Published March 2014
Published June 2013
Published September 2012
Published June 2012
Published March 2012
Published December 2011
Published September 2011
Curator: Katie Lenanton Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, Perth 11 August – 6 October 2012
Published December 2012
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.
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.
The cloud/explosion paintings of James Guppy's The Weather Report series of 2006 were made as a response to 9/11.
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.
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."
Jennifer Hamilton reviews English and European responses to big storms over time and suggests that even today we need "the more metaphysical dimensions of our existence – the cultural, social and political – to even begin to understand how thunder, lightning, strong winds and an abundance of water falling from the sky can still completely destroy a city and change the course of history."
AEAF (Australian Experimental Art Foundation), Adelaide 20 July – 18 August 2012
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
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?"
Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Melbourne 11 August - 23 September 2012
