More from this Issue
The Sublime and the Parochial: The Foot of God
In Australia, the land has been, for non-Aboriginal settlers, from the beginning a sign for the nation and for the manufacture of livelihood (the sheep's back, mineral wealth) as well as a repository of dreams and misapprehensions. The importance of the land to Aboriginal Australian ought to be easy for us to comprehend.
Sport and Porn
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.
Festival of the Dreaming
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.
The Republican Rock: A Vexing Issue
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.
Mothertongue
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
Three Fragments of an Aberrant Narrative of Australian Identity
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.
An Australian Head of State - Eureka!
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.
To Have or to Hold
Containment
Debra Dawes, Zsolt Faludi, Gwyn Hanssen Pigott, Carlier Makigawa, Susan Norrie, Mary Scott. Curator: Clare Bond.
Plimsoll Gallery, Hobart
12 April -2 May, 1997
University Gallery. Launceston
2 - 31 July, 1997
Reviewed by Mary Knights
Towards a Pre-Capitalist Flag
Australia's flag has as much to do with contests as with consensus. The original design resulted from a 1901-2 competition sponsored by a tobacco company.
Glue and Yeast: Asian Perceptions and the Year 2000
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.
Symbols for Australia
Trademarks and logos have been vital ways of marketing goods and services for well over a century. What are the readily identifiable symbols for Australia?
Art as Cultural Diplomacy: Back to the Drawing Board
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.