Currents I
In depth profiles of leading Australian artists Narelle Autio, Catherine Woo, Sue Ford, Gosia Wlodarczak, David Wadelton, Gunther Christmann, Michael Nelson Jagamara: many strands of current visual arts. Ian North reviews the Biennale of Sydney and '2004: Australian Culture Now'.
Topic list: identity, indigenous culture, popular culture, regionalism.
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Articles in Vol 24 no 3, 2004
MFC's and Gunter Christmann
Feature by John McPheeGunter Christmann was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1936. After two years in Canada, he arrived in Australia in 1959 and studied, somewhat casually, at the National Art School, Sydney, from 1962 to 1965. This article looks at the life and work of Christmann, that shambolic figure who, even as he is approaching his seventieth year, shows something of the perpetual youthful student. From his dress and demeanour to his his sloping walk and willingness to talk to the people he knows. A self taught artist, Christmann once saw his work as Geometric Abstraction and now states that the only major difference in style is the lack of intellectual order imposed on the work. —
Michael Jagamara Nelson Gives It A Go 
Feature by Vivien JohnsonMichael Jagamara Nelson is an artist who love - maybe even needs - a challenge. As Johnson examines, he has had his fair share. With his first painting, a piece he did for his uncle Jack Wayuta (a senior custodian for the Flying Ant Dreaming for Yuwinji) going unrecognised as one of his own for fifteen years, Michael Nelson made his mark in the indigenous art scene after his big break from Daphne Williams of Papunya Tula Arts. —
On Your (Motor)bike - REVIEW: Reason and Emotion, Biennale of Sydney, 2004, and 2004: Australian Culture Now, Melbourne
Feature by Ian NorthSydney Biennale bad, 2004 in Melbourne good. The artworld's consensus locked in quick and hard. Fair? Of course not.
Why compare the two, anyway? Because the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) seemed to set it up that way, by the timing of their show. They certainly took as 2004's model the nationally bound Whitney Biennial and, in particular, the Art Gallery of New South Wales's Perspecta exhibitions (last one 1999) - in turn established to counter the perceived internationalism of the Sydney Biennale. —
Raw and Cooked Margins
Feature by Stephanie RadokA series of journeys and pilgrimages characterise Paul Hoban's life, his account of which is spotted with significant exhibitions, readings, people, music and events. It wasn't until 1993, when he was 39, that Hoban first had a one man exhibition at Greenaway Art Gallery. Radok here paints a clear picture of his work - A sense of surfaces and layers; words - intelligible, unintelligible, back-to-front, upside-down; wrinkles and transparency; colour and pattern; modernism and archaism, and so on. A myriad of conceptual and stylistic devises that exist largely within the margins of art conventions. —
That Strange Quivering of Substance: The Recent Paintings of Catherine Woo
Feature by Peter TimmsMany years ago the Chinese writer Lin Yutang expressed that, from an Oriental perspective, Western artists always seem to depict objects from the outside, whereas those from China and Japan express their experience of them from within. This Eastern approach is inherent in the culture, not a position able to be merely adopted, and springs in part from religious inheritance, but also from the pictorial nature of Asian written languages. This inherent approach can be found in the recent work of Catherine Woo, expressing some sort of biological affinity. If the paintings can be said to be 'about' anything, it is a the fine balance between energy and rest rather than the apparent subject matter. —
That was Then, This is Now: New Work by David Wadelton
Feature by Ted GottDavid Wadelton's artistic career took a dramatic turn in the years 1997-98 after he purchase an iMac computer. Prior to this time he had been painting hybrid canvases and creating refined pencil and silverpoint drawings that displayed a unique quirckiness that was informed by the artist's affection for the culture and language of Pop art. Gott explores the apparent shift in Wadelton's work, from the assemblages of the everyday objects that he first exhibited to his new works; mesmerising, hypnotic, dizzying. —
The Poetics of Agoraphobia
Feature by Ian McLeanPolish/Australian artist Gosia Wlodarczak draws obsessively, as a means of engaging with a biological cognitive bedrock. By drawing out the duration of her being she avoids the burden of memories and hope. This, she thinks, will lighten the weight of ideology that oppresses her with its exaggerated claims of authenticity...Ideology is already manifest in her sence of self, freedom and individual consciousness. It is even there in the languages she lives between; in her name, in her history, a graduate of the Poznan Academy of Fine Arts in Poland, now living in inner-city Perth. —
The Sea Is In Them: Narelle Autio and Trent Parke
Feature by Virginia BaxterNarelle Autio and her partner in life and work, Trent Parke, completed a 16-month journey around Australia's coastline in 2004. The two set out to document the culture of Australian coastal dwellers with an exhibition lined up at the Australian Centre for Photography the following year. Baxter speaks of her first encounter with the works of these remarkable photographers and goes on to offer some insight into the profundity encapsulated by these images. —
What's Mine Is Yours: Touching the Surface of the Practice of Sue Ford
Feature by Zara StanhopeMelbourne artist Sue Ford's 2003 photographic series Continuum is a suitable portal through which Stanhope looks at aspects of Ford's work, a practice that has consistently evinced strength of vision and a humanistic philosophy, rich in connecting personal and local subjects to the field of national culture, social politics and the nature of individual existence. Continuum looks at the aftermath of bushfires and is aligned with her passionate reflection and documentation of the nature of our being in both time and place. "If there is one medium that records time it is photographs" - Sue Ford.
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21st Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award
Review by Felicity WrightMuseum & Art Gallery of the Northen Territory
13 August 7 November 2004 —
Barking Up the Wrong Tree
Review by Felix RatcliffCarnegie Gallery, Hobart
10 June - 4 July 2004
Curators: Stephen Mori, Felicity Wade & Raquel Ormella —
Brad Nunn: Machine Gun Walker
Review by Timothy MorrellInstitute of Modern Art, Brisbane
30 April - 29 May 2004 —
Fabrics of Change: Trading Identities
Review by Stephanie RadokFlinders University Art Museum
18 June - 1 August 2004 —
Jacky Redgate: Survey 1980-2003 [Three Exhibitions]
Review by Lisa HarmsIII, V, VI of Contemporary Art Projects SA 2004
Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia
Curator, Alan Cruickshank
23 April - 23 August 2004 —
Ken Searle: Papunya: Paintings and Drawings
Review by Joanna MendelssohnWatters Gallery, Sydney
25 May - 19 June 2004 —
Octopus 5
Review by Penelope RichardsonRaafat Ishak, Horst Kiechle, Kaji Ryui, Grant Stevens.
Curator: Nicholas Chambers
Gertrude Street Contemporary Art Spaces
9 July - 21 August 2004 —
Philip Wolfhagen
Review by Deborah MalorThe Inner Edge
Academy Gallery, University of Tasmania, Inveresk
14 June - 9 July 2004 —
Sandy Edwards: Indelible
Review by Robert McFarlaneStills Gallery, Sydney
17 March - 17 April —
Su Baker: Serious Pleasure
Review by Simon BlondJohn Curtin Gallery, Perth
25 June - 8 August 2004 —
Sue Richter. On Colour: Whiteblack Red
Review by Anne Mosey24HRArt, Darwin
9 July - 7 August 2004
Araleun Arts Centre, Alice Springs
3 April - 9 May 2004 —
Three Colours: Gordon Bennett and Peter Robinson
Review by Juliette PeersHeide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne
8 April - 4 July
Travelling to Victoria, Tasmanaia, Queensland, NZ
July 2004 - July 2006 —
Other articles & reviews
in this issue
- Artrave
Artrave by Edblog - Peter Timms' What's Wrong With Contemporary Art?
Book review by Pat Hoffie