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Integration Assimilation and a Fair Go For All: Khaled Sabsabi
Integration Assimilation and a Fair Go For All: Khaled Sabsabi Gallery 4A, Sydney 13 June – 25 July 2009
Upturns, Props and Portals: Bec Stevens
Upturns, Props and Portals: Bec Stevens Curator: Sean Kelly Kelly’s Garden Curated Projects Series 1 Salamanca Arts Centre, Hobart 5 June – 3 July 2009
Oh that I were where I would be
Oh that I were where I would be Andrew Baker Art Dealer, Brisbane 10 June – 4 July 2009
The romantic spirit
In 2007 Jennifer A. McMahon, senior lecturer in philosophy at the University of Adelaide, published a book called Aesthetics and material beauty: aesthetics naturalized. (See book review by Michael Newall, this issue of Artlink.) In the late 1970s McMahon was an art student looking for truth. Her move to philosophy to find truth makes use of Kant's doctrine of aesthetic ideas and argues that our perceptual and cognitive orientation to the world is reaffirmed through finding forms that seem to draw us to them for their own sake. When this occurs it unleashes ideas like immortality, infinity and freedom for which there are no perceptual counterparts. She argues that Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder but what constitutes the eye of the beholder is determined by culture.
On sunsets
A voyage across sunsets in recent Australian art from Jim Thalassoudis to Anne Zahalka, Tim Storrier to Philip Hanson. While at the outset Ted Snell quotes with approval Oscar Wilde's statement that 'nobody of any real culture ever talks nowadays about the beauty of sunsets' he goes on to show the enduring and meaningful presence of the sunset in both paintings and photography. Thus he demonstrates that art involving repossession and reinvention can, in spite of having to deal with accusations of kitsch, parochialism and provincialism, turn old themes into pure gold, both actual and emotional.
Australian Beauty
Beauty is problematic for contemporary art theory at least in part because it affords a pleasurable, life-affirming, yet ineffable experience. Yet Margot Osborne finds many examples to show that it has never really gone away. As Peter Schjeldahl observed in 1996: Beauty will be what it has always been and, despite everything, is now in furtive and inarticulate ways: an irrepressible, anarchic, healing human response without which life is a mistake.' Osborne writes: Embodiment, the synthesis of sensibility, skill and material form, is at the heart of beauty...The perception of beauty is an integrative sensual and cerebral experience, dissolving dualities of mind/body and repudiating outmoded art form hierarchies.
Shimmering fields
An essay on Indigenous aesthetics in the paintings of John Mawurndjul and Gulumbu Yunupingu from Arnhem Land, and Doreen Reid Nakamarra form the Central Desert as their work appears in the exhibition Culture Warriors, the first Indigenous Triennial, curated by Brenda Croft and reviewed in Artlink (Vol 27 #4) by Daniel Thomas. 'Their works are site-specific, alive with meaning and essentially metaphysical and religious in conception. For these artists beauty equals power, the power of the creation stories that underpin their art.'
Gatecrashing the sublime
In his youth as a regional gallery director Peter Timms imagined an exhibition called Flat Earth that would show all country artists that where they actually lived was, like anywhere else, able to be transformed into art. This article looks at the different approaches to landscape taken by the work of Tasmanian artists David Keeling, David Stephenson, Philip Wolfhagen and Richard Wastell, and how they transcend social, moral or political point-scoring to achieve their own kind of beauty, a clear-eyed, unsentimental appreciation of the environment as it really is, which frankly acknowledges the harm, both physical and conceptual, that has been inflicted upon it.
Some digressions on ornament, abstraction and the stowaway
An erudite elaboration of the concept that a certain amount of ornamentalism in art rather than being the opposite to minimalism is present within it as a secret stowaway. Wendy Walker muses on this topic with particular reference to the 2001 exhibition Ornament and Abstraction at the Fondation Beyeler, Basel, and its curator Markus Bruederlin's premise that ornamentation has played a more integral role in the development of abstract art than has previously been supposed. Walker illustrates her thesis with works by Christian Lock, Stieg Persson and Timothy Horn.
Karl Wiebke
Karl Wiebke has been making art for thirty years. Margaret Moore selectively reviews his oeuvre and concludes that though 'Beauty as an ideal is not a platform for his practice it is a consequence. His works are profoundly and atmospherically evocative of mood, weather, or nature like a bed of lichen or a sense of saturation. He has adopted a programmatic approach to his practice, setting schema and working toward attainment. That schema might incorporate an obligation of time, of mark-making, of palette or the allowance for interventions other than by his hand.
Cobi Cockburn
Cobi Cockburn is a glass artist whose work reflects her journey through the world, first in response to the country around Canberra and more recently the Shoalhaven district. It is her personal response to the landscape in which she lives (as opposed to a larger environmental message) which drives her to continue to push herself with a medium not typically used for landscape. Cockburns working methods of fusing, slumping, rolling, hot forming and cold working glass demonstrate clear connections from one piece of work to the next. Central to her motivation is the desire to create works of subtlety and grace. Cockburns working methods demonstrate clear connections from one piece to the next, yet each piece is a self-contained process in itself. A self-confessed addict of her book (her journal), Cockburn says that when she reviews her collection of journals, she can trace progress and a sense of continuous narrative. But she feels, on the whole, that her work is evolving more as a natural process as she herself develops both as an artist and a person. Each piece has its own essence, or presence, and comes together with others as collections which reflect part of the greater experience. Central to her motivation is the desire to create works of subtlety and grace, pieces that will stand for themselves but not shout at the viewer.
Robin Best
Robin Bests ceramics reflect her attention to the importance of location. Her forms are classical, meditative and reflective, and has ranged from marine forms to works decorated by Ernabella artist Nyukuna Baker. Her most recent body of work undertaken during and after a number of residencies in China reflects the complexity of the cultural, commercial and political history of China. Her snuff bottles are a picture gallery of images related to trade, culture and commerce, while others contain designs taken from each of the countries that blue and white porcelain passed through on its way from China to Europe via India and the Middle East.
Tina Gonsalves: Unleashing emotion
Tina Gonsalves is currently honorary artist in residence at the Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience and visiting artist at the MIT Media Lab in the US. Her recent work is interested in adaptive, rather than expressive approaches to mental and emotional states. Gonsalves situates emotional states as rhizomorphic and emergent. In her new works, she has given the media art world a new concept, the emotional algorithm. Feel: Chameleon (2007/2008) introduces multiple subjects, both projected images and people, into a panoramic installation. It is a complex exploration of ideas drawn from the emerging discipline of social neuroscience which is interested in the ways in which people connect with the emotional state of others.
Ellen Dissanyake: homo aestheticus
In this phone interview conducted by Margot Osborne with North American ethologist Ellen Dissanyake in her home in Seattle her case for a species-centric approach to art is explored through the ideas in her books Homo Aestheticus (1992) and Art and Intimacy (2000). She states that some form of art as an activity has existed in all societies across all times and is innate in human nature. The core of this innate activity is making special, or elaboration. From this species-centric perspective, many recent developments in art are seen by Dissanayake as unfortunate aberrations and a denial of the positive life-enhancing qualities of art.
Blubberland: the dangers of happiness, Elizabeth Farrelly
University of New South Wales Press, 2007 RRP $29.95
The Formalesque: a guide to modern art and its history, Bernard Smith
Macmillan Australia 2007, RRP $135.
Aesthetics and material beauty: aesthetics naturalized, Jennifer A. McMahon
New York and London, Routledge 2007, RRP US$135
Truth and beauty entangled
Sian Ede is Arts Director for the Uk branch of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation where she initiated an Arts and Science program to encourage artists to engage with new thinking and practice in science and technology. She is editor and co-author of Strange and Charmed: science and the contemporary visual arts (2000) and author of Art and Science (2005). In this article Sian discusses the entanglement of truth and beauty by referring to John Keats famous 1820 poem Ode on a Grecian Urn and its statement that Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all Ye know on earth and all ye need to know. and shows how relevant it is today in the fields of both art and science.
The realities of power
This is the third chapter of an unpublished autobiography by art theorist and national treasure Donald Brook. Previous chapters were published in 2005 in Artlink Vol 25#3 and in 2006 in Vol 26#4. In The Realities of Power Brook recapitulates what happened in terms of teaching and policy at the Power Institute, University of Sydney, in the late sixties when he first arrived in Australia from the UK. His long and detailed account explores why, in his opinion, the early Power Institute had so little impact on Australian visual culture. The rest of Brooks autobiography waits in the wings.
The 32nd congress of the international committee of the history of art (CIHA)
A brief description on the 32nd CIHA and its relevance in relation to art history and practices.
Insights and a conversation
A brief but notable account of the 2008 CIHA from the perspective of Anne Kirker describing the key speakers and their topical lectures in relation to art history. Kirker further elaborates on her experiences at the CIHA and what she deemed intellectually stimulating and intriguing. Kirker also summarises the general relevance and opportunities the CIHA provides.
One night only project
Curators: Kate Kelly and Pip Stafford Artists: Lindsay Arnold, Braddock, Lisa Campbell-Smith, Lachlan Conn, Moira Corby, Scot Cotterell, Lindsay Cox, Empire, Ghostpatrol, Andrew Harper, Jamin, Kate Kelly, Kirsty Madden, Noble, Michael Prior, Pip Stafford, Andy Vagg. Sound Artists: Chrysalis, Cycle, Global Ethnic, Matt Neidra. 29 March 2008
Chaos and revelry: Neo-Baroque and camp aesthetics
Curator: Edwina Bartlem 18 January 10 February 2008 Counihan Gallery, Brunswick
Papunya Painting: out of the desert
Curator: Vivien Johnson National Museum of Australia 28 November 2007 3 February 2008
The Ship of fools: recent paintings, Bill Brown
Wilson Street Gallery, Newtown 29 March - 20 April 2008
Now that I am a man I can go to war: Angela Lynkushka
Monash Gallery of Art 29 February - 27 April 2008
In response to conversations with a therapist as a narrative device: Martin Smith
Ryan Renshaw Gallery April 22 - May 10, 2008
Liminal
Curator: Colin Langridge Thomas Bachler, Andrew Dewhurst, Richard Giblett, David Martin, Todd McMillan, Ali Sanderson, Richard Wastell Carnegie Gallery, Hobart March 6 April 13 2008
The Larrakia Legacy of Billiamook
Larrakia people bore the brunt of colonial expansion in the Northern Territory when Darwin was settled by beraguds (white people) in 1869. Gary Lee writes of Billiamook, one of the first Larrakia to interact with the settlers and the first Aboriginal artist to have his work exhibited and recognised as art.
Under the Skin
The Aboriginal community of Balgo, situated on the cusp of the Tanami and Great Sandy Desert is a melting pot for contemporary Aboriginal art and culture. This article examines a group of white women artists and their various bodies of work which grew from their time spent at Balgo.
Just Really Out There
Steve Fox's job involves regular 1400km round trips from Uluru to some of the most remote communities in Australia. He reports on a typical four-day excursion in the Maruku troopcarrier.
Looking Forward Looking Back: in the East Kimberly
Marrying visual art, dance and inspirational rhetoric has been one of the hallmarks of the Jirrawun Artists Co-operation operating out of Kununarra. These traditional people have been at the forefront of contemporary political debates and Indigenous art practice. Cath Bowdler follows the story of Jirrawun Artists Co-operation from its inception in 1998 to the present day. A non-government funded body, Pro bono partnerships with the corporate and private sector.
Kuninjku Modernism
Kuninjku Modernism pays respect to the wellspring of the Indigenous art movement and the many artists of Western Arnhem Land, furthermore exploring the several countries or nations of this large civic nation.
Looking Elsewhere: Asia at the Top End
The top end has a distinctly Asian flavour not only because of its cultural heritage prior to 1880s but also because of the significant East Timorese connection. This article looks at the Northern Territorys strong and visionary commitment to cultural exchange with Indonesia and the increasing Asian character of Darwin's rapidly changing population.
Sitting Down with Indigenous Artists
Erica Izett explores the cultural convergence between Australias indigenous and non-indigenous people over the past few decades and the rewarding implications it is having on Australias artistic and cultural practice and awareness.
Bush Techies and Secret Data Business
Caroline Farmers position at 24HR Art, the Northern Territorys Centre for Contemporary Art required an involvement with projects specifically aimed to help indigenous artists acquire new media skills. What she found in the Territory however required her to think in an entirely new way. Farmer discusses some of her experiences with her new found traditionally and technologically aligned environment.
Art at the Frontier: Franck Gohier
Frank Gohier has distinguished himself as a resident Darwin artist whose work as a painter, sculptor, printmaker and teacher reflects a different perspective of the far northern - one based on lived experience. Addresses the impact of the indigenous community on his Anglo perspective art.
From Fregon to Srinigar and Back
Kaltjiti Arts is a community owned arts centre in Fregon. A cross-cultural project between two groups of community artists based in South Australia's remote and traditional Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands and in Srinigar, the turbulent capital of Kashmir is based on the combining of these two isolated and very different cultures via their arts and traditions.
Neverland vs. Reality: How to Sustain an Art Practice in the Territory
Historically, people in the Territory have viewed southeners with suspicion, often characterising them as missionaries or carpetbaggers. Some emerging artists here are beginning to question these attitudes and are starting to take advantage of the financial and critical lifelines that the south has to offer. Bronwyn Wright and Tobias Richardson are two who have engaged energetically with southerners and achieved high levels of recognition.
Making the Gospel Their Own
Eastern Arrernte Catholics at Ltentye Apurte, the former Santa Teresa Catholic mission east of Alice Springs, are making the local church and liturgy a ground for telling their recent history and reflecting their ancient yet evolving traditions. A mural project was initiated by a local non-aboriginal woman Cait Wait in 2002 with the help of eight neophyte artists.
Women's Business by Remote
In the past two decades the face of Australian art practice has been changed immeasurably by a renewed focus on the culture of Indigenous people and the efflorence of Aboriginal art. This article looks at the work of three non-Indigenous artists who worked in places regarded as remote and developed art practices through engagement with Aboriginal people.
The Art of Fiona Hall
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane 19 March - 5 June 2005 Julie Ewington, Fiona Hall, Piper Press, 2005, RRP $88.
The 14th Annual Linden Postcard Show
Linden St Kilda Centre for Contempory Arts 5 February - 19 March 2005
Seeking Transcendence
Curator: John Stringer 10 February - 5 May 2005 Perth International Arts Festival
Proof: The Act Of Seeing With One's Own Eyes
Curator: Mike Stubbs Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne 9 December 2004 - 13 February 2005
Giant Steps and Transcriptions
Experimental Art Foundation 25 February - 2 April 2005 Greenaway Art Gallery 22 February - 1 March 2005 Adelaide Film Festival
Not Far From Here
Davenport Regional Gallery 28 January - 6 Marcg 2005 Bett Gallery, Hobart 9 March - 23 March 2005
3 Into 1: Hermie Cornelisse, Amanda Davies and Mish Meijers
CAST Gallery, Hobart 5 February - 6 March 2005
Light Years: William Robinson and the Creation Story
Art for William Robinson has always been an intensely personal exercise, from the early domestic interiors, suffused with love for his family, to the hard-won intimacy of his relationship with the wilderness in which he now lives. Yet the animating principle of his work in its ever changing fashion is its expression of faith. Robinsons landscape is unquestionably a God-revealed world; what is in question is the relation of man to that universe. As much as Robinson's art is a faithful reflection of his immediate environment, it is drawn from the memory of an experience in a landscape .
Post Natural Nature: Rosemary Laing
Brisbane born Rosemary Laing is one artist who is fully up to speed with the photographic and technological changes in supermodernity. Her work conveys better than most the strange double life we lead today: one half viscerally embodied, the other half immaterial and virtual. Like an aviation physicist Laing tries to push the envelope of what can be represented in photography. Works such as Natural Disasters (1988), Flight Research (2000) and Groundspeed are here examined.
Gordon Bennett's Art: The Aura of Origin
With a directness and clarity born from genuine insight, Gordon Bennetts art gives form to the structure of an invisible repetitive history haunting the psyches of non-Indigenous and Indigenous Australians alike. This text gives rise to Bennett's fierce artistic practice - including an examination of the works Outsider, Am I scared? and the Notes to Basquiat and Home Decor series. These works are looked at to reveal his recent concerns with the mechanisms of doubling, moving beyond the fatal powers of representation and indeed beyond a primary concern with Australian heritage to take on the world.
Ginger Riley Munduwalawala: A Seeing Artist
Ginger Rileys superlative colour sense sets him apart from other Indigenous Australian artists. His unique landscape manner, studded with icons of identity and place, is instantly recognisable yet it has attracted both passionate acclaim and vitriolic criticism. Riley has forged his own way of encapsulating and celebrating the grand sweep and detailed minutiae of a particular tract of land in Southeast Arnhem Land, over which he now holds native title through his role as djungkayi (caretaker). In order to understand why Riley stands alone as an Indigenous painter, Ryan looks at his personal life history and the wellsprings of his art: his intimate connection to his mother's country.
Imants Tillers and Positive Value
Artlink asked Ian North to interview Imants Tillers for this issue, in view of North's longstanding interest in both Tiller's work and the landscape genre generally. North introduces the artist from his early recognition as a leading conceptual artist in the 1970's and pre-eminent postmodernist thereafter, working consistently according to strategies he evolved during the 1980's. This interview examines some of the key works and local concerns of Tiller's ongoing artistic practice.
Rosslynd Piggott: Perfect/Sense
In the context of Melbourne art, Rosslynd Piggott could be linked to a significant movement of young artists who emerged in the 1980's. Her earlier works were figurative compositions which presented painterly/philosophical essays upon the nature of water, clouds and impermanence through surrealistic juxtapositions. This article follows her career from the early painting days through to her current concerns with mediums such as sculpture, installation and more recently performance.
Fiona Foley: Knowing Where to Look
Fiona Foley's career as an artist has resulted in a diverse practice united by a dedication to indigenous issues that are of relevance to all Australians. Her presence as an artist, advocate, activist and identity in the Australian cultural scene has remained poised and proud for over two decades. From her involvement in the formation of the Boomalli Ko-operative to her often hard-hitting presence as a public speaker and the lyrical and enchanting nature of her images, Foley has continued to disturb assumptions and challenge clichés about the way Australians think of themselves and the place we inhabit. Ephemeral Landscapes (1990), Ya Kari - speak for (2001), Kunmarin - wooden shield (2001) and other works are here discussed.
Polemic: The Undoing of Art History (Part I)
In this part 1, the viability of the subject called Art History is challenged, using the terms art and work of art in a conventional way. The nature of histories as they are ascribed to kinds, especially art as a kindcultural kinds, the problems associated with generalisations and the dilemma for the Macho art historianare ideas addressed through this text.
Modern Australian Women: paintings & prints 1925-1945 and In Context: Australian Women Modernists
Curator: Jane Hylton Art Gallery of South Australia 24 November 2000 - 25 February 2001 Curator: Paula Furby Flinders University Art Museum 8 December 2000 - 17 February 2001
Bias
An exhibition of contemporary embroidery Moonah Arts Centre. Hobart 17 November - 22 November 2000
Looking at Yourself Looking at Yourself
Martin Smith, Sharon Green and Annie Hogan Stratton Gallery, Brisbane 15 - 23 December 2000
Time, Gentlemen, Please
Art Association of Australia and New Zealand Conference Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane 7-10 December 2000
Mining the Imagination
Old Mine Management Office Queenstown Martin Walch, Richard Bladel, Leisa Tyler, Poonkhin Khut 1 December 2000 - open-ended
World Without End: Photography and the 20th Century
Art Gallery of New South Wales 2 December 2000 - 25 February 2001
Another Look: Six Women Artists of the 1950s
Inge King, Erica McGilchrist, Helen Maudsley, Mirka Mora, Norma Redpath, Dawn Sime Heide Museum of Modern Art 18 November -7 January 2001
7th Havana Biennial Uno mas cerca al otro
La Cabaña and El Moro (the old fort) and multiple city venues 17 November 2000 - 1 January 2001
Simulating the Flow
Alfred Deakin was not a man to muck about. As well as being a major player in the long campaign to establish an Australian Federation, he was an indefatigable crusader for irrigation, pushing hard to establish a pioneer industry. As President of a Royal Commission on Water Supply & Irrigation, Deakin visited and studied Californian irrigation schemes in 1885.
