National Multicultural Arts Network

The Network links NESB, ethnic and arts organisations, sets up cross cultural and other training programs for artists, arts organisations and the media and lobbies governments and other funding bodies to reassess their policies and practices.

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Ethnicity and Excellence in the Arts

One of the leading debates in Cultural Studies around the world deals with the issues of cultural difference or ethnicity in relation to concepts of a national culture.

Sneja Gunew

Ginger Riley Munduwalawala: Working on a Heroic Scale

Looks at the art practice of Ginger Riley Munduwalawala, born in 1937 at Ngukurr in the Northern Territory. Good colour photos of the artist and some works.

Anthony Knight

Unpacking My Cultural Bundle

I migrated to Australia from China in March 1983 with nothing but 60 kg of books and manuscripts plus a big cultural bundle - all the things; the Classical Literature, the History and the Philosophy that I had been taught over the last 24 years....

Xiao-xiong Zhang

Beginning in the Middle

Reflections on an exhibition of abstract art at Linden Gallery St Kilda, Melbourne March 1991. An emigrant artists once said to me "I can never abandon the figure and make purely abstract art, after all I am Greek".

Evangelos Sakaris

Satellite Dreaming

Making a TV documentary about indigenous people's television in Australia. Photographs on location at Ernabella in the Pitjantjatjara lands of far north west South Australia.

Tony Dowmunt

As Australian as AMPOL

How much marketability is immanent in the artist's cultural background is a matter of delicate negotiation between dealer and client. Just now, it may appear to some artists an unfortunate fact that for them, Aboriginality is not an option.

Penny Webb

A Matter of Representation

Since the birth of Australian television, non-anglo Australians have suffered from an acute case of foreign accent syndrome. Unfortunately 35 years on they are still suffering, not only from bad accents usually spoken by Anglo actors playing NESBs, but from the dearth of authentic storylines and subsequently the lack of accurate representation of NESBs on our TV and screens.

Monica Pellizarri

'...The Divinity of Optimism', Le Thanh Nhon at Acacia Centre

Le Thanh Nhon and the Acacia Indo-Chinese Children's Centre.

May Lam

Mirror in Mirror

Standing between the mirrors of East and West, my art always gets an inverted image and a double interpretation. This is me.....

Xiaolin Xue

New Artist's Group: Dihedron

The tendency to pigeon hole 'ethnic' art as a second class art practised by minority groups is common in Australia too... Dihedron is a group of artists and supporters operating in Brisbane who share the common goal of helping artists in socio-cultural isolation.

Anthony Gall

Interview with James Mollison

The Office of Multicultural Affairs talks for Artlink with James Mollison, Director of the National Gallery of Victoria March 1991.

Meredith Smith

Gunta Parups: A Latvian in Australia

Looks at the art practice of Gunta Parups who was and remains a displaced person. The experience of leaving one's homeland as a refugee at the age of thirteen during the war is etched indelibly into her being.

Andra Kins

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