On the ground with Our Mob in 2011
Terry Cleary was the Statewide Indigenous Community Artists Development (SICAD) Program Manger with Ananguku Arts and Culture from 2009-2011. He reflects on the potential power of Our Mob when it works.
More from this Issue
Sitting & connecting: Goulburn Art Class 2-0-1-1
Goulburn Class 2-0-1-1 was an exhibition curated by Djon Mundine at the Goulburn Regional Art Gallery of work made by prisoners at the local Correction Centre in response to ten one day workshops in the prison by seven Aboriginal artists whose work was also in the show. Writer and editor Maurice O'Riordan reviews the exhibition and more importantly the processes it involved.
Obscured by Light: Pamela Lofts and Kim Mahood
Araluen Arts Centre, Alice Springs 25 February – 25 March 2012
How did Aborigines invent the idea of contemporary art?
Brenda L Croft, artist, curator and Senior Research Fellow at the National Institute for Experimental Arts, UNSW, reviews and finds gaps in the big pink book put together over many years by Ian McLean that collects iconic bits of writing about Aboriginal art and knits them together.
Indigenous Art Code: cracking the code
The Director of the Indigenous Art Code John Oster explains the Code, how it works, why it is needed and who isn't complying.
No Place without Other Places: Spinifex Arts Project at fifteen years
University of Western Australia lecturer Darren Jorgensen examine the Spinifex Arts Project from its inception with reference to a new exhibition happening August-October 2012 at John Curtin Gallery and asks the big question: "What would it mean if Aboriginal artists were not tied to language groups, communities, art centres and regional styles?"
Big wave: Desert Country
Legendary curator John Kean looks at three recent large exhibitions of Aboriginal art - Tjukurrtjanu: Origins of Western Desert Art, Desert Country and Living Water, and questions whether the same spirit sings in all of them.
Artefacts of authenticity
Artist and lecturer Garry Jones is undertaking a Phd at the Australian National University School of Art in Canberra. In this article he reveals some of his investigations of Aboriginal artefacts in museum collections and questions notions of authenticity, reclamation and reinvigoration of the past in contemporary Aboriginal art.
The Ghost Net art project
Program Director for Ghost Nets Australia Sue Ryan describes how the Ghost Net Art Project began and what it is all about - people using eco-trash to share stories and express their creativity.
For architecture and country
Torres Strait Islander Kevin O'Brien, who is commissioning and directing an independent exhibition called 'Finding Country' at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2012 running from August to 25 November 2012, writes about an Aboriginal architecture that is not about buildings shaped like native animals.
Spaced: Art out of place
Artistic Director: Marco Marcon Fremantle Arts Centre 4 February - 11 March 2012
The elephant in the room: public art in Brisbane
Artist-activist Fiona Foley recounts a recent incident of the commissioning of a public art work for Kurilpa (place of the kuril or native water rat). Kurilpa is the cultural precinct where GOMA is located. Foley imagines works by prominent Queensland Aboriginal artists dotted along that place.