Outsider Art is enjoying increasing attention in Australia. STOARC – the Self-Taught and Outsider Art Research Collection – at the University of Sydney opened its public face at Callan Park Gallery in March 2009.
Drifting in My Own Land: Nalda Searles John Curtin Gallery, Curtin University of Technology, Perth Touring Australia 2009 – 2013 19 June - 30 August 2009
Toni Wilkinson’s 'm/other' exhibition of photographs at Perth Galleries, North Fremantle earlier this year confronted the viewer with a series of atypical representations of the mother child relationship. She give a glimpse into the privacy, and reality, of a mother’s world by showing us mothers and their children at their most naked, physically and emotionally.
The artworks of Sanja Pahoki walk a zigzag between melancholy and its contemporary cousin, anxiety. Curator and writer Hannah Mathews interviewed Sanja Pahoki about her recent work while thinking about Daniel Birnbaum's comment about the relationship between melancholy and the arts: "The idea of the melancholic as someone not only passive and depressed but also creative is the basis for the Renaissance idea of the genius – the dialectic between darkness and light, destruction and creation."
The 2009 OzAsia Festival runs from 3 – 17 October, and also includes a fantastic family-friendly program of theatre, dance, film, food, as well as the free community opening event, the Moon Lantern Festival in Elder Park. See www.adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au Open from 29 September - 1 November at the Festival Centre Curious Screen: Festival Theatre (FT) Foyer The Sum of Cultures: Piano Bar Follow, Northern India: Faces and Words and Okami: FT Foyer Miss Taken: Space Theatre Foyer 'this reminds me of some place': FT Foyer 29 September - 8 November, Following Threads: Artspace Gallery (Upstairs, Dunstan Playhouse)
A New Truth to Materials Boxcopy (Miles Hall, Chris Handran, Chloe Cogle, and Ross Manning) Curator: Raymonde Rajkowski Level 3 Metro Arts, Brisbane April 30 - May 30 2009
Artist Boris Eldagsen and writer Robert Cook are both looking down the barrel of forty. Cook is fascinated by other members of his exact generation. In his words: 'They are alternative selves, part of my body. Mid-life is hard life, the life as lived not the life not lived, the other path, the no stepping back.' Cook and Boris did not meet.