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 For three months from 1 June to 1 September 2019, Tai Kwun Contemporary in Hong Kong showcases MURAKAMI vs MURAKAMI, a major survey exhibition of the Japanese artist Takashi Murakami. Curated by Tobias Berger, head of art at Tai Kwun, and Gunnar B Kvaran, director of Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo, the exhibition spans the three floors of Tai Kwun's...
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...
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 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...
![Art Basil [sic]](http://d3rtf5gv0re40d.cloudfront.net/anzax/93/9399f02a-6253-4ff2-a089-cfbc857cd71f_263_196.png)
Ocula Report Art Basil [sic] 31 Mar 2016 : Diana d'Arenberg for Ocula I was Brainwashed the Friday before Art Basel Hong Kong kicked off. French street artist, Mr. Brainwash, was holding court—to an audience full of Hong Kong society types, complete with bodyguards, and media—with a spray can in a graffiti decorated shell-space in Lan Kwai Fong. It was one of several property developer-artist...
Ocula Report APT8: A fragmenting vision of the future 14 Dec 2015 : Susan Acret for Ocula It is 16 years since I last visited an Asia Pacific Triennial and it is heartening to see that although APT8 is a very different beast from the ground-breaking APTs of the 1990s, this edition has stayed true to the triennial’s philosophy of interacting with the region’s artists in a sustained and very localised way. When the APT was...
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 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...
