Whyalla Art Prize
Growing up the visual culture
More from this Issue
Philip Wolfhagen
The Inner Edge Academy Gallery, University of Tasmania, Inveresk 14 June - 9 July 2004
Peter Timms' 'What's wrong with contemporary art'
Blak Insights Queensland Art Gallery 3 July - 30 October 2004
Sue Richter. On Colour: Whiteblack Red
24HRArt, Darwin 9 July - 7 August 2004 Araleun Arts Centre, Alice Springs 3 April - 9 May 2004
Jacky Redgate: Survey 1980-2003 [Three Exhibitions]
III, V, VI of Contemporary Art Projects SA 2004 Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia Curator, Alan Cruickshank 23 April - 23 August 2004
MFC's and Gunter Christmann
Gunter Christmann was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1936. After two years in Canada, he arrived in Australia in 1959 and studied, somewhat casually, at the National Art School, Sydney, from 1962 to 1965. This article looks at the life and work of Christmann, that shambolic figure who, even as he is approaching his seventieth year, shows something of the perpetual youthful student. From his dress and demeanour to his his sloping walk and willingness to talk to the people he knows. A self taught artist, Christmann once saw his work as Geometric Abstraction and now states that the only major difference in style is the lack of intellectual order imposed on the work.
That was Then, This is Now: New Work by David Wadelton
David Wadeltons artistic career took a dramatic turn in the years 1997-98 after he purchase an iMac computer. Prior to this time he had been painting hybrid canvases and creating refined pencil and silverpoint drawings that displayed a unique quirckiness that was informed by the artists affection for the culture and language of Pop art. Gott explores the apparent shift in Wadeltons work, from the assemblages of the everyday objects that he first exhibited to his new works; mesmerising, hypnotic, dizzying.
Barking Up the Wrong Tree
Carnegie Gallery, Hobart 10 June - 4 July 2004 Curators: Stephen Mori, Felicity Wade & Raquel Ormella
That Strange Quivering of Substance: The Recent Paintings of Catherine Woo
Many years ago the Chinese writer Lin Yutang expressed that, from an Oriental perspective, Western artists always seem to depict objects from the outside, whereas those from China and Japan express their experience of them from within. This Eastern approach is inherent in the culture, not a position able to be merely adopted, and springs in part from religious inheritance, but also from the pictorial nature of Asian written languages. This inherent approach can be found in the recent work of Catherine Woo, expressing some sort of biological affinity. If the paintings can be said to be about anything, it is a the fine balance between energy and rest rather than the apparent subject matter.
Michael Jagamara Nelson Gives It A Go
Michael Jagamara Nelson is an artist who love - maybe even needs - a challenge. As Johnson examines, he has had his fair share. With his first painting, a piece he did for his uncle Jack Wayuta (a senior custodian for the Flying Ant Dreaming for Yuwinji) going unrecognised as one of his own for fifteen years, Michael Nelson made his mark in the indigenous art scene after his big break from Daphne Williams of Papunya Tula Arts.