Art
Edward Colless reviews 'Imants Tillers and the Book of Power' by Wystan Curnow
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.
... (read more)Rod Hagen reviews 'Aboriginal Australian Art: A visual perspective' by Ronald M. Berndt & Catherine H. Berndt with John E. Stanton
Mary Eagle reviews 'The Years of Hope: Australian Art and Criticism 1959–1968' by Gary Catalano
Gary Catalano’s book, which I admire greatly, is a readjustment. His standpoint, so far as I can tell, is an ideal he has of what might be the suitable creative situation for artists, and he reviews the 1960s with this in mind.
... (read more)Gary Catalano reviews 'Conrad Martens in Queensland: The Frontier Travels of a Colonial Artist' by J.G. Steele and 'A few Thoughts and Paintings' by Ted Andrew
I don’t quite know what to make of J.G. Steele’s dull, parochial catalogue of sketches and watercolours by Conrad Martens. The ‘frontier travels’ of one of our better colonial artists should, you expect, make interesting copy – especially when the artist in question happened to be prolific and the area of his travels the sparsely settled pastoral area of what is now South-eastern Queensland.