Visual artists tell you why and how they create! From studio visits, intimate interviews, and live issues, we take art out of the gallery and into your ears.
For Kamilaroi artist Warraba Weatherall, art that isn't a catalyst for something—that isn't driven by critique of gatekeeping museums, the criminal justice system, or the wilful historical amnesia and complacency—isn't worth making. Warraba has just unveiled his first institutional solo at Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art, laying bare his politics in a manifesto of simmering rage catalysed into monumental sculptures, anti-monuments, and a tense 8-minute film that explores the violence of the archive.
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The truth behind Vincent Fantauzzo's verisimilitude
In art, verisimilitude — representing things as they appear — is something like telling the unvarnished truth and it makes perfect sense that it's the form in which Vincent Fantauzzo is most comfortable. His first commercial artworks were actually counterfeit 50 dollar notes, just one of the uncomfortable truths which he tells in his new autobiography, Unveiled. Although his childhood in the outer suburbs of Melbourne was wracked by endemic poverty and a distant but physically and emotionally violent father, it was undiagnosed dyslexia that almost beat this Jack Rennie-trained boxer.But Fantauzzo has gone on to great success, and while his representational style isn't wildly popular with critics, his portraits are perennial people's choice award winners at the Archibald Prize.
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Robots aside, Robert Andrew draws inspiration from country
Robert Andrew's artwork features simple robotic machines, with a stylus that impulsively draws or leaves a trace; not so much artificial intelligence as incidental happenstance. Although he works with technology, Andrew has always been deeply inspired by country. So it made sense that he was invited to make work for a new group exhibition at Bundanon, the timeless yet scarred landscape that figured in the paintings of its previous owner, Arthur Boyd.Robert and Daniel chat about wombats, watercourses, and the mother of all road-trips.
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Nici Cumpston: Indigenous artist turned curator to lead overseas museum
Nici Cumpston has played a transformative role at the Art Gallery of South Australia. Over the past 16 years she has driven First Nations curatorial practice to new heights, shaping what began as a biennial exhibition into a festival of contemporary Indigenous art that surveys artmaking across the continent.As Tarnanthi reaches its tenth anniversary, Nici has accepted a new challenge overseas — becoming the first Indigenous director of one of the world's great collections of Aboriginal art housed at Kluge-Ruhe at the University of Virginia.
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An art historical approach to the work of Khaled Sabsabi
When questions were raised in Federal Parliament about two artworks by Khaled Sabsabi from 2006 and 2007, it was enough to convince Creative Australia to dump the artist from next year's Venice Biennale. The board hoped to avoid a "prolonged and divisive" public debate, but the unparalleled move to rescind the invitation to Sabsabi to represent Australia risks creating has had the opposite effect: compromising artistic freedom and the appearnance of arms-length independence of the arts funding agency.Art historian Rex Butler and barrister Paris Lettau, contributing editors of the art magazine Memo, lend an art historical perspective to the debate.
Visual artists tell you why and how they create! From studio visits, intimate interviews, and live issues, we take art out of the gallery and into your ears.
Ireland