Darren Siwes: dialogue with Rembrandt

Dutch art historian Marianne Riphagen, whose PhD looked at contemporary Indigenous photo-media artists, draws togther the dark and light in the artwork of Rembrandt and South Australia-based Darren Siwes to question the Dutch Golden Age.

Published June 2011

Action at Canopy Artspace in Cairns

Canopy Artspace first opened for the 2009 Cairns Art Fair. It houses the Australian Art Print Network, New Flames Foundation and Editions Tremblay NFP (no Fixed Press). Paloma Ramos who works at Editions Tremblay vividly decribes the intense and fertile work in printmaking and sculpture that happens at Canopy.

Published June 2011

To hold and protect: Mulka at Yirrkala

The Mulka Project is a Yolngu archive and production centre incorporating a theatre, media lab, project office, audio video library and museum. “As the Mulka Project is growing up we need to be clear that it is just a resource and the law and culture is coming from the land where people are staying, even where there is no one staying, its patterns, the designs and culture, are coming from the country.” states Djambawa Marawili.

Published June 2011

Torres Strait Islander watercolours

The Queensland State Library Executive Manager of Indigenous research and projects Tom Mosby writes about the Margaret Lawrie Works on Paper Collection and the role of art in the lives of Torres Strait Islanders. Between July and October 2011, the watercolours in the Margaret Lawrie Works on Paper Collection will, for the first time, be exhibited together as part of 'Strait Home' at the State Library of Queensland.

Published June 2011

A Third Path: the Musée des Confluences

French curator Arnaud Morvan, who recently completed his Phd at the University of Melbourne on the art of the East Kimberley, writes about the new approach to showing and consulting about Indigenous art taken by the still-under construction Musée des Confluences (due to open in 2014) in Lyon.
"It represents a first step towards an abolition of the segregation endured by non-Western art in Europe and an attempt to rise above the antiquated opposition between art and ethnography."

Published June 2011

Elcho Island: Morning Star over London

Artlink's UK contributing editor Jo Higgins interviewed Melbourne-born London gallerist Rebecca Hossack about her Indigenous art program and her attempts to raise its profile in London. She has two galleries and each summer for three months both galleries show only Australian Indigenous art in her Songlines series. Recently Elcho Island art featured.

Published June 2011

Fiona Foley: Public and Political

Fiona Foley's recent public work has gone from strength to strength most recently at Mackay where her six large new works form a trail commemorating the Pacific and black history of the region.

Published June 2011

Report on Remembering Forward Forum, Cologne

Ian McLean is Winthrop Professor, Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Visual Arts, The University of Western Australia.

Published June 2011

Artrave

Published June 2011

Yalangabara: Art of the Djang'kawu

'Yalangabara: Art of the Djang'kawu' curated by Banduk Marika and Margie West includes art made from 1939 till recently. All works are about the same creation story and all comprise a history of creative and spiritual custodianship by the Marika family of the Rirratjingu clan.

Published June 2011

Aboriginal art at the Vatican

The National Museum of Australia's Margo Neale writes in depth about the curation of a 100 year old collection of Aboriginal art at the Vatican in Rome. She asks: "How do Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, previously captive to the anthropological gaze and to unequal power relations, not only interrogate the histories that defined them as ‘other’ and ‘lesser’, but also regain their voice and agency over historic cultural objects that reside in collections around the world?"

Published June 2011

Tracey Moffatt / Stop(the)Gap /
tall man

Tracey Moffatt: Narratives
Curators: Stephen Zagala, Maria Zagala
Art Gallery of South Australia
26 February - 20 March 2011

Stop (the) Gap: International Indigenous art in motion
Curator: Brenda Croft
Samstag Museum of Art
24 February - 21 April 2011

Vernon Ah Kee: tall man
Australian Experimental Art Foundation
23 February - 26 March 2011

Published June 2011