Issues

Issue 17:3 | September 1997 | Looking at the Republic
Looking at the Republic
Issue 17:3 | September 1997
Issue 13:1 | March 1993 | Film & Video
Film & Video
Issue 13:1 | March 1993

Articles

The Lie of the Land
Fiona Foley's 'The Lie of the Land' is an extraordinary piece of art and soundwork that illustrates yet another taking of land and culture from the indigenous people of this land.
Looking at the Republic
A Postmodern Republic for a (West meets East) Post-colonial State
"Whatever the shape the Federal Republic pf Australia takes, there will be something unstructured, if not deconstructed about it. I imagine it as already impressionistic, figurative, eclectic, bebop. I'm only just game enough to say it might be the world's first post-modern republic, and I mean that in the nicest possible way."
Looking at the Republic
The Sublime and the Parochial: The Foot of God
In Australia, the land has been, for non-Aboriginal settlers, from the beginning a sign for the nation and for the manufacture of livelihood (the sheep's back, mineral wealth) as well as a repository of dreams and misapprehensions. The importance of the land to Aboriginal Australian ought to be easy for us to comprehend.
Looking at the Republic
That Iconic Moment: The Dismissal
1.30pm Remembrance Day. November 11, 1975 is a sacred memorial for the Australian Republican movement. This was the first time in Australian history that an unelected representative of the Queen had dismissed a Federal Government elected by the people.
Looking at the Republic
Lines in the Sand
Craftspeople engaged with questions of nation and national and personal identity from their specific cultural backgrounds. Features the work of Arone Raymond Meeks.
Looking at the Republic
Towards a Pre-Capitalist Flag
Australia's flag has as much to do with contests as with consensus. The original design resulted from a 1901-2 competition sponsored by a tobacco company.
Looking at the Republic
Saluting the Dot-spangled Banner
Aboriginal culture, National identity and the Australian Republic. The closing ceremonies of the Atlanta Olympics were watched by a 1/5th of the world's population. This was arguably the most expensive bit of air time on the planet at that moment....
Looking at the Republic
The Republican Rock: A Vexing Issue
Flags are vexing (vexillological) by nature. Explores the role of flags and the ways they have been subverted, with recent exhibitions recognising their irony and employing ideas that unpick the ideological rhetoric stitched into these symbols.
Looking at the Republic
Three Fragments of an Aberrant Narrative of Australian Identity
Post colonialism provides a chimerical hope of a different means of shaping and ordering public representation of Australia, bu the institutional discourse around post-colonial arworks tends to uphold the status quo by using race/ethnicity as another means of directing scorn towards the lower reaches of Australian society.
Looking at the Republic
The Stamp of Republicanism
When a nation puts out a stamp design it reveals a great deal about its official ideology. The designs which appear on stamps of countries which achieve independence and become republics follow a curious pattern. From France through Tsarist Russia to Libya.... what will Australia put on its Republican stamp [if and when it becomes a Republic]?
Looking at the Republic
Thinking Like a Sheep, Acting Like a Ham
Some thoughts on performance and the Australian cinema. Verhoeven snuggles up to the sheep film as a clue to what Australian filmmakers have held dear. Nationalism and republicanism examined.
Looking at the Republic
Glue and Yeast: Asian Perceptions and the Year 2000
The perception of 'culture' underlies all our relations in Asia. What are we? Are we as we are perceived? It is a really pertinent, dynamic interesting moment in our history, and in a wider world, in the history of this region.
Looking at the Republic
The New Republics: Contemporary Art from Australia, Canada and South Africa
The ideas behind this project stem from the particular legacy of Black British arts practice in the 1980s....This touring visual arts exhibition and book project tries to deconstruct the notion of the centre (London/UK/Europe) both as a site of former colonial power and as a site of current economic and cultural power.
Looking at the Republic
An Australian Head of State - Eureka!
Eureka - the First Australian Republic? was a touring exhibition which documented and interpreted the Eureka stockade. Containing paintings, drawings and prints ranging from the 1850s to 1994 as well as objects, documents and books related to or dealing with the Eureka Stockade the exhibition demonstrated the symbolic power this event has exerted on Australian political life as well as the imagination of artists.
Looking at the Republic
Sport and Porn
Sport and Porn was huge in its scope and scale. The show ran for an hour and a half over a two week period at the Performance Space in Sydney during March 1997. Victoria Spence writes about the performance that she was involved in. The team comprised Morgan Lewis, Scott Wright, Sharon Kerr and Steve Howarth, Adam Kronenburg, Dana Diaz Tutaan, Victoria Spence and Rodgers D.
Looking at the Republic
Art for a Banana Republic
Morrell contemplates the Banana Republic, a tourist destination with exotic indigenous culture and good weather. An Australian Republic seems to be inevitable...but where will art sit in this new future?
Looking at the Republic
Festival of the Dreaming
Looks at the cultural events planned to accompany the Olympic Games to be held in Sydney in September 2000. There are 4 cultural festivals -- 1997 The Festival of the Dreaming curated by Rhoda Roberts, 1998 A Sea Change curated by Andrea Stretton, 1999 Reaching the World, 2000 Harbour of Life co-ordinated by Leo Schofield.
Looking at the Republic
Symbols for Australia
Trademarks and logos have been vital ways of marketing goods and services for well over a century. What are the readily identifiable symbols for Australia?
Looking at the Republic
Art as Cultural Diplomacy: Back to the Drawing Board
How would we re-present ourself to the rest of the world if we became a republic? It is the treatment of Australia's indigenous people that will ultimately determine both how we can imagine our own cultural development and how we are viewed by other cultures in the region.
Looking at the Republic
The Path of Peace
Arts of Vanuatu Ed Bonnemaison, Huffman Kaufmann, Tryon. Published by Crawford House RRP $69.95
Looking at the Republic
Travelling North or Going Backwards?
Is Australia an Asian Country? by Stephen FitzGerald Allen and Unwin 1997 RRP $19.95.
Looking at the Republic
Cheating Tragedy
The Art of Gordon Bennett by Ian McLean and Gordon Bennett Craftsman House RRP $75
Looking at the Republic
Hard Edge Political
Lawyers, Guns and Money 19 June - 7 September Experimental Art Foundation Lion Arts Centre, North Terrace, Adelaide.
Looking at the Republic
A few more fish than you'd expect for seven bucks
Still Life: Still Lives Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide 6 June - 27 July 1997
Looking at the Republic
Post-Colonial Dreaming
Mapping the Comfort Zone: The Dream and the Real works by Irene Briant, Jenny Clapson, Jo Crawford, Christine James. Catherine K, Nien Schwartz, Lucinda Clutterbuck & Sarah Watt. Artspace, Adelaide Festival Centre 4 July - 16 August 1997
Looking at the Republic
Disclosing Secrets
Terr(or) Firma Terr Affirma Brenda Goggs Prospect Gallery South Australia 1- 22 June 1997
Looking at the Republic
Mothertongue
Re Affiliations 12 June - 13 July 1997 Margaret Sanders, Claudia Lünig, Clare Martin, Hanh Ngo, Maria Stukoff, Lisa Jeong, Paloma Ramos, Madelaine Neveu Nexus Gallery, Adelaide
Looking at the Republic
To Have or to Hold
Containment Debra Dawes, Zsolt Faludi, Gwyn Hanssen Pigott, Carlier Makigawa, Susan Norrie, Mary Scott. Curator: Clare Bond. Plimsoll Gallery, Hobart 12 April -2 May, 1997 University Gallery. Launceston 2 - 31 July, 1997 Reviewed by Mary Knights
Looking at the Republic
Ngarrindjeri Soldier Kerry Giles Kurwingie 1959 - 1997
Looking at the Republic
Film and Video
The emphasis in this collection has been on the films and videos themselves rather than the structures which support their production and circulation but they have not been overlooked....
Film & Video
Selected Shorts: Oppositionality, Postmodernity and the Australian Short Film
Despite my distrust of the postmodern, the possibility of disruption, the disturbance of vision that postmodernity is capable of providing within the cultural framework needs to be investigated. That such disturbances fail to deliver the most popular short films may be because they unsettle the comfortable fictions with which we seek to live....
Film & Video
Domestic Noir Night Out
Surely one of the powers of cinema is the aesthetic redemption of everyday reality, a poetics in motion that can distill and energise mundane objects, be they tiles on a kitchen wall, the fluorescent facade of an airport terminal, a luminously white T-shirt being twisted and tugged or the compact shapeliness of Y-fronts on a young body emerging from bed.
Film & Video
More Bangs for Bucks: Male Sexuality and Violence in Australian Film
Looks at 3 Australian films: Romper Stomper Night Out and Resonance each of which brings masculinity, sexuality and violence together.
Film & Video
Lesbian Independent Cinema and Queer Theory
Lesbians do not exist in mainstream Australian cinema. Apart from a brief sequence representing youthful lesbian desire in 'The Getting of Wisdom (1977)' and the undercurrent of adolescent homoeroticism in 'Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)' Australian cinema has remained mute - perhaps dumbstruck might be a more appropriate term - in relation to the issue of desire between women.
Film & Video
Wizards of Oz: Into the 90s - Between Documentary and Fiction
In the incredible shrinking space between 1984 and 2001 the distinction between social-issue documentary and surreal fiction is collapsing - almost as fast as Australian capitalism or Soviet communism.
Film & Video
Monica Pellizari's Short Black Look at the Italian-Australian Experience
The title of Monical Pellizari's recently completed short film has a characteristically wry double edge. 'Just Desserts (1993)' tempers an unfortunates Australian maxim with distinctive humour. This film is a delight, a consolidation of the stylistic and thematic concerns of her previous 3 films in 13 witty and evocative minutes.
Film & Video
Aleksi Vellis
Aleksi Vellis announced his arrival in the turmoil of early 90s Australian cinema with his debut feature 'Nirvana Street Murder' a restlessly energetic film with cavalier camera moves that are almost as swish as the director himself.
Film & Video
Memory and Image: The Multiculturalism in Film Project
It is diversity, and the celebration of the marginal which makes Australian film innovative. Diversity provides the opportunity for people in Australia to enjoy and reflect on the cultural heterogeneity rather than on the alienating myth with which we are so familiar.
Film & Video
"I Am Like You, I Am Different" - Beyond Ethnicity, Becoming Asian-Australian
Beyond ethnicity, becoming Asian - Australian. How does one address issues of ethnicity? What is authenticity?
Film & Video
Who Told You We Wanted To Make Our Own TV?
The broadcasting in remote Aboriginal Communities Scheme and the failure of policy.
Film & Video
"I Am Not A TV Show"
"I am not a TV show, this is not a TV show." These are the oft-spoken words of Tony Tjamu, Chairperson of the Mutitjulu Community at Uluru (Ayers Rock) in the Pitjantjatjara Lands of Central Australia. Their repetition reveals something of the exasperation born of the visibility of being Aboriginal in a predominantly white Australia.
Film & Video
Independent Distribution and Exhibition
In the decades prior to the expansion of art-house cinemas and television programming, 'independent distribution and exhibition' denoted a more specific activity than it does in the 1990s.
Film & Video
"Just Trust The Text, Don't Colour It"
Tracey Moffatt offers her personal insights on the making of 'Bedevil' made in 1992 with Film Finance Corporation Trust funds. Due for release in 1993.
Film & Video
A Tale of Reproduction and Dependency
The interface between film and video education and the Independent film and video production.
Film & Video
Digital Art
The Third International symposium on Electronic Art (TISEA) which took place in 16 venues in Sydney from 9 -13 November 1992 converted the whole city into a massive hologram event.
Film & Video
The 7th International Video Festival
Blotting paper, alchemy or potent cocktail. When radical European film-makers in the 1950s with the Nagra sound recorder and noiseless, hand held camera, the Eclair, launched what they called Cinema Verite, they thought they had discovered a way to film truth on the move.
Film & Video
Perplexities: Experimenta 1992
Over 12 days in November 1992, the Melbourne based Modern Image Makers Association (MIMA) held the third Experimenta presenting nearly 200 works of film, video, installation and performance. It included work from Germany, Japan, England and the USA, thus providing an opportunity to assess the current state of 'avant garde' practice and discourse.
Film & Video
Museum Screen Dreams
Sydney's new Museum of Contemporary Art has actively integrated film, TV and videos into its programs since opening in 1991.
Film & Video
The End of Independence? Women's Film and Video in the 1990s
Independent cinema may have been diverse in form, but its practitioners had in common a position of difference and marginality, working outside the mainstream and in opposition to it.
Film & Video
Cinema or Death
What is the effect on film when the maker's background is utterly different from the culture in which he now works. Anna Epstein talked to a film-maker who brings fresh vision to the Australian film industry.
Film & Video
The Last Days of Chez Nous: Love Stories and Girls' Blouses
In his discussion of male sexuality, it was Freud who asserted that men customarily distribute their libido with expedience. What psychical energies a man 'employs for cultural aims he to a great extent withdraws from women and sexual life'. But not so in the love story, a genre which disavows this predicament.
Film & Video
Wild: Beyond the Deconstruction
To begin this discussion of Ross Gibson's new film 'Wild' it may be useful to trace its origins to his 1984 film 'Camera Natura'. The earlier film employed an essay mode to deconstruct the discourses around non-Aboriginal imaging of the landscape.
Film & Video
Redemptive Moments Through Utter Despair: The Films of Brian McKenzie
Expressionism and modernism. Two old fashioned words in these days of post modernism.
Film & Video
Brother Can You Spare a SP Betacam
Discussion with George Mannix. If there is any form of expression that eats money it is the feature length movie. Camera, lights and actors all cost big bucks and many ideas have stopped at the drawing board simply because there wasn't enough money. Independent Producer George Mannix had other ideas.
Film & Video
One Way Street
John Hughes independent documentary film on Walter Benjamin One Way Street was screened on ABC television in December 1992, the centenary year of Benjamin's birth. The film has been released to festival audiences in the US and Europe and will theatrical release in Sydney and Melbourne in 1993. Here John Hughe slips into pause and explores an opening on certain scenes.
Film & Video
TV Eye: Cinema in the Age of Video
In 1993 in Australia less than 2 per cent of the population attends the cinema yet over 90 percent of households own a VCR....
Film & Video
Delayed Voyage: George Popperwell
Exhibition review George Popperwell: Recent Works Contemporary Art Centre, Adelaide, South Australia September 25 - October 8 1992
Film & Video
The Pure and The Impure: Shaun Kirby
Exhibition review Cultic Gloss: Shaun Kirby Contemporary Art Centre Adelaide, South Australia October 23 - November 24 1992
Film & Video
Colonial Patterns Repeated: Robert Harrison
Exhibition review Architecture without Walls Robert Harrison University of South Australia Art Museum 10 September - 3 October 1992
Film & Video
Pretty as a Picture: Women Artists and the Heidelberg Era
Exhibition review Completing the Picture: Women artists and the Heidelberg era Carrick Hill, South Australia 8 November - 6 December 1992
Film & Video
Come Again: Aldo Lacobelli
Exhibition review Souvenirs Aldo Iacobelli Experimental Art Foundation South Australia 22 October - 15 November 1992
Film & Video
Journey by Proxy
Exhibition review Crossings Mary Knott: Drawings and Sculptures 1988 - 1992 Curated by Tony Geddes The Art Gallery of Western Australia October 3 - December 13 1992 Geraldton Regional Gallery December 18 -January 21 1993 Bunbury Art Galleries January 30 - March 7 1993
Film & Video
A Golden Threat: Feminisms
Exhibition review Feminisms Curated by Niki Miller Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts Western Australia November 1 - 28 1992
Film & Video
Transformation of the Real: Constantine Koukias and Ann Wulff
Review To Traverse Water IHOS Opera Hobart, Tasmania Constantine Koukias and Ann Wulff
Film & Video
Floral Tributes: The Flower
Exhibition review The Flower Curated by Paul Zika Plimsoll Gallery, Centre for the Arts Hobart Tasmania
Film & Video
Different Dreaming
Lap : an installation view Keitha Phelps Five Different Homes: Louise Haselton Contemporary Art Centre 19 November- 12 December 1993.
Looking at the Republic
Against 'Neofuturism': Women Artists in Technological Media
In matters of technology, as in matters of sex, it is easy to assume one's own preferences are universal and normal, and to regard other's tastes as somehow debased or improper.
Film & Video
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