Reviews | ArtInfo.com.au | Art in Melbourne, Australia

Skip to content

Reviews

The Spoils, Sam Leach at Nellie Castan Gallery: In the beginning, the thing you will notice about Sam Leach’s paintings is that they are very seductive objects. Let’s get this out of the way. Did I say....; Read review

Stillness is the Move: Frozen Frames in Thornton Walker: Outstanding works on paper are seen in a pair of shows by Thornton Walker: The Stillness in Movement at Beaver Galleries....; Read review

Irresistible object:Lee Ufan at the Guggenheim: Lee Ufan’s arrangements of rocks and canvases are sparse and clean, but he is no glib minimalist. Instead of looking coolly on these works, we identify with the intense absorption behind each line...; Read review

Generation Capture Release: Fairweather Robbins: Robbins is well known for his wind drawing machines, his focus on process and on the generative power of natural forces. His ‘Weatherglyph’ series is a new iteration of his wind drawings but with a completely alternative temporal approach.; Read review

Forms of Deception: Read review

Nature revealed: Nature revealed is an extensive record of von Guérard’s art that takes a good couple of hours to digest. By the time I’d worked my way through the exhibition I was at once overawed by his prolific output, his relentless expression of a detailed and ‘picturesque’ enframement of the landscape, and equally discomforted by a sickly sweet, tick-a-box translation of an ideal Romanticism.; Read review

Longer Little Deaths: Moulds for anamonitored experiences: Bill Sampson’s installation has three components: moulds on tall stands, crushed aluminium paintings, and a triple plinth. They all upset our expectation and startle our reality and, to various degrees, involve chance and alchemy.; Read review

Images of modern evil: History is full of moralists who went around in their day insulting people for their lack of virtue. A millennium, a century, a decade later, we read their invectives and cringe. The main cause of their distemper now seems little more than misanthropic jealousy, where the reasons for moral disapproval boil down to a hatred of other people having fun.; Read review

Ohne Titel: I’m trying really very hard not to open this review with a variant on ‘what a load of rubbish’, but alas, there it is. Truly, this show is rubbish. And yet, it is so much more.; Read review

The Recovery of Discovery: Signing a legal waiver before admission to an art exhibition has almost always set me up for a disappointment. It sets my imagination running wild with expectations of truly dangerous and perilous conditions. .; Read review

A Bird on the Wire: At first these images, for all of their post-Picasso minimalist edge, seem strangely archaic. Of course the painting of the feathered has...; Read review

Georgetti’s Carnivalesque: At first sight it could be some kind of gigantic insect larvae, a creature in the process of embryogenesis, a pupa of some monstrous creature waiting to hatch. The heat of the lights bares down on it, encouraging some...; Read review

The Shock of the Old: Tony Clark was always something of an oddity. He emerged in the early 1980s via the independent artists’ space Art Projects, Melbourne...; Read review

Freehand : Recent Australian Drawing: The title of this show set up certain expectations which were frustrated, for different reasons, for me and the people I saw it with. I think that people generally go into an exhibition of drawings hoping to feel they are closer to...; Read review

Book: The Key Issues Concerning Contemporary Art by Dr Gary Willis: For anyone interested in the problems attendant on contemporary art today, a new publication to hit the print-on-demand market is Dr Gary Willis's The Key Issues Concerning Contemporary Art, University of Melbourne, 2010.; Read review

James & Eleanor Avery: For their first major exhibition in Melbourne, James and Eleanor Avery bring a beautifully malicious presence to the main gallery at Nellie Castan. Openly stating a wish to create works which are ambiguous and have multiple readings ...; Read review

Sam Martin-Overloaded Man: In the tight confines of the project space at Arc One a definitive articulation of colour pulsates from the semi-figurative, semi-abstract paintings of Sam Martin. A rushing sea of reds is offset by occasional oranges....; Read review

Steven Asquith-Storm Concepts: As the title suggests Steven Asquith’s new show alludes to landscape and the weather– but not literally. Asquith seems...; Read review

Hard Age New Edge: Depak Chopra meets Robert Morris in one of the strangest shows you’re going to see this year. With equal amounts of Minimalist....; Read review

WHITE LINE, GREEN WAY-LISA ANDREW: A modestly scaled exhibition for sure, but there’s a lot to look at in Sydney artist Lisa Andrew’s White Line, Green Way. Dealing with the tricky front ‘cube’; Read review

The Lost Living: A drawn-out whining sound surrounds the audience as we descend into the darkness and are silently and impassively instructed to sit.; Read review

In The Zone by Blaine Cooper: Walking the darkened narrow corridor toward the gallery space I’m immediately drawn in by the rhythmic drums and the sound of a man’s voice. Light filters down the pathway creating a sense of anticipation; Read review

Portraits under the pavement: You never know what you're going to get. Catch my drift, thronging masses?; Read review

My brother Esau is an hairy man but I am a smooth man: he curator of the Ron Mueck retrospective at the NGV referred to the narrative qualities of the work. By this I take him to mean that we are drawn into a scene that the people depicted in the work inhabit and infer their state of mind from their facial expressions and body language, by reference...; Read review

Camilla Tadich-Slabalong: SLABALONG. The word is painted on a piece of wood with the Ls turned into arrows pointing off somewhere into the outback night. It’s a funny word, cute even, but there’s no way I’d follow its direction.; Read review

Ross Coulter-Prelude: Occupying the large front gallery of Seventh, Prelude commands a presence. A large group of paper sculptures hang suspended in space, as if floating, frozen. As many as two dozen of these occupy the gallery, each an aggregate of folded paper, taped together, that...; Read review

Tai Snaith-The Wild Chorus: To me, Tai Snaith's work has always seemed like the product of an innocence both cheeky and brutal. A series of messages delivered in the same way a child might exclaim in the supermarket queue...; Read review

Art and Medicine: Mori show needs further injection of art; Read review

Peter Greenaway at Melbourne International Arts Festival: eter Greenaway’s filmic installation of a replica of Da Vinci’s The Last Supper (1498) is on as part of The Melbourne International Arts Festival. He aims to set up a dialogue between painting and film – as the short written introduction outside the exhibition...; Read review

ANALOGUE SHIFT-JUSTIN ANDREWS: I’ll start at the beginning. This is a beautiful looking exhibition. There’s a shift from some of the more overtly architectural works of some of Andrews’ past shows and a move to a fascination with abstraction...; Read review

EurEco Revolution by Ash Keating: Ash Keating is a highly productive artist whose work embraces the ancient and simultaneously contemporary process of utilising/modifying the energy flow of a system in order to alter/subvert it. Think judo masters....; Read review

between... you + me, sky + earth, time + space: group show in three parts, a collaborative show, or a show of two artists, this collected group of artworks serves itself as any or all of those propositions. Clearly presented as an entity of....; Read review

Damon Kowarsky- Joshua McClelland Print Room: The exhibition rooms; a charming series of small, intimate rooms more akin to an old school apartment than contemporary viewing rooms, immediately establish a homely setting within which the intimacy of....; Read review

Daniel Argyle at NCG: In his latest show at NCG Argyle presents a series of cardboard boxes printed with colourful, formalist abstract patterns. On the walls are a series of cardboard works - small boxes which seem to have...; Read review

Dream Houses.: DON'T WAIT TILL YOU RENOVATE! The time to see David Ralph’s EXTENSIONS is NOW!; Read review

Block Projects - Geoff Newton: There’s a certain peripatetic nature to the various art projects of Geoff Newton. Traveling through music/sound...; Read review

Dalí: Liquid Desire: There are such a vast number of objects in this exhibition, and it is so difficult to get close to the more famous ones, due...; Read review

You’re Portrait by Lucy Farmer: In a long, narrow space, glowing with rich burgundy paint, seven portraits are arranged along the walls. Eight sets of eyes look out from painted confines, seeming to observe and gain life from the return of a viewers gaze. As...; Read review

AUTO RETRATO - PAINTINGS FOR P.W. - JEREMY KIBEL: Picasso himself was quoted as saying "all paintings are self portraits". What Kibel has painted are a series of large heads strongly reminiscent of Picasso, faintly resembling the man, and then again ....; Read review

Tacita Dean at ACCA: I have had a background interest in Tacita Dean’s work for a number of years now, from the first time I saw her mesmerising films....; Read review

ROSE NOLAN -"ANOTHER HOMEWORK EXPERIMENT ": “…Rose Nolan’s “detail, My Scrap/Note Collection” and “It’s Okay To Be Alright” look like a quick attempt to come up with a spoof of a Barbara Kruger work, but...; Read review

DENISE GREEN: EVANESCENCE: Recently, my sister and I decided to take a drive up to Kinglake and the Yarra Valley for the first time since Black Saturday. As you...; Read review

My Plastic Everything-Jackson Slattery: lattery is certainly one of the most interesting painters working in Melbourne. This show is a rare opportunity to see a major body of his work in....; Read review

New 09 - A review: The New series of exhibitions at ACCA inevitably disappoint some....; Read review

SOCIETY GETS THE ART IT DESERVES: This was the phrase employed by Stephen Asquith of Block Projects in regard to a society which only produces an elite few who can afford art and who have created a market for a slickly presented final product, which.....; Read review

A Life More Ordinary at Westspace: 400 years ago, we decided to switch from deductive to inductive reasoning as our favourite way of making new knowledge. Of course it is widely acknowledged (at least it is often mentioned in the pages of New Scientist) that....; Read review

Guardians Of The Departed: Last September I was in studio 3 at the British School at Rome, Amanda Marburg was in studio 7. It was way too hot to paint, or do anything much other than take refuge in the cool dark marble interiors of churches and smirk at the baroque excess, or be dumbstruck by crypts decorated with the bones...; Read review

Kristian Pithie Gallery: Same, same but different: I applaud Kristian Pithie’s efforts in starting a new space at this time. It is a welcome note of optimism in a relentlessly gloomy period. There are some very nice works in this show, which is essentially an introduction to....; Read review

They Shoot Horses Don’t They: Last Thursday night I thought I was going to the opening of a show by Berlin based, Belgian painter, Stephan Balleux but it turned out I was a week early. I was told that it was a preview, not an opening. Whatever, I got....; Read review

Double Voyage: I really enjoy going to Anna Schwartz gallery when the lights are out. The space is so cavernous and the shoes I was wearing last Friday created a satisfying click-clunk that echoed nicely as I walked back and forth....; Read review

There are more things: "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that....; Read review

Graham Day Guerra at Wardlow Studio: Guerra uses software to create 3d models of conglomerate figures resumbling some combination of a Bellmer doll and a Chapman brothers' sculpture. These models form the basis for skillfully executed...; Read review

An OK Biennale: The Biennale of Sydney is a very important show for Australians who like contemporary art. Many of us take a bi-annual trip to see the latest and sometimes the fashionable in contemporary art. Australia still suffers from...; Read review

Darkness Matters: Imagine a museum display from another planet, or imagine what the early seventies thought the future of art would look like and now imagine them getting it right. If you can't do either of these things then check out Giles Ryder's latest show, Dark Matter. Ryder's grey matter must be.....; Read review

Turner to Monet: the triumph of landscape painting: Ah, the blockbuster, staple of a gallery’s financial diet. They’re a phenomenon that exists, pure and simple, so there’s no point...; Read review

Kate Rohde's Flourish: The theme of the wunderkammer in Kate Rhode's installation at Tarrawarra Museum of Art is a lovely bit of cheek; Read review

Benevolent Terrorist Siege at Neon Parc: To be honest I haven’t even seen this show. I only went to the opening (an hour late) and even then I didn’t actually go into the gallery. It wasn’t my fault, it was because terrorists had taken over Neon Parc and they weren’t letting.....; Read review

NEW08 at ACCA: This much anticipated annual survey demonstrates an eye for detail. The works here are carefully constructed, labour intensive and often require the viewer to look.....; Read review

A Considered Response: One of the consequences of this image-saturated world is that eight seconds is as long as you can expect anyone to look at a painting. Sam Leach’s entry into this years Archibald Prize is a case in point. In eight seconds you will see a self portrait of the artist in Nazi uniform, after....; Read review

There Goes a Narwhal: Nell's bronze sculpture scared my 19 month old daughter. It is just life-like enough to trigger that sort of response - it appears to have....; Read review

Corey Delaney - Fucken Legend: A legend in yellow plastic shades..; Read review

David Ralph at Arc One Gallery: Dribbly, blurry, smeary, chunky, slick and rough, David Ralph makes his paint work hard. He puts it through an almost gymnastic regime, forcing it to perform in leaps and bounds on the canvas. The surface terrain is rich....; Read review

Goodfellow Show at Seventh: Antonia Goodfellow Seventh Gallery December 2007 Goodfellow exhibited sculptures and drawings at Fitzroy Seventh Gallery in December last. The sculptures....; Read review

Tim Hawkinson at MCA, Sydney: "All these giant piles of moving rubbish are making me feel quite anxious," says my partner at "Mapping the Marvelous" - the Tim Hawkinson survey show at MCA.; Read review

Bertram Mackennal: Sex, nudity, orgies, death and fame, glorious, fickle fame. A hundred years ago, Bertram Mackennal was an art superstar. An Australian who made it big time in England, a member...; Read review

Aaron Martin - Shadow Play: Aaron Martin’s current exhibition of works at Apartment surrounds the aptly small space with their dark and individual intimacies. Each....; Read review

Louise Hearman at Tolarno Galleries: It was a sunny October morning but in the reverential gloom of Tolarno Galleries the only light seemed to be emanating from the paintings themselves. An ethereal light reflected from who knows whence revealing....; Read review

The Spoils: In the beginning, the thing you will notice about Sam Leach’s paintings is that they are very seductive objects. Let’s get this out of the way. Did I say objects? Yes I did. But these are paintings? Oil paintings. Old school...; Read review

Judith Van Heeren: An interesting show in a wonderful space. Richly coloured paintings of birds (specimens from the Natural History museum in New York, we are told) set....; Read review

Andrew Browne - Chimera: As I write this, the show is about to close, but these paintings will be floating around the art world in the flesh and in reproduction for a while. I have heard criticism of this show that the paintings are perhaps....; Read review

Politics of picturing: Two exhibitions both with political concerns to a greater or lesser extent are on show at the VCA.; Read review

bird girl: "I'm no anti-feminist. I love women. Some of my best friends are women. My wife, indeed." (Sir Humphrey in Yes Minister). The status....; Read review

John Nixon at TarraWarra: I am an artist who has recently arrived from another country. A local artist friend took me along to see my first exhibition of paintings by John Nixon. My friend....; Read review

Wardlow Opinion: A one night only show at Wardlow Studio proved to be one of the more interesting I have seen this year. Slattery's work in particular is a bit of a revelation.; Read review

Geoff Newton - Paintings: Geoff Newton's show at Neon Parc is good. A collection of smallish paintings, ranging from well painted to poorly painted, gestural to quite tight, conceptual to figurative they hang together beautifully....; Read review

Describing Air With Earth: The ambitious and rather poetic title is quite the opposite of the experience of viewing this prosaic exhibition.; Read review

David Thomas at Nellie Castan - April 2007: Dr Thomas looks very serious on the cover of the latest edition of Art Collector. As well he might – he has staged a serious installation of paintings and what he calls "photo-paintings" at Nellie Castan Gallery; Read review

We need writers!

Got something to say about art?

Seen something cool? An exhibition, movie, theatre or heard some great music? Write a review and tell us what you think. If we like your review, we'll publish it.

Please send submissions to: submit@artinfo.com.au