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.
Melbourne-based artist Ash Keatings art practice is based on an ethic and aesthetic of recycling. He reinvents waste often for site-specific interventions - before disposing of the relics by recycling them responsibly. For 'Press Release' (2005-ongoing) he cut 6,500 copies of the same bird from magazines and has thrown them skywards, letting them soar to the ground, in atriums and galleries from Sydney to Santiago. In his videos he is seen at work deconstructing free newspapers or wrestling with large discarded vinyl banners.
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.
Since the early nineties Asialink has helped to plunge 450 Australian artists into the proverbial deep end of arts practice, the overseas residency. Out of their comfort zones, far from friends and familiar comforts, the artists test their artwork and themselves in new cultural contexts. The recent experiences of Megan Keating in Taiwan, Danius Kesminas in Indonesia, Alwin Reamillo in the Philippines and Ben Morieson in Japan are described in all their variety and embrace of an increasingly Asia-literate world.
Michael Keighery, current Chair of Viscopy and past chair of NAVA and the Crafts Council of Australia reviews the apathy and ignorance of artist about their industrial, copyright and taxation rights. He draws attention to the hard worn, by NAVA and Artslaw, ruling by the Tax Office in 2005 that all kinds of artists can now claim their art business expenses against all forms of income.
In September 2007 in Townsville Stephanie Radok attended the Perc Tucker Regional Gallerys Strand Ephemera, a biennial outdoor sculpture and installation exhibition first held in 2001. The Strand is a 2km landscaped beachfront park where local and interstate artists placed their site specific works which ranged from an Aeolian harp by Nameer Davis to a throne made of seasponges by Wendy Robertson. An enthusiastic audience of children and Strand-strollers made their way from work to work thinking about art and its myriad manifestations. Commissioned artists making work in shipping containers were Craig Walsh, Bonemap, Donna Marcus, Chris Fox and Richard Goodwin.