World Food Books, August 3 – September 1, 2018
By Giles Fielke
There is an overwhelming temptation to fill in the constitutive blanks where an artist’s life should be, but here there is no artist, only the artworks remain. The evidence of the so-called Philadelphia Wireman’s life is patchy, effectively non-existent. Enough facts remain, however, to establish a scene. Twelve of the some 1200 small, meticulously bound-in-wire sculptures and drawings found dumped in a lan...
This week Memo Review travels through two art fairs currently open as part of Melbourne Art Week: David Wlazlo and Amelia Winata review the reborn Melbourne Art Fair at Southbank Arts Precinct, and Vicki Perin reviews the third Spring 1883 at The Hotel Windsor on Spring Street.
Southbank Arts Precinct, 111 Sturt Street, Southbank, 2–5 August
By David Wlazlo
Maybe it isn’t the best way to approach it, but Melbourne Art Fair (...
Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, 7 July – 16 September 2018.
By Anna Parlane
The current exhibition at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), A Lightness of Spirit is the Measure of Happiness, is very welcome. This is in part because it is the inaugural product of an institutional and governmental investment in not only Indigenous artists but also Indigenous curators. A partnership between Creative Victoria, ACCA and Ta...
Memo Review asked three of our contributors to write on a show they have especially liked but that we haven't had a chance to review. As a special issue we publish these reviews from Tiarney Miekus, Amelia Winata and Giles Fielke.
recess, Friday 30 March – 30 April 2018
By Tiarney Miekus
Considering the amount of things that can be streamed online (i.e., entire lives), it's peculiar how art is a thing that supposedly doesn't h...
Arts Project Australia, 16 June – 21 July 2018, guest curated by Patrice Sharkey, Director of West Space
By Shelley McSpedden
I recently made a rather modest foray into the world of body augmentation. After ninety minutes of being subjected to intense buffering, sharp prods and eye-watering fumes, I emerged transformed; a once recalcitrant nail-biter revamped into someone just presentable enough for inclusion in my sister's bridal party. This alarmingly visceral experience...
Ian Potter Centre, National Gallery of Victoria. Colony: Australia 1770–1861 until 15 July | Colony: Frontier Wars until 30 September
By Rex Butler
Colony is undoubtedly the best show the NGV has put on since Australian Impressionists in France in 2013. And I’d even say that the two shows are connected. Seriously. Both shake up our conception of what “Australia” is and perhaps even more profoundly where “Australia” is. Certainly, a number...
Tolarno Galleries, Level 4/104 Exhibition Street, 7 June – 7 July 2018
By Paris Lettau
In the final chapter of his 1931 book, An Account of French Painting, Clive Bell attempts to explain what he calls 19th century French painting's (i.e., modernism's) 'momentous lapse in taste'. Of course, he meant a lapse from the perspective of those trained in the 19th century Academy's tradition of taste, and all the standards of painting it sought to uphold. For Bell's generat...
Point Leo Estate, 3649 Frankston-Flinders Road, Merricks, Victoria
By Jane Eckett
That the Mornington Peninsula now boasts three privately endowed sculpture parks is a remarkable fact given the relatively small geographic area. Joining the long-standing McClelland Gallery + Sculpture Park (founded and chiefly supported – up until recently – by the late Dame Elisabeth Murdoch) are two new additions, both attached to wineries: Montalto in Red Hill South and Point Leo Estat...
Weekly art criticism in Melbourne, Australia.
Published each Saturday
Memo Review is an online publication dedicated to accessible reviews of a broad variety of exhibitions at public art museums, commercial galleries and smaller artist-run spaces in Melbourne.
Reviews will be published weekly each Saturday
