This piece was originally written for The Australian, which is just about the only newspaper that will print my commentary ...

Art fairs are incubators of optimism, and the hopeful idea at Art Jakarta is that those 20-somethings buying merchandise or tiny paintings by regional artists will sooner or later begin shopping at ...

When the S.H. Ervin Gallery held a show of Margaret Olley’s work in 2017, she had been gone more than five years but still felt magnificently alive. It’s now been 15 years since Olley departed but my ...

There are cities around the world that are almost interchangeable in their blandness. Cairo is not one of them. One could never say Cairo lacks character - if anything it has too much character. As an ...

Ask most people about Pompeii, the Roman city buried by a volcanic eruption in 79 CE, and they think of those stony figures frozen in the moment of death as the full force of the explosion swept over ...

When you meet the curator of an exhibition carrying a protective helmet and fluoro vest, it can only raise concerns about what you’re about to see. When that show is the Archibald Prize for ...

It’s been seven years since the once-prolific Bruce Beresford directed a feature. That movie, Ladies in Black (2018) took me by surprise. It was so up-tempo, so cheerful, yet full of keen observations ...

Have you noticed lately how many old movies are being screened at the cinemas? It’s not like the annual Cinema Reborn festival, which blends new prints of classics with rare and unusual titles, it’s a ...

When the Australian Financial Review is drawing up its next Arts Power list, Tony Albert deserves a prominent place. Given the current priorities of Australia’s leading arts institutions, it’s hard to ...

#567 Last week the phone kept ringing about a Sothebys online auction in which a work by a humanoid robot sold for more than a million dollars – more precisely, for US$1,084,800 (AUD $1.66 million).