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Writing with art
Melbourne-based writer and curator Anusha Kenny discusses the writing about art that she likes by poets Ken Bolton, Alex Selenitsch and John Forbes and contrasts it with the situation described by Adrian Martin in a recent article in 'Discipline' lamenting the fact that so much art writing is chained to “the hit-parade values of the art market”.
The original model - Australian Experimental Art Foundation
Long term resident artist at the department of Medical Biotechnology, Flinders University in Adelaide, Niki Sperou describes the fluidity of the Experimental Art Foundation (now the Australian Experimental Art Foundation)which is now almost four decades old.
No hotheads in this hothouse - Adhocracy
Self-confessed techno-evangelist and nomadic geek artist Fee Plumley is about to head off on a reallybigroadtrip. Before she left Adelaide she participated and revelled in Vitalstatistix's live art incubator Adhocracy. She suggests: "We should [all] take full advantage of Regional Arts Australia’s conference, Kumuwuki,(18-21 October 2012 in Goolwa, South Australia) where Sara Diamond (the creator of the Banff New Media Institute) will speak.
Every map has an agenda? PVI
Kellie McClusky is an artist, writer and Head Girl of the celebrated PVI Collective in Perth. She describes their new work 'deviator' and some of the experimental thinking and working processes of PVI including a wiki-map of connections.
On SafARI in Sydney
SafARI is the unofficial fringe event to the Biennale of Sydney, presenting the work of unrepresented Australian artists across multiple artist-run initiatives and public spaces in Sydney. It was founded in 2004 by Lisa Corsi and Margaret Farmer. Artists are selected after an open call for submissions.
ARIna spaces for the unexpected
Curator Brianna Munting, who co-organised (with Georgie Meagher) the We Are Here Symposium of ARIs in Sydney in 2011, describes the new ARI online resource ARIna and asks: "Perhaps what we really need is to spend a lot more time asking each other whether our architectures and images, our hierarchies and ambitions, our ideas and narratives, are really any good for us or simply cultural fictions?"
Biennale of Sydney - Catherine De Zegher
Guest editor of Artlink and writer Din Heagney interviews Catherine De Zegher, one of the Directors of the 18th Biennale of Sydney (the first she curated) who is now the Director of the 5th Moscow Biennale 2013. De Zegher acknowledges the balancing act between the conventions of Biennales and attempting to experiment and step beyond them.
Adelaide Biennale of Australian Art - Alexi Glass-Kantor & Natasha Bullock
Artlink Experiment Guest Editor, writer and critic Din Heagney probes the curators of the 2012 Adelaide Biennale of Australian Art and in particular their approach to the embedding of artworks in the colonial Elder Wing of the Gallery.
Experimental International Biennial of Media Art - Abigail Moncrieff
Guest Editor of Artlink on Experiment and writer Din Heagney interviews Abigail Moncrieff, the curator of the '2012 Experimenta: speak to me' which explores 'interconnectivity' through the commissioning of new works and their location around Melbourne.
dOCUMENTA (13)
Artistic Director: Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev Kassel, Germany 9 June – 16 September 2012
Contemporary Australia: Women
Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) and Queensland Art Gallery (QAG), Brisbane 21 April – 22 July 2012
Theatre of the World
Curator: Jean-Hubert Martin MONA (Museum of Old and New Art) in collaboration with TMAG (Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery), Hobart 23 June 2012 – 8 April 2013
18th Biennale of Sydney: all our relations
Artistic Directors: Catherine de Zegher and Gerald McMaster Museum of Contemporary Art, Cockatoo Island, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Pier 2/3, Carriageworks 27 June – 16 September 2012
18th Biennale of Sydney: all our relations
Artistic Directors: Catherine de Zegher and Gerald McMaster Museum of Contemporary Art, Cockatoo Island, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Pier 2/3, Carriageworks 27 June – 16 September 2012
unDisclosed: second National Indigenous Art Triennial
Curator: Carly Lane National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 11 May – 22 July 2012
Camouflage: Visual Art and Design in Disguise
Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art Helsinki, Finland 15 June – 7 October 2012
No Added Sugar: Engagement and Self-determination
Curator: Rusaila Bazlamit Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre 12 May – 18 July 2012
The Kick Ass Painting Show
Curators: Brigid Noone, Ben Leslie Fontanelle, Adelaide 24 May – 30 June 2012
In-Habit (Project Another Country)
Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney 22 June – August 2012
South Australia Illustrated: Colonial painting in the Land of Promise
Curator: Jane Hylton Art Gallery of South Australia 2 June – 5 August 2012
We are all Flesh: Berlinde De Bruckyere
ACCA (Australian Centre for Contemporary Art), Melbourne 2 June – 29 July 2012
Editorial: ®ECLAIMED closing the gap of radical apathy
Daniel Browning takes a long hard look at the gap of apathy in Australia.
Editorial: Making history
Stephanie Radok takes the temperature of Aboriginal art and history in 2012.
The elephant in the room: public art in Brisbane
Artist-activist Fiona Foley recounts a recent incident of the commissioning of a public art work for Kurilpa (place of the kuril or native water rat). Kurilpa is the cultural precinct where GOMA is located. Foley imagines works by prominent Queensland Aboriginal artists dotted along that place.
The Ghost Net art project
Program Director for Ghost Nets Australia Sue Ryan describes how the Ghost Net Art Project began and what it is all about - people using eco-trash to share stories and express their creativity.
The Ballad of Jimmy Governor
Emeritus Indigenous curator Djon Mundine wrote this essay on the occasion of a production of Posts in the Paddock a play about Jimmy Governor by the company My Darling Patricia. The performance included members of the both families involved. Mundine addresses questions of familial and national forgiveness.
What lies buried on my land rises
Nyoongar artist Dianne Jones returned to York in Western Australia where her people come from and researched its tragic Aboriginal history.
Culture Warriors as cultural diplomacy
Senior lecturer at the College of Fine Arts (CoFA), University of New South Wales, Gail McDonald analyses the exhibition Culture Warriors, the first National Indigenous Art Triennial curated by Brenda L. Croft, that travelled to Washington in 2009. McDonald argues that, rather than diplomatic blandness, real political confrontation was present in the exhibition.
A place of our own
This conversation between curator Hetti Perkins and co-editor Daniel Browning looks at Perkins call for a National Institution, or Centre, of Indigenous Art, which might become, as she puts it, “a living space that breathes culture”.
Artefacts of authenticity
Artist and lecturer Garry Jones is undertaking a Phd at the Australian National University School of Art in Canberra. In this article he reveals some of his investigations of Aboriginal artefacts in museum collections and questions notions of authenticity, reclamation and reinvigoration of the past in contemporary Aboriginal art.
For architecture and country
Torres Strait Islander Kevin O'Brien, who is commissioning and directing an independent exhibition called 'Finding Country' at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2012 running from August to 25 November 2012, writes about an Aboriginal architecture that is not about buildings shaped like native animals.
Tandanya: the case for home
The National Aboriginal Cultural Institute, known as Tandanya, was established in 1989 in Adelaide. Philip Watkins, Artistic and Cultural Director of Tandanya, 2006-2011, said: “This is Tandanya’s role – to show our world through our eyes, to tell our stories and to sing our songs with our voices.” Curator, educator and writer Sara White reviews Tandanya's 23 years of art and asks "Does Australia need more Tandanyas?"
Archie Moore: drilling deep
Freelance curator and writer Tim Morrell studies the art practice of Brisbane-based Archie Moore which is emphatically free from any signature style and is concerned with sharing his experience as an Indigenous Australian in order to put viewers 'in his shoes'.
How did Aborigines invent the idea of contemporary art?
Brenda L Croft, artist, curator and Senior Research Fellow at the National Institute for Experimental Arts, UNSW, reviews and finds gaps in the big pink book put together over many years by Ian McLean that collects iconic bits of writing about Aboriginal art and knits them together.
Indigenous Art Code: cracking the code
The Director of the Indigenous Art Code John Oster explains the Code, how it works, why it is needed and who isn't complying.
Ancestral memory: out of the shadows
University of Melbourne Research Fellow Fran Edmonds along with Victorian artists Lee Darroch, Maree Clarke and Vicki Couzens looks at the story of Aboriginal art in Victoria as a determined reclamation of the past, a cross-generational celebration in the present and a visionary guide for the future.
Chiharu Shiota: State of Being Sue Saxon and Jane Becker: All that is solid melts into air
TarraWarra Museum of Art 25 February - 27 May 2012
FotoFreo 2012: The City of Fremantle Festival of Photography
Perth, Western Australia 17 March – 15 April 2012
Glen Skien: MYTHO-POETIC
The Webb Gallery Queensland College of Art Griffith University 19 – 28 April 2012
Obscured by Light: Pamela Lofts and Kim Mahood
Araluen Arts Centre, Alice Springs 25 February – 25 March 2012
Panorama: are we there yet?
Daniel Boyd, Nadine Christensen, Sarah Goffman, Fiona Lowry, Bennett Miller, Arlo Mountford, Joan Ross, Caroline Rothwell, Bernie Slater, Jemima Wyman Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, NSW 27 January 2011 – 13 March 2012
Parallel Collisions: 2012 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art
2 March to 29 April 2012 Art Gallery of South Australia Curators: Natasha Bullock, Alexie Glass-Kantor
Restless – Adelaide International 2012
Curator: Victoria Lynn Flinders University City Gallery Samstag Museum of Art Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia Australian Experimental Art Foundation March 2012
Spaced: Art out of place
Artistic Director: Marco Marcon Fremantle Arts Centre 4 February - 11 March 2012
Big wave: Desert Country
Legendary curator John Kean looks at three recent large exhibitions of Aboriginal art - Tjukurrtjanu: Origins of Western Desert Art, Desert Country and Living Water, and questions whether the same spirit sings in all of them.
Sitting & connecting: Goulburn Art Class 2-0-1-1
Goulburn Class 2-0-1-1 was an exhibition curated by Djon Mundine at the Goulburn Regional Art Gallery of work made by prisoners at the local Correction Centre in response to ten one day workshops in the prison by seven Aboriginal artists whose work was also in the show. Writer and editor Maurice O'Riordan reviews the exhibition and more importantly the processes it involved.
Reviewing Our Mob: A state-wide celebration of South Australian Indigenous art
Our Mob is a state-wide celebration of South Australian Indigenous art held annually at the Adelaide Festival Centre since 2006. Curator Susan Jenkins who worked on it for three years from 2009-2011 analyses what works about Our Mob and what the future might be.
Long Way Home: A celebration of 21 years of Yunggorendi First Nations Centre
Yunggorendi First Nations Centre for Higher Education and Research at Flinders University, celebrated 21 years of operation in 2011 with an exhibition of work selected by staff and students from the collection of Flinders University Art Museum. Artist Ali Gumillya Baker critically reviews selected works in the exhibition and the issues they raise.
No Place without Other Places: Spinifex Arts Project at fifteen years
University of Western Australia lecturer Darren Jorgensen examine the Spinifex Arts Project from its inception with reference to a new exhibition happening August-October 2012 at John Curtin Gallery and asks the big question: "What would it mean if Aboriginal artists were not tied to language groups, communities, art centres and regional styles?"
Postcards from China
Multi-disciplinary artists Jason Wing, who has both Aboriginal and Chinese forebears, undertook a residency in Xucun, a remote village in China, where Chinese artists Qu Yuan and Shen Shaomin have established the Xucun Art Commune in order to protect the village's beauty and heritage.
Tu Di Shen Ti, Our Land Our Body: the Ngaanyatjarra poetic goes to China
The exhibition 'Tu Di Shen Ti – Our Land Our Body, Masterworks of the Warburton Collection', was seen in China by about a quarter of a million people, across seven venues, throughout 2011. Director of the Warburton Arts Project Gary Proctor describes how the exhibition came about, what it looked like and what its goal are.
On the ground with Our Mob in 2011
Terry Cleary was the Statewide Indigenous Community Artists Development (SICAD) Program Manger with Ananguku Arts and Culture from 2009-2011. He reflects on the potential power of Our Mob when it works.
The inchworm revisited
Artist, writer and honorary visiting Professor at the Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics at the University of Sussex in England Paul Brown sketches out the long intertwining history of the relationship between C.P. Snow's two cultures - art and science, design and mathematics, beauty and computation, and extrapolates upon Lady Ada Lovelace's famous words: "We may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves."
Fractal food
John Walker is the founder of Autodesk, Inc. and co-author of AutoCAD. In Fractal Food he discusses the marvel of fractal forms (complex shapes which look more or less the same at a wide variety of scale factors) as they are seen in a rather wonderful vegetable - the chou Romanesco.
Openwork patterns: Love Lace
Powerhouse Museum Curator of Textiles Lindie Ward discusses the groundbreaking 'Love Lace' exhibition on show at the Powerhouse until April 2013. A globally sourced series of works it showcases 130 designs for openwork structures from 20 countries.
A Meme is born
Adelaide writer and artist Peter Drew looks at various examples of recent street art and the many ways it is circulated and reproduced as a meme in a wired and globally connected world. "As it turns out," he says, "memetics can be very useful in understanding the patterns of street art."
Not just black and white
Scholar and inaugural director of the new Godinymayin Yijard Rivers Arts and Culture Centre in Katherine Cath Bowdler discusses the work of two indigenous artists Brook Andrew and Gunybi Ganambarr and suggests that they are both operating at a conceptual level as bricoleurs in a globalised world, inventing new juxtapositions of materials and revealing new ways of seeing the world through the prism of local histories and traditions.
Caroline Durré: Reforming the earth
Drawing Studio and Program Co-ordinator at Monash University Stephen Garrett examines the optically challenging artworks of Caroline Durré which blend patterns and perspectives.
The Poliness wall drawings: not quite right
Artist Kerrie Poliness writes about her wall drawing projects, one of which appears in the exhibition 'Art, Pattern and Complexity' at RiAus, Adelaide from 16 February to 16 May 2012. The wall drawings begin with the artist's instructions but are produced with intuition rather than rulers.
Mesne: Stitches in the Air: computational craft
Media artist, techno-evangelist and digital nomad Fee Plumley responds to Mesne Design Studio's lacemaking environment 'Pricking Version 2.0' which is their answer to the question “what happens if you apply computational processes to the historical notion of craft?”.
Shape of the wind: pattern & chaos in Sue Lovegrove's island art
Head of Environmental Studies at the University of Tasmania and writer Peter Hay describes the recent paintings of Sue Lovegrove made from her experience of different islands off the coast of Tasmania - Maatsuyker Island, Egg Island and most recently Tasman Island. Lovegrove began with painting clouds but has moved on to paint the shape of the wind.
Mesne: Pattern In(formation)
Tim Schork and Paul Nicholas founded MESNE Design Studio, an innovative architecture and urban design studio working globally as one office from London and Melbourne, to explore the relationship between architecture and divergent domains of knowledge through the use of computation in order to create innovative design strategies for novel spatial structures. They write about the back story of the project "Pricking', an interdisciplinary collaborative project between MESNE Design Studio, Ian Maxwell (supermanoeuvre) and Indae Hwang, which involves an interactive lace-making table with an infra-red based multi-touch interface.
Pipilotti Rist I Packed the Postcard in my Suitcase
Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne 21 December 2011 – 4 March 2012
Medi(t)ation - 2011 Asian Art Biennial
1 October 2011 – 1 January 2012 Curator: Iris Shu-Ping Huang National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts?(NTMoFA) www.asianartbiennial.org
Everyday the possible
Sonia Donnellan, Anna Hughes & Sonja Porcaro South Australian School of Art (SASA) Gallery 14 August - 16 September 2011
Sequences and Cycles: contemporary ceramics from the desert
Pantjiti Lionel, Mel Robson, Pip McManus, Patsy Morton, Suzi Lyon, Amanda McMillan Co-curators: Jo Herbig and Franca Barraclough Araluen Arts Centre, Alice Springs 19 November 2011 - 22 January 2012
Revealed: Emerging Aboriginal Artists from Western Australia
Curator: Thelma John Gallery Central, Perth 24 October - 12 November 2011
