This issue of Artlink meanders (with kitschy loucheness rather than formalist stringency) around 'taste' bad and good, the workings of taste and various permutations of cultural expression in present day Australia. Kitsch is scrutinised.
When I was an art critic, I quickly grew to dislike the word 'taste'. It was a convenient tool used to dismiss reviews by people who didn't like what I had to say. Whenever I delivered a negative crit upon a widely revered artist, or a positive crit on a very minor figure, they complained that I was allowing my taste to undermine my professionalism.
...But the Mardi Gras will always be a child of the seventies. Remember that mantra 'the personal is political'. In spite of the co-option and mainstreaming of Lesbian and Gay culture this wonderful spectacularly amateurish display (of difference) cannot help but be a politicised intervention.
Collecting and making dolls grows in popularity in Australia, but members of Australia's arts industry are relatively under-represented in the ranks of doll collectors. Original dolls speak of the culture that produces them.
The days of the Tamworth Festival are marked with ceremonies. Stars place their hands into cement and history in the Hands of Fame Park. At the rear of Maguire's pub the popular alternative Noses of Fame honours famous noses.
That these same institutions have never seriously attempted to digest the great crafty, feminine art of traditional cake decoration is more regrettable. Icons, after all, are as valued as the most avant-garde compostion if made of oil paint and gold leaf on wood. When future generations visit our hallowed aesthetic halls, let them meet cake!
Are gossamer wings set to supplant shoulder pads as signifiers of feminist power? Shopping malls in middle class suburbs are now sprouting fairy shops where, for only a few dollars, little girls and grown-up ones too, can sprout fairy wings that temporarily release them from the masculine world around them.
Collection of images with artists statements. Artists featured: Katanya Shanzy, Anne Graham, Geoffrey Seelander, Simon Duncan, Pierre Cavalan, Stefan Szonyi, Cliff Burt, Andrea McNamara, Karen Ferguson, Constanze Zikos, Jandee Amar Leddar, Leon Pericles, Meryn Jones, Annie Taylor, Ex de Medici and Ian Mowbray.