Emails and comments to The Art Life have been running hot lately – wild accusations, flames and abuse along with some suggestions, questions, notifications of events and exhibitions. Before we get to the contentious stuff, Lisa Havilah, the director, Campbelltown

14 June 2005 Media Release Ricky Swallow wins hearts at Venice More than 15,000 international art curators and critics have seen the exquisite works of Ricky Swallow in the first four days of the Venice Biennale. A record 5,000 people

The road outside Gitte Weise Galleries [Sydney/Berlin] is a parking nightmare and with the slabs of newly laid bitumen, random cones and bollards, if you end up at Gitte Weise Galleries it’s because you really meant to be there. We

People who live in Sydney have a secret envy of Melbourne. It’s a place where sub cultures get taken seriously, where vast, glittering art palaces are funded by the public purse and art magazines are given away free to any

Could we really have thought that there are just too many people doing the photography-video thing? Could we have really gone all fogey and started blaming the medium for the lack of interest we find in work in galleries? Pretty

Clinton Nain’s work deals with one of the most fundamental aspects of making art – a heightened appreciation and understanding of materials. People forget that making art is about the very stuff that actually makes it and an appreciation for

“[Ricky Swallow] is essentially self-taught – “I had to start at ground zero” – but he received valuable assistance in the early stages from a couple of experienced woodworkers and a book called How to Carve Realistic Birds“. – Sebastian

The world outside Sydney is a fiction. It’s what people who live in Sydney like to invoke when they’re talking about people other than themselves. At Nell’s show Happy Ending at Roslyn Oxley Gallery there are a series of works

We have of late been suffering from acute phonotony, that debilitating ennui brought on by too much photography. Although we had promised to review the Citigroup Private Bank Australian Photographic Portrait Prize at the Art Gallery of NSW we just