British art critic Matthew Collings is currently in Australia, to lecture (not surprisingly) on art, or, as he explains: ‘What my idea of contemporary art is about’. Although he does humbly admit to not knowing much about contemporary Australian art.
When pushed to define the exact ‘art’ he is going to talk about, Collings acknowledges that his interest in contemporary art is based on what he knows. ‘I tend to know my own patch,’ he comments, ‘I have been doing this for 25 years now, and in that time I have formed my ideas about art, based on a lot of internationalism… I have been very interested in American art and German art, as well as English art, and to some extent other European countries. But I have never really known about Australian art because it is too far away.’
