Contributors
Kevin Murray
Dr Kevin Murray is Adjunct Professor at RMIT and a prolific writer and curator. He sits on the VicUrban Public Art Advisory Committee
Articles
Stop the Moats: Recent work by Cecile Williams and Nick Mangan
Adjunct Professor at RMIT Kevin Murray contrasts the idea of Australians as xenophobic 'moat' people with the idea of 'poor craft' which uses detritus to alchemically create a new preciousness.
Stirring II
Designing with the Neighbours in Mind: Unlimited Asia Pacific
'Unlimited Asia Pacific' is a platform for the Queensland state government to join Victoria as a leading force in Australia’s emergent design economy. It coincides with the birth of the Australian Design Alliance as a lobbying group to promote design as a capacity across government.
Stirring II
Who Stole the Southern Cross? A Cautionary Tale for Public Art
Curator and cultural visionary Kevin Murray asks what happened to Southern Cross Station, once Spencer Street Station now lost under a morass of advertising. Where is the public art?
Art in the Public Arena
The South South Way
How does the south appear to itself and how might south appear on the southern stage? The sweep of the south is broad and there are many ways to cross it. Kevin Murray considers the role of nature as a host of shared references for people and cultures of the southern hemisphere as well as ideas concerning indigenous and diasporic solidarity. Murray makes the point that it is on the political stage where the south seems particularly vocal, especially in relation to economic relations between north and south. The flow of traffic between north and south is also discussed, taking into consideration the infiltrating of modernism into Australia via its northern source and the shifting patterns in positioning the exotic gaze that is normally directed south. Murray concludes that, at this stage, the south remains a rare platform that welcomes both indigenous and non-indigenous, both tribes and individuals.
The South Issue: New Horizons
Thirsty Work
This article tells the story of the Irish engineer CY O'Connor who was appointed to oversee the construction of the pipeline that would supply the Kalgoorlie goldfields with fresh water and whose suicide caused much controversy in the region. The O'Connor monuments throughout the south of Western Australia are now being joined by contemporary sculptures that tell the other side of the story and play on the anxieties buried below. Anne Neil and Adrian Jones have developed works such as Death by Water which acts as a thirsty allegory of CY's life and Water Carrier which encourages visitors to listen to the trickle of despair that is so ingrained in the history of Kalgoorlie.
Taking in Water
Tasmania as Haven
Despite its troubled history, Tasmania has managed to offer quiet sanctuary for a remarkable range of peoples, natures and ideas. Much of Tasmania's political muscle has been exercised around environmental issues, backed by world heritage listing. Artists in the Haven exhibition which toured in 2003-4 each chose a biographical subject that dramatised the utopian appeal of Tasmania. Artists included Pip McManus, Geoff Parr, Patrick Collins, Anna Phillips, Jennifer Brook, Penny Carey Wells, John Vella, Helena Psotova and Judith-Rose Thomas. Each of these artists created works as tributes to various historical figures and all contain within them the thin glimmer of hope that beckons the darkened mainland above.
Fallout
How Clay Speaks for Neville Assad
The alphabet was invented, so they say, in Lebanon. To some Lebanese, their country represents an un-broken link with the birth of human history. Non-Aboriginal Australians, by contrast, share stories of interrupted family ties, of exile and forgetting. How then do these Lebanese relate to life in Australia?
Arts in a Multicultural Australia
You be the Chorus: Rites of Passage in a Virtual Art World
Imagine art without gatekeepers - no curators, no reviewers, no bureaurcrats. Emerging artists would no longer kowtow to the standards of a few curators in order to have their work seen. Audiences would no longer depend on the tastes of a select group of critics to determine which exhibition they should visit....the prospect of a transparent art world is in fact a mere extrapolation of current trends.
Emerging Artists
All this and Heaven too
Exhibition review All this and Heaven too Curated by Juliana Engberg The Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art
Art Gallery of South Australia
28 February - 13 April 1998
Public Art in Australia