Shaun Gladwell constantly experiments with technique – from classical oil painting to virtual reality – but he remains the master of playful motion.
Mella Jaarsma, The landscaper 2013, costume: wood, paint, iron and leather, single-channel video: 3:40 minutes, colour, sound.
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Purchased 2018. Photo by Mie Cornoedus
The exhibition Contemporary Worlds: Indonesia has many wonderful works. But it is an exception - despite our close proximity, there are few opportunities for Australians to engage with Indonesian art.
Photographs of tattooed Japanese women in the exhibition Perseverance: Japanese Tattoo Tradition in a Modern World.
Ben Healley
An exhibition at Melbourne’s Immigration Museum explores tattoo traditions from Samoa, Japan and Melbourne, telling stories of culture, tradition and migration.
A still from Gough’s video Hunting Ground (pastoral).
Rosslynd Piggott’s artworks explore an uncanny, dream-like state. A new exhibition of her objects, installations and paintings is a memorable reflection of a major Australian artist.
Sam Cranstoun, Utopia, The National, Carriageworks.
Zan Wimberley
The ambitiously named exhibition, The National: New Australian Art, lives up to its title as a visual examination of Australia in an age of uncertainty.
Installation view: Quilty featuring Pancreatitis (Kenny), The Last Supper (Bottom Feeder) and Farewell virginity by Ben Quilty, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2019.
Photo: Grant Handcock.
Ben Quilty is the next big thing in Australian art. Will he be allowed - and will he allow himself - to explore and find his true potential as an artist?
Cherish Violet Blood as Lila in Deer Woman, playing at this year’s Sydney Festival.
Prudence Upton
Deer Woman, written, directed, designed, composed, stage managed and performed by First Nations artists from Canada, is anchored by a solo performance of fierce skill, focus and precision.
Dust is a new show by far-north Queensland company Dancenorth, currently playing at the 2019 Sydney Festival.
Pippa Samaya
Dancenorth’s Dust explores a world on the brink of turning back to dust. Its themes are familiar in contemporary dance, but the show is replete with powerful images.
Soprano Jane Sheldon in La Passion de Simone. Kaija Saariaho’s work had its Australian premiere at the 2019 Sydney Festival, performed by the Sydney Chamber Opera.
Victor Frankowski
The Australian premiere of La Passion de Simone uses multiple voices to tell a story about philosopher Simone Weil. But the work lacks the emotional drama of its subject’s life.
In his Quarterly Essay, Smee laments the erosion of ‘inner life’ thanks to digital technology.
Shutterstock
Smee insists that the rich and intense visions of artists such as Cézanne or Chekhov are increasingly lost to us.
Anna Breckon and Nat Randall, Rear view 2018 (still),
high definition digital video, multi-channel sound, 85:11 mins
Courtesy of the artists Photo: Andrew Curtis
Through animation, video, light and sound, Theatre is Lying exposes how visual art, performance and theatrical devices can interrogate what is real and what is not.
Leah Ashwood, Jasper Lloyd, and Texas Watterston in The School (2018).
Bronte Pictures, Head Gear Films, Kreo Films FZ
There is nothing to prepare us for the shock to the senses in the National Gallery of Victoria’s latest exhibition combining the works of M. C. Escher with Japanese design firm nendo.
Forty-five years after his death, the Art Gallery of New South Wales has mounted a major exhibition of Tony Tuckson, focussing on his intensely personal Abstract Expressionist works
André Rieu performs in his Sydney Town Hall performance.
André Rieu Productions
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne