Published on ocula ‘There is nothing more boring than the story of decline,’ a journalist remarked at an art criticism panel I attended the evening before making the trip to see Art Taipei (26–29 October 2018). As I attended the opening night of Asia’s oldest art fair, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, those … Continue reading
During the Ottoman invasion of Wallachia in 1462, Sultan Mehmed II– who had marched into the territory with an army of more than 150,000 troops–entered the small town of Târgoviste, in what is today known as Romania, to find a forest of twenty thousand Turkish men, women, and children, all impaled. The perpetrator; voivode Vlad III … Continue reading
Describing herself as a ‘kind of twisted social documentary photographer’, American photographer Catherine Opie has an affection for subcultures. Inspired by the photographs of Lewis Hine, the Ohio-born Opie picked up the camera at age nine and immediately began photographing friends and her community. Her early series Being and Having (1991) and Portraits (1993—1997) mixed traditional portrait photography with less … Continue reading
A row of 12 colourful creatures cast shadows behind a blue wall in Perrotin Gallery Hong Kong. A series of paintings–large and small–fill up the other wall spaces, but it is these creatures, which from a distance resemble ethnographic tribal sculptures, that catch your eye. Closer up, extra-terrestrial looking, round painted mouths, and big … Continue reading
Published on Ocula Shirazeh Houshiary was born in 1955 in Shiraz, an Iranian city known for its rich literary and art history. She came to London in 1974 to study at the Chelsea School of Art—five years before the Iranian Revolution broke out. It was her sculptural works that first garnered attention in the 1980s, … Continue reading
Published on ocula, 17 April 2018 OCULA CONVERSATION IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE 21ST BIENNALE OF SYDNEY Guest editor: Natalie King Embarking on a career as a painter relatively late, at the age of 33, Belgian artist Michaël Borremans initially trained as a draughtsman and engraver at Saint Lucas in Ghent. On the occasion of his inaugural … Continue reading
Published on Ocula, 6 April 2018 On Monday night of Hong Kong Art Week, the Guerrilla Girls, the US feminist activist art collective who call themselves ‘the conscience of the art world’, addressed a packed lecture theatre at University of Hong Kong—their first ever appearance in Asia. Armed with their signature stats, facts, and bananas, … Continue reading
