Roger Benjamin

'Ethel Carrick and Anne Dangar: Elements of discovery in two exhibitions' by Roger Benjamin

ABR Arts • 24 December 2024

These paired exhibitions do great credit to the National Gallery of Australia’s program promoting the fortunes of women artists in Australia: Know My Name. After the initial selective survey show that included 150 artists, the Gallery is ‘drilling down’ to heavily researched presentations of historical figures. In this case, two women born in the late nineteenth century: Ethel Carrick (1872- ... (read more)

'Gauguin’s World: Tōna Iho, Tōna Ao: A sumptuous new exhibition in Canberra' by Roger Benjamin

ABR Arts • 09 July 2024

I think that as a person Gauguin did a lot of dodgy things but as a painter he did a wonderful job. All the interesting work happened when he came to Polynesia, inspired by the Other.Yuki Kihara, 2019 These words put the case for and against Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) in a nutshell. Kihara speaks with the authority of a Pasifika, a transgender Japanese-Samoan artist who wittily restaged two dozen G ... (read more)

Roger Benjamin reviews ‘Vincent Namatjira’ edited by Vincent Namatjira

April 2024, no. 463 • 26 March 2024

At last a spectacular tome for the many fans of Vincent Namatjira, one that will also win him new admirers. Originating from an exhibition at the Tarnanthi Festival and the Art Gallery of South Australia, this beautifully laid-out book from Thames & Hudson Australia captures the humour and intense vision of Namatjira’s career to date. The fascination with Vincent Namatjira – Indigenous pa ... (read more)

'Kandinsky: Vasily Kandinsky from the Guggenheim' by Roger Benjamin

ABR Arts • 20 November 2023

We can all be grateful for Kandinsky, this summer’s main exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. It is a strong and balanced show by the most influential among the early practitioners of modern abstract art. There are four main collections of Kandinsky’s work worldwide, but the best one belongs to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. It was formed from the late 1920s by Baro ... (read more)

'Rembrandt: True to Life: Etched with feeling' by Roger Benjamin

ABR Arts • 18 July 2023

Unlike his compatriot Jan Vermeer, Rembrandt van Rijn was never forgotten. Like a Beethoven of visual art, he has always been a beacon and has always inspired later artists. Famous for his biblical storytelling on a symphonic scale, he was also a supreme portraitist and master of the self-portrait in oils (he made more than forty). Public familiarity with Rembrandt’s oeuvre in the centuries befo ... (read more)