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In these days of 'Theory', innovative curatorial practice calls for a certain empirical discipline; by revealing the arts subtle and yet detectable connections with the social world. Having established this position, Souchou looks at the controversial performance work of Chinese artist Zhang Huan; a practice which displays a confronting yet contemplative look at the relationship between people and society in a post-Mao and contemporary China. An ongoing process of losing oneself in order to understand the effects of cultural and material life, and to animate the desire for release.

Yao Souchou

The Cost of Creativity?

The fabric of the contemporary art scene in China comprises the densely woven strands of politics, economics and aesthetics specific to the immediate socio-cultural framework: a cloth that is today increasingly more sophisticated that the coarse serge of the past. A vibrant contemporary art scene which emerged in the early 1980's following years of rampant cultural destruction and rigid doctrinal control over its form and content. This article focuses on the economic viability of contemporary Chinese art, a movement that found its key members a part of the lower socio-economic class.

Karen Smith

Backflow: Returned Chinese Artists

The decades since China's Great Proletarian Cultural revolution (1966-1976) have witnessed a tide of artists leaving China, and now returning, propelled in part by the desire to locate a healthy climate for art production. There was a time when western society provided a climate more conducive to creativity and these artists sought better living conditions and freedom of thought and expression. Now many of these artists fight a battle over the encroaching forces of materialism and globalisation and there is an increasing backflow of these artists returning to China in the light of new policies valuing creative output and generally higher living standards.

Britta Erickson

Chinese Art Sydney Style

After more than a decade since many of the Chinese artists who have the highest profiles here migrated to Australia, several of them are currently at a crossroads with respect to their careers and what their next steps will be. As is the case with Guan Wei and Ah Xian, two of the best-known mainland Chinese artists working in Sydney, there has been an invested interest in exposing their work to local and international audiences. Teo looks at some of the initiatives which have propelled these artists work both locally and internationally and the various approaches in bringing together aspects of Australian and Chinese life and culture.

Louisa Teo

Xiandai Shufa: Brushes With Modernism

As similar to the changes that came to be called 'modernism' in the West in the nineteenth century, the nature of changing artistic traditions in the East are as far-reaching and as significant in that they also prefigure a contestation of the tradition/modernity duality. This article looks specifically at the tradition of Chinese ink painting and calligraphy and the insistence by Chinese critics that evolution - if not revolution - in these forms is occurring. Moreso the concentration here lies with modern calligraphy (xiandai shufu) and the distinguishing of calligraphy from the generalised use of Chinese characters in contemporary art.

Helen Grace

Broadening the Scope

The First Beijing Biennale, held in September of 2003 somewhat echoed the Venice Biennale in it's approach to expansive venues and activities. Although Chinese Officials are realising the importance of contemporary art and its role in promoting international activities in Beijing, it is the artists themselves who have managed to expand the scope of contemporary art events in the city. Furthermore the event hosted a series of forums and international conferences to promote dialogue between Chinese experts and their international counterparts.

Thomas J. Berghuis

Thinking About Guan Wei

With Traditional Chinese art education requiring students to master the painting styles of each historic period, it is not surpirising that Guan Wei's own style (having painted systematically from Impressionism to Postmodernism over ten years) has rendered his work appealing to Australian audiences. His works are cool in colour, surreal in style, quirky in wit. Wei's work displays a graphic sensibility and visual language similar to that of Leunig's cartoons and is successful for these exact reasons.

Philippa Kelly

A Lens on Diversity

'To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life' - Ludwig Wittgenstein. So to it is that to read the works of contemporary Chinese photography is to read Chinese social life. During the middle of the 1990's photography was admitted to the canon of contemporary Chinese art and the Chinese economy started to reflect a 'glocal' trend through the merging with the global economy. As a result Chinese artists began experimenting with new media and dialogue between Chinese and international artists became more frequent. This article looks at the diversity and proliferation of contemporary Chinese photography and the shifting perceptions of Chinese society from an international perspective.

Huang Du

Wang Jianwei: Working on the Boundaries

New media in China is probably the most rapidly developing medium used by contemporary artists in that country. As an art form new media characterises a form of communication with an almost endless capacity to be manipulated, making it the perfect tool to express a new artistic confidence. The intent of this article is the concentration on the work of one artist Wang Jianwei, whose work typifies many of the issues being expressed nationally through contemporary art. His is a practice differentiated by the way he slides from media to media allowing the intent of the art to govern the form of expression.

Binghui Huangfu

The Decade of the Rise of Chinese Women Artists

Socio-economic conditions and traditional ethics encourage Chinese women to maintain the ideal of harmony between genders, whilst certainly pursuing and endorsing independence. The state of women's art in China is an increasingly pluralistic art establishment within which international feminist thought has been a great source of energy but where there exists a clear opposition to the 'we don't bite' attitude. This article examines the impact of western feminist thought on a group of Chinese women artists who studied in Europe and America and the new awareness of their own feminist identities that came as a result.

Gu / Yang Zhenqing / Li

Alors, La Chine?

Alors, La Chine? was a major exhibition of contemporary Chinese art at the centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, from 25 June to 13 October 2003. An exhibition of this kind had been planned for several years and included several research visit to China by Pompidou curators. Eventually the French government intervened when it decided that such an exhibition should be part of a planned two-year series of Franco-Chinese exchanges. Clark examines some of the political and ethical issues which surfaced as a result of this major event being held.

John Clark

The China Phenomenon

Binghui Huangfu and Stephanie Britton

Changchun, China: to Confront or Confirm

Scarlett pays homage to the opening of an International Sculpture Park at Changchun, northern China, which bosts 315 works by numerous international and local provincial Chinese artists. Scarlett looks at this event and examines how audiences react to both controversial and more accepted and confirmed art within a society.

Ken Scarlett

Economic Downturn in Hong Kong Breathes New Life Into Culture

The situation today for creative, especially cultural, industries in Hong Kong is perhaps better than it has been for many years. Tsong-Zung looks at the effects of a dramatic economic downturn in Hong Kong as it is providing artists with two of the most defining conditions for creative work, leisure and space.

Chang Tsong-Zung

Artrave

Artlink

Sadomaschism, Art and the Lesbian Sexual revolution

Black leather, blood, piercing and tattooing, glamourised dominance and submission should be approached with political discernment and discrimination.

Sheila Jeffreys

Art & the Feminist Project

Shedding Skins: Identity and 'Lesbian' Art Practice

What does it mean to present as a 'lesbian' artist? The very identity categories 'gay', 'lesbian', 'heterosexual' are extremely problematic. Now that 'I' am out, I find that I am in - inside a category that reduces rather than expands possibilities for me, not just as an artist, but as a person.

Barbara Bolt

Art & the Feminist Project

The Horror of the Prose: Some Reflection on a Paper entitled The Horror of the Gaze

Some reflections on a paper entitled the Horror of the Gaze. Art criticism is, perhaps, an art form and not expected primarily to make sense. There is no consensus about what art is, but we do seem to share an urge to understand what critics say about it.

Donald Brook

Art & the Feminist Project

Update: Projects of Women and Art

A survey of current issues, events and projects with respect to women's art from around Australia.

Stephanie Britton

Art & the Feminist Project

HER-ESIES Ancient and Modern

"Women in art must look to the future as they have no past" said Mary Cecil Allen at an opening of the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors in 1935. A critical examination of the current art practices of women in Australia.

Juliette Peers

Art & the Feminist Project

Someday, Somewhere - Women and Nation in International Art

However, feminist artists, curators and writers could collaborate in establishing alternative frameworks for international exhibitions that would render unthinkable the omission of female artists or the implicit erasure of gender as an interpretive key.

Sue Rowley

Art & the Feminist Project

The Art World: More Than a Foothold

Australian women artists still see grey skies when they look out of their studio windows. This study examines the experiences of women in the hierarchical Australian contemporary art scene.

Melissa Cater

Art & the Feminist Project

What Should We Do With The 'Women and Art' Elective?

Women's courses since the 1970s have become a familiar if marginalised component of most art school curricula, their initial aim being to compensate for the absence of women in the Art History and Theory syllabus and to encourage the development of feminist art practices.

Jude Adams

Art & the Feminist Project

Nourishment for Tough Times: Bring A Plate Conference

Review Conference Bring a Plate: Feminist Cultural Studies Conference University of Melbourne 10-12 December 1993

Juliette Peers

Art & the Feminist Project

The Engagement of the Personal

How do we define ourselves? What are the choices for women these days?

Teri-Ann White

Art & the Feminist Project

Image Bank: The Feminist Project

Presentation and artist statement by contemporary female art practitioners. Women looking as feminist, feminine, female, femme, feminal. Artists featured: Frances Joseph, Angela Stewart, Maryanne Coutts, Noela Hjorth, Jill Kempson, Maria Kuczynska, Rosslynd Piggott, Eugenia Raskopoulos, C. Moore Hardy, Alex Macfadyen, Janet Neilson, Deborah Paauwe, Virginia Barratt, Linda Dement, Susie Hansen, Janina Green, Joy Smith, Madeleine Winch, Kathie Muir, Libby Round, Pam Johnston, Merryn Eirth, Dee Jones, Di Barrett, Frances Phoenix and Ella Dreyfus.

Stephanie Britton

Art & the Feminist Project

Knocking on the Inside: Heather Ellyard, Annette Bezor, Janette Moore and Anna Platten

Looks at the work of Heather Ellyard, Annette Bezor, Janette Moore, Anna Platten.

Stephanie Radok

Art & the Feminist Project

The Changing Face of Australian Women

Women from non-English speaking backgrounds are adding another dimension to the picture of women in Australian art. Informed by other cultures and dealing with issues of ethnic difference, the images on these pages create a broader idea of what it is to be an Australian woman.

Anna Epstein

Art & the Feminist Project

Fatal Attractions: Women and Technology: Norma Wight, Edite Vidins and Lyndall Milani

Looks at the work of three Queensland artists working in different ways with computers.

Nicholas Zurbrugg

Art & the Feminist Project

Trapped in Paradise - Some Women Artists in Tasmania

The artists were selected because their work embraces not only questions of gender, but also addresses the distinctive duality between the superficial look of things and the complex web of underlying meaning, desire, fear, experience, and memory that they have located and interpreted for us. Featured artists are Jane Eisemann, Jacqui Stockdale, K.T. Prescott, Helen Wright and Megan J Walch.

Victoria Hammond

Art & the Feminist Project

A View from the Other Side - Five Women West Australian Artists

Looks at the art practice of 5 Western Australian women artists: Helen Taylor, Alison Rowley, Moira Doropoulos, Michelle Elliot and Linda Banazis.

Estelle Barrett

Art & the Feminist Project

Bad Girls: Institute of Contemporary Art London

Review Bad Girls: Institute of Contemporary Art London 7 October - 5 December 1993. Using glamour, virginity and stardom to attract as wide an audience as possible to a show of supposedly anarchic women artists all hoping to confront notions of sexuality and gender was a smart, if questionable, move....

Suzanne Treister

Art & the Feminist Project

Speaking the Ineffable: New Directions in Performance Art

Looks at Linda Sproul's 'Listen' and Barbara Campbell's 'Backwash'.

Amanda King

Art & the Feminist Project

Making (A) Difference: Suffrage Year Celebrations and the Visual Arts in New Zealand

Suffrage year celebrations and the visual arts in New Zealand.

Christina Barton

Art & the Feminist Project

Re-orienting Feminism in Aotearoa

During the past 8 years or so there have been two distinctive strands of activity which women artists have pursued in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Both are concerned with questions of identity. Artists Fiona Pardington, Emily Karaka, Shona Davies, Christine Webster and Robyn Kahukiwa.

Anne Kirker

Art & the Feminist Project

Bush Women: Narrative Paintings from Outback Western Australia

Article written with Karen Dayman Works being produced by senior indigenous women artists around Western Australia use figurative elements as well as symbols to doucment their own histories during a period of unprecedented social and environmental upheaval.

John Kean

Art & the Feminist Project

Filipina Migranteng Manggagawa: Feminism, Art and Advocacy in the Philippines

Overseas contract workers from the Philippines support their families and their country as whole through many lonely years of exile.

Julie Ewington

Art & the Feminist Project

Jillian Davey: Stories on Canvas

Jillian Davey works at the Ernabella Arts Centre on the Pitjantjatjara Lands of the north west of South Australia.

Jenni Dudley

Art & the Feminist Project

The Price of Liberty

The Women's Art Register contains a public access slide library of 20,000 slides, 14,000 information folders representing (as at 1994) 2,400 Australian based women artists.

Merran Ricketson

Art & the Feminist Project

Sight Lines

Book review: Sight Lines Women's art and Feminist Perspectives in Australia Sandy Kirby Craftsman House Sydney 1992 RRP $75

Jude Adams

Art & the Feminist Project

Nola Farman: The Challenge Continues

Examination of the art practice of Nola Farman.

Christine Sharkey

Art & the Feminist Project

Memorial to the Survivors

Discussion of the work of Aboriginal artist Hope Neill

Stephanie Britton

Art & the Feminist Project

The Amazingness of Women to JUST DO IT

Rural Australia produces resolute women - astute, sensible, profound. This article examines the work of one of a woman from the south west of Western Australia - what influences and inspires her.

Mara Mann

Art & the Feminist Project

Porn Shop Art Adventures

Written with Barbara Holloway Exhibition review Joe Blow: A very erotic art exhibition by Jo Ernst Adam and Eve Gallery Canberra December 1993

Mary Hutchison

Art & the Feminist Project

Surviving the first 12 months: Swing Bridge Art Gallery Dunally

Joerg Andersch

Art & the Feminist Project

Printmaking and Optimism

Exhibition review I'sland (I'l)n. Exhibition of prints Long Gallery, Salamanca Arts Centre, Hobart, Tasmania 23 December - 2 January 1994

Sean Kelly

Art & the Feminist Project

Far Beyond First Impressions

Order Australis Dick Bett Gallery, Hobart, Tasmania August 1993.

Lorraine Hepburn

Art & the Feminist Project

A Woman's Story: Hunting Grounds

Fremantle Arts Centre, Western Australia 5 November - 10 December 1993

S Lavinia Hartley

Art & the Feminist Project

Modest Perfection

Bunbury Regional Galleries November 1993

David Bromfield

Art & the Feminist Project

Revelations of a decade

Tangerine Dreams: a matter of Western Australian Style 1970 - 1980 Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery University of Western Australia

Christine Sharkey

Art & the Feminist Project

Memories of a Nebula

Fountain installation by Derek Kreckler Experimental Art Foundation Adelaide South Australia 2-24 December 1993 and 11-23 January 1994

Steve Wigg

Art & the Feminist Project

Different Dreaming

Lap : an installation view. Keitha Phelps Five Different Homes. Louise Haselton Contemporary Art Centre 19 November- 12 December 1993

Jyanni Steffensen

Art & the Feminist Project

More Light (Goethe's last words)

Craig Andrae Miscellaneous Remarks Contemporary Art Centre Adelaide, South Australia 3 September - 3 October 1993

Richard Grayson

Art & the Feminist Project

Reaffirming Identity

Fab art: Works by Kerry Giles (Kurwingie) Gallerie Australis Adelaide South Australia 23 November - December 1993

Janet Maughan

Art & the Feminist Project

En-Gendering Resistance: Opening Moves with Game Girl

All New Gen Game Girl by VNS Matrix (Josephine Starrs, Francesca Da Rimini, Julianne Pierce, Virginia Barratt), Experimental Art Foundation Adelaide South Australia 21 October - 21 November 1993

Deborah White

Art & the Feminist Project