art collector named John Kaldor sponsored a visit to Sydney by the renowned international artists, Christo and Jeanne Claude. The project that resulted was Wrapped Coast, which saw hundreds of volunteers working with the artists to wrap a rocky section of Little Bay. Wrapped Coast was the first ever Kaldor […]
13 Rooms: First Impressions
Thursday, April 11th, 2013 Blog,Nude women in rooms are as big a drawcard for major art events as they are for Kings Cross sleaze parlours. There is, however, a world of difference between the tawdry eroticism of the strip club and the aura of high aesthetic distinction that applies to a project such as 13 Rooms. John Kaldor and […]
Trance & Rust and Bone
Saturday, April 6th, 2013 Film Reviews,In a recent poll sponsored by HMV, Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting (1996) was voted the best British film of the past 60 years. Although such surveys have an unhappy resemblance to those ‘Greatest Hits of All Time’ polls run by commercial radio stations, Trainspotting deserves the kudos. It was a brilliantly original movie which sealed Boyle’s […]
South of no North
Saturday, April 6th, 2013 Sydney Morning Herald Column,South of no North may seem an enigmatic title for an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, but a moment’s reflection provides clarity. The name of this show, which brings together the work of Laurence Aberhart, William Eggleston and Noel McKenna, is borrowed from a book of short stories by Charles Bukowski (1916-1994). This […]
Hyde Park on Hudson & Silence in the House of God
Saturday, March 30th, 2013 Film Reviews,Hard on the heels of Lincoln comes another movie about a great American President. But if Steven Spielberg seemed to be sending a message to Barack Obama about being steadfast and determined, it’s hard to know what Richard Michell is telling us about Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Hyde Park on Hudson. Allowing for its Spielbergisms, […]
Setouchi Triennale 2013
Saturday, March 30th, 2013 Sydney Morning Herald Column,‘Revitalisation’ is the keynote to the second Setouchi Triennale, an exhibition that uses contemporary art to bring new energies to a region in decline. The Seto Inland Sea is one of the most picturesque parts of Japan, with a diverse cultural heritage spread across a series of islands, large and small. Today, as in so […]
The Archibald Prize 2013: A Review
Saturday, March 23rd, 2013 Sydney Morning Herald Column,This column comes from Japan, where like a character in a horror story pursued by an implacable nemesis, I’m writing about… the Archibald Prize! This venerable portrait competition is an Australian institution that is simply incomprehensible to the rest of the world. To outsiders the popularity of the prize, and of portraiture in general, is […]
Hara-Kiri & The Loneliest Planet
Saturday, March 23rd, 2013 Film Reviews,Takashi Miike is the cinema’s man of a thousand faces. He is astonishingly prolific for a contemporary filmmaker, having directed more than 60 movies since his debut in 1991, as well as stage and TV productions. Miike is notorious not only for the quantity of his films but for their bewildering variety. He is probably […]
The Archibald Prize 2013: A Comment
Friday, March 22nd, 2013 Sydney Morning Herald Column,This year’s Archibald throws up one nagging question: “What’s that animal Hugo Weaving is holding?” Perhaps it’s something the special effects crew from the Matrix movies dreamt up. According to the news reports, Del Kathryn Barton, says the indefinable creature “demonstrates facets of the actor’s personality” – an explanation that raises more questions than it […]