Tragedy in Adelaide
A tragedy looms in Adelaide as the current ALP State government appears to be pulling back on the well-developed plans of the previous Liberal government to build a nationally significant Read More
EXISTENTIAL LIMBO
“A pared-to-the-bleached-bones existential thriller”.. The Guardian review of Ivan Sen’s latest film Limbo sums it up awfully well. The unworldly underground/overground landscape of Cooper Pedy shot in black and white Read More
Kunmanara (Pepai) Carroll
Last month I wrote about the exhibition at Manly Art Gallery which featured Blak Douglas paintings and both pottery and art by the late Pepai Jangala Carroll. I mentioned a Read More
First Nations Take Over the AGNSW
Wow, was my headline last time prescient! I touted, "First Nations Take Over the AGNSW Prizes" last week. And now that we know and have met the winners, I can Read More
Finalists for the 40th NATSIAAs
63 finalists have been announced in the 2023 Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards, Australia’s richest art awards, presented by the Museum and Art Gallery of the Read More
Two Recent Losses
In Melbourne, galleryist, Aboriginal art lover and bon vivant William Mora has lost a long fight with cancer; and at Kalka in the distant APY Lands, founding artist at the Read More
APYACC Part 4
Sadly, it’s inevitable that I keep writing about the issue raised several weeks ago now by The Australian newspaper. For, as I’ve tried to indicate, much hangs on understanding how Read More
First Nations Take-over the AGNSW Prizes
Just three percent of the nation and just over four percent of the 2348 entries for Sydney’s Archibald, Wynne and Sulman prizes, but Aboriginal artists are a whopping 26.5% of Read More
APYACC Part 3
Big news – the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) has announced the team that will enquire into claims made by The Australian newspaper two Saturdays ago that artists working as Read More
Trans-Indigenous Marrugeku
You go to see Marrugeku dance for difference. It may be the marvellous co-artistic director Dalisa Pigram dancing by her Yawuru self on stage. Or it may be an increasingly Read More
Blak and Deadly
Dhungatti artist and Archibald Prize winner Blak Douglas has returned to Manly Art Gallery & Museum to present his challenging truth about Gayamay (Manly Cove). It’s the first solo exhibition Read More
APYACC Part 2
This is how I began an article a week ago on this website: “A lengthy investigation by The Australian newspaper claims to have discovered that artists working for the APY Read More
“Barka Looks Sad”
A small but powerful exhibition which opened recently at the Australian Museum in Sydney is offering both insights into the traditional way of life of the Barkandji people of western Read More
APY Art Under Review
A lengthy investigation by The Australian newspaper claims to have discovered that artists working for the APY Art Centre Collective (APYACC) at art centres across the north of South Australia Read More
The Fugacious National
The cover of the catalogue for ‘The National 4’, the somewhat surprising fourth iteration of this underwhelming alternate to the Sydney Biennale, carries a magical photograph of the bamugora – Read More
Yunupiŋu 1948-2023
It might be asked as to why this art and cultural website is commemorating the passing of a man most closely identified with his many years as the major First Read More
Belonging in Bowral
There’s no doubt that the creation of the Namatjira Legacy Trust in 2017 has inspired artists from the Hermannsburg family to think differently. Credit must go to philanthropist Dick Smith, Read More
Parrtjima 2023
Since 2016 when it kicked off, the light festival Parrtjima has become a cultural icon in Mbantwa, where so much else seems uncultured. “Every year it builds upon its own Read More
Mr Yanyatjari Donegan 1940/2022
James (Jimmy) Donegan, 64 St Killian’s Crescent and formerly 27 Barrack St. Carlow, passed away unexpectedly, on January 23rd, 2023, at his home. That’s what you learn when Googling Jimmy Read More
The Tiwi Designed
“I was an apprentice to the Tiwi in trying to comprehend the vitality and unconscious force of their culture”. Thus Diana Wood Conroy ends the book ‘Tiwi Textiles’, which also Read More