2012 Deadly Ennui

Pat Hoffie riffs off Samuel Taylor Coleridge's famous 18th century poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner with its curse brought on by the killing of an albatross all the way to Lars Von Trier's recent film Melancholia about the end of the world. "Nowadays shit is happening all the time everywhere to everybody."

Published December 2012

9th Shanghai Biennale: Re-Activation

Chief Curator: Qiu Zhijie
Co-curators: Boris Groys, Jens Hoffmann, Johnson Chang

Shanghai Power Station of Art
and other venues
2 October 2012 – 31 March 2013

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

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

Calamity Japan: grieving artists respond to quake, tsunami and nuclear crisis

Former editor of Japanese Art Scene Monitor and the current Arts, Entertainment and Features Division Chief at The Japan Times, Edan Corkill looks at the wide variety of sensitive works produced by Japanese artists in the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake and the subsequent Fukashima Daiichi nuclear Power Plant disaster.

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

Exhibitions to watch

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

Bungaree: the First Australian

Curator: Djon Mundine
Mosman Art Gallery, Sydney
1 September – 25 November 2012
then touring

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

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