Vaginas. Pretty weird, right? They excrete things, they sprout things, sometimes they make embarrassing noises during sex and the owner has to pretend it didn’t happen, or at least pretend they didn’t hear it. I know, the weirdest. They’ve also been the subjects of intense artistic fascination—especially from male observers—basically since art was invented….
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Renata Buziak’s series Afterimage, which was recently exhibited at ANCA Gallery, Canberra, demands to be looked at. No passing glances on your way to the wine here; these are images which grab you and won’t let go. They are vivid, surreal works that draw in the viewer, who curious to explore these alien-like landscapes created by Buziak’s highly detailed imagery….
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The show-stopping exhibition Hollywood Costume opened at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) in Melbourne last week. Direct from London’s Victoria and Albert museum, the exhibition is sure to draw in seamstresses to cinephiles alike. Hollywood Costume features over 100 costumes, painstakingly gathered from private collections over a five-year period. No genre…
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Prostitutes, drunkards and erotic dancers. These were amongst the favourite subjects of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901), whose art is the subject of a major retrospective at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Toulouse-Lautrec: Paris and the Moulin Rouge is composed of more than 100 works spanning his brief yet celebrated career. This includes…
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A larger-than-life circular mirror angled to reflect the clouds above. The aptly-titled Sky Mirror (2006) graces the lawn outside Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), which is currently showing a major exhibition by the artist behind this intriguing work, Anish Kapoor. Provocative yet majestic, Sky Mirror makes a striking appearance in Circular Quay and,…
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Nodding towards minimalism, conceptual and process art, the ideas behind Magda Cebokli’s Drawn Out, currently showing at the Counihan Gallery, Brunswick are difficult to reconcile. For one, each is too complex an idea to explore properly through just a nod. For another, trying to survey them all at once makes things far too convoluted to…
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‘I found her a woman of few words, not very friendly, a bit pouty, almost defiant.’ These are the initial impressions Diana had of the student-photographer who approached her at a gig at the Melbourne University’s student union. The photographer was Carol Jerrems and the year was 1968. Little did either young woman know…
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“It is this love of beautiful colour which makes us paint like this and not a liking for the point.” – Paul Signac “This love of beautiful colour” perfectly encapsulates the NGV International’s summer blockbuster, Radiance: The Neo-Impressionists. The exhibition showcases some fine examples of Neo-Impressionist works. Each artwork, composed of layers of unmixed points,…
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Try as we may (and many intellectuals and creatives alike might), taking a real peek into our subconscious is impossible. By definition, the subconscious is something that lurks beneath the surface of consciousness. If we were to theoretically retrieve whatever’s beneath that surface, it would then be brought to the forefront of our consciousness….
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‘All the world’s a stage…’ wrote Shakespeare more than five hundred years ago. The works of American photographer Gregory Crewdson reveal that these sentiments have as much relevance to contemporary life as they did to Elizabethan England. In a Lonely Place, the first major exhibition of Crewdson’s photographs to tour Australia, features images that…
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The world of the ballet meets high fashion in the sumptuous new exhibit at Melbourne’s NGV International, Ballet & Fashion. Celebrating the close relationship between renowned local and international designers and ballet, the exhibit explores the blurred line between the costumes and haute couture. Launched in conjunction with 50th birthday celebrations for the Australian Ballet,…
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Speak to Me may strike you as a curious choice for the title of a biennial of new media art. Today, we communicate with one-another through so many means that speaking seems old-fashioned. This tension between technology and humanity underlies Experimenta’s Speak to Me Fifth Biennial of New Media Art, currently showing in Melbourne, before…
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Last Thursday night was the Fat Stories launch at the Brisbane Powerhouse. It is a free exhibition being held in the Visy Theatre foyer and runs until November 5th. I had just arrived back from Melbourne that afternoon and was in a bit of a fluster trying to work out what to wear to the…
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