Steve Lopes + Leo Robba
Issue 16
In his eighth decade, artist John Olsen’s legendary lust for life is as obvious as ever and so is his devotion to drawing, a practice that has underpinned his long and distinguished career. What is also evident when talking with Olsen is that his diverse life experiences have informed his approach to art. Memories of tough times during the Depression in the late 1920’s, creative battles of a life spent dedicated to art, and the many wonderful people who have shared his world and great places he has visited are all deeply intertwined through his work. He is still looking outward, projecting what he sees and more importantly celebrating life- just as he did as a young boy growing up in Newcastle, discovering a passion for drawing.
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Pat Nourse
July 2011
Tribute – Vale David Band
The late David Band left a distinct stamp on graphic design in Australian restaurants, writes Michael Harden.
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William Delafield Cook. A Survey
Gippsland Art GallerySimon Gregg
July 2011
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.
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Lynne Dwyer
June 11 - 12 2011
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.
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Louise Schwartzkoff
June 9 2011
At a table laden with paint-crusted crockery, John Olsen slides his brush into a dish if curdling watercolour. The paint is as thick and creamy as the salt deposits on the surface of Lake Eyre. It bleeds at the edges when Olsen strokes his brush across a freshly painted indigo background. “Look there,” he says. “It’s alive. And there’s sort of a running figure, you see? Ill just give it some arms.”
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John McDonald
June 4-5th
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.
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Matt Buchanan
May 28-29 2011
Earlier this month Sydney lost one of its great arts patrons, Ann Lewis, to cancer. Over the years Lewis enriched the culture, donating remarkable and extraordinarily valuable paintings, photography and sculpture to the Museum of Contemporary Art, the National Gallery of Australia and others
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13/5/11
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.”
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John McDonald
07/05/11
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.
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Joyce Morgan
3/5/11
For artist Michael Johnson, size most definitely matters..
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Fiona Hile
April 2011
Philip Hunter has talked about his work as ‘an invariably complex field of conceptual possibilities and material outcomes; a zone where different foci, fragments, textures, perspectives, illusory spaces, moods and views coexist.’ A conversation with the artist can be as complex as one of his paintings, and when I visited him recently at his Melbourne studio where he was preparing for a forthcoming exhibition at Sydney’s Tim Olsen Gallery we discussed, among other things, his recent trip to Europe; his new ‘tropical inland sea’ paintings; Borges; Calvino; wasp nests; dog fences; horseshoes; memory palaces; horizons and ‘a vast book with no pages’ . What follows is a slice taken from that conversation.
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Leta Keens
April 2011
Love art but unsure how to start your own collection? Experts, curators and gallery directors reveal their tips on how to find what suits your taste, budget and home.
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Jane Albert
May 2011
The hottest new creatives in the frame.
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Rhianna Walcott
23/3/2011
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.
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Linda Morris
12/03/2011
20 Questions
Guy Maestri
Archibald winner, Johnny Cash fan, Mudgee boy, coffee snob.
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Tony Magnusson
April 2011 edition
Paul Davies designs the artist page for the latest edition of GQ
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Kate Crawford
25/2/11
The paintings in artist Sophie Cape’s first solo exhibition reflect the pain of her former career as a downhill ski racer. Sophie’s paintings have been described as “shocking in impact with their shattered bones and broken dreams”. Sophie grew up in Mosman and is the daughter of Mosman artist Ann Cape
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John Macdonald
19/2/2011
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...
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16/2/11
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,
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