“Every time a new gallery – or even a new exhibition – is opened in Melbourne, Canberra or Brisbane, one hears a chorus of comments about how Sydney will soon be left behind. This is the second biggest furphy in

“The Gallery of Modern Art, a new building at Brisbane’s South Bank dedicated to post-1970 art, opened a whole year ago, generating a buzz not seen in Brisbane since Charles Kingsford Smith touched down after crossing the Pacific. Since the

Critics, alas, are expected to speak about art like adults, not like children.

Gursky’s 1999 photograph of an American 99 cent store may have sold for more than $US3 million at auction but it is the kind of picture anyone with a good camera and a passing acquaintance with Photoshop could have taken.

“The title, Handle With Care“, explains Felicity Fenner, curator of the 2008 Adelaide Biennial “came from removal boxes that I’ve been packing lately because we’re moving house. But the idea came some time ago, when I noticed that increasingly artists

“Jon Schueler was, by nature, a Romantic and an enthusiast. He exerted a tremendous charm on women but would sacrifice any relationship for the sake of his work. He was married five times and had many other relationships but it

“Politics, of course, is catnip to the curatorial team at the MCA. Unless the shows have a high sociopolitical content, they are out of their comfort zone. Consider the program over the past two years: it has been stuffed full

I remember seeing Mental As Anything play at Sydney University in the early 1980s. The support band that night was a little-known group called INXS, who seemed turgid and nondescript, with an awful poseur as a lead singer. Perhaps that’s