Our latest reviews
Stealing Picasso: Anson Cameron
Anson Cameron’s fifth novel is a playful homage to Melbourne’s most infamous art heist, the theft of a Picasso from the NGV in 1986 by a group known as Australian cultural terrorists. Heads almost rolled in high places until ‘greenface’…
Lost Days: Emily The Strange
Lost Days: Emily The Strange is a very interesting book about confusion, losing things, finding things you never knew you had, four black cats, the number 13 and Emily!
In this book Emily, aged 13, dressed in a simple black…
Open 16: The Art Biennial as a Global Phenomenon
This is a more theoretical examination of the subject of arts festivals, containing a number of lectures delivered at a debate in connection with the first Brussels Biennial. Together with supplementary texts, a ‘reader’ had been created in which the…
Hijack Reality: Deptford X: A 'How to' Guide to Organize a Really Top Notch Art Festival: Bob and Roberta Smith
The past decade has seen a massive growth in arts festivals, to the point where almost no city would be without one. Apparently Deptford X is really successful, integrating diverse interests in the local community with big-name artists. With a…
Vitamin 3-D
This latest offering in the Phaidon ‘Vitamin’ compendiums includes all forms of sculpture and installation, except for film and video installations. Even before Rosalind Krauss’s landmark 1979 essay ‘Sculpture in the Expanded Field’, the distinction between sculpture and its environment…
Scruffy Old Cat: Pop Hooper’s Perfect Pets: Kyle Mewburn
Scruffy Old Cat is really for younger readers (aged 6-8) that enjoy cats. It is story of Lilly, who gets the idea that she should be the perfect ballerina princess, with the perfect fluffy cat as a pet. Despite her…
The Galant Bassoon: Matthew Wilkie
Gentle lyricism opens the first track of this new CD from Melba records, and shows the virtuosity of bassoonist Matthew Wilkie. He is skilfully accompanied by Neal Deres Da Costa on harpsichord and Kees Boersma on continuo double bass.
Consisting…
A New Heaven: Harry Christophers and The Sixteen
This is not normally the repertoire one associates with The Sixteen, but as Harry Christophers suggests, this recording has something to do with tradition: ‘It’s music that all of us in The Sixteen grew up with’.
So what we have…
JS Bach: Goldberg Variations (played on the Harp): Catrin Finch
For her DG debut, the Welsh Harpist Catrin Finch has chosen to record JS Bach’s sublime Goldberg Variations, using her own transcription. From the opening variation Finch demonstrates that in the hands of a world class musician the music…
Josef Suk: Asrael Symphony: Claus Peter Flor & Malaysian PO
Suk started writing this piece in 1904 as a dedication to his teacher and father-in-law Antonin Dvorak, who had recently died. Towards the completion of the work his wife, Otylka, also passed away. As a result, Suk turned this work…