Blog / Articles
Exhibition of drawings at Port Adelaide
HOW WILL WE DEFINE THIS ERA?
Historically we can look back over the last century and see how art reflected the time in which it was made.
IS IT MY MEMORY OR ONE THAT I APPROPRIATED?
Memory is defined in the dictionary as ‘the mental capacity or faculty of retaining and reviving facts, events, impressions, or of recalling or recognising previous experiences’. How that process works is still a mystery as is why some impressions are registered and retained and others are not. Recollection is another matter. Having something ‘on the tip of your tongue’ is a common phenomenon. What eventually brings it to mind? Synaptic association?
ART, THE MEASURE OF CIVILISATION
The 80s is forever condemned to being defined by the gaudy concoctions of Jeff Koons and the 90s by a shark in formaldehyde and the soulless reconstructed planes of Keiffer. Even now some two decades later, it seems as though art and artists were raking over the corpse of civilisation rather than defining it.
IS IT IGNORANCE OR JUST PLAIN STUPIDITY?
I hear people refer to work as abstract all the time. Sometimes it’s simply a lack of understanding and sometimes it’s a derogatory term suggesting that any work that doesn’t imitate nature in all its detail, is not art.
MODERN, POST MODERN and CONTEMPORARY
There are any number of terms in art that cause confusion not least of which are those that try to divide art, artists and time into clearly defined movements as you so often find in art text books.
PAINTING AND ILLUSTRATION – the unspecified divide.
I recently read a piece of critical writing...
THE FORGERY, THE COPY AND THE BREACH OF COPYRIGHT
Recently an artist on FB asked if making a study/copy of an artist’s work was a breach of copyright and someone else added that you would end up in jail if you did.
DO WE REALLY NEED CATALOGUE ESSAYS? I THINK NOT
I have lost count of how many times I have gone to an exhibition and been presented at the door with a book-length explanation of the work on the walls or the floor.
THE POLITICAL POWER OF EASEL PAINTING: FACT OR FALLACY
I recently spoke to a young artist, barely out of art school, who believed that her work could alter or shape people’s thinking about animals and the environment.
TIME IS ONE FILTER< CONTEMPLATIVE STILLNESS THE OTHER
In an article on sustainability in art Allen looks to the state of mind of the artist rather than the objects produced. This set me thinking [as does all of his writing] about my own practice.
ENCOUNTER
Today I re-read Joan Kee’s book on Korean contemporary abstract art in the light of seeing Jonathon Kim’s work at the West Thebarton gallery and on the back page of the recent edition of Artist Profile.