New Media Art in Brisbane

The investigation of New Media Art is especially relevant in a city that is hyped with the rhetoric about critical mass in the New Media and Creative Industries. Machan here attempts to redraw some lines of definition in what the term New Media Art actually means, as it is often seen as a doomed and short-lived handle. She does this through examining some of the key New Media artists (including Craig Walsh, Keith Armstrong, Tim Plaisted, Bonemap, Trish Adams, Di Ball, Grant Stevens, Jenny Fraser, Simone Hine, Alex Gillespie, Jay Younger, Adam Donovan, Andrew Kettle and Molly Hankwitz) and the difference between New Media and other visual arts as well as looking at government support and initiatives in the line of New Media Arts.

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The New Brisbane

Brisbane's coming of age has been announced a number of times, most recently with millennial-expansiveness, in its claim to be the Creative City leading the Smart State. Over the past 15 years the city has spawned new enterprises, a new generation of artists, new cultural policies, new public buildings, and a new sense of grace. With an ugly past left largely unexplained, the focus is on the present and the ambitions for the city. While government and the mainstream media look to the future of the New Brisbane, it has been the role of writers, artists and a few historians to examine the past as part of the task of fully inhabiting the city. This article provides a discourse with Ross Fitzgerald about some of the above mentioned issues.

Stuart Glover and Stuart Cunningham

Parallel Precincts

Once depressed inner-city suburbs that were havens for students, migrants, artists and fringe communities, the high profile precincts of South Brisbane/West End and Fortitude Valley/New Farm have developed into fast-growing centres of urban residential and cultural development. The Millennium Arts Program now underway will see the expenditure of over $100 million on the development of a new Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) through the Queensland Art Gallery's Two Sites-One Visionstrategy. Heather locates the diversity of Brisbane's arts and culture scene through such new and existing precincts, establishments which mark an exciting transformation in the future of the cities art scene.

Robert Heather

Always Remember: there is no past

This article examines Brisbanes steeped conservative polical history and looks at the radical changes which occured as a result of the early 1990s shift to a Labour goverment. As an aftermath to the anti-climax that was the 1988 World Expo, the 90s was a decade which saw the Queensland Art Gallery embark on new avenues of experimentation and a new confidence was in the air. Furthermore Hoffie addresses the ongoing lack of substantial criticism in relation to arts and cultural development as many saw this as the single most pressing problem dogging the local scene.

Pat Hoffie

Moving Beyond Pragmatism: filmmaking in Queensland

The local film production community in South-East Queensland has come a long way, and over the past decade it has been important for local filmmakers to lay claim to an authentic local production that has achieved commercial if not critical success in the box office. Ward looks at those feature films and documentaries (Blurred, Under The Radar, Getting Square and Feeling Sexy) which have contributed to the emerging critical mass of the local film industry and the current debate surrounding creative pragmatism within this fledgling sector.

Susan Ward

NEW03

Emily Floyd, Andrew McQualter, Christine Morrow, David Rosetzky, Daniel von Sturmer, Louse Weaver Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne

Robyn McKenzie

Artrave

Artlink

Drought and Fire

Paintings, drawings and installation, Wendy Teakel Stella downer Fine Art, Sydney 18 March - 17 April 2003

Martin Thomas

Vacant Space

Anthony Johnson Inflight, North Hobart 8 - 28 March 2003

Philip Watkins

Deficiency - Installation and paintings

Christian Flynn Soapbox Gallery, Brisbane 21 March - 4 April 2003

Pat Hoffie

The Artists

Notable for their ability to conduct practices from Brisbane over recent years are Luke Roberts, Scott Redford, Eugene Carchesio, Leonard Brown, Sebastian de Mauro, Gordon Bennett, Joe Furlonger, and Jay Younger, who have all emerged since 1980 into the national (and several into the international) marketplace. These practice are here explored in all their diversity. Martin-Chew looks at the increase in available resources and some of the opportunities that Brisbane has to offer for young and emerging artists wanting to break into the local and international art scene. Other artists discussed include Jemima Wyman, Lisa Adams, Rod Bunter, Vernon Ah Kee, Sandra Selig, Andrea Higgins and Michael Zavros.

Louise Martin-Chew

Synergies

A Fusion Event Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra 27 March - 27 April 2003

Lisa Byrne

A History of Forgetting

Anderson looks at one of Brisbanes formative cultural events, The Demolition Show, an exhibition curated by John Stafford in 1986 to mark to demise of the relatively short lived Observatory artist run space and in the fact the whole city block that surrounded it. This notion of demolition is raised in this article not only in the context of this particular event but also as a way of exploring a past which has for the most part fallen through the cracks. As Anderson states: Long after the dust has settled, the perception that Brisbane has no past in visual art, no critical mass, still lingers. Yet it is far from a new issue.

Peter Anderson

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