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In the past two years, artist and writer John Kelly has chronicled the small group of wealthy collectors and commercial gallery dealers who collectively determine who is chosen as the artist to represent Australia at each Venice Biennale. The event is the most important and prestigious contemporary art show in the world, which is why millions of dollars of Australian taxpayers’ dollars are spent on the
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Late last month, I wrote a Daily Review (DR) article that questioned the Australia Council’s appointment of Callum Morton as Chair of the ‘independent’ selection panel to choose an artist or artists for the 2019 Venice Biennale of Art (VB19). My reason for doing so was that the Australia Council proclaimed they wanted the process to
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In the recent Palme d’Or winning film The Square, Ruben Östlund satirises the very notion of contemporary art by exploring its contradictions outside the boundaries of the insular art world. The film’s title derives from an artwork that is a simple square within which, “we all share equal rights and obligations”. Upon entering “…you have
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Artist John Kelly visits the National Gallery of Victoria’s Transformer, a retrospective of Melbourne artist Gareth Sansom, an influential teacher — and once a handy leg spinner for Essendon — whose work has frequently alluded to the game of cricket. *** I was a student when Gareth Sansom opened an exhibition at RMIT University in the early
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On Wednesday night in Sydney the Australian journalism Walkley Foundation Awards were held and included two new categories – Best Arts Journalism and Best Arts Criticism. The irony is that these awards have finally arrived as arts journalism is disappearing in Australia. While the internet is awash with ticket information and promotion of events, the forums
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“In Photography, as everyone knows, content is 90 percent of the ball game. To get good subject matter, you find it. This makes photography the only art form in which shopping is considered a talent” – Peter Plagen, ‘Fretting About Photos: Four Views’, Art in America, November, 1979 The lens and screen are omnipresent in Venice. Not only in
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Artist John Kelly is in Venice – painting – in a visit that coincides with next month’s Venice Biennale. Kelly is a regular visitor to the Biennale and a commentator on the Australia Council sponsored Australian Pavilion in which (usually) one artist is chosen to represent the country’s art. In 2015 he wrote in Daily Review of the coterie of powerful commercial galleries behind Australia’s
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I’m writing this under the duress of jet lag so anything I say is after a 24-hour flight from Sydney to Dublin with only an hour’s break in Singapore and London along the way. However as I wake at midnight, I feel compelled to write and while I am supposed to be composing a proposal
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Artist John Kelly thinks so. The Australian painter and sculptor, best known for his cow images, lives most of the time in Ireland where artists are treated separately to other taxpayers. Kelly argues that a similar scheme should apply in Australia. He says this isn’t because artists are more “special” than other taxpayers but because the work they produce — their
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Artist John Kelly has often been critical of the Australia Council’s treatment of the arts as a ‘brand’. In the the early 2000s he used its kangaroo logo for an art work that eventually saw it adorn MONA owner David Walsh’s ‘Moo Brew’ beer label. It was an ironic comment on the Australia Council’s ‘branding’. But
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