Art medicine and the body was a project spanning 18 months. There were 28 participating artists. The exhibition opened at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art in August 1996 followed by the performance and forum.
Exhibition review In focus: Rover Thomas
Stories: Works from the Holmes a Court Collection
Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery
The University of Western Australia
Part of the 1997 Festival of Perth
The role of drugs and art making is examined in the works of particular artists. Historically drugs have been used for enlightenment as well as for healing or endurance....
Body suits, conceived by Jane Trengove of Arts Access Victoria, proposes the body as a site for investigation with the contributing artists being mostly people who experience 'bodily difference due to disability'. Touring show in 1997.
Book review Max Germaine's Artists and Galleries on CD Rom
Published by Macquarie Multimedia
RRP $199
(reviewed by Anna Ward with Julia Farrow vi$copy@wr.com.au)
How does the notion of experiment translate from the realms of scientific medicine to the realms of art? We are forced to examine how legal and ethical liabilities of behaviour are encoded. Looks at the work of Stelarc and Orlan.
Exhibition review Inside the visible - Alternative views of 20th Century Art through Women's Eyes
Art Gallery of Western Australia
13 February - 6 April 1997
For a number of years the collaboration of Farrell and Parkin has produced photographic imagery dealing with medical history. Their photographic work involves the almost archaeological reconstruction of medical contraptions together with bandaging and stirrups and so on which are described in medical texts.
Carnal art is self portraiture in the classical sense, but realised through the possibility of technology. It swings between defiguration and refiguration. Its inscription in the flesh is a function of our age. The body has become a 'modified ready-made', no longer seen as the ideal it once represented.