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Pat Hoffie: Compassion and Anger
The element of denial ingrained in Australian society provides the basis for much of Pat Hoffie's work. The popularly constructed myths, histories and relationships that reinforce Australian society involve a certain amount of self-delusion, and Hoffie uses her work to amplify this fact. This article explores some of the political and humanitarian issues at the core of Hoffie's artistic practice, with specific reference to the 'children overboard' incident and Australia's role in the 'war against terror'.
Disorientation: Afghan War Rug, No Easy Answers
Lendon takes up the idea of cross-cultural interpretation and exchange as exemplified through the symbolism imbued in a traditional 'Afghan war rug', an item which was part of the exhibition 'The Rugs of War' held in June 2003. Through deconstructing the seemingly violent and barbaric visual imagery, Lendon is posing some important questions regarding the role of traditional artefacts and the valuing of such hand made craft once it has reached its destination in the west.
Afghanistan Unveiled: Four refugee artists from Afghanistan
Afghanistan Unveiled was an exhibition in South Australia of paintings and drawings by four refugees from Afghanistan: Ali Reza Ramzi from Western Australia, Ghulam Sakhi Hazara from Queensland, Sayed Mansoor from South Australia and Shafiq Monis from New South Wales. All of these artists have recently lived in detention and one is still in detention. The artists use art as a way to depict their lives under the Taliban regime, their flight to Australia and their experiences in Australia. The exhibition received television, radio and newspaper coverage, both locally and nationally and over 200 people attended the opening with many more viewing the exhibition over the following two weeks.
The Ballet of Nothing More
Megan Keating's installation The Ballet of Nothing More uses sources from international military and propaganda imagery in order to allude to the present state of unrest within the world. Although no particular campaign or situation is specifically referred to, the paintings and papercuts aim to evoke an awkwardness or ambivalence indicative of contemporary experience. This work is not about war or the experiences of war but people's acceptance, detachment and displacement of such issues fuelled by the media and its methods of reportage.
Viet Nam Voices: Lessons of History
Viet Name Voices was a unique exhibition, striving to give all major groups of participants the opportunity to be heard impartially, often in direct opposition to each other. The voice that is most passionate in this exhibition is that of the Viet Name veterans, who are speaking out after twenty-five years of silence. The issues raised by the unjust treatment of the veterans on their return to Australia are vividly addressed through their artworks, including the legacy of chemical defoliants such as Agent Orange, their betrayal by the Australian government, the mass media's complicity in wartime propaganda, and the enduring and unfulfilled need to honour and remember the dead.
Tasmania as Haven
Despite its troubled history, Tasmania has managed to offer quiet sanctuary for a remarkable range of peoples, natures and ideas. Much of Tasmania's political muscle has been exercised around environmental issues, backed by world heritage listing. Artists in the Haven exhibition which toured in 2003-4 each chose a biographical subject that dramatised the utopian appeal of Tasmania. Artists included Pip McManus, Geoff Parr, Patrick Collins, Anna Phillips, Jennifer Brook, Penny Carey Wells, John Vella, Helena Psotova and Judith-Rose Thomas. Each of these artists created works as tributes to various historical figures and all contain within them the thin glimmer of hope that beckons the darkened mainland above.
Terrorist Training School: PVI Collective
Contemporary performance often seems bent on escaping the theatrical frame, eroding the boundaries, and making problematic the relationship between theatre and reality. In Terrorist Training School, the Perth-based performance group PVI abandoned traditional theatrical space altogether, opting for tour buses and trams. Wilson here sets the scene for the 2002 performance and discusses the performative and prescriptive aspects of both the theatrical and real life terrorist attacks taking place in all parts of the contemporary world.
Queue Here
One of the key works in the 2002 exhibition Queue Here is by Pat Hoffie, an artist long concerned with issues of social justice. A frieze of paintings, lifted from portraits on the web of Australian Federal Members of Parliament, become, as Hoffie says, the 'horrific scared smiles of those we trusted to speak for us'. The artists featured in Queue Here (Pat Hoffie, Peter Latona, Holly Williams, Aseem Pereira, John Vella, Angelina Brazzale, Margaret Baguley, Penny Cain and Paul Gazzola) have all adopted tropes that point to the heart of the problem. If we are dealing with perceptions, then these are a truthful reading of Australia's current vision of its own culture.
A4 Refugee Project: Artists in Solidarity
The A4 Refugee Project began in July as a response to Austcare's call for participants in Refugee Week 2002. Letters, flyers and e-mails were sent to contemporary artists throughout Australia with the request to submit a work as a gesture of support for refugees. The works addressed all sorts of issues surrounding the topic of refugees: alienation, lip sewing, consumerism, wire fencing, loneliness, nationalism...and punctuating these were abstract works that allowed some breathing space. The works were donated to the James Hardie Art Archive at the State Library of Queensland and will provide a permanent document of the artistic response from the community to this issue.
The Pacific Highway Solution
Wayne Barrow provides a humorous dialogue between himself and two of his mates Boney and Dazza, the three of them on their way back to Sydney after a week of concreting. This article raises issues surrounding the problems with the construction of the Pacific Highway, the government's policies on mandatory detention and the shocking state of take away food along the way.
Our Voices: Living with Trauma
Mammad Aidani was born in the port city of Khorramshar in South-West of Iran and later born into the English language and the complexities of the Australian environment in 1982. He here writes about his ongoing struggles since fleeing his country during the Shah's regime when the war between Iran and Iraq ultimately led to the loss of his family and friends. He speaks out about the current political and humanitarian agenda in Australia and the role of creativity in providing rich human emotions as noble causes to unite people.
The Promised Land
Linda Jaivin tells an imaginative story of Moses' plight to the Promised Land, imparting an additional reading to this historical tale, one very much aligned with contemporary society and the struggles of refugees seeking asylum in Australia. The story depicts the promised land as 'a liberal democracy which respects human rights and international conventions as set out by the United Nations' with the story leading the refugees to the ultimate reality of this supposed liberated new land.
Museums For the 21st Century: Entertainments or Big Challenging Ideas?
Museums both reinforce one's views and challenge them, encouraging innovative connections we hadn't thought of before, driving us on to expanded understandings. Griffin addresses some of the controversies surrounding museums in the age of technology.
Scaling Up at ACCA
Opening in mid October 2002, the new ACCA is a purpose built complex designed by Melbourne- based architects Wood Marsh. An architectural marvel and simultaneously a contemporary art space, at last the ACCA is moving to a building that lives up to the portent of its name. Haley spoke to the new Creative Director Juliana Engberg in August of 2002.
Documenta 11 Takes On Masters of the Universe
Every five years the sleepy little German town of Kassel is invaded by the international art world. The 2002 Documenta exhibition staged here, which have traditionally played second fiddle only to the Venice Biennale, was eagerly anticipated as the first genuinely postcolonial Documenta, due in large part to the appointment of the expatriate Nigerian curator Okwui Enwezor as Artistic Director.
Cacophony + Cramp for the Sensory Bundle
Digital media provides intuitive contemporary ways for storytelling in our times. dLux media arts, based in Sydney, this year curated a selection of installation works derived from their annual d>art program, and for the first time showed it outside Sydney. The five works selected for the Adelaide exhibition were complex and esoteric: a gorgeous array of storytelling techniques which explore and exploit narrative and interactivity.
A Stitch in Time
Peter Callas' show held at Stills Gallery in 2002 Vinculum + Orison resulted from his Asialink residency in Delhi, India and comprises of digital prints on photographic paper and an artist's book. Both the scale and choice of images in this exhibition are seductive and enthralling; deceptively innocent moments in daily and century-old rituals and routines.
Uncertain Terrain
Modern physics suggests we are living within an expanding universe. We are, it seems, still moving away from our point of origin (the singularity of the Big Bang). The intersection of new physics and Buddhism provides pathways into Julia Ciccarone's landscape paintings (exhibited at Niagara Galleries in Melbourne in early 2002), elucidating the narratives and suggesting relationships between the metaphors and symbols she uses.
Small Deaths
Australian artist Kate Breakey, who now resides in Tucson, Arizona, caught up with Sarah Thomas to discuss the impact of growing up in the coastal town of Port Lincoln and the impact her childhood upbringing is having on her recent work. 'I think my childhood proximity to nature turned me into a naturalist...Growing up around animals you learn that life is complicated, survival is a struggle, death usually isn't quick or clean, and nature doesn't make any allowances for love and attachment'.
Lawrence Daws: From Mandala to Full Circle
Australian artist Lawrence Daws speaks of seven phases of his work, based on specific themes that have guided his development as an artist. There has been a gradual trend in his work from themes of archetypal symbolism and exotic portent towards the more local and personal.
Singapore Opens Up to the World - Site + Sight: First Major International Show
Using Singapore as the first 'site' for the exhibition, Site + Sight: Translating Cultures from 7 June to 26 July 2002 brought together 26 international artists from 11 countries to discuss and present artworks relating to the theme of globalisation and its cultural impact on the world.
Marine Nature in Porcelain: The Recent Work of Robin Best
Ceramic artist Robin Best became fascinated by a complex marine world which included sea-invertebrates/filter feeders like bryozoans, sea sponges and ascidians (sea squirts) during walks on the beach in her seaside suburn of Semaphore. Here Walker discusses some of Best's recent work and conceptual concerns.
Fashion Infiltrates the Galleries
Even if one's first reaction upon hearing the sound of the words 'Melbourne Fashion Festival' is not to reach for one's gun, but to condemn the dumbing down of 'culture' into Madonna or Barbie 101, bemoan the melting of the abstract expressionist/tachiste snows of yesteryear, it has unquestionably enriched the city's art experience.
Jewel Mackenzie: Gemini Paintings
Jewel Mackenzie's practice explores both the understanding and experience of the world and the history and legacies of painting. Her background in both dressmaking and in public administration has informed her project to provoke and explore the positioning of the artist within contemporary bureaucratic culture.
I Wonder Where the Public Art Went?
During the first half of 2002 the Danish champion of pedestrians, Dr. Jan Gehl and his team from GEHL Architects were commissioned to analyse the City of Adelaide in terms of its viability as a pedestrian city.
The Possibility Forum - Institutional Change and Modest Proposals
This text takes up some of the broader concerns of Tony Bond's initial questions to an Australian panel at ARCO 2002 Madrid, particularly 'can there be a benign global capitalism?' and 'how do we address the value of exchanges between artists?'.
Asia Pacific Triennial 2002 - Starry Night
When talking about non-Indo-European cultures, we are taking on board profound differences in how we arrange our worlds. The 2002 Asia Pacific Triennial endeavours to present art from these cultures through various treatments of time and space relations.
Breathing/Diving/Dreaming/Dancing to the BEAP in Perth (You Can't Buy These Emotions off the Hollywood Shelf)
Immersion was part of the Perth Biennale of Electronic Art (BEAP), a selection of some of the most important international immersive, interactive and virtual reality artworks from the last decade, created by Chris Malcolm and presented at the John Curtin Gallery.
The Generosity of a Light Touch
For the more than 15 years that the Australian organisation Experimenta Media Arts has metamorphosed through various ideological, aesthetic and technological identities, its one constant has been a passionate involvement with and championing of the new and experimental. Prototype, exhibited in Melbourne in 2002, carried on this tradition, more than living up to the title.
Love Your Work: Fremantle Arts Centre 30th Birthday
Artists together again for Fremantle Arts Centre's 30th Birthday celebrations
Matthew Collings Comes to Town
Introducting the final episode of 'This is Modern Art', his six-part television series which screened in Australia in 2000, Matthew Collings seemed ridden with apocalyptic feelings about the whole thing wrapping up. For five weeks he had come into our homes at night like kind of groovy art dad to deliver his version of the story of art from Picasso to the young British artists.
Patronage and Corporate Collections in Western Australia
While only a small percentage of national enterprises are based in the west, business leaders have a tradition of serious interest in the visual arts, with a number owning fine collections which they are prepared to share with the public. The three collections featured here all include contemporary Western Australian art - a form of patronage local artists can instantly appreciate. The associated catalogues and books produced are an enduring form of patronage which provide a much needed record of art in Western Australia.
Border Zones: An Eye on the World from Sydney
According to Chapman, the contemporary understanding of a globalised world is the result of the understanding that we all share a finite physical realm: this planet. The world is no longer understood purely in terms of geographic boundaries, but cultural ones. This article looks at some of the utopian values imparted upon some of the major cities in the western world and discusses concepts of globalism and localism as they contribute to a new perception of the world around us.
A contested place: Film and land
The importance of place depends on what it means to us, what we make of it and our understanding of how it shapes us. In 2001 in the Australian film industry there was an avalanche of films, both documentaries and features, addressing issues surrounding place in the context of the relationship between black and white Australians. Six features which Hann values for their portrayal of this relationship are One Night the Moon, Rabbit Proof Fence, The Tracker, Beneath Clouds, Kabbarli-A Film About Daisy Bates and Australian Rules.
Places Not Forgotten: In Rural South Australia
The Flinders Ranges in South Australia where Malcolm McKinnon lives is a place of diminishing population, sparse landscapes and resilient social memory. It's a place that reveals itself only over time, as the stories, names and explanations for particular places and people become gradually apparent. It's a place where most of the people of the land carry memories and maps of special places around in their heads. McKinnon's aim in writing this article is to use these places and the claims attached to them by many non-indigenous people to show that they are just as legitimate as those of indigenous people.
Postcards from Victoria: Fertility from the Air
To celebrate the Centenary of Federation, Regional Arts Victoria undertook a series of art projects across Victoria. '...such fertile ground...' unfolded in two stages during the years 1999-2000, involved twelve different locations, fourteen different artists and produced some stunning images which reflected unique aspects of the places which inspired them. Participation was open to anyone going through the local affiliate Arts Council and a local artist would be appointed the task of creating an image. Artists included Maxine Salvatore, Mark Selkrip, Jenny Munday, Ken Raff and Anton Vardy.
Float or Sink: A New Direction for Art in Regional Australia
When it comes to the interpretation of place, whether it be through the language of art, economy or social relations, we are always doing so through a culturally constructed lens and at a culturally constructed moment in time. The way we represent the land affects how we use the land and our land use in terms affects the way we represent it. Wilson looks at art that is made outside the context of the art gallery or computer screen and the ongoing categorisation and separation of institutionalised art from public art. The Artists Working in Nature movement and The Floating Land project are here used in reference.
International Artists Space Kellerberrin Australia: WA Wheatbelt Artzone
Two hours drive from Perth is the small regional town of Kellerberrin. With a population of nine hundred people and appearing just like many other municipalities in the region, the incongruity of this town lies in the presence of the grandly named International Art Space Kellerberrin Australia (IASKA), a gallery and residency centre for international contemporary artists. IASKA was established in 1998, developing from a collaboration between two wheatbelt farmers, Tony York and Donna Dransfield, and two art professionals from Perth, artist Rodney Glick and Marco Marcon. The intention behind this double displacement is to offer both artist and communities a kind of shock treatment that will force them out of their respective comfort zones and encourage the development of new ways of approaching both art practice and notions of local identity. Visiting artists have included Salvatore Falci and Cathy Barber.
Terror Australis: Fear and Loathing in Open Spaces
When European explorers first discovered Australia, it was generally referred to as Terra Australia Incognita literally translated as Unknown Southern Land. Marshall looks at the physical terrain of this equally beautiful and dramatic region of the world via a selection of prolific Australian films which give shocking portrayals of our lifestyle here in the lucky country. Terror based films such as Dead Calm, Razorback, The Cars that ate Paris and Kiss or Kill.
Making Place in an Urban Sense
Our sense of who and where we are is continually mediated by images of the wilderness and the outback, but the real home of our species is the city. Downton is an architect determined to work through processes of ecology and community and is excited by the challenges of the city. He here examines the connections between humans and nature within the domain of a civic built environment.
Material Difference
Chandler looks at the practice of Paul Johnson and Elizabeth Frith Poole, two artists who both live in the same regional area, but convey contrasting views concerning the significance of place. For Frith Poole, time spent investigating her immediate environment has led to a more profound understanding of it, while Johnson utilises materials that are claimed as belonging to specific sites or cultures to confront assumptions concerning landscape and identity.
Spirit and Place Revisited
Spirit + Place, Art in Australia 1861 to 1996, an exhibition curated by Nick Waterlow and Ross Mellick at the Museum of Contemporary Art in 1996 in Sydney, is widely referred to as a landmark exhibition. The exhibition placed Indigenous Australian Art together with non-Indigenous Australian Art, as well as making honorary Australian artists of Joseph Beuys, Marina Abramovic, Christo and others. The exhibition encompassed ideas that were linked to issues involving the environment, ethnicity and human pain and pleasure, with relevance both locally and beyond these shores.
Living the Lie (of the land)
Due to the concentric nature of its revelations the exhibition The Lie of the Land deserved particular consideration in terms of the resonances that placement, grounding and the physical experience of the Australian landscape and environment can have on the issue of current art practice. Curator Carmen Grostal felt a personal and philosophical urgency behind the idea for the exhibition, with the title of the show responding to Paul Carter's text of the same name and was used as a way to enter into dialogue with the ideas raised in it.
Six Days in Boyd Country
When Arthur Boyd gifted his large Bundanon property to the nation in 1993, he imagined the creation of a place that would become a living arts centre where artists of all persuasions would come to find refreshment and renewed inspiration in the landscape. The Bundanon Artists Centre is housed in former farm buildings and has hosted writers, visual artists, musicians, choreographers and film-makers. Among the most celebrated are J.M. Coetzee, South African novelist, Peter Mumme, environmental composer and Dorothy Porter, Australian poet. Kronenberg also discusses the work of artist John R. Walker who was invited to participate as a senior-artist-in-residence in 2000.
Tjukurpa Wangapai - Story-Telling Place
In 1998 Margaret Worth was invited by a small group of Pitjantjatjara women to visit the Tjilbruke Gateway installation at Warriparinga on the banks of the Sturt River in Adelaide. Months later Worth visited the women to talk about making a place like the Tjilbruke Gateway. This article looks at Worth's role in helping to develop a built site which would signify as much as its natural environment did. In the process she learnt what was important to know about the land and developed her own understanding of place.
Your city is so ugly: Adelaide and the truth
'Your City is Ugly' was a 2002 Adelaide Fringe production devised by John Adley, Chris Barker, Julianne Pierce, Katrina Sedgwick and Daryl Watson. Page layout by Daryl Watson with text by Julianne Pierce. Architectural photographs by Daryl Watson assisted by Tim Fenton. Photographs of Madame Ivana, Vladimir and Sergei by Annette Tripodi.
On Humans and Other Animals 'Becoming' Each Other
The metaphor of becoming animal till there is no longer man or animal is becoming real with the advances in genetic tissue technology and stem cell research. Artists dealing with hands-on wet biology art practice are exploring the tangibility of such an idea. Zurr looks at issues surrounding such new technology, at the experiment which saw an ear grafted onto a mouses back, constructed in vitro (outside of the body) and the possible future for the human and animal kingdoms.
The Extra Ear (or an ear on an arm)
What characterises all of Stelarc's projects and performances is the notion of the prosthetic. The EXTRA EAR is a project Stelarc has been fostering since 1997 and the problems lie in finding the appropriate medical assistance to realise it. Constructing the EXTRA EAR would involve a number of procedures, over approximately 8-10 months. Techniques from Cosmetic, Re-constructive and Orthopaedic surgery are necessary. Here Stelarc outlines some of the essential steps in constructing the EXTRA EAR and discusses the nature of this radical project.
The Surgical Fix: Physical Capital, Self-Improvement and the Body Beautiful
Historical studies have shown that an improved physical appearance had profoundly beneficial psychological effects and behavioural outcomes. Plastic surgery became a vital tool in the 1930s, holding out the promise of removing the traces of war and eliminating prominent markers of ethnicity. In recent years the cosmetic surgery industry has grown in Australia, and as with all countries the common goal is the production of a narrowly defined culture of bodily beauty. Ryan looks at the cosmetic surgery industry and some of the artistic responses to such ideas and ideals, particularly those of artist Annabelle Collett.
Sex in the Cyborg: Julie Rrap's Overstepping
This article follows in the footsteps of Julie Rrap's Overstepping, the digital print that won the 2001 Hermann's Art Award, at a time when geneticists are close to patenting a hybrid body. This image is a snapshot merging of the developed and the evolved, it can trigger a complex mix of fear and desire at a time when flesh has become protean and everything else morphologically dubious.
Similarities, Gen-et(h)ic Boundaries, and Respect for Otherness
This article discusses a specific aspect of the human/ animal relationship and of communication in and between species. It points to a few specific experiments which have been conducted to try and bridge the gap between human and animal connectivity and relatedness. Furthermore it recognises the different ways animals and humans relate to and view the world around them, whether it be via visual, tactile, olfactory, auditory or other sensory devices.
The Theatrics of Cloning: The Recent Paintings of Juan Ford
Juan Ford's recent exhibition Clone is a series of portraits of doppelgangers trapped within neo-realistic hallucinatory environments that are rich in attributes taken from technological culture. The juxtaposition of traditional painterly portraiture with objects taken from recent technologies uncovers the sense of mystery that these new technologies provide for us. Trotter looks at Ford's practice within the context of our post-modern society, discussing relevant issues of capitalist culture as 'narcissistic' and the breakdown of a consistent personal identity within it.
Carnophilia
This text is concerned with the notion of animal and human hybridity, as examined in a historical and contemporary context through the myth of King Minos of Crete and more recently the work of artists such as Damien Hirst and John Kelly. From the shadowy overlap between species that the minotaur depicts to such contemporary models of animal/ human formation as the fictitious Spiderman, such figures of the imagination remind us of the diminishing gap between science fact and science fiction.
Sympathetic Magic: Skin and Canvas
The skin, the membrane, the corporeal envelope, the shroud, the veil - all those things that tend to separate and define appearances from either the being inside, or from the beingness outside - have provided a source of some of the most rich and persistent metaphors for Western culture. With the 20th century bringing a re-emergence of the idea of the skin as an organ rather than a boundary, notions and representations of the physical body dominated the work of last century and painting returned as an important medium for such depictions. This article looks at the metaphoric and literal relationship between skin and its various representations in contemporary art.
Animal Magnetism: Sharon Goodwin and the Eternal Romance of the Bestial
The work of Sharon Goodwin is directly influenced by the Coles Funny Picture Books which create a bizarre Victorian world where human and animal promiscuously cross over. Here people are frequently turned into animals, and the qualities of animals emerge in humans through vices of personality. Goodwin's exhibition which was held at Uplands Gallery in Melbourne, Victoria in November 2001 presented a series of portraits of bestial humans or humanised animals repainted from Cole's woodcuts. Goodwin has introduced crude lines and stitching and patching in the images to represent the frequent actualisation of plastic surgery in contemporary society.
Uglielands: The Fremantle Festival 2001
At Fremantle Arts Centre, as part of the annual Fremantle Festival in 2001, selected artists addressed the notion of fascination by and in the freak, geek and grotesque in relation to carnivals and circuses. Artists included Susan Flavell, Emma Margetts, Clare McFarlane and Nein Schwarz.
Polemic: The Undoing of Art History (Part II)
In Part I (Artlink, December 2001) the subject called Art History was challenged, using the terms art and work of art in a conventional way. Here in Part II it is argued that some of the woes of art theory can be alleviated by understanding these terms in a different way. Brook discusses the role of cultural memes in creating different kinds of historiesand the doctrine of creativity. He here concludes that it is perfectly understandable that, as metaphysical explorers, we may address works of art with little or no respect for the author's intentions. In the end, he states, it depends upon the regularities of the real world.
Improving Their Bodies, Improving Our Bodies
Anne Quain is a veterinary student living in Sydney and through this text explores the notion of animal/human relationships and the cloning of adult animals. This idea is discussed in the context of contemporary consumer society, and the question is raised: Might replacing a body become an economically more feasible alternative to treating an existing body? Would animals become disposable? Although she is here referring to a process having only been explored through fiction, she makes the point that it may not be far off.
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.
Polemic: An Allergic Reaction - The eminence grise in our Art Schools
Artist/academic Pat Hoffie has been brooding on the rise and rise of the éminence grise in our teaching institutions and warns of the perils of giving in and being swept along by the current of the times. She is not the only commentator to observe that the visual arts created an irritating skin condition for itself in the eighties when, in search of institutional support, it mimicked the language of professionalism and thus unwittingly exposed itself to the corrosive influence of bureaucracy. This is here discussed.
Australian New Media: An Active Circuit
Through a process of active lobbying by various people around the country in the mid-eighties, the funding and institutional support for art and technology practice in Australia began to materialise. Some key figures in this push were Stephanie Britton, Louise Dauth and Gary Warner who saw the Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) come into existence. The progress of the Australian new media arts scene is here documented from these early years and the various initiatives and supportive programs and events through to what is now the fundamental arts and cultural practice of the twentieth century. Artists Maria Miranda, Norie Neumark and Mari Velonaki are featured.
Interfacing Art, Science and New Media
Among the current metaphors used to describe the unfolding relations between art and science, the two ascriptions that have held sway most recently have been those of collaboration and/or intersection. Both art and science have sent out sets of feelers towards each others cultures which has in turn produced an overlapping sphere of cultural and intellectual activity. Following Lisa Jardine's argument, Munster tentatively proposes that we think through these connections as a process of hybridisation performed by the work of the technical-aesthetic objects themselves rather than to declare a glorious new age of harmony, unity and productivity between the two. Artists Oron Catts, Ionat Zurr, Guy Ben-Ary, Justine Cooper, Michele Barker and Patricia Piccinini are in reference.
Is Any Body Really There? Hybrid/Performance Arts
In a work that refuses language and conventional psychologising, Mary Moores production Exile, which opened at the Sydney Spring International Festival of New Music at The Studio, Sydney Opera House in 2000, the ascribed meaning is an experience rich in identification. This is pleasurably disorienting theatre that says it all about the immersive experience from 3D to Cinemascope to TODD-AO to Cinema to VR. Other new media performance and installation works are brought into focus such as the Melbourne-based Company in Space work Trial by Video (1997), Liquid Gold by Lisa O'Neill, that of Queensland media artist Keith Armstrong and the Melbourne performance company The Men Who Knew Too Much.
Digital Drawing: The Same But Different
Drawing - the use of line and tone - is at the other end of a technology timeline currently unravelling in the digital age of information. The theory and practice of drawing ranges from a tool for honing perceptual disciplines to one that permits the free-flow of the obsessive-compulsive component of our personalities. Leggett looks at the works of artists Paul Thomas, Maria Miranda, Harriet Birks, Alyssa Rothwell, Mr Snow, Peter Callas, Simon Biggs and Damien Everett and the various digital tools they employ to assist in the documenting and drawing out of their individual ideas.
Fresh Portals for the Caravanserai: art and new media in India and Australia
In Delhi early in 2001, a new media research and development program Sarai: The New Media Initiative was launched carrying the energy and quality of intellectual exchange embedded within the history of the caravanserai, translated through the colourful codes, cants and images of public urban life within India's cities. Sarai is a bold initiative facilitating formal and informal partnerships within India and internationally between the likes of hackers, philosophers, artists, media theorists, graphic designers, anthropologists, filmmakers and software developers. Some of the names which appear in this article include Meena Nanji, Rehan Ansari, Graham Harwood, Monica Narula, Sarah Neville, Mari Velonaki and Mukhul Kesevan.
The A-gender of Cute Capital
One the one hand the notion of the cute is seemingly universal and yet it is marked by specific cultural indices and contextual factors. The possible modes of employing the cute is evidenced by the practices of Australian artists Martine Corompt and Kate Beynon. Both artists have a strong interest in character culture (ie. comics, cartoons) and their associated vernaculars; in turn they explore and outline different types of cute landscapes. Both artists use ambiguity in the case of gender representation and utilise aspects of eastern and western contexts and character traits to create works which reinforce and subvert the constructions of gender, class and culture within the universal graphic language.
Do Art-droids Dream Of Electric Sheep?
Peter Robinson and Jacqueline Fraser were the first two New Zealand artists ever to be included in the Venice Biennale. Both were chosen as a result of their work, rich in conceptual layering and with roots in Maori culture, but wrapped in appealingly conventional presentation styles with plenty of hooks for an international audience. This fact leads Butt to the discussion surrounding the support for New Zealand's arts and culture sectors, pointing to a few examples such as Cuckoo, The Physics Room web project series and artists such as Sean Kerr and Warren Olds.
An Ecology of OZ Mutant Media
Wade Marynowsky, aka Spanky is a software engineer who has coded a new program which allows audio-video samples to be collated for the live performance of a particular song, triggered live through a preferably loud sound system and video projector. This innovation marks a step forward in the realm of audio-video intersection and hybridisation. The recent emergence of VJ's (Vidi-yo Jockeys), artists who combine computer and VHS source materials to play with visual rhythms, create atmospheres, tell stories, respond to the music and provide visual stimulus also play a crucial role in this new media arena. Other new media collectives such as Shut up & Shop, Kraftwerk, the Distributed Audio Sequencer Environment crew and Labrat are here discussed.
Inframedia Audio: Glitches and Tape Hiss
This article focuses on that which is known as sound art, new media art or if a label is required the best might be simply audio. It is not so much a sound as a transparent substrate for organised expression but rather sound being mediated, synthesised, generated, collaged. Furthermore this article looks at the in-between sounds - the glitches, clicks, pops, and CD-skips - with many artists drawing on these entropic internal workings of audio processing systems. Artists include Nam June Paik, Minit, David Haines, Vicky Browne, Andrew Gadow and Netochka Nezvanova.
Out of Australia: International Exposure
This article poses the question of what new media art exhibitions, as international exports, can offer to us as a nation, as a new media community and as individual artists, and of how they can function in terms of the transmission and propagation of certain ideas and images into what might be called the world brain. To discuss this Wallace looks at the structure and outcomes of PROBE, the first large-scale exhibition of contemporary, new media art ever held in Beijing which featured the work of Patricia Piccinini, Justine Cooper, Leon Cmielewski/Josephine Starrs, Brenda L. Croft, Zen Yipu and Jen Seevink, as well as including a range of internet sites.
Storming the Reality Studio
Tofts attempts to redefine that which is commonly known as new media art, as he believes it is out of touch with what's actually going on in digital culture. He refers to a range of contemporary Australian artists utilising digital media to explore some of the ways old material is appropriated and remediated to present works that are new and unique. Amongst those are Josephine Starrs and Leon Cmielewski, Murray McKeich, Ian Haig, Nicholas Negroponte, David Carson, James Widdowson, Gregory Baldwin, Elena Popa, Greg O'Connor, Troy Innocent, Rebecca Young, Andrew Trevillian and Tina Gonsalvas.
Writing on the Net: Nodes and Hypertext
Many new media works contribute to the field of hypertext despite not being concerned with the literary. Corroli refers to Adrian Miles who likes to 'think of hypertext as being primarily about links and nodes and their relations, which may or may not privilege words'. This topic is examined using examples where hypertext has become a primary focus such as the partnering of eWRe, trAce Online Writing Centre and ANAT who developed a series of online writing residencies in the late 1990s. Artists also discussed: Anne Walton, Francesca da Rimini, Sally Pryor, Diane Caney and Robin Petterd.
Digital Luggage and Meaningful Relationships
Machan turns the light on and examines the fears associated with technology - mystical secret language, complex software, indecipherable code - and furthermore those associated when art is involved. She proposes that the use of technology in everyday life be an experimental process, more aligned to the ways it is used in an art-based contexts. She states that: through risk taking with fragile technologies we not only accelerate our knowledge but also accelerate relationships formed from the very human experience with technology .