Just when I decide it’s too hard to get to the vernissage of this year’s Venice Biennale, Australia wins the Golden Lion! It came as a surprise, but it’s also a great occasion. For once – perhaps the first time ever – we managed to get it right. Archie Moore may have simply beaten down […] The post Newsletter 537 appeared first on John McDonald ..read more

Challengers may be the first tennis movie that really takes us onto the court. When racket connects with ball it’s as if an exocet missile has been fired. Every contact between ball and court is explosive, as director, Luca Gaudagnino pumps up the volume and pushes us back into our seats. Sweat doesn’t drip from […] The post Challengers & Evil Does Not Exist appeared first on John McDonald ..read more

Of all the Parisian museums and galleries, the Musée Carnavalet is probably not a first-tier attraction, which is a distinct advantage from the visitor’s perspective. It means one is unlikely to encounter the hordes of selfie addicts that swarm around the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, or Van Gogh’s Self-portrait in the Musée d’Orsay. The […] The post Paris – Impressions of Life 1880-1925 appeared first on John McDonald ..read more

It’s rare one comes across a survey exhibition that feels so personal, so achingly sincere, as the 18th Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, subtitled Inner Sanctum. Guest curator, José Da Silva, has put heart and soul into his choices and gone to great pains to explain them in the catalogue, writing at length on every […] The post Adelaide Biennial 2024 appeared first on John McDonald ..read more

By the time you read this I should be back from my travels, watering the garden, trying to reset my biological clock to Sydney time. I’ve missed the horrendous knife attack at Bondi Junction and the gruesome farce of Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation case – the two Australian news items that are all over the Internet. […] The post Newsletter 536 appeared first on John McDonald ..read more

After Rain, the theme of the second Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, refers to that moment when a storm has passed, and the desert comes alive. It’s a moment Australians who live in the Outback know well, when flowers spring up out of nowhere and animals go partying. In a world growing hotter and drier, this […] The post Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale 2024 appeared first on John McDonald ..read more

If you’re wondering what happened to this newsletter, I’m afraid it has been subject to entirely human problems. That is, as a one-man band, I simply haven’t had time to sit down and contemplate writing a piece. I’ve been travelling pretty much non-stop for more than two weeks, and I’m still in the thick of […] The post Newsletter 535 appeared first on John McDonald ..read more

When it appeared in 1976, Richard Donner’s The Omen was acclaimed as one of the all-time great horror films. It was an era of classic horror, led by The Exorcist (1973) and Carrie (1976), movies that still set people raving. Oh my God, these were the scariest things they’d ever seen! If these classics no […] The post The First Omen appeared first on John McDonald ..read more

For a debut feature, Mahomed Kordofani’s Goodbye Julia is an astonishingly mature work. One of only a handful of movies to originate in Sudan, it’s an instant classic that sets a high bar for a future national cinema – when the civil war in Khartoum allows films to be made once again in that ravaged […] The post Goodbye Julia appeared first on John McDonald ..read more

For the second year in a row, I’ve come away from Art Dubai with the feeling that it’s distinctly different from every other international art fair. Even as I write, one of the biggest of all fairs is getting ready to launch. Art Basel Hong Kong remains Asia’s premier commercial art event, despite challenges from […] The post Art Dubai 2024 appeared first on John McDonald ..read more