An Unlandscape of words and painting: from Meenamatta to paradise

A number of practising artists were invited to respond to a scenario in which a local council asked them to organise an exhibition featuring local artists from a sister city in a third world country. It seems a noble gesture, but one fraught with potential missteps. How would they proceed?

Potter and Head of Ceramics at ANU School of Art Janet de Boos writes about her journeys to China since 1996 and her current collaborations in bone china tableware. She writes : 'Rather than just a place where we can appropriate techniques and technologies and source cheap labour, China becomes a place for Australians to work and research collaboratively with fellow artists.'

In late 2008, the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) established its first Pacific Arts department. From the opening of the controversial Musée du quai Branly in Paris in 2006, to the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art’s creation of permanent new galleries for Oceanic art in 2007, there has been an international surge of interest in Pacific art, accompanied by hot debate surrounding exhibition protocols. Among the many works exhibited at these institutions are rare carvings of traditional gods from the Cook Islands: works that are still of great cultural significance to many Islanders today. Jacqui Durrant asked artists, curators and cultural professionals in the largest of the Cook Islands, Rarotonga, their opinions as to how images of their ‘old gods’ might be best exhibited, to see what a Western art gallery might take on board.

Timothy Morrell provides the reader with a keen description in relation to the role that the art organisation NAVA (National Association for the Visual Arts) has within Australia's government but also the empowerment they claim to provide practicing artists. Morrell also includes some insight towards the rights of the common artworker by presenting some examples as to where they stand within Australian society but also how they operate in co-relation with the governments guidelines and in particular the controversial portrayal of nudity in art. A conclusive article articulating the importance of government organisations such as NAVA, Morrell provides an insightful discussion towards the role of the artist within Australian society but also the co-operation needed from the government to enable a sufficient means of expression from artists.

Artists who have created fascinating works within the DMZ (Korean Demilitarized Zones) include the Spanish artist Santiago Sierra, the Italian artist Armin Linke and the Australian artist Lyndal Jones.

The Long March Project founded by Lu Jie is an ongoing art project that began with a philosophical evaluation of the complex role and meaning of art and selfhood, in all its political, economic, cultural, and social guises. It is critical that new opportunities are found for artistic reciprocity that exist beyond the presumed centres of art validation (ie. America and Europe). The Long March directs the gaze of Chinese cultural producers to re-assess how art can be a tool through which ideas of making – self, thought, object – can be critically empowered and conceived.

Haema Sivanesan, Curator and Executive Director of SAVAC ( South Asian Visual Arts Centre) in Toronto Canada, analyses the current situation of Asian contemporary art by looking at work that is not only cross-cultural but concerned with bridging cultures and being a form of social action rather than simply engaging with commodity culture.