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Contributors
Artlink
Adele Hann
Alison Carroll
Amanda McDonald Crowley
Andy Marshall
Andy Miller
Angela Goddard
Anna Zagala
Annemarie Kohn
Annika Evans
Barbara Piscitelli
Bec Tudor
Belinda Hoare
Bette Misfud
Briony Rhodes
Bronwyn Wright
Carol Schwarzman
Cassandra Laing
Catherine De Lorenzo
Catherine Speck
Charles Esche
Chris Chapman
Christine Nicholls
Christopher Chapman
Daryl Watson
David McNeill
Des Griffin
Donald Brook
Dorothy Erickson
Dylan Rainforth
Emma Zakarevicius
Francesco Bonarto
Gail Fairlamb
George Petelin
Grace Cochrane
Gregory Leong
Heather Ellyard
Heather Wallace
Ian Hamilton
Ian Tully
India Flint
Ingrid Hoffmann
Jacqueline Millner
Jacqui Durrant
Jane Barney
Jane Button
Janet Maughan
Jennifer Mehra
Jessie Lumb
Jo Higgins
Joanna Mendelssohn
Jonathan Holmes
Josephine Wilson
Judith Abell
Julianne Pierce
Julie Blyfield
Juliette Peers
Kate Warren
Ken Orchard
Kevin Murray
Kevin Wilson
Kiersten Fishburn
Kim Machan
Lesley Harding
Linda Carroli
Lisa Byrne
Lisa Chandler
Lisa Harms
Logan Macdonald
Louise Martin-Chew
Malcolm McKinnon
Marco Marcon
Margaret Moore
Margaret Way
Margaret Worth
Margot Osborne
Maria Kunda
Mark Ferguson
Mark Gomes
Martin Thomas
Martin Walch
Maurice O'Riordan
Megan Jones
Michael Newall
Michele Helmrich
Michelle Antoinette
Nancy Bless
Nathan Firth
Nick Waterlow
Nien Schwarz
Nikki Miller
Noris Ioannou
Pat Hoffie
Paul Downton
Paul Greenaway
Paul Holton
Paula Furby
Penelope Richardson
Peter Anderson
Philip Hutch
Issues
Art in the Public Arena
Issue 30:3 | September 2010
Critical Mass: The New Brisbane
Issue 23:2 | June 2003
New Museums, New Agendas
Issue 22:4 | December 2002
Place
Issue 22:2 | June 2002
Sculpture and Cities
Issue 20:4 | December 2000
Articles
Elizabeth Woods: There is going to be a wedding and you are all invited
Elizabeth Woods' art practice has for many years revolved around the relationship between place, artist and community and what arises from their connection to each other. Marrying a tree is its latest manifestation.
The Fourth Plinth
In Antony Gormley’s living portrait 'One and Other' for 100 days, from 6 July to 14 October 2009, 2400 randomly selected, otherwise unextraordinary, individuals continuously occupied the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square for an hour at a time.
The Meandering River: Slowing Down and Keeping Going
The notion of public art has been shifting over the years to include hopeful new models for change in a time of uncertainty - festivals, the temporal, the long term developmental and experimental thinking about how art can modify and influence the public realm.
Echigo-Tsumari: Public Art as Regenerating Force
Janet Maughan travelled to the Echigo-Tsumari Triennial in September 2009. With Stephanie Britton she interviewed the indefatigable Fram Kitagawa, Director of both the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial [ETAT] and of the new Niigata Water and Land Art Festival in the seaport of Niigata, and wove his words around the experience of seeing outstanding art in the unusual and delightful surroundings of the Japanese countryside.
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?
Torches in the Night: The Odyssey of Craig Walsh
'Craig Walsh Digital Odyssey' is a national touring Project presented by the Museum of Contemporary Art in association with the artist. www.digitalodyssey.com.au With his partner artist Hiromi Tango Walsh is also making complementary collaborative works called 'The Home Project".
A Public Spectacle: Next Wave Risks All
Next Wave: No Risk Too Great, directed by Jeff Khan, took place in Melbourne from 13 – 30 May 2010.
Strangers and the Slow Laneway Experience
Kate Warren examines Melbourne's laneways and the many way artists have used them to re-energise and re-familiarise local audiences with their urban environment. Artists mentioned are Sarah Rodigari and Tim Webster, Troy Innocent, Matt Blackwood, John Alexander Borley, Anthony McInneny, Sue McCauley and Keith Deverell, and QingLan Huang.
Social Conscience, Migration, Rivers and Oceans: Virginia King
New Zealand sculptor Virginia King is an artist who has long recognised the changing nature of public art and the part it can play in raising awareness and social conscience.
Solar Systems and Winter Glow: Cameron Robbins, Alexander Knox
Anna Zagala looks at two striking public artworks in Melbourne, Cameron Robbins and Christopher Lansell's The Solar System down at the St Kilda Foreshore and Alexander Knox's kinetic light work Maxims of behaviour on the corner of Bourke and Swanston Sts in the UBD of Melbourne.
Synergy Tasmania-Style - Ocean, mountains and windpower meet boardwalks, public art and a new museum
The Glenorchy Art & Sculpture Park (GASP!) project on the outskirts of Hobart is under construction just two kilometres from Australia’s largest private freely accessible art gallery the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), opening in January 2011.
Self in the City: Launceston Living Laneways
Public artworks surrounding the Regional Arts Australia National Conference and Festival held in Launceston in August 2010 set the cat among the pigeons.
Street Talk with Mary Lou Pavlovic
Juliette Peers interviews Mary Lou Pavlovic Mary Lou Pavlovic to find out how one becomes a de facto public institution? MLP: Just do it. Don’t worry so much about acceptance into a very institutionalised dysfunctional system...Worry about being creative and alive on your own terms. Put yourself in any exhibition you feel you should be in. You may not get the institutional rewards but lets face it – they ain’t that great here in Aussie land anyway.
Royal Mail vs McQueen: A very public memorial for the dead
Turner Prize-winning artist Steve McQueen’s recent work 'Queen and Country' (2003-2010) overwhelmingly embodies the complexities and possibilities for memorial-making and public art today.
17th Biennale of Sydney, The Beauty of Distance: Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age
Curator: David Elliott MCA, Cockatoo Island, Botanic Gardens Artspace, AGNSW, Pier 2/3, Opera House 12 May – 1 August 2010
Was Drau - En Wartet/What is Waiting Out There: 6th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art
Curator: Kathrin Rhomberg 11 June - 8 August 2010
17th Biennale of Sydney, The Beauty of Distance: Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age
17th Biennale of Sydney The Beauty of Distance: songs of survival in a precarious age Curator: David Elliott MCA, Cockatoo Island, Botanic Gardens, Artspace, AGNSW, Opera House, Pier 2/3 12 May – 1 August 2010
Melbourne >< Brisbane: Punk, Art and After
Curator: David Pestorius Ian Potter Museum of Art University of Melbourne 24 February - 16 May 2010
Green: Richard Giblett, David Haines, Colin Langridge, Lucy Bleach, Roman Signer, Bec Stevens, Richard Wastell, Semiconductor (Ruth Jarman + Joe Gerhardt)
Curators: Geoff Parr, Lucy Bleach, Bec Stevens Plimsoll Gallery, Hobart 16 April – 14 May 2010
Your Reference to More Gracious Living: Bevan Honey
Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA) 25 June – 26 August 2010
A Tradigital Survey
A Tradigital Survey Curators: Kirsten Rann, Gina Kalabishis Level 17 Artspace, 300 Flinders St, Victoria University, Melbourne 29 June – 16 July 2010
Flight of a Bird: Life in Performance: Linda Lou Murphy
Curators: Keith Giles, Ali Baker and Yoko Kajio SASA Gallery, Adelaide 6 April - 7 May 2010
Wallpaper
Linda Banazis, Penny Bovell, P. James Bryans, Susanna Castleden, Sue Codee, Cat Critch, Rebecca Dagnall, Jo Darbyshire, Mark Datodi, Annabel Dixon, Anna Dunnill, Eva Fernandez, Brendan Hibbert, Harry Hummerston, Little Design Horse, Clare McFarlane, Trevor6025/Emma McPike, Toogarr Morrison, Philippa Nikulinsky, Perdita Phillips, Gregory Pryor, Alex Spremberg, Marzena Topka, David Turley, Paul Uhlmann, Caitlin Yardley. Curators: Thelma John, P. James Bryans Gallery Central Central Institute of Technology, Perth 12 - 31 July 2010
duetto
Curator: Domenico de Clario Australian Experimental Art Foundation, Queen’s Theatre, Mercury Cinema, Botanic Gardens, Adelaide 28 May – 26 June 2010
Not Dead Yet: A Retrospective Exhibition: Therese Ritchie and Chips Mackinolty
CDU Art Gallery, Darwin 11 August -17 September 2010
Shaw Hendry (1963-2010)
Vale Shaw Hendry (1963-2010) The image on the front of the catalogue said it all – Hermano Rojo, ukulele in hand, bowing to his audience.
The New Brisbane
Brisbane's coming of age has been announced a number of times, most recently with millennial-expansiveness, in its claim to be the Creative City leading the Smart State. Over the past 15 years the city has spawned new enterprises, a new generation of artists, new cultural policies, new public buildings, and a new sense of grace. With an ugly past left largely unexplained, the focus is on the present and the ambitions for the city. While government and the mainstream media look to the future of the New Brisbane, it has been the role of writers, artists and a few historians to examine the past as part of the task of fully inhabiting the city. This article provides a discourse with Ross Fitzgerald about some of the above mentioned issues.
A History of Forgetting
Anderson looks at one of Brisbanes formative cultural events, The Demolition Show, an exhibition curated by John Stafford in 1986 to mark to demise of the relatively short lived Observatory artist run space and in the fact the whole city block that surrounded it. This notion of demolition is raised in this article not only in the context of this particular event but also as a way of exploring a past which has for the most part fallen through the cracks. As Anderson states: Long after the dust has settled, the perception that Brisbane has no past in visual art, no critical mass, still lingers. Yet it is far from a new issue.
Always Remember: there is no past
This article examines Brisbanes steeped conservative polical history and looks at the radical changes which occured as a result of the early 1990s shift to a Labour goverment. As an aftermath to the anti-climax that was the 1988 World Expo, the 90s was a decade which saw the Queensland Art Gallery embark on new avenues of experimentation and a new confidence was in the air. Furthermore Hoffie addresses the ongoing lack of substantial criticism in relation to arts and cultural development as many saw this as the single most pressing problem dogging the local scene.
Great White Sharks
Holubizkys article deals with the ever present attitude that Brisbane is a city 20 years behind the times in the cultural sector and poses the question as to what this really means? Culture has become a business only within the relative scheme of things, and ahead may only be the false competitive edge and gamesmanship of regional-urban cultural ambition. Comparisons, therefore, should not be made lightly, nor benchmarks for the vitality of a cultural milieu. Discusses the works of Craig Walsh, Eugene Carchesio, Caitlin Reid and Vernon Ah Kee.
Parallel Precincts
Once depressed inner-city suburbs that were havens for students, migrants, artists and fringe communities, the high profile precincts of South Brisbane/West End and Fortitude Valley/New Farm have developed into fast-growing centres of urban residential and cultural development. The Millennium Arts Program now underway will see the expenditure of over $100 million on the development of a new Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) through the Queensland Art Gallery's Two Sites-One Visionstrategy. Heather locates the diversity of Brisbane's arts and culture scene through such new and existing precincts, establishments which mark an exciting transformation in the future of the cities art scene.
Is Art Built-in Built-out? debating public art
In 1999 Art Built-in was declared public policy by the Queensland Government, mandating that two percent of all construction budgets over $250,000 across governments be allocated to the artworks equating to some $15m worth of arts projects annually. Recently the first in a series of formal debates took place to canvas opinion on results so far. The topic was that the role of the curator is essential to create great public art. Looks at the role of local artists such as Jay Younger and her collaborative partner, architect Michael Rayner as well as Wendy Mills and Jill Kinnear.
Next Wave Coming
A conversation between Jennifer Herd, artist, curator and convenor of the BOVACAIA program at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Richard Bell, artist and activist, Gloria Beckett, an artist who is currently completing her Masters candidature at the QCA, GU, and well known artist and lecturer, Pat Hoffie. Together they discuss some of the personal and artistic struggles of the Aboriginal Murri community and the role of performative and visual arts in recognising a history largely understood.
The Campfire Group
The Campfire Group is an independent cultural enterprise where Indigenous and cross-cultural perspectives provide the organising principles. This article talks briefly of Balance 1990, the first exhibition held by The Campfire Group, open to Murris and whitefellas alike with curatorial efforst by Michael Eather, Marlene Hall and Marshall Bell. The diversity of Campfire Group's projects over the past few years is testimony to its members ability to transform and reinvent artistic practices and introduce those practices to new audiences. Carrolli looks at the various projects, both local and international, which have contributed to the success of the transitional authorial figure that the Campfire Group has come to be.
Hybrid Arts, Cultural Policy and Chinese Whispers
Recently some of the individual, performance and new media artists who have been collaborating across borders in Brisbane and Queensland have networked their way out of the city and into Europe and Asia. With cross commissions and research and development for contemporary performance work there is a new and vibrant creative export. This article explores some of these artists and their international work and looks at how such collaborated efforts are contributing to a new examination of what culture actually is for a country steeped in its European heritage. Follows the practice of local performance artist Lisa ONeil and her collaborations with Keith Armstrong as well as examining The Bonemap Project initiated by artists Russell Milledge and Rebecca Youdell.
The Artists
Notable for their ability to conduct practices from Brisbane over recent years are Luke Roberts, Scott Redford, Eugene Carchesio, Leonard Brown, Sebastian de Mauro, Gordon Bennett, Joe Furlonger, and Jay Younger, who have all emerged since 1980 into the national (and several into the international) marketplace. These practice are here explored in all their diversity. Martin-Chew looks at the increase in available resources and some of the opportunities that Brisbane has to offer for young and emerging artists wanting to break into the local and international art scene. Other artists discussed include Jemima Wyman, Lisa Adams, Rod Bunter, Vernon Ah Kee, Sandra Selig, Andrea Higgins and Michael Zavros.
New Media Art in Brisbane
The investigation of New Media Art is especially relevant in a city that is hyped with the rhetoric about critical mass in the New Media and Creative Industries. Machan here attempts to redraw some lines of definition in what the term New Media Art actually means, as it is often seen as a doomed and short-lived handle. She does this through examining some of the key New Media artists (including Craig Walsh, Keith Armstrong, Tim Plaisted, Bonemap, Trish Adams, Di Ball, Grant Stevens, Jenny Fraser, Simone Hine, Alex Gillespie, Jay Younger, Adam Donovan, Andrew Kettle and Molly Hankwitz) and the difference between New Media and other visual arts as well as looking at government support and initiatives in the line of New Media Arts.
Fuelling Innovation: Starting Young
Over the last two decades, Queensland has generated an arts and innovation culture for children and youth. Brisbanes distinguished reputation in the arts for young audiences rests on several solid foundations, most developed with support from major civic organisations, cultural institutions and successive governments. To understand how critic mass for childrens participation in the arts has been achieved, this article looks at a few of the formative events such as Play and Prime held at the Queensland Art Gallery and the popularity of artists such as Yayoi Kusama and Cai Guo Qiang amongst young audiences.
Prime Two
With the redevelopment of many inner-city dwellings which in the past were alternative hot spots for the local youth, Brisbane was left with very few arts venues catering for youth-specific programs, and limited opportunities for young artists to present their work. In 2001 the Queensland Art Gallery appointed an Access and Youth Program Officer and 2003 saw Prime Two, a six-hour long celebration of youth culture for National Youth Week. The intensity of Prime Two transformed the gallery into a festive and lively venue and created an experience that was reminiscent of an adventure rather than a visit to a state institution. Featured artists include Jemima Wyman, Arryn Snowball, Anne Wallace, Brett Whiteley and James Gleeson.
Moving Beyond Pragmatism: filmmaking in Queensland
The local film production community in South-East Queensland has come a long way, and over the past decade it has been important for local filmmakers to lay claim to an authentic local production that has achieved commercial if not critical success in the box office. Ward looks at those feature films and documentaries (Blurred, Under The Radar, Getting Square and Feeling Sexy) which have contributed to the emerging critical mass of the local film industry and the current debate surrounding creative pragmatism within this fledgling sector.
'Glocal' Government: Cross Cultural Understanding
David Hinchliffe has been a Councillor with Brisbane City for 15 years. He is also a photographer and exhibiting artist with 16 exhibitions to date. His background makes him a powerful supporter of Brisbanes art scene. Artlink asked him to tap into his experience and tell us how the new Brisbane came into being and where it is headed next.
The Gay Museum – a history of lesbian and gay presence in Western Australia
A history of lesbian and gay presence in Western Australia 22 January - 31 May 2003
The Possibility Forum - Institutional Change and Modest Proposals
This text takes up some of the broader concerns of Tony Bond's initial questions to an Australian panel at ARCO 2002 Madrid, particularly 'can there be a benign global capitalism?' and 'how do we address the value of exchanges between artists?'.
Asia Pacific Triennial 2002 - Starry Night
When talking about non-Indo-European cultures, we are taking on board profound differences in how we arrange our worlds. The 2002 Asia Pacific Triennial endeavours to present art from these cultures through various treatments of time and space relations.
Breathing/Diving/Dreaming/Dancing to the BEAP in Perth (You Can't Buy These Emotions off the Hollywood Shelf)
Immersion was part of the Perth Biennale of Electronic Art (BEAP), a selection of some of the most important international immersive, interactive and virtual reality artworks from the last decade, created by Chris Malcolm and presented at the John Curtin Gallery.
The Generosity of a Light Touch
For the more than 15 years that the Australian organisation Experimenta Media Arts has metamorphosed through various ideological, aesthetic and technological identities, its one constant has been a passionate involvement with and championing of the new and experimental. Prototype, exhibited in Melbourne in 2002, carried on this tradition, more than living up to the title.
I Wonder Where the Public Art Went?
During the first half of 2002 the Danish champion of pedestrians, Dr. Jan Gehl and his team from GEHL Architects were commissioned to analyse the City of Adelaide in terms of its viability as a pedestrian city.
Museums For the 21st Century: Entertainments or Big Challenging Ideas?
Museums both reinforce one's views and challenge them, encouraging innovative connections we hadn't thought of before, driving us on to expanded understandings. Griffin addresses some of the controversies surrounding museums in the age of technology.
Scaling Up at ACCA
Opening in mid October 2002, the new ACCA is a purpose built complex designed by Melbourne- based architects Wood Marsh. An architectural marvel and simultaneously a contemporary art space, at last the ACCA is moving to a building that lives up to the portent of its name. Haley spoke to the new Creative Director Juliana Engberg in August of 2002.
Documenta 11 Takes On Masters of the Universe
Every five years the sleepy little German town of Kassel is invaded by the international art world. The 2002 Documenta exhibition staged here, which have traditionally played second fiddle only to the Venice Biennale, was eagerly anticipated as the first genuinely postcolonial Documenta, due in large part to the appointment of the expatriate Nigerian curator Okwui Enwezor as Artistic Director.
Cacophony + Cramp for the Sensory Bundle
Digital media provides intuitive contemporary ways for storytelling in our times. dLux media arts, based in Sydney, this year curated a selection of installation works derived from their annual d>art program, and for the first time showed it outside Sydney. The five works selected for the Adelaide exhibition were complex and esoteric: a gorgeous array of storytelling techniques which explore and exploit narrative and interactivity.
A Stitch in Time
Peter Callas' show held at Stills Gallery in 2002 Vinculum + Orison resulted from his Asialink residency in Delhi, India and comprises of digital prints on photographic paper and an artist's book. Both the scale and choice of images in this exhibition are seductive and enthralling; deceptively innocent moments in daily and century-old rituals and routines.
Uncertain Terrain
Modern physics suggests we are living within an expanding universe. We are, it seems, still moving away from our point of origin (the singularity of the Big Bang). The intersection of new physics and Buddhism provides pathways into Julia Ciccarone's landscape paintings (exhibited at Niagara Galleries in Melbourne in early 2002), elucidating the narratives and suggesting relationships between the metaphors and symbols she uses.
Small Deaths
Australian artist Kate Breakey, who now resides in Tucson, Arizona, caught up with Sarah Thomas to discuss the impact of growing up in the coastal town of Port Lincoln and the impact her childhood upbringing is having on her recent work. 'I think my childhood proximity to nature turned me into a naturalist...Growing up around animals you learn that life is complicated, survival is a struggle, death usually isn't quick or clean, and nature doesn't make any allowances for love and attachment'.
Lawrence Daws: From Mandala to Full Circle
Australian artist Lawrence Daws speaks of seven phases of his work, based on specific themes that have guided his development as an artist. There has been a gradual trend in his work from themes of archetypal symbolism and exotic portent towards the more local and personal.
Singapore Opens Up to the World - Site + Sight: First Major International Show
Using Singapore as the first 'site' for the exhibition, Site + Sight: Translating Cultures from 7 June to 26 July 2002 brought together 26 international artists from 11 countries to discuss and present artworks relating to the theme of globalisation and its cultural impact on the world.
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.
Fashion Infiltrates the Galleries
Even if one's first reaction upon hearing the sound of the words 'Melbourne Fashion Festival' is not to reach for one's gun, but to condemn the dumbing down of 'culture' into Madonna or Barbie 101, bemoan the melting of the abstract expressionist/tachiste snows of yesteryear, it has unquestionably enriched the city's art experience.
Jewel Mackenzie: Gemini Paintings
Jewel Mackenzie's practice explores both the understanding and experience of the world and the history and legacies of painting. Her background in both dressmaking and in public administration has informed her project to provoke and explore the positioning of the artist within contemporary bureaucratic culture.
Border Zones: An Eye on the World from Sydney
According to Chapman, the contemporary understanding of a globalised world is the result of the understanding that we all share a finite physical realm: this planet. The world is no longer understood purely in terms of geographic boundaries, but cultural ones. This article looks at some of the utopian values imparted upon some of the major cities in the western world and discusses concepts of globalism and localism as they contribute to a new perception of the world around us.
A contested place: Film and land
The importance of place depends on what it means to us, what we make of it and our understanding of how it shapes us. In 2001 in the Australian film industry there was an avalanche of films, both documentaries and features, addressing issues surrounding place in the context of the relationship between black and white Australians. Six features which Hann values for their portrayal of this relationship are One Night the Moon, Rabbit Proof Fence, The Tracker, Beneath Clouds, Kabbarli-A Film About Daisy Bates and Australian Rules.
Places Not Forgotten: In Rural South Australia
The Flinders Ranges in South Australia where Malcolm McKinnon lives is a place of diminishing population, sparse landscapes and resilient social memory. It's a place that reveals itself only over time, as the stories, names and explanations for particular places and people become gradually apparent. It's a place where most of the people of the land carry memories and maps of special places around in their heads. McKinnon's aim in writing this article is to use these places and the claims attached to them by many non-indigenous people to show that they are just as legitimate as those of indigenous people.
Postcards from Victoria: Fertility from the Air
To celebrate the Centenary of Federation, Regional Arts Victoria undertook a series of art projects across Victoria. '...such fertile ground...' unfolded in two stages during the years 1999-2000, involved twelve different locations, fourteen different artists and produced some stunning images which reflected unique aspects of the places which inspired them. Participation was open to anyone going through the local affiliate Arts Council and a local artist would be appointed the task of creating an image. Artists included Maxine Salvatore, Mark Selkrip, Jenny Munday, Ken Raff and Anton Vardy.
Float or Sink: A New Direction for Art in Regional Australia
When it comes to the interpretation of place, whether it be through the language of art, economy or social relations, we are always doing so through a culturally constructed lens and at a culturally constructed moment in time. The way we represent the land affects how we use the land and our land use in terms affects the way we represent it. Wilson looks at art that is made outside the context of the art gallery or computer screen and the ongoing categorisation and separation of institutionalised art from public art. The Artists Working in Nature movement and The Floating Land project are here used in reference.
Place Works: India Flint
India Flint's textile practice seeks to articulate the cyclical connection between human existence and the patterns of nature. She researches traditional dye practices with old approaches being re-examined to generate more ecologically sustainable methods of production and uses indigenous plant forms and declared noxious weed. As the cloth absorbs colour from materials extracted from the landscape, so it becomes steeped in the landscape itself.
Place Works: Martin Walch
Over the last five years Martin Walch has been working on the Mt Lyell Project as an artist in residence with Copper Mines of Tasmania. The project is ongoing, and now consists of a number of sound recordings, animations in 2D and 3D, stereoscopic pairs in travelling cases, as well as large re-photographic works based on J.W.Beatties' Mt Lyell photographs from 1893-6.
Place Works: Bette Mifsud
The body of work shown as The Living Room (RMIT Gallery 2001) continues Bette Misfud's studies of the emotive and emblematic power of landscape imagery. The Living Room represents, in part, the cultural segregation and physical isolation Misfud experiences in rural life as a second-generation migrant. The land is continually transformed by the marking and scarring of our habitation. Thus both land and identity are in a continual state of flux.
Place Works: Bronwyn Wright
Bronwyn Wright's work has closer links to the stealth associated with graffiti artists and the flamboyant play of the theatre than to large scale earthworks. It is based on intimacy with the site, daily visits, observations of seasonal variations and an anonymous interaction of dialogue with a young sub-culture. The ruined cars which adorn the site of 'The Swamp' where Wright works are symbolic mediators between earth and technological man. The car bodies wear away, crumple and disintegrate as the land itself is torn and worn and as our own bodies tire and retire.
International Artists Space Kellerberrin Australia: WA Wheatbelt Artzone
Two hours drive from Perth is the small regional town of Kellerberrin. With a population of nine hundred people and appearing just like many other municipalities in the region, the incongruity of this town lies in the presence of the grandly named International Art Space Kellerberrin Australia (IASKA), a gallery and residency centre for international contemporary artists. IASKA was established in 1998, developing from a collaboration between two wheatbelt farmers, Tony York and Donna Dransfield, and two art professionals from Perth, artist Rodney Glick and Marco Marcon. The intention behind this double displacement is to offer both artist and communities a kind of shock treatment that will force them out of their respective comfort zones and encourage the development of new ways of approaching both art practice and notions of local identity. Visiting artists have included Salvatore Falci and Cathy Barber.
Terror Australis: Fear and Loathing in Open Spaces
When European explorers first discovered Australia, it was generally referred to as Terra Australia Incognita literally translated as Unknown Southern Land. Marshall looks at the physical terrain of this equally beautiful and dramatic region of the world via a selection of prolific Australian films which give shocking portrayals of our lifestyle here in the lucky country. Terror based films such as Dead Calm, Razorback, The Cars that ate Paris and Kiss or Kill.
Making Place in an Urban Sense
Our sense of who and where we are is continually mediated by images of the wilderness and the outback, but the real home of our species is the city. Downton is an architect determined to work through processes of ecology and community and is excited by the challenges of the city. He here examines the connections between humans and nature within the domain of a civic built environment.
Material Difference
Chandler looks at the practice of Paul Johnson and Elizabeth Frith Poole, two artists who both live in the same regional area, but convey contrasting views concerning the significance of place. For Frith Poole, time spent investigating her immediate environment has led to a more profound understanding of it, while Johnson utilises materials that are claimed as belonging to specific sites or cultures to confront assumptions concerning landscape and identity.
Spirit and Place Revisited
Spirit + Place, Art in Australia 1861 to 1996, an exhibition curated by Nick Waterlow and Ross Mellick at the Museum of Contemporary Art in 1996 in Sydney, is widely referred to as a landmark exhibition. The exhibition placed Indigenous Australian Art together with non-Indigenous Australian Art, as well as making honorary Australian artists of Joseph Beuys, Marina Abramovic, Christo and others. The exhibition encompassed ideas that were linked to issues involving the environment, ethnicity and human pain and pleasure, with relevance both locally and beyond these shores.
Living the Lie (of the land)
Due to the concentric nature of its revelations the exhibition The Lie of the Land deserved particular consideration in terms of the resonances that placement, grounding and the physical experience of the Australian landscape and environment can have on the issue of current art practice. Curator Carmen Grostal felt a personal and philosophical urgency behind the idea for the exhibition, with the title of the show responding to Paul Carter's text of the same name and was used as a way to enter into dialogue with the ideas raised in it.
Six Days in Boyd Country
When Arthur Boyd gifted his large Bundanon property to the nation in 1993, he imagined the creation of a place that would become a living arts centre where artists of all persuasions would come to find refreshment and renewed inspiration in the landscape. The Bundanon Artists Centre is housed in former farm buildings and has hosted writers, visual artists, musicians, choreographers and film-makers. Among the most celebrated are J.M. Coetzee, South African novelist, Peter Mumme, environmental composer and Dorothy Porter, Australian poet. Kronenberg also discusses the work of artist John R. Walker who was invited to participate as a senior-artist-in-residence in 2000.
Tjukurpa Wangapai - Story-Telling Place
In 1998 Margaret Worth was invited by a small group of Pitjantjatjara women to visit the Tjilbruke Gateway installation at Warriparinga on the banks of the Sturt River in Adelaide. Months later Worth visited the women to talk about making a place like the Tjilbruke Gateway. This article looks at Worth's role in helping to develop a built site which would signify as much as its natural environment did. In the process she learnt what was important to know about the land and developed her own understanding of place.
Place Works: Tim Maslen and Jennifer Mehra
Tim Maslen and Jennifer Mehra are Australians who live and work in the UK and have appropriately developed their body of work based on the experiences of disjunction one feels when removed from their familiar physical environment. Their artificial landscapes act as metaphors for the difficulty humans have in overcoming epistemological delusion and acknowledging the fact that life in the world is a unitary experience. We can see Maslen and Mehra's work as a kind of ritual to help us reconcile ourselves with our origins.
Traces of a Shared Memory
Julie Blyfield's recent work explores her family history and her own sense of place and identity through the objects that have been handed down to her from her grandparents. Her grandmothers embroidery was a specific reference point for this work, as she metaphorically 'unpicked' her designs and reinvented them through her own medium.
River Systems
The work in River Systems responds to the region Ian Tully lives in, the south western Riverina of New South Wales and the surrounding country. The intention of his work is to question the whole notion of sustainability. Tully is continually torn between the design and aesthetics of industry, and the fragility, beauty and sensitivity of our diminishing natural systems.
Your city is so ugly: Adelaide and the truth
'Your City is Ugly' was a 2002 Adelaide Fringe production devised by John Adley, Chris Barker, Julianne Pierce, Katrina Sedgwick and Daryl Watson. Page layout by Daryl Watson with text by Julianne Pierce. Architectural photographs by Daryl Watson assisted by Tim Fenton. Photographs of Madame Ivana, Vladimir and Sergei by Annette Tripodi.
