Art Life, The

A three-part television series that asks a simple question of contemporary Australian Art ... what's it all about? The Art Life is presented by Andrew Frost – the editor and co-founder of the widely known art world blog of the same name.

Most ART television made in Australia has concentrated on individual artists and their studio practice, but it's been a long time since anyone attempted to describe the big picture of contemporary Australian art ... asking questions like: how does contemporary art fit into Australian culture at large? How does it relate to the world? And how do traditional art forms like painting survive?

The Art Life series tackles these ideas in three episodes, drawing on the rich talents of Australian Contemporary artists.

Episode 1: Out There
'Out There' concentrates on how the psychological space of Australian suburbia influences contemporary Australian artists. This episode looks at how artists respond to, critique, deal with or incorporate the notion of suburbia into their work. Episode 1 features the work of Richard Glover, Matthew Sleeth, Howard Arkley, Adam Cullen, Rachel Scott and Jane Burton.

Episode 2: Millions of Images
'Millions of Images' deals with the modern spectacle of our world – the way in which we are constantly bombarded with visual glitz and glam that somehow seems to both seduce and horrify us. Frost uses the work of artists David Rosetzky, Darren Sylvester, Merilyn Fairskye and Petrina Hicks to explore how we are responding to this contemporary phenomenon. The artists offer a critique of the way images are being made and disseminated, how they are understood, and how they are felt. Frost also explores a different approach to the same question – the documentary photos of Glenn Sloggett that expose the falseness of our overtly slick world through their truthful 'ugliness' and the colourful work of Narelle Autio who documents Australian life on the beach.

Episode 3: Always Busy Dying
'Always Busy Dying [the Life and Death of painting]' explores how painting has experienced a series of 'deaths' – brought on by the advent of cinema, photography, abstraction and then postmodernism. Through paintings by contemporary Australian artists Jan Nelson, Lily Hibberd, Mark Titmarsh, Fiona Lowry, Del Kathryn Barton, Frost looks at how each of these deaths actually served to resurrect painting through reinvention. The episode considers how painting has managed to survive in our contemporary world.