John Maitland is the sole director of Energy Architecture, an Adelaide architecture firm committed to environmentally sound and socially responsible architecture established in 1990.
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.
A look at roughly the last five years of 2007 Samstag scholar Sarah crowESTs art practice of objects, performances and videos. CrowESTs manifesto is to maintain flexibility in her thinking; to do or consider the opposite of that which is usual or customary and to make something very messy. Her work often explores the functions of the alter ego in contemporary visual arts practice.
A fascinating participant report on an exciting collaborative project of great vision and experimentation. Reskin 2007 was developed by the Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT), the Australian National University School of Art, the Centre for New Media Arts (CNMA) and Craft Australia. It brought twenty international and national artists, designers and technologists together under the guidance of seven professional wearable technology specialists at the forefront of their respective fields. The idea of Reskin, co-ordinated by Alexander Gillespie was to design wearable technologies for the body using the latest materials and methods.
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.
Topsy Eleanor Avery, Ray Cook, Kim Demuth, Alice Lang, David Spooner, Grubbanax Swinnasen. Curator Chris Comer Metro Arts Galleries, Brisbane 5 - 22 September 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.)
The latest work by Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro, artists who have been fruitfully collaborating for over seven years was shown at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2007. Called The Paper Trail it explores Paul Virilios ideas about dromology (the science and logic of speed especially in relation to war) through thinking about the Mongolian Empire. A fantastic Mongolian Ger (a nomadic structure ordered on the internet), government archives, Johnson Solids and the Trailer of Death are some of the features of the installation which suggests complex and recurring layers to all globalisation.
The Quote Generator is a three year public art project where the artist only speaks in quotes which she instantly attributes. For the first year Danielle Freakley will quote from commercial products, the second year from friends and acquaintances and the last year from herself in the past.
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.