
Culture
October 1, 2018Barron Field and the myth of terra nullius
How a minor poet made a major historical error
LATEST
Culture
October 1, 2018Barron Field and the myth of terra nullius
How a minor poet made a major historical error
Culture
September 1, 2016Double dissolution
Ben Lerner’s ‘The Hatred of Poetry’ brings together questions of art and politics
Culture
April 1, 2015Late styles
Clive James’ ‘Sentenced to Life’ and Les Murray’s ‘Waiting for the Past’
arts
July 5, 2012‘Unexpected Pleasures’ at the National Gallery of Victoria
‘Contemporary jewellery’ doesn’t simply mean jewellery that’s being made now. It’s also the name of a major international movement, beginning in the mid 1970s, in which jewellers started to experiment with the inherited limitations …
Culture
December 1, 2009Neon statements
Joseph Kosuth and conceptual art
Society
September 4, 2009‘Inherent Vice’ by Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Pynchon is one of the most extraordinary novelists writing today. This isn’t due to his genius alone, though there’s no doubting his encyclopaedic knowledge, literary range and sheer inventiveness. It’s also due to sheer luck, to Pynchon …
arts
April 2, 2008‘Poe: A Life Cut Short’ by Peter Ackroyd
Born into poverty, sickness and vagabondage, Edgar Allan Poe was doomed from the beginning. His parents were actors, a déclassé profession at the time, and both were consumptive. His alcoholic and incompetent father abandoned the family a few years …
arts
September 5, 2007‘Linda Marrinon: Let Her Try’ by Chris McAuliffe
Chris McAuliffe’s governing image for Linda Marrinon’s career is that of Voltaire’s Candide, tending carefully to the garden despite the vicissitudes of the world. Beginning in the early 1980s with hilariously understated anti-aesthetic canvases …
arts
July 4, 2007‘Show Court 3’ by Louise Paramor, Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne, 20 April
In a world overburdened by museums and monuments, by the claims of the past and the injunction to protect and save, what should we preserve? Everything! Transience has assumed real value in contemporary art. Instead of the object, the event becomes primary: …
‘Australian Impressionism’, Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia
This is an impressive corporate exercise, bringing together more than 240 works from the heroic era of Australian art, from an unprecedented range of galleries and private collections. The stars are among the most celebrated painters in the nation's history: …
arts
March 7, 2007A law that cannot be enforced
The politics of art in Australia
arts
December 6, 2006Haranguing the nation
‘Juan Davila’
arts
October 4, 2006‘The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis’ By Jacques Lacan, trans. Russell Grigg
‘Being and Event’ By Alain Badiou, trans. Oliver Feltham
arts
August 2, 2006Rembrandt 1606–1669: From the Prints and Drawings Collection
NGV International, to 24 September
arts
July 5, 2006We’re all globile now
The 2006 Biennale of Sydney: ‘Zones of Contact’