More from this Issue
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.
Thinking Like a Sheep, Acting Like a Ham
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.
The Path of Peace
Arts of Vanuatu
Ed Bonnemaison, Huffman Kaufmann, Tryon.
Published by Crawford House
RRP $69.95
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.
A few more fish than you'd expect for seven bucks
Still Life: Still Lives
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
6 June - 27 July 1997
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.
The New Republics: Contemporary Art from Australia, Canada and South Africa
The ideas behind this project stem from the particular legacy of Black British arts practice in the 1980s....This touring visual arts exhibition and book project tries to deconstruct the notion of the centre (London/UK/Europe) both as a site of former colonial power and as a site of current economic and cultural power.
Saluting the Dot-spangled Banner
Aboriginal culture, National identity and the Australian Republic. The closing ceremonies of the Atlanta Olympics were watched by a 1/5th of the world's population. This was arguably the most expensive bit of air time on the planet at that moment....
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.
Art for a Banana Republic
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?
Travelling North or Going Backwards?
Is Australia an Asian Country? by Stephen FitzGerald
Allen and Unwin 1997 RRP $19.95.