Talking about my g-g-g-generation: Mark Siebert

Neil Fettling asks; 'Why does an Australian-based artist like David Griggs, living and working in the first world, have such strong connections with a third world community, and how do these linkages affect his work?' and answers this question through an analysis of Griggs' recent art as well as comparing it to the work of Pat Hoffie and Wim Delvoye.

In the past decade bilum fashion has really taken off in Papua New Guinea and is now getting wider exposure through a few PNG gallery and designer websites like Pasifik Nau and Lava Lava Innovations. Since the late 1990s, local trendsetters of high fashion, including Cathy Kata and Florence Jaukae, have made a name for their original bilum outfits.

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.

Paul Carter's Nearamnew, a public art work which is embedded in the 7,500 square metres of paving at Federation Square, asks for multiple, inclusive and open-ended responses.