The Dave Inside
About the work and fame of Las Vegas based art writer Dave Hickey. Like all icons Dave comes with a portable, pocketable, mythology. A pungent blend of his own statements, press hype, rumour and dubious speculation.
More from this Issue
Can Culture Save the River and Wetlands?
This question 'can culture save the river and wetlands'was put to a debating panel at the annual conference of Country Arts SA in October 2003. The river in question was the Murray. This article takes up some of the important issues surrounding environmental degredation and focuses on the SunRise 21 Artists in Industry Project which saw the collaboration of artists and organizations working together to establish a mutual relationship between arts and the environment.
This was the Future, the McClelland Sculpture award and Sculpture at RMIT during the Jomantas Years 1961-1987
RMIT Gallery, Storey Hall, Melbourne 21 July - 13 September 2003 McClelland Art Gallery, Langwarrin 4 November 2003 - 8 March 2004 Heide Museum of Modern Art, Bulleen 4 October - 7 December 2003
The Real Thing: Recent Art of Derek Kreckler
The twenty-first century, it seems, will not be the age of manifestos. Like advertising campaigns and the design of cars and other consumer items, contemporary art has started to look the same....there is no agenda, no politics, no historical claims . As McLean states, for Derek Kreckler, the point of being an artist today is not how well you resist this condition, but how well you can bend it to your own ends. Krecklers work is here positioned in a postminimalist rather than a postmodernist framework.
To Begin With: Five Tasmanian Artists
Bett Gallery, North Hobart 28 November - 24 December 2003 Curated by Richard Wasteil
Signs of the Times: Stephen Page, Sacred Symposium, Adelaide Biennale
Stephen Page is the first Artistic Director of the Adelaide Festival of Arts to be indigenous and his program for 2004 includes indigenous works but perhaps not many more than most Adelaide Festivals, which have always had a significant indigenous component. Yet there is a sense that the commissions that Page has initiated represent a maturity in approach and development that signifies a watershed for Indigenous culture in Australia. Page expects it to be optimistic, philosophical, constructive, to reflect on the fusion of the old and new without bastardization.
Ara Irititja: Protecting the Past, Accessing the Future - Indigenous Memories in a Digital Age
White fellatechnology was once considered a threat to Anangu culture and identity, but when iMacs, data-projectors and printers turned up in Anangu communities, they attracted a great deal of interest and excitement. The above mentioned title was an exhibition that opened at the South Australian Museum in October 2003 and comprised of three remarkable multimedia interactive databases which stand to offer unique opportunities to investigate pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara peoples history and culture.
The Second Experiment: Floating Land 2003
Floating Land 2003 was an event held as part of Noosa Regional Gallerys second major biennial site-specific art project that ended in high drama at 3am on the top of a mountain and one that unexpectedly created a new lobby group. The emphasis for this project was on experimentation both in terms of the art and the notion of what consitutes an event/festival that takes place over a period of time.
In the Far North-West
Colin Koch is the coordinator of Ku Arts, the artists representative and development body, a role which requires him to make the journey up into the northern regions of South Australia, land belonging to the Anangu people, once every six weeks. Koch discusses the significance of Ku Arts: some of the hurdles they have had to overcome and the subsequent milestones this regional indigenous arts centre has acheived.
Young South Australian Art
This article is about hip young artists working outside the field of contemporary art. Even if the changes of the last forty years have meant that liking things for being cool and fashionable has generally lost its polemical significance, my sense is that this still may hold some currency with regard to the specific condition of contemporary art in South Australia . Strickland examines the work of South Australian artist Magosia Miow.