Issues

Issue 27:4 | December 2007 | Work
Work
Issue 27:4 | December 2007

Articles

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The Hard Work
Michael Keighery, current Chair of Viscopy and past chair of NAVA and the Crafts Council of Australia reviews the apathy and ignorance of artist about their industrial, copyright and taxation rights. He draws attention to the hard worn, by NAVA and Artslaw, ruling by the Tax Office in 2005 that all kinds of artists can now claim their art business expenses against all forms of income.
The Work of Art

Art theorist and Emeritus Professor of Visual Arts, Flinders University, Donald Brook examines the art world and its strange ways. Art, he says, is not craft nor the consequence of any exercise of skill at all but the artworld is infallible in identifying art.

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Throwing the Baby Out with the Bathwater
The CDEP (Community Development Employment Program) was axed by the Howard Federal Government throughout the Northern Territory though is still current in South Australia and Western Australia. The Program was launched in 1977 by the Fraser Government and has been a very valuable way of getting Aboriginal people to be engaged productive community memes in art centres and other activities. A number of key Aboriginal art centres rely on CDEP staff for printing, administration, preparators, artists and craftspeople. It is a vital component in building community self-reliance and pride.
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The Obsessive Compulsive Worker
What does obsessive artwork mean? Is this a new compulsion among artists and what does it mean? The work of Hossein Valamanesh, Fiona Hall, Zhuang Hui, Zhang Huan, Shen Shaomin, Katsuhige Nakahashi are referenced.
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A Relationship can't be Outsourced: Tracey Clement
The idea of slow art takes on a gripping intensity in Tracey Clements textile works which use ideas of duration and repetition to refer to womens traditional work and skills - a huge ball of wool, a giant button-covered blanket, full-size bodies made from thread and most recently a miniature city of salt and wire. The excessive though delicate relationship between the artist and the work becomes evident in the resulting artefacts. She admits to watching very bad DVDs while on the job.
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Soft Power - Confession: Leung Mee Ping
Hong-Kong based Leung Mee Ping sees the artist as a craftperson able to fabricate intricate work that makes the viewer revision the everyday. Memorising the Future is an ongoing project of shoes made from felted human hair. It has been shown all over the world in major museums and now consists of more than 11,500 shoes.
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Busy Work: Dreaming Time
Justine Khamara uses a scalpel to cut out tens of thousands of images from magazines. She then joins the often identical images to make very large assemblages. The artist sees the obsessive busywork that she does with her hands as providing her with space to dream and do the real work of sifting through the stuff in her head.
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Process, Production and the Invisible Line: Carly Fischer
Carly Fischer's work is on the cover of the Work issue of Artlink. Her latest exhibition at Helen Gory Galerie of everyday cleaning items and broken fluorescent tubes made from blue paper is art that is almost invisible but critiques consumerism and the culture of waste.
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Work Wanted: Keith Wong
An artist advertising art in the yellow pages as an artwork turns out not to be a light matter.
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Everybody's Working for the Weekend
This article was written by a mysterious Australian creative labour collective possibly based in Western Australia. It humorously analyses the special characteristics of creative work as against the goals of capitalism while simultaneously possessing an intense work ethic through looking at recent artworks by Matthew Hunt, Tarryn Gill and Pilar Mata Dupont, Rodney Glick and Lynnette Voevodin, and pvi collective. It concludes that the creative task of showing how the nature of work is historically and geographically located is vital.
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Labour of Love: Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro
The latest work by Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro, artists who have been fruitfully collaborating for over seven years was shown at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2007. Called The Paper Trail it explores Paul Virilios ideas about dromology (the science and logic of speed especially in relation to war) through thinking about the Mongolian Empire. A fantastic Mongolian Ger (a nomadic structure ordered on the internet), government archives, Johnson Solids and the Trailer of Death are some of the features of the installation which suggests complex and recurring layers to all globalisation.
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Beyond the Parlour Games: We Refuse to Become Victims
Thresholds of Tolerance curated by Caroline Turner and David Williams, was shown at the ANU School of Art Gallery from 10 May to 5 June, 2007. We Refuse to Become Victims, an art work made by three artists collectives, Culture Kitchen in Canberra, Taring Padi in Jogyakarta and Gembel in Dili, Timor, a four part series of large works on fabric of small woodcuts, screenprints and painting struck Pat Hoffie as political art that really works as it is cross-disciplinary, cross cultural and seems to stretch out back to the fields of production rather than towards the empty field of the gallery.
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Valuing Relationships: Concertina
Concertina is a group of seven artists, Katrina Weber, Ros Miller, Wendy Rushby, Kathryn Hill, Wendy Todd, Dana Kinter and Anny Gooden, who for six years have been working as a collective creating within self-prescribed boundaries. Once a year they set aside their own practices and embark upon a major collaborative project leading to an exhibition. Their latest venture meant one artist Anny Gooden stepping outside the group, she was overseas, and providing instructions to the others. The resulting exhibition, Text as Muse, was shown at Light Square Gallery from 27 June - 26 July 2007. 
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Reskin: Intensive Collaboration
A fascinating participant report on an exciting collaborative project of great vision and experimentation. Reskin 2007 was developed by the Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT), the Australian National University School of Art, the Centre for New Media Arts (CNMA) and Craft Australia. It brought twenty international and national artists, designers and technologists together under the guidance of seven professional wearable technology specialists at the forefront of their respective fields. The idea of Reskin, co-ordinated by Alexander Gillespie was to design wearable technologies for the body using the latest materials and methods.
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Mirroring our Dialogue: Danielle Freakley as 'The Quote Generator'
The Quote Generator is a three year public art project where the artist only speaks in quotes which she instantly attributes. For the first year Danielle Freakley will quote from commercial products, the second year from friends and acquaintances and the last year from herself in the past.
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Taking Care of Business: Ash Keating
Melbourne-based artist Ash Keatings art practice is based on an ethic and aesthetic of recycling. He reinvents waste often for site-specific interventions - before disposing of the relics by recycling them responsibly. For 'Press Release' (2005-ongoing) he cut 6,500 copies of the same bird from magazines and has thrown them skywards, letting them soar to the ground, in atriums and galleries from Sydney to Santiago. In his videos he is seen at work deconstructing free newspapers or wrestling with large discarded vinyl banners.
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A Bush Camp in a Mysterious Land: Guan Wei
Chinese-Australian artist Guan Wei first visited Australia eighteen years ago but it was only in 2006 that he went bush for two weeks with nine other artists, on an artists camp organised by Darwin's contemporary art space 24 Hour Art in collaboration with Injalak Arts and Crafts in Western Arnhem Land. His vivid experiences of the great outdoors, its sounds, animals and birds, led to his A Mysterious Land series. He worked with local Aboriginal artists, was shown rock paintings and found similarities between Aboriginal culture and Taoist philosophy.
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We Can Work it Out: New Style Residencies in Asia
Since the early nineties Asialink has helped to plunge 450 Australian artists into the proverbial deep end of arts practice, the overseas residency. Out of their comfort zones, far from friends and familiar comforts, the artists test their artwork and themselves in new cultural contexts. The recent experiences of Megan Keating in Taiwan, Danius Kesminas in Indonesia, Alwin Reamillo in the Philippines and Ben Morieson in Japan are described in all their variety and embrace of an increasingly Asia-literate world.
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Witnessing: Transcending the Public-Private Divide in Photography
Reveries: Mortality and photography was curated for the National Portrait Gallery by Helen Ennis and shown from 27 April to 5 August 2007. This touring show will be at Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery from 19 March to 18 May 2008. It includes a wide range of approaches from the harrowing to the humorous. It includes work by Axel Poignant  a self-portrait with his last roll of film, Anne Ferran, Carol Jerrems, Craig Potton, William Yang, Anne Noble, Ruth Maddison, Bernie ORegan and Jonathon Delacour who stopped taking photographs after this series of babies and their carers in intensive care.
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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.
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Unknown Worker in Art: Alan Lukey
A retrospective survey of the work of Alan Lukey who died in 2003 aged 51 organised by fellow artist John Foubister with the help of Jill Lukey was shown at New Land Gallery in Port Adelaide, 21 April to 10 June 2007. Lukey was a South Australian artist who painted abstract and meditative works and lived on the Fleurieu Peninsula between 1977 and 2003. He also made public art works often in the shape of waves.
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Artworks Out on the Beach Townsville
In September 2007 in Townsville Stephanie Radok attended the Perc Tucker Regional Gallerys Strand Ephemera, a biennial outdoor sculpture and installation exhibition first held in 2001. The Strand is a 2km landscaped beachfront park where local and interstate artists placed their site specific works which ranged from an Aeolian harp by Nameer Davis to a throne made of seasponges by Wendy Robertson. An enthusiastic audience of children and Strand-strollers made their way from work to work thinking about art and its myriad manifestations. Commissioned artists making work in shipping containers were Craig Walsh, Bonemap, Donna Marcus, Chris Fox and Richard Goodwin.
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John Maitland's Energy Architecture
John Maitland is the sole director of Energy Architecture, an Adelaide architecture firm committed to environmentally sound and socially responsible architecture established in 1990.
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Indigenous Triennial
Culture Warriors: National Indigenous Art Triennial 07 Curator: Brenda L. Croft. National Gallery of Australia, 13 October 2007 - 10 February 2008; touring to Art Gallery of South Australia, 20 June - 31 August 2008; Art Gallery of Western Australia, 20 September - 23 November 2008; Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, MarchMay 2009. (Note: The touring exhibition will be about 90 works rather than the 130 seen in Canberra.)
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X Strata Indigenous Art Awards
Xstrata Coal Emerging Indigenous Art Award GoMA, Brisbane 4 August - 11 November 2007
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The Hours
The Hours: Visual Arts of Contemporary Latin America Curator: Sebastian Lopez Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney 21 June - 2 September 2007
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Territorial
Territorial Canberra Contemporary Art Centre June 2007 24 hr Art, Darwin September  October 2007 ACT Artists: Silvia Vélez, Bernie Slater, Raquel Ormella NT artists: Franck Gohier, Catriona Stanton, Gary Lee
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ACCA
Almost Everywhere Apparent Sonia Leber and David Chesworth Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne 11 August - 30 September 2007
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Fremantle Print Awards
Fremantle Print Award 07 Fremantle Arts Centre 8 September - 21 October 2007
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Papunya Tjupi: A New Beginning
Papunya Tjupi: A New Beginning Ivan Dougherty Gallery 6 September - 6 October 2007
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Anne Mestitz
Electric Love Anne Mestitz Bett Gallery, Hobart 4 August - 18 August 2007
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Strange Fruit
Strange Fruit: Testimony and Memory in Julie Dowlings Portraits Curator: Jeanette Hoorn Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne 21 July - 14 October 2007
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Painting at SALA
Shades of the Real: a selective survey of tonal painting Adelaide Central Gallery 20 July - 11 August 2007 artists: Morgan Allender, Nona Burden, Stephanie Crase, Kveta Deans, Louise Feneley, Mary-Jean Richardson, Chelsea Lehmann, Rachel Smyth, Deborah Trusson, Yve Thompson Christian Lock Greenaway Art Gallery 4 -29 July 2007 Kaylie Weir (in Noodle) Premier Art Gallery SALA exhibition 3 August  1 September 2007 Learning to Speak Simone Kennedy Artlab SALA Exhibition 3-19 August 2007
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Tautology
Tautology Emma White 9 - 26 August 2007 MOP Projects, Sydney
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No. 1
No. 1 six a, North Hobart 24 August - 24 September 2007
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Sara Elson
Sarah Elson Anigozanthos (eudaimonia hybrid) 5 August - 2 September 2007 Galerie Desseldorf, Perth
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The Ranger
The Ranger Julie Gough SASA Gallery, Adelaide 12-28 September 2007
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Topsy
Topsy Eleanor Avery, Ray Cook, Kim Demuth, Alice Lang, David Spooner, Grubbanax Swinnasen. Curator Chris Comer Metro Arts Galleries, Brisbane 5 - 22 September 2007
A Revolutionary Digital Summer in the UK
Digital technology is driving the revolution in visual culture and consciousness. Exploring the ninth International Symposium of the Electronic Arts [ISEA98].
The Big Pond: Australian Artists Overseas
Sydney Biennale Every Day
Exploration of the 11th Biennale of Sydney curated by Jonathon Watkins.
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Tracey Moffatt's Lost Highway
Tracey Moffatt has since the end of 1997 had two solo exhibtions overseas -- 'Freefalling' at the Dia Center for the Arts in New York and 'Tracey Moffatt' at the Kunsthalle Vienna touring 16 galleries in Europe. She was included in the 10th Biennale of Sydney in 1996, followed in 1997 by the Venice Biennale, the Basel Art Fair and the Sao Paulo Bienal in Brazil. Adrian Martin looks at her show at the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol.
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Passion, Rich Collectors and the Export Dollar: The Selling of Aboriginal Art Overseas
The author with Djon Mundine explore the paradox which is faced by Aboriginal dealers and curators who take Aboriginal art to the world. Issues of viability to ethnocentricity and notions of the primitive as well as the role of art in educating audiences and promoting the culture of indigenous Australians are discussed.
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To Go Abroad: Australians-in-residence
Explores the issues of residencies overseas for Australian artists: Jeffrey Smart, Justin O'Brien, Norma Redpath, Clement Meadmore and Colin Lanceley.
The Big Pond: Australian Artists Overseas
Residencies in Asia
Examines Asialink's artist in residency program. Complete with a list of Visual Arts/Crafts Residency destinations.
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Seven Little Australians
Artists Louise Paramor, Yenda Carson, Damon Moon, Jayne Dyer, Matthew Calvert, David Jensz and Helga Groves write about their experiences in residencies throughout Asia: India, South Korea, Indonesia, Beijing, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam respectively.
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The Culture of Exporting Art-cargo
How does Australia export its visual culture overseas? What have been the positive achievements and the low points of this process? Looks at the role of the Australia Council and the Visual Arts/Crafts Board.
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Export What! Where!
Looks at the issues facing the export of the Australian visual art product overseas.
The Big Pond: Australian Artists Overseas
Narelle Jubelin at the Tate: Case No T961301
Looks at the international career and art practice of Narelle Jubelin.
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Enjoin to the Philippines
Profiles the exhibition 'Enjoin' which opened in November 1998 at the Museo ng Sining (CSIS Museum) in Manila as part of the centenary celebrations of the Philippines' independence from colonial rule.
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Asialink's Exhibition Program: A Sampling
Describes Asialink's exhibition program which commenced in 1991 at the same time as the residency program with funding from the VACB and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
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Telling Tales to Austria
Telling Tales an exhibition curated by Jill Bennett and Jackie Dunn about trauma, subjectivity and memory began an international tour in March 1999 as part of the SOCOG Cultural Olympiad 'Reaching the World' . Opened at the Ivan Dougherty Gallery at the College of Fine Arts Sydney in conjunction with a major conference 'Trauma and Memory--Cross Cultural Perspectives'.
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Larrikins in London to London
An exhibtion curated by Nick Waterlow and Felicity Fenner which examines the extensive and multifarious nature of the cultural exchange which took place between London and Australia in the 1960s. OZ magazine and activists and writers such as Germaine Greer, Juno Gemes, Robert Hughes, Clive James, Richard Neville, Robert Whitaker and Wendy Whiteley provide a vehicle of narration for the exhibition. Part of the Olympiad theme of 'Australia to the World' 1999/2000
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Parachuting Postponed: Birmingham
Claire Doherty is a curator at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, England's second city. The 'Art into Action' program supports artists working in process based or research based ways over extended periods of time in direct communication with groups and individuals in Birmingham. The exploration of 'home' suggested itself as a universal metaphor as the 'sacred place' from which all else could be mapped.
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International Programs
Discusses the cultural policy of the Victorian Government Arts 21 promulgated in 1994 which aimed to reinforce the government's agenda to promote Melbourne and Victoria as an international centre of excellence.
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Kultural Kommuting
Kultural Kommuting is a collaboration between 18 artists resulting in installations in public locations in Melbourne and Berlin during 1998. Initiated by Claudia Luenig and Maggie McCormick, Kultural Kommuting is a 'cityartpublicspace' project run in association with Galerie Trepenhaus and the Public Office and is a project of the City of Melbourne's public art program.
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John Kelly: London to Brighton
John Kelly was the recipient of a Samstag Scholarship in 1996 to study at the Slade for a year. The article looks at Kelly's current work and the tensions between working in London and Australia.
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Steven Holland: Game Over
Steven Holland was awarded a Samstag scholarship in 1997 which allowed him to enrol in Natural History Illustration and Sculpture at the Royal College of Art in London and to travel to Europe.
The Big Pond: Australian Artists Overseas
Zhong Chen: Adelaide - London - Adelaide
Zhong Chen as a relatively recent graduate of the SA School of Art won a Samstag Scholarship to travel to the Chelsea College of Art in late 1997.
The Big Pond: Australian Artists Overseas
Nike Savvas: Joining the Inner Circle
Nike Savvas was awarded a Samstag Scholarship in 1996 ans was accepted into Goldsmiths College as an Associate Research Student. She has instigated a number of one day exhibitions with artists from Australia and Europe along with fellow students from Goldsmiths.
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Simon Mangos in Berlin
Explores the work of Simone Mangos who left Australia in 1988 to spend a year as an artist in residence at the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin. During the past 10 years she has maintained a profile in Sydney and Adelaide. Mangos creates site specific installations as well as discrete objects that can be exhibited in art galleries and art fairs.
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An Australian or Two in Paris Nineties-style
On four Australian artists working in Paris: Marion Borgelt, Tim Maguire, Helen Kennedy and Heidi Woods
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Annette Bezor in Paris
Since 1986 Annette Bezor has been working in both the Cite Internationale des Arts and private studios in Paris. The Adelaide Paris connection, seemingly so contemporary is very much a part of South Australian visual art history. Conducted as an interview with the artist.
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Jill Scott: Zurich, Weimar and Sydney
Jill Scott writes about her experiences in Europe particularly Germany. Short biographical details of the artist are also included.
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Aldo Iacobelli in Valencia
Explores the artistic tension in the work of Aldo Iacobelli --- between Australia where the lack of tradition may be seen to allow greater movement of ideas and Europe where the cultural territory is much more established.
The Big Pond: Australian Artists Overseas
Anne Pincus in Munich
'Ask the dust' the exhibition of Anne Pincus at Access Gallery in Sydney explores the contrast between the light and sand and dust of Australia and Israel and the darkness of Europe.
The Big Pond: Australian Artists Overseas
Dorothy Erickson: Jetset Jeweller
The strength of the Australian jewellery practice may be attributed to the jewellery departments in Australian universities and art schools as well as to the influence and impact of leading jewellery artists who have arrived from other countries to live, teach or practice in Australia. Looks at the work of Dorothy Erikson.
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Get Out There and $ell
Explores the international art market for serious contemporary art, looking at the Australian Visual Art Export Strategy.
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Who's Selling What to Whom: Australian Dealers Taking Australian Art Overseas
Although the US is often cited as the holy grail for export, with its huge art-aware public and wealthy collectors, and although it is true to say that many Australian art dealers have links with US dealers and sales are made on a fairly regular basis, Japan, Germany and Spain are the countries to which Australian commercial galleries have exported Australian art since the early nineties.
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ODD: business, news, finance and weather
Andrew Petrusevics and Chris Gaston Artspace, Adelaide Festival Centre 28 August to 24 October 1998
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Entree: Emerging Adelaide Artists
Curated by Di Barrett Nexus Gallery, Adelaide September - October
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Expanse: Aboriginalities, Spatialities and the Politics of Ecstasy
University of SA Art Museum 4 September - 3 October 1998 Curated by Ian North
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Warka Irititja Munu Kuwari Kutu/Work from the Past and the Present
A celebration of fifty years of Ernabella Arts Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institute, Adelaide August - September 1998
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Sit Up! and Nature as Object
Sit Up!: 100 Masterpieces from the Vitra Design Museum Collection Nature as Object: Craft and Design from Japan, Finland and Australia Art Gallery of Western Australia 2 July - 6 September 1998
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Past Tense/Future Perfect
Craftwest Gallery, Perth and Moores Building, Fremantle 4 - 26 July 1998 Centre for Contemporary Craft, Customs House, Sydney 12 September - 11 October 1998
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Divergent: Abstraction and the Photographic Object
Recent Works by Adam Bunny, Jane Burton, Penelope Davis, Gavin Hipkins, Brian Jefferies, David Martin, Jeffrey Sturges & Andrew Wilson Curated by Simon Cuthbert Plimsoll Gallery, Centre for the Arts, Hobart, September 11 - October 4
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The Meeting of the Waters: The Australian Print Project
24 Hr Art, Darwin September 1998
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The Wild(e) Colonial Boy
Leigh Bowery edited Robert Violette published Editions Violette/distributed by Thames and Hudson $89.00 238 pp colour and b&w illustrations
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White Aborigines: Identity Politics in Australian Art
Ian McLeanWhite Aborigines:Identity Politics in Australian Art. Oakleigh, Vic, Cambridge University Press, 1998, 204 pp. RRP $39.95 hb.
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