Artrave
CULTURAL POLICY AND THE ARTS PORTFOLIO
More from this Issue
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.
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.
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?
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."
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.
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.
Louise Bourgeois: Late Works
Curator: Jason Smith Heide Museum of Modern Art 21 November 2012 – 11 March 2013
Pamela Anne Johnston Dahl-Helm (1947–2013)
Pam was a proud Bundjalung woman. An artist, mother, grandmother, sister and friend to many, a long-term resident of Sydney’s Woolloomooloo, she was a true leftie, advocating for social justice, equality and the rights of minority groups.
tough(er) love: art from Eyre Peninsula
Curator: John Neylon Flinders University Art Museum 28 February – 28 April 2013