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
Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Melbourne 11 August - 23 September 2012
Published December 2012
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.
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.
QUT Art Museum, Brisbane 1 September – 28 October 2012
Curators: Vivonne Thwaites, Fiona Salmon, Anita Angel Flinders University City Gallery 29 June – 26 August 2012
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.
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.
The cloud/explosion paintings of James Guppy's The Weather Report series of 2006 were made as a response to 9/11.
Humanity seems to be on the brink of annihilating the natural world on which we depend. Our quarrelsome species has built a gigantic web of capitalism, connecting global corporations, consumerism, the markets, the military, rhetoric machines called politicians and the organisations and institutions that now include, tragically, the universities.
From September 11, 2011 to January 8, 2012 an exhibition called September 11 curated by Peter Eleey was held at MoMA PS1 in New York. Charity Bramwell describes key works in this "shocking and intriguing" exhibition which commemorated the tenth anniversary of the historic attacks on the World Trade Centre Twin Towers.
Curator: Djon Mundine Mosman Art Gallery, Sydney 1 September – 25 November 2012 then touring
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?"
