In traditional landscape painting, trees are typically employed as a compositional device – a means of framing a particular passage or view. In this watercolour by Albert Namatjira, the central tree has become a subject unto itself: we are presented with a portrait of an individual living...
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Art Reviews
By BRETT BALLARD
04 Nov 2021
The death of George Lambert in 1930 marked the end of the extraordinary life of a painter who in passing called neither Australia nor England home. Restlessness and energy marked Lambert’s life, and in death the tributes flowed from painters who saw Lambert as the great light of Australian...
By Ruth Pullin
04 Nov 2021
Although the many mountain ranges that you catch sight of here both on the African as well as on the Arabian side appeared almost universally bare, the imposing forms and colours with the variation of the lighting are indescribably beautiful. I could hardly tear...
By Ashleigh Wilson
04 Nov 2021
The numbers don’t lie. CJ Hendry, born in South Africa, raised in Australia and now based in New York, has built a social media empire considerably larger than her peers. And she’s done it by harnessing the power of her art.
By Asta Cameron
04 Nov 2021
By the late 1960s, when the present work was created, Charles Blackman had already exhibited his three major series: the Schoolgirls paintings of 1951 to 1954, the Alice in Wonderland paintings of 1956, and the Faces and Flowers paintings of the late 1950s – all motifs...
By Tim Abdallah
04 Nov 2021
A solitary woman is walking away from us, strolling down the road of a modern city. There is a breeze: a scrap of paper tumbles across the road. Sharp shadows cut cross the scene and streaks of cloud darken the sky. The woman has an umbrella open and yet there is no sign of rain. Although the...
By Catherine Baxendale
04 Nov 2021
Patricia with Fruit and Flowers belongs to a rare and important group of works created in Brisbane during the 1960s, when Margaret Olley first achieved recognition on a national scale. In 1962 Olley was heralded by the Courier-Mail as Australia’s ‘top woman painter’ following...
By Catherine Baxendale
04 Nov 2021
Were Grace Cossington Smith to be alive today, she would probably have been unfazed by the prospect of spending months at home. Of course, Cossington Smith never had to run the gauntlet of Zoom calls or home-schooling – though she was a devoted carer to her sister Diddy, who fell ill in the...
By Caroline Jones
04 Nov 2021
Ethel Carrick’s depictions of France during la Belle Époque are undoubtedly some of her best and most accomplished works. This period of the artist’s life was one full of contentment and discovery which is evident in the subjects and execution of these works.
By Marguerite Brown MA - Art Curatorship
04 Nov 2021
The heady artistic atmosphere of fin de siècle Paris captivated the young Rupert Bunny, when he moved there in 1886 as a twenty-four-year-old art student. By the late 1880s Bunny’s sociable nature was well known and earned him a place in artistic circles that included some of the...