Introducing Friday Degustation

Friday: Degustation: assorted links for your digestion…

Quilty

Ben Quilty‘s self-titled mono moniker survey show [>] Quilty opened at the Art Gallery of South Australia has opened. Things got off to an… interesting start with a profile in Nine Media’s Good Weekend with a cover featuring Quilty as a Christ-like figure. Also in anticipation of the opening, The Art Life’s editor Andrew Frost [>] interviewed the artist for ABC TV’s The Mix, and a post version for ABC News.

Post-opening reviews have also started to arrive. First off the blocks was Gina Fairley‘s 4.5/5 rated ArtsHub review: [>] “Cutting through hype, AGSA’s take on Ben Quilty’s career is mapped across a less predictable path, encouraging audiences to think beyond his seductive impasto surfaces.“ Sasha Grishin‘s review for The Conversation begins by wondering [>]“At 45, it is no longer a question of whether Ben Quilty is the next big thing in Australian art, but of how big will he get – a Storrier, a Whiteley or a Nolan?”

Brie Lee review at New Matilda [>]asks whether the survey show is 20 years too late to be considering notions of masculinity while at Running Dog Eugene Yiu Nam Cheung [>]takes the artist to task for his media coverage.

Classics with a modern twist

Interviews over lunch are curious events, particularly when you’ve been briefed not to talk about certain… things. Linda Morris interviewed Lisa Havilah for the Sydney Morning Herald on moving the Powerhouse Museum to Parramatta, or rather, not. “The NSW election is four weeks away and the new chief executive of the Powerhouse Museum is mindful of caretaker conventions that public servants avoid political commentary on sticky subjects. [>] “I have my instructions,” [Havilah] grins as she peruses the menu of Italian classics with a modern twist

Museum + $$$ + Art

It seems odd that any work of the late Jean-Michel Basquiat would remain unseen in his home town, but it turns out New York’s famous son has more fame and lasting consequence outside the US, as in Paris where he’s just had a street named after him. Back in NYC, The New York Times‘s Martha Schwendener [>]takes a fresh look at Basquiat’s work as a new show opens at the Brant Foundation, and then digs into the nexus of art, patronage, money and private foundations…

Slowly fading HK

Hong Kong is a city that is being steadily remade as old neighbourhoods, mansions, warehouses and entire streets are removed, remodelled and rebuilt. [>] The Guardian covered a small band of urban explorers seeking out the last remnants of the old city, including Bruce Lee’s old house...

Fully immersive

[>]Nothing quite says Vincent Van Gogh, an artist who died in poverty, like a gigantic walk through digital light show…

Consider the Wombat

The Public Domain Review is one of the best archival websites going, and its steady diet of antique oddities is addictive. Angus Trumble considers the Pre-Raphaelite obsession with… the wombat: “Only one of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood actually visited Australia — the sculptor Thomas Woolner who, after failing to earn a proper living with his art, emigrated there to seek his fortune on the goldfields. The Pre-Raphaelites and their friends met regularly to read aloud from the letter–journals that Woolner sent home. He had no luck at all, and did not like the Australian landscape. […]   [>]Although wombats don’t get a specific mention in the surviving letters, it is quite possible he brought word of the exotic marsupial home with him when he moved back to England just a year later.”

And finally…

Nate Freeman at Artsy.com claims that Damien Hirst’s Vegas hotel suite – might just be his masterpiece… [>] “On Friday night, I saw Hirst in the world’s most expensive hotel suite, on the upper floors of the 40-story Palms Casino Resort, with a view of the shimmering lights of the Las Vegas Strip. Hirst, who wore a black shirt with skulls on it, designed the suite, which is full of his art and fully branded as a Hirst—a Hirst you can sleep in…”