Why MONA succeeds where the rest fail
This extremely disparate exhibition appears to be a cheeky send-up of the Biennale industry – but it works, thanks to the notes.
Visual Arts
Melbourne: through a migrant’s lens
David Niu emigrated from Shanghai in 2007, and says he still struggles with the language barrier in Australia. But his street photography of his adopted city speaks volumes.
How artist JiaWei Shen created Tower of Babel
An enthralling documentary about the creation of a unique work of art charts the history of communism and its impact on one long-suffering family.
ChristopherAllen
Striking works by artists who took part in the Australian Antarctic Division’s residency program between 1987 and 2009
‘They were dangerously modern’: trailblazing women artists
A big exhibition of Australia’s pioneering women artists who overcame social constraints is slated for the state art galleries of NSW and South Australia next year.
Prisoners in a foreign land
A moving exhibition documents the harrowing experience of a group of German men who were shipped to Australia in 1940.
Woodside shrugs off art scandal
WA Deputy Premier Rita Saffioti said the decision to accept the vandalised perspex into the museum’s collection was not one she would have made.
‘Lindy, I want you to be as ambitious as possible’: Lee’s $14 million masterpiece
The National Gallery of Australia has unveiled its most expensive ever acquisition. But is Lindy Lee’s Ourorobos worth the multimillion dollar price tag, and will it stand the test of time?
NGA unveils most controversial purchase since Blue Poles in 1973
The National Gallery of Australia’s most expensive commission – a $14m sculpture by Lindy Lee of a self-eating serpent – has been unveiled in the forecourt of the Canberra institution.
Our critic’s verdict: $14m is an absurd price for a work of debatable value by an artist of modest standing
Lindy Lee’s Ouroboros is an example of the incompetent management of our National Gallery and of the weak and ineffectual oversight of the Council. Both should be replaced if the decline of the NGA is to be reversed.
Impressionist masterpieces heading Down Under
Works by artists including Monet, Renoir and Degas will travel from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston to the National Gallery of Victoria in what will be one of the largest and most significant collections of French Impressionism ever exhibited here.
‘This sends the message to green activists that criminal acts should be celebrated rather than condemned’
What do you call a Woodside-hating radical’s spray paint job over one of the nation’s greatest paintings by Frederick McCubbin? Vandalism? Criminal damage? The Western Australian Museum calls it history.
10 must-see cultural landmarks: The world’s best new museums from Bali to Norway
Focused on everything from Balinese astrology to Shakespearean performance, these museums are as diverse as they are innovative.
What you didn’t know about the Roman empire
This remarkable exhibition deals with an aspect of Roman culture that is relatively unfamiliar to most people.
‘His objective was to disturb, to provoke’: Magritte unmasked in ground-breaking retrospective
The Beatles and Steve Jobs loved his art so much they ended up in court over it. Now, The Art Gallery of NSW unveils the first Australian in-depth exhibition dedicated to this surrealist master.
Anti-Israel artist quits NGA after outrage over ‘holocaust’ slur
Tony Burke has remained tight-lipped after he advised the National Gallery the artist he appointed had resigned after calling out the state of Israel for committing ‘genocide’ in Gaza.
An artist retreats: Tony Clark, his tin shed, and a life’s work
What led this painter to brush off the urbane art world and seek solace among the crocs in remote Far North Queensland?
How Australian artists found creative and sexual liberation abroad
For Australian expat painters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Paris was a liberal city where they could escape the ‘stuffy moralism’ of England.
It’s a seahorse love story
They form long-term monogamous relationships, and it’s the male that gets pregnant. But the most endearing thing about White’s Seahorses, according to a leading researcher? They fall in love.
Journey into light and deep time
Lloyd Rees was ignored for most of his career. Now, the painter’s Tasmanian landscapes are on show in this fine exhibition.
Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/visual-arts/page/3