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More from this Issue
Food Slut > Manifesto
Food increasingly became alienated from the body over the latter half of the twentieth century. Its material, its preparation, its distribution and its consumption became hostage to the banal aesthetics of the food stylist, the aridity of cultural studies and the repressive partnership of the public health zealot and the liability lawyer. Paul van Reyk here presents a manifesto on the food slut, a model for the examination of current food consumption trends in our society. As he states, a food slut is never indifferent to food, any more than a sex slut is indifferent to sex.
New 04
Guy Benfield, Nadine Christensen, Stephen Honegger & Anthony Hunt, Tom Nicholson, Sangeeta Sandrasegar, Parekohai Whakomoe Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne 23 March - 16 May 2004
Repercussions: Individual and Collaborative Works
Peter Hennessey & Patricia Piccinimi Greenaway Gallery, Adelaide 28 February - 28 March 2004
Songs of Australia: Volume 16
Aleks Danko The Ian Potter Centre, NGV Australia Melbourne (and touring) 7 February - 18 April 2004
How Much is that Artwork in the Window? Notes on Shops and Art
Through reference to Walter Benjamin's writings, Peers suggests that it has become commonplace to describe the city in terms of the progress of the flaneur, the middle class bohemian who strolled through the city, moving in the ephemeral sphere of impressions and images. This article looks at shopping as a central feature to the manner in which Australian art and culture has developed. The artist is a shopper and collector, moving through the materiality of things. Australian culture has itself become flaneur-ised over the past decade in the expansion of new museums and cultural precincts inviting discovery and added pleasure to the experiences of viewing and consuming art.
2004 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Contemporary Photomedia
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide 29 February - 30 May 2004
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.
The Perverted Gaze of the Artist: Recent Work of James Guppy
James Guppy has a curiously ambiguous place in contemporary art. This is not because of his subject matter, but rather because of his technique. For the most part Guppys recent work is not about fun, nor is it even really about sex. Rather he argues it is about the nature of exploitation. He argues that artists by their nature are voyeurs who see the world around them and all its objects as items to be used as visual product. His recent Peeping Box series taps into this idea where images of sexual activity with a particular sadistic overlay are presented behind thick glass to incite some vain attempt on the part of the viewer to engage in such voyeuristic acts.