In the Wake of Gesture: Architecture and the Handmade

Architecture has long since surrendered the tactile in favour of grander visions. Through an examination of Sandra Seligs recent work Synthetic Infinite at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney and the unique responses to architecture and the handmade that this work displays, Murray attempts to question how we might then consider architecture and our relationship with built matter to restore a direct connection with human experience.

Published March 2005

Petrified Nature: Julia Robinson and Morgan Allender, Birds and Bees, Louise Flaherty

Downtown Art Space, Adelaide
28 October - 6 November 2004

The Project Space, CACSA, Adelaide
29 October - 5 December 2004

Published March 2005

Artrave

Published March 2005

For Nothing

The Bank, Midland, WA
26 November - 14 January 2005

Published March 2005

Patrick Hall's Cabinets of Everyday Curiosities

For Hughes, Patrick Halls cabinets recall the great elaborately decorated cabinets of the 17th century. Rather than mere decoration, Halls cabinets express a poetry of the everyday that is neither a condescending celebration nor a critical analysis but a deeply personal response to his materiel.

Published March 2005

Vivienne Westwood

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
12 November 2004 - 30 January 2005

Published March 2005

Unpacking 'Il Cretino Veloci' or 'The Fast Idiot'

Thomson pays tribute to an increasing minority of Australians devalued for getting their hands in the mucky stuff. As he proclaims ...people who make things with their hands for a living are seen as a hopeless anachronism rooted to the ground. In an age where the majority of the Australian population now work in what are termed the service industries, the ability to apply ones motor skills are making for a society who rarely needs to use those funny slabs of flesh at the end of our arms.

Published March 2005

The Darkroom in the Age of Post-Film Photography

In both amateur and professional photography the few multinational corporations that control the industry have collectively marshalled their marketing strategies to capitalise on recent advances in digital technology. Jolly looks at the shifting photographic trends, their viability and the increasing loss of intimate image-making.

Published March 2005

Christian de Vietri: The Nature of Things

Goddard de Fiddes Gallery, Perth
27 November - 18 December 2004

Published March 2005

Hand to Mouse: Design and the Handmade

There have always been cycles in the making of what we describe as art, crafts and design, where surges of new ideas have been followed by revivals of earlier values or reform movements that challenge both. The Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, is working on an exhibition for late 2006, on the interface between art, design, industry and the values of the handmade. Cochranes hope is that it will challenge audiences to look closely at some of the exciting working relationships that are possible.

Published March 2005

Australian Drawing Now: Labouring Lightly

The on again/off again love affair between drawing and contemporary art practice seems to have been going on ad nauseam. From the sixties through to the present day, ongoing tensions between the apparent values of traditional and conceptual art have resulted in much of today's appreciation for the reworking of both aesthetics in what has become a new labour of love.

Published March 2005

Domestic Arts in the White Cube

There exists an increasing number of artists - mostly women - creating art using what have been known, somewhat disparagingly, as domestic arts: knitting, crochet, sewing, tatting, embroidery. For many of these artists the choice of method is integral to what the work is saying, the making - the journey - as important as the result, even if that journey is not immediately obvious to the viewer.

Published March 2005