Art Guide Australia

Art Guide Australia is a print and online magazine exploring contemporary Australian art. Our editors and our team of writers and contributors know the local art scene and keep you informed through engaging and thoughtful articles. We speak with artists, curators and gallerists to learn more about their ideas and share them with an audience who want to know more about Australian art and what to see. We’re here to support a vibrant and diverse arts community and our aim is to provide independent, considered editorial coverage alongside a comprehensive picture of what’s happening in the visual arts across Australia.

A Note From the Editor November/December 2024

Art Guide Australia

Issue 152 Contributors

Sydney/Eora • WRITERS

Canberra/Ngambri

Alice Springs/Mparntwe

Bendigo/Dja Dja Wurrung Country

Melbourne/Naarm

Hobart/Nipaluna

Gold Coast/Yugambeh Country

Sydney/Eora

Fremantle/Walyalup

Melbourne/Naarm

Self Reflections • Jack Ball’s new work challenges the extractive history of the archive while searching for shapes that can articulate the complexity of trans life.

Family Ties • For Lardil and Yangkaal writer and curator Maya Hodge, Archie Moore’s presentation at this year’s Venice Biennale is a powerful symbol of reckoning—one that asks the world to bear witness to the long shadows of colonial violence and clears space for possibilities ahead.

Studio Nathan Beard

A Stitch in Time • A new exhibition at the Art Gallery of South Australia shows us how textiles evoke material memories while keeping the radical lineage of needle and thread alive.

Stranger than Fiction: Magritte and Cao Fei • René Magritte and Cao Fei speak to each other across cultures and eras about the way that perception can unsettle reality—and the places the real intersects with the surreal.

The Paradox of Painting with Ben Quilty • A Torana’s crumpled bonnet. The haunted gaze of a soldier. Skulls and Rorschach blots done in a thick, bruising impasto. The signifiers of a culture shaped by undercurrents of violence and a white, male psyche at war with itself have animated the paintings of Ben Quilty for the last two decades. Here, Quilty—the subject of Ben Quilty: 20 Years, an upcoming retrospective at Jan Murphy Gallery—talks to Georgia Spain about the wrestle with mythology that has defined his career. He also shares, with his fellow painter, the contradictions of joy and suffering and a belief in art as an antidote to an increasingly volatile world.

Speaking Volumes • The growing cultural interest in art books reflects the enduring power of the printed word. Jane O’Sullivan takes a closer look.

Poetic Relations • Bringing together 70 artists from 30 countries, the 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art fosters connections across cultures and borders, and translates cultural knowledge for the present day.

TO INFINITY AND BEYOND • Yayoi Kusama 15 December—21 April 2025 National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne/Naarm VIC)

20/20 Vision: On the Legacy of un Magazine • un Magazine was conceived to champion courageous art criticism in an art world too often shaped by power and influence, a mission that still endures two decades on.

Victoria

New South Wales

Queensland

Australian Capital Territory

Tasmania

South Australia

Western Australia

Northern Territory

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