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Art & Surveillance

Guest co-editors Virginia Fraser and Natalie King.
This issue of Artlink approaches the prying curiosity of surveillance, scopophilia, and compulsive and clandestine looking. Texts by artists, curators, writers and academics alongside images by artists who use photography, video, film, electronic networking, installation, performance and painting reveal some of the social implications of watching and the way that watching is framed. From surreptitious encounters to self-exploitation, they uncover the uneasy questions about who is looking at whom for power or pleasure. What is clear is that people love to watch! Including Judy Annear, Geoffrey Batchen, Djon Mundine and Adrian Martin.

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Articles in vol 31 no 3, 2011
A Job for the dogs: the ASIO pictures
Feature by Haydn Keenan

Award-winning filmmaker Haydn Keenan has spent the last five years getting haunted, while going through 'a gold mine' of stills and film collected by ASIO in the sixties and seventies, for his documentary series 'Persons of Interest'. — More »

Are you being watched? Who are you watching?
Feature by Deeksha Nath

New Delhi-based critic and curator Deeksha Nath looks at recent projects by the Raqs Media Collective (Monica Narula, Jeebesh Bagchi and Shuddhabrata Sengupta) dealing with surveillance. — More »

Art on the run: Ubiquitous Mobility and the Camera Phone
Feature by Daniel Palmer

Well-known commentator on photography and senior lecturer in art theory at Monash University Dr Daniel Palmer examines the promiscuity of the gaze in recent art using mobile and online media. — More »

Batesian mimicry and Urban scarecrows
Feature by Kate Fulton

An Australian artist based in Berlin Kate Fulton is the Site Manager of HomeBase LAB. In 2006-7 she made a series of bogus surveillance cameras commenting on the false construct of authority. — More »

Clinical and Critical: from Von Trier to Haneke
Feature by Adrian Martin

Legendary film critic Adrian Martin examines the inclusion of low tech digital footage in many recent films including the 'Paranormal Activity' horror-thrillers by Oren Peli and 'The Video Diary of Ricardo Lopez' by Sami Saif. — More »

Contemporary Chinese Art Full article available
Feature by Christen Cornell

Christen Cornell manages Local Consumption Publications and 'Artspace China' a blog on contemporary Chinese culture. Currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Sydney on China's contemporary art districts her article outlines the very latest developments in this volatile field. — More »

Don't go kissing at the garden gate
Feature by Brenda L Croft

Indigenous artist, curator, writer and lecturer at the University of South Australia Brenda Croft looks back at the courtship of her parents and their early life together in her 1996 photographic series 'Don't go kissing at the garden gate' shown at the Australian Centre for Photography and regionally. — More »

Gaze without subjectivity: Kohei Yoshiyuki and Yoko Asakai
Feature by Shihoko Iida

Curator and writer Shihoko Iida analyses the stratified links of the gaze and the voyeur element in the photographic work of Kohei Yoshiyuki that shows couples and peeping toms in parks and that of Yoko Asakai which shows people watching movies at home. — More »

How to catch a Rooman: Fleur Elise Noble
Feature by Peter Drew

Adelaide-based artist and writer Peter Drew interviewed South Australian Fleur Elise Noble whose acclaimed drawing-animation performance 'The 2-Dimensional Life of Her' has taken her around the world. He found Noble about to leave the city for the outback with a new character 'Rooman' who first came to her in a dream. — More »

Inside the museum: surveilled
Feature by Regan Forrest

PhD candidate on museum visitor experience Regan Forrest describes the fascinating field of museum surveillance where spectators are unknowingly being watched in old and new ways - from paper and pencil to MONA's 'O'. — More »

It's rude to stare: Bill Henson revisited Full article available
Feature by Helen McDonald

Art historian and author of the book Erotic Ambiguities: the Female Nude in Art (2001) Helen McDonald examines 'The Henson affair' of 2008. — More »

Neighbourhood watching
Feature by Destiny Deacon

Melbourne-based blak artist Destiny Deacon provides some insight into her inquisitive nature and the stickybeaking she sees as endemic in the world, especially towards indigenous people. — More »

Night vision goggles Full article available
Feature by Jon Cattapan

Melbourne painter Jon Cattapan was a war artist in East Timor where he wore night vision goggles. This reminded him of earlier moments of surveillance from a balcony apartment in St Kilda in the eighties. — More »

People love to watch: From Mr Rumbold to Julian Assange Full article available
Feature by Natalie King Virginia Fraser

The editors of 'Surveillance' Natalie King and Virginia Fraser describe how they put this issue together - from surreptitious encounters to self-exploitation. — More »

Surreptitious Pictures
Feature by Geoffrey Batchen

Professor of Art History at Victoria University, Wellington, NZ and author of 'Photography Degree Zero' Geoffrey Batchen writes about the secret history of secret cameras. — More »

Surveillance art: Genre and Political Action
Feature by Anne Marsh

Professor of Art History at Monash University and author of Look: Contemporay Australian Photography Dr Anne Marsh reviews art about surveillance that is often lens-based and/or performative from Jane Burton to Catherine Bell, Paul Batt to Denis Beaubois. — More »

Surveillance was not the artwork
Feature by Neil Evans

Painter and former conceptual artist Neil Evans remembers the 1972 event he masterminded on the corner of George and Market Streets in Sydney. — More »

The way you look at me
Feature by Nusra Qureshi

Pakistan-born Melbourne-based Nusra Qureshi who often works collaboratively with Naeem Rana describes their works focusing on eye adornment in religiously segregated societies. — More »

Three secrets
Feature by Djon Mundine

Bandjalung curator and writer Djon Mundine says there are three kinds of secrets - the secrets you keep from others, the secrets you share with others and the secrets others keep from you. — More »

Treading the fault-line of inter-cultural relations in Alice Springs
Feature by Kieran Finnane

Alice Springs-based writer Kieran Finnane explicates the long roots of the project 'Pmere Arntarntareme / Watching This Place' and how it points towards a different kind of future where 'there is no us and them' for the residents of Mparntwe (Alice Springs). — More »

Visibility: a survey of major recent exhibitions and publications on surveillance art
Feature by Jane Button

Dr Jane Button provides a rich viewing of recent exhibitions and texts concerned with self-scrutiny, the scrutiny of others and strategies of control from 'Proof: The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes' curated by Mike Stubbs at ACMI to 'against the grain/tim burns/survey' at the AEAF. — More »

Why photograph people? Sousveillance from Hippolyte Bayard to Sue Ford
Feature by Judy Annear

Senior Curator of Photography at the Art Gallery of New South Wales Judy Annear looks at artists who photograph themselves. — More »


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