Handy Definitions
Don't know your conceptual from your perceptual? Your MCA from your ARI? We're here to help
Contemporary art
The term’s literal meaning is art made now, but in art-speak it applies to work that is made from around the 1950s onwards (opinions differ, with some saying it’s ’60s onwards and others ’70s onwards). Apart from that, anything goes – but painting, drawing and traditional sculpture are rather out of fashion these days.
Modern art
Modernism as a school of thought begins with the Industrial Revolution and stretches to the end of the ’60s. In art, it manifests as the rejection of traditional subject matter and realism in favour of experimentation.
Installation
Involves an arrangement of different elements of the one work in three-dimensional space (for example, a sculpture, a video screen and a soundtrack).
Conceptual art
Is art where ideas are more important than images/tangibles, and the artist’s “personal touch” is irrelevant.
Performance art
Is less interested in character and narrative and more interested in social and relational experiments.
Biennale
A huge festival of art, held every two years. The best-known these days is the Venice Biennale.
ARI
Or ‘artist-run-initiave’ is used to describe galleries that are run by emerging artists and focus on emerging artists. Profit is secondary.
Commercial gallery
The majority of galleries in Sydney are commercial galleries – run by art dealers for the purposes of profit.
The Turner Prize
It was created by the Tate Gallery in 1984, named after 19th-century landscape artist JMW Turner, and is awarded to a British artist under the age of 50 ”who has made an outstanding contribution to art... during the previous year.” Past winners include Damien Hirst and Anish Kapoor.
