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Out of the Dark
Out of the dark - night shots from indigenous artists is an exhibition I experienced online via the cyberTribe website. If you have not browsed the site, then you should. WiseART Gallery in Brisbane presented the physical exhibition from 7 –27 August.
Instinct
Emily Floyd, Sharon Goodwin, Irene Hanenbergh, Louise Hearman, Rebecca Ann Hobbs, Ronnie Van Hout, David Noonan, Lisa Roet, Kathy Temin. Curator Lisa Vasiliou Faculty Gallery, Monash University 9 September - 5 November 2004
[in]stall(s)
Rebecca Coote, jonathan Hodgkin, Kylie Johnson, Nick Maxwell, Mish Metjers, Hanna Parssinen. Sally Rees, Tristan Stowards, Tricky Walsh, Matt Warren and Tiffany Winterbottom Long Gallery, Salamanca Arts Centre, Hobart 19 August - 5 September 2004 A Tasmanian Living Artists' Week Exhibition
1/2 Way: Scott Redford the Collages
Dell Gallery at Griffith University Queensland College of Art, Brisbane 13 August - 19 September 2004
Savvy: New Australian Art
Savvy: New Australian Art QUT Art Museum, Brisbane 6 August - 17 October 2004
The Meaning of Aboriginal Art
This essay is not about interpreting Aboriginal art rather it is about the wider issues raised by Aboriginal art, issues that tear through the discrete context of contemporary art and connect it to history, to the everyday, to politics and to the future.
Loop-Back: New Australian Art to Berlin
Engberg writes about FACE UP, a large museum exhibition curated for the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum in Berlin in October 2003. Britta Schmitz who curated FACE UP was intent on extending the discussion surrounding conceptualism and modernism that is reflected backwards with a sideways glance created by a slow burn effect. Photography was delivered in the works of Rosmary Laing, Simryn Gill and Darren Siwes. Installation, in a variety of manifestations, was offered in works by Patricia Piccinini, Mikala Dywer and Fiona Hall.
Why Correggio Jones is not The Hero of the 2004 Biennale of Sydney
The title of the 2004 Sydney Biennale was Biennale Of Reason and Emotion, the curator was Isabel Carlos, a Portuguese woman who will stress her cultural links with the New World, but in her case it is South America rather than North. One of the ideas she wished to explore through the Biennale was the concept of 'south' in a world dominated by the culture of the 'north'. As she states - "what I really want is to create a Biennale that works on the borders of the perception and on artworks that change our way of seeing the world around us."
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.
The Entire Life Behind Things: David Keeling's Little Epiphanies
Timms paints a vivid picture of one of David Keeling's paintings, simultaneously posing questions surrounding how we as audiences deconstruct, interpret and therefore place values on certain images. His argument clearly lies in the appreciating of a process, a journey over the final image, especially when the image is as seemingly banal as that which typifies Keeling's practice. Keeling's previous works tended to acknowledge the traps of both the dewy-eyed romantic and the coldly rationalist approach. With his recent shift from a surreal satirical atmosphere to the common everyday, though the subject matter may be different, the locating of meaning is still the same.
Thinking Big: Spatial Conception in the Art of Dorothy Napangardi
The Warlpiri artist Dorothy Napangardi was born in the late 1940s or early 1950s in the bush near Mina Mina, northwest of Alice Springs at a time when colonisation meant that whites were increasingly encroaching on Walpiri land. Although Napangardi did not begin painting until much later, her childhood spent in the bush gathering the plentiful bush tucker and watching family members catch animals for food has had a critical influence on her artistic work. Because Napangardi did not live in a house in her formative years, the ability to view the landscape in its full 360 degrees enabled a different kind of 'eye' which plays out extensively in her visual scapes. It is in this sense that Nicholls looks at the spatial conceptions of the work of Napangardi.
Warped Reflections
Through this article Clement examines the idea that, as human beings we never tire of looking at ourselves, and we particularly seem to like looking at a self we recognise. In this sense it is not hard to see why Mueck's sculptures are so popular, not only in their satisfying familiarity but also in the sheer technical virtuosity they display. The same cultural anxiety that subtly animates Mueck's seemingly ordinary human figures deforms the flesh of Patricia Piccinini's hyper-real creatures. Subsequent to this idea of self observation, Clement looks at the increasing fluidity of the boundaries of the human body and, through examples of such artistic concerns, questions what it means to be human.
Stone Into Flesh: Julie Rrap
Australian artist Julie Rrap has consistently explored issues of corporeality and history. Her recent Fleshstones series expands upon these interests by directing her attention to public sculpture and, in particular, the relationship between landscape and the body. Using digital photography Rrap questions the hierarchical organisation of space through fusing figure and ground relations together. These images refer largely to the sculptural work of Henry moore and the myth of Galatea, the tradition of figurative sculpture in which stone is transformed into flesh.
Place-Urbanity: A Psycho-Ethnographic Portrait of Melbourne by Jeffrey Shaw
Australian artist Jeffrey Shaw has been at the forefront of interactive new media practice for the past two decades. He has used complex technologies to create large-scale immersive experiences that explore the meeting point between physical touch and human motion, and fantastic and uniquely conceived digital landscapes. He is also the founding Director of the Institute for Visual Media at the ZKM Centre for Art and Media in Karlsruhe in Germany. Right looks at Shaw's film piece Place-Urbanity which premiered in November 2002 and which has proven to be one of the most popular works in the ACMI's collection.
Impressive Risk-Taking: The Ideal City at the Valencia Biennial 2003
While the Venice Biennale remains the pre-eminent visual arts event on the international calendar there are now over 40 similar events that claim to be truly international. One of the newest is held in Spain and its second addition in 2003 gave us a tightly curated, human-scale celebration of ideas with some outstanding exhibitions. Developed expediently over the last five years, taking the community with them, the government is changing face and mindset of what was only ten years ago a city in the grip of chronic decay. Paul Greenaway reports.
Colin McCahon: A Question of Faith
Colin McCahon was born in 1919 in the South Island of New Zealand, in the town of Timaru, that is to say, about as far from the centres of modern art as it is possible to get. The early Italian Renaissance as much as the work of Gauguin and Picasso provided McCahon with his lead in these paintings. Raw and strange, they were greeted with puzzled and angry responses whilst at the same time these profound works secured a number of loyal and powerful supporters. McAloon looks at what was initially a slow and meandering ascent to his career and examines one of McCahon's most well known exhibitions which included 78 of McCahon's works covering the span of his career from 1946 to 1982.
Sideways Glances: South Africa, Australia and Intersections
With the showing of the BHP-Billiton collection of South African art at the RMIT Gallery in late 2002 early 2003, Australians not only saw convincing artworks, but also contemplated a culture that is both akin and alien. Synchronicities and differences in these two cultures and specific artistic experiences played out through the Intersections exhibition, with a recognition of the two nations being joined by mediating a white culture, looking upwards to Europe for inspiration and validation. Peers explores these and other parallels drawn between Australian and South African art and culture and addresses some of our own countries ongoing inequalities and historical misfortunes.
A Memory of Times Past
Australia's 'official culture', the face that government puts on to show the country to the world has changed, and although those changes were set in motion well before the events of 11 September 2001, they are only now beginning to emerge as defining forces. Mendelssohn looks at the role of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games as a celebration of Australia's diversity and one of the main catalysts for such change. However, there is a darker side to all of this celebratory glory which Mendelssohn has addressed with reference to Australia's political climate and the granting of permission to express its collective worst feelings of fear and loathing.
Refugee stories: Afghanistan & Iran
The Migrant and Workers Resource Centre (MWRC) was established in Brisbane in 1995 by a group of migrant factory workers, with the aim of providing assistance to migrant communities. Recently, the MWRC conducted an independent investigation into the condition of refugees released from detention centres and now residing in Brisbane. The MWRC coordinator and the centre's consultant psychologist, Madonna Abella, visited the homes of refugees for face-to-face interviews, assisted by an interpreter. This article presents the findings of these interviews and the individual experiences of the refugees.
Borderpanic: open channel on refuge
Borderpanic was a conference and tactical media lab hosted by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, a seminar hosted by Metroscreen and an exhibition at the Performance Space. It was a coming together of artists, activists, cultural theorists and people of social conscience examining a world of burning borders. Many of the artworks exhibited at the Performance Space reflected in positive mode the documentation, connectivity and networking between people around the planet. Some of the artists included in these shows were Julian Burnside, Ghassan Hage, Mickey Quick, Geert Lovink, Stephen Best and Peter Lyssiotis.
The Pathos of Boat People
On 10th April 1999, a large boat carrying 60 passengers and crew who had travelled all the way from China seeking asylum arrived on the shores of the small town of Scotts Head on the mid North coast of NSW. Shayne Higson created a series of poetic images in response to this desperate attempt for freedom. These poignant photographs present the remnants of these asylum seekers, the striped plastic bags and rusting hulk which were abandoned and replaced by suits, ties and good shoes, items worn by the refugees in an attempt to fit in with the mainland surroundings.
Ambient Fears
Artlink here prints a slightly abbreviated version of Nikos Papastergiadis essay which was first delivered as a lecture in Finland on 30 September 2001. This essay covers issues surrounding the idea of the other, the enemy, and discusses some of the ramifications of the events of September 11. In november that year it was used as a companion piece to the exhibition Fallout at the Victorian College of the Arts. The Exhibition featured artists Destiny Deacon, Elizabeth Gower, Homi Vesal, Jarrad Kennedy, Justine Khamara amongst others. Nikos Papastergiadis is Deputy Director of the Australian Centre, University of Melbourne.
Fallout: Quick Response to 9/11
Fallout was a quick response exhibition that only lasted for one week. The show examined the impact on art of the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington, globalisation and the refugee crisis. The thirty-seven artists who participated, each at different stages in their careers, contributed their work purely on political conviction. Many of the works in the show were quite raw, and captured this desire to re-express the shock of the violence towards the western world, but also the violent and brutal way the western world sought revenge. Sanja Pahoki and Rowan Douglas were amongst those to exhibit.
Pat Hoffie: Compassion and Anger
The element of denial ingrained in Australian society provides the basis for much of Pat Hoffie's work. The popularly constructed myths, histories and relationships that reinforce Australian society involve a certain amount of self-delusion, and Hoffie uses her work to amplify this fact. This article explores some of the political and humanitarian issues at the core of Hoffie's artistic practice, with specific reference to the 'children overboard' incident and Australia's role in the 'war against terror'.
Disorientation: Afghan War Rug, No Easy Answers
Lendon takes up the idea of cross-cultural interpretation and exchange as exemplified through the symbolism imbued in a traditional 'Afghan war rug', an item which was part of the exhibition 'The Rugs of War' held in June 2003. Through deconstructing the seemingly violent and barbaric visual imagery, Lendon is posing some important questions regarding the role of traditional artefacts and the valuing of such hand made craft once it has reached its destination in the west.
Afghanistan Unveiled: Four refugee artists from Afghanistan
Afghanistan Unveiled was an exhibition in South Australia of paintings and drawings by four refugees from Afghanistan: Ali Reza Ramzi from Western Australia, Ghulam Sakhi Hazara from Queensland, Sayed Mansoor from South Australia and Shafiq Monis from New South Wales. All of these artists have recently lived in detention and one is still in detention. The artists use art as a way to depict their lives under the Taliban regime, their flight to Australia and their experiences in Australia. The exhibition received television, radio and newspaper coverage, both locally and nationally and over 200 people attended the opening with many more viewing the exhibition over the following two weeks.
The Ballet of Nothing More
Megan Keating's installation The Ballet of Nothing More uses sources from international military and propaganda imagery in order to allude to the present state of unrest within the world. Although no particular campaign or situation is specifically referred to, the paintings and papercuts aim to evoke an awkwardness or ambivalence indicative of contemporary experience. This work is not about war or the experiences of war but people's acceptance, detachment and displacement of such issues fuelled by the media and its methods of reportage.
Viet Nam Voices: Lessons of History
Viet Name Voices was a unique exhibition, striving to give all major groups of participants the opportunity to be heard impartially, often in direct opposition to each other. The voice that is most passionate in this exhibition is that of the Viet Name veterans, who are speaking out after twenty-five years of silence. The issues raised by the unjust treatment of the veterans on their return to Australia are vividly addressed through their artworks, including the legacy of chemical defoliants such as Agent Orange, their betrayal by the Australian government, the mass media's complicity in wartime propaganda, and the enduring and unfulfilled need to honour and remember the dead.
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.
Terrorist Training School: PVI Collective
Contemporary performance often seems bent on escaping the theatrical frame, eroding the boundaries, and making problematic the relationship between theatre and reality. In Terrorist Training School, the Perth-based performance group PVI abandoned traditional theatrical space altogether, opting for tour buses and trams. Wilson here sets the scene for the 2002 performance and discusses the performative and prescriptive aspects of both the theatrical and real life terrorist attacks taking place in all parts of the contemporary world.
Queue Here
One of the key works in the 2002 exhibition Queue Here is by Pat Hoffie, an artist long concerned with issues of social justice. A frieze of paintings, lifted from portraits on the web of Australian Federal Members of Parliament, become, as Hoffie says, the 'horrific scared smiles of those we trusted to speak for us'. The artists featured in Queue Here (Pat Hoffie, Peter Latona, Holly Williams, Aseem Pereira, John Vella, Angelina Brazzale, Margaret Baguley, Penny Cain and Paul Gazzola) have all adopted tropes that point to the heart of the problem. If we are dealing with perceptions, then these are a truthful reading of Australia's current vision of its own culture.
A4 Refugee Project: Artists in Solidarity
The A4 Refugee Project began in July as a response to Austcare's call for participants in Refugee Week 2002. Letters, flyers and e-mails were sent to contemporary artists throughout Australia with the request to submit a work as a gesture of support for refugees. The works addressed all sorts of issues surrounding the topic of refugees: alienation, lip sewing, consumerism, wire fencing, loneliness, nationalism...and punctuating these were abstract works that allowed some breathing space. The works were donated to the James Hardie Art Archive at the State Library of Queensland and will provide a permanent document of the artistic response from the community to this issue.
The Pacific Highway Solution
Wayne Barrow provides a humorous dialogue between himself and two of his mates Boney and Dazza, the three of them on their way back to Sydney after a week of concreting. This article raises issues surrounding the problems with the construction of the Pacific Highway, the government's policies on mandatory detention and the shocking state of take away food along the way.
Our Voices: Living with Trauma
Mammad Aidani was born in the port city of Khorramshar in South-West of Iran and later born into the English language and the complexities of the Australian environment in 1982. He here writes about his ongoing struggles since fleeing his country during the Shah's regime when the war between Iran and Iraq ultimately led to the loss of his family and friends. He speaks out about the current political and humanitarian agenda in Australia and the role of creativity in providing rich human emotions as noble causes to unite people.
The Promised Land
Linda Jaivin tells an imaginative story of Moses' plight to the Promised Land, imparting an additional reading to this historical tale, one very much aligned with contemporary society and the struggles of refugees seeking asylum in Australia. The story depicts the promised land as 'a liberal democracy which respects human rights and international conventions as set out by the United Nations' with the story leading the refugees to the ultimate reality of this supposed liberated new land.
Modern Machine Art
Information processing technology influences our notions about creativity, perception, and the limits of art ... It is probably not the province of computers and other telecommunication devices to produce works of art as we know it; but they will, in fact be instrumental in redefining the entire area of esthetic awareness.
Artlink - The Second Decade 1991-2000
Britton recaps on the decade that was and discusses some of the significant challenges she and her team at Artlink faced such as marketing, distributing, staffing, staying solvent and avoiding terminal burnout. Also looks at some of Artlinks major achievement over the past ten years.
Screen Gallery
At the time of this article, Screen Gallery, the world's first gallery for the exhibition and research of digital media, was anticipated to open at Federation Square in Melbourne. Screen Gallery is located underground, on the site of a couple of old railway platforms 100 metres long, 15 metres wide and seven metres deep. Creative Director of the Screen Gallery, Ross Gibson spoke to Stephanie Radok over the internet.
Australian Aboriginal Cultures Gallery
The new Australian Aboriginal Cultures Gallery, the spearhead of the new and improved South Australian Museum development program, set out to unlocked one of the great ethnographic collections of the world and give insight into one of the worlds oldest, most continuous living cultures. Some of the artefacts on display included totem poles from Elcho Island, headdresses from Central Australia, Darwin area and Mornington Island and wooden shields from across Australia.
Artlink and Museums, Past and Present
The issues raised by revisiting in some degree the past within Artlink touch upon a more general invocation to the authority and precedent of history in an Australian context. Some of these issues are here discussed with reference to key figures such as the Papunya Tula movement, David Kerr, Jude Adams, Drusilla Modjeska, Joan Kerr, Anne McClintock, Louise Dauth, Penny White, Zara Stanhope, Stuart Hall, Nicholas Rothwell, Paul Carter and Donald Brook.
The Link Exhibition
The Link Exhibitions were a series of contemporary art exhibitions run on a very low budget by the Art Gallery of South Australia between 1974-1979 to increase communication and understanding between Australian artists . This article is a retrospective account of the events and responses to the Link Exhibitions. Key figures discussed are Imants Tillers, Jim Cowley, Bob Ramsay, Brian Medlin, Terry Smith, John Baily, Noel Sheridan, Donald Brook, Hank Vischedyk, John Kaldor, Charlotte Moorman, Nam June Paik, Ann Newmarch, Hossein Valamanesh, Aleks Danko, Tony Coleing, Marcus Beresford, Alison Carroll, Ian Maidment, Dick Richards and Barry Pearce.
Craft Theory
The twentieth anniversary of Artlink has provided an occasion for an article on the current state of craft theory and its ramifications. This article gathers and presents a knowledge that eddies around craft and engages in the ontology of craft theory. Its aspirations: for craft theory to be not only approached from the point of view of the useful, instrumental or skilful but as offering new ways of moving and thinking. William Morris, Adolf Loos, David Walker, Sue Rowley, Grace Cochrane, Justin Clemens, Mark Pennings, Kevin Murray, Gilles Deleuze, Nicole Tomlinson, John Rajchman, Felix Guattari, Tony Fry, Frances Lindsay and Paul Carter are discussed through this text.
Design Practice: Trawling the Speculative Field
This article is a response to a renewed interest by design practice into the cultural and natural environment for inspiration, and a renewed focus of design education and practice on investigations in the field. The recent installation works of two architectural practices - Lyons: City of Fiction inspired by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney and Shop:Dunescape by PSI New York - are here described.
Art/Body the Liminal Experiences of Indigeneity
Art from an indigenous context cannot be transferred wholly into another context for reading. This denies the fact that indigenous contexts do have ways of seeing and making sense of their art. Mel presents a discourse for alternate ways of viewing such indigenous artwith reference to terms such as postmodern, objectivity and subjectivity. The Mogei people of Mt Hagen area in Papua New Guinea are examined through this text.
Social Ecology
In March 2000, Stuart Hill attended the Mildura Palimpsest #3 Science and Art Symposium organised by Sunraysia TAFE and La Trobe University. One of the speakers was Stuart Hall, scientist and ecologist who, in his talk introduced the concept of social ecology, a cross-disciplinary field of which he is the inaugural professor at the University of Western Sydney, Hawkesbury Campus. Here is Hill's interview with Stephanie Radok.
Regional Art: Theorising the regions
This article seeks to challenge regional communities away from the self-prophesying defeatism of whingers from the bush towards a concept of growing communities . The arts have an intrinsic contribution to make within the chosen future. Fettling discusses this with reference to globalisation, de-centred cultural and ethnic hybridization and individuality. Featured artists include Megan Jones, Andrew McDonald, Janet Gallagher, Vicki Reynolds, Danielle Hobbs, Chris Booth, Craig Christie, Rodney Spooner, Michael Doneman, Motoyuki Niwa and Lee Salomone.
Art for Social Change: Footsteps from the Past to the Future
We have arrived at a point where we are constantly experimenting with and experiencing a new understanding of diversity in Australia. Art discovers new directions through the development of strategies that enable it to penetrate and interpret the unknown other in a more profound way. This sets up the topical discussion for this article with references to exhibitions Boghcheh (Bundle), Defiling the Object, Embellishing the Family Photograph and The City which showed at the Gabriel Gallery in 2000. Featured artists include Karen Lunn, Mehmet Adil, Peter Bok, Alan Cruickshank, Helen Fuller, Catherine K, Pramod Kumar, Michelle Nikou, Deborah Paauwe, Bronwyn Platten, Hossein Valamanesh, Zita Weelius, Mei Wong, Anthony Figallo, Fassih Keiso, Samia Mikhail, Yatzek Szmuc and John Tsiavis.
Unsentimental Experimental: The Experimental Art Foundation 25 years on
Bilske looks at the history of EAF: Experimental Art Foundation and some of the significant events which have contributed to its success since its inception in 1974. Discusses briefly Stephanie Brittons publication A Decade at the EAF written in 1984 and the role Donald Brook has played in tackling head-on the problem of just what the experimental in Experimental Art Foundation means. Some of the artists involved with EAF include Aleks Danko, Mike Parr, Michael Craig-Martin, John Barbour, George Popperwell, Shaun Kirby, Craige Andrae, Nic Folland, Hayley Arjona, Sam Wilde, Samantha Small, Jim Moss, Chris Chapman, Sally-Ann Rowland and Michael Newall.
Donald Brook's Art Theory
This text is a dedication to Donald Brooks literary contributions to Artlink magazine over the years. Different from his specifically theoretical writings on art, those featured in Artlink focus on temporal and local issues, and are often written in a wittily ironic style that leaves readers unsure whether they have understood his position.
Culture Without Limits: a reflection of art, politics, and shabby nationalism
In this article Kapetopoulos reflects on the watersheds which reinforce her attachment to multiculturalism. The watersheds are the works of certain artists involved with Multicultural Arts Victoria (MAV) and the rise of One Nation. The artists Kapetopoulos writes about are: Yumi Umiumare, Tina Yong and Sung Ping; Charito Saldana; Renato Cuocolo and his innovative theatre company IRAA; Emmanuel Santos and Sandor Matos.
Adelaide Studios
This article celebrates the diversity of some of the groupings whichlink artists within the city that is Artlink's birthplace, Adelaide. Gray Street Workshop, Central Studios, Experimental Art Foundation (EAF), Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT), Jam Factory Contemporary Craft and Design, Jamboree Ceramic Workshop, SAAW (South Australian Artists Workshop), Red Door Facing East, Butcher's Studio, Blythe Street Studios, Rice Art, Zu Design, SEAS Studios and the Electronic Writing Research Ensemble are all examined.
Ethnicity and Excellence in the Arts
One of the leading debates in Cultural Studies around the world deals with the issues of cultural difference or ethnicity in relation to concepts of a national culture.
Arts in a Multicultural Australia
Performing in Tongues
...Underlying this linguistic fertility is a migrant intuition of the relativity of language, of the lightness and mutability of its phonology, inflections and syntax. Less portentously there is no migrant to this country who has not experienced those punning co-incidences, echoic repetitions, mutual misunderstandings and mishearings which are the basis of my scripts. It may be no accident that in 1992 Australian voices evoke first contact with the New World.
Arts in a Multicultural Australia
Museums on the Edge
Guest editor for Vol 12 No 1 Museums on the Edge. This edition was founded on a perception of a lack of any quantity of readily available material on the Australian and New Zealand experience of museums.
Museums on the Edge
Some Thoughts on Museum Futures
The quintessential purpose of Museums is to encourage and instil the joy of intellectual and aesthetic discovery. Abstracted partly from a public lecture entitled 'Ideas -Heresies even - for Museum Futures' given in Perth for the Western Australian Government Department of the Arts Task Force on Museums in August 1991.
Museums on the Edge
From Curiosities to the Hyper-Real: Notes on Context in Museum Anthropology Exhibitions
Daniel Thomas provoked a distinct murmur at the 1990 CAMA Conference when he suggested that art museums have a greater capacity to disturb and move people than other cultural museums. If this is true and I think it is.....
Museums on the Edge
Aboriginal People and Museums: Restricting Access to Increase It
The South Australian Museum has the world's largest and most comprehensive collection of Australian Aboriginal material culture. It also has a vast archive of information about that material and about other aspects of Aboriginal life in the form of photographs, films, audio tapes, diaries and other records.
Museums on the Edge
Towards the Light: The story of One New Age Gallery's Quest for Purpose and Relevance in a Changing World
On 23 October 2002, yet another Council of Australian Museums Associations (CAMA) ran down. Conferees were already half deep in thought about melting credit cards and distant work site desks stacked high with urgent files. Well Not exactly CAMA...
Museums on the Edge
Cultural Diversity and the Challenges of Access
Cultural diversity has become a key issue in the 1990s for a number of reasons. In the United States we have recently completed a census. The results of that census indicate a dramatic change in the nation's demographics.
Museums on the Edge
Urban Regions and the City Centre: A Changing Cultural Relationship
One of the curious things about very large cities is the gulf that exists between the inner city and the outer suburbs or hinterland.
Museums on the Edge
Exhibiting Conflict - Who Dares?
Museum exhibitions tend not to challenge visitors with critical perspectives, contradictory points of view or subject matter which is controversial. I would like to explore different ways that conflict might be included in exhibitions and used to further our understanding of the past.
Museums on the Edge
To Have and To Hold: Art Museum Departments
One of the things which continues to fascinate me about museums is how, despite the vast amount of talk about displaying material culture, the often personal, often idiosyncratic, often haphazard decisions about departments are very rarely mentioned. Yet these decisions are central to much of the museum's collection, display, exhibitions and research programme.
Museums on the Edge
Whams and Whimms: An Exercise in Classification and Meaning
Interview with Louise Dauth about issues of gender. Dale Spender is a foundation member of the Women Heritage and Museums Group.
Museums on the Edge
The Ownership of Cultural Meaning: Local Museums and Access
According the the Australia Council figures in 1990 a number of people exceeding the entire population of Australia visited the 187 Australian Museums that employed paid staff in 1989/90 at a cost, for maintence, development and operations in excess of $13.00 per head of population, excluding any charges imposed on entry to museums or exhibitions. And what does $13.00 buy for the Museum going public?
Museums on the Edge
Implementing Aboriginal and Multicultural Policy in the Museum Sector
Helen Andreoni writes on matters which are addressed in the report commissioned by the Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA) by Amareswar Galla (also in this edition of Artlink).
Museums on the Edge
Background to the Project: Heritage Curricula and Multiculturalism (HC&M)
Background to the National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia with the final report to be released by the Office of Multicultural Affairs OMA in mid 1992. See also the article by Helen Andreoni in this issue.
Museums on the Edge
European Museums Make an Exhibition of Themselves
Report on the 3rd International Salon of Museums and Exhibitions (SIME) at the Grand Palais Paris January 1992
Museums on the Edge
Repatriation of Papua New Guinea's Cultural Heritage
Jim Specht of the Australian Museum Sydney, has written that "public and private collections of archaeological and ethnographic specimens around the world contain tens of millions of specimens yet only a minute fraction of this total is actually held in its countries of origin" ; most of this material he says, was acquired through colonial or military occupation.
Museums on the Edge
Designing for Interesting People
Andrew Andersons is, and has been, engaged to contribute to many of Australia's leading art museums as well as to other public buildings and spaces. His work might be described as adaptive; accommodating to the style and typology of the major buildings on which he has worked as well as responding to the varied views of curators with whom he has co-operated closely when designing galleries.
Museums on the Edge
Abel Tasman at Dunedin
Looks at the exhibition 'Terra Australis Incognita' at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery in New Zealand, to celebrate the 350th anniversary of Abel Tasman's discovery.
Museums on the Edge
Local Conditions: New Zealand Art
Headlands: Thinking through New Zealand Art. Exhibition for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney from 31st March 1992. Article by the co-curator Robert Leonard.
Museums on the Edge
Te Papa Tongarewa: Museum of New Zealand
Looks at recent issues for the National Art Gallery of New Zealand from the boardroom dismissals and judgments as well as the operations.
Museums on the Edge
A Continuum of Maori Art
Whatu Aho Rua - Tandanya Aboriginal Cultural Institute Adelaide Festival. The exhibition Whatu Aho Rua 'weaving with two strands' organised by the Sarjeant Gallery in Wanganui, New Zealand, is a departure form exhibitions usually seen in New Zealand Galleries.
Museums on the Edge
Sources of Synergy: Museums for Design
The Zandra Rhodes costume in Sydney's Powerhouse Museum holds unique significance within the design collection.
Museums on the Edge
Exhibiting the Museum
The recession led rash of public conferences on the theme of Australian identity raises questions about the sources of our national self-knowledge. The congregation of bureaucrats, economists, television personalities, writers and artists has a democratic ring to it but it also points to the failure of our cultural institutions - notably our museums, galleries and libraries - to embrace their responsibility to develop a regional self consciousness.
Museums on the Edge
Charging to Disaster: The Introduction of Museum Entry Fees
Museums are complex social phenomena and valuable resources. There's an ecological analogy there; if you mess with even apparently trivial elements of a complex system, the results can be unpredictable, powerful and are most often catastrophic.
Museums on the Edge
A New Museum for Victoria
In the first project of its kind, private investors will provide half the money needed to build the Museum of Victoria at a new site on the Yarra River.
Museums on the Edge
Victoria Moves Towards Museum Accreditation
Accreditation is set to become one of the significant features of the Victorian museum scene in the 1990s. At a time when Victoria might be perceived as out for the count it may seem unlikely to be introducing major developments in the operation of the State's 400 Museums.
Museums on the Edge
Multicultural Artworkers: Sacrificial Anodes?
This is a new notion for me. I'm sure it is a term familiar to most readers. However, just in case, this is my version of what it means. To understand it you need to appreciate that there is an hierarchical order of metals determined by their 'nobility'. A sacrifical anode is less a noble metal which is used to attract impurities away from more noble metals that you do not wish to be eroded. Thus if you wish to avoid erosion in your copper boiler, you can put a sacrificial anode in the water which will attract the impurities in the water and keep them away from your noble boiler. The link between multicultural artworkers and sacrificial anodes is entirely my own!
Arts in a Multicultural Australia
If you Can't Measure It, You Can't Manage It!
I am particularly troubled about debates such as those illustrated by the publications 'What Price Heritage? - Finance 1989' and 'What value Heritage? DASETT 1990' and Professor Donald Horne's article 'Weekend Australian Jan 4-5 1992' on museums, because there is nearly always truth on all sides.
Museums on the Edge
Museums and Technology: A Recession Boom?
With so many people feeling bruised and battered by the 1980s, it may seem cynical to point out that this unlamented decade also produced some new museums. These two 1980s legacies appear unrelated. On the face of it, museums are a quintessentially boom-time phenomenon, another emblem of 1980s extravagance.
Museums on the Edge
Heritage Collections not Museums
In 1975 the Whitlam Government's Committee of Inquiry on Museums and National Collections (the Piggott Committee, after its chairman P H Piggott) unsuccessfully recommended setting up of a Museum's Commission.
Museums on the Edge
Bad Names Improved
Suggestions for renaming many cultural institutions which are ambiguously named.
Museums on the Edge
Conservation: The State of the Art Conservation - Access, Equity and Future Directions
Conservation - access, equity and future directions. Everyone is talking about the effects of the economic climate, some people are calling it a recession and others a depression.
Museums on the Edge
A Virtue of Necessity: Deaccessioning Without Guilt
De-accessioning is too often characterised as an ill-wind, blowing through the vast and mostly undisturbed reaches of our cultural store-houses capriciously violating the integrity of our collections.
Museums on the Edge