Stephanie Britton interviewed Felicity Fenner, curator of the 2008 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, to find out what Handle with Care really means in the twenty-first century.
At Magnet Gallery in Quezon City Filipino artist Norberto Roldans exhibition Oil goes beyond the local situation and deals with the theme of peak oil as the root of all geopolitical evil, with the United States of America as the primary agent of ill intent. Lourd de Vera vividly describes it as a deliberate exercise in propaganda and sloganeering. Roldan takes a broad historical view and reflects on US policy in the Philippines over time while the rusting Caltex sign embedded in the exhibition asserts a warning: no empire lasts forever.
Recent art made by East Timorese artists is contrasted with work by Australian war artists Wendy Sharpe and Rick Amor. Artworks made by artists from the Arte Moris Free Art School in Dili are full of passion and deep knowledge of the incongruities of war and the poverty of their lives while the artworks made by Sharpe and Amor seem remote and generalised.
Tracey Clement interviews Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, curator of the 2008 Biennale of Sydney, and finds out what she thinks about the Stendhal Syndrome, Biennale Syndrome and the politics of language.
Cairns-based artist Tijn Meulendijks considers the plant world as his medium. His exhibition, Natura est ars, held at Umbrella Studio in Townsville in 2007, was concentrated around a single plant community gathered while walking in a coastal Melaleuca swamp after fire had affected the environment.
Two South Australian writers work with discarded materials to make strong commentaries on contemporary life. Pamela Kouwenhoven uses old empty plastic car battery cases to make Rosalie Gascoigne-like collages of faded colour and worn histories. Like her signature works using malthoid taken from beneath rainwater tanks, they have a strong environmental agenda, drawing attention to beauty as well as responsibility. Peter McKay makes playful works with serious messages. At night he makes patterns in oil stains on the road with glitter and photographs them. These works collapse the infinite into the accidental as galaxies appear on the ground.
Rabih Mrou and Lina Saneh are Lebanese performance artists. In their work called Whos Afraid of Representation?, currently touring Europe, they describe the work of over fifteen well-known performance artists from Chris Burden and Marina Abramovic to Stelarc and Rudolf Scwharzkogler whose violence occurs within the safe and sanctioned space of the art world. They contrast this symbolic violence with descriptions of violent murders in Beirut. The work draws attention to the way violent deaths in Beirut are as ephemeral as the newspapers they are reported in while the violence practiced by the performance artists becomes history and the artists gain authority.
Anthony Kelly, Pilar Mata Dupont & Tarryn Gill, Bennett Miller, Tom Muller, Anna Nazzari, Mark Parfitt, Ric Spencer, Brendan van Hek (WA) Curator: Consuelo Cavaniglia PICA 1 - 25th November 2007