New museums, new agendas

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A nation's museums are an index of its understanding of itself. We examine the controversies and debates surrounding new museums in Canberra and Melbourne which have challenged the conventional wisdom. Charles Esche proposes that a new breed of less tightly prescriptive art institutions can be catalysts for changing societal attitudes. Also new practice in digital media, fashion as art, profiles of Peter Callas, Lawrence Daws, Julia Ciccarone, Kate Breakey, and Robin Best. Reviews of Documenta and Site and Sight in Singapore.

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Articles in Vol 22 no 4, 2002

A New Catch-Up - Report of the Contemporary Visual Arts and Craft Inquiry

Editorial by Stephanie Britton

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A Stitch in Time

Feature by Tempe MacGowan

Peter Callas' show held at Stills Gallery in 2002 Vinculum + Orison resulted from his Asialink residency in Delhi, India and comprises of digital prints on photographic paper and an artist's book. Both the scale and choice of images in this exhibition are seductive and enthralling; deceptively innocent moments in daily and century-old rituals and routines. — More »

Asia Pacific Triennial 2002 - Starry Night

Feature by Alison Carroll

When talking about non-Indo-European cultures, we are taking on board profound differences in how we arrange our worlds. The 2002 Asia Pacific Triennial endeavours to present art from these cultures through various treatments of time and space relations. — More »

Breathing/Diving/Dreaming/Dancing to the BEAP in Perth (You Can't Buy These Emotions off the Hollywood Shelf)

Feature by Stephen Jones

Immersion was part of the Perth Biennale of Electronic Art (BEAP), a selection of some of the most important international immersive, interactive and virtual reality artworks from the last decade, created by Chris Malcolm and presented at the John Curtin Gallery. — More »

Cacophony + Cramp for the Sensory Bundle

Feature by Amanda McDonald Crowley

Digital media provides intuitive contemporary ways for storytelling in our times. dLux media arts, based in Sydney, this year curated a selection of installation works derived from their annual d>art program, and for the first time showed it outside Sydney. The five works selected for the Adelaide exhibition were complex and esoteric: a gorgeous array of storytelling techniques which explore and exploit narrative and interactivity. — More »

Documenta 11 Takes On Masters of the Universe

Feature by David McNeill

Every five years the sleepy little German town of Kassel is invaded by the international art world. The 2002 Documenta exhibition staged here, which have traditionally played second fiddle only to the Venice Biennale, was eagerly anticipated as the first genuinely postcolonial Documenta, due in large part to the appointment of the expatriate Nigerian curator Okwui Enwezor as Artistic Director. — More »

Fashion Infiltrates the Galleries

Feature by Juliette Peers

Even if one's first reaction upon hearing the sound of the words 'Melbourne Fashion Festival' is not to reach for one's gun, but to condemn the dumbing down of 'culture' into Madonna or Barbie 101, bemoan the melting of the abstract expressionist/tachiste snows of yesteryear, it has unquestionably enriched the city's art experience. — More »

I Wonder Where the Public Art Went?

Feature by Paul Downton

During the first half of 2002 the Danish champion of pedestrians, Dr. Jan Gehl and his team from GEHL Architects were commissioned to analyse the City of Adelaide in terms of its viability as a pedestrian city. — More »

Jewel Mackenzie: Gemini Paintings

Feature by Angela Goddard

Jewel Mackenzie's practice explores both the understanding and experience of the world and the history and legacies of painting. Her background in both dressmaking and in public administration has informed her project to provoke and explore the positioning of the artist within contemporary bureaucratic culture. — More »

Lawrence Daws: From Mandala to Full Circle

Feature by Timothy Morrell

Australian artist Lawrence Daws speaks of seven phases of his work, based on specific themes that have guided his development as an artist. There has been a gradual trend in his work from themes of archetypal symbolism and exotic portent towards the more local and personal. — More »

Marine Nature in Porcelain: The Recent Work of Robin Best

Feature by Wendy Walker

Ceramic artist Robin Best became fascinated by a complex marine world which included sea-invertebrates/filter feeders like bryozoans, sea sponges and ascidians (sea squirts) during walks on the beach in her seaside suburn of Semaphore. Here Walker discusses some of Best's recent work and conceptual concerns. — More »

Museums For the 21st Century: Entertainments or Big Challenging Ideas?

Feature by Des Griffin

Museums both reinforce one's views and challenge them, encouraging innovative connections we hadn't thought of before, driving us on to expanded understandings. Griffin addresses some of the controversies surrounding museums in the age of technology. — More »

Scaling Up at ACCA

Feature by Stephen Haley

Opening in mid October 2002, the new ACCA is a purpose built complex designed by Melbourne- based architects Wood Marsh. An architectural marvel and simultaneously a contemporary art space, at last the ACCA is moving to a building that lives up to the portent of its name. Haley spoke to the new Creative Director Juliana Engberg in August of 2002. — More »

Singapore Opens Up to the World - Site + Sight: First Major International Show

Feature by Michelle Antoinette

Using Singapore as the first 'site' for the exhibition, Site + Sight: Translating Cultures from 7 June to 26 July 2002 brought together 26 international artists from 11 countries to discuss and present artworks relating to the theme of globalisation and its cultural impact on the world. — More »

Small Deaths

Feature by Sarah Thomas

Australian artist Kate Breakey, who now resides in Tucson, Arizona, caught up with Sarah Thomas to discuss the impact of growing up in the coastal town of Port Lincoln and the impact her childhood upbringing is having on her recent work. "I think my childhood proximity to nature turned me into a naturalist...Growing up around animals you learn that life is complicated, survival is a struggle, death usually isn't quick or clean, and nature doesn't make any allowances for love and attachment". — More »

The Art of Gift Giving...

Feature by Heather Wallace

The magnificent donations made to museums, galleries and libraries in the last 12 months were made possible by the Commonwealth's Cultural Gifts Program, an initiative that encourages Australian patronageof the arts by offering attractive tax incentives to donors. Wallace here presents a short expression of appreciation. — More »

The Generosity of a Light Touch

Feature by Shiralee Saul

For the more than 15 years that the Australian organisation Experimenta Media Arts has metamorphosed through various ideological, aesthetic and technological identities, its one constant has been a passionate involvement with and championing of the new and experimental. Prototype, exhibited in Melbourne in 2002, carried on this tradition, more than living up to the title. — More »

The Possibility Forum - Institutional Change and Modest Proposals

Feature by Charles Esche

This text takes up some of the broader concerns of Tony Bond's initial questions to an Australian panel at ARCO 2002 Madrid, particularly 'can there be a benign global capitalism?' and 'how do we address the value of exchanges between artists?'. — More »

Uncertain Terrain

Feature by Cassandra Laing

Modern physics suggests we are living within an expanding universe. We are, it seems, still moving away from our point of origin (the singularity of the Big Bang). The intersection of new physics and Buddhism provides pathways into Julia Ciccarone's landscape paintings (exhibited at Niagara Galleries in Melbourne in early 2002), elucidating the narratives and suggesting relationships between the metaphors and symbols she uses. — More »

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