Elaborate Irreverence
Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, In the beginning
Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne, 22 November 2016 – 26 February, 2017
By Beth Kearney
Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran’s solo exhibition In the Beginning is arresting. Covertly located on the top floor of the Ian Potter Museum of Art, the Sri Lankan–born, Sydney-based artist introduces confronting imagery and a vibrant palette into the University of Melbourne gallery. Despite Nithiyendran’s potentially off-pu...
Aspiring to Anti-Aspiration
Lucina Lane, Range
White Cuberd, 8pm – 10pm, 15 January 2017
By Giles Fielke
Off-site art exhibitions have seen something of a resurgence in Melbourne over the past few years. There are a number of reasons for this, not the least being the rapidly rising cost of rent in the city, which seems to force a commercialise or perish imperative on artists exhibiting work early in their career. Mediating the reappearance of ‘recession art’, as Peter Cripps termed a si...
The Sculpture of Bronwyn Oliver
TarraWarra Museum of Art
19 November 2016 – 5 February 2017
Curated by Julie Ewington
By Helen Hughes
The Sculpture of Bronwyn Oliver is the first major survey of the work of Australian artist Bronwyn Oliver (1959–2006). Though her career was cut short by her premature death at age forty-seven, the body of work presented within this exhibition has a pulse—writhing with movement and flickering with energy.
Oliver, a Sydney-based artist who undertook severa...
Suzanne Archer: Over-looked
Suzanne Archer, Moving Forwards, Looking Back: A Survey 1969–2016
Nicholas Thompson Gallery, 155 Langridge Street, Collingwood, 17 December 2016 – 29 January 2017
By Rex Butler
When the well-known painter Gareth Sansom opened Suzanne Archer’s show at the Nicholas Thompson Gallery in December, he made the rather large claim that two of the paintings—Coalesce (1993) and Ant holes and Bandy-Bandy (1994)—were the best he’d seen in Melbourne all year.
It’s a...
In 2016, The Age ended its weekly art review column, which it had been publishing for well over a century. For the first time, the public space occupied by the local art review has effectively been vacated in Melbourne. The art review is an important forum where meaningful dialogue and exchange can take place between artists, gallerists, critics, collectors and the public. Without a regular review, the art world lacks a meeting place where common ground can be found, be it to settle scores or...