More from this Issue
Culture/Agriculture
Agriculture and culture go back a long way. The fact that they actually meet and marry in the word 'cultivation' makes this clear....when it comes to direct experience, city and country are more distinct in Australia than in many countries.
Living with the Land
If there is a contemporary issue for landscape artist to engage with, it must be the process of developing a relationship with the landscape, even if it is at the level of s sustain[able] failure, a low level antagonism or an uneasy peace. It is as difficult and as complex as any other issue, and it ultimately speaks of the human condition.
Mark Stephens on 600,000 Hours
Exhibition review 600,000 Hours (mortality) exhibitions
Experimental Art Foundation
Adelaide South Australia
15 September - 4 December 1994
Rene Boutin: An Artist and His Garden
New Caledonia has become the first Pacific nation to hold a Biennale of Contemporary Visual Art. Lucienne Fontannaz travelled to Noumea to interview artist Rene Boutin and discovered an artist who takes more than the gallery and his studio as his milieu.
Robyn Daw on Elsje King
Exhibition review Elsje King: Textiles
University Gallery
University of Tasmania, Launceston
9 September - 7 October 1994
Rice on the Terrace
The artist grew up in Baguio, which looks to be quite close to Ifugao on the map, and although I was taught that the rice terraces of this region of the Philippines were the eighth wonder of the world it was many years before he was able to see them.
The Cultural Biography of Plants
The cultural biography of plants provides an extremely fertile field for artists to explore. It also encourages artists, and viewers, to explore the interface between cultures and between culture and agriculture.
Art about farming, farming as an art
The daily experience of tending a tract of land in the south-east of South Australia is the raw material of artist–farmer James Darling. The land which comprises Duck Island is watercourse country where sand, water, salt and native vegetation are the elements from which, over decades of passionate attention, he and his partner Lesley Forwood have developed a farm which includes a special salt-tolerant grass for their cattle. His exhibition, Define the Country, at Riddoch Art Gallery in Mount Gambier is a response to this farmed landscape.
Plant a Yam, Paint a Yam
Explores the relationship between food and its representation in the northeast of Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. Remember, dangerous themes make dangerous art.
Culture/ Agriculture
Story 1: A story about land owners and nomads. Story 2: Never terra nullius. Story 3: Genetic imperialism. Story 4: The politicization of hunger. Story 5: Kunde and the perception of order.