At the age of ninety John Olsen is the grand old man of Australian Art, still active with an energy and enthusiasm of someone half his age. His contribution to Australia has been justly recognised with all manner of honours and awards, but more importantly, there is enormous public affection...
Slide Show
Art Reviews
By Anonymous
28 Mar 2018
Although Garry Shead could be broadly described as a republican and his Royal Suite paintings promptly entered the Australian republican debate of the late 1990s, this was not the primary intention of the series. It had been a long time in the making, in fact about forty years...
By Anonymous
28 Mar 2018
Walk at Ubud 1979 is painted by a master of the exotic and sensuous tropical landscape. It is one of a select group of spirited Balinese paintings that Brett Whiteley produced in response to his time in Bali during the 1970s.
The attraction of island paradises such as Bali, Tahiti and...
By Anonymous
28 Mar 2018
Del Kathryn Barton’s art is informed by a deeply-ingrained sense of an abundant natural realm, brought to her work from childhood memories of farm life and roaming amongst nature. These experiences left an indelible mark on her artistic practice - the figures, both anthropoid and animal, that...
By Anonymous
28 Mar 2018
My vision of landscape… has to do with it being nothing more than a backdrop for theatre, a stage set for human drama – travel, dreams, disaster.1
For almost half a century Tim Storrier has largely sought to capture his personal reaction to the landscape, his...
By Anonymous
28 Mar 2018
The genesis of Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s painting lies in a range of experiences and custodial obligations she shared with other women in caring for Country and presiding over the transference of law – one ‘grows up’ the land as one ‘grows up’ children.1 Her genius, however, stems from...
By Anonymous
28 Mar 2018
Charles Blackman’s schoolgirl paintings of 1953 brought the artist to the fore of Australian art in a forthright and positive way. Seemingly from nowhere, a new artist was on the scene, producing work that was striking, memorable and worthy of critical recognition. Blackman might have been just...
By Anonymous
28 Mar 2018
Jeffrey Smart enjoyed playing the trickster. He approached a major picture as an opportunity to conduct sly games with compositional design and geometry while passing wry comments on modern city life. Carefully developed then impeccably painted, this is why the best of his mature oils are most...
By Anonymous
28 Mar 2018
There are times when Brett Whiteley’s paintings are unusually lyrical. Certainly, Whiteley is one of Australia’s most lyrical artists, generally in the free use of his easy, languorous lines particularly when they describe a curve, an arm, a thigh or a tree trunk. However, in paintings such as...
By Anonymous
28 Mar 2018
Sidney Nolan’s standing as Australia’s most significant modernist painter is universally recognised –demonstrated most recently by the landmark retrospective exhibition curated by Barry Pearce for the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2007.
Central to this exhibition was, of course, his...
