Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran

Welcome to the 33rd guest blog post of Time Out Sydney's 52 Weeks of #SydCulture 2017 challenge! August’s culture selector is Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran: one of Australia’s rising art stars. Every week in August, Ramesh will be telling us what he loved the week before. Think of it as your recommendations for this week, from someone who sees a helluva lot of arts and culture. Over to him. ‘Contemporary art’ is a slippery term. Debates surrounding what constitutes Art-with-a-capital-A are tiresome. The cliché that anything can be art, is both useful and irritating. As an artist, as you are given freedom to create meaning through your works with whatever means possible; however, it is also troublesome when philistines trash contemporary art based on a belief that the work they are looking at is devoid of skilled craftsmanship. It’s not uncommon for me to glance at work of mine shared on social media and notice strings of negative comments claiming that my work lacks technical sophistication. While this doesn’t bother me, it makes me wonder about the ways in which we categorise and define different streams of art practice. If people didn’t instantly link clay with the craft of functional pottery, would these criticisms I see on Facebook and Instagram even exist? Probably not. However, while they can be problematic, systems of categorisation can also be incredibly useful. Last week I attended and spoke at a symposium in Parramatta presented by 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art

Welcome to the 32nd guest blog post of Time Out Sydney's 52 Weeks of #SydCulture 2017 challenge! August’s culture selector is Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran: one of Australia’s rising art stars. Every week in August, Ramesh will be telling us what he loved the week before. Think of it as your recommendations for this week, from someone who sees a helluva lot of arts and culture. Over to him. The ‘emerging artist’ is often fetishised on the premise of youth and freshness – but the term has been subject to much debate and criticism. This has obliged gallerists, institutions and artists to approach the concept with caution. Should there be a curated exhibition, prize, fellowship or other opportunity for artists at the beginning of their careers, most forward-thinking organisations are asking artists to self-determine their status. This approach is a welcome alternative to previous standards, such as  an age limit or a ‘number of years working’ (both of which generally  privilege wealthy white males who live in metropolitan regions). Terminology aside, three exhibitions at showing at UNSW Galleries this month showcase emerging and early career artists: the Freedman Foundation Travelling Scholarship, the John Fries Award, and the postgraduate projects of Monika Behrens, Paul Ogier and Morgan Veness. The three exhibitions are unique in their own right, but have been programmed simultaneously to underline a common interest. Being a past recipient of the Freedman Foundation Travelling Art

Welcome to the 31st guest blog post of Time Out Sydney's 52 Weeks of #SydCulture 2017 challenge! August’s culture selector is Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran: one of Australia’s rising art stars. Every week in August, Ramesh will be telling us what he loved the week before. Think of it as your recommendations for this week, from someone who sees a helluva lot of arts and culture. Over to him. The ceramics of Glenn Barkley pack a punch. He has a signature style defined by a commitment to labour, a sharp wit and a love for the ceramic material that borders on obsession. Seeing his pots, you are inevitably drawn in by infinite amounts of tiny holes poked through exposed coils. Various tokens dangle and a glassy green glaze often embellishes parts of his surfaces. The title of his mini exhibition at Artspace, ‘yetmorecontemporaryart’, is an ironic proposition. There is a tendency for contemporary art and discourse to exist in a closed feedback loop; artists often make art about art, for a tiny ‘art-educated’ section of the population. Glenn is not one of these artists. Encountering his massive pot in the front room at Artspace, you think of monuments, trophies and even a kind of tribute. As an artist, I was struck by the hardcore physicality of the work. It suggests time, labour, sweat, and maybe even tears.   Glenn Barkley: Yetmorecontemporaryart Photograph: Zan Wimberley     His inspiration for this exhibition is drawn from the internet. Specifically, the sometimes tedious (yet al

Welcome to the 30th guest blog post of Time Out Sydney's 52 Weeks of #SydCulture 2017 challenge! August’s culture selector is Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran: one of Australia’s rising art stars. Every week in August, Ramesh will be telling us what he loved the week before. Think of it as your recommendations for this week, from someone who sees a helluva lot of arts and culture. Over to him. It seemed the Archibald was all the fuss last week. Despite the mixed sentiment the event arouses within the arts community, I’ve always been interested. Within the three concurrent exhibitions – Archibald, Wynne and Sulman – Joan Ross’s Sulman Prize-winning entry, ‘Oh history, you lied to me’, was one of the works that deeply captivated me. As a scathing, yet cheekily humorous criticism of Australian colonialism, ‘Oh history, you lied to me’ conveys a perspective that is complex and timely. History is positioned and personified as a turbulent past lover. It’s a simple yet powerful analogy, gesturing to the various agendas and power imbalances implicit in the creation of historical narratives. It’s one of those works where the longer you look, the more you see. I saw little birds drawn in pencil, I heard the paper cutting when I looked at the collaged elements and I imagined the artist smiling during certain moments of its creation.   Jenny Watson: The Fabric of Fantasy – installation view, Museum of Contemporary Art Photograph: Anna Kucera     It’s not often I’m engaged in this way. Yet it