In an increasingly uneasy and splintering Australia, Lin Onus has, in his two serene paintings Fish and Ripple - Dingo Springs I and II created a peaceable kingdom, a tranquil oasis (or billabong in this case) of refuge and calm. He was a self-taught painter, but hardly naive,...
Slide Show
Art Reviews
By menzies
29 May 2019
Brett Whiteley’s sensuous, light-filled interior and still life paintings produced in Sydney during the mid-to-late 1970s represent a high point in the formidable oeuvre of this revered Australian artist. Menzies has been fortunate to present two of the most important of these paintings over the...
By menzies
29 May 2019
One of the most remarkable things about Williams’s paintings, such as his large and adroitly executed Werribee Gorge II of 1978, is that, despite seeming to be made up of various smudges, daubs and dabs of pigment, they convince the viewer that his non-naturalistic pictorial depictions capture...
By menzies
29 May 2019
Deluxe Setting, first shown in Howard Arkley’s Mix ’n Match exhibition at Tolarno Galleries in South Yarra in November 1992, marks yet another critical juncture in a career full of dramatic shifts and changes. Recycling a composition from Frances Joslin Gold’s Instant Decorator, a 1970s...
By menzies
29 May 2019
Ian Fairweather was born on Tuesday 29 September in 1891 at Bridge of Allan in Stirlingshire in Scotland, the youngest of nine children. His father James, “a man of the most perfect temper”, was educated at Edinburgh University, became a Surgeon Major and Deputy Surgeon-General and worked for...
By menzies
29 May 2019
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 creative giants...
By menzies
29 May 2019
In 1907, Arthur Streeton returned to Australia from England having lived there since 1897, working and exhibiting his art. He held a successful exhibition of his paintings at Hibernian Hall in Melbourne, with sales totalling a respectable two thousand pounds. Some of...
By menzies
28 May 2019
It is just on fifty years since Tim Storrier burst onto the Australian art scene with his win in the Sulman Prize at the age of nineteen. It was an extraordinary achievement for a young artist barely out of art school. The winning work, Suzy 350, depicted two figures in flight, thrown from a...
By menzies
28 May 2019
Inge King’s oeuvre stretched over seven decades and, unlike many artists who peak early in their career and then spend decades in repeating their youthful triumphs, King’s work grew, developed and matured with age. She created some of her best work in the final decades of her life.
Rings...
By menzies
28 May 2019
When the ideas, the formal elements and the medium all work together a sculpture will ‘sing’ with a kind of rightness.
It takes on a life, a presence, which is removed from this world. It belongs to a mythical other life without a place in time.1
Bronwyn Oliver’s...
