Flight of the Cicada: Susan Purdy's insect photograms

The inaugural Watermark Literary Fellow Carolyn Leach-Paholski describes the black and white photograms of Susan Purdy which were made in the course of a long wet winter.

Published December 2011

Tom Freeman: 18th and 19th Century Prisoner art

The Museum of Natural Mystery, North Perth
22 - 23 July 2011

Published December 2011

Transplanting Life: the distributed media of embodied selves. The Body is a big place

Personality psychologist at Macquarie University Doris McIlwain does yoga and throws pots. She writes about new media installation 'The Body is a Big Place' the recent work of Peta Clancy and Helen Pynor which deals with the complexities of organ donation.

Published December 2011

Kate Shaw: Amping up the Magic Hour

In an interview format artist and academic Stephen Haley discusses the work of Kate Shaw the artist whose work features on the cover of the Phenomena issue of Artlink.
Shaw talks about the way she uses colour, her techniques and goals from garnering attention to depicting an ambivalent relationship to the natural world.

Published December 2011

Sara Hughes: Colour coded to quicken the heart

New Zealand-based Sara Hughes considers colour has been degraded throughout Western history. She uses coloured vinyl applied to architecture to "articulate social meaning".

Published December 2011

Blakely & Lloyd - Social Documentary Photography

Museum of Brisbane
12 August - 20 November 2011

Published December 2011

Speaking in Colour

Artist and curator Una Rey writes about the exhibition 'Speaking in colour' that she curated for the Newcastle Gallery from their collection in March-May 2011. Her experience of working with Indigenous artists in Central Australia coloured her choices and her interpretations of them.

Published December 2011

The Torres Strait Islands: A Celebration

Land, Sea and Sky: Contemporary Art of the Torres Strait, GOMA
Strait Home, State Library of Queensland
Awakening: Stories from the Torres Strait, Queensland Museum
Belong, Bangarra Dance Theatre, Queensland Performing Arts Centre
Mabo Oration 2011, Follow the Stars: Indigenous culture, knowledge and intellectual property rights
1 July - 23 October 2011

Published December 2011

Editorial: Vibrating, buzzing, swarming

Published December 2011

Artrave

Published December 2011

We Are Here: the International Symposium for Artist Run Initiatives

This year marks the 41st anniversary of the development of ARIs in Australia, and as both a celebration of and an indication of how far national and international ARIs have come, a four-day symposium organised by NAVA and Firstdraft was held in Sydney in September 2011.

Published December 2011

Cephalopods: Colour on demand

Octopuses come in many colours and they keep changing. Kate Chmiel explores their exceptional use of colour and what it might mean to humans.
As Denis Baylor points out in his 1995 book 'Colour: Art and Science': "The rich colours that we see are inventions of the nervous system rather than properties of light itself."

Published December 2011