Landscape and complexity: Raquel Ormella

Raquel Ormella's art is political and takes many circuitous approaches to complex issues. Her recent work Wild Rivers: Cairns, Brisbane, Sydney shown in the 2008 Sydney Biennale called up a political landscape of maddening complexity even as it emphasises the need for direct action. Bec Dean writes: 'Ormella is a kind of critical idealist who understands not only the effectiveness of lobbying and the power of the individual in bringing about change but also the slow-burn persistence of such change.'

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George Gittoes art and the war on terror

George Gittoes' latest film Miscreants was made in Pakistan and records the contradictions of life there with the polemic of Goya and the speed of an MTV music clip. This film follows his earlier cult films Soundtrack to War and Rampage. Gittoes is never a dispassionate observer, he continues to paint and to draw, making war art that is emotional as well as rich with the difficult truths of our time.

Joanna Mendelssohn

G.R.L. giving people opportunities to tear their city apart since 2005

In March 2008 James Powderly and Evan Roth of the New York-based Graffiti Research Lab (G.R.L.) spent time in Adelaide during the Festival as guests of Carclew Youth Arts. The Graffiti Research Lab is dedicated to outfitting graffiti writers, pranksters, artists and protestors with open source tools for urban communication. Today, an inventory of street artforms would include tagging, muralling, political sloganeering, stencils, stickers, paste-ups, installation, guerilla projection, culture jamming, and advertisement hacking. Powderly and Roth define graffiti as anything that happens outside in the city without permission. At the heart of all G.R.L. projects is the concept of open source , and perhaps it is this approach that has been their greatest area of influence.

Charity Bramwell

Lynette Wallworth: shared moments of revelation

Lynette Wallworth's New Media Art is subtle and complex. Empathy is the emotion at the heart of all her works such as Invisible by Night in which the viewer activates the work by reaching out to make contact with a grieving woman and Hold in which viewers catch imagery in glass bowls. Wallworths international profile is rising. She has exhibitions planned for France (Aix en Provence Festival), the Melbourne Festival in 2008 and the Adelaide Film Festival 2009 and with each new project she is striking an emotional chord in her audiences that resonates long after the physical engagement with the work is over.

Ted Snell

Helen Fuller: Domestic forensics

Cath Kenneally

Artrave

Artlink

Hijacked

Hijacked Artsource, Fremantle April 5 - May 4

Thelma John

Ian Friend: Thirty Years of Works on Paper 1977-2007

Ian Friend: Thirty Years of Works on Paper 1977-2007 Curators: Gordon Craig and Anne Kirker QUT Art Museum, Brisbane 24 April- 29 June 2008

Angela Gardner

Bal Tashchit: Thou Shalt Not Destroy

Bal Tashchit: Thou Shalt Not Destroy Curators: Melissa Amore and Ashley Crawford Jewish Museum of Australia, St Kilda 8 April 29 June 2008

Sophie Knezic

Performances at Biennale of Sydney 2008 Revolutions - Forms That Turn

Performance at Biennale of Sydney 2008 Revolutions - Forms That Turn Curator: Caroline Christov-Bakargiev 18 June 7 September 2008

Jo Higgins

Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba seduction and imponderability

Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba's best-known work is the video Memorial Project Nha Trang, Vietnam: Towards the Complex - For the Courageous, the Curious and the Cowards (2001)in which fishermen ride cyclos (cycle rickshaws) underwater across the seabed. An engaging retrospective of Nguyen-Hatsushiba's thought-provoking and challenging work was shown in 2007 at the Museum of Art Lucerne and in 2008 at the Manchester Art Gallery displayed the work. In his most recent and ongoing work he is running a global marathon, the diameter of the earth. The artist says: 'After developing various kinds of memorial projects, I needed to experience the nature of physical struggle myself.'

Catherine Wilson

Rose Farrell and George Parkin: home (operating) theatre

Rose Farrell and George Parkin's art consist of photographs of tableaux involving the artists in sets that they build in their home. They frequently copy old medical illustrations in which the reality of the past is both made to live and to seem ever more mythical. Dylan Rainforth takes an informative and affectionate approach to the complexity of Farrell and Parkin's modus operandi and their newest photographic series called Restoration.

Dylan Rainforth

Kate Rohde: flourish

Kate Rohde: flourish Curator: Jenna Blyth TarraWarra Museum of Art 20 April - 20 July 2008

Justine Khamara

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