Art Gallery of New South Wales
Rupert Bunny: Artist in Paris by by Deborah Edwards, with Denise Mimmocchi, David Thomas and Anne Gérard
by Jane Clark •
Bertram Mackennal: The Fifth Balnaves Foundation Sculpture Project by Deborah Edwards
by Christopher Menz •
Margaret Preston by Deborah Edwards (with Rose Peel et al.) & The Prints of Margaret Preston by Roger Butler
by Damian Smith •
Ten days in Australia in July brought a remarkable round of studio visits plus an exhibition of new Australian painting, Phenomena, at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Painting has had a hard time of it lately. Michael Wardell, curator of Phenomena, goes further: ‘throughout the twentieth century, painting has been under threat,’ claims the slightly melodramatic opening sentence of his otherwise modest and useful catalogue. The claim became even more of a reach at the AGNSW where, on the floor below Phenomena, you could see the pictures from the Orangerie with superb Cézannes, Picassos, Soutines and Rousseaus. None of them looked particularly threatened to me.
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