Exhibition reviews

This original, creative and challenging exhibition reflects the rising interest in recent years in the history of the beach, swimming, surfing and the surf lifesaving movement in Australia.

Despite this exhibition's enormous popularity, it delivers only a chaotically organised selection of uncontextualised movie props and interactive displays.

The simple fact that such an exhibition had come into existence at all is newsworthy. For persons of interest, it is an absolute paradox, since the very basis of all ASIO's activities is that they are secret.

This exhibition subtly insists on the importance of science, modern global environmental issues, and the fact that a committed body of men had to actively tie Australia to Antarctica.

Even those who feel that handwriting is a skill no longer required in the age of the keyboard and touch-screen can surely revel in the fascinating array of handwritten manuscripts gathered together in the National Library of Australia's latest blockbuster.

Photographer Martin Mischkulnig’s and writer Tim Winton’s travelling exhibition, Smalltown, seeks ‘the unsentimental realities of remote settlements’, where natural beauty and cultural ugliness are common, opposing categories, and ‘plastic chairs seem as ubiquitous as corrugated iron’.

Without question, the particular strength of this exhibition are the artworks from 1949 to the early 1990s. One visitor in his 20s to whom I spoke remarked this exhibition was a revelation to those in his age group in understanding China in that era.