Carving into Country: The work of Badger Bates
When I carve I feel I am carving new life into my country and I can hear my old Granny and the other old people singing in the language.
More from this Issue
tough(er) love: art from Eyre Peninsula
Curator: John Neylon Flinders University Art Museum 28 February – 28 April 2013
Ich Bin Ein Aratjara: 20 years later
Aboriginal super-curator Djon Mundine, who travelled to Europe in 1994 as touring curator with the significant exhibition Aratjara: art of the first Australians, looks back at the genesis and reception of that exhibition. He asks where is the political impetus evident in Aratjara today and where is the Aboriginal input into the development of national survey exhibitions.
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.
Disquiet and resistance in the art of Julie Gough
Senior Curator of Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Victoria Judith Ryan surveys the complex and inventive art practice of Julie Gough who is concerned with "developing a visual language to engage with the unsettling space between conflicting and subsumed Australian histories."
Black prints* @ Cicada Press
Cicada Press is a research group within the School of Art at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales (COFA UNSW). For the past six years Cicada Press, with Tess Allas from the School of Art History and Art Education, have been working closely with a number of Aboriginal artists from across the country.
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?
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.
Harry James Wedge (1957–2012)
Assistant Curator of Indigenous Heritage Collections at the Macleay Museum Matt Poll writes a thoughtful, engaging and detailed account of the life and art of Harry Wedge, known as 'Big H' in his home community in Cowra. Poll says:" Harry’s artistic career remained an enigma to those closest to him throughout his life. His work is an exemplary case of an Australian outsider art – though not in the conventional definition."
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.
String theory: Karen Mills
Michelle Culpitt examines the work practice of Northern Territory artist Karen Mills whose paintings are inspired by the string bags made by the women weavers of Arnhem Land. Culpitt writes: "The articulation of her painterly vision is only possible at the nexus of her experience and influences as an Aboriginal woman in contemporary Australia, a place of both deep connection and belonging to country, and also disjuncture and dislocation from a nation in denial of its own history."
Testing Ground
Curator: Julie Gough Artists: The 1491s, Ólöf Björnsdóttir, Trudi Brinckman, Darren Cook, Rebecca Dagnall, Sue Kneebone, Nancy Mauro-Flude, Jeroen Offerman, Perdita Phillips, r e a, Keren Ruki, Christian Thompson, Martin Walch, Siying Zhou Long Gallery, Salamanca Art Centre, Hobart 14 March – 28 April 2013