The position of long-term visitor or unfaithful citizen affords a view from both within a culture and outside it. The art of Pasifika is as diverse as its people, it is a 21st Century hybrid reality. Pasifika is urban.
Melbourne is the host city of the South Project, a project designed to celebrate the creative energies of people living in the southern hemisphere and create south-south dialogue between artists of the countries of the south. South 1 encouraged all kinds of responses: philosophical and whimsical, creative and conceptual, contesting and renewing ideas, in the first gathering of its kind.
The artists featured in ACMIs latest exhibition of new media work, SenseSurround, both use and develop cutting edge audio/visual technology to enhance sensorial experience for the spectator. The idea was to use the film soundtrack to trigger massively boosted low frequency signals, below the audible threshold, in the theatres. This would cause vibrations of the ear-drum and the body of the spectator and provide the sensation of earth tremors.
During his visit to Melbourne in April this year, Bombay-born, Oxford-educated, Harvard professor, Homi Bhabha spoke of Vernacular Cosmopolitanism, the global citizenry of refugees, economic migrants and minorities within cultures who must learn about translation because you survive that way.
PerceptualDifference John Curtin Gallery, Perth 8 September - 12 December Curator: Chris Malcolm BigDifference Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, Perth 12 September - 3 October Curators: Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr
Out of the dark - night shots from indigenous artists is an exhibition I experienced online via the cyberTribe website. If you have not browsed the site, then you should. WiseART Gallery in Brisbane presented the physical exhibition from 7 –27 August.
Britton follows up from Peers examination of Art and Globalism to discuss the trends of international art residencies and the evident exchange in cultural values and creative receptibility that comes as a result of working in a foreign country; the buying of time away from other strategies for staying solvent - part time or full time jobs, or feeling under pressure to make work with commercial appeal.
Bridget Riley is an artist who has pursued her own agenda for over thirty years with no concessions and has made a place for herself within the heart of the art world not only with her work but through her extraordinary desire and willingness to communicate. On the occasion of her major survey exhibition in Sydney in the summer of 2004 at the Museum of Contemporary Art she kindly assembled for Artlink some excerpts from some of these interviews.