The year 2021 marks one hundred years since the birth of Australian artist Jeffrey Smart (1921-2013). To celebrate we delve into two of his works currently on loan to the National Gallery of Australia for his major exhibition. One of Australia’s most celebrated artists, he sought inspiration from the world around him. DELVE DEEPER: Jeffrey Smart…
Continue reading » “Mysterious and mundane: The art of Jeffrey Smart”
Australian artist Yasmin Smith is known for her research-based ceramic installations that formally and chromatically evoke the landscape from which they are produced. As part of her investigative method, Smith gathers natural materials and, through analysis, determines how she can harness their chemical properties. Key to the artist’s process is burning plant material as a…
Continue reading » “Ceramic installations evoke the landscape from which they are produced”
In the early 2000s, senior Wik and Kugu law men from the Aurukun region on the west coast of Cape York Peninsula, Far North Queensland, pioneered a significant contemporary movement: They reimagined their ceremonial visual traditions as contemporary art. Embodying ancestral narratives in a way that maintains spiritual and historical connections between the past and…
Continue reading » “Contemporary Ceremonial art from Aurukun”
Than Sok infuses new meaning into spiritual practices and investigates the ways in which they permeate daily life and vernacular culture in Cambodia. His art explores how Buddhist principles manifest and dictate relationships to community and environment, while being able to question the role of religious ritual and its incumbent sense of morality. Recently Than…
In 1928 a competition for the design of a Shrine of Remembrance (illustrated) in Brisbane was won by Sydney architects Buchanan and Cowper. Construction proceeded over the following two years with Anzac Square opening on Armistice Day in 1930. The Shrine honours the men and women of Queensland who served abroad and at home in…
Continue reading » “Back in time: Max Dupain’s Anzac Square, Brisbane”
Over her long career, Kimiyo Mishima has become one of Japan’s most widely exhibited female ceramic artists, noted for her wry humour and material sophistication. Her background, however, lies not in Japan’s justly honoured disciplines of craft and design but in the avant-garde, accompanied by a persistent fear of being buried in the ever-accumulating castoffs…
Continue reading » “A sense of absurdism: Breakable throwaway objects”