Image above: Kandinsky, Sketch for ‘Composition II’, 1909-10

2024 gallery visits, summaries and images

Exhibitions list

Friday 27 December 2024 Karla Dickens: Rise and Fall, Bondi Pavilion Art Gallery, Sydney
Evocative environmental art. “Explores climate catastrophe from a First Nations perspective. Created by acclaimed Wiradjuri artist Karla Dickens in response to the devastating floods that impacted her hometown of Lismore in February 2022, Rise and Fall combines sculpture, photography and video. Putting a post-apocalyptic spin on the mermaid mythologies of Bondi (where Dickens lived in her youth), Rise and Fall conveys urgent ideas of what it means to fight for survival and change in a world hanging by a thread, where shared responsibility for action is crucial.” The sculptures titled ‘Deeply Rooted’ – “tree roots retrieved after the 2022 Lismore floods hold powerful history – memories of Country – found objects markers of time – relics of the past recontextualised in the present as omens to foretell the danger ahead.”
Some installation views





Wednesday 11 December 2024 The Grad Show, National Art School, Sydney
Promising creative hard work “This exhibition showcases the work of the 2024 BFA cohort, produced with a multi-disciplinary approach across the celebrated studio traditions of ceramics, drawing, painting, photomedia, printmaking and sculpture, exhibited throughout the NAS campus.” A small sample.

Juls Fraser, Whispers

Liv Campton, The Hatter in Rodney dances with time

Mitchell Caponas, Rose Room

Gitte Backhausen, In the Real World

Wednesday 4 December 2024  Julie Mehretu: A Transcore of the Radical Imaginatory, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
Deep layered gestural abstraction. “The New York artist’s first exhibition in Australia reveals her commitment to painting as a contemporary art form. It traces Mehretu’s ongoing engagement with abstraction as a richly layered language, informed by histories of art and mark-making across millennia, from Chinese ink painting and Japanese manga to rock art, literature and music.”

Julie Mehretu, Among the Multitude1, 2020-2021

Julie Mehretu, Black Monolith, for Okwui Enwezor (Charlottesville), 2017 -2020

Julie Mehretu, Haka (and Riot), 2019

Julie Mehretu – Installation View

Wednesday 20 November 2024 Magritte, Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney
Timeless classics, real/unreal “retrospective featuring more than 100 works – paintings that highlight Magritte’s profound influence on contemporary visual culture, and rarely seen works that reveal his subversive sense of humour and the fierce independence of his artistic vision. A painter of ideas.”

Magritte, The difficult crossing, 1926

Magritte, The listening room, 1952

Magritte, The dominion of light, 1954

Magritte, Evening falls, 1964

Monday 11 November 2024 Krimsone, Colourful Loneliness, Studio 551, Newtown, Sydney
Colour, light, surrealist “a multidisciplinary artist, style resinates around flora and fauna, imaginative style, constructive patterns and colour, explores ideas from his imagination and turns them into physical marks and colours.”

Krimsone, Can’t Keep Still Life, 2024

Krimsone, The Bower, 2024

Krimsone, The Itch, 2024

Krimsone, Indian Flycatchers, 2024

Wednesday 23 October 2024 Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi to Tamarama, Sydney
Perfect day – inspiring art “now in its 26^th year, 100 artworks from artists from 16 countries, 36 first time exhibitors”

Lucy Humphrey (NSW), Infinity

Kaoru Matsumoto (Japan), Cycle 90^o ‘Wind of the Sea’

Shen Lieyi (China), Tracing (winner)

Fatih Semiz (Victoria/Turkey), Shadows of Perception

Wednesday 2 October 2024  Lee Ufan– Quiet Resonance, Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney
Stillness, time for quiet contemplation. “Within spaces designed by the artist, this exhibition distils over six decades of considered experimentation into a series of recent paintings and sculptures created especially for the exhibition. Lee’s sparing use of simple materials, including stone, steel and canvas, has a quiet force that encourages contemplation and consideration of the physical and intellectual self in relation to the work. Lee values the power of emptiness to generate both harmony and tension between objects and people. For him, the space around objects is as significant as the objects themselves. His conceptual and minimalist approach has been influential in art, design and philosophy, with artists Anish Kapoor and Park Seo-Bo as well as architect Tadao Ando among the prominent figures inspired by his art.”

Lee Ufan, Relatum – to heaven road, 2024

Lee Ufan, Relatum – position, 1968/2024

Lee Ufan, Relatum – The shadow of the stars, 2014/2024

Lee Ufan, Response, 2023

Wednesday 18 September 2024  Gauguin’s World: Tōna Iho, Tōna Ao, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Stunned by the quality of the works on loan for this incredible exhibition. It took me a while to regain my composure, “includes over 130 works of art drawn from 68 leading public and private collections worldwide including: Musée d’Orsay, Paris; National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh; National Gallery of Art, Washington; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Cleveland Museum of Art; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Louvre Abu Dhabi; The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo.” A small sample of the masterpieces in this exhibition

Gauguin, Portrait of the artist with the yellow Christ, 1890-91

Gauguin, Parahi te marae (The sacred mountain), 1892

Gauguin, Street in Tahiti (Rue de Tahiti), 1891

Gauguin, Three Tahitians (Trois tahitiens), 1899

Wednesday 18 September 2024 Euan Macleod – Flux, Drill Hall Gallery, Australian National University, Canberra
Expressionist works capture the grandeur and danger of the mountain landscape and intensity of emotion. “Macleod’s fascination with potentially dangerous environments recurs as he paints this sublime and inhospitable world of minerals, rock and ice. His climbers, often alone or linked by a rope to a companion figure or guide are metaphors through which the connection to and reliance on another human being is amplified. Adjoining the glacier paintings are 200 works from an ongoing series Macleod has made of his friend Geoff Dixon. The portraits, created almost daily over the FaceTime app, began in 2021 during Covid lockdowns as a way of maintaining a connection with Geoff, who had recently lost his partner.”

Euan Macleod, Figures in snowstorm, 2023

Euan Macleod, Triptych – figure in a dissolving landscape, 2020

Euan Macleod, Painting in hut (with observer), 2023-2024

Euan Macleod, Portraits of Geoff Dixon, 2022-2024

Tuesday 17 September 2024 The Art World Came to Us – Macquarie Galleries 1938-1963, Ngununggula, Bowral
Broad scope, includes works by some of Australia’s most important artists “celebrates Treania Smith, Lucy Swanton and Mary Turner, women at the helm of Australian art who carved out a new way of working and representing artists during this period of significant global and social change. Featuring over 50 Australian artists, this exhibition pays tribute to a significant period in Australian art history but only scratches the surface of the profound impact Macquarie Galleries had historically and continues to have today.”

Lloyd Rees, Evening Landscape, Gerringong, 1944-46, AGNSW

Sidney Nolan, Robbed, 1947, AGNSW

Carl Plate, Destructive Paradox No 1 Permanency, 1959, Carl Plate Painting Trust

Ian Fairweather, Painting VII, 1960, Orange Regional Gallery

Thursday 5 September 2024  Sydney Contemporary, Carriageworks, Sydney
A lot of bling – bright shiny new works – not much grit and challenge. Expanded section for works on paper a standout this year. “85 leading galleries from Australia, New Zealand, and beyond”.

Timo Hogan, Lake Baker, 2023

Lottie Consalvo at Nanda Hobbs Gallery

Chen Wenling, Freedom, 2021

Lisa Roet, Skywalker Gibbon, 2018

Friday 9 August 2024 Hiroshi Sugimoto: Time Machine, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
Mesmerising “time and memory, stretching and re-arranging time, space and light. Brings together all of his major photographic series from the beginning of his career through to his most recent projects”. Dioramas (from American Museum of Natural History), Portraits (from Madame Tussauds waxworks, London), Sea of Buddha (from 12th century temple in Kyoto), Theatres (American movie palaces), Lightning Fields (created by a burst of electrical currents across of large sheet of unexposed film), Seascapes (interaction of water, air, and the light of the sun or moon), Conceptual Forms (made in Germany late 19th century, physical representations of mathematical concepts), Opticks (colours of natural light using a glass prism and mirror)

Diorama (from American Museum of Natural History)

Portrait (from Madame Tussauds waxworks, London)

Theatre (American movie palaces)

Opticks (colours of natural light using a glass prism and mirror)

Friday 2 August 2024 Wildlife Photographer of the Year, Maritime Museum, Sydney
Stunning photography in this annual exhibition, “photography that captures the beauty and vulnerability of the natural world. Direct from London’s Natural History Museum, these remarkable images reveal unique moments from Earth’s rich biodiversity, prompting reflection on our role in nature, and the challenges our planet faces.”

Storm Gull, Mateusz Piesiak (Poland)
Mateusz had come to Iceland to photograph glaciers and the aurora borealis but found himself distracted as a storm rolled in. Struggling to stand upright in the gale-force winds, he used his telephoto lens to record the power of the moment. Unperturbed, a glaucous gull soared effortlessly between the towering waves.

Reflections on a waterworld, Barbara Dall’Angelo (Italy)
Flying in a little Cessna plane over the inland sea of rice paddies, Barbara was hoping for a striking reflective composition. What she hadn’t expected was this strange optical illusion, with the lower rectangular fields reflecting the sky as if from a sloping wall. The Guadalquivir River Basin wetlands are
important both to the rice industry and to the region’s rich biodiversity. This rice-growing region surrounds Doñana National Park – a World Heritage Site (a natural reserve in Andalusia, southern Spain) of huge importance and a vital refuge for many species, including the estimated six million birds
that visit each year. Whether overwintering in the park or stopping off to refuel on their way south to Africa, tens of thousands of birds feed in its paddy fields.

The art of courtship, Rachel Bigsby (UK)
From her boat, which was pitching from side to side in a turbulent sea swell, Rachel realised that achieving her vision of showcasing the gannets set against the towering cliffs would be tricky. But as the boat aligned with the rocks, she spotted this pair. They were ‘isolated on a lower ledge, intertwining their necks and framed by streaks of guano’

The vanishing seal, Bruno D’Amicis (Italy)
Beneath the clifftop where Bruno lay hidden, a Mediterranean monk seal glided through the shallows before disappearing into a cave. Masked by the reflections on the water, the seal appears to be almost vanishing in front of our eyes – an apt metaphor given that the species is on the brink of extinction.

Friday 26 July 2024 Australian Abstraction in Context, Macquarie University Art Gallery, Sydney
Impressive survey of Australian artists. The exhibition “reflects upon the legacies of this international art movement with its varietal imports, indices and counterparts. These expressions cast a different spin on the current generation of Australian artists adhering to abstraction. Their diverse practices challenge the aesthetic orthodoxies of abstraction, particularly the idea of shape as content, by revealing new ways of thinking and talking about Australian abstraction.”

Telly Tu’u, Wiggle Room 2022

Donald Laycock, Mount Olympus-Strange Island, c 1962

Eva Kubbos, Landscape II, 1964

Emanuel Raft, Untitled, 1963

Friday 19 July 2024 Laozi’s Furnace, White Rabbit Gallery, Sydney
Another interesting and memorable exhibition at this gallery. “Early alchemists yearned for an imperishable physical form, anchoring the Chinese concept of immortality firmly within the material realm. In modern times, the compelling artists in Laozi’s Furnace inherit their legacy by delving into material exploration. The artist’s studio, like the alchemist’s laboratory, becomes a crucible of experimentation. Pushing, pinching, cutting, and stitching—one shape metamorphoses into another, as if under a sorcerer’s spell.”

Liu Wei, Big Dog-Death Star 2015-16, rawhide, wood, steel

Feng Chen, Odo, 2023, carbon fibre

Jiang Pengyi, Foresight series, 2017, inkjet print

Jiang Pengyi, Foresight series, 2017, inkjet print

Friday 12 July 2024 Salon des Refusés, S H Ervin, Gallery, Sydney
Good to be reacquainted with some of the regulars and to see less well known artists – “rivals the selections in the ‘official’ exhibition (Archibald and Wynne Prizes, AGNSW), with works selected for quality, diversity, humour and experimentation, and which examine contemporary art practices, different approaches to portraiture and responses to the landscape.”

Katie Firth, Sea from Birkley Road

Mary Tonkin, A scream, Kalorama

Jo Bertini, Singing up country – each phase the size of red stone – Turraburra (Iningai Country, QLD)

Noel Thurgate, Portrait of Ann Thomson

Friday 5 July 2024 Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes 2024, Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney
Good to see a wide range of emerging artists given a chance in this annual event – bring on shock of the new! Archibald Prize: 1005 entries, 57 selected. Wynne Prize: 738 entries, 41 selected. Sulman Prize: 628 entries, 40 selected.

Laura Jones, Tim Winton (winner Archibald prize)

Djakanu Yunupinu, Nyalala gurmilili (winner Wynne prize)

Muna Kulyuru, Ngayuku ngura – my Country

Naomi Kautjuriny, Minyma mamu tjuta (winner Sulman prize)

Friday 14 June 2024 World Press Photo exhibition, State Library of NSW, Sydney
Annual confronting experience, photojournalism at its best – droughts, floods,
earthquakes pollution, climate change, political unrest, war – “showcases the
best and most important photojournalism and documentary photography of the last
year. Photographs that won the 67th annual World Press Photo Contest, chosen
from 61,062 entries by 3851 photographers from 130 countries.” Some of the projects

Arie Basuki, Pollution in the Cileugsi River, Indonesia

Mohammed Salem, A Palestinian Woman Embraces the Body of Her Niece, Gaza

Ebrahim Noroozi, Afghanistan on the Edge

Lalo de Almeida, Drought in the Amazon

Friday 26 April 2024 Ten Thousand Suns, 24th Biennale of Sydney, White Bay Power Station, Sydney
Third venue on the list of seven see below. Immense new space for big impressive art “the heritage-listed White Bay Power Station, a relic of the early 20th century and once a bustling coal power station, open to the public for the first time in over a century. Ten Thousand Suns breathes new life into this architectural gem, transforming it into a canvas for contemporary expression.”

Felix de Rooy, Mother Earth, 1988

Doreen Chapman, untitled, 2023 – Doreen Chapman was born in Jigalong and has spent her life moving between Western Desert communities in the Pilbara, Western Australia. She is a Manyjilyjarra artist and has spent the majority of her adult life in Warralong, a community 120km south-east of Port Hedland.

Installation view Turbine Hall level 1

Saturday 20 April 2024 24th Biennale of Sydney Ten Thousand Suns, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
Second venue on the list of seven see below “Many artists exhibiting at the Art Gallery of New South Wales interrogate the value of images in conveying global emergencies. Others explore the performative and celebratory body through costume and adornment, as powerful expressions of self and community”

Francisco Toledo (1940-2019) – born in Juchitán, Oaxaca, Mexico, was a painter and engraver who drew inspiration from his native culture and mythology. Toledo worked in a variety of media, including pottery, sculpture, weaving, graphic arts, and painting, depicting a vast menagerie of real and fantastical animals.

Pauline Kahurangi Yearbury (1926 – 1977) a New Zealand artist.She is considered a leading practitioner in Māori modernist art.

John Pule is a Niuean artist, novelist and poet who lives in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. His work is inspired by the history and mythology of Niue and his own experience of migration and identity.

Friday 19 April 2024 24th Biennale of Sydney: Ten Thousand Suns, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
First venue on the list of seven “24th Biennale of Sydney features 96 artists and collectives from 50 countries and territories and is presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Artspace, Chau Chak Wing Museum at the University of Sydney, Sydney Opera House, UNSW Galleries and the White Bay Power Station. The exhibition draws from multiple histories, voices, and perspectives, to explore connected thematic threads, from the celebration of First Nations technologies and knowledges, and the history of Islam in Australia, to Queer resilience, and the international expression of carnival.”

Serwah Attafuah, 1471, 2024, digital 3D render, electronic goods, e-waste, enamel

Irene Chou, The universe is within our hearts, 1992

Anne Samat, Cannot Be Broken and Won’t Live Unspoken #2, 2023, rattan sticks, kitchen and garden utensils, beads, ceramic, metal and plastic ornaments, handwoven tapestry

Kirtika Kain, The illusion of your history, 2023, gold, gold leaf, wax, cotton wicks, human hair, wire, plastic, cow dung, chunni fabric, cotton, Rangoli pigment, Holi pigment, plasticine, coconut broom grass, synthetic polymer paint, grains, copper leaf, coir rope, leather, wire, cardboard, plaster, impasto, black lotus seeds, sindoor, turmeric, tar

Friday 22 March 2024 Field of Vision: Contemporary Indigenous Art, S H Ervin Gallery, Sydney
Mesmerizing “focuses on art from the Western Desert, highlighting the methods and techniques artists use to make paintings of optical illusion. The complexity and sophistication of this imagery rich with cultural knowledge has evolved over the past 50 years to create an art movement symbolic of Australia and its ancient land. These geometric abstract paintings explore optical sensations with visual effects such as recurring simple forms and rhythmic patterns and vibrating colour combination.”

George Ward Tjungurrayi, untitled, 2006 (detail)

Warlimpirrnga Tjapaljtarri, untitled

Mick Namarari Tjapaljtarri, untitled, 1997

Bobby West Tjupurrula, untitled

Wednesday 13 March 2024 Emily Kam Kngwarray, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Awe and wonder – a stellar exhibition. Emily Kam Kngwarray (circa 1910 – 1996) “Working in a remote, north-west corner of the Simpson Desert, a leading figure in eastern Anmatyerr ceremony, attained artistic maturity in her seventies, the final decade of her life, in an extraordinarily prolific eight years of professional painting, she produced magnificent canvases in which she appears to have aimed for essentialist visions of the multiplicities and connectedness of her country.” This exhibition “celebrates the timeless art of a pre-eminent Australian artist, one of the world’s most significant contemporary painters to emerge in the twentieth century.”

Emily Kam Kngwarray, Kam, 1991

Emily Kam Kngwarray, Ntang Altyerr (seeds of abundance) 1990

Emily Kam Kngwarray, Mern angerr, 1992

Emily Kam Kngwarray, Mern – bush tucker, my Country, 1995

Friday 9 February 2024 In Our Time : Four decades of art from China – the Geoff Raby collection, National Art School, Sydney
Wide range of works through the decades, social commentary, the ink paintings the standouts. The exhibition presents “intermixed subject qualities – urban life, Chinese philosophy, cultural differences, social justice, reflections on contemporary identity and nationhood.”

Jian Jun Xi, Untitled, c1986

Jian Jun Xi, Between earth and sky, c1985

Chen Man, Ms Wan studies hard, 2011

Wang Yufeng, Typewriter II, 2014

Wednesday 31 January 2024 Ann Thomson, S H Ervin Gallery, Sydney
Invigorating, expressionist, gestural, colour, reflections on landscape. A major survey exhibition mainly the last 15 years. “Physical exuberance is innate to her, and it is expressed more strongly than ever in her recent work.  Her feeling for pulse and rhythm, for irrepressible physical energies projected into space, imbues her pictorial conceptions with a great vivacity.” Terence Maloon, curator

Ann Thomson, Transom, 2023

Ann Thomson, Future landscape, 2023

Ann Thomson, What the Painter is Told on the Subject of Landscape, 2003

Ann Thomson, Don Quixote, 1997

Wednesday 24 January 2024 A Blueprint for Ruins, White Rabbit Gallery, Sydney
Another challenging exhibition from a gallery that is always interesting. The exhibition “reverberates with the shadows of the dispossessed within China’s urban metamorphosis. The artworks guide us toward the remnants of memories woven into the very fabric of each structure, even as the walls crumble.”

Liu Wei, People 1 ,2014 metal, glass

Zhou Dong, Red Marginal, 2018-19 oil on canvas, diptych

Tu Wei-Cheng, Bu Num Civilization Revealed, 2003-07, photographic prints, artificial stone, installation

Yang Jiechang, Heavenly Horse, 2014, ink and acrylic on paper, mounted on canvas

Tuesday 16 January 2024 Louise Bourgeois – Has the Day Invaded the Night or Has the Night Invaded the Day?, Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney
Complex emotional intensity – the spiders rule. 120 works created across seven decades “Day and night, love and rage, calm and chaos, conscious and unconscious.”

Louise Bourgeois, I Undo, I Redo

Louise Bourgeois, Arch of Hysteria, 1993

Louise Bourgeois, The Destruction of the Father, 1974

Louise Bourgeois, Crouching Spider, 2003

Tuesday 9 January 2024 Kandinsky, Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney
Gasp – colour! – like meeting some old friends in person for the first time
“curated with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, draws from the Guggenheim’s rich holdings to reveal Kandinsky’s work in depth – from his beginnings in Munich (1897), to his return to his birthplace of Moscow with the outbreak of World War One (1914-21), followed by the interwar years in Germany where he was an instructor at the Bauhaus (1922-33), and his final chapter in Paris (1933-44)”

Kandinsky, Sketch for ‘Composition II‘, 1909-10

Kandinsky, Painting with white border, 1913

Kandinsky, Red oval, 1920

Kandinsky, Landscape with rain, January 1913