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.

Art Guide Australia

Issue 136 Contributors

A Note From the Editor

Hobart

Melbourne

Sydney

Canberra

Port Augusta

Melbourne

Sydney

Adelaide

Sydney

Melbourne

23rd Biennale of Sydney: rīvus 12 March—13 June

Interview José Roca and Anna Davis • From sustainability to non-living participants to a focus on waterways, this year’s Biennale weaves multiple, entangled threads. We talked to artistic director Jose Roca and one of the four locally-based curatorium members, Anna Davis, about their process in bringing together the 23rd Biennale of Sydney.

Leaves of Grass • The acclaimed UK duo Ackroyd & Harvey are two of the most innovative artists working in environmental art today—and for the Biennale, they’re bringing their grass works to Sydney, advocating for a sustainable future.

Studio Leanne Tobin

Interview Kiki Smith • Since the 1980s acclaimed American artist Kiki Smith has been creating multidisciplinary works on mortality, sexuality, nature and embodiment. From sculptures of the body, to drawings based on mythology and fairy tales, to incredible tapestries—which are showing for the Biennale of Sydney—Smith has pushed at the boundaries of form, creating works that are beguiling in their existence. Her work has shown in five Venice Biennales, and in 2006 she was recognised by TIME Magazine as one of the ‘TIME 100: The People Who Shape Our World.’ Here, Smith talks about the process of making art and being patient in the face of the uncontrollable.

Branching Out • Mexican artist Tania Candiani is bringing her large-scale installations to Sydney, in a startlingly poetic work reflecting the flows of waterways, sound, language, migration and ecosytems.

Common Ground • Central to the Biennale of Sydney is a focus on collectives coming together. We look at the stories and art behind three Indigenous collectives in rīvus: Iltja Ntjarra (Many Hands) Art Centre and Casino Wake Up Time from Australia, and New Zealand’s Mata Aho Collective.

Dance Dance Revolution • Across dance, performance and video, Amrita Hepi’s latest art isn’t only about protest, but what happens after the revolution.

State of Freedom • With a lineup of intergenerational artists, the 2022 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Free/State is grappling with the state’s colonial origins, alongside questions of freedom and displacement.

On Balance • If life were a set of scales, what would the balance be for Australian female artists today? With over five decades of thinking, writing on, and curating exhibitions centring Australian women artists, Julie Ewington reflects on the position of female artists in Australia today.

All Hail The King • With memorabilia coming to Australia direct from Graceland, how do we account for the enduring, almost divine, presence of Elvis? “More popular than Jesus” is how John Lennon referred to The Beatles in 1966, a line we could lend to The King himself.

Radical Ceremony • Ceremony and radical activism may seem like differing forces, but The 4th National Indigenous Art Triennial is showing us otherwise, centering itself on art, action and...