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Observing Father's Day in a Good Weekend
Analysis of maleness from a semiotic approach in the context of the lifestyle magazine 'Good Weekend' published as a supplement to both The Age in Melbourne and The Sydney Morning Herald.
Men's Business: Masculinities Reflected
Fathers and/or Sons
Musings on the man who was the author's father from a multicultural perspective.
Men's Business: Masculinities Reflected
I've Written a Letter to Daddy
Social documenter Maxx Image is obsessed with the colour purple. Black leather is the costume of rebellion and the thrill and valour expounded by such an ideal could be seen as enticing accessories to the passion and zeal of leather sexuality.
Men's Business: Masculinities Reflected
Art and Masculinity after Auschwitz after Bosnia: The work of Dennis Del Favero, 1995
Masculinity continues its argument with itself, quizzical at its self-propelled self-assertion. But in asserting aggression the pain is not just experienced in the victim. For even in the crudest acts of coitus, for a moment, the raper becomes the raped, he is tied by his penis and his balls into an abomination.
Men's Business: Masculinities Reflected
Men and Mettle: Recent Portraits by Rox De Luca
Rox de Luca's exhibition of 19 men portrayed in 'All Meat No Veg' were all of men known to her. What did the portraits reveal about the sitters?
Men's Business: Masculinities Reflected
Demystifying Masculinity: The Photography of Krystyna Petryk
Polish born Krystyna Petryk has long been fascinated with portraiture and representations of the nude in photography. Her own investigations began in Warsaw by photographing her pregnant friends and continued after her arrival in Western Australia in 1982. Once here she broadened her explorations to include both male and female subjects before shifting to photograph and research representations of men exclusively.
Men's Business: Masculinities Reflected
Exquisite Corpses
We collage, genderbend, cross dress and polymorph exquisite corpses out of media and advertising personalities, then use them as fantasy aids in the cause of our mundane desires.
Men's Business: Masculinities Reflected
Image Bank: Works by Various Artists
Series of works by Tyrone Townsend, Victoria Straub, Polixeni Papapetrou, Phil George and Simon Cardwell. Large format and mainly colour images.
Men's Business: Masculinities Reflected
They Are Not Photographs: Natalie Lowrie
The images are selections from a body of work called flamingharlots@trashed, created by Sydney based photographer Natalie Lowrie. The images, digitally retouched photos of Natalie's circle of friends and acquaintances were exhibited at the Polymorph Gallery at Newtown.
Men's Business: Masculinities Reflected
Figures of Elongation
Using illustrations from a technical manual of the 1940s `the author examines the working male figure in popular iconography focusing on masculine representation in the visual arts and its link to the means of production.
Men's Business: Masculinities Reflected
Saviour and Sportsman
Vigilantly looking out to sea, the two manifestations of the life saver, the saviour and the sportsman, are combined in this 'gay greeting card' in such a way as to draw on the history of surf club masculinity and create an erotic pose.
Men's Business: Masculinities Reflected
Symbolic Identities: Masculinity and the Motor Cycle
Since 1927, the idea that the motor cycle is synonymous with assertive and unmediated masculinity has been enlarged and expanded through a broad range of visual, literal and cinematic imagery to the point where a machine which was once acclaimed as a means of transport has been transformed into a gendered cultural icon, an object of and for masculine display.
Men's Business: Masculinities Reflected
Sorely Tried Men: The Male Body in World War Two Australia
During World War Two, the Australian government's Department of Information represented the male body in at least two distinct ways. The photographer Edward Cranstone photographed a heroically active, phallicised body and the cameraman Damien Parer filmed a heroically suffering abject body.
Men's Business: Masculinities Reflected
Unwanted Shadow Man
Photos and essay by the author on a relationship between men.
Men's Business: Masculinities Reflected
Public Objects and Private Parts in Harry Hummerston's Recent Assemblages
Harry's work immediately identifies the object as a site of meaning. It is fair to say that Harry is strongly opposed to any restriction or taboo upon what he may represent, particularly from the arena of representing the female object or gender.
Men's Business: Masculinities Reflected
Men Without Toilets
Let's speak about nomads and farmers... The acrid vapours that fill the cast iron nooks and crannies by day: the trickles on metal that appear in my black and white slides each night like blood from a more visible crime: this evidence of the distillation of men: these signs are signs enough of the collapsing consequences of 'farming'.
Men's Business: Masculinities Reflected
Soap: A Letter to Sam Schoenbaum on Not Writing an Essay on a Show Called Phallus and its Funtions
What is the phallus?
Men's Business: Masculinities Reflected
Blokes and Sheds
Images and text by Mark Thomson from his recent book 'Blokes and Sheds'.
Men's Business: Masculinities Reflected
The Back Yard Shed
In 1992, Helen Moyes made a documentary 'The Back Yard Shed' which set out to look at the lives of a cross-section of Australian households through the phenomenon of the back-yard shed.
Men's Business: Masculinities Reflected
The Taste Factor
When I was an art critic, I quickly grew to dislike the word 'taste'. It was a convenient tool used to dismiss reviews by people who didn't like what I had to say. Whenever I delivered a negative crit upon a widely revered artist, or a positive crit on a very minor figure, they complained that I was allowing my taste to undermine my professionalism.
Taste Meets Kitsch
Kitschoprenia
Our affection for kitsch is a benign form of aesthetic hypocrisy. My generation, give or take 15 years, adores kitsch. We want to have some badness; it's fun: you laugh both at your dismay for an object and your perplexity over the delight that it brings. In a broad cultural sense, my generation is kitschophilic; and this means, I suppose, not that we love the kitschy object with innocence but that we love the contempt which the kitschy object arouses.
Taste Meets Kitsch
Kitsch or Kind: Representations of Aborigines in Popular Art
Much contemporary Aboriginal art functions in the inappropriate melding of two visual art traditions and is kitsch within the given meaning within the article.
Taste Meets Kitsch
Kitschville - The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras
...But the Mardi Gras will always be a child of the seventies. Remember that mantra 'the personal is political'. In spite of the co-option and mainstreaming of Lesbian and Gay culture this wonderful spectacularly amateurish display (of difference) cannot help but be a politicised intervention.
Taste Meets Kitsch
Mary MacKillop Kitsch
I confess to a feeling of great affection for Mary MacKillop (1842 - 1909), vernacular culture and kitsch, and great enthusiasm for the idea of an Australian Vatican - an extravagant museum which is also a major site of pilgrimage.
Taste Meets Kitsch
The Black Swan of Western Australian-ness
Since 1829, the inhabitants of the western third of Australia have identified more closely with the black swan than the kangaroo. The swan was and is to be found on a wide range of items from buildings to letterheads and furry toys. It crosses class boundaries...
Taste Meets Kitsch
Destiny Deacon: It's Been Ages Since We Last Marched
You can hear her on the radio and see her on the television and contemplate her in better State galleries. Pluralist par excellence, artist, writer and film-maker Destiny Deacon has been blazing away on visual and linguistic fronts since premiering 'Koori Rocks Gub Words' in 'Pitcha Mi Koori' (1990).
Taste Meets Kitsch
Worms and Roses
The first Australian garden books put vegetables first but by the mid 19th century the language of flowers was in vogue. Gardens, flowers and art...
Taste Meets Kitsch
Cakes for Show: The Last Great Undigested Art
That these same institutions have never seriously attempted to digest the great crafty, feminine art of traditional cake decoration is more regrettable. Icons, after all, are as valued as the most avant-garde compostion if made of oil paint and gold leaf on wood. When future generations visit our hallowed aesthetic halls, let them meet cake!
Taste Meets Kitsch
Made in WA: A Sculptor's Alternative Practice
Although well known in regional art histories, Western Australian sculptor Edward Kohler has a far wider importance. Economic survival led him to blend popular and high art long before it was standard practice. With the Piccadilly Theatre reliefs of 1938, the sheer exuberance and infectious quality of a positive (if unconscious) kitsch aesthetic entered professional Australian art 60 years ago: Hollywood meets Olympia.
Taste Meets Kitsch
If Aquarium Gravel Is So Bad For You, How Come It Tastes So Good?
In the trading card world there are collectors, dealers, curators, critics, interested observers, and of course various magazines. Does this world sound familiar? Looks at the role of collecting...
Taste Meets Kitsch
Delma's Collection
Collections of any kind require patience, luck, money, space, time and dedication.....
Taste Meets Kitsch
Image Bank
Collection of images with artists statements. Artists featured: Katanya Shanzy, Anne Graham, Geoffrey Seelander, Simon Duncan, Pierre Cavalan, Stefan Szonyi, Cliff Burt, Andrea McNamara, Karen Ferguson, Constanze Zikos, Jandee Amar Leddar, Leon Pericles, Meryn Jones, Annie Taylor, Ex de Medici and Ian Mowbray.
Taste Meets Kitsch
Pretty Baby
Collecting and making dolls grows in popularity in Australia, but members of Australia's arts industry are relatively under-represented in the ranks of doll collectors. Original dolls speak of the culture that produces them.
Taste Meets Kitsch
The Other Big F-Word
Monash University Gallery presented Fashion, Decor, Interiors, curated by Natalie King 7 June - 15 July 1995, high-lighting aspects of advertising, mass production and architectural design through the work of Lyndal Walker, Tony Clark and Stephen Bram -- extracts from the exhibition catalogue.
Taste Meets Kitsch
Not Afraid of Flying: Fairies and Femocrats
Are gossamer wings set to supplant shoulder pads as signifiers of feminist power? Shopping malls in middle class suburbs are now sprouting fairy shops where, for only a few dollars, little girls and grown-up ones too, can sprout fairy wings that temporarily release them from the masculine world around them.
Taste Meets Kitsch
Kings of Kitsch: Big Things
Big things have the power to make real the stuff of dreams. They have the power to make us stop at places we would never have dreamed of visiting. Grand kitsch is both art and beyond.
Taste Meets Kitsch
Boys and Girls: Pierre et Gilles' Sydney Mardi Gras Poster
Examines the 1995 poster for the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. How appropriate though, at the moment when Mardi Gras had successfully commodified itself as a cultural event, that its key representation should be through international glamour product photography.
Taste Meets Kitsch
Museum of Shopping
Kitsch is a kind of creole. It quotes and mixes references from quite unrelated sources, dresses in wildly unsuitable materials, then tries to insinuate itself using childhood wiles.
Taste Meets Kitsch
Motor-Cross Dressing
Issues of stereo-typing, conforming behaviour and fun and practicality are looked at in an observation of an MG driver.
Taste Meets Kitsch
Tamworth
The days of the Tamworth Festival are marked with ceremonies. Stars place their hands into cement and history in the Hands of Fame Park. At the rear of Maguire's pub the popular alternative Noses of Fame honours famous noses.
Taste Meets Kitsch
Bruising as R & D
Livid Festival was launched in Brisbane in 1988 with the broad altruistic aim of 'giving a go' to local Brisbane bands, performers and visual artists. Within three years the festival had grown exponentially and included a wide range of feature guest artists.
Taste Meets Kitsch
Thought Police Versus Life: Extracts from an Interview with Ray Hughes
Discussion with the artist Ray Hughes about issues that have impacted on his art practice. Biographical details also included.
Taste Meets Kitsch
When Is A Door Not A Door?
Exhibition review Birds Have Fled
Angela Valamanesh
Univsersity of South Australia Art Museum
7 September - 2 October 1995
Taste Meets Kitsch
Talk, Torque and the Garden Knot
Report Torque, the Fourth Artists' Regional Exchange, Perth February - March 1995 - a five week residency for visual artists from Australia, Indonesia and the Philippines, an exhibition of work at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art Western Australia and a Symposium (24- 26 March 1995).
The Face
The Artist and the Industry
Close examination of the artist in the arts industry. The demystification project, the mysterious nature of art, the mystification of the artist, the mystery of moral arts and some consequences for the artist are examined with logical persuasion and a sharp sense of humour.
The Face
Donald Brook in the role of Dean Swift: A Response
A response to the challenging article by Donald Brook, 'The Artist and the Industry' in Artlink Volume 15 Number 2 & 3.
The Face
Professional or Pretending?: A Response to Donald Brook
A response to the challenging article by Donald Brook 'The Artist and the Industry' in Artlink Volume 15 No 2 & 3.
The Face
Careful They Might Hear You: A Response to Donald Brook
A response to the challenging article by Donald Brook 'The Artist and the Industry' in Artlink Volume 15 No 2 & 3.
The Face
C(r)ook Brook: Ian North has the Last Word
Ian North has the last word. A response to the challenging article by Donald Brook 'The Artist and the Industry' in Artlink Volume 15 No 2 & 3.
The Face
Closer Up: Into the Sunset
Examines the fate of portrait painting in the twentieth century....the critical focus of contemporary art is undoubtedly elsewhere...Examined with reference to the portraits of artists Mike Parr, Matthys Gerber, Vicente Butron
The Face
Portraiture and Faciality
Each age has apparently had some theory of the face. Article links to the exhibition 'Faciality' curated by Zara Stanhope at the Monash University Gallery. Includes the work of artists Geoffrey Dupree, Chris Barry, Maria Kozic, Gordon Bennett, Peter Kennedy and others.
The Face
In the Company of Women
In the Company of Women along with other components of the National Women's Art Exhibition, offers an opportunity to review the complex ideological ingredients that women modernists brought to their formal experiments. Artworks by Margaret Francis, Elise Blumann, Margaret Morgan and Grace Cossington Smith.
The Face
Portraiture and Technology
The recent revival of portraiture may not be unconnected to the technologies now available which allow artists to appropriate and manipulate images. Artists discussed include Wendy Mills, Adrienne Harris, Caroline Lewens, Regis Lansac, Anna Hurley and Deborah Mooney.
The Face
Snake/Skin
Ann Newmarch has recently confronted and embraced the problems of ageing ...in a project she calls 'Anti Medusa/Risking Fifty'.
The Face
Facets of the Self
Review of the 'About Face' exhibition: Angela Stewart and Jenny Loverock. The last 15 years has seen portraiture rise to particular importance in relation to the politics of representation, particularly self representation by women.
The Face
Narrating a Life: Mary Moore and the Self-Portrait
It goes without saying that for a woman to make a self-portrait, a self-representation, a different world of considerations will be required than if a man entered the same quest. The weight of history, of tradition, the idea of 'truthfulness' and women's unreliability: must I go on?
The Face
National Portrait Gallery
Australia now has an embryonic National Portrait Gallery in five small rooms, one larger room and three corridors in Old Parliament House, Canberra. Photos of the opening and the inaugural exhibition 'About Face'.
The Face
The Fortunes of Anatomy: 1895 - 1995 Venice Biennale
Although the Centenary Venice Biennale has a number of faces, the primary one is to represent the face of contemporary art through international participation of 43 countries at their official pavilions.
The Face
Julie Dowling - Cultural Communication
Historically, depictions of Aboriginal people have their gaze diverted away from the viewer. The work of Julie Dowling confronts the viewer to acknowledge the Aboriginal individual communicating as one human being to another.
The Face
The Mask Behind the Mask
Rei Zunde is a photographer and painter working in Melbourne. His recent photographic work records specific cultural or sub-cultural worlds - rodeos, tattooed men and women, suburban football teams and their supporter and circus workers and their animals.
The Face
Image Bank: Portraiture
Artist's statements and images: Kate Butler, Destiny Deacon, Di Barrett, Thomas Hoareau and Anne Zahalka.
The Face
The Terratransformers of Planet Three
Re-creation of a living landscape has to happen in farmyards, back-yards, and city squares, it has to be understood and practised at the small scale as well as the large. The remake the landscape for an ecological future we must make it fit for all living beings.
Culture/Agriculture
Culture/ Agriculture
Story 1: A story about land owners and nomads. Story 2: Never terra nullius. Story 3: Genetic imperialism. Story 4: The politicization of hunger. Story 5: Kunde and the perception of order.
Culture/Agriculture
The use of Aesthetics: Food for Thought
Aesthetic value is determined by commonly held notions of taste, beauty and attractiveness and differs from culture to culture. How does this influence us in our choice of nourishment - our daily bread, fruit or snack food? Why does food today look like it does?
Culture/Agriculture
Living with the Land
If there is a contemporary issue for landscape artist to engage with, it must be the process of developing a relationship with the landscape, even if it is at the level of s sustain[able] failure, a low level antagonism or an uneasy peace. It is as difficult and as complex as any other issue, and it ultimately speaks of the human condition.
Culture/Agriculture
Asian Tucker in the NT - new trend, old ecology
An installation work 'Guarding Civilization's Rim' a collaborative effort by 'The Personal Museum' comprising three Queensland artists opened in Townsville in September 1994. The project has been specifically created for and about northern Australia - the last frontier.
Culture/Agriculture
The Cultural Biography of Plants
The cultural biography of plants provides an extremely fertile field for artists to explore. It also encourages artists, and viewers, to explore the interface between cultures and between culture and agriculture.
Culture/Agriculture
Plant a Yam, Paint a Yam
Explores the relationship between food and its representation in the northeast of Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. Remember, dangerous themes make dangerous art.
Culture/Agriculture
Harsh Realities: Artists and the Land
Even in the shiny spaces of the big cities, for some the dirt of the paddocks is only just below the surface. Michael Eather talks to three artists who were born and raised in the country, about their current attitudes to the land as a place of production.
Culture/Agriculture
Rice on the Terrace
The artist grew up in Baguio, which looks to be quite close to Ifugao on the map, and although I was taught that the rice terraces of this region of the Philippines were the eighth wonder of the world it was many years before he was able to see them.
Culture/Agriculture
Saved by the Demon - Hemp Lives
Cannibis Sativa as a drug, as uses of hemp - textiles, fabric and paper - as building materials, as oils food and protein, for medical and therapeutic applications, biomass energy... so why is there a prohibition?
Culture/Agriculture
Wolseley and Majzner Read the Land
Looks at the recent work of John Wolseley and Victor Majzner.
Culture/Agriculture
The Struggle for LESS Interesting Pictures
Beth Field is a farmer and a photographer in the WA wheatbelt facing a curious loss, one she is happy to accept - the dramatic colours of sunsets reflected in the salt lakes which she used to photograph may soon be hard to find as revegetation reclaims the soil. She recounts the changes she has seen in the last decade.
Culture/Agriculture
Portrait of the Farmer as a Mature Potato
"As with everything else, the country that I have been talking about is frequently regarded as a commodity, be it in relation to yields of primary produce or to spectacles and hypothetical experiences marketed for tourist consumption. Here's the main thing to understand: this commodification is entirely at odds with the appreciation of landscape that I've been trying to tell you about."
Culture/Agriculture
Photographing the Drought
"I used to think there was no link between farming and art...well, most art reflects the environment in which it is produced and the artist who produces it..."
Culture/Agriculture
A Piece of EcoCity
The Halifax EcoCity Project is not just the seed for a future ecological Adelaide; it is the embodiment of a new paradigm that is sweeping the planet.
Culture/Agriculture
Rene Boutin: An Artist and His Garden
New Caledonia has become the first Pacific nation to hold a Biennale of Contemporary Visual Art. Lucienne Fontannaz travelled to Noumea to interview artist Rene Boutin and discovered an artist who takes more than the gallery and his studio as his milieu.
Culture/Agriculture
Husbandry and the Coporate Collection
Making taste? Making money? Melbourne historian Juliet Peers scrutinises a group of books and catalogues on corporate art collections to see whether boardroom fancies and their lavish publications reflect a wider role in shaping popular visions of Australian painting.
Culture/Agriculture
Grief and the Gay Community
While AIDS does indeed affect everyone in our society, at the moment in Australia we are seeing predominantly a gay and lesbian artistic response to the epidemic.
Art & Death: Facing Mortality
Learning to Understand: Art Helps to Dispel Ignorance
The artist looks at the paintings which were developed for the Health Commission on education, prevention and caring in the AIDS environment. Using an Aboriginal perspective these paintings were produced as a powerful series of posters.
Art & Death: Facing Mortality
Kumantji and the Contemporary Curator
Across much of Aboriginal Australia the announcement of a death is followed by profound communal mourning, the removal or destruction of the deceased's belongings and most significantly a prohibition on the use of the deceased's name.
Art & Death: Facing Mortality
A Cemetery for the Community: Enfield Memorial Park, South Australia
Thus we come full circle to view the cemetery not as a necessary inconvenience to be isolated on the edge of town and visited once every few years but as a resource that can make a positive contribution to the community.
Art & Death: Facing Mortality
Death in Excess: Nuclear Imagery
Nuclear conflagration - whether real or imagined - captivated the post war psyche. Endist images of one form or another were developed in response to what many foresaw as the likely outcome of a third world war.
Art & Death: Facing Mortality
In the Coil of Life's Hunger
Looks at the work of James K Baxter 1926 - 1972 (poet) Colin McCahon 1919 - 1987 (artist) both of whom found in travel through New Zealand recurrent metaphor's for life's journey. The principle referent in their work was death.
Art & Death: Facing Mortality
Animal Death and an Artist's Culture: Brian Blanchflower's Tursiops Installation
Examination of the installation Tursiops by Brian Blanchflower which refers to the brutal heritage of Western Australia's first settlement at Albany which had a large whaling station until the late 1970s.
Art & Death: Facing Mortality
And Love a Fantasy: Breastfeeding our Sexuality
On 17 March 1993, the body of photographer Angelo Campana was discovered in the burnt out remains of the newly opened IEG Waste Recycling Plant in Corrimal. According to the coroner's report, his death had not been caused by this fire, but from fatal head injuries incurred by the deceased's head being repeatedly bashed with a theodolite. This is the immediate crime which is appears to be investigated in Dennis Del Favero's sleuthian compilation of words and images, objects and installations called 'Prima Facie'.
Art & Death: Facing Mortality
Guide to...Image Bank
Exploration of images and statements by artists on the theme of death. Artists include William Kelly, Ross Moore, Bette Mifsud and Dennis Del Favero.
Art & Death: Facing Mortality
Death, Pleasure and Gender in Film
The cinema's ability to represent death - the act of dying, bodily transformations, decay, the corpse - in astonishing realistic terms helps to explain why film, the moving rather than the static image, has become the central depository of death narratives (ancient and modern) in contemporary culture.
Art & Death: Facing Mortality
Cinema, Death and the Abject
Cinema is both dead and deathless. Cinema like this can take us to the great chasm in our lives and hold us over the edge.
Art & Death: Facing Mortality
Death: A Post-Mortem
Looks at the exhibition 'Death' co-curated by Felicity Fenner and Anne Loxley held at the Ivan Dougherty Gallery in April 1993. 'Death' was a mixed media survey covering more than 200 years of Australian art which directly addressed the theme of death.
Art & Death: Facing Mortality
600,000 HOURS (Mortality) Conference Day 21 October 2, 1994
Examination of the issues addressed at the conference which accompanied the exhibition 600,000 hours (mortality).
Art & Death: Facing Mortality
Images of Death 600,000 HOURS (Mortality) Experimental Art Foundation
Images of death explored in the context of the exhibition 600,000 hours (mortality) held at the Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide South Australia October 1994.
Art & Death: Facing Mortality
Sydney from Afar
For 20 years Daniel Thomas lived and worked in Sydney. In the 2 decades since he has left he has remained a frequent visitor, but he still sees Sydney from afar.
Sydney: The Big Shift
A Series of Close Connections
Really the only way to understand the apparently large Sydney art scene is to use diagrams and statistics, all of which were compiled by the author.
Sydney: The Big Shift
Why Criticism?
The most incisive commentary on the visual arts in Sydney usually occurs in private conversations that are not repeated in print for fear of the NSW defamation laws. But there is a great deal published on the visual arts....
Sydney: The Big Shift