Jarragbu-nungu Warrambany: Flood in Warmun

On 13 March 2011 a deluge of water swept through the Warrmarn [Warmun] community. It rushed into Turkey Creek from the tributaries that flow northward from the Purnululu ranges and from the eastern hills. Assistant manager and curator at Warmun Arts Centre Cate Massola asks how much consultation with residents occurred around their evacuation and the rebuilding of their homes.

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

Contact lenses: Lloyd Godman's ecological art

New Zealand-born ecological artist, Lloyd Godman, who now lives in Australia, has in his own determined way for over thirty years, pondered and acted upon questions of how aesthetics might be involved in creating sustainable solutions to environmental problems. Historian Helen McDonald uses eco-critic Timothy Morton's notion of ambient aesthetics to examine three of Godman's multimedia projects.

Published December 2012

Ian Burns: In the Telling

ACMI, Melbourne
24 July 2012 – 20 January 2013

Published December 2012

Artrave

Published December 2012

Somewhere: Manuwangku life with a nuclear waste dump

The current touring exhibition by Jagath Dheerasekara, Manuwangku: Under the Nuclear Cloud (2012) is a salutary reminder that the struggle for self-determination by Aboriginal people continues unabated. Jagath’s project dates back to July 2010 when Beyond Nuclear Initiative (BNI) organised a forum in Sydney to inform people of the impact of a decision made in mid 2005 by the Howard government to dump nuclear waste at Manuwangku, or Muckaty as it is popularly known, 120 km north of Tennant Creek.

Published December 2012

The place you stay when you visit the future today

In 2011 at Tin Sheds Gallery in Sydney as part of The Right To The City project an installation and performance by NZ/Australian artist D.V. Rogers called DISASTR explored the idea of shelter in times of disaster by building a functioning Hexayurt Hotel in the centre of Wadigal Green at Sydney University.

Published December 2012

Falling through time

In September 2011 at the UTS Gallery in an exhibition called The Fall before the Fall Elvis Richardson and Daniel Mudie Cunningham showed work reflecting on 9/11. Anna Gibbs analyses how their works make this trauma "articulable, shareable and ... to some extent, bearable."

Published December 2012

Merilyn Fairskye: Precarious

Merilyn Fairskye's work on Chernobyl was serendipitous in the beginning as she visited Reactor No. 4 in 2009 as a sidetrip from Kiev to get a single video shot. She returned a year later to film Precarious which was previewed to Sydney audiences to coincide with the 25th anniversary of Chernobyl just a few days before 11 March 2011 when the world witnessed the Fukushima Daiichi disaster unfold.

Published December 2012

In a silent way

Curator: Matt Warren
Laura Altman, Monica Brooks, Nicolas Bullen, Darren Cook, Gail Priest, Lawrence English, Samaan Fieck, Joel Stern
Contemporary Art Spaces, Hobart
28 July – 26 August 2012

Published December 2012

Shen Shaomin: The day after tomorrow

The Day After Tomorrow is Chinese-Australian Shen Shaomin’s first solo show in Australia in ten years. His visions of a warped natural world tap into anxieties about civilisation’s ghastly effects. “The space for our lives is shrinking,” Shen said in a recent interview. “The world is more and more dangerous because of the way that we live our lives.”

Published December 2012

Promoting the long view

Artist and filmmaker Malcolm McKinnon's current practice is focused around documentary filmmaking and social history, motivated by an appreciation of living memory and local vernacular. He writes about the Illuminated by Fire project, an initiative of Regional Arts Victoria, that involved a dozen artists working with eleven local communities in the wake of Black Saturday.

Published December 2012