My Country, I Still Call Australia Home: Interview with Bruce McLean
On curating My Country, I Still Call Australia Home: Contemporary Art from Black Australia, opening at the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane on 1 June 2013.
More from this Issue
Rekospective
Yorta Yorta and Wiradjuri curator and lecturer Jirra Harvey traces the career of self-taught graffiti and studio artist Reko Rennie. He uses a traditional Kamilaroi patterning in neon and in graffiti as a contemporary statement of sovereignity. Harvey says: "The subtext to such works is a running narrative on government practices that work to control and restrain Aboriginal communities and the subsequent rebellion of the people."
The road to Pormpuraaw
Filmmaker Peter Hylands writes about a recent visit to the remote Pormpuraaw Art Centre in Far North Queensland. Here he talks with artist Sid Bruce Short Joe who speaks nine languages, the ninth is English.
The archive in the contemporary
The artworks of Danie Mellor, Brian Robinson and Christian Thompson each draw on archival material for subject matter, for inspiration, and to develop new work that harks back and forward at the same time.
Louise Bourgeois: Late Works
Curator: Jason Smith Heide Museum of Modern Art 21 November 2012 – 11 March 2013
Sculpture@Bathers
Curators: Tony Jones, Joanna Robertson Kidogo Arthouse and Bathers Beach Arts Precinct, Fremantle 16 March – 1 April 2013
The limits of criticism
Anthropologist John Carty casts his eyes over the last ten years of writing on Desert art, mostly in newspapers, and finds many cliches and inconsistencies. He asks: "Where are the fine-grained localised art histories, the rich biographies of our most interesting and important individual artists? Where are their voices?" And replies: "They are still waiting in the Desert."
Let's be polite
Editor Daniel Browning interviews artist Vernon Ah Kee who discusses the lack of criticism of Aboriginal art and the abundance of 'mass production' Aboriginal art emanating from remote communities seen by some as 'real Aboriginal art' but in the eyes of Ah Kee simply and uncritically playing into false romantic notions of the lives of Aboriginal people.
Rainforest identity (past and future)
Napolean Oui is a Cairns-based, mid-career, Djabugay artist and a proud advocate of the rainforest art style unique to Far North Queensland. 2012 was a breakthrough year for him, he did a residency at Studio PM with Paul Machnik and others in Montreal, developed new work at Djumbunji Press for a solo show at Kickarts Contemporary Arts in Cairns during the Art Fair, AND sold work to the National Gallery of Australia.