The 1970s and 2010s are not the same but there can be no doubt that they are both periods of social crisis that has carried over in to art. This installation frames the beginning and end of a process for me in the 1970s. I'm sure many others went through their own version of [...]
This article was originally published in Artlink Issue 36:1, March 2016 Big Ideas edition. Biennales, like war, are the continuation of politics by other means. In early 2014 at the height of the brouhaha surrounding the non boycott of the 19th Biennale of Sydney I commented that I had boycotted the previous eighteen biennales so [...]
Exhaust is an exhibition at Contemporary Art Tasmania in Hobart from 13 January to 14 February 2016, then travelling as a portable boîte-en-valise exhibition and online. My contribution was to be my first in depth look at the years I spent working for trade unions, but rather than being a simple historical view it was [...]
http://youtu.be/E6giLpIkzjU I had never given portraiture much thought until early 2014 when a friend, Louisa Chircorp, proposed painting my portrait for the Archibald Prize. The result was both truthful and unflattering so I had to comfort myself with Rembrandt's comment. But let's be blunt about it, a portrait painting competition like the Archibald is a [...]
New artist? was written for the Object and Idea exhibition held at the National Gallery of Victoria in November 1973. The curator Brian Finemore had discussed the exhibition with me several years earlier when I had jokingly complained about being left out of the the NGVs 1968 opening blockbuster, The Field. "Dear boy, we did [...]
http://youtu.be/id0Un-CeoXs This article was written for a sustainability themed issue of Artlink magazine, Vol 34 No 4, 2014. This version is as originally written, structured differently to the published version although the content is substantially the same. Love among the ruins Is art sustainable? Well of course that depends on whether you mean the official [...]
Art As A Verb was an exhibition at Monash University Museum of Art 3 October – 16 December 2014, "a major thematic exhibition that takes as its departure point the concept of art as action, both inside the gallery and beyond. " I had one work in it, the circular tug of war originally shown in [...]
21st Century Artist was a conference held at Artspace in October 2013. It was remarkable for several reasons. Firstly if the proceedings were to be believed then the 21st century artist will be no different to the 20th century artist, and little different to the 19th century artist. Secondly apparently climate change will have no [...]
These are examples of a large series of works I did in early 1970. Almost all were damaged so they exist now in two forms, the damaged original and a high resolution print with all damage removed. I was not happy with them at the time and many were consciously derivative as I experimented with [...]
The exhibition at Artspace, Woolloomooloo Sydney in November 2013 was originally conceived as a survey but one that attempted to come to grips with the problem that most of my work was not conceived with exhibition in mind, it always had other forms of distribution. In the end it became something different, an exploration of [...]