Published December 2014
Mazie Turner 1954–2014
Published 01 September 2014
Gordon Bennett 1955–2014
Published September 2014
Published 01 June 2014
Howard Taylor 1918 – 2001 WA
Published September 2001
Published 01 September 2013
Thancoupie (aka Dr Thancoupie Gloria Fletcher James AO) was a trailblazer in Aboriginal art, studying, showing and making work in ceramics for many years. Her work was shown nationally and internationally. After many years she returned home to Weipa, and while still making and exhibiting, focused much of her attention on her family, community, land rights and the next generations.
Published June 2013
AEAF (Australian Experimental Art Foundation), Adelaide 20 July – 18 August 2012
Published December 2012
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.”
Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Melbourne 11 August - 23 September 2012
Curator: Djon Mundine Mosman Art Gallery, Sydney 1 September – 25 November 2012 then touring
!Metro Arts, Brisbane 19 September – 6 October 2012
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."
Curator: Katie Lenanton Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, Perth 11 August – 6 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."
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?"
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.
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
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.
