Primary Non-Producers: The Arts in Crisis in Public Education

In this article Orchard is looking at the nature of art teaching in primary schools rather than focusing on the debate surrounding the value of arts learning and education. Although art has in the past decade become a formal part of the curriculum across Australia there is still a huge dearth of support material for teachers, particularly those in isolated areas. Orchard introduces some of the support programs which have been implemented in various schools, including the Department of Education & Training & Employment (DETE) and South Australian Living Artists (SALA) programs.

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Art of the Sacred Heart

Arts Project Australia Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide 31 January - 25 February 2001

Paul Hoban

Liminal Narratives

Zofia Sleziak 31 March - 8 April 2001 The Chapel Adelaide

Lisa Harms

Teenage Riot: Representations of Adolescence in Contemporary Art

The child has always been a favoured subject for artists. Recent exhibitions both in Australia and internationally address the shift from a sanguine vision of childhood to alternative representations, where children are presented as desirable and desirous, menacing yet vulnerable, widely unpredictable and ultimately mysterious. Artistic works by Robert Gober, Ronnie Van Hout, Larry Clark, Katie Siegel, Justine Kurland, Anna Gaskell, Diane Arbus, Di Barrett, Mark McDean, Anne Ferran, Polixeni Papapetrou, Bill Henson, Pat Brissington, Tracey Moffatt, Deborah Paauwe, Mona Hatoum and Nic Nicosia all help to illuminate the complexities of adolescence, a subject of ambivalence wedged between contradictory discourses and spaces of transition.

K.P. Hall

Children's Art Program at Sydney Children's Hospital

The childrens art program at Sydney Children's Hospital, Randwick, has revealed that exhibitions of children's art, in the context of a child-oriented environment, are at least as significant to their target audience as art by adult professionals. The children's art program is administered by a company called Identity, Environment and Art, which specialises in developing art and cultural programs, primarily in health facilities. The plan included commissioned artworks by professional artists, murals, interactive wall panels and integrated mosaics.

Lesley Rosenberg

Artists and Wunderkids

Beryl Mckenzie and Jennifer Phipps

Play Things: Some Contemporary Artists and their Objects

The function and materiality of the art object, when investigated by artists, often evokes a childlike sense. Be they miniatures, process-related installations or large minimalist works, these objects call upon the viewer to look at them as if for the first time. As so much contemporary art retreats from theory and aims to locate itself squarely in the everyday, the art objects social function is also more assured, bringing the artist and the audience closer together. Paradoxically, this use-effect is best achieved by artists by emphasising the dysfunction of the object and some of those who best achieve this are Paul Saint, Stephen Birch, Jean Arp, Paul McCarthy, Mike Kelley, Tom Friedman, Robert Pulie, Simryn Gill, Mikala Dwyer and David Griggs.

Russell Storer

East of Somewhere

Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Sydney 10 March - 29 April

Kiersten Fishburn

Anatomy of a Metaphor

Madeleine Kelly Modus Gallery Fortitude Valley, Brisbane 6 - 22 April 2001

Pat Hoffie

Focus: No Man is an Island: A Two Part Reading

Radok here recognises the issue of nationality present in the work of German artist Nikolaus Lang, an artist who often visits Australia to make field trips, to research, to make art and to exhibit. Since his first visit as a participant in the 1979 Sydney Biennale, Lang has been collaborating with Aboriginal people, as his work strongly relates to the origins of art and the origins of the materials of art, often literally the pigments that form artworks. Parts I and II discuss these facts and some of the ideas imbedded in his collaborative works with Indigenous artists Dorrie Gibson, Andrew Gibson and John Turpie.

Stephanie Radok

Mildura Palimpsest #4

Mildura, various sites 19 April - 20 May 2001

Stephanie Radok

Remembering Jesus: The Child in Australian Aboriginal Art

Andrew discusses the work of various Australian artists under a generic theme of the blakborg, a term he uses with regards to the re-creation of the blak body. A fleshy cyborg, much like the Star Trek Borg family, the blakborgacts as a symbol: alluding to the Western preoccupation with aliens and simultaneously reminding Europeans of their own alien status in the Australian landscape. The works of Julie Gough, Tracey Moffatt, Destiny Deacon, Bianca Beetson, John Packham, Les Midikuria, James Gleeson, Richard Billingham and Marc Quinn are here examined.

Brook Andrew

The Child Guides Program

One of the challenges facing galleries dealing with contemporary art is to persuade visitors to be open-minded about whats on display. All too often it's not the art that's the problem, but the context in which it is placed. Macgregor is here responding to an issue she feels strongly about, especially as it relates to the viewing of art amongst children. The Child Guides program was an initiative at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham which Macgregor was involved with. The program recruited children from local schools to guide visitors informally around the exhibition, and helped to enhance the childrens communicative skills, gain knowledge of a range of contemporary art practices and to develop a sense of self-importance.

Elizabeth Ann Macgregor

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