Published 30 March 2022
Issues of stereo-typing, conforming behaviour and fun and practicality are looked at in an observation of an MG driver.
Exhibition review Birds Have Fled Angela Valamanesh Univsersity of South Australia Art Museum 7 September - 2 October 1995
Published December 1995
Big things have the power to make real the stuff of dreams. They have the power to make us stop at places we would never have dreamed of visiting. Grand kitsch is both art and beyond.
Although well known in regional art histories, Western Australian sculptor Edward Kohler has a far wider importance. Economic survival led him to blend popular and high art long before it was standard practice. With the Piccadilly Theatre reliefs of 1938, the sheer exuberance and infectious quality of a positive (if unconscious) kitsch aesthetic entered professional Australian art 60 years ago: Hollywood meets Olympia.
Our affection for kitsch is a benign form of aesthetic hypocrisy. My generation, give or take 15 years, adores kitsch. We want to have some badness; it's fun: you laugh both at your dismay for an object and your perplexity over the delight that it brings. In a broad cultural sense, my generation is kitschophilic; and this means, I suppose, not that we love the kitschy object with innocence but that we love the contempt which the kitschy object arouses.
Exhibition review Received Richard Grayson Greenaway Art Gallery Adelaide South Australia 12 July - 6 August 1995
Exhibition Review Patmos Series Paintings Jules Sher Perth Galleries Western Australia
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.
Exhibition review Beep 'n' Click Entrepot Gallery Tasmanian School of Art Hobart Tasmania 8 - 29 September 1995
I confess to a feeling of great affection for Mary MacKillop (1842 - 1909), vernacular culture and kitsch, and great enthusiasm for the idea of an Australian Vatican - an extravagant museum which is also a major site of pilgrimage.
Since 1829, the inhabitants of the western third of Australia have identified more closely with the black swan than the kangaroo. The swan was and is to be found on a wide range of items from buildings to letterheads and furry toys. It crosses class boundaries...
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.
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!
