Ocula Conversation Hito Steyerl: How To Build a Sustainable Art World 'A Picture of War is Not War', we read in Hito Steyerl's iconic film November (2004), an essayistic Super 8 film tackling the definition of terrorism constructed around the figure of the artist's best friend Andrea Wolf, who was killed as a terrorist in 1998 in Eastern Anatolia after she joined the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party). Mixing documentary...
Ocula Report Aichi to Okayama: Art in Japan Looks to the Future 11 Oct 2019 : Stephanie Bailey for Ocula There has been a flurry of triennial and biennial art activity in Japan this year. The Aichi Triennale opened in Nagoya this August, sparking a national debate about the shutting down of a display of formerly censored works—the result of public backlash against a burnt image of Emperor Hirohito and a statue commemorating the women forced into...
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...
Benjamin Armstrong made his Tolarno debut in 2008 and was lauded by critic Sebastian Smee as "the most dazzling show of the new gallery season... among the strangest, most beguiling works of art produced in Australia in the past 10 years."
Significant recognition followed swiftly thereafter, with invitations to show as part of NEW 09 at ACCA and New Acquisitions at Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2009); Adelaide Biennial (2010); Melbourne Now at National Gallery of Victoria (2013) and Biennale of Sydney (2014).
International galleries also beckoned, with showings in Rome, Beijing, Gwangju and New York. Acquisitions came from the British Museum, London, Monash University Museum of Art, University of Queensland Art Museum, Queensland Art Gallery, MCA Sydney, Art Gallery of South Australia and Art Gallery of Western Australia.
Just this year, Armstrong's 2008 linocut series The shape of things to come was included in and inspired the title of the inaugural exhibition at the newly opened Buxton Contemporary in Melbourne. So it is with great anticipation that Benjamin Armstrong returns with his first solo exhibition since the sculpture and drawings included in Conjurers at Tolarno in 2012.
Invisible Stories: Meditations on Port Essington is Armstrong's new series of linocut prints - an intense, complex and highly nuanced sequence of imagery. The work relates to the Australian historian and multi-award winning author Mark McKenna's book From the Edge: Australia's Lost Histories (2016). McKenna's book explores the central drama of Australian history: the encounter between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians.
From this account Armstrong's imagination lit up with visions of scenes that began to take hold...
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...
