Tag: Wynne Prize
The Wynne Prize 2023
Tuesday, May 23rd, 2023 Sydney Morning Herald Column,Although the Wynne Prize for landscape (and very occasionally, figurative sculpture) is twenty years older than the Archibald Prize, the portrait show gets all the headlines. It seems local audiences agree with Clement Greenberg, the champion of late modern Abstraction, who said landscape was “overrated”. Not being an Aussie, he did not proceed to transfer […]
Salon des Refusés 2023
Tuesday, May 16th, 2023 Sydney Morning Herald Column,With more than 900 entries in this year’s Archibald Prize competition, one might imagine there would be a surfeit of masterpieces left over for the Salon des Refusés. Yet somehow, despite the obligatory breathless enthusiasm the Archibald generates in press and public, those great paintings never seem to show up, either at the Art Gallery […]
Salon des Refusés 2019
Friday, June 7th, 2019 Sydney Morning Herald Column,If Friedrich Nietzsche hadn’t come up with his theory of the Eternal Return in the late 19th century, a few visits to the Salon des Refusés at the S.H.Ervin Gallery would have planted the idea in the mind of any latter-day philosopher. For Nietzsche the thought that everything in life would repeat on an endless cycle was […]
Salon des Refusés 2018
Friday, June 29th, 2018 Sydney Morning Herald Column,After the Trustees of the Art Gallery of NSW have plucked the choicest morsels from the Archibald and Wynne buffet, it’s left to the Salon des Refusés to clean up the leftovers. This time there was less to choose from, as the Incredible Expanding Archibald Prize had swelled to 59 finalists, removing many good options […]
Salon des Refusés 2017
Thursday, August 3rd, 2017 Sydney Morning Herald Column,Every year I nurture a dim fantasy of a Salon des Refusés bristling with masterpieces rejected from the Archibald and Wynne Prizes by the Trustees of the Art Gallery of NSW. Every year I relinquish this thought almost as soon as I step into the S.H.Ervin Gallery. The Refusés was a great idea when it […]
Salon des Refusés 2016
Friday, August 5th, 2016 Sydney Morning Herald Column,Émile Zola gave us a vivid, barely-fictionalised account of the first Salon des Refusés, in his novel, L’Oeuvre (AKA. The Masterpiece): “He could see the visitors’ mouths gaping, their eyes narrowing, from the moment they passed the door; across the room, a group of young people were staggering back against the archway as if someone […]
Salon de Refusés 2013 & Jenny Sages
Saturday, April 20th, 2013 Sydney Morning Herald Column,This year’s Archibald Prize was one of the most even contests in decades, but also one of the least memorable. There have been pictures in previous competitions that would have romped home in this year’s field, but the luck and timing was with Del Kathryn Barton, not with the ghosts of Archibalds past. If there […]
William Robinson
Saturday, May 14th, 2011 Australian Art, Sydney Morning Herald Column,Looking at this year’s dismal selection for the Wynne Prize at the Art Gallery of NSW, I couldn’t help thinking that the most average landscape by William Robinson, who won the prize in 1990 and 1996, would have murdered everything else in the room.
Salon des Refuses, Wynne & Sulman Prize
Saturday, April 3rd, 2010 Sydney Morning Herald Column,Nothing could make this year’s Archibald Prize exhibition look good, although the Salon des Refusés at the S.H.Ervin Gallery makes it more understandable. After examining those works rejected from the official hang one may feel a twinge of sympathy for the Trustees of the Art Gallery of NSW who had to work their way through […]