Unpacking 'Il Cretino Veloci' or 'The Fast Idiot'

Thomson pays tribute to an increasing minority of Australians devalued for getting their hands in the mucky stuff. As he proclaims ...people who make things with their hands for a living are seen as a hopeless anachronism rooted to the ground. In an age where the majority of the Australian population now work in what are termed the service industries, the ability to apply ones motor skills are making for a society who rarely needs to use those funny slabs of flesh at the end of our arms.

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Living Together is Easy

National Gallery of Victoria: Ian Potter Centre, Melbourne 27 August - 7 November 2004 Contemporary Art Center, Art Tower Mito, Japan 24 January - 28 March 2004 Curated by Jason Smith and Eriko Osaka

Jeff Khan

Calling all Anti-Capitalist Pashtivists, fluxus reincarnators and Crafty Billboard Operators: Documenting the Uncollectable

Royce W. Smith

For Nothing

The Bank, Midland, WA 26 November - 14 January 2005

Ian McLean

Everyone Lives Downstream: James Darling and Lesley Forwood

Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide
24 November – 19 December 2004

Paul Downton

Bush TV's: Piliyi - Good One

Nyinkka Nyunyu is an art and culture centre located on Warumungu land in Tennant Creek, right in the middle of the Northern Territory. From the time the idea came up to build something alongside the sacred site of Nyinkka Nyunya, art was always going to be an integral part of the project. The result of many brainstorming sessions amongst traditional owners of the land on which Tennant Creek stands was the idea of dioramas, or Bush TVs to provide the means to present history and contemporary life through art to a diverse audience.

Alison Alder

Mary Scott - Skirted

Criterion Gallery, Hobart 28 October - 23 November 2004

Felix Ratcliff

Artrave

Artlink

The Art of Outsourcing

While our romantic inheritance imagines artists working in isolation, this is changing. Increasingly, successful artists are working with teams of technicians who contribute precious amounts of skill, time and experience to the final work. Harvey looks at the relationships between artists, apprentices and their creations within the realm of tactile, three-dimensional art and some of the apparent concerns associated.

Nicola Harvey

I Came to Japan Because of the Chopstick

Timms' account of a personal journey through Japan and South Korea and the traditional history of fine pottery crafts that accounts for a large degree of Eastern culture. He here explores the distinctions and connections between Eastern and Western material culture as exemplified through the life and role of the chopstick.

Peter Timms

The Hand in Making

The Tamworth Fibre Textile Biennial began in 1975 and every two years a collection of contemporary fibre textile work tours nationally to metropolitan and regional audiences. For Attiwill, guest curator of the 16th Biennial, the spark for the exhibition A Matter of Time came from Sue Rowleys wisdom: it is useful to think of craft in terms of multiple temporalities, A Matter of Time is an exploration of this usefulness.

Suzi Attiwill

The Return of Labour?

Kevin Murray

The Sounds of Silence

Through traditional method, an explicit residue of manual labour, and a constructed subject, Ricky Swallows wooden work suggests a past tense, which leads the viewer backwards through the material history of the work. The Defining aspects of Swallows approach are distinctly framed in the western tradition of the artisan and the language of figuration.

Damiano Bertoli

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