Latest Ocula Conversation Artist Taloi Havini and Ruth McDougall, curator of Pacific art at Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art, discuss Havini's first Australian solo exhibition, Reclamation .
Latest Ocula Report Sydney Biennale Connects Here with Everywhere By Soo-Min Shim, Sydney 'This year's Biennale of Sydney seems like a corrective,' writes Soo-Min Shim, 'prioritising autonomy in an international exhibition format that has all too often omitted or sidelined First Nations artists.'
Ocula Insight Hell is a Place on Earth: P·P·O·W Looks to History in Context of Covid-19 By Stephanie Bailey, London In the United States, parallels have been drawn between the HIV/AIDS crisis and what is unfolding with Covid-19. These connections feed into P·P·O·W's online exhibition, Hell is a Place on Earth. Heaven is a Place in Your Head .
Ocula Insight Juan Ford: Artist of Seduction By Anna Dickie At Galerie du Monde , Hong Kong , the centrepiece of Juan Ford 's recent solo exhibition Blank (15 March–20 April 2019) was Recollector (2018), a hyper-realistic portrait of a solo female figure standing against a clear blue sky, the painting cropped at her knee. She is costumed in white drapery, although fragments of red, blue, and yellow...
Ocula Conversation Vincent Namatjira By Natalie King, Melbourne 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...
Ocula Report Sydney Contemporary: Bridging the Gap By Anna Dickie, Sydney As far as art fair venues go, Sydney Contemporary (13–16 September 2018) has nailed it with Carriageworks, where the fair was once again staged. Formerly a rail yard and now a cultural centre, the space has retained its distinctive 19 th -century industrial details, and it offered a striking light-filled backdrop to the fair's crisp white...
Ocula Photolog Sydney Contemporary 2018 'With a thriving contemporary art scene, Sydney is a dynamic cultural destination with an international reputation for presenting the very best in visual art through its leading commercial galleries, public institutions, private museums, festivals and Biennale. Defined by the vibrancy of its host city, Sydney Contemporary provides collectors...
Ocula Report Melbourne Art Shows to See: The Lowdown By Carol Que, Melbourne 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 Report Art Basel in Hong Kong 2018: A Post-mortem By Diana d’Arenberg, Hong Kong Hong Kong is set to become more than just a trading post for art defined by its international art fair, as a city with its own voice on the international art stage.
Ocula Insight Chris Bond at THIS IS NO FANTASY + Dianne Tanzer Gallery, Melbourne By Laura Thomson, Melbourne Chris Bond is well known for his exquisite paintings that look like books. Playing with concepts of authenticity and identity, his work involves the invention and embodiment of fictional artists, writers, organisations and scenarios that assist with the creative act. These inventions are presented as painted facsimiles of imagined books...
Ocula Conversation Adeline Ooi By Diana d'Arenberg, Hong Kong Art Basel Hong Kong has started early this year. I don't mean just the dates, which have been pushed forward from May to March. I mean inboxes are already flooded with invitations for previews and dinners taking place well ahead of the March 22 VIP preview. There are more events, more exhibitions, and certainly more collectors descending upon Hong...
Ocula Insight Michael Cook at THIS IS NO FANTASY + dianne tanzer gallery, Art Basel in Hong Kong 2016 Michael Cook is a Brisbane-based photomedia artist of Bidjara heritage who has forged an international reputation as an artist with a significant vision. His photographic series, Majority Rule was a stand out success at the 19th Biennale of Sydney: You Imagine What You Desire , 2014. In 2015 his work was exhibited in Personal...
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 10 th 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...
Ocula Conversation Aileen Burns and Johan Lundh By Rachael Vance, Brisbane Having held the dual role of co-directors of Brisbane’s Institute of Modern Art (IMA) for almost two years, Aileen Burns and Johan Lundh have shaken up the city’s contemporary art landscape. The unprecedented formulation of a joint vocation of director and curator shared between two people saw two outsiders hailing from Canada and...
Ocula Report Melbourne Summer Focus By Carol Que, Melbourne Queen Victoria Memorial Gardens MPavilion Until 31 January 2015 Nestled in Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Memorial Gardens and sponsored by the Naomi Milgrom Foundation, MPavilion is a contradictory vision of permanence and ephemerality, discipline and play. Designed by internationally acclaimed architect Sean Godsell, it is a temporary...
Ocula Report Notes On Desire: The 19Th Biennale Of Sydney By Stella Rosa McDonald, Sydney " Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will ." George Bernard Shaw In 1879, a French postman named Ferdinand Cheval began building an esoteric homage to the beauty of sandstone. On one of his postal rounds, Cheval came across small pieces of...
Ocula Conversation Dianne Tanzer Dianne Tanzer established her gallery, Dianne Tanzer Gallery + Projects in Melbourne, Australia in 1990. Established as an exciting platform for Australian contemporary art, it continues to deliver a robust exhibition program. This year the gallery is undergoing a significant shift as it joins forces with another Melbourne stalwart, Helen Gory...
