Ocula Conversation Pierre Huyghe: The Artist as Director Pierre Huyghe is a producer of spectacular and memorable enigmas, with works that function more like mirages than as objects. Abyssal Plain (2015–ongoing), his contribution to the 2015 Istanbul Biennial, curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, was installed on the seabed of the Marmara Sea, some 20 metres below the surface of the water and close to...
Ocula Report MoMA Expansion: Once the Modern, Always the Modern 29 Nov 2019 : Mohammad Salemy for Ocula In the early decades of its existence, New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), founded in 1929, transformed from a philanthropic project modestly housed in a few rooms of the Heckscher Building on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, to an alleged operating node in the United States' cultural struggle during the cold war, and one of the...
Ocula Insight | Video Hans Hartung and Art Informel at Mazzoleni London (1 October 2019-18 January 2020) presents key works by the French-German painter while highlighting his connection with artists active in Paris during the 50s and 60s. In this video, writer and historian Alan Montgomery discusses Hartung's practice and its legacy.Born in Leipzig in 1904, Hans...
Simon Kennedy’s paintings are imbued with romanticism of varying shades of darkness. Sublime landscapes paintings of stoats, polar bears and pigs evoke a 19th century inherited vision transposed onto a colonial landscape. In other works disembodied limbs hover above landscapes whilst their bloodier counterparts litter interior settings. Portraits of historic and fictional women investigate the intricacies, strengths and vulnerabilities of human nature.
Simon Kennedy holds a BFA from the Otago Polytechnic School of Art in Dunedin. Before relocating to Sydney, he staged several solo exhibitions with Marshall Seifert Gallery in Dunedin and has won the Waiheke Art Prize in 2005. His work has featured in numerous group exhibitions in Sydney, Melbourne and New Zealand and has been collected by the New Zealand Parliament Collection, the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery and Artbank.
Simon lives and works in Sydney.
