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.
Craftspeople engaged with questions of nation and national and personal identity from their specific cultural backgrounds. Features the work of Arone Raymond Meeks.
Re Affiliations
12 June - 13 July 1997
Margaret Sanders, Claudia Lünig, Clare Martin, Hanh Ngo, Maria Stukoff, Lisa Jeong, Paloma Ramos, Madelaine Neveu
Nexus Gallery, Adelaide
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.
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.
Looks at the cultural events planned to accompany the Olympic Games to be held in Sydney in September 2000. There are 4 cultural festivals -- 1997 The Festival of the Dreaming curated by Rhoda Roberts, 1998 A Sea Change curated by Andrea Stretton, 1999 Reaching the World, 2000 Harbour of Life co-ordinated by Leo Schofield.
Post colonialism provides a chimerical hope of a different means of shaping and ordering public representation of Australia, bu the institutional discourse around post-colonial arworks tends to uphold the status quo by using race/ethnicity as another means of directing scorn towards the lower reaches of Australian society.
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.
Fiona Foley's 'The Lie of the Land' is an extraordinary piece of art and soundwork that illustrates yet another taking of land and culture from the indigenous people of this land.