Snapshot of a Culture

Cover of Snapshot of a Culture
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Writing through the archive: the art writing marathon
Feature
Jacqueline Millner
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Ethics and aesthetics: D Harding, Luciano Benetton and Terra Incognita: inclusiveness is a good way
Feature
Ian McLean

Published 30 March 2022
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In conversation: Sebastian Goldspink and Una Rey
Feature
Sebastian Goldspink and Una Rey

Published 30 March 2022
Artshub
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The museum fell silent
Feature
Elspeth Pitt

Published 30 March 2022
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Kings of wishful thinking: internet irony and its illusionary critics
Feature
Olivia Bennett

Published 30 March 2022
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Damper is a language word for art
Feature
Dominique Chen

Published 30 March 2022
NAVA
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Someone has to be innocent: a reflection on the post-2020 art critic
Feature
John Mateer

Published 30 March 2022
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A case for writing contemporary art history
Feature
Aneta Trajkoski

Published 30 March 2022

A conference about Indigenous arts and crafts was held in 1999 and was a useful sounding board for issues from the new Label of Authenticity and copyright, to the new Goods and Services Tax and art in cyberspace.

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More from this Issue Full Issue Contents

Political Theatre in Beyond the Pale
Feature
John Kean

The Adelaide Biennial of Australian Artin 2000 was a survey of new indigenous art titled Beyond the Pale. This attempt to show the best of new work was staged as a series of rooms each with a different mood from baskets and shimmering paintings to rooms of confrontation where works invited viewers to be shocked by figures of authority seen in very unflattering mode.

Published March 2000
Art in Warmun community
Feature
Susan Hartley

A new art centre at Warmun in the Kimberly of WA is a showcase for the talents of the artists of the area, some of whom used to work on big pastoral stations in this remote area. Celebrated founders of the centre were Rover Thomas and Queenie Mckenzie. There are tensions between their interests and those of white landowners in relation to access to 'country' being denied. Young people are unable to have a traditional education and are becoming westernised through videos.

Published March 2000
The Indigenous Visual Arts Industry: Issues and Prospects for the Next Decade
Feature
Jon Altman

The economics of indigenous art is analysed in detail in relation to production, collection and distribution, consumption, developments in the 1990s, prospects for the next decade, tourist art, protection of intellectual property, quality control, authenticity and leadership.

Published March 2000
Polemic: From the 21st Century and Through the Telescope
Feature
Janet Maughan

Polemic: There has been a paradigm shift in Australia with the development of Aboriginal art, which may be as consequential as that of the Impressionists. Over the last 30 years Aboriginal artists have been making their voices heard and now make up at least 25% of the country's working visual artists though they are only 1.7% of the population. Their art will go down in history as providing new perspectives with which to view the world

Published March 2000
Health and Art: Can art make people (feel) well?
Feature
Felicity Wright

Art can function in a wide range of ways beyond what is normally regarded as its arena. It can empower by raising confidence, providing income which can be used to improve diet and living conditions, it can be therapeutic, liberating and provide an emotional and intellectual outlet, while posters and TV ads can convey important messages about health issues. When a culture is strong the people are healthy.

Published March 2000
M.N. Tjapaltjarri
Tribute
Richard (Dick) Kimber

A tribute to Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri born c.1926 in Pintupi country and who died in 1998. He lived in Papunya and was encouraged by Geoff Bardon to start painting and was a member of the Papunya Tula Artists Company. By 1991 when he won the National Aboriginal Art Award his works were being acquired by national collections and many other collectors.

Published March 2000
Judy Watson's etched zinc wall at Bunjilaka
Feature
Gaye Sculthorpe

Queensland artist Judy Watson spent three months in Melbourne on a commission for a zinc wall around 50 metres long for the Bunjilaka gallery at the new Museum Melbourne. Watson used motifs relating to Aboriginal material culture in the etched panels of this work.

Published March 2000
Challenging boundaries: Indigenous Art in Three Dimensions
Feature
Doreen Mellor

Recent Indigenous 3-D work is regarded as both art and craft. The materials range from shell and rushes to scrap steel, grass, ceramic, glass and bull kelp; the works may be vessels, installations, necklaces, small figures etc. The works often contain explicit references to cultural or historical truths eg the figures by WA artist Joyce Winsley which recall characters from her youth in the country, or Lola Greeno's water containers made in the traditional way from bull kelp .

Published March 2000
Tandanya: One City and a Festival
Feature
Darryl Pfitzner Millika

3SPACE -C21st Indigenous Explorers was an exhibition by Darryl Pfitzner Millika, Mark Blackman and David Pearce for the 2000 Adelaide Festival. In common is their shared history as contemporary indigenous artists in Adelaide, the city which had the first indigenous art centre Tandanya, a powerful catalyst for many enterprises which without it would not have been so well presented or widely seen.

Published March 2000
Charting Co-existence
Feature
Maurice O+Riordan

Mapping Our Countries was an exhibition at the short-lived Djamu Gallery in Sydney, curated by artist Judy Watson and archaeologist Dr Paul Taon. They collected objects and works of art to illustrate how
they relate to the idea of mapping land or sea. Mapping is done for a huge variety of reasons, for exploiting resources, for proving theories, for simply finding one's way.

Published March 2000
Remote Area Computer Art: Multi-Media Talent Emerges in Yuendumu
Feature
Sue Angel

Donovan Rice is a young Warlpiri man who has virtually taught himself to make computer art in the remote community of Yuendumu. He is making digital images and animations which relate to his own cultural situation against the backdrop of a chronically disfunctional society. He works under the aegis of Warlpiri Media, a community-run media resource centre and TV production house.

Published March 2000
Boomalli: Fact or Fantasy: you decide!
Feature
Ken Watson

Boomalli, founded in 1987, enters an unlikely future where anonymous benefactors help them to buy premises in an inner city suburb, to employ curators and become independent of funding bodies. Tax-free havens are set up for indigenous artists in NSW and Boomalli members exhibit regularly at MOMA in New York.

Published March 2000
 
Desert Mob
ACE Open
Goulburn Regional Art Gallery
The David Roche Foundation