Art Guide Australia

TIMMAH BALL is a writer of Ballardong Noongar heritage who is influenced by studying and working in the field of urban planning. Her writing has appeared in a range of anthologies and literary journals. OSLO DAVIS is an illustrator, cartoonist and artist who has drawn for The New York Times, The Age, The Monthly, Meanjin, SBS and The Guardian, as well as the National Gallery of Victoria, Golden Plains and State Library Victoria, among many others. Oslo’s latest book is Overheard: The Art of Eavesdropping. STEVE DOW is a Melbourne-born, Sydney-based arts writer, whose profiles, essays, previews and reviews range across the visual arts, theatre, film and television for The Saturday Paper, The Guardian, The Monthly, the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Sunday Life, Limelight and VAULT. BRIONY DOWNES is an arts writer…

I first came across Mia Boe’s paintings of elongated figures a few years ago. I was dazzled by their angular composition and vivid colour, and then chastened by the colonial histories these paintings speak to—which Boe, our cover artist for this issue, discusses in our profile. Reflecting on buried histories is today an important revisionism within many art practices, and this powerfully comes through in Timmah Ball’s interview with Wiradjuri and Kamilaroi artist Jonathan Jones, whose latest work at the National Gallery of Australia is exploring how Indigenous cultures undertook breadmaking practices dating back 32,000 years—long before Western food production processes. And yet Jones poignantly questions if people understand what this truly means. Revisionist histories also define many current exhibitions, and we profile Philippa Cullen, an artist active in the 1970s who…

Melbourne Goddess ACMI Until 1 October If the best lead actress nominations from this year’s Academy Awards are anything to go by, audiences want to see strong women on screen. That is exactly what ACMI’s new exhibition Goddess is delivering, celebrating the defiant disruptors and headstrong heroines of film through costumes, original sketches, interactive experiences and cinematic treasures. The women of Goddess are the ones who unapologetically occupy space both on and off the screen, challenging gender roles and social conventions. Some of them are household names—Marilyn Monroe, Bette Davis, Pam Grier, and recent Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh—while other women’s stories and careers are little known. Like Fearless Nadia, the Australian actress who became Bollywood’s leading stuntwoman in the 1930s, and Cheryl Dunye, director and star of the 1997 landmark New Queer Cinema film, The…

The Favourite Michael Zavros Queensland Art Gallery 24 June—2 October “Jeff Koons says ‘embrace your past’,” cites Michael Zavros. “I think I’m good at that.” Brisbane-based Zavros, arguably one of Australia’s most celebrated artists of the last decade, has been dissecting his personal and artistic history for the most significant exhibition of his career: The Favourite. The survey show features works dating back to 1999, and naturally includes many of his signature photorealist paintings with their startlingly resonant detail, as well as sculptures, video works, photography and hybrid pieces. For Zavros, a central work in the exhibition is his provocative painting Phoebe Is Dead/McQueen, 2010, which shows his five-year-old daughter ‘playing dead’, covered with an Alexander McQueen scarf. It won the Doug Moran Portrait Prize that year. This piece is not necessarily, though, Zavros’s “favourite”. Rather,…

Pierre Bonnard: Designed by India Mahdavi National Gallery of Victoria 9 June—8 October Perhaps you know Pierre Bonnard for his vivid, emotive displays of landscapes and interior settings, luminous with colour. Or his women walking with parasols, cast within an Impressionistic, refined haze. Maybe it’s the intimate portraits of Marthe, his wife and muse. This winter the National Gallery of Victoria will host such images with Pierre Bonnard: Designed by India Mahdavi. Bonnard (1867-1947) was a leading French painter, illustrator and printmaker, and founding member of the post-impressionist group ‘Les Nabis’. Celebrated for his use of colour to convey emotion, he captured landscapes, urban sites, portraits and intimate domestic scenes. Interestingly, Bonnard did not want his works to be presented in a white cube environment. Miranda Wallace, a senior curator at NGV, elaborates: “He was…

Dark Garden Valerie Sparks Bett Gallery Until 7 May Capturing the intricate details of nature, Hobart-based photographic artist Valerie Sparks creates visually immersive installations inspired by 19th century French scenic wallpaper and the work of female botanical artists. Deeply influenced by historic Australian women artists like Ellis Rowan, Marianne North, Louisa Anne Meredith and Margaret Anderson Hope, Sparks speaks of her enduring admiration for their output. “These women made significant contributions to our understanding of biodiversity. The remarkable detail in their images reveals not only their skills, but also their capacity for observation. Photography allows us to explore this level of detail as well, and to appreciate the importance of observation in our understanding of the natural world.” Working with photography and digital imagery, Sparks pieces her visuals together in a seamless collage. Often creating…