“There are always flowers for those that want to see them” Henri Matisse Down a dirt road, one and a half hours southwest of Coffs Harbour, is the home and studio of painter Helen McCullagh. Isolated and without mobile reception, … Continue reading Helen McCullagh’s Simple Pleasures
I’m the first to admit that a lot of fine art photography leaves me cold. For every Bill Henson or James Craig Annan, there’s an infinite number of Anne Geddes wannabes (nope, I don’t get wanting to work with babies … Continue reading Emma Wright, Storyteller
First published on the QAGOMA Blog page, 18 February 2016. I was sixteen and doing work experience at the Gold Coast Art Gallery. My supervisor had received a fax (!) about a brand new exhibition of Asian and Oceanic art being launched at the Queensland Art Gallery, and for some inexplicable reason I was put in charge of taking a group of volunteers up to see the show. God knows why they thought I was responsible enough to get 22 octogenarians there and back safely, but as one of the volunteers said to me on the day “at least you’re … Continue reading My First Time
If you haven’t dropped in to see the latest exhibition at Edwina Corlette Gallery, then you’re missing out on one of the most beautiful exhibitions to hang in Brisbane over the last few years. Local artist Lyndal Hargrave has created an immense body of work for this show, every one a radiant, prismatic celebration of the inherent beauty of geometry. To discover more of Lyndal’s work, and read my essay on her show New Geometricks, visit Edwina Corlette Gallery here. Continue reading Lyndal Hargrave at Edwina Corlette Gallery
“We are profoundly tested.” That’s how Christchurch Art Gallery director Jenny Harper described the situation she found herself in just one year after the 2010-2011 Canterbury earthquakes that forced her gallery’s closure. In an article for Artlink, she wrote of the difficulty in seeing the gallery devoid of visitors, of the frustration of living with an uncertain future, and the reality of staff redundancies. She wasn’t to know then just how much greater the challenges were to get. Despite having already planned and cancelled three reopening events, Harper and her staff were still quietly confident of being up and running again … Continue reading Profoundly Tested
Late last year I was lucky enough to sit down with Archibald and Wynne Prize finalist Julian Meagher to discuss his new body of work for Edwina Corlette Gallery. In front of an audience of VIP clients, artists, collectors and curators, we discussed Julian’s childhood growing up in a large Sydney family, and the growing desire to understand his ancestors. The show itself was a beautifully rendered portrait of a family and its tribulations, and incorporated both historical photos and his existing motifs of empty alcohol bottles and native Australian flora. Here’s a little excerpt from the piece I … Continue reading Julian Meagher’s Alone In The Sun
Long before David Attenborough seduced us all with his dulcet tones, art and science were inextricably linked by the use of scientific illustrators to provide visual records of each new discovery. Though the earliest examples were often comically inaccurate, having … Continue reading Found and Lost: the art of Emma Lindsay and Victoria Reichelt
Have you ever had flowering tea? Appearing at first like a tightly bound ball of chaff, it bursts open when steeped to reveal a beautiful floral bloom. Served in glass teapots so that you can appreciate the beauty unfolding, it really is one of life’s simple pleasures. I first tried one at White Rabbit Gallery’s tearoom, and it occurred to me at that time that it was the perfect analogy for the gallery itself. Not particularly exciting from the outside, but with an interior that gets more beautiful the further in to its layers you delve. White Rabbit Gallery is one … Continue reading Are we in PARADI$E yet, BITCH?
There’s a perverse thing about humans that make two behavioral quirks a certainty: when we see a closed door, we immediately want to know what’s happening on the other side of it; and when we lock ourselves away from the world, we can’t help but look out the window to see what we’re missing. It’s the constant push-pull of being human; we require both intimacy and isolation in order to function. Well…that, and the fact that we’re all of us excited by a little voyeurism. City people are especially prone to extremes of human interaction. The urgency and immediacy of city living makes for … Continue reading Robyn Stacey’s Cloud Land
When Sydney artist Linde Ivimey was looking for a new studio space a few years ago, she chanced upon a two story warehouse in the inner west that was exactly what she desired. Built in the early 1900s as a mail dispatch centre, it had been converted into a bright and airy living space upstairs with a large light-filled workshop below, and was the perfect place to merge home and studio time the way she needed. But perfect places come with imperfect asking prices, and the building was out of Linde’s reach. Back in her existing studio she tried to reconcile her … Continue reading Linde Ivimey: Cross My Heart
CULTURAL FLANERIE 
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