Photosynthesis: Two approaches

The photograph as a source and subject for photographic practice iteself is characteristic of the work of a great many artists today. Tracey Moffatt and Margaret Dawson's works are considered. Each draws on photographs which precede their own, but work in markedly different ways.

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Underbelly

November 22 to December 20 Cosmopolitan Cinema and Shopping Arcade

Samara Mitchell

Psychology of Retrieval: Personal and Fictional Archives

How can (traumatic) memories be excavated? Many visual artists use records and material objects as documentation with which to resurrect their past experience and those of their families. Often using literary means, visual artists who archive their past employ text as well as images in poetic and haunting ways. Quotation and citation form the kernel of this pychology of retrieval and act of preservation.

Natalie King

A Dream of Earthly Organisation

Not only are artists fascinated with images and objects - it has been estimated that half the adult world population has been a collector at some point in their life. A number of different projects have been instigated by artists considering what it means to collect and archive.

Zara Stanhope

The Fleurieu Biennale 1998

McLaren Vale Fleurieu Peninsula 6 - 29 November 1998

Michael Newall

Debra Phillips: List

'List' examines Phillips recent investigations into issues of memory, history and renown, and the structuring of such through systems of language representation and communication. The work traverses the worlds of royalty, theatre, film, science, politics, literature and fashion. The images range across a period of 150 years.

Blair French

The TMAG Commissions 1998

Here at the end of the twentieth century, the world is having to come to terms with the socio-political, economic and environmental legacies of nineteenth century imperialism. Contemporary art participates in this post colonial discourse: issues of ancestry and inheritance, relations between indigenous and settler peoples, national and imperial mythology, mapping and borders, migration and language, ecology and exploitation - these are increasingly familiar themes.

David Hansen

Polemic: Object and Text

"So the question raised for art theory is this....Is a physical autographic sculpture - a Brancusi woodcarving for example - only an 'instantiation'(albeit rather a privileged one) of some imperceptible, intentional object that is the 'real' sculpture? Are sculptures more literally than metaphorically - 'poetry in stone'? Are they in a word 'texts' whose proper reading (as we are told) had best be undertaken in French?"

Donald Brook

Four Shoes Many Signs

Four artist's projects initiated by the National Gallery of Victoria engage contemporary art practices and the role of the museum and public galleries as mediators between the collections and the viewers. Impacts on policies regarding the moral rights of artists.

Jason Smith

Market Mark-Art: Forgotten Fruit

In the final stages of the demolition of the old Adelaide fruit and vegetable markets, Margaret Dodd and Jennifer Hughes collaborate to produce an installation which caught the echoes of the history displayed in situ at the markets.

Noel Purdon

Elizabeth Gertsakis: Tampering with the Archive

Elizabeth Gertsakis has excavated her family histories and Greek/Slavic heritage as part of understanding difference as a critical space of knowing. It is not an attempt to 'position' or 'locate' herself in Anglo Australian culture or in the art world, but to understand the mechanisms that produce dominant cultural histories and resultant exclusions.

Brett Jones

Parallax Error

Working within the context of the Percy Grainger (1882-1961) collection, artists Louise Weaver and Carolyn Eskdale created an installationwithin the architecture and material culture of the building. In 1998 composer and sound artist Ros Bandt created an installation for the Museum's courtyard.

Naomi Cass

Wunderkammern: Actual and Virtual

The notion of the Wunderkammern is discussed in the work of Shiralee Saul (an on-line hypertextual essay for the World Wide Web WWW) and Luke Roberts ( a series of exhibitions from 1990 onwards).

Beth Jackson

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