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Art

This exhibition book from the National Gallery of Victoria is enthralling. It presents the imagery of British emigration, hitherto unstudied; fifteen million people fled during Queen Victoria’s reign (1837–1901). There is a mix of art history with social history: major and minor paintings and popular-culture prints; memorabilia and relics. A wedding ring salvaged from the dreadful 1857 wreck of the emigrant ship Dunbar reminds us that there was only one survivor when, at the end of the voyage, she crashed into Sydney Heads.

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Published in March 2006, no. 279

Hermetic parameters

Anthony Gardner
Wednesday, 01 March 2006

There is no doubt that the state of writing about contemporary Australian art would be in dire straits without the support of Craftsman House. In the past two decades, this small Sydney-based publisher has plugged significant gaps in the field with some of its most influential texts: Vivien Johnson’s ground-breaking work on Australia’s Western Desert painters (1994); Charles Green’s thorough mapping of Australian art since 1970 (Peripheral Vision, 1995); and one of the first, and still most concise, English-language surveys of Soviet and early post-Soviet art, immediately spring to mind. This is not to say that all of these initiatives were limited to the thrall of academia. In collaboration with the magazine Art and Australia, Craftsman House produced a series of monographs on emerging and mid-career Australian artists at a time when their CVs generally hinged on catalogue essays or the occasional review. The effect was complementary: alongside the advocacy of artists such as Janet Laurence, H.J. Wedge and Hossein Valamanesh came the franking of a new wave of important local critics: not just Green and Johnson, but Chris McAuliffe, Paul Carter, Benjamin Genocchio and Ashley Crawford as well.

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Published in March 2006, no. 279

In Brenda Niall’s biography of Judy Cassab, the art forms of the subject and the author – life story and portraiture – are nested one in the other. As the story builds, one comes to accept that certain unsparing reflections on the subject’s personality and behaviour have as their authority Judy Cassab herself. She emerges as a heroine in a decidedly modern mode.

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Published in October 2005, no. 275

The tempting cover leads to a feast of 164 colour pictures, which you will fall upon with delight. Despite the title, almost all are of Melbourne and Sydney, places most Australians know well enough to enjoy pleased shocks of recognition. There are two highly specific Perth roofscapes, but a futurist speeding tram in Adelaide could be anywhere, and so could the industry at Yallourn, or sexual and racial tension at Townsville in 1942. Even if you come from the bush, you will know the city markets, cathedrals, law courts, showgrounds, Circular Quay and Harbour Bridge, Flinders Street Station and Collins Street trams, Town Hall concerts, Tivoli showgirls, Manly, St Kilda, racy Kings Cross lats, a frisson of ‘slums’. The author says he chose the works of art solely for their subject matter, yet he certainly appreciates aesthetic force. It’s a lively anthology of transport and other social nodes, parklands, beaches, building construction, shopping, entertainment. It makes the familiar look unexpectedly interesting.

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Published in August 2004, no. 263

Peter Timms is ‘dismayed’ by the state of contemporary art and by the hype that surrounds it and the reality of the experience. He has written a book mired in exasperation and frustration. It is not hard to share Timms’s sentiments. Visit any sizeable biennale-type exhibition and you are engulfed in flickering videos in shrouded rooms, installations of more or less hermetic appeal, large-scale photographs – these often prove to be the most interesting – scratchy ‘anti-drawings’ and a handful of desultory paintings. Noise is ‘in’, too. ‘Biennale art’ is the term frequently used to describe the phenomenon.

Quite who is to blame for this occupies much of the first half of Timms’s book. Artists hell-bent on having careers rather than seeking vocations are part of the problem, and so are curators of contemporary art who nourish the artist’s every need. Art schools are next, where cultural theory has replaced the teaching of art history. The superficialities and the susceptibility to trendiness in the Australia Council are further contributors.

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Published in August 2004, no. 263

Sublime Cocktail

Mary Eagle
Saturday, 01 May 2004

The exhibition murmured, with Baudelaire, of Correspondences. Wesfarmers’ collection has a high proportion of major paintings, each warranting close attention. What elated me, however, was the unusual rightness of the play between works of art. It was years since I had seen a non-thematic display (the Sublime is limitless, so hardly a theme) that reached into works of art obliquely and exercised the art of comparison with true inspiration.

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Published in May 2004, no. 261

Humphrey McQueen reviews 'Goya' by Robert Hughes

Humphrey McQueen
Monday, 01 December 2003

An appreciation of Goya, contends Robert Hughes, has become essential for Europeans wishing to make themselves literate in their own culture. Goya’s significance is heightened because his works are arguments for humanity, to be balanced against the horrors he depicted. Goya (1746–1828) indeed remains our contemporary. His life, his imagery and his dilemmas resonate at a time when countries are being invaded for their own good, as Europe was by Napoleon, provoking the first guerillas.

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This issue marks the start of a new feature for ABR, with covers reproducing some of the finest Australian photographs held by The National Gallery of Victoria (NGV). ABR is a journal that critically engages with a broad range of creativity, so it seems fitting that it should also highlight photography, a medium that is not only one of the leading art forms of the modern era but also an area in which Australian artists consistently excel.

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Published in April 2001, no. 229

Imants Tiller is one of the most distinguished of Australia’s postmodern generation of artists. Just about every trendsetting exhibition within Australia throughout the 1980s had a Tillers piece on centrestage, and his inclusion in internationally touring shows then and in the 1990s has been a matter of course. His commercial success has matched his fame and his prodigious output. But Tillers’s high profile and fashionable appeal are contradictory phenomena. For an artist whose work is declaratively derivative – brashly quoting, awkwardly imitating or strategically appropriating other artists’ imagery – Tillers has nonetheless managed to develop a signature effect in his working method which is inimitable.

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Despite the upsurge in the publication of books about Aboriginal life in recent years and the increased interest in traditional or ‘primitive’ art around the world, very few attempts have been made in this country to either reproduce substantial collections of photographs of Aboriginal art, or to provide serious, but readable. discussions of its relationship to the broader aspects of Australian society. This offering from the Berndts goes some way towards filling the gap between the coffee table glossies and the specialist publications of bodies such as the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. ... (read more)
Published in November 1982, no. 46