Published March 2014
Published June 2013
Published September 2012
Published June 2012
Published March 2012
Published December 2011
Published September 2011
AEAF (Australian Experimental Art Foundation), Adelaide 20 July – 18 August 2012
Published December 2012
QUT Art Museum, Brisbane 1 September – 28 October 2012
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."
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.”
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
Curator: Lisa Harms Adelaide Botanic Garden, FELTspace, SASA Gallery 31 July – 26 August 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.
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?"
The cloud/explosion paintings of James Guppy's The Weather Report series of 2006 were made as a response to 9/11.
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.
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."
