Museum of Shopping
Kitsch is a kind of creole. It quotes and mixes references from quite unrelated sources, dresses in wildly unsuitable materials, then tries to insinuate itself using childhood wiles.
More from this Issue
Kitsch or Kind: Representations of Aborigines in Popular Art
Much contemporary Aboriginal art functions in the inappropriate melding of two visual art traditions and is kitsch within the given meaning within the article.
Worms and Roses
The first Australian garden books put vegetables first but by the mid 19th century the language of flowers was in vogue. Gardens, flowers and art...
Cakes for Show: The Last Great Undigested Art
That these same institutions have never seriously attempted to digest the great crafty, feminine art of traditional cake decoration is more regrettable. Icons, after all, are as valued as the most avant-garde compostion if made of oil paint and gold leaf on wood. When future generations visit our hallowed aesthetic halls, let them meet cake!
It's Things That Matter
Book review The Barossa Folk: Germanic Furniture and Craft Traditions in Australia
By Noris Ioannou
Craftsman House
1995
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.
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.
Continuous History
Exhibition review Djalki Wanga: The Land is My Foundation
50 years of Aboriginal Art from Yirrkala
Northeast Arnhem Land Northern Territory
Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery
Western Australia
July 9 - September 3 1995
Delma's Collection
Collections of any kind require patience, luck, money, space, time and dedication.....
Ethereal Days
Exhibition review Defrosting Familiar Tales
Jo Crawford, Bev Hogg
Jam Factory Gallery
Adelaide South Australia
7 July - 27 August 1995
Not Afraid of Flying: Fairies and Femocrats
Are gossamer wings set to supplant shoulder pads as signifiers of feminist power? Shopping malls in middle class suburbs are now sprouting fairy shops where, for only a few dollars, little girls and grown-up ones too, can sprout fairy wings that temporarily release them from the masculine world around them.
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.
Pretty Baby
Collecting and making dolls grows in popularity in Australia, but members of Australia's arts industry are relatively under-represented in the ranks of doll collectors. Original dolls speak of the culture that produces them.