Getting Better all the Time: Austin and Repatriation Medical Centre Arts Program
The Austin and Repatriation Medical Centre (Victoria) has an innovative arts program. Commenced in 1989 and now holds an annual exhibition of sculpture.
Examines ideas of place in medical/health facilities from different perspectives. What role does art play in these places? To promote wellness, designers need to create environments that help in reducing stress. Art has an important role to play in helping people to heal.
Looks at the conference 'inter sections 1996' hosted by the College of Fine Arts at the University of New South Wales. The theme for the conference was Imag(in)ing Bodies; Issues of art, design, technolgy, health, medicine and science.
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.
Medical imaging through the work of nine artists: James Guppy, Ruth Waller, Victor Dellavia, Elizabeth Abbott, Julie Rrap, Jan Parker, Tina Gonsalves, Kate Campbell-Pope and Claire Bailey. Artists statements and colour images included.
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)
One of the general aims of internationally focussed survey exhibitions is to reflect the art of a particular time....However there is also a sense in which exhibitions of this nature can tend to operate as a form of cultural engineering, where the very status of inclusion in such exhibitions influences the kind of work made.
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.
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.