By Madeleine Martin — 6 November, 2020
Two-hundred-odd elongated beeswax candlesticks hang by their uncut wicks over three wooden dowels. Their smooth, organic contours are appealing, prompting my comrade to pull down her mask in the otherwise empty gallery to inhale their cosy, honeyed scent. The primary function of a candle is to emit light upon ignition, yet these candles are, for…
By Jane O'Sullivan — 9 October, 2020
Flux and change prevail in Pieces of Spaces and Other Places, a collaborative exhibition project by Carla Cescon and Tina Havelock Stevens. The idea of fatalism is handled in different ways: Cescon through tarot and symbolism, and Havelock Stevens through forces of nature. The work of both artists is deeply personal, and about ageing parents….
By Jacqui Shelton — 7 August, 2020
This piece is the fourth in a five-part series of responses for BLEED—an online biennial festival from Arts House and Campbelltown Arts Centre. This article was written in response to Angela Goh and Su Yu Hsin’s ‘Paeonia Drive‘ (2020), which you can view here. Walking my dog in the city council-maintained garden, I notice the…
By Daniel Press — 28 April, 2020
Anna Louise Richardson is raising the seventh generation of her family on a cattle farm in country Western Australia, south of Perth. Unbeknownst to her children, looming dangers prowl the inside and outside of their homestead. Her fears surrounding the safety of her children, inherited from family histories as well as her own parenting experiences,…
By Tim Marvin — 20 March, 2020
‘Drum Shield Affordance Extension 1.1 Extravehicular Activity’ (2020): Noah’s Ark, a 4.8-billion-year-old moon rock, ‘One Bad Snake’, the High Flight Foundation, Mary Irwin’s The Moon Is Not Enough: An Astronaut’s Wife Finds Peace with God and Herself (1978), a 3D render of the Boeing-manufactured Apollo 15 LRV deck module, a Creation Ministries International business card,…
By Naomi Riddle — 21 February, 2020
The Museum of Contemporary Art’s summer exhibition, Cornelia Parker, is a retrospective of the celebrated British artist’s work. Parker is the tenth artist to feature in the Sydney International Art Series—an initiative undertaken in partnership with the NSW Government to bring internationally recognised artists to Australian audiences. Parker is best known for her large-scale installations,…
By Andrew Brooks — 7 February, 2020
This is part two of an extended review considering Vernon Ah Kee’s The Island at Campbelltown Arts Centre. You can read part one here. At the centre of Vernon Ah Kee’s exhibition are two multiple channel video works—one old and one new—that bring into sharp relief how central policing and detention are to the preservation of…
By Andrew Brooks — 5 February, 2020
This is part one of an extended review considering Vernon Ah Kee’s The Island at Campbelltown Arts Centre. ‘That’s not an accident.’ Lex Wotton ‘Settlers always think they’re defending themselves.’ Fred Moten The ‘island’ continent often referred to as Australia is underpinned by a carceral imagination. A national mythology casts settlers as a bunch of…
By June Miskell — 11 December, 2019
This text is in dialogue with Caroline Garcia and JD Reforma’s collaborative exhibition The Fullness of Time at Verge Gallery. The exhibition explores the way time is recorded in materials and language through two distinct, yet interrelated, approaches: a choreography of transliteration, oscillating between Tagalog and English (Garcia), and an accretion of gestures and distilled…
By Fiona McGregor — 20 November, 2019
‘I am fascinated by dualisms, mirror images, blindness and invisibility, subject/object reversals, the roles of artist and audience and all my work, since my earliest performances of the 1970s exacerbates such tensions, as the deeper structure of both thought and image.’ Mike Parr, (January 1998) Entering the space, you see a large rectangular installation…