Improving Their Bodies, Improving Our Bodies

Anne Quain is a veterinary student living in Sydney and through this text explores the notion of animal/human relationships and the cloning of adult animals. This idea is discussed in the context of contemporary consumer society, and the question is raised: Might replacing a body become an economically more feasible alternative to treating an existing body? Would animals become disposable? Although she is here referring to a process having only been explored through fiction, she makes the point that it may not be far off.

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The Bank West Inaugural Contemporary Art Prize, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art

8 November 2001 - 26 January 2002

David Dolan

Love and Death: Art in the Age of Queen Victoria

Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide 7 December 2001 - 3 February 2002

Vesna Drapac

Animal Magnetism: Sharon Goodwin and the Eternal Romance of the Bestial

The work of Sharon Goodwin is directly influenced by the Coles Funny Picture Books which create a bizarre Victorian world where human and animal promiscuously cross over. Here people are frequently turned into animals, and the qualities of animals emerge in humans through vices of personality. Goodwin's exhibition which was held at Uplands Gallery in Melbourne, Victoria in November 2001 presented a series of portraits of bestial humans or humanised animals repainted from Cole's woodcuts. Goodwin has introduced crude lines and stitching and patching in the images to represent the frequent actualisation of plastic surgery in contemporary society.

Juliette Peers

The Extra Ear (or an ear on an arm)

What characterises all of Stelarc's projects and performances is the notion of the prosthetic. The EXTRA EAR is a project Stelarc has been fostering since 1997 and the problems lie in finding the appropriate medical assistance to realise it. Constructing the EXTRA EAR would involve a number of procedures, over approximately 8-10 months. Techniques from Cosmetic, Re-constructive and Orthopaedic surgery are necessary. Here Stelarc outlines some of the essential steps in constructing the EXTRA EAR and discusses the nature of this radical project.

Stelarc

Hema Upadhyay, The Nymph and the Adult, Sung Kwon Park, (un)real, Eugene Carchesio, On Contemporary $ilence

Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane 1 December - 26 January

Alison Kubler

Uniform: Kate Just

Penthouse & Pavement 4 - 26 January 2002

Jazmina Cininas

Sex in the Cyborg: Julie Rrap's Overstepping

This article follows in the footsteps of Julie Rrap's Overstepping, the digital print that won the 2001 Hermann's Art Award, at a time when geneticists are close to patenting a hybrid body. This image is a snapshot merging of the developed and the evolved, it can trigger a complex mix of fear and desire at a time when flesh has become protean and everything else morphologically dubious.

George Alexander

The Theatrics of Cloning: The Recent Paintings of Juan Ford

Juan Ford's recent exhibition Clone is a series of portraits of doppelgangers trapped within neo-realistic hallucinatory environments that are rich in attributes taken from technological culture. The juxtaposition of traditional painterly portraiture with objects taken from recent technologies uncovers the sense of mystery that these new technologies provide for us. Trotter looks at Ford's practice within the context of our post-modern society, discussing relevant issues of capitalist culture as 'narcissistic' and the breakdown of a consistent personal identity within it.

Penny Trotter

Carnophilia

This text is concerned with the notion of animal and human hybridity, as examined in a historical and contemporary context through the myth of King Minos of Crete and more recently the work of artists such as Damien Hirst and John Kelly. From the shadowy overlap between species that the minotaur depicts to such contemporary models of animal/ human formation as the fictitious Spiderman, such figures of the imagination remind us of the diminishing gap between science fact and science fiction.

Kit Wise

Jane Trengove

Jane Trengoves new paintings of monkey faces are the latest work in her long investigation into the human/animal interface. Trengoves intention with her series Looking Back is to grasp the moment of recognition from the human point of view and reverse the subject and object positions of the gaze. Trengove was born in Melbourne and studied at East Sydney Tech and at the Victorian College of the Arts.

Jane Trengove

Neo Tokyo - Japanese Art Now

Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney 10 November 2001 - 10 February 2002

Kiersten Fishburn

Lynne Roberts-Goodwin

Lynne Roberts-Goodwins work with birds is the latest chapter in her 20-year practice using digital photography. Her current work involves the research and image capture/production of animal habitat and migration using infrared and supplementary daylight fibre-optic lighting with digital image and video capture technologies.

Lynne Roberts Goodwin

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