Artrave

City councils are not generally known for their finesse when dealing with sensitive political issues - or art - and when the two collide the rule of thumb seems to be when in doubt shut it down. Which is what happened in the western suburbs of Sydney in November when Zanny Begg put up her previously approved work for a community exhibition titled [out of gallery] project - part of The Western Front, organised by the Blacktown Art Gallery. Acting on an order by the local Council police stopped her as she was installing Checkpoint, a series of 10 life-sized placards of a soldier on various hoardings, fences, walls and car parks around Blacktown designated as 'checkpoints' for 'weapons of mass distraction'. They told her to remove them: in a climate of terrorism it was inappropriate to show such political messages and that if she did not comply she would be taken to the police station and fined.

More from this Issue

The Sounds of Silence

Through traditional method, an explicit residue of manual labour, and a constructed subject, Ricky Swallows wooden work suggests a past tense, which leads the viewer backwards through the material history of the work. The Defining aspects of Swallows approach are distinctly framed in the western tradition of the artisan and the language of figuration.

Damiano Bertoli

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.

Kit Wise

Disorientate: Colour, Geometry and the Body

John Aslanidis, Paul Boam, John Dunkley-Smith, NeilHaddon, John Plapp, Wilma Tabacco Plimsoll Gallery, University of Tasmania, Hobart 15 October - 7 November 2004

Philip Watkins

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.

Grace Cochrane

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.

Mark Thomson

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

Sera Waters

Batik and Kris: Duality of the Javanese Cosmos

Perc Tucker Regional Gallery 10 September - 7 November 2004

Joanna Barrkman

Getting Off Your Face With a Destructive Character

Christian Capurros Another Misspent Portrait of Etienne de Silhouette documents the act of erasure over a period of five years, with the artist asking family, friends, artists and others to each erase a page from the male fashion rag Vogue Hommes. Each rubber was asked to record how long it took them to rub out their page, the results were then tallied.

Justin Clemens

Pixel Perfect: The Craft of Photography in the Age of Digital Reproduction.

Walkling proclaims that something is being mourned that has to do with the physical object and its associated labour, in the meantime the distinction between amateur and professional photographer is lessening as this particular creative niche is becoming more automated.

Les Walkling

The Hand in Making

The Tamworth Fibre Textile Biennial began in 1975 and every two years a collection of contemporary fibre textile work tours nationally to metropolitan and regional audiences. For Attiwill, guest curator of the 16th Biennial, the spark for the exhibition A Matter of Time came from Sue Rowleys wisdom: it is useful to think of craft in terms of multiple temporalities, A Matter of Time is an exploration of this usefulness.

Suzi Attiwill

Mary Scott - Skirted

Criterion Gallery, Hobart 28 October - 23 November 2004

Felix Ratcliff

The Art of Outsourcing

While our romantic inheritance imagines artists working in isolation, this is changing. Increasingly, successful artists are working with teams of technicians who contribute precious amounts of skill, time and experience to the final work. Harvey looks at the relationships between artists, apprentices and their creations within the realm of tactile, three-dimensional art and some of the apparent concerns associated.

Nicola Harvey

View all articles in this issue