Chief Curator at the National Institute for Experimental Arts (NIEA) at the College of Fine Arts, Uni of NSW, Felicity Fenner discusses the HotHouse Symposium the launch event of a longer-term research project called 'Curating Cities' being conducted by NIEA in association with Object: Australian Centre for Craft and Design and the City of Sydney. Other research partners include the Melbourne-based group, Carbon Arts, which facilitates opportunities for artists to generate awareness and action on climate change. The central premise of the project is that we can no longer simply curate art, but need to think more holistically, instead curating space in ways that are environmentally sustainable.
'Unlimited Asia Pacific' is a platform for the Queensland state government to join Victoria as a leading force in Australia’s emergent design economy. It coincides with the birth of the Australian Design Alliance as a lobbying group to promote design as a capacity across government.
Joanna Mendelssohn examines a new book on photography, second in a series, this time juxtaposing German and Australian artists. Mendelssohn writes "What Germany and Australia have in common is a certain navel-gazing obsession about what it means to belong to their particular nationalities."
Stephanie Radok reviews eleven recent publications in a long celebration of the book: Before Time Today: Reinventing Tradition in Aurukun Aboriginal Art; Once Upon a Time in Papunya; John Davis: Presence; Ingo Kleinert: Two Decades; Joachim Froese: Photographs 1999-2008; Renata Buziak: Afterimage; Substance of Shadows: Jutta Feddersen; Khai Liew; Rounds (PICA); Barbara Hanrahan: A Biography; and Ken Bolton's Art Writing.
University of Chicago Professor Wu Hung analyses Sydney and Beijing-based Shen Shaomin's Bonsai series as seen at the MCA for the 2010 Biennale of Sydney as "uncovering secrets".