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
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."
Published December 2012
New Zealand-born ecological artist, Lloyd Godman, who now lives in Australia, has in his own determined way for over thirty years, pondered and acted upon questions of how aesthetics might be involved in creating sustainable solutions to environmental problems. Historian Helen McDonald uses eco-critic Timothy Morton's notion of ambient aesthetics to examine three of Godman's multimedia projects.
The cloud/explosion paintings of James Guppy's The Weather Report series of 2006 were made as a response to 9/11.
Curators: Vivonne Thwaites, Fiona Salmon, Anita Angel Flinders University City Gallery 29 June – 26 August 2012
Director of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu Jenny Harper writes about the resilience and the pioneering spirit of the many and varied achievements of the Gallery since the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes in Canterbury.
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.
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 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.
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.
!Metro Arts, Brisbane 19 September – 6 October 2012
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.
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.
