Contemporary Australian painter Anne Wallace is widely admired for her strange and suspenseful dream-like scenes. Her landscapes, cityscapes and interiors are made rich with particulars and always…

Robe is a very early example of a major body of work that occupied Wang Jin for the most part of a decade. In these works the iconic form of the Peking Opera robe is rendered in transparent plastic…

In 2009, 63-year-old law man Rex Warrimou began the process of recounting the Papua New Guinean Ömie people’s creation story to young Australian curator Brennan King. The story, entrusted for…

1954 was an important year for the growing northern Queensland town of Cairns. The town played host to the Royal Tour of the newly-crowned Queen Elizabeth II, the first and hitherto only visit by any…

In the 1968 catalogue for the landmark exhibition ‘The Field’, Royston Harpur identified The Mooche 1968 by Dick Watkins as ‘the outstanding painting’ in the exhibition.(1) Curator Brian Finemore and…

Public art has the power to change the cultural landscape in which it stands. Recently, Judy Watson’s impressive cast bronze sculpture, tow row, was installed in the forecourt of GOMA. Watson’s work…

For over 50 years, Dutch-born photographer Ans Westra has been absorbed by the documentation of Maori communities in Aotearoa New Zealand. Her often frank photographic portraits have elicited varied…

In the mid to late 1960s, Margaret Worth was making important contributions to the advancement of abstract art in Australia. At the time, however, this was poorly acknowledged, in part because of her…

Born in 1955, Xu Bing has lived through numerous political campaigns in China: from the Hundred Flowers campaign of the mid 1950s in which Mao Zedong and the Communist Party reversed their initial…

ShanghART Supermarket (Australia) 2007–08 is one of Shanghai-based artist and curator Xu Zhen’s most recent installations. Emerging in the late 1990s as a radical and innovative artist in the fields…

Yang Fudong was born in Beijing in 1971 and graduated from the China Academy of Fine Arts, Huangzhou in 1995. Since moving to Shanghai in 1998, Yang Fudong has maintained an active and extensive video…

Yang Shaobin is a senior Chinese painter whose practice since the late 1980s reflects the social realities affecting China today. A leading representative of the cynical realist movement, his early…

Yang Zhenzhong uses humour to reveal the contradictions within Chinese contemporary life. His video work 922 rice corns is a refined and ironic visual metaphor. Playfully invoking Cultural Revolution…

This is an interesting image of an unremarkable thing, at least at first glance. Ostensibly, the work depicts the edge of a suburban sports ground in what appears to be the wet season. In the…

As an artist committed to feminist issues and supported by traditional Confucian ethics, Yun Suk-nam has developed a vibrant art practice that explores the position of woman in a patriarchal society.…

WOMEN AND REALITYYUN SUK-NAM’S PINK SOFASouth Korean feminist artist Yun Suk-nam’s alluring theatrical installation Pink sofa 1996 has recently undergone conservation treatment in preparation for the…

The paintings that comprise Zhao Dalu’s ‘Balcony’ series were completed in 2007, during a particularly intense period in the artist’s life. Executed in darker hues with apparent haste, the paintings…

Based in Guangzhou, in China’s highly urbanised Pearl River Delta, Zhou Tao is part of a generation of Chinese artists born after the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) that is now coming to maturity. His…