Archive | Art Criticism

Outsider art and the desire of contemporary art, October 2014

This paper was delivered at the conference ‘Contemporary outsider art; the global context’, University of Melbourne, 24 October 2014. Along with many other speakers, I was responding to the suggestion that outsider art is now ‘in’. Late in the twentieth century, Arthur C Danto spoke of the ‘selective enfranchising’ of outsider artists. 1 Such mainstreaming […]

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Noel McKenna, ‘The psychiatrist’s dog’, Darren Knight Gallery, 27 September–25 October 2014

Can an art work be an oxymoron? A profound Jeff Koons, there’s one. A scintillating Bill Viola, there’s another. But those are oxymorons of the non-technical, colloquial kind; the snide put-down, the cheap shot. What about a more formally constructed oxymoron, one that uses a jolting contradiction for rhetorical effect? Noel McKenna’s current exhibition is […]

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Robert Rooney, ‘Portrait photographs 1978–1987’, Tolarno Galleries, 11 September–11 October 2014

Over a period of 107 consecutive days, from December 1972 to March 1973, Robert Rooney photographed the clothes he wore. Each black and white image is uniform, a latent pun in keeping Rooney’s predilection for wry linguistic play. The artist’s garments are neatly folded and stacked, underwear on top, outer wear at the bottom, as […]

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Lyndell Brown/Charles Green and Jon Cattapan, ‘Spook country’, Station and ARC One, 21st August–13th September 2014

On a recent visit to the Australian War Memorial, I was surprised at the visual density of ‘classic’ war art. In the paintings of George Lambert (World War I) and Ivor Hele (World War II), the combat is hand-to-hand. The viewer is in the thick of it, given the now-familiar first-person shooter point of view. […]

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Building a better art prize

A ‘behind the scenes’ account of the planning of the $100,000 Basil Sellers art Prize. Building a better art prize Tonight (25 July 2014) the winner of the fourth A$100,000 Basil Sellers Art Prize will be announced at the Ian Potter Museum of Art in Melbourne, chosen from shortlist of 16 artists and decided by a panel of six […]

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Dale Hickey, ‘New Paintings’, 2005

This piece was written for the exhibition brochure. As always, Hickey’s work prompted me to reflect on how complicated supposedly simple paintings can be. When paintings have a singular target, the writer’s task seems straightforward enough. Because Dale Hickey’s new paintings circle around the motif of the artist’s studio, they teasingly invite the writer to […]

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The games people play, 2008

There’s a marvellous photograph of a corner of Sidney Nolan’s studio taken in 1949. On a small work table are the usual trappings of the bohemian laboratory: tobacco tin, overflowing ashtray, dog-eared books, and candlesticks picturesquely caked in melted wax. The only unfamiliar element in this ad hoc still life is a photograph pinned to […]

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Hayley Arjona, ‘Rock’n’roll redneck’, CASPA, Castlemaine, 3–31 May 2014

Not long ago I found myself standing in a country pub staring at a print of that often-reproduced nineteenth-century engraving of three Australian farm hands carousing in a bar. Backs arched, arms flailing; they were the original wild colonial boys, out on a spree. Arjona’s rock’n’roll rednecks are their great-great-grandchildren, bingeing on Maccas and VB, […]

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