Category: visual

“The Melbourne Art Fair turns 20 this year, and it’s come a long way. In 1988… 23 galleries were involved and they exhibited at the Royal Exhibition Building, upstairs from a tractor show. This year, MAF involves more than 80 galleries from the Asia-Pacific region as well as Switzerland, Germany and Ireland, and will use the entire building as well as the Melbourne Museum forecourt.”

“The British curator David Elliott was confirmed yesterday as the artistic director of the next Biennale of Sydney, in 2010. Mr Elliott will inherit one of Australia’s most successful artistic events… With more than a month to go [in this year’s edition of the Biennale,] 206,157 people have seen the show.”

“A plan by the British Museum to build a £130 million exhibition centre in its northwest corner has provoked anger from heritage groups that claim it will destroy some of the 19th-century building’s most beautiful period details and vistas.”

“A small menagerie of new Damien Hirst pickled animals took a bow yesterday, including a new shark, a zebra, a calf with solid gold horns and hoofs valued at up to £12m, and even a unicorn – a white foal fitted with a resin horn… All have been churned out by his small army of assistants this year for an auction at Sotheby’s in September which will sell more than 200 pieces. The auction is predicted to raise £65m.”

“A complete set of Andy Warhol’s silkscreen and acrylic paint “Athletes” series will go on show at the Faurschou gallery in Beijing on 26 July in an exhibition timed to coincide with the Olympics… Their display in China, along with other Warhol portraits of celebrities such as Michael Jackson, represents the first major show by the artist in mainland China where his market has never been tested.”

“The National Gallery of Canada has a storied 128-year history and one of the country’s largest, most distinguished art collections, but the public’s interest has strayed from the gallery’s towering walls to tales of strife in its offices. The atmosphere, already quietly described as “toxic” by sources inside and outside the gallery before the latest whirlwind, may now be verging on intolerable after the Federal Court of Canada released documents detailing a bitter feud in the top ranks.”

“The huge spending power of buyers such as the Russian oligarch and Chelsea football club owner Roman Abramovich, who think nothing of spending tens of millions on a Freud or a Bacon, has driven the rise of a new art discipline. Furniture is too mundane a description for its devotees, who have coined the term ‘functional sculpture’.”

“Internationally it is reckoned that China has overtaken France as the world’s third largest art market after the US and Britain. ArtPrice’s list of 100 living artists whose works sell for more than $1million includes 35 Chinese. Five years ago, only one made the list. But inside China it’s a different matter.”

“Australia’s greatest ancient Aboriginal rock art is at risk of being damaged or destroyed because it sits at the epicenter of the country’s resources boom, experts say. The etchings of men and animals on the rocks of the Burrup Peninsula, some of which are believed to be up to 30,000 years old, lie in Western Australia’s remote and mineral-laden Pilbara region.”

“No one has the right to question your love for a work of art, any more than to criticise your relationships. No, what is sad, far sadder than sitting in a room decorated with the soppy, woodland landscapes of Thomas Kinkade is to spend money and time on art for any reason but the pure passion these collectors express for their unusual objects of desire.”