culture

Open Window, presented by the collective of Gavin Bell, Jarrah de Kuijer and Simon McGlinn, is a puzzle of objects as empty vessels within spaces divided by open wall frames.

In Supernatural, the latest exhibition from Judith Neilson’s monumental collection of contemporary Chinese art, works about nature are, like their subject, informed by tradition but transformed into wholly modern visions.

MoMA at NGV: 130 Years of Modern and Contemporary Art provides an engaging and broad survey of how we have sought to understand the negotiation between technology, nature and our humanity.

A 30-year retrospective of Ronnie van Hout’s work includes a dazzling variety of distorted sculptural and filmic self-portraiture, with the effect of interrogating what is real.

The work of Chinese artist Sun Xun explores concepts of time and space, truth and lies – always searching for answers. As the first solo exhibition of his work in Australia opens at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, he talks about the role of the artist. “We live in a lie, in a big lie system. People should jump out from the lie circle and touch the world. It is the modern world’s problem. Where is the truth? I don’t know. In my art, I want to make people think: ‘Don’t believe our world – it is a big lie.’ I am trying to open the door for people.”

All We Can’t See, an exhibition of works responding to the incident reports published as the Nauru Files, leaves the viewer deliberately overwhelmed in the face of the trauma it interrogates.

French conceptual artist Daniel Buren continues to charm and engage with his quiet, contagious ways of seeing the world in stripes. “My biography is very simple: Daniel Buren. Born 25 March, ’38. Works and lives in situ.”

A year-long curatorial project, involving new work from 52 artists, hosted principally on an Instagram account, raises questions of form and function.

Archibald Prize-winning artist Yvette Coppersmith’s principal subject is herself, in works created with little concession to how they might be perceived by others. “To make a work without an awareness of an audience is virtually impossible, even though I began doing portraits or drawings of faces to hang in my childhood room, and that’s probably what I still want to do. It’s a very private process. It’s really private, actually. It’s only the fact that you’re an artist and part of your role is to share your work.”