More from this Issue
A Dual Aesthetic
Exhibition Review Patmos Series Paintings
Jules Sher
Perth Galleries
Western Australia
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.
If Aquarium Gravel Is So Bad For You, How Come It Tastes So Good?
In the trading card world there are collectors, dealers, curators, critics, interested observers, and of course various magazines. Does this world sound familiar? Looks at the role of collecting...
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.
Inflecting the Museum
Exhibition review Litteraria
Simryn Gill and Robert MacPherson
Artists in residence at the South Australian Museum
16 September - 31 December 1995
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
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.
Motor-Cross Dressing
Issues of stereo-typing, conforming behaviour and fun and practicality are looked at in an observation of an MG driver.
Destiny Deacon: It's Been Ages Since We Last Marched
You can hear her on the radio and see her on the television and contemplate her in better State galleries. Pluralist par excellence, artist, writer and film-maker Destiny Deacon has been blazing away on visual and linguistic fronts since premiering 'Koori Rocks Gub Words' in 'Pitcha Mi Koori' (1990).
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.
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.
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.