The role of drugs and art making is examined in the works of particular artists. Historically drugs have been used for enlightenment as well as for healing or endurance....
"The belief system that makes the artworld so unlike - let us say - the builder's hardware world is distinguished primarily by the doctrines that there are no truths and that nothing is real.... To put the point with moderation: artists would not be inconvenienced in the least by a general theory of representation that brought the trustworthiness of their critic somewhere within powerful cooee of the trustworthiness of their radiologist. And Theory owes it to them."
Carnal art is self portraiture in the classical sense, but realised through the possibility of technology. It swings between defiguration and refiguration. Its inscription in the flesh is a function of our age. The body has become a 'modified ready-made', no longer seen as the ideal it once represented.
Looks at the conference 'inter sections 1996' hosted by the College of Fine Arts at the University of New South Wales. The theme for the conference was Imag(in)ing Bodies; Issues of art, design, technolgy, health, medicine and science.
One of the general aims of internationally focussed survey exhibitions is to reflect the art of a particular time....However there is also a sense in which exhibitions of this nature can tend to operate as a form of cultural engineering, where the very status of inclusion in such exhibitions influences the kind of work made.
How does the notion of experiment translate from the realms of scientific medicine to the realms of art? We are forced to examine how legal and ethical liabilities of behaviour are encoded. Looks at the work of Stelarc and Orlan.
Art medicine and the body was a project spanning 18 months. There were 28 participating artists. The exhibition opened at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art in August 1996 followed by the performance and forum.
Exhibition review Inside the visible - Alternative views of 20th Century Art through Women's Eyes
Art Gallery of Western Australia
13 February - 6 April 1997