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Sydney Modern

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The ABR Podcast 

Released every Thursday, the ABR podcast features our finest reviews, poetry, fiction, interviews, and commentary.

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Neil Thomas

The red thread: Xi Jinping’s ideology of power

by Neil Thomas

This week on The ABR Podcast, Neil Thomas reviews On Xi Jinping: How Xi’s Marxist Nationalism is shaping China and the world by Kevin Rudd. Thomas explains that even China watchers find it hard to be clear on the thoughts and plans of the leader of the Chinese Communist Party. They disagree, he tells us, on basic, critical questions, such as for how long Xi will rule. ‘Enter Kevin Rudd’, Thomas writes. ‘In his latest book, former prime minister Kevin Rudd adds a worthy new chapter to his life of public service, digesting thousands of pages of “Xi Jinping Thought” so that you do not have to’. Neil Thomas is a Fellow on Chinese Politics at Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis in Washington DC. Here is Neil Thomas with 'The red thread: Xi Jinping's ideology of power' by Neil Thomas, published in the December issue of ABR.

 

Recent episodes:

Sydney Modern

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The ABR Podcast
Sydney Modern (courtesy of AGNSW)

In December last year, the Art Gallery of New South Wales launched its Sydney Modern project, the centerpiece of which was an extraordinary new building overlooking Sydney Harbour. Sydney Modern has received mixed reviews, some lamenting that it seems to have been designed as a chic backdrop for Instagram selfies. In this week’s ABR podcast, Julie Ewington, an arts curator and broadcaster, describes her first encounter with Sydney Modern in a piece titled ‘Lyrical layers at AGNSW’, published in the April issue of ABR.

... (read more)

Sydney Modern

Art Gallery of New South Wales
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April 2023, no. 452
Art Gallery of New South Wales (photograph by Iwan Baan)
Nearly three months have passed since the new building at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) opened (3 December 2022). This summer, Sydney Modern, as the new North building by Japanese architectural firm SAANA is popularly known, has been Sydney’s main attraction and topic of conversation. ... (read more)

Retainers of Anarchy

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06 December 2022
Howie Tsui 'Retainers of anarchy' 2017 (video still), Art Gallery of New South Wales
Outlaw, the opening exhibition of the purpose-built new media gallery at Sydney Modern, (the Art Gallery of New South Wales’s new extension) features Howie Tsui’s mesmerising multimedia installation, Retainers of Anarchy. On a 27.4-metre long, 3.85-metre high projection, which simulates the form of a scroll painting, hundreds of images hand-drawn in ink are animated into a kaleidoscope of supernatural severed heads, grotesque tortures, and characters familiar from wuxia (martial arts) novels and television series. These fantastical images jostle with motifs of everyday life in Hong Kong and iconic figures from the pro-democracy protests that culminated in the Umbrella Movement of 2014 and were later to erupt in the all-out rebellion in 2019 and its violent suppression by Xi Jinping’s government. ... (read more)