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Arts

Mix'n'match switcheroo leaves art lovers guessing

Artist Alex Gawronski and his work for The National: New Australian Art at the Art Gallery of NSW.

If it looks like it doesn't belong, that is a good thing, says artist Alex Gawronski on the eve of The National: New Australian Art 2017, a ground-breaking three-way collaboration between the Museum Contemporary of Art, the Art Gallery of NSW and Carriageworks.

Surprise shortlist picks in children's book awards

Maxine Beneba Clarke (pictured) with illustrator Van T Rudd received two nods for The Patchwork Bike.

Two self-published books - including a unique album of typographical art in which every image is made with letters that spell its very name - have cracked the shortlist for information books in the Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Awards.

Dreams of a good night's sleep

A sleeper is bathed in pink light in Matthew Bird's  speculative installation Dormitorium.

Some people design a dream home around a library or a kitchen. The owner of the Garden Pavilion in Brunswick renovated in order to dream. An insomniac for 50 years owing to childhood trauma, he required a refuge to sleep.

How fences can mend political walls

Street art: Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei is planning a major work in New York.

The provocative Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has announced he will build more than 100 fences and installations around New York City in a project called Good Fences Make Good Neighbours, one of his largest public art works to date.

'I lived a hero's life but I was actually a demon'

Khadim Ali's mural "The Arrival" depicts the fate awaiting asylum seekers in Australia.

The strange transformation of Khadim Ali into a demon might be traced back to when he was a boy, drawing pictures on the walls of his home in Quetta, by the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, using charcoal scraps from the local bakery. He liked drawing a gallant man with a feather in his helmet, who tamed wild stallions, slew dragons and battled evil beasts. Ali kept the charcoal in his pockets, which annoyed his mother when she did the washing.