What makes a great work of art? How do you separate the best from the base? What makes an artwork worth $110.5 million such as a recent piece sold by the artist Basquiat? And what work is worthless? This question was brought into sharp focus at this year’s Archibald Prize when Mitch Cairns portrait of his wife took out the $100,000 prize. Other well-known artists … Continue reading What makes a great work of art?
I’m going to say it right now, I love Dan Kyle. He’s a young guy, living in the mountains taking an obsessive look at the Australian bush around him. To be honest, it’s not the man I love, it’s the artist. He paints trees again and again and again. The pale trunks of eucalyptus trees like ghosts stalking the landscape. They’re silent witness to what’s … Continue reading Is Dan Kyle the next Arthur Boyd?
This was the first year I entered the Belle Arti Prize, it’s a great award run by Chapman & Bailey. Essentially, they send out hundreds of canvases for artists to create works and then they all come back to be hung together. There are so many different styles of works on display, so many different subjects and a crazy array of talent. It’s a true … Continue reading Let’s play a game called spot the #panda @ChapmanInfo #belleartiprize
Art for art’s sake is a beautiful idea – but artists have to eat. Few of us have generous benefactors to lavish funds upon us, so a sale means we can keep going. Selling work means we can buy new art supplies, sales mean we can secure a space in a studio or artist-run-initiative (ARI) and sales mean we can keep doing what we love. … Continue reading SOLD, SOLD. Why sales validate artists.
A trip to the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Hobart, Tasmania is the closest you’ll get to entering Hades. In a good way. Carved into a mountain, you drop into the dark depths of the museum and then flail your way back to the surface. This photo is looking down into the complicated web-like stair structures that emerge from the darkness. A … Continue reading A dark journey into sex, death and the purgatory in between
I enterted the Saatchi Online collage showdown last month. It’s a great opportunity to showcase your work and even get a chance to show in Saatchi Gallery in London. Great stuff. The old voting system was a ‘hot or not’ style voting where you were paired with another piece of work and the viewer voted on the one they liked the most. Thankfully, they’ve changed … Continue reading They’ve changed the rules: Saatchi Showdown
Ray Monde 