Australian cities cannot continue to grow in the manner to which we've become accustomed. The environmental, social and economic costs are simply too great. There needs to be a qualitative change to the way we build and live in them.
The Shire of Mundaring is a large semi rural locality in the hills of the Darling Scarp some 35 km east of Perth in Western Australia. Large areas of natural bushland including the John Forrest National Park and the catchment areas of the Mundaring Weir are to be found within its boundaries--- so are some fascinating sculptures and installations.
In Tasmania particularly it can be difficult to be vocal about political issues. Here is a chance to be uncompromising, a chance to take risks, a chance to raise community cultural awarenes. And who says art needs to be permanent? Heres a chance to make something and then release it, to allow visual art to metamorphose into performance art. Intrigued? then follow up the article!
A new paradigm of design is starting to emerge as a result of the efforts of those members of the design community who are concerned with the extent, as well as the underplaying, of our global environmental crisis.
Written with Paul Mutton. Merz is a new urban artist's village in the inner city suburb of Brompton, South Australia. Photos and drawings of the project.
British artist Andy Goldsworthy came to Australia for three weeks in July to work on site at Mount Victor Station east of the Flinders Ranges. During the 1992 Festival of Arts photographs of the works made at Mount Victor and an installation was shown at the Artspace at the Adelaide Festival Centre, a survey of past works was on show at Yarrabee and Goldsworthy produced a permanent work for the Adelaide Botanic Gardens.
Two recent shows in Melbourne of installations by Alex Danko have investigated issues indirectly referring to architecture and the private and social body within the Australian environment.
"In modern architecture we find difficulty in managing the relation between the physical presence of a building and its intimations of the mental and spiritual. Our architectural objects rarely serve as objects of intermediation between the ordinary, the physical and the present on the one hand, and the mystical, the spiritual and the abstract on the other...."
The idea for a 7 day 'Reading the Land' Festival came to Wimmera River Catchment Group Chairperson, farmer, artist and environmentalist Barry Clugston during a series of salinity flights.