Wrestling with Difficult Issues

The Jewish Museum of Australia is almost certainly the only religiously based institution in Australia which provides a contemporary art space. An important role of the Museum is to define an Australian Jewish identity, but in the contemporary space the Museum also helps to shape this identity. As well as celebrating our eternity in our permanent exhibitions, we help to forge our future by having contemporary shows.

Published March 1998

Caboodle: Work from the Jam Factory Studios

Jam Factory Gallery SA
Ceramics, Glass, Furniture, Metal
14 November 1997 - 11 January 1998

Published March 1998

The Spiritual, the Rational and the Material: Spirit and Place Art in Australia 1861 - 1996

Since 1984 there have been five major exhibitions which sought to engage aspects of the spiritual in art and which attracted international comment. Spirit + Place, Art in Australia 1861 - 1996, which opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney on 22nd November 1996 and closed on 5th March 1997, was the most recent of these.

Published March 1998

Vi$copy Rules. OK?

In 1972, when I began work as curatorial assistant at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, artists in the collection had no formal written rights to their work. Each time a work was acquired by the gallery, the artist was sent a pink copyright form which they were expected to sign, even though this relinquished all their rights and assigned them to the gallery.

Published March 1998

Migration and Faith: Places of Worship in a Multicultural Community

"The cosmopolitan character of the residents of Australian cities has often been shown and it is in their worship that the various nations represented in our midst receives most definite demonstration. The Greek Orthodox Church has a small but increasing community in Melbourne, numbering about 150 Greeks and 50 Syrians, and it is now decided to build immediately, at a cost of about $3,000 a new Greek Church".

Published March 1998

Building a picture: Interviews with Australian Artists by Gary Catalano

Published by McGraw Hill Australia 1997
RRP $36,90

Published March 1998

Swingtime, East Coast - West Coast: Works from the 1960s-1970s in The University of Western Australia Art Collection

East Coast  22 August 1997 -1 February 1998; & 10 April - 27 September 1998.
West Coast  22 August 1997 - 21 June 1998.
Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery
The University of Western Australia, Perth.

Published March 1998

Collaboration by Satellite

Satellite link-ups between continents have upped the telecommunication ante, intensifying the exchange of ideas and impressions by participants. The sense of sight is now added to the teleconferencing capacity for hearing everyone at once, making it easier for participants who have never met to know who is speaking when, and simplifying the task of managing a given session.

Published March 1998

Artrave

Published March 1998

Cedar Prest: Community Art and Spirituality

For Cedar Prest, stained glass work always begins with a meditation on what she terms the "light atmosphere" of a particular place. This is not simply the physical presence of a source of light and its intensity within a room or particular architectural space, but also the more complex sensual influences that determine the way light enters a particular space through one or more "holes in the wall".

Published March 1998

David Jones' sculptures in the landscape - a spirit of place

Spirituality in western art is not necessarily ecclesiastical. There are artists who make work which is imbued with a deep spiritual connection to the land. The works may be temporary, ephemeral installations surviving only in the photographic record or they may be of more permanent substances.

Published March 1998

Art, Trash and Religion: the Serrano Affair revisited.

Who would have expected that Piss Christ would spark off a major public row in Australia, eight years after it was originally made notorious in the United States?

Published March 1998