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
Spirits beyond borders: Shadowlife
Curator and Associate Director of Taiwan Culture and Creative Platform Foundation Antoanetta Ivanovna, resident in Taiwan since 2011, discusses the travelling exhibition Shadowlife curated by Djon Mundine and Natalie King, and its impact in Taiwan where consciousness of their indigenous people is not as developed as it is in Australia.
Gulumbu Yunupingu (1943–2012)
People in Nhulunbuy still talk wonderingly about the last days of Gulumbu Yunupingu’s life. Something happened. Something changed. For nine days the monolithic concrete hospital in the sterile mining town threw open its doors and for nine days the Yolngu ceremony ground flowed in.
Good Medicine
Being Aboriginal doesn’t make you wise, spiritual or even good at art. Being Aboriginal is historical just like being any other nationality or ethnicity. All art can be examined ethnographically, all people can be examined ethnographically.
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."
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."
Mouths and Meaning Bronwyn Platten, Sarah Coggrave and others
Australian Experimental Art Foundation Adelaide 1 February – 2 March 2013
Jimmy Pike: there is more
Curator and writer Karen Dayman fills in the background of the development of the work and broadens the profile of Great Sandy Desert artist Jimmy Pike whose skills took him around the world and into collaborations with Desert Designs, with his partner Pat Lowe and with the theatre.
Louise Bourgeois: Late Works
Curator: Jason Smith Heide Museum of Modern Art 21 November 2012 – 11 March 2013
