Artist Profile6 min read
Grounded Mystic Khaled Sabsabi
On an unseasonably warm afternoon, Khaled Sabsabi unveils a new mystical world housed in a humble, cramped, tin shed doubling up as his studio at Fairfield City Museum and Gallery in south-west Sydney. Beads of sweat drip off him as he strips one lay
Artist Profile3 min read
The Making of Donald Friend Life and Art
Ian Britain’s intense scholarly scrutiny of the artist Donald Friend’s early life is more than interesting. Beautifully presented, lavishly illustrated, the book delights. Britain notes in his introduction that he reviewed volume three of Friend’s di
Artist Profile3 min read
Will The Museum Please Move Out Of The Way?
If the Powerhouse Museum’s exhibition A Line A Web A World is anything to go by, drawing is a domain to which we still look for connection with the long continuum of human ingenuity. “Drawings” the exhibition notes state, “are an integral part of the
Artist Profile4 min read
Zoe Leonard Al Río / To The River
Leonard photographed sections of and moments along the roughly 2000 km stretch of the Río Bravo/Rio Grande flowing southeast from the twin cities of El Paso/Ciudad Juarez to the Gulf of Mexico that demarcates the USA and Mexico. Leonard’s Río Bravo/R
Artist Profile3 min read
Anselm
Wim Wenders’ documentary film, Anselm, delves into the life and meteoric career of painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer. The 3D film retraces how the artist established himself as a giant of the contemporary art world. It is a testament to the seventy-
Artist Profile3 min read
Cassandra Bird
The gallery is the project of art dealer and curator Cassandra Bird with her husband Fabian Jentsch, an exhibition maker, set designer and artist. As I knock on the door I wonder if it’s the right place, but swiftly Fabian greets me. The energy pulse
Artist Profile5 min read
Heavenly Beings: Icons Of The Christian Orthodox World
To reflect appropriately on Heavenly Beings: Icons of the Christian Orthodox World I will apply the disciplines of Eastern Christian Theology, the dual modes of cataphatic (positive) and apophatic (negative) thought, in offering definitions of what w
Artist Profile9 min readDiscrimination & Race Relations
“Let No-one Say The Past Is Dead, The Past Is All About Us And Within.” (Oodgeroo Noonuccal-The Past)
THE FUTURE DOES NOT JUST HAPPEN. IT IS MADE. AND WE ARE ITS AUTHORS. The Ethics Centre (June 2023) I have an enduring memory of my great Grandmother where I use to brush her long flowing hair as she sat in a cane chair watching the dirt path that led
Artist Profile6 min read
Michael Butler Bold and Beautiful
Michael Butler came late to art—in his early thirties. He had been a wanderer and had known trouble, very serious trouble. Art both challenged and settled him; and his world changed. What follows is about him, and the inter-linking of two works of ar
Artist Profile4 min read
Telly Tu’u
Abstraction has developed its own myths, realities, supporters and detractors since its genesis a century or more ago. The discussion on what abstraction is—its temperament, character, variety and lucidity—continues to the present day and will no dou
Artist Profile5 min read
In The Studio With John R Walker
This year marks twenty years since artist John R Walker, moved to Braidwood in rural New South Wales. It’s also the thirty-fifth anniversary of Utopia Art Sydney, the gallery that has represented Walker since it opened in 1988. Born and raised in Syd
Artist Profile3 min read
Hill End Analogue
Lauded for its higher dynamic range, analogue photography captures the ephemeral moment with all its nuance and detail. Colour for example is true to the moment, as are the idiosyncrasies of photographer, film, light, and exposure. It is also respons
Artist Profile3 min read
Contributors
Editor KON GOURIOTIS OAM Art Director KIM GREGORY Deputy Editor IMOGEN CHARGE Principal Writer ELLI WALSH Sub-editor DR. JUDITH PUGH National Advertising Manager JILL TROCHEI Distribution Co-ordinator JAMIE KANAWATI Copyeditor JOE KINSELA Proofreader
Artist Profile2 min read
An Unruly Art Fair
NotFair, Australia’s perpetually unruly alternative art fair, was founded in 2010 as a satellite event to the Melbourne Art Fair—thus Not The Fair, a title which was rapidly shortened. The notion was to showcase independent artists who do not fit the
Artist Profile3 min read
Justine Muller And James “Chip” Thomas Jr.
During a recent trip to the US I learnt the words tó iiná, meaning water is life in Navajo. Water is imperative to our survival and connects us all and to mother earth. Rivers are the arteries of our fragile planet and we must do more to protect them
Artist Profile4 min read
Sundari Carmody
At the time of writing, I am waiting for my next crop of opium poppies to germinate, blossom and dry: a full season before I can harvest their seeds. I’ve been collecting the seeds each summer for several years. I didn’t know what I would do with the
Artist Profile4 min read
Kirtika Kain Untouchable
Kain migrated with her family from India to Australia in 1993, and during her childhood was shielded from the weight of the Indian caste system. Caste structures form the backbone of the Indian nation; it is a system in which bodies are denoted as sa
Artist Profile5 min read
18th Adelaide Biennial Of Australian Art: Inner Sanctum
The notion of a contemporary art biennial as a site of refuge is appealing, if somewhat unexcepted, in our current climate. Biennials generally brim with curatorial concepts and statements, and often feature a near-overwhelming number of artworks. Th
Artist Profile2 min read
Sabio And Her Theatre Of The Absurd
“The greatest darkness can often be concealed by an astonishing colour palette of pinks, reds and gold.” – Sabio. Sabio grew up in Railton in the north-west of Tasmania. The seventh of eight children, she left home at seventeen and, after having a da
Artist Profile2 min read
Editor’s Note
Throughout this issue of Artist Profile, inner and outer conversations that are searching for the proper order of these opposites are very noticeable. On 14 October Australians were asked to look inward and vote in a referendum on whether to alter th
Artist Profile4 min read
Suburban Stories
It’s tempting to describe Dagmar Cyrulla as an old-fashioned painter, not just because she is a narrative painter of domestic scenes but because, for her, painting is a vocation, not just a career. And with vocation comes the discipline of the studio
Artist Profile3 min read
Armando Chant
In my artistic practice, I delve into the transformative power of materials on photographic images of landscapes. I explore the boundaries of their representation through erasure, disruption and repetition, creating works that exist in between craft
Artist Profile4 min read
Meagan Streader
To encounter Meagan Streader’s work is to experience the phenomenon of light, not just as a series of wavelengths that bounce off surfaces to reveal the physical world, but as something itself physical, relational and emotional. Slow Rinse, 2019, pre
Artist Profile4 min read
Patrick Hall
Patrick Hall’s work comes alive in layers. He has built an impressive forty-year practice making stories unpicked from memories. They here create intimate self-portraiture in a visual language that asks, “What remains beyond the wreckage of war? What
Artist Profile16 min read
Has Artspace Found Its Place In The Emerald City?
Artist Hilarie Mais had just arrived in Sydney from New York with her expatriate husband, the late painter and educator William “Bill” Wright, who had been appointed the director of the 4th Biennale of Sydney (Vision in Disbelief, 1982). Mais recalls
Artist Profile1 min read
The Awkward Conversation (texts On The Floor)
This hard soil of rebirthWill we talk about it?The muscle, the sky and the earth Of my lofty perch, blood red with disquiet,And sinewy games, buried in darkness.For a yellow strand embellished, holds yet. It is I who excavates crafted consciousnessto
Artist Profile4 min read
Adam Cullen Art Is Pain Relief
The death of artist Adam Cullen in 2012 at the age of forty-six did not shock the Australian art world. There was a feeling that Cullen had “lived by the sword and died by the sword.” His life, a self-fulfilling prophecy of drugs, booze, guns, and co
Artist Profile6 min read
Jacky Redgate Mirrors, Systems And Self
Redgate is a leading Australian contemporary artist; her on-going investigation spans almost five decades. She explores the creative possibilities and boundaries of self-knowledge through formal qualities of light and space, impersonal and personal h
Artist Profile3 min read
Artists For Artists’ Sake A Decade of the Byron School of Art
Cape Byron in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales was named in 1770 by Lieutenant James Cook after the Baron John Byron, notable, sober navigator grandfather of the poet Byron—the club footed, scandalous and flamboyant romantic of Regency L
Artist Profile5 min read
Marie Hagerty Under Cover
When I ask Hagerty what drew her to art at such a young age, she dispels any romantic notions of a precociously young vocational calling. Her family was not wealthy. They lived in a fibro shack in Sydney’s western suburbs. “I just needed to get out.
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