The Dictionary of Animal Languages: Heidi Sopinka

We meet Ivory Frame, the protagonist of Sopinka’s tale when she is aged ninety-two but still  receiving surprises from life. And what a life it’s been. Being at first passionate about painting she has devoted the greater part of her life to recording the languages of animals…before they all become extinct.

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Peter Dombrovskis: Journeys Into The Wild

Peter Dombrovskis was one of the world’s foremost wilderness photographers. His powerful, reflective and deeply personal images of the unique Tasmanian wilderness had a lasting impact, changing the way Australians think about their environment.

The Photographer’s Shadow

Painting Norway: Nikolai Astrup 1880-1928

When best-dressed is undressed

Who says Australia’s a cultural backwater? Rafael Bonachela and the Sydney Dance Company’s Sydney Festival show last month was a world first: nude dancers in front of nude paintings before a nude audience. Strangely enough, the nude-audience shows sold out faster than the clothed shows.

http://www.sydneyfestival.org.au/2017/nude-live/?q=bonachela

Modern Love – The Lives of John and Sunday Reed

Have you got a Caravaggio in your barn? Or even an Erpenbeck?

Artists you’ve never heard of: Sophonisba Anguissola 1532-1625

  

Three cheers for womankind with the victory of Michelle Payne, the first woman to win Australia’s most famous horse race, the Melbourne Cup, and even more cheers for Michelle’s post-race comment

Van Gogh

               

No one did colour more blatantly and more unexpectedly than Van Gogh. Its blatancy gives his pictures their roaring charm.  Colour, he seems to be saying: you haven’t seen colour before, look at this deep blue, this yellow, this black; watch me put them screechingly side by side. Colour for Van Gogh was a  kind of noise.

Julian Barnes in the LRB vol 37 no 15, 30 July 2015 p.7