That Iconic Moment: The Dismissal

1.30pm Remembrance Day. November 11, 1975 is a sacred memorial for the Australian Republican movement. This was the first time in Australian history that an unelected representative of the Queen had dismissed a Federal Government elected by the people.

More from this Issue

The New Republics: Contemporary Art from Australia, Canada and South Africa

The ideas behind this project stem from the particular legacy of Black British arts practice in the 1980s....This touring visual arts exhibition and book project tries to deconstruct the notion of the centre (London/UK/Europe) both as a site of former colonial power and as a site of current economic and cultural power.

Sunil Gupta

Art as Cultural Diplomacy: Back to the Drawing Board

How would we re-present ourself to the rest of the world if we became a republic? It is the treatment of Australia's indigenous people that will ultimately determine both how we can imagine our own cultural development and how we are viewed by other cultures in the region.

Pat Hoffie

Thinking Like a Sheep, Acting Like a Ham

Some thoughts on performance and the Australian cinema. Verhoeven snuggles up to the sheep film as a clue to what Australian filmmakers have held dear. Nationalism and republicanism examined.

Deb Verhoeven

The Path of Peace

Arts of Vanuatu Ed Bonnemaison, Huffman Kaufmann, Tryon. Published by Crawford House RRP $69.95

Barry Craig

Saluting the Dot-spangled Banner

Aboriginal culture, National identity and the Australian Republic. The closing ceremonies of the Atlanta Olympics were watched by a 1/5th of the world's population. This was arguably the most expensive bit of air time on the planet at that moment....

Philip Batty

Three Fragments of an Aberrant Narrative of Australian Identity

Post colonialism provides a chimerical hope of a different means of shaping and ordering public representation of Australia, bu the institutional discourse around post-colonial arworks tends to uphold the status quo by using race/ethnicity as another means of directing scorn towards the lower reaches of Australian society.

Juliette Peers

Artrave

Artlink

The Sublime and the Parochial: The Foot of God

In Australia, the land has been, for non-Aboriginal settlers, from the beginning a sign for the nation and for the manufacture of livelihood (the sheep's back, mineral wealth) as well as a repository of dreams and misapprehensions. The importance of the land to Aboriginal Australian ought to be easy for us to comprehend.

Stephanie Radok

Symbols for Australia

Trademarks and logos have been vital ways of marketing goods and services for well over a century. What are the readily identifiable symbols for Australia?

Peter Spearritt

The Republican Rock: A Vexing Issue

Flags are vexing (vexillological) by nature. Explores the role of flags and the ways they have been subverted, with recent exhibitions recognising their irony and employing ideas that unpick the ideological rhetoric stitched into these symbols.

Kurt Brereton

To Have or to Hold

Containment Debra Dawes, Zsolt Faludi, Gwyn Hanssen Pigott, Carlier Makigawa, Susan Norrie, Mary Scott. Curator: Clare Bond. Plimsoll Gallery, Hobart 12 April -2 May, 1997 University Gallery. Launceston 2 - 31 July, 1997 Reviewed by Mary Knights

Mary Knights

Lines in the Sand

Craftspeople engaged with questions of nation and national and personal identity from their specific cultural backgrounds. Features the work of Arone Raymond Meeks.

Philip Morrissey

View all articles in this issue