Jane Trengove

Jane Trengoves new paintings of monkey faces are the latest work in her long investigation into the human/animal interface. Trengoves intention with her series Looking Back is to grasp the moment of recognition from the human point of view and reverse the subject and object positions of the gaze. Trengove was born in Melbourne and studied at East Sydney Tech and at the Victorian College of the Arts.

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Sympathetic Magic: Skin and Canvas

The skin, the membrane, the corporeal envelope, the shroud, the veil - all those things that tend to separate and define appearances from either the being inside, or from the beingness outside - have provided a source of some of the most rich and persistent metaphors for Western culture. With the 20th century bringing a re-emergence of the idea of the skin as an organ rather than a boundary, notions and representations of the physical body dominated the work of last century and painting returned as an important medium for such depictions. This article looks at the metaphoric and literal relationship between skin and its various representations in contemporary art.

Pat Hoffie

Artrave

Artlink

Morphologies

Artspace & Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney 22 November - 15 December 2001

Rilka Oakley

Sally Rees: A Loft

LSSp, Hobart November 30 - December 9 2001

Duncan Bligh

Lynne Roberts-Goodwin

Lynne Roberts-Goodwins work with birds is the latest chapter in her 20-year practice using digital photography. Her current work involves the research and image capture/production of animal habitat and migration using infrared and supplementary daylight fibre-optic lighting with digital image and video capture technologies.

Lynne Roberts Goodwin

Love and Death: Art in the Age of Queen Victoria

Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide 7 December 2001 - 3 February 2002

Vesna Drapac

The Surgical Fix: Physical Capital, Self-Improvement and the Body Beautiful

Historical studies have shown that an improved physical appearance had profoundly beneficial psychological effects and behavioural outcomes. Plastic surgery became a vital tool in the 1930s, holding out the promise of removing the traces of war and eliminating prominent markers of ethnicity. In recent years the cosmetic surgery industry has grown in Australia, and as with all countries the common goal is the production of a narrowly defined culture of bodily beauty. Ryan looks at the cosmetic surgery industry and some of the artistic responses to such ideas and ideals, particularly those of artist Annabelle Collett.

Victoria Ryan

The Theatrics of Cloning: The Recent Paintings of Juan Ford

Juan Ford's recent exhibition Clone is a series of portraits of doppelgangers trapped within neo-realistic hallucinatory environments that are rich in attributes taken from technological culture. The juxtaposition of traditional painterly portraiture with objects taken from recent technologies uncovers the sense of mystery that these new technologies provide for us. Trotter looks at Ford's practice within the context of our post-modern society, discussing relevant issues of capitalist culture as 'narcissistic' and the breakdown of a consistent personal identity within it.

Penny Trotter

Monika Tichacek

Monika Tichacek is an installation artist based in Sydney. Her performance installations exist as a space within fiction, dreamlike. In both of Tichacek's works I Wanna Be Loved By Youand Romancethe view of the human is mediated by a surveillance camera, echoing the receding of the surgically enhanced body from human towards post-human.

Monika Tichacek

Uglielands: The Fremantle Festival 2001

At Fremantle Arts Centre, as part of the annual Fremantle Festival in 2001, selected artists addressed the notion of fascination by and in the freak, geek and grotesque in relation to carnivals and circuses. Artists included Susan Flavell, Emma Margetts, Clare McFarlane and Nein Schwarz.

Dorothy Erickson

Animal Magnetism: Sharon Goodwin and the Eternal Romance of the Bestial

The work of Sharon Goodwin is directly influenced by the Coles Funny Picture Books which create a bizarre Victorian world where human and animal promiscuously cross over. Here people are frequently turned into animals, and the qualities of animals emerge in humans through vices of personality. Goodwin's exhibition which was held at Uplands Gallery in Melbourne, Victoria in November 2001 presented a series of portraits of bestial humans or humanised animals repainted from Cole's woodcuts. Goodwin has introduced crude lines and stitching and patching in the images to represent the frequent actualisation of plastic surgery in contemporary society.

Juliette Peers

The 'Improved' Body: Animals and Humans

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