Notes on melancholy and anxiety in the works of Sanja Pahoki

The artworks of Sanja Pahoki walk a zigzag between melancholy and its contemporary cousin, anxiety. Curator and writer Hannah Mathews interviewed Sanja Pahoki about her recent work while thinking about Daniel Birnbaum's comment about the relationship between melancholy and the arts: "The idea of the melancholic as someone not only passive and depressed but also creative is the basis for the Renaissance idea of the genius – the dialectic between darkness and light, destruction and creation."

More from this Issue

Len Lye: An Artist in Perpetual Motion

Len Lye: An Artist in Perpetual Motion Curators: Alessio Cavallaro and Tyler Cann ACMI, Melbourne 16 July – 11 October 2009

Adrian Martin

Living palely

The Stoics may have taken rationality too far in their resolute minimisation of all feeling. Are emotions no more than disturbances in the logical landscape? What of Pascal’s ‘the heart has its reasons that reason is not acquainted with’? Perhaps the rationality/emotion divide is overdrawn, risking battle lines forming around pure opposites never found in real life examples. Yet the issue has bite, relevance to intimate features of our life: our friendships, our sense of safety in the world, how much we give of ourselves and give up of ourselves to our working life and the living texture of what it feels like to be us: fugitive, or having the ‘warm antiquity of self’.

Doris McIlwain

Artrave

Artlink

The Divided Heart

The divided heart Rachel Power Red Dog Books, Melbourne RRP $29.99

Rox De Luca

Upturns, Props and Portals: Bec Stevens

Upturns, Props and Portals: Bec Stevens Curator: Sean Kelly Kelly’s Garden Curated Projects Series 1 Salamanca Arts Centre, Hobart 5 June – 3 July 2009

Philip Watkins

Visual arts at OzAsia

The 2009 OzAsia Festival runs from 3 – 17 October, and also includes a fantastic family-friendly program of theatre, dance, film, food, as well as the free community opening event, the Moon Lantern Festival in Elder Park. See www.adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au Open from 29 September - 1 November at the Festival Centre Curious Screen: Festival Theatre (FT) Foyer The Sum of Cultures: Piano Bar Follow, Northern India: Faces and Words and Okami: FT Foyer Miss Taken: Space Theatre Foyer 'this reminds me of some place': FT Foyer 29 September - 8 November, Following Threads: Artspace Gallery (Upstairs, Dunstan Playhouse)

Artlink

The Second Life of Pye: Daniel Jay Mounsey

Social media is the new buzz word and trend - like it or not. Daniel Jay Mounsey is ahead of the pack in having Pyewacket Kazyanenko as his well-established alter-ego in Second Life, AND collaborating and performing online through an avatar with Stelarc and others, AND(!) performing onstage live as anime character Hell Girl. Curator and writer Charity Bramwell interviewed all she could find of him.

Charity Bramwell

Personal Political Emotional

Artist Megan Evans was for some years the partner of Aboriginal activist and artist Les Griggs who suicided in 1993. Fifteen years later she has begun to write his story - a story of reconciliation with herself and her country, through a relationship that undid her and put her back together again.

Megan Evans

Drifting in My Own Land: Nalda Searles

Drifting in My Own Land: Nalda Searles John Curtin Gallery, Curtin University of Technology, Perth Touring Australia 2009 – 2013 19 June - 30 August 2009

Holly Story

Nobody Likes a Show Off: Richard Lewer

Nobody Likes a Show Off: Richard Lewer Curator: Kirrily Hammond Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne 1 July – 5 September 2009

Jared Davis

Astra and the ventilation hypothesis

Astra Howard’s 'Action Research/Performances' necessarily require participation by members of the public. This makes them unpredictable. Astra’s presence is not about entertainment. It is not a show. There is no star. There is no attempt to expose any individual. There are simply sincere attempts to understand them. Astra acknowledges and responds sincerely to one of our deepest and most affective human needs – our need for emotional expression. Our need to have our voice heard. Our need to vent.

Eliza Muldoon

The Underpass Motel

This project grew as an extension of a Fellowship awarded to Stuart Elliott in 2006 from ArtsWA – the major arts funding body of the WA Government. Artists involved: Stuart Elliott, Graham Taylor, Patrizia Tonello, Amanda Williams, Peter Dailey, Ben Jones, Richard Heath and Si Hummerston. The Underpass Motel, DVD premiere and gallery exhibition opens at Turner Galleries 9 October - 7 November 2009. www.turnergalleries.com.au Visit the website: http://members.iinet.net.au/~reuham/theunderpassmotel.html

Stuart Elliott

View all articles in this issue