Alive and Kicking

This issue is subtitled ‘beauty and terror’; let me explain.

I often think of the natural environment of the continent as a metaphor that mirrors the history of colonisation; a kind of infinite pathetic fallacy redoubling on itself.

Published June 2011

Bruce Reynolds: Air Percussion

Ryan Renshaw Gallery, Brisbane
3 - 26 March 2011

Published June 2011

Blandowski's Illustrated Encyclopaedia

Freelance curator, honorary associate of Museum Victoria and Blandowski-ite from way back John Kean analyses this prickly Prussian polymath's Illustrated Encyclopedia on Australia at last brought together and to light by the efforts of New Zealander Harry Allen. The book includes contributions by Mark Dugagrist, Brook Andrew, Luise Hercus and Thomas A. Darragh.

Published June 2011

New Exhibitions Projects Initiatives

Published June 2011

Jason Wing: In Flight

Larissa Behrendt writes about both soothing and painful installations and paintings by Jason Wing that explore his Chinese and Aboriginal roots.

Published June 2011

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

Victorian Indigenous Art Awards 2011

Article on VIAA, Indigenous arts in Victoria – from the VIAA Curator.

Published June 2011

New displays at Pitt Rivers Museum

In 2009 eight new case displays were added to the legendary 1884 Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. Indigenous art scholar and lecturer Susan Lowish examines how Aboriginal art fared in this rejig of history.

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

An encounter with the National Galleries

Lecturer in the Australian Indigenous Studies program at the University of Melbourne, Odette Kelada describes her visit to the National Gallery of Australia's new Indigenous galleries and the National Portrait Gallery that is just next door and views them as sites of contemporary Frontier warfare.

Published June 2011

Trevor Nickolls: Other side Art

This is the first time that noted historian and writer on Aboriginal art Ian McLean has written a substantial interpretive artcile on the work of Trevor Nickolls. Nickolls began working in the 70s and is still painting his own particular brand of cross-cultural art.

Published June 2011

Exhibitions to Watch

Published June 2011