PRESS ROOM

From Archibald to Argentina
Craig Ruddy fled the controversy over his Gulpilil portrait to find inspiration in South America, writes Katrina Strickland
William Dobell retreated to his sisters farm on Lake Macquarie in the mid-1940s after the infamous court battle over whether his 1943 Archibald Prize winning portrait of fellow artist Joshua Smith was a portrait or a caricature....sixty years later another artist, Craig Ruddy, was taken to court over his 2004 Archibald prize-winning portrait of actor David Gulpilil, this time weather it was a painting or a drawing.

... I wanted to capture the beauty of the environment but also the danger, poverty and struggle in Rio, where people say you need 10 eyes in the back of your head.
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Levitação / Levitation
Craig Ruddy - New Exhibition, Review by Jonathan Turner, the award-winning Rome-based art critic and curator.
Craig Ruddy captures the sharp light of Rio de Janeiro as it is reflected by the rippling sea, bouncing off the white sands to create a distinctive, mauve haze. The shards of light overlap and fragment, as though refracted by panes of glass, and the imagery in Ruddy's Levitation series is further affected by the glass sheets superimposed over his most recent paintings. Outlines of athletic figures immersed in water, tumbling in the frothy surf and leaping on the beach sometimes resemble the shimmering profiles of a mirage. The horizon shifts. Shadows seem to appear and disappear, but in fact, they really do... more

Favourite Things
Stormie Mills, Graffiti Artist
When Perth artist Stormie Mills, 39, started painting his city as a 12 year old, he came to see the walls he marked as part of a layered artwork. "Spray paint is such a thin medium, it takes on the texture of the wall," he says. When affronted citizens erased his work with their own paint patchwork, he saw that as an artistic conversation. ...more

Better then a Chook Raffle
Tina Hansen-Jones in Mosman Daily
Mosman artist Tina Hansen-Jones has devoted a whole exhibition to portraits of ordinary everyday chooks... ... more

THE PLANNER - Gordon Richards
Going, Going...
Gordon Richards... more

Julie Harris
A Prize To Conjure With
Now established as a leading art event in the Australian art calendar The Fleurieu Biennale Water Prize bring together a wide variety of art. But while the works may be of uneven quality, it is clear that the Water Prize has well and truly 'arrrived' and its organizers have earned the right to expect a stellar future. ...more