Khmer pop-lock: saving kids through breaking

It's tough being a refugee, really tough for some. Cambodian Tuy 'KK' Sobil's story begins in a refugee camp in Thailand, travels to the US where he winds up in prison for eight years and more happily shifts to Phnom Penh where he landed as a deportee from the US and has since become an important role model teaching hiphop dancing and music to vulnerable children.

Published December 2012

Exhibitions to watch

Published December 2012

Remembering Lidia Groblicka 1933 - 2012

Published December 2012

Coming soon: Big mining and the question of scale

Ann Finegan raises the alarm on the fiendish short-sighted depradations of Big Coal open cut mining in the lower Hunter Valley and other places currently under threat. She describes the work done by artist/activists in response and asks: "How does one fight such incommensurables of scale and the slow unfold of food bowl and water disaster? Where do we start? With protective changes to State and Federal legislation? With commensurable economic data?"

Published December 2012

The art of climate change

Architect, writer and urban evolutionary Paul Downton asks where the great climate change art is, finds some examples and suggests that more is sorely needed. "Have you ever seen climate change activism that made you laugh? While your jaw may drop slightly when confronted with some of the hard facts about climate change impacts, have you ever really gasped at a work of climate change art?"

Published December 2012

Conversations in ellipsis: an exercise in affect & association... time & (e)motion studies, or things unsaid

Curator: Lisa Harms
Adelaide Botanic Garden, FELTspace, SASA Gallery
31 July – 26 August 2012

Published December 2012

The cinemas of disaster

Curator, film programmer and writer Danni Zuvela reviews the genre of disaster films since 1903 and finds that the most recent example 'Beasts of the Southern Wild' expresses a spirit of resilience that is both wild and magical.

Published December 2012

Artrave

Published December 2012

Pat Brassington: Á Rebours

Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Melbourne
11 August - 23 September 2012

Published December 2012

Cambodia and youth arts

Life is tough in Cambodia if you are not a tourist. Dragonfly Tours is run by a unique partnership model which results in terrific holidays as well as contributing to the betterment of life in Cambodia for its residents.

Published December 2012

Contained fear: living in geological time: Ken & Julia Yonetani's uranium art

The artwork Crystal Palace: The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nuclear Nations consisting of elaborate chandeliers painstakingly made from uranium glass beads shown at Artereal Gallery in Sydney and at GV Art in London were the eloquent response of Ken and Julia Yonetani to the meltdown of the nuclear reactor Fukushima Daiichi on March 11, 2011. Senior lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Macquarie University Doris McIlwain examines the Yonetani's work in the context of psychological responses to disaster, in particular nuclear disaster.

Published December 2012

New Orleans': Resilience goes way back before Katrina

The Big Easy is a nickname for New Orleans, USA, referring to the easy-going, laid back attitude to life that jazz musicians and local residents indulge in there. Carol Schwarzman, with the aid of her brother, reviews some resilient responses to the Big Hurricane Katrina's path through it on 25 August 2005. In the words of US writer Tom Piazza: "The ‘underprivileged’ people of New Orleans “spun a culture out of their lives – a music, a cuisine, a sense of life – that has been recognised around the world as a transforming spiritual force.”

Published December 2012