One of my favourite contemporary thinkers is the American author Robert Greene (born 1959)—who has produced the bestsellers The 48 Laws of Power (1998), The Art of Seduction (2001), The...
Who are you, and what are you doing here? You, there in the mirror, there in the lens of your phone: What do you see? asks Lawrence Farago in the...
Looking into ancient Greek and Roman visual art, I recently discovered a curious location that is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the comune of Pompei, near Naples, in the Campania region...
In the early 1990’s, while working in a part time job with the installation team at the NGV, an artwork by Eva Hesse, No Title 1963, struck me as being...
2020, as we all know, has been a particularly strange year for those associated with the arts. While some have struggled and withdrawn themselves, being unable to process the situation,...
A particular topic that has remained very clearly in my mind since my MA days is Aristotle’s Four Causes. Change, motion, contingency, the coming into being of phenomena (and the...
We welcome artist and teacher, David Palliser to share his art knowledge in this MAC newsletter, beginning with his discussion of a Gareth Sansom painting from the 2017 NGV retrospective....
From the dense and wonderful Gareth Sansom survey exhibition at the NGV in 2017, A Forensic Possibility was one of my favourite works. Gary is a friend, mentor, and adventurous...
Art is an industry unlike any other. It operates in strange, funny ways. It is an unregulated market wherein there are no ultimate definite criteria as to the worth of...
COVID-19 has generated an important debate around the role of surveillance technologies in our lives. Several articles have stood out to me: some noting its advantages, others cautioning us against...
I read somewhere on Instagram a few days ago that April Fools’ Day was to be cancelled this year because no made-up prank could match what is happening in the...
As we all know, important discussions around climate change and the ecological crisis have been around for the last two to three decades. In my memory, what sticks out are...
Driven by a freight train of a mind, Luisa Blignaut’s acrylic paintings frequently and impulsively veer off track into unexpected, fertile territories. The painting After Anaesthetic describes the minutes after...
Margaret Dunn’s paintings build environments, often domestic and exotic at the same time, often modern and ancient also. These environments seem to be in flux, suggesting that while we exist...
There is a quote by Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) that I find very interesting: “They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn’t. I never painted dreams. I painted my own...
Before I left for Europe, my father told me that I had to see the artwork of one of the greatest Spanish artists, Diego Velázquez. So it was a wonderful...
A few days ago I came across a 2017 article on Frieze website titled “How Important is Art as a Form of Protest?” (https://frieze.com/article/how-important-art-form-protest), presenting a survey of 50 respondents...
New York Review Books (https://www.nyrb.com/collections/classics) is one of my favourite publishers. NYRB editions cover the best in world literature and are known for their superlative translations, expert introductions and attractive...