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.

More from this Issue

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.

Vernon Ah Kee and Daniel Browning

Ghostnets go global, and local

Ghost nets are fishing nets that have been abandoned at sea, lost accidentally, or deliberately discarded. The GhostNet Project, which began on islands and in communities around the top of Australia, uses the nets to make artworks, to raise awareness of marine pollution, to be creative. Awareness of Ghostnets is on the rise both nationally and internationally.

Sue Ryan

In the Shadow of the Past, this World Knots Tight

Venn Gallery, Perth 29 March – 10 May 2013

Sheridan Coleman

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.

Stephanie Radok

New Olds - Design between Tradition and Innovation

Curator: Volker Albus RMIT Gallery, Melbourne 7 December 2012 – 9 March 2013

Patricia Brien

Savanhdary Vongpoothorn: The Beautiful as Force

Martin Browne Fine Art, Sydney 7–31 March 2013

Prue Gibson

Desert Lake

Curator: Mandy Martin Araluen Arts Centre, Alice Springs 2 March – 14 April 2013

Kieran Finnane

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.

Beverley Mitchell and Napoleon Oui

NUNGAODRADEK - AEAF 2013

odradek is a window exhibition space at the Australian Experimental Art Foundation in Adelaide. nungaodradek is a season of works by four emerging nunga (Aboriginal) artists based in South Australia curated by Ali Gumillya Baker. Their overall theme is sovereign protest.

Artlink

The dearth of criticism

Some artists are often heard to complain about the lack of honest criticism of Aboriginal art. But in such a limited sphere, criticising an Aboriginal artist in formal or aesthetic terms, or at a deeper level, is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel. Too often, critics play the man and not the ball. Can we handle the truth?

Daniel Browning

Foundations Edge: Artists and technology

QUT Art Museum 16 March – 26 May 2013

Rainer Doecke

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."

John Carty

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