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Wasted
Metis is a remarkable fusion of art and science. The first of these biennial events, held in May 1999, was inspired by Rebecca Scott from the CSIRO and Canberra artist Jill Peck, and featured works which resulted from a range of collaborations between artists and scientists. Metis 2001 - Wasted focuses on environmental themes including detritus, recycling, toxic waste and land degradation.
The Waterworks Project
Culturally, spiritually, intellectually, water runs through our lives creating and suggesting connection and renewal. All life depends on water. Like those European explorers who encountered this land so recently, the artists who worked on the Waterworks project searched to make sense of the many manifestations and meanings that water has. It is no real surprise that survival was the thread that connected most of the thinking of the artists. The project saw the work of artists Cameron Robbins, Malcolm McKinnon, Lisa Philip-Harbutt, Jo Crawford, James Darling, Catherine Truman, Graeme Hopkins, Jonathon Novick and Elena Gallegos.
Nola Farman's Wind Tree
Nola Farman's The Wind Tree is one of a series of three permanent public artworks commissioned in 1998 by Griffith Artworks, Queensland College of Art, and installed at the new Logan Campus of Griffith University south of Brisbane. The Wind Tree stands on a site that was once occupied by indigenous inhabitants and from the time of white settlement until the recent sixties, the homestead site of the dairy cattle stud Ellerslie. The Wind Tree has been christened according to a traditional pedagogical symbol: the Tree of Knowledge. Ross examines Farman's site specific work in relation to its complex functional and aesthetic qualities.
Bias
An exhibition of contemporary embroidery Moonah Arts Centre. Hobart 17 November - 22 November 2000
Staring at the sea, staring at the sand: the work of Matthew Dalziel and Louise Scullion
Humanity's universal relationship to the environment has always been at the heart of Matthew Dalziel and Louise Scullion's work, and in large part stems from their own working and living proximity to the ocean on the coastline of Scotland in the fishing village of St Combs. Kubler conducts an examination of some of Dalziel and Scullion's installations, many of which offer that most magical and rare thing in art, the miraculous. Kubler looks at their collaborative works General Release, Sargassum, Rain and Melt and the various ways they have explored the Nature/Culture dichotomy. In particular cyclical weather patterns and mankind's evolving interaction with Nature.
A Water or a Light
Water figures in Australian art and Australian history as a vital thread binding together many narratives and imageries. Art that concerns itself with some manifestation of water demonstrates what can be considered a new phase in Australian art about the land. David Keeling, Nicole Ellis, Ruby Davies, Peter James Smith, Patricia Picinnini, Judy Holding and Danielle Thompson are all Australian artists whose work is manifested by this notion of the land and of water.
Dinoflagellates and Art: Jane Quon's Marine Installations
Jane Quon has evolved from printmaker to multi-media installation artist - though she much prefers the descriptor 'ecological artist'. Her installations make strong use of 'ephemeral' media - light, sound - and her focus is the quality of the marine environment, within that the threat to vulnerable aquatic ecosystems posed by the dumping of ship ballast water. Quon has been involved in a number of ecological projects, including installations at the new headquarters of the Centre for Living Aquatic Resources Management in Penang, the International Maritime Organisation building on the Thames Embankment in London and was part of the CSIRO's Metis exhibition in Canberra. Hay here pays particular attention to her installation devised for the Bass Strait Forum in Launceston in December 2000.
Interceptions: Art, Science and Land in Sunraysia
Editor Helen Vivian Mildura Arts Centre and Artmoves, 2000
Karra: River Red Gum
Karra was a visual arts project devised for the 2000 Adelaide Festival. Its focus was the River Red Gum, once the most widespread tree in south eastern Australia and quite justifiably an Australian icon. The project comprised an installation by three artists Chris De Rosa, Agnes Love and Jo Crawford in the Artspace Gallery, Adelaide Festival Centre, from 1 March to 20 April, and a 40 page publication with essays and visual material from many contributors. As curator, Thwaites' intention for Karra was for people to consider their connection with the tree as well as the urgent problems facing this ecosystem, such as salinity, diminished water flow and environmental degradation.
