Ocula Report ‘An Opera for Animals’ at Rockbund Art Museum 19 Jul 2019 : Penny Liu for Ocula An Opera for Animals was first staged at Para Site in Hong Kong between 23 March and 2 June 2019, with works by over 48 artists and collectives that use opera as a metaphor for modes of contemporary, cross-disciplinary art-making. The exhibition's second iteration takes up a large portion of the Rockbund Art Museum (RAM) in Shanghai (22 June–25...
Ocula Conversation Mandy El-Sayegh: Productive Ambiguity Moving across installation, painting, drawing, and writing, Malaysia-born and London-based artist Mandy El-Sayegh explores the political, social, and economic complexities of humanity, using a mosaic of information—from advertising slogans and pornographic imagery to newspaper articles—that she subjects to processes of layering,...
Ocula Report Get Up, Stand Up Now: Generations of Black Creative Pioneers at Somerset House 5 Jul 2019 : Jareh Das for Ocula Get Up Stand Up Now: Generations of Black Creative Pioneers at Somerset House in London (12 June–15 September 2019) surveys more than half a century of black creativity in Britain and beyond across the fields of art, film, photography, music, design, fashion, and literature.Curated by Zak Ové, works by approximately 100 intergenerational black...
Bold, painterly and conceptually rich, Vincent's work has been shortlisted in significant awards including the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Awards (finalist: 2013, 2014), the John Fries Memorial Award (finalist: 2013) and the Outback Art Award, Broken Hill Regional Art Gallery. His work is held in collections including the British Museum, Artbank, and Flinders University Art Museum and Queensland Art Gallery.
Ocula Conversation Vincent Namatjira Artist Vincent Namatjira relishes painting famous people who are humorously redeployed across vivid canvases and depicted in his community in remote Indulkana in South Australia. His powerful paintings are part portraiture and part caricature, in which politicians are placed side by side in wryly preposterous juxtapositions, such as Donald Trump and Kim...
Ocula Report Melbourne Art Shows to See: The Lowdown 27 Jul 2018 : Carol Que for Ocula Melbourne Art Week returns to much fanfare this year, taking place between 30 July and 5 August 2018 with the biennial Melbourne Art Fair holding centre stage after its hiatus in 2016 (2–5 August 2018). Situated across two venues within the Southbank Arts Precinct and presenting 40 new and established galleries from Australia, New Zealand and...
Ocula Insight Vincent Namatjira at THIS IS NO FANTASY + Dianne Tanzer Gallery, Melbourne By Laura Thomson Bold, painterly and conceptually rich, Vincent Namatjira's work has gained significant recognition in Australia and abroad. In 2015, his work was curated into the 10th Mildura Palimpsest Biennale, and Tarnanthi Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art at the Art Gallery of South Australia, where he exhibited a series of...
Related Press Art Basel's buzziest exhibit makes fun of global despots Quartzy : 9 December 2018 It came as a serious shock to me when I rounded a corner at Art Basel Miami Beach, the world's largest contemporary art fair, and came face-to-face with Donald J. Trump.
Related Press Photos | Weapons for the Soldier exhibition opening at Hazelhurst The Leader : 15 November 2018 On New Year's Eve 1915, 31-year-old William Joseph Punch from North Queensland joined up and went to war.Sent to northern France he was wounded twice, finally ending up in a military hospital in Britain. There on August 29, 1917, he died from pneumonia.
Related Press 'Youngfellas': artists come to grips with legacy of Indigenous servicemen The Guardian : 9 November 2018 Vincent Namatjira and Kamurin Young are two of the "youngfellas" who belong to one of the most remote artistic collectives on earth, spanning a vast proportion of central Australia, larger than many European countries.
Related Press Review: Speed north to Darwin to see the latest, most dynamic Indigenous art The Sydney Morning Herald : 24 August 2018 A remarkable thing happened at this year's 35th Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT): the stand-out work actually won the major prize. The annual circus of the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman may have given me a jaundiced view of art prizes, but it was pleasing...
