Writer & editor
Atong Atem’s commanding works examine the power dynamics embedded in photography, the role of the photographer, and postcolonial and diaspora narratives.
In photographic portraiture, “there will always be some kind of imbalance, even with collaboration,” she says. “I’m interested in how we can challenge the way that power has historically been wielded.”
Full story in the print edition of Art Guide, January-February 2020. Cover artwork is Atong Atem’s Self Portrait in Blue, 2018.
Renee So began working with ceramics around the time she moved from Melbourne to London in the mid 2000s. “I was doing lots of research into European trade in the 1700s,” she says. “European trade with China and porcelain were a big catalyst for that and the subsequent ceramics industry in Europe, so I became interested in that material. It had this Chinese identity and provenance…It was sort of the first thing about China was desirable to Europe.”
Full story in the print edition of Art Collector, Issue 91, January-February 2020. Portrait pic by Richard Eaton.
“Most of the work I do starts with drawing,” says Tom Blake about his wide-ranging practice. These drawings are then fragmented and redrawn, and the new compositions incorporated into cyanotypes, hand-etched desilvered mirrors, mobiles and installations. […] “The repetition is key for me. The compositions and drawings, I’m repeating them many times before I make a work that’s exhibited,” he says. At its heart, this repetition is a liberating act. His lines often seem to gesture towards the figure or symbols and letters. By “gently breaking things apart and removing elements,” as he puts it, he is pointing to the way that structures can be disassembled and recomposed, and how meanings can be reconfigured in new contexts.
Full story in the print edition of Art Collector, Issue 91, January-February 2020. Portrait pic by Andrew Vincent.
Published in Art Collector, Issue 91, January-February 2020
Casey Jeffery takes the patterns and folds of fabric and flattens them into abstract paintings. They are immediately recognisable as textiles. Interno (Natale), 2018, uses the kind of stylised floral found on vintage curtains. Reveal, 2018, takes the striped ticking used on awnings, but gives it a flip so that it appears more like a Tomma Abts painting. […] “Textiles are a wormhole of possibilities when you use it as the point of reference for a painting,” she says. “I’m interested in utilising the flatness of the painting surface and warping that depth and perception.”
Full story in the print edition of Art Collector.
I spoke with Jumaadi about his major exhibition My love is an Island Far Away at Mosman Art Gallery. The title is taken from a poem by Chairil Anwar. As he says:
The poem is celebrating the independence from the Dutch in 1945. It was written about 1946, and then he died a year later, around 27-years old. It captured the restlessness of the time, but in the manner of romantic poetry. I guess that’s how I approach my work, with a grand narrative but very personalised. It’s about love and birth and a way of connecting people.
Full interview in Art Guide Online.
Thrilled to announce my very short story Collector was named the day 4 & overall winner of the Digital Writers’ Festival Swinburne Microfiction Challenge. You can read it over on Going Down Swinging!
“I’m not ever trying to just paint a photograph,” says Mark Tweedie. “The way I paint, I’m being very selective. My paintings are more like a memory…The things that I’m not interested in, or that may not be relevant or have little meaning to me, I make them less saturated, I use washes on those aspects, I keep the paint quite thin. Whereas if there’s something I really want to draw attention to, or it’s something that I remember, then I use colour or thicker impasto paint or a different technique, a more controlled or tighter technique.”
Full interview in the print edition of Vault, Issue 28, November 2019-January 2020.
