Former Head of Asialink Alison Carroll visited Touched the Liverpool Biennial and found 870 artists showing in 400 exhibitions over the 10 weeks of the event.
Artlink began thirty years ago in a corner of an office in Adelaide. Today it is available in the Tate Modern Bookshop purveying its unique brand of attention to important issues in contemporary art, mostly Australian, often international, wherever the ideas are sharp and the ideals are idealistic.
Laughter Stephen Bird, Ben Booth, Andrew Harper, Henri Papin, Roam & Loba, Nicole Robson Curator: Victor Medrano 14 August - 19 September 2010 CAST Gallery, Hobart
Novelist and former Director of Research and Postgraduate Studies in the College of Arts at the University of Western Sydney Jane Goodall responds to the new collection of essays edited by Brad Buckley and John Conomos called 'Rethinking the Contemporary Art School'. Goodall analyses the complexity and often dire times engendered by the incorporation of art schools into universities. However she is optimistic and suggests a first step to be a well-designed retreat system.
Joanna Mendelssohn examines a new book on photography, second in a series, this time juxtaposing German and Australian artists. Mendelssohn writes "What Germany and Australia have in common is a certain navel-gazing obsession about what it means to belong to their particular nationalities."
Stephanie Radok reviews eleven recent publications in a long celebration of the book: Before Time Today: Reinventing Tradition in Aurukun Aboriginal Art; Once Upon a Time in Papunya; John Davis: Presence; Ingo Kleinert: Two Decades; Joachim Froese: Photographs 1999-2008; Renata Buziak: Afterimage; Substance of Shadows: Jutta Feddersen; Khai Liew; Rounds (PICA); Barbara Hanrahan: A Biography; and Ken Bolton's Art Writing.