Making Place in an Urban Sense

Our sense of who and where we are is continually mediated by images of the wilderness and the outback, but the real home of our species is the city. Downton is an architect determined to work through processes of ecology and community and is excited by the challenges of the city. He here examines the connections between humans and nature within the domain of a civic built environment.

More from this Issue

Notes from 2045: Meredith Rowe

Westspace Melbourne 14 - 31 March 2002

Juliette Peers

Living the Lie (of the land)

Due to the concentric nature of its revelations the exhibition The Lie of the Land deserved particular consideration in terms of the resonances that placement, grounding and the physical experience of the Australian landscape and environment can have on the issue of current art practice. Curator Carmen Grostal felt a personal and philosophical urgency behind the idea for the exhibition, with the title of the show responding to Paul Carter's text of the same name and was used as a way to enter into dialogue with the ideas raised in it.

Juliette Peers

Pattern as Subject

Contemporary Art Services Tasmania Hobart 7 - 24 March 2002

Philip Watkins

ConVerge: Where Art Meets Science

2002 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art Art Gallery of South Australia 1 March - 28 April 2002

Belinda Hoare

Float or Sink: A New Direction for Art in Regional Australia

When it comes to the interpretation of place, whether it be through the language of art, economy or social relations, we are always doing so through a culturally constructed lens and at a culturally constructed moment in time. The way we represent the land affects how we use the land and our land use in terms affects the way we represent it. Wilson looks at art that is made outside the context of the art gallery or computer screen and the ongoing categorisation and separation of institutionalised art from public art. The Artists Working in Nature movement and The Floating Land project are here used in reference.

Kevin Wilson

A contested place: Film and land

The importance of place depends on what it means to us, what we make of it and our understanding of how it shapes us. In 2001 in the Australian film industry there was an avalanche of films, both documentaries and features, addressing issues surrounding place in the context of the relationship between black and white Australians. Six features which Hann values for their portrayal of this relationship are One Night the Moon, Rabbit Proof Fence, The Tracker, Beneath Clouds, Kabbarli-A Film About Daisy Bates and Australian Rules.

Adele Hann

Spirit and Place Revisited

Spirit + Place, Art in Australia 1861 to 1996, an exhibition curated by Nick Waterlow and Ross Mellick at the Museum of Contemporary Art in 1996 in Sydney, is widely referred to as a landmark exhibition. The exhibition placed Indigenous Australian Art together with non-Indigenous Australian Art, as well as making honorary Australian artists of Joseph Beuys, Marina Abramovic, Christo and others. The exhibition encompassed ideas that were linked to issues involving the environment, ethnicity and human pain and pleasure, with relevance both locally and beyond these shores.

Ross Mellick and Nick Waterlow

Fresh Cut 2002

Institute of Modern Art Brisbane 16 March - 27 April

Mark Gomes

Canberra/Brasília: A tale of two cities

Jane Barney

Tjukurpa Wangapai - Story-Telling Place

In 1998 Margaret Worth was invited by a small group of Pitjantjatjara women to visit the Tjilbruke Gateway installation at Warriparinga on the banks of the Sturt River in Adelaide. Months later Worth visited the women to talk about making a place like the Tjilbruke Gateway. This article looks at Worth's role in helping to develop a built site which would signify as much as its natural environment did. In the process she learnt what was important to know about the land and developed her own understanding of place.

Margaret Worth

Australian Paper Art Awards 2001

Artspace, Adelaide Festival Centre, Adelaide December 2001 - February 9, 2002

Ken Orchard

Intertwine

Adelaide Festival 2002

Janet Maughan

View all articles in this issue