A rusty sign at the end of a bloody empire

At Magnet Gallery in Quezon City Filipino artist Norberto Roldans exhibition Oil goes beyond the local situation and deals with the theme of peak oil as the root of all geopolitical evil, with the United States of America as the primary agent of ill intent. Lourd de Vera vividly describes it as a deliberate exercise in propaganda and sloganeering. Roldan takes a broad historical view and reflects on US policy in the Philippines over time while the rusting Caltex sign embedded in the exhibition asserts a warning: no empire lasts forever.

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Rabih Mroué and Lina Saneh interview

Rabih Mrou and Lina Saneh are Lebanese performance artists. In their work called Whos Afraid of Representation?, currently touring Europe, they describe the work of over fifteen well-known performance artists from Chris Burden and Marina Abramovic to Stelarc and Rudolf Scwharzkogler whose violence occurs within the safe and sanctioned space of the art world. They contrast this symbolic violence with descriptions of violent murders in Beirut. The work draws attention to the way violent deaths in Beirut are as ephemeral as the newspapers they are reported in while the violence practiced by the performance artists becomes history and the artists gain authority.

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Power and art in East Timor

Recent art made by East Timorese artists is contrasted with work by Australian war artists Wendy Sharpe and Rick Amor. Artworks made by artists from the Arte Moris Free Art School in Dili are full of passion and deep knowledge of the incongruities of war and the poverty of their lives while the artworks made by Sharpe and Amor seem remote and generalised.

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Economy

Anthony Kelly, Pilar Mata Dupont & Tarryn Gill, Bennett Miller, Tom Muller, Anna Nazzari, Mark Parfitt, Ric Spencer, Brendan van Hek (WA) Curator: Consuelo Cavaniglia PICA 1 - 25th November 2007

Thea Constantino

The winding way

Cairns-based artist Tijn Meulendijks considers the plant world as his medium. His exhibition, Natura est ars, held at Umbrella Studio in Townsville in 2007, was concentrated around a single plant community gathered while walking in a coastal Melaleuca swamp after fire had affected the environment.

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Robert MacPherson, Vernon Ah Kee and Jeremy Hynes

Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane 8 December 2007 - 2 February 2008

Timothy Morrell

Artrave

Artlink

Watching as the enchanted land meets its end: Qiu Anxiong

With traditional Chinese brush painting skills Qiu Anxiong's three screen video animation New Book of Mountains and Seas, Part 1 shows the history of the world from its genesis as a vast sea to cities on the edge of destruction. It shows cycles of animal, bird and human life, oil drums and pipes, trees, mountains, the last ten yeas in China and the Great Wall of China. A modern version of the Shanhai Jing (The Classic of Mountains and Sea) the two thousand year old Chinese fanciful geography, Qiu Anxiong's animations brilliantly use scale to combine drawing with political comments.

Yuko Hasegawa

The error of our ways: Madeleine Kelly

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Fierce or Friendly: Humans in the Animal World

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from time to time one talks to the moon: Aldo Iacobelli

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Handling the Adelaide Biennial

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Stephanie Britton

Replay: Christian Marclay

Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) Melbourrne 19 November 2007 - 2 February 2008

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