Contributors
Wendy Walker
Wendy Walker is an Adelaide-based writer, art critic and occasional curator.
Articles
John Barbour: Work for Now
Curator: Kerry Crowley Australian Experimental Art Foundation 12 November 2010 - 29 January 2011
Diaspora
Paul Greenaway: Energy Synergy
Habitual browsers of a leading internet art site, accustomed to an absence of Australian content, would have been startled in February of this year, to observe a prominent reference to Australian art at Madrid's ARCO. For Paul Greenaway, Director of Greenaway Art Gallery in Adelaide, and motivated by a desire to redress the lack of international awareness of contemporary Australian art, it marked the culmination of seven years of lobbying to have Australia designated the focus nation at the Spanish contemporary art fair.
Art & Enterprise
Some digressions on ornament, abstraction and the stowaway
An erudite elaboration of the concept that a certain amount of ornamentalism in art rather than being the opposite to minimalism is present within it as a secret stowaway. Wendy Walker muses on this topic with particular reference to the 2001 exhibition Ornament and Abstraction at the Fondation Beyeler, Basel, and its curator Markus Bruederlin's premise that ornamentation has played a more integral role in the development of abstract art than has previously been supposed. Walker illustrates her thesis with works by Christian Lock, Stieg Persson and Timothy Horn.
Art Mind Beauty
The Creative Potential of the Awkward: Sarah crowEST
A look at roughly the last five years of 2007 Samstag scholar Sarah crowESTs art practice of objects, performances and videos. CrowESTs manifesto is to maintain flexibility in her thinking; to do or consider the opposite of that which is usual or customary and to make something very messy. Her work often explores the functions of the alter ego in contemporary visual arts practice.
Work
Anton Hart
Thenatureofthings Anton Hart South Australian School of Art Gallery Adelaide 2 November - 23 November 2006
The Word As Art
Becalmed: The Art of Going Nowhere in the Work of Nicholas Folland
Becalmed: the art of going nowhere in the work of Nicholas Folland
Currents II
Fifth Showing
Chris Mulhearn Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide 5 - 30 March 2003
Critical Mass: The New Brisbane
A Leaf May Become a Forest
Like nature itself, Hossein Valamanesh's artistic oeuvre is inextricably articulated as an evolution which is cyclical. Following his emigration to Australia in 1973, the diverse, but thematically unified art practice of Valamanesh has come to encompass installation, sculpture and works on linen and paper in addition to substantial public artworks. The intricate patternings of Islamic architecture play out in his work which are consistently fragile and subtle in both appearance and approach.
Rich & Strange
Marine Nature in Porcelain: The Recent Work of Robin Best
Ceramic artist Robin Best became fascinated by a complex marine world which included sea-invertebrates/filter feeders like bryozoans, sea sponges and ascidians (sea squirts) during walks on the beach in her seaside suburn of Semaphore. Here Walker discusses some of Best's recent work and conceptual concerns.
New Museums, New Agendas