Trade: Fiona Hall
Botany meets metal. Metal meets knitting. Knitting meets videotape. Videotape meets soap. Soap meets money. Money meets botany.
More from this Issue
Ginger Riley Munduwalawala: A Seeing Artist
Ginger Rileys superlative colour sense sets him apart from other Indigenous Australian artists. His unique landscape manner, studded with icons of identity and place, is instantly recognisable yet it has attracted both passionate acclaim and vitriolic criticism. Riley has forged his own way of encapsulating and celebrating the grand sweep and detailed minutiae of a particular tract of land in Southeast Arnhem Land, over which he now holds native title through his role as djungkayi (caretaker). In order to understand why Riley stands alone as an Indigenous painter, Ryan looks at his personal life history and the wellsprings of his art: his intimate connection to his mother's country.
KaltjaNOW
Wakefield Press in association with the National Aboriginal Cultural Institute - Tandanya Softcover 170pp
Home is where the heart is
University of South Australia Art Museum, 13 September - 20 October, 2001
Gordon Bennett's Art: The Aura of Origin
With a directness and clarity born from genuine insight, Gordon Bennetts art gives form to the structure of an invisible repetitive history haunting the psyches of non-Indigenous and Indigenous Australians alike. This text gives rise to Bennett's fierce artistic practice - including an examination of the works Outsider, Am I scared? and the Notes to Basquiat and Home Decor series. These works are looked at to reveal his recent concerns with the mechanisms of doubling, moving beyond the fatal powers of representation and indeed beyond a primary concern with Australian heritage to take on the world.