Maestri's Portrait of a Landscape in Town

Sydney gallerist Tim Olsen claims a Victorian link by recalling his childhood at the Dunmoochin artist's
colony, when the likes of Fred Williams, John Brack and Albert Tucker would come to dine with his father, the artist John Olsen.

Best In Show

Surreal films, fine antiquities, 3D video installations and melancholy photography will broaden your mind over the coming months

Colour Schemes

The act of putting paint on canvas creates fascinating tensions between the cerebral, the sensual and the suggestive.

Arts - About Town

Paul Davies: Tim Olsen pop-up gallery. A Sydney artist and quintessentially Sydney gallerist in Melbourne?

Unpacking the Painted Library

It’s enormous, two metres by seven metres, and by far the most expensive piece in the show at $70,000, even without the purpose-built $20,000- plus gilt frame. In fact, the only mystery about James McGrath’s monumental Ex-Libris, the central work in his new show opening at the Tim Olsen Gallery in Sydney today, is who has a wall big enough to hang it.

A Brush With Greatness

Is landscape painter Luke Sciberras the next John Olsen?

William Delafield Cook. A Survey

William Delafield Cook. A Survey is the first survey exhibition of this significant Australian artist in over two decades.

Since the late 1970s Delafield Cook has worked almost exclusively with the Australian landscape - remarkably, from his studio in London. His paintings are characterised by a deadpan photo realism, yet they transcend the real altogether to speak of phenomena beyond our perception. Taken as a whole, his paintings elevate our understanding and appreciation of the Australian landscape to a new level.

This timely survey unites works from over a thirty year period, to provide a compelling document on the work of one of Australia's most acclaimed and accomplished artists.

Phantom Surge

Swirling white lines float above the golden yellow plains and vast skies in Philip Hunter's latest series of semi-abstract landscapes. A recurring motiff in the artists work, they shimmer with energy and almost pulse with light, like the afterburn of a sparkler.

Masters at Work

Top dealers flocking to the influential Hong Kong art fair see it all, from young talent to genuine show- stoppers to the tasteless and over-priced, writes John McDonald.

Where to buy...

When Michael Johnson isn’t painting, he likes to go fishing at night, says Joyce Morgan in The Sydney Morning Herald. At night, “you have to feel what’s going on – it’s all communication by touch,” he says. Asking his students to paint blindfold gave them that same sense. Despite the shimmering bands of jewel like colour: “After a while you get a grasp on it, like the body movements of a dancer.”

From the Heart

Despite contrasting views of the world, two artists find common ground by putting emotion before technique, writes John McDonald.

The conundrum of how to express one’s thoughts and feelings in a way that doesn’t become illustrative or didactic lies at the heart of abstract art. Many artists consider abstraction to be a logical progression, believing that once they have crossed the lines that separates them from strictly representational art there is no turning back. This made it doubly startling last week to see Michael Johnson’s extraordinary drawing of a snow leopard completes as part of last year’s artist’s project at Taronga Park Zoo.

When the Invisible Becomes Visible

For artist Michael Johnson, size most definitely matters..

Ben Ali Ong - Ballads of the Dead and Dreaming

With its darkly poetic title, Ballads of the Dead and Dreaming, Ben Ali Ong’s latest series will not disappoint those familiar with his ominous, seductive and moody photographs. The exhibition which is being shown at Tim Olsen Gallery, as part of Art Month Sydney, chronicles Ong’s ongoing fascination with ideas of mortality, spirituality and the subconscious.

An abstract blast from the present

As floods follows droughts, the art dealers are hoping a new year will bring clients rushing back through their doors. The previous 12 months were so quiet and visitation so poor that 2011 simply has to be better. This may be an optimistic view, but only an optimist would ever open a commercial gallery. The problem has not been the quality of the shows but the dogged reluctance of buyers to succumb to their acquisitive impulses. The money was there but self-denial was practices with a rigour that is rarely seen in Sydney. As usual there are many shows crying out for attention, but at the risk of making an arbitrary connection, I’ll look at three exhibitions by three young painters working in completely different styles.. Sophie Cape, at the Tim Olsen Gallery is making her debut…  Cape, who is the youngest of these three artists but perhaps, the most confidant...

24 Hours - The Arts Diary

Cross a paintbrush with an adrenalin rush and you get artist Sophie Cape, pictured. A champion downhill skier until injuries forced a change of career, Cape describes her violent way with a brush as "a cathartic expulsion of energy". Her pyschological self portraits,

Painting with an Adrenalin Brush

Somewhere within Sophie Cape’s violent and visceral paintings is her biography. As the dirt and paint intersect on huge pieces of paper, the results tell the story of an elite athlete distraught after injures took away her goals. Cape was a champion skier who changed careers after serious knee and muscle injuries.

Soul of a Nation Rendered in Light and Shade

In casting around for a theme for this year’s Australia Day special, we hoped to choose one that would give the artists scope to explore and celebrate what it means to be Australian. The brief was that the work should be a personal response to our country’s diversity, landscape and culture. Each artist has brought a distinct vision of how they understand and picture our national character, reflecting the wide rang of reactions to the idea of Australia Day.

Phoenix Rising

Photographer Rex Dupain was in a town in Western NSW and the locals were warning him not to go near the local Aboriginal reserve. Your car will be damaged, they said; you’ll be robbed or beaten up. But then Dupain met an Aboriginal man in the street who offered to take him there and show him around. “Don’t worry bro,” the man said. “If you’re with me you’ll be OK.”

Artist scales down - the size of her works, not her output

It has taken Cherry Hood six years to overcome her fear of the landscape at her farm near Goulburn. “It’s been a difficult thing,” she said. “We have this big black range of hills near us and they’re quite spooky and we’re surrounded by these white trees that are quite eerie.” Years of drought had taken a toll, but Hood said rains had brought life to the district’s parched farms: “Its very green and lush.

Open Gallery

Emdur's seascapes featuring floating women have always been singularly beautiful with their weightless, Ophelia-like overtones but in this show her work takes on a more provocative edge with multiple, occasionally intertwined naked bodies. "Martine's paintings celebrate aquatic liberation," says gallerist Tim Olsen. Detail from Sage pictured below.