Blog / Articles
BANANA POLITICS OR WHATEVER YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH
Given three hundred years from now the baby boomers, millennials and Gen Z will be long gone and the ultra-rich will be camped on Mars thumbing their noses at the have-nots. ‘Comedian’ may well be an apt description.
THE NOVELTY OF LIFE AND DEATH IN THE ART MARKET
Are these the natural filters we have come to accept Novelty, boredom and death? Perhaps we of the 21st century can’t see the wood for the trees and will have to wait a century or a millennium to find out what has survived and what was worth preserving but who, or what circumstance, actually render that decision, if indeed it is even rational, remains a mystery.
THE EXPLOITATION OF EXPECTATION
The internet has democratised access to the visual arts but is the result an advance in culture or has it reduced culture to its lowest common denominator
THE AGE OF MORTALITY
The candidates for this year’s Turner prize all work with their political and social pasts, injustice, prejudice and colonialism as the reworking of history seemingly exists to teach us lessons. While art has always been utilised as propaganda, those lessons essentially fall on deaf ears.
ART IS FINISHED. OR IS IT?
A recent controversy over the work of Damien Hirst has brought the idea of conceptual and finished dates into question.
THE DEMOCRATIC RIGHT TO SUFFER AS AN ARTIST
If there is a direct link between art and democracy it is that under any democratic society artists have the collective right to be poor, put upon, misunderstood, barely tolerated and to complain vociferously.
NOWHERE TO HIDE
It is not often that portrait painting...
ORIGINALITY OR HOW TO LITIGATE YOUR WAY TO HEROIC STATUS
In Australia there is hardly an outback road sign that is not peppered with bullet holes but then again, this has nothing to do with art so much as road signs being fair game.
AGE, RETIREMENT AND THE FALLACY OF YOUTH
My most frequent response to the question of retirement is that it depends what they mean by retired.
Inner Sanctum
For some decades now the art world has been pondering where it is heading, if it is heading anywhere in particular or in indeed if it could ever have a singular face
BAROSSA ARTS FESTIVAL
THE ANECDOTE THAT TELLS YOU EVERYTHING – EXCEPT HOW TO RESPOND
The speaker at an exhibition opening has to balance any number of aspects of both the art and the artist. Audiences come to openings hoping to come to grips with the work of the artist and expect anecdotes that impel understanding or at least, recognition that artists have lives beyond the gallery walls.