Work
What defines what an artist does when they are at work? Do artists actually work in the normal sense of the word, or do they play out their obsessions in various ways? This issue explores the modes in which artists can function - as a solo operator, as a collaborator with one long-term partner, working in various shorter-term groupings, including intensive workshops, bush camps, and guerilla activity. Does the current preoccupation with image-making which requires labour-intensive, repetitive work hint at a loss of old certainties and a return to activities which consume time and involve manual labour? The tension between working in the enterprise bargaining mode and the collective bargaining nature of protocols that have evolved to protect artists from exploitation reflect current debates in the labour market. Artists include Carly Fischer (cover image), Tracey Clement, Leung Mee Ping, Claire Healy & Sean Cordeiro, Daniel Kojta, Guan Wei, Ash Keating, Sarah CrowEST, Meg Keating, Keith Wong, Alan Lukey, Anne Noble, Ros Miller, Wendy Rushby, Matthew Hunt, Culture Kitchen, Taring Padi and Gembel. Editor Stephanie Britton.
Topic list: Asia, copyright, cultural policy, death, economy, migration, multiculturalism, regionalism, survival.
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Articles in Vol 27 no 4, 2007
A Bush Camp in a Mysterious Land: Guan Wei
Feature by Guan WeiChinese-Australian artist Guan Wei first visited Australia eighteen years ago but it was only in 2006 that he went bush for two weeks with nine other artists, on an artist's camp organised by Darwin's contemporary art space 24 Hour Art in collaboration with Injalak Arts and Crafts in Western Arnhem Land. His vivid experiences of the great outdoors, its sounds, animals and birds, led to his A Mysterious Land series. He worked with local Aboriginal artists, was shown rock paintings and found similarities between Aboriginal culture and Taoist philosophy.
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A Relationship can't be Outsourced: Tracey Clement
Feature by Dominique AngeloroThe idea of slow art takes on a gripping intensity in Tracey Clement's textile works which use ideas of duration and repetition to refer to women's traditional work and skills - a huge ball of wool, a giant button-covered blanket, full-size bodies made from thread and most recently a miniature city of salt and wire. The excessive though delicate relationship between the artist and the work becomes evident in the resulting artefacts. She admits to watching very bad DVDs while on the job. —
Artworks Out on the Beach Townsville
Feature by Stephanie Radok In September 2007 in Townsville Stephanie Radok attended the Perc Tucker Regional Gallery's Strand Ephemera, a biennial outdoor sculpture and installation exhibition first held in 2001. The Strand is a 2km landscaped beachfront park where local and interstate artists placed their site specific works which ranged from an Aeolian harp by Nameer Davis to a throne made of seasponges by Wendy Robertson. An enthusiastic audience of children and Strand-strollers made their way from work to work thinking about art and its myriad manifestations. Commissioned artists making work in shipping containers were Craig Walsh, Bonemap, Donna Marcus, Chris Fox and Richard Goodwin. —
Beyond the Parlour Games: We Refuse to Become Victims 
Feature by Pat HoffieThresholds of Tolerance curated by Caroline Turner and David Williams, was shown at the ANU School of Art Gallery from 10 May to 5 June, 2007. We Refuse to Become Victims, an art work made by three artists' collectives, Culture Kitchen in Canberra, Taring Padi in Jogyakarta and Gembel in Dili, Timor, a four part series of large works on fabric of small woodcuts, screenprints and painting struck Pat Hoffie as political art that really works as it is cross-disciplinary, cross cultural and 'seems to stretch out back to the fields of production rather than towards the empty field of the gallery.' —
Busy Work: Dreaming Time
Feature by Justine KhamaraJustine Khamara uses a scalpel to cut out tens of thousands of images from magazines. She then joins the often identical images to make very large assemblages. The artist sees the obsessive busywork that she does with her hands as providing her with space to dream and do the real work of sifting through the stuff in her head. —
Everybody's Working for the Weekend
Feature by partyofThis article was written by a mysterious Australian creative labour collective possibly based in Western Australia. It humorously analyses the special characteristics of creative work as against the goals of capitalism while simultaneously possessing an intense work ethic through looking at recent artworks by Matthew Hunt, Tarryn Gill and Pilar Mata Dupont, Rodney Glick and Lynnette Voevodin, and pvi collective. It concludes that the creative task of showing how the nature of work is historically and geographically located is vital. —
John Maitland's Energy Architecture
Feature by Mark ThomasJohn Maitland is the sole director of Energy Architecture, an Adelaide architecture firm committed to environmentally sound and socially responsible architecture established in 1990. —
Labour of Love: Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro
Feature by Zanny BeggThe latest work by Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro, artists who have been fruitfully collaborating for over seven years was shown at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2007. Called The Paper Trail it explores Paul Virilio's ideas about dromology (the science and logic of speed especially in relation to war) through thinking about the Mongolian Empire. A fantastic Mongolian Ger (a nomadic structure ordered on the internet), government archives, Johnson Solids and the Trailer of Death are some of the features of the installation which suggests complex and recurring layers to all globalisation. —
Mirroring our Dialogue: Danielle Freakley as 'The Quote Generator'
Feature by Penny TrotterThe Quote Generator is a three year public art project where the artist only speaks in quotes which she instantly attributes. For the first year Danielle Freakley will quote from commercial products, the second year from friends and acquaintances and the last year from herself in the past. —
Process, Production and the Invisible Line: Carly Fischer
Feature by Marcus KeatingCarly Fischer's work is on the cover of the Work issue of Artlink. Her latest exhibition at Helen Gory Galerie of everyday cleaning items and broken fluorescent tubes made from blue paper is art that is almost invisible but critiques consumerism and the culture of waste. —
Reskin: Intensive Collaboration
Feature by Daniel KojtaA fascinating participant report on an exciting collaborative project of great vision and experimentation. 'Reskin' 2007 was developed by the Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT), the Australian National University School of Art, the Centre for New Media Arts (CNMA) and Craft Australia. It brought twenty international and national artists, designers and technologists together under the guidance of seven professional wearable technology specialists at the forefront of their respective fields. The idea of Reskin, co-ordinated by Alexander Gillespie was to design wearable technologies for the body using the latest materials and methods. —
Soft Power - Confession: Leung Mee Ping
Feature by Binghui HuangfuHong-Kong based Leung Mee Ping sees the artist as a craftperson able to fabricate intricate work that makes the viewer revision the everyday. 'Memorising the Future' is an ongoing project of shoes made from felted human hair. It has been shown all over the world in major museums and now consists of more than 11,500 shoes. —
Taking Care of Business: Ash Keating
Feature by Anthony GardnerMelbourne-based artist Ash Keating's art practice is based on an ethic and aesthetic of recycling. He reinvents waste often for site-specific interventions - before disposing of the relics by recycling them responsibly. For 'Press Release' (2005-ongoing) he cut 6,500 copies of the same bird from magazines and has thrown them skywards, letting them soar to the ground, in atriums and galleries from Sydney to Santiago. In his videos he is seen at work deconstructing free newspapers or wrestling with large discarded vinyl banners. —
The Creative Potential of the Awkward: Sarah crowEST
Feature by Wendy WalkerA look at roughly the last five years of 2007 Samstag scholar Sarah crowEST's art practice of objects, performances and videos. CrowEST's manifesto is to maintain flexibility in her thinking; to do or consider the opposite of that which is usual or customary and to make something very messy. Her work often explores the functions of the alter ego in contemporary visual arts practice. —
The Hard Work
Feature by Michael KeigheryMichael Keighery, current Chair of Viscopy and past chair of NAVA and the Crafts Council of Australia reviews the apathy and ignorance of artist about their industrial, copyright and taxation rights. He draws attention to the hard worn, by NAVA and Artslaw, ruling by the Tax Office in 2005 that all kinds of artists can now claim their art business expenses against all forms of income. —
The Obsessive Compulsive Worker
Feature by Stephanie BrittonWhat does obsessive artwork mean? Is this a new compulsion among artists and what does it mean? The work of Hossein Valamanesh, Fiona Hall, Zhuang Hui, Zhang Huan, Shen Shaomin, Katsuhige Nakahashi are referenced. —
The Work of Art
Feature by Donald BrookArt theorist and Emeritus Professor of Visual Arts, Flinders University, Donald Brook examines the art world and its strange ways. Art, he says, is not craft nor the consequence of any exercise of skill at all but the artworld is infallible in identifying art. —
Throwing the Baby Out with the Bathwater
Feature by Felicity WrightThe CDEP (Community Development Employment Program) was axed by the Howard Federal Government throughout the Northern Territory though is still current in South Australia and Western Australia. The Program was launched in 1977 by the Fraser Government and has been a very valuable way of getting Aboriginal people to be engaged productive community memes in art centres and other activities. A number of key Aboriginal art centres rely on CDEP staff for printing, administration, preparators, artists and craftspeople. It is a vital component in building community self-reliance and pride. —
Unknown Worker in Art: Alan Lukey
Feature by James MossA retrospective survey of the work of Alan Lukey who died in 2003 aged 51 organised by fellow artist John Foubister with the help of Jill Lukey was shown at New Land Gallery in Port Adelaide, 21 April to 10 June 2007. Lukey was a South Australian artist who painted abstract and meditative works and lived on the Fleurieu Peninsula between 1977 and 2003. He also made public art works often in the shape of waves. —
Valuing Relationships: Concertina
Feature by Sera WatersConcertina is a group of seven artists, Katrina Weber, Ros Miller, Wendy Rushby, Kathryn Hill, Wendy Todd, Dana Kinter and Anny Gooden, who for six years have been working as a collective creating within self-prescribed boundaries. Once a year they set aside their own practices and embark upon a major collaborative project leading to an exhibition. Their latest venture meant one artist Anny Gooden stepping outside the group, she was overseas, and providing instructions to the others. The resulting exhibition, Text as Muse, was shown at Light Square Gallery from 27 June - 26 July 2007. —
We Can Work it Out: New Style Residencies in Asia
Feature by Georgia SedgwickSince the early nineties Asialink has helped to plunge 450 Australian artists into the proverbial deep end of arts practice, the overseas residency. Out of their comfort zones, far from friends and familiar comforts, the artists test their artwork and themselves in new cultural contexts. The recent experiences of Megan Keating in Taiwan, Danius Kesminas in Indonesia, Alwin Reamillo in the Philippines and Ben Morieson in Japan are described in all their variety and embrace of an increasingly Asia-literate world. —
Witnessing: Transcending the Public-Private Divide in Photography
Feature by Stacie BobeleReveries: Mortality and photography was curated for the National Portrait Gallery by Helen Ennis and shown from 27 April to 5 August 2007. This touring show will be at Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery from 19 March to 18 May 2008. It includes a wide range of approaches from the harrowing to the humorous. It includes work by Axel Poignant – a self-portrait with his last roll of film, Anne Ferran, Carol Jerrems, Craig Potton, William Yang, Anne Noble, Ruth Maddison, Bernie O'Regan and Jonathon Delacour who stopped taking photographs after this series of babies and their carers in intensive care. —
Work Wanted: Keith Wong
Feature by Keith WongAn artist advertising art in the yellow pages as an artwork turns out not to be a light matter. —
ACCA
Review by Saige WaltonAlmost Everywhere Apparent
Sonia Leber and David Chesworth
Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne
11 August – 30 September 2007
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Anne Mestitz
Review by Philip WatkinsElectric Love
Anne Mestitz
Bett Gallery, Hobart
4 August – 18 August 2007
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Fremantle Print Awards
Review by Judith McGrathFremantle Print Award 07
Fremantle Arts Centre
8 September - 21 October 2007
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Indigenous Triennial
Review by Daniel ThomasCulture Warriors: National Indigenous Art Triennial 07
Curator: Brenda L. Croft.
National Gallery of Australia, 13 October 2007 – 10 February 2008; touring to Art Gallery of South Australia, 20 June – 31 August 2008; Art Gallery of Western Australia, 20 September – 23 November 2008; Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, March–May 2009. (Note: The touring exhibition will be about 90 works rather than the 130 seen in Canberra.)
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Painting at SALA
Review by Lisa HarmsShades of the Real: a selective survey of tonal painting
Adelaide Central Gallery
20 July - 11 August 2007
artists: Morgan Allender, Nona Burden, Stephanie Crase, Kveta Deans, Louise Feneley, Mary-Jean Richardson, Chelsea Lehmann, Rachel Smyth, Deborah Trusson, Yve Thompson
Christian Lock
Greenaway Art Gallery
4 -29 July 2007
Kaylie Weir (in Noodle)
Premier Art Gallery SALA exhibition
3 August – 1 September 2007
Learning to Speak
Simone Kennedy
Artlab SALA Exhibition
3-19 August 2007
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Papunya Tjupi: A New Beginning
Review by Amanda MuscatPapunya Tjupi: A New Beginning
Ivan Dougherty Gallery
6 September – 6 October 2007
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Sara Elson
Review by Holly StorySarah Elson
Anigozanthos (eudaimonia hybrid)
5 August - 2 September 2007
Galerie Desseldorf, Perth
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Strange Fruit
Review by Maura EdmondStrange Fruit: Testimony and Memory in Julie Dowling's Portraits
Curator: Jeanette Hoorn
Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne
21 July - 14 October 2007
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Tautology
Review by Anneke JasperTautology
Emma White
9 - 26 August 2007
MOP Projects, Sydney
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Territorial
Review by Sarah ScottTerritorial
Canberra Contemporary Art Centre
June 2007
24 hr Art, Darwin
September – October 2007
ACT Artists: Silvia Vélez, Bernie Slater, Raquel Ormella
NT artists: Franck Gohier, Catriona Stanton, Gary Lee
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The Hours
Review by Jeff BrowittThe Hours: Visual Arts of Contemporary Latin America
Curator: Sebastian Lopez
Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
21 June - 2 September 2007
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The Ranger
Review by Stephanie RadokThe Ranger
Julie Gough
SASA Gallery, Adelaide
12-28 September 2007
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Topsy
Review by Holly ArdenTopsy
Eleanor Avery, Ray Cook, Kim Demuth, Alice Lang, David Spooner, Grubbanax Swinnasen. Curator Chris Comer
Metro Arts Galleries, Brisbane
5 – 22 September 2007
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X Strata Indigenous Art Awards
Review by George PetelinXstrata Coal Emerging Indigenous Art Award
GoMA, Brisbane
4 August – 11 November 2007 —
Other articles & reviews
in this issue
- Artrave
By Edblog - Australian Pastoral by Jeanette Hoorn
Review: book by Joanna Mendelssohn