Artlink on the Road: a China Diary

March saw a little bit of history being made in Sino-Australian cultural relations with Artlink being the first Australian art magazine to be launched as well as offered for sale in China. Perversely we were not offering the Chinese an issue of the magazine about Australia, our normal subject area, but about China, a subject area we have only visited occasionally. In the manner of all human vanities that may have been one of the reasons we received such a warm reception. Imagining the reverse - reading an issue of a Chinese art magazine about Australian art is in the current state of art writing in China unlikely.

More from this Issue

Flatness Packed

While the idea of modern and contemporary art are located in a fairly nebulous discursive realm, the notion of modern or contemporary lifestyle (the two seem, in fact, interchangeable) are very much a part of the familiar rhetoric of consumer spending. No Nonsense Return Policy (2003), Pat Foster and Jen Bereans installation at BUS Gallery, documented six miss-assembled items of IKEA furniture and dissect the curious aesthetic cycles that drive the commercial products in both realms. Taylor looks at this work and others which are focused on drawing attention to the formal and ideological intersections between modernism and the stuff of homes and home decoration.

Alex Taylor

In The Vein

Gallery 25, Mildura April 18 June 6, 2004

Ian Hamilton

One or Two Things about Art and Shopping

This article explores the relationship between art and shopping, in particular the contemporary alignment of the two as one and the way feminist identity is largely constructed through the media and consumption. Wilson looks at the work of Barbara Kruger and her critique of Western consumer habits, in particular the way Kruger explores the different shopping patterns of men and women to reflect some inherent gender traits.

Josephine Wilson

Art of the Biotech Era: Art, Culture and Biotechnology

Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide 27 February - 3 April 2004

Julianne Pierce

Joan Kerr, Art Historian: February 1938 - February 2004

Joan Kerr, Art Historian, February 1938 - February 2004

Craig Judd

Artists' Week

Adelaide Bank 2004 Festival of Arts 28 February - 4 March

Stephanie Britton

2004 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Contemporary Photomedia

Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide 29 February - 30 May 2004

Maria Bilske

Group Material

Ben Booth, Neil Haddon, Anthony johnson, Anna Phillips, Lucia Usmiani and Kit Wise The Queen's Warehouse Gallery Tasmanaian museum and Art Gallery, Hobart 18 March - 2 May 2004

Phillip Watkins

Chaotic Attractors: Jake Chapman Lecture Tour 04

The two hours of Jake Chapmans lecture at the Capitol Theatre in Melbourne in March 2004 were in many ways a homage to Modernism and the aesthetic of industry - albeit back-handed. The hierarchies of art history, the possibility of the poetic and the tradition of humanism all came under attack. The core issue circled around throughout the discussion was the degree to which art was simply a diversion for the middle-class: a market-responsive product or cathartic moment in which people could be and even pay for the privilege of being shocked.

Kit Wise

Transmission and a Selection from 32 Cars for the 20th Century - Play Mozart's Requiem Quietly

Nam June Palik Sydney Opera House Forecourt 8 -26 January 2004 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 26 February - April 2004

Penny Craswell

Captive Bait: The Work of Jose Da Silva

Daniel Mudie Cunningham

Temperature

Museum of Brisbane 11 March - 23 May 2004

Susan Ostling

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