Ocula Conversation Sunjung Kim’s Real DMZ Project Interrogates the North and South Korea Divide Ongoing since 2012, the Real DMZ Project interrogates the demilitarised zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea through annual, research-based exhibitions that bring together the works of Korean and international artists. Sunjung Kim, the independent curator behind the project, conceived the idea of exploring the DMZ while curating Japanese artist...
Ocula Report Frieze Week Lowdown: London Shows to See 20 Sep 2019 : Tessa Moldan for Ocula London's galleries and museums are gearing up for a lively October, with Frieze London and Frieze Masters running between 3 and 6 October 2019 at Regent's Park, along with 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, taking place across the same dates at Somerset House; and the tenth anniversary of the Sunday Art Fair, showcasing new and emerging artists...
Ocula Insight | Video Mark Bradford’s Call for Unity at Shanghai’s Long Museum 16 August 2019 Mark Bradford walks through Mark Bradford: Los Angeles Mark Bradford: Los Angeles at the Long Museum West Bund in Shanghai (27 July–13 October 2019) is the artist's largest solo exhibition to date in China. In this video for Ocula, Bradford and Diana Nawi, curator of the show, walk through selected works that convey the artist's concerns with...
Ocula Report 4th Kochi-Muziris Biennale: Possibilities for a Non-Alienated Life 15 Feb 2019 : Natalie King for Ocula 'Poems are like sentences that have taken their clothes off.' Marlene Dumas' poetic and sensual refrain accompanies her figurative watercolours on view in Possibilities for a Non-Alienated Life, the fourth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB) in the southern state of Kerala, India (12 December 2018–29 March 2019).Dumas' new series...
Ocula Report Sydney Contemporary: Bridging the Gap 20 Sep 2018 : Anna Dickie for Ocula 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 19th-century industrial details, and it offered a striking light-filled backdrop to the fair's crisp white booths, the...
Ocula Photolog Sydney Contemporary 2018 14 September 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 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 Conversation Australian artist Brook Andrew's practice often finds inspiration in institutional archives, but his intentions go beyond the archaeological: he is not primarily interested in discovering or documenting the past, but in 'un-cementing' history's hold on events, people and beliefs, and in doing so, freeing the discussions taking place today from that...
Ocula Conversation Adeline Ooi Director, Art Basel in 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...
Ocula Report Sydney Summer Report 12 Jan 2016 : Rachel Fuller for Ocula When Silence Falls Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney 19 December 2015 - 1 May 2016Currently showing in the contemporary galleries of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, When Silence Falls is a collection-based, group exhibition curated by AGNSW curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art, Cara Pinchbeck. When...
Ocula Report Institutional critique in the 8th Asia Pacific Triennial 3 Dec 2015 : Tess Maunder for Ocula Since the late 1980s the major concern for curatorial practice has been the rise of biennale culture; the impact this exhibition format has had upon both the production and reception of contemporary art internationally. Reflecting on this lineage and recent politics from within the Asia-Pacific region, it is apparent that exhibitions such as the...
Ocula Conversation Peter Atkins Artist, Australia Australian artist Peter Atkins was one of 7 artists invited to create new site-specific public art works for the forthcoming Christchurch Biennial, SCAPE8: New Intimacies, curated by Rob Garrett.An important figure in Australian contemporary art, Peter Atkins has exhibited extensively both in Australia and internationally and is...
Ocula Report Sydney Contemporary Wrap 15 Sep 2015 : Jane O’Sullivan for Ocula A marble bench sat out of the front of the Pearl Lam Galleries stand at the Sydney Contemporary art fair last week. Inscribed with Chinese characters, and without a card stating the artist or artwork title, many visitors simply passed it by.Those who could read the inscription, and those who asked, found out it said: Don’t put too...
Ocula Conversation Ben Quilty Artist, Australia With a Bachelor of Visual Communication from University of Western Sydney, a certificate in Aboriginal Culture and History from Monash University, and a Bachelor of Visual Arts in Painting from the Sydney College of the Arts, Ben Quilty’s work is all about Australia and its social, political, cultural and historical landscapes. The genesis of...
Ocula Conversation Barry Keldoulis Director, Melbourne Art Fair Barry Keldoulis has more than three decades experience in the world of contemporary art. Keldoulis started his career in New York where he worked as private secretary and chief of staff for Henry Geldzahler, Commissioner of Cultural Affairs for the City of New York, and the first curator of 20th century art at the Metropolitan Museum of...
Ocula Conversation Clinton Ng Collector, Sydney Sydney based collector, Clinton Ng, has built a substantial collection of leading contemporary art in just over ten years. His collection now includes works by over 150 artists, including Ahmed Alsoudani, Olafur Eliasson, Adrian Ghenie, Vik Muniz, Alex Prager, Simon Denny, William Kentridge, Adrián Villar Rojas, Shaun Gladwell, Thomas Hirschhorn...
Ocula Conversation Clinton Ng Collector, Sydney Sydney based collector, Clinton Ng, has built a substantial collection of leading contemporary art in just over ten years. His collection now includes works by over 150 artists, including Ahmed Alsoudani, Olafur Eliasson, Adrian Ghenie, Vik Muniz, Alex Prager, Simon Denny, William Kentridge, Adrián Villar Rojas, Shaun Gladwell, Thomas Hirschhorn...
Ocula Report Melbourne Now 2 Dec 2013 : Emily Cormack for Ocula For a city consistently referred to as Australia’s ‘cultural capital’ Melbourne’s National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) has had a track record of casual disregard for the vigorous cultural activities that have been occurring in its midst. It has seemed odd at best, that despite healthy acquisitions of contemporary...
Ocula Conversation Bill Henson Artist, Australia / Part two of a two part interview Faced with the daunting, but intriguing challenge of interviewing one of Australia’s most distinguished artists, Bill Henson, I did the contemporary obvious – I googled him. The result was, as one would expect, slightly polarized. His recent withdrawal of work from the Adelaide Biennale following a police complaint had...
Ocula Report Notes On Desire: The 19Th Biennale Of Sydney 12 Nov 2013 : Stella Rosa McDonald for Ocula "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 ShawIn 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 the...
Ocula Report Great Expectations: Emerging Australian Art 5 Nov 2013 : Stella Rosa McDonald for Ocula In literary criticism, the term Bildungsroman refers to a coming of age novel. The protagonist learns a lesson, undergoes a transformation and grows up. They are stories where sentiment conflicts with authority, and we love them because they question our foundations and because we were all kids, once. ‘Emerging’ is the art...
