Blog

Beyond Spectacle: At the NGV Triennial

Feb 5th, 2021 | Dr Nick Gordon

A single note plays in a darkened room – a C tone. It is then repeated, short + long, long + short, until you hear an unfortunately familiar pattern: short short short, long long long, short short short. It’s a distress call from a violin on a spaceship that has...

Arthur Streeton | The Unknown Streeton

Jan 10th, 2021 | Dr Michael Adcock

The ‘unknown’ Streeton might more accurately be termed the less well-known Streeton, in the sense that art galleries will usually hang his iconic Australian works in some numbers, but will tend to show only a few examples of his work done outside this country. The average visitor might see the...

Arthur Streeton: The Master of Light

Dec 10th, 2020 | Dr Michael Adcock

The Art Gallery of New South Wales’ latest blockbuster exhibition, Streeton, very correctly describes him as “The impressionist who captured Australia’s light, land and sea.” The rubric is most apposite, for the core of his work is indeed to capture the essence of our landscape saturated with bright light. However,...

The 1%: African American artists in US institutions

Oct 2nd, 2020 | Dr Nick Gordon

In 2018 Amy Sherald’s Portrait of Michelle Obama and Kehinde Wiley’s Portrait of Barack Obama were unveiled at The National Portrait Gallery. The museum contains 23,000 works in its collections, from the official portraits of presidents to the great men and women of the arts, sciences and public life in...

A visit to Lenin’s Mausoleum in Red Square

Aug 21st, 2020 | Dr Michael Adcock

Moscow held one more treat for me. Paula had very strategically and considerately pointed out that there was a last small window of opportunity in which to sprint over to Red Square to visit Lenin’s tomb in the first hour of opening, just before our bus was due to depart...