In an 1833 pamphlet English economist William Forster Lloyd posed a quandary: a plot of grazing pasture is held in common by a group of cattle farmers who have free unregulated access. Each grazes as much cattle as they please, and the common is soon spent. Lloyd's pastoral fable, 'The Tragedy of the Commons,' describes how individuals take more...

The light fades but the gods remain, the new Bill Henson exhibition at Monash Gallery of Art (MGA), Melbourne, opens with a pairing of opposites. As you enter the exhibition, Untitled 42, 1985-86, a photograph of a suburban house with a front lawn at either dawn or dusk, is to your right.

Local Melbourne artist Patricia Piccinini is best known for her lifelike sculptures of almost-human beings. She evokes fantasy worlds that are so close to being real that they make us question what it means to be human in the world today. She takes some of her inspiration from the great outdoors.

Brook Andrew's grandmother was forbidden to speak her Wiradjuri tongue. 'People need to understand there were generations of genocide in this country,' the artist and first Indigenous Australian artistic director of the 22nd Biennale of Sydney (which will take place across six Sydney sites in 2020) tells Art Guide Australia. 'And it takes time,...

In an 1833 pamphlet English economist William Forster Lloyd posed a quandary: a plot of grazing pasture is held in common by a group of cattle farmers who have free unregulated access. Each grazes as much cattle as they please, and the common is soon spent. Lloyd's pastoral fable, 'The Tragedy of the Commons,' describes how individuals take more...

Brendan Huntley emerges from a spring-green coastal backyard, dressed in an orange puffer jacket. The garden goes down towards a large, tidy shed at the back where the artist has set up an enviable studio.In one room there is an industrial gas-fired kiln, complete with a set of tracks for a trolley.

In the 1980 historical drama, The Elephant Man, the titular character John Merrick is chased by a mob into a railway station toilet. Finding himself trapped by the baying crowd, Merrick screams, "I am not an animal! I am not an animal! I am a human being!" While the real Joseph (not John) Merrick who lived in Victorian London was a man...

It's six o'clock in the morning and I'm in a hot air balloon high above the Yarra Valley to get a glimpse of the Skywhale. She floats majestically in the morning sky, all 10 breasts hanging pendulously. It's very rare to see her in flight, and even now we can't get that close. At 34 metres tall she's pretty hard to miss. She's also unwieldy and far...

The word "love" covers a multitude of feelings that span everything from sexual desire to a connection with the environment. The works by two women artists at Victoria's TarraWarra Museum of Art show how much richer our visual vocabulary is when it comes to capturing the nuances of our emotions.

Brendan Huntley has two art studios. One where he lives in Melbourne's inner-north; that's where he does most of his painting. Then there's another way down south in Frankston, at his mother's rambling house where he grew up, surrounded by bush and birds.

An art fair is not the natural habitat of political statements; a temporary assembly of galleries hawking their wares primarily to cashed-up collectors, it's a parade of beauty and taste (good, bad, indifferent) that will, generally speaking, fit in the lounge room and impress the guests.

The Art Gallery of South Australia will be the first to host a major exhibition by one of Australia's most acclaimed contemporary artists.

On the eve of Sydney Contemporary art fair, five leading artists, collectors and philanthropists share their passion and tips for collecting art.Ben Quilty, artistBen Quilty, artist Ben Quilty never met the renowned Indigenous artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye, but he is the proud owner of one of her works, thanks to a heartfelt letter he wrote to a...

Acclaimed contemporary artist Danie Mellor is currently exhibiting The Landspace: [all the debils are here] at Tolarno Galleries in Melbourne.Here the Mamu/Ngajan artist speaks with our indigenous arts writer, Tyson Yunkaporta, about this powerful body of work, which combines snake-eye view infrared photography and graphic compositions, in a...

As Australia's leading art fair, Sydney Contemporary manages to make art critics into art lovers and the unanointed into worshippers, all within the space of three days.

Navigating a major art fair can seem a bit daunting if you're not a pro, and this year's Melbourne Art Fair is jam-packed. There are 40 galleries showing work across venues in Southbank from August 2 to 5, with leading contemporary artists from Australia, New Zealand and South East Asia.So we got the art fair's director Maree Di Pasquale to pick...

Known for her otherworldly creature sculptures, Melbourne artist Patricia Piccinini is reimagining her installation The Field at Carriageworks as part of the annual Sydney Contemporary Art Fair this September.For Sydney Contemporary, Piccinini will repurpose one of her pieces from a previous exhibition, Curious Affection, which showed to great...

To call Andrew Browne's practice 'disquieting' would, of course, be to say nothing new. In fact, a scan of the literature on his work shows that this, in some register or another, is about the only consistent thing said about his gothic greyscale drawing, painting and photography: it is disquieting, filled with suspense, dream-like, humming with...

Congratulations to Brook Andrew who has been appointed Artistic Director of the next Biennale of Sydney to be held in 2020.A participant in the 2018 and 2010 Biennales of Sydney, Brook Andrew will draw on curatorial experiences including his groundbreaking TABOO exhibition at Museum of Contemporary Art in 2012.His distinguished 25-year career was...

On June 19, the Biennale of Sydney (BoS) named Melbourne-based multidisciplinary artist Brook Andrew the artistic director of its 22nd edition, slated to open in 2020.The artistic director of the 21st BoS, Mami Kataoka—who is chief curator of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo—was the first Asian to assume the mantle in BoS's 45-year...

In a ceremony at Geelong Art Gallery on Friday 8 June, Andrew Browne was named the winner of the 2018 Geelong contemporary art prize for his work, The awakening. A biennial acquisitive award for contemporary painting with a cash prize of $30,000, the judging panel comprised Justin Paton (Head Curator of International Art, Art Gallery of New South...

When walking through Patricia Piccinini's exhibition Curious Affection with Curator Peter McKay, he commented: 'It's the biggest exhibition we've devoted to a single contemporary artist, and we've been trying to find a comparative exhibition of this scale that's been presented in Australia - I don't think there is one.'McKay is right. Piccinini's...

As the lift doors open on Tolarno Galleries, where Bill Henson's latest collection of untitled photographs is currently on display, the subdued temple-like atmosphere is immediately affecting. It encourages a distinct downward-shift in gear from the bustle and blare of the street below. The blinds are drawn. The polished black surface of the floor...

Art Radar takes a look at some of the highlights from the exhibition featuring more than 100 works and ephemera from the museum's collection and beyond. Every Brilliant Eye: Australian Art of the 1990s, on at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) until 1 October 2017, explores diverse cultural phenomena. Ranging from grunge to techno, identity...