Morrell contemplates the Banana Republic, a tourist destination with exotic indigenous culture and good weather. An Australian Republic seems to be inevitable...but where will art sit in this new future?
How would we re-present ourself to the rest of the world if we became a republic? It is the treatment of Australia's indigenous people that will ultimately determine both how we can imagine our own cultural development and how we are viewed by other cultures in the region.
Eureka - the First Australian Republic? was a touring exhibition which documented and interpreted the Eureka stockade. Containing paintings, drawings and prints ranging from the 1850s to 1994 as well as objects, documents and books related to or dealing with the Eureka Stockade the exhibition demonstrated the symbolic power this event has exerted on Australian political life as well as the imagination of artists.
The perception of 'culture' underlies all our relations in Asia. What are we? Are we as we are perceived? It is a really pertinent, dynamic interesting moment in our history, and in a wider world, in the history of this region.
Craftspeople engaged with questions of nation and national and personal identity from their specific cultural backgrounds. Features the work of Arone Raymond Meeks.
Some thoughts on performance and the Australian cinema. Verhoeven snuggles up to the sheep film as a clue to what Australian filmmakers have held dear. Nationalism and republicanism examined.
1.30pm Remembrance Day. November 11, 1975 is a sacred memorial for the Australian Republican movement. This was the first time in Australian history that an unelected representative of the Queen had dismissed a Federal Government elected by the people.
Sport and Porn was huge in its scope and scale. The show ran for an hour and a half over a two week period at the Performance Space in Sydney during March 1997. Victoria Spence writes about the performance that she was involved in. The team comprised Morgan Lewis, Scott Wright, Sharon Kerr and Steve Howarth, Adam Kronenburg, Dana Diaz Tutaan, Victoria Spence and Rodgers D.
Flags are vexing (vexillological) by nature. Explores the role of flags and the ways they have been subverted, with recent exhibitions recognising their irony and employing ideas that unpick the ideological rhetoric stitched into these symbols.