|
Tripoli-born Western Sydney artist Khaled Sabsabi, who was announced today as Australia’s representative at the 61st Venice Biennale in 2026, has promised his multimedia work, yet to be unveiled, will be about building empathy and inclusivity, expressing hope it will bring people together.
Sabsabi, 59, whose parents fled Lebanon’s civil war in 1976, reflected on the recent bombardment of Gaza at the unveiling of his successful collaborative bid with curator Michael Dagostino for the prized spot in Australia’s pavilion at Venice. It represents his fifth proposal submitted for the biennale during his career, as well as his second pitch with Dagostino for the international honour.
|
|
At 91, Elizabeth Cameron Dalman dances in nature at her bushland retreat outside Canberra, Mirramu, surrounded by writers, singers and visual artists stoking their respective muses. “So many people bring up this age thing,” she says, “and my reply is that in dance we are ageless.”
A contemporary dance pioneer in Australia, Dalman has just seen the final performance of one of her “great inspirations” and occasional collaborators, dancer Eileen Kramer, in a filmed component of the dance work Afterworld, part of Sydney festival. Kramer died in November at 110. “I’m going to live to that age,” Dalman chuckles.
|
|
When Indigenous artists collaborated inland from the New South Wales south coast on making an enormous architectural gunyah (or gunya, meaning house or hut, according to Sydney language linguist Jakelin Troy), their initial wish to fell gum trees to make the installation raised “interesting schisms” and a “cultural tussle” about managing Country, says Wiradyuri/Kamilaroi artist Jonathan Jones.
The gunyah was eventually made of 80 turpentine trees, not gums, harvested from around the Bundanon Art Museum site, says Jones, curator of the new exhibition bagan bariwariganyan: echoes of country, who also argues native logging bans are “really strange”.
|
|