Transforming East and West dialogues

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.

Published June 2009

Yellow Vest Syndrome

The Yellow Vest Syndrome: recent West Australian art
Curator: Jasmin Stephens
Fremantle Arts Centre
31 January – 29 March 2009

Published June 2009

Collapsing the Bilateral: creating consciousness

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.

Published June 2009

21 Ada St - the DVD

Published June 2009

Old Gods new lives: Exhibiting traditional Cook Islander art

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.

Published June 2009

An Unlandscape of words and painting: from Meenamatta to paradise

This article explores new territory opened up by a cross-cultural collaboration between Indigenous poet Jim Everett and visual artist Jonathan Kimberley.

Published June 2009

Threads, traces and legacies of the mission

Artist Kylie Waters works with the history of her own family and the way it is embedded in South Australian history. Specifically she explores the space between negative and positive evaluations of Lutheran missions in Central and South Australia.

Published June 2009

Paul Zika

Paul Zika: Home and Away – reconstructing artifice
Curator: Philip Watkins
Carnegie Gallery, Hobart
26 March – 3 May 2009

Published June 2009

Hired hands: the Filipino collaborations of David Griggs

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.

Published June 2009

Karen Genoff

Karen Genoff
The Mother Lode
BMG Art Adelaide
27 March-18 April 2009

Published June 2009

The China Project

The China Project: Three Decades; William Yang; Zhang Xiaogang
GOMA, Brisbane
28 March – 28 June 2009

Published June 2009

Bilum breakout: fashion, artworld, national pride

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.

Published June 2009