
Barron Field and the myth of terra nullius
Culture
How a minor poet made a major historical error
By this author
Barron Field and the myth of terra nullius
Culture
How a minor poet made a major historical error
Late styles
Culture
Clive James’ ‘Sentenced to Life’ and Les Murray’s ‘Waiting for the Past’
Double dissolution
Culture
Ben Lerner’s ‘The Hatred of Poetry’ brings together questions of art and politics
‘Unexpected Pleasures’ at the National Gallery of Victoria
arts
‘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 …
Neon statements
Culture
Joseph Kosuth and conceptual art
‘Inherent Vice’ by Thomas Pynchon
Society
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 …
‘Poe: A Life Cut Short’ by Peter Ackroyd
arts
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 …
‘Linda Marrinon: Let Her Try’ by Chris McAuliffe
arts
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 …
‘Show Court 3’ by Louise Paramor, Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne, 20 April
arts
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
Tea Party
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: …
A law that cannot be enforced
arts
The politics of art in Australia
Haranguing the nation
arts
‘Juan Davila’
‘The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis’ By Jacques Lacan, trans. Russell Grigg
arts
‘Being and Event’ By Alain Badiou, trans. Oliver Feltham