Wer ist Unschuldig?

This issue of Artlink meanders (with kitschy loucheness rather than formalist stringency) around 'taste' bad and good, the workings of taste and various permutations of cultural expression in present day Australia. Kitsch is scrutinised.

More from this Issue

Making and Breaking

Exhibition review Cross Fibre Lia Gill Pam Lofts and NT women working with fibre 24 Hour Art Darwin, Northern Territory 18 August - 2 September 1995

Suzanne Spunner

Thought Police Versus Life: Extracts from an Interview with Ray Hughes

Discussion with the artist Ray Hughes about issues that have impacted on his art practice. Biographical details also included.

Tony Twigg

Boys and Girls: Pierre et Gilles' Sydney Mardi Gras Poster

Examines the 1995 poster for the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. How appropriate though, at the moment when Mardi Gras had successfully commodified itself as a cultural event, that its key representation should be through international glamour product photography.

Leigh Raymond

Made in WA: A Sculptor's Alternative Practice

Although well known in regional art histories, Western Australian sculptor Edward Kohler has a far wider importance. Economic survival led him to blend popular and high art long before it was standard practice. With the Piccadilly Theatre reliefs of 1938, the sheer exuberance and infectious quality of a positive (if unconscious) kitsch aesthetic entered professional Australian art 60 years ago: Hollywood meets Olympia.

Robyn Taylor

Kings of Kitsch: Big Things

Big things have the power to make real the stuff of dreams. They have the power to make us stop at places we would never have dreamed of visiting. Grand kitsch is both art and beyond.

John Cross

Kitschoprenia

Our affection for kitsch is a benign form of aesthetic hypocrisy. My generation, give or take 15 years, adores kitsch. We want to have some badness; it's fun: you laugh both at your dismay for an object and your perplexity over the delight that it brings. In a broad cultural sense, my generation is kitschophilic; and this means, I suppose, not that we love the kitschy object with innocence but that we love the contempt which the kitschy object arouses.

Robert Nelson

It's Things That Matter

Book review The Barossa Folk: Germanic Furniture and Craft Traditions in Australia By Noris Ioannou Craftsman House 1995

Artlink

Image Bank

Collection of images with artists statements. Artists featured: Katanya Shanzy, Anne Graham, Geoffrey Seelander, Simon Duncan, Pierre Cavalan, Stefan Szonyi, Cliff Burt, Andrea McNamara, Karen Ferguson, Constanze Zikos, Jandee Amar Leddar, Leon Pericles, Meryn Jones, Annie Taylor, Ex de Medici and Ian Mowbray.

Juliette Peers

Reathing, Writhing and Fainting in Coils: Richard Grayson

Exhibition review Received Richard Grayson Greenaway Art Gallery Adelaide South Australia 12 July - 6 August 1995

Linda Marie Walker

Inflecting the Museum

Exhibition review Litteraria Simryn Gill and Robert MacPherson Artists in residence at the South Australian Museum 16 September - 31 December 1995

Barry Craig

The Taste Factor

When I was an art critic, I quickly grew to dislike the word 'taste'. It was a convenient tool used to dismiss reviews by people who didn't like what I had to say. Whenever I delivered a negative crit upon a widely revered artist, or a positive crit on a very minor figure, they complained that I was allowing my taste to undermine my professionalism.

Christopher Heathcote

Artrave

Artlink

View all articles in this issue