Images of Death 600,000 HOURS (Mortality) Experimental Art Foundation
Images of death explored in the context of the exhibition 600,000 hours (mortality) held at the Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide South Australia October 1994.
Exhibition review Crossovers: Site works and symposium
Tasmanian School of Art and various locations, Launceston, Tasmania 26 September - 2 October 1994
Nuclear conflagration - whether real or imagined - captivated the post war psyche. Endist images of one form or another were developed in response to what many foresaw as the likely outcome of a third world war.
Across much of Aboriginal Australia the announcement of a death is followed by profound communal mourning, the removal or destruction of the deceased's belongings and most significantly a prohibition on the use of the deceased's name.
The artist looks at the paintings which were developed for the Health Commission on education, prevention and caring in the AIDS environment. Using an Aboriginal perspective these paintings were produced as a powerful series of posters.
While AIDS does indeed affect everyone in our society, at the moment in Australia we are seeing predominantly a gay and lesbian artistic response to the epidemic.
Thus we come full circle to view the cemetery not as a necessary inconvenience to be isolated on the edge of town and visited once every few years but as a resource that can make a positive contribution to the community.
Book reviews Indecent Exposures: Twenty years of Australian Feminist Photography
By Catriona Moore
Allen & Unwin in association with the Power Institute of Fine Arts
206 pp $21.95
Dissonance: Feminism and the Arts 1970 -90
Edited by Catriona Moore
Allen & Unwin in association with Artspace
308 pp $21.95