On Your (Motor)bike - REVIEW: Reason and Emotion, Biennale of Sydney, 2004, and 2004: Australian Culture Now, Melbourne

Sydney Biennale bad, 2004 in Melbourne good. The artworld's consensus locked in quick and hard. Fair? Of course not. Why compare the two, anyway? Because the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) seemed to set it up that way, by the timing of their show. They certainly took as 2004's model the nationally bound Whitney Biennial and, in particular, the Art Gallery of New South Wales's Perspecta exhibitions (last one 1999) - in turn established to counter the perceived internationalism of the Sydney Biennale.

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The Sea Is In Them: Narelle Autio and Trent Parke

Narelle Autio and her partner in life and work, Trent Parke, completed a 16-month journey around Australias coastline in 2004. The two set out to document the culture of Australian coastal dwellers with an exhibition lined up at the Australian Centre for Photography the following year. Baxter speaks of her first encounter with the works of these remarkable photographers and goes on to offer some insight into the profundity encapsulated by these images.

Virginia Baxter

On Being Fair

Stephanie Britton

Fabrics of Change: Trading Identities

Flinders University Art Museum 18 June - 1 August 2004

Stephanie Radok

Artrave

Artlink

MFC's and Gunter Christmann

Gunter Christmann was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1936. After two years in Canada, he arrived in Australia in 1959 and studied, somewhat casually, at the National Art School, Sydney, from 1962 to 1965. This article looks at the life and work of Christmann, that shambolic figure who, even as he is approaching his seventieth year, shows something of the perpetual youthful student. From his dress and demeanour to his his sloping walk and willingness to talk to the people he knows. A self taught artist, Christmann once saw his work as Geometric Abstraction and now states that the only major difference in style is the lack of intellectual order imposed on the work.

John McPhee

Three Colours: Gordon Bennett and Peter Robinson

Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne 8 April - 4 July Travelling to Victoria, Tasmanaia, Queensland, NZ July 2004 - July 2006

Juliette Peers

Brad Nunn: Machine Gun Walker

Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane 30 April - 29 May 2004

Timothy Morrell

The Poetics of Agoraphobia

Polish/Australian artist Gosia Wlodarczak draws obsessively, as a means of engaging with a biological cognitive bedrock. By drawing out the duration of her being she avoids the burden of memories and hope. This, she thinks, will lighten the weight of ideology that oppresses her with its exaggerated claims of authenticity...Ideology is already manifest in her sence of self, freedom and individual consciousness. It is even there in the languages she lives between; in her name, in her history, a graduate of the Poznan Academy of Fine Arts in Poland, now living in inner-city Perth.

Ian McLean

Peter Timms' 'What's wrong with contemporary art'

Blak Insights Queensland Art Gallery 3 July - 30 October 2004

Pat Hoffie

Sue Richter. On Colour: Whiteblack Red

24HRArt, Darwin 9 July - 7 August 2004 Araleun Arts Centre, Alice Springs 3 April - 9 May 2004

Anne Mosey

What's Mine Is Yours: Touching the Surface of the Practice of Sue Ford

Melbourne artist Sue Fords 2003 photographic series Continuum is a suitable portal through which Stanhope looks at aspects of Fords work, a practice that has consistently evinced strength of vision and a humanistic philosophy, rich in connecting personal and local subjects to the field of national culture, social politics and the nature of individual existence. Continuum looks at the aftermath of bushfires and is aligned with her passionate reflection and documentation of the nature of our being in both time and place. If there is one medium that records time it is photographs - Sue Ford.

Zara Stanhope

Blak Insights

Queensland Art Gallery 3 July - 30 October 2004

Pat Hoffie

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