Throwing the Baby Out with the Bathwater

The CDEP (Community Development Employment Program) was axed by the Howard Federal Government throughout the Northern Territory though is still current in South Australia and Western Australia. The Program was launched in 1977 by the Fraser Government and has been a very valuable way of getting Aboriginal people to be engaged productive community memes in art centres and other activities. A number of key Aboriginal art centres rely on CDEP staff for printing, administration, preparators, artists and craftspeople. It is a vital component in building community self-reliance and pride.

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A Relationship can't be Outsourced: Tracey Clement

The idea of slow art takes on a gripping intensity in Tracey Clements textile works which use ideas of duration and repetition to refer to womens traditional work and skills - a huge ball of wool, a giant button-covered blanket, full-size bodies made from thread and most recently a miniature city of salt and wire. The excessive though delicate relationship between the artist and the work becomes evident in the resulting artefacts. She admits to watching very bad DVDs while on the job.

Dominique Angeloro

Tautology

Tautology Emma White 9 - 26 August 2007 MOP Projects, Sydney

Anneke Jasper

Everybody's Working for the Weekend

This article was written by a mysterious Australian creative labour collective possibly based in Western Australia. It humorously analyses the special characteristics of creative work as against the goals of capitalism while simultaneously possessing an intense work ethic through looking at recent artworks by Matthew Hunt, Tarryn Gill and Pilar Mata Dupont, Rodney Glick and Lynnette Voevodin, and pvi collective. It concludes that the creative task of showing how the nature of work is historically and geographically located is vital.

partyof

Australian Pastoral by Jeanette Hoorn

Joanna Mendelssohn

Strange Fruit

Strange Fruit: Testimony and Memory in Julie Dowlings Portraits Curator: Jeanette Hoorn Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne 21 July - 14 October 2007

Maura Edmond

Papunya Tjupi: A New Beginning

Papunya Tjupi: A New Beginning Ivan Dougherty Gallery 6 September - 6 October 2007

Amanda Muscat

Soft Power - Confession: Leung Mee Ping

Hong-Kong based Leung Mee Ping sees the artist as a craftperson able to fabricate intricate work that makes the viewer revision the everyday. Memorising the Future is an ongoing project of shoes made from felted human hair. It has been shown all over the world in major museums and now consists of more than 11,500 shoes.

Binghui Huangfu

ACCA

Almost Everywhere Apparent Sonia Leber and David Chesworth Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne 11 August - 30 September 2007

Saige Walton

Unknown Worker in Art: Alan Lukey

A retrospective survey of the work of Alan Lukey who died in 2003 aged 51 organised by fellow artist John Foubister with the help of Jill Lukey was shown at New Land Gallery in Port Adelaide, 21 April to 10 June 2007. Lukey was a South Australian artist who painted abstract and meditative works and lived on the Fleurieu Peninsula between 1977 and 2003. He also made public art works often in the shape of waves.

James Moss

The Hours

The Hours: Visual Arts of Contemporary Latin America Curator: Sebastian Lopez Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney 21 June - 2 September 2007

Jeff Browitt

X Strata Indigenous Art Awards

Xstrata Coal Emerging Indigenous Art Award GoMA, Brisbane 4 August - 11 November 2007

George Petelin

Editorial

Stephanie Britton

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