You’d need a heart of stone not to be moved by the outpouring of grief over the shooting of 20 children at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. However, the wall-to-wall coverage in the media in the US and here has been over-indulgent, ghoulishly invasive and gratuitously suspect. It’s as if the classroom massacre has…
I’ve just been to Brisbane to see the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art – APT for short. The Queensland Art Gallery initiated the project almost 20 years ago, and it remains the only major gallery exhibition series in the world devoted to Asian contemporary art. When I first visited Brisbane back in 1986 it…
My good friend Terence Maloon, who curated some of the finest exhibitions of recent years at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, has just been appointed director of the Drill Hall gallery at the Australian National University. He has been welcomed in the Canberra Times with a perceptive interview by Ron Cerabona. In discussing…
An official inquiry in London has vowed to leave no stone unturned in investigating all the circumstances of the suicide of nurse Jacintha Saldanha, the 46-year-old mother of two. What unbearable pressure was placed on Mrs Saldanha after she unwittingly transferred a prank call from a Sydney radio station to the ward where Mrs Kate…
Half a lifetime ago, when I was a student, I went to Colombia in search of the historical background to the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. Recently there came news that there will be no more books from its author, the great Gabriel García Márquez. I’ve been moved to write an account of my…
Sam Dastyari has two jobs: general secretary of the NSW Labor Party and head honcho of the state branch of the right-wing faction known as Centre Unity. How do I know? I’ve received an email invitation from Dastyari to the 2012 Centre Unity Christmas Party on Tuesday, December 18, starting at 6pm. The card ends…
