Published 01 December 2020
What does obsessive artwork mean? Is this a new compulsion among artists and what does it mean? The work of Hossein Valamanesh, Fiona Hall, Zhuang Hui, Zhang Huan, Shen Shaomin, Katsuhige Nakahashi are referenced.
The CDEP (Community Development Employment Program) was axed by the Howard Federal Government throughout the Northern Territory though is still current in South Australia and Western Australia. The Program was launched in 1977 by the Fraser Government and has been a very valuable way of getting Aboriginal people to be engaged productive community memes in art centres and other activities. A number of key Aboriginal art centres rely on CDEP staff for printing, administration, preparators, artists and craftspeople. It is a vital component in building community self-reliance and pride.
Published December 2007
Territorial Canberra Contemporary Art Centre June 2007 24 hr Art, Darwin September October 2007 ACT Artists: Silvia Vélez, Bernie Slater, Raquel Ormella NT artists: Franck Gohier, Catriona Stanton, Gary Lee
Shades of the Real: a selective survey of tonal painting Adelaide Central Gallery 20 July - 11 August 2007 artists: Morgan Allender, Nona Burden, Stephanie Crase, Kveta Deans, Louise Feneley, Mary-Jean Richardson, Chelsea Lehmann, Rachel Smyth, Deborah Trusson, Yve Thompson Christian Lock Greenaway Art Gallery 4 -29 July 2007 Kaylie Weir (in Noodle) Premier Art Gallery SALA exhibition 3 August 1 September 2007 Learning to Speak Simone Kennedy Artlab SALA Exhibition 3-19 August 2007
Culture Warriors: National Indigenous Art Triennial 07 Curator: Brenda L. Croft. National Gallery of Australia, 13 October 2007 10 February 2008; touring to Art Gallery of South Australia, 20 June 31 August 2008; Art Gallery of Western Australia, 20 September 23 November 2008; Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, MarchMay 2009. (Note: The touring exhibition will be about 90 works rather than the 130 seen in Canberra.)
Almost Everywhere Apparent Sonia Leber and David Chesworth Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne 11 August 30 September 2007
Topsy Eleanor Avery, Ray Cook, Kim Demuth, Alice Lang, David Spooner, Grubbanax Swinnasen. Curator Chris Comer Metro Arts Galleries, Brisbane 5 22 September 2007
Reveries: Mortality and photography was curated for the National Portrait Gallery by Helen Ennis and shown from 27 April to 5 August 2007. This touring show will be at Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery from 19 March to 18 May 2008. It includes a wide range of approaches from the harrowing to the humorous. It includes work by Axel Poignant a self-portrait with his last roll of film, Anne Ferran, Carol Jerrems, Craig Potton, William Yang, Anne Noble, Ruth Maddison, Bernie ORegan and Jonathon Delacour who stopped taking photographs after this series of babies and their carers in intensive care.
Hong-Kong based Leung Mee Ping sees the artist as a craftperson able to fabricate intricate work that makes the viewer revision the everyday. Memorising the Future is an ongoing project of shoes made from felted human hair. It has been shown all over the world in major museums and now consists of more than 11,500 shoes.
Thresholds of Tolerance curated by Caroline Turner and David Williams, was shown at the ANU School of Art Gallery from 10 May to 5 June, 2007. We Refuse to Become Victims, an art work made by three artists collectives, Culture Kitchen in Canberra, Taring Padi in Jogyakarta and Gembel in Dili, Timor, a four part series of large works on fabric of small woodcuts, screenprints and painting struck Pat Hoffie as political art that really works as it is cross-disciplinary, cross cultural and seems to stretch out back to the fields of production rather than towards the empty field of the gallery.
Chinese-Australian artist Guan Wei first visited Australia eighteen years ago but it was only in 2006 that he went bush for two weeks with nine other artists, on an artists camp organised by Darwin's contemporary art space 24 Hour Art in collaboration with Injalak Arts and Crafts in Western Arnhem Land. His vivid experiences of the great outdoors, its sounds, animals and birds, led to his A Mysterious Land series. He worked with local Aboriginal artists, was shown rock paintings and found similarities between Aboriginal culture and Taoist philosophy.
Concertina is a group of seven artists, Katrina Weber, Ros Miller, Wendy Rushby, Kathryn Hill, Wendy Todd, Dana Kinter and Anny Gooden, who for six years have been working as a collective creating within self-prescribed boundaries. Once a year they set aside their own practices and embark upon a major collaborative project leading to an exhibition. Their latest venture meant one artist Anny Gooden stepping outside the group, she was overseas, and providing instructions to the others. The resulting exhibition, Text as Muse, was shown at Light Square Gallery from 27 June - 26 July 2007.
Justine Khamara uses a scalpel to cut out tens of thousands of images from magazines. She then joins the often identical images to make very large assemblages. The artist sees the obsessive busywork that she does with her hands as providing her with space to dream and do the real work of sifting through the stuff in her head.
