Taste Meets Kitsch

This issue of Artlink meanders (with kitschy loucheness rather than formalist stringency) around 'taste' bad and good, the workings of taste and various permutations of cultural expression in present day Australia. Kitsch is scrutinised.

Published December 1995

Bigs R Us

Feature

Paul Ryan

Australians have a natural thirst for objects of grand scale, however ridiculous their theme or location or context. From big sandfly, big axe to big oyster and beyond, we are the big desert island that experiences big wets and big dries, little wonder someone made a Big Tap to remind us...we are big drinkers.

Published December 1995

Boys and Girls: Pierre et Gilles' Sydney Mardi Gras Poster

Feature

Leigh Raymond

Examines the 1995 poster for the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. How appropriate though, at the moment when Mardi Gras had successfully commodified itself as a cultural event, that its key representation should be through international glamour product photography.

Published December 1995

Bruising as R & D

Feature

Pat Hoffie

Livid Festival was launched in Brisbane in 1988 with the broad altruistic aim of 'giving a go' to local Brisbane bands, performers and visual artists. Within three years the festival had grown exponentially and included a wide range of feature guest artists.

Published December 1995

Cakes for Show: The Last Great Undigested Art

Feature

Joan Kerr

That these same institutions have never seriously attempted to digest the great crafty, feminine art of traditional cake decoration is more regrettable. Icons, after all, are as valued as the most avant-garde compostion if made of oil paint and gold leaf on wood. When future generations visit our hallowed aesthetic halls, let them meet cake!

Published December 1995

Delma's Collection

Feature

Emma Hopton

Collections of any kind require patience, luck, money, space, time and dedication.....

Published December 1995

Destiny Deacon: It's Been Ages Since We Last Marched

Feature

Jo Holder

You can hear her on the radio and see her on the television and contemplate her in better State galleries. Pluralist par excellence, artist, writer and film-maker Destiny Deacon has been blazing away on visual and linguistic fronts since premiering 'Koori Rocks Gub Words' in 'Pitcha Mi Koori' (1990).

Published December 1995

If Aquarium Gravel Is So Bad For You, How Come It Tastes So Good?

Feature

Shaw Hendry

In the trading card world there are collectors, dealers, curators, critics, interested observers, and of course various magazines. Does this world sound familiar? Looks at the role of collecting...

Published December 1995

Image Bank

Feature

Juliette Peers

Collection of images with artists statements. Artists featured: Katanya Shanzy, Anne Graham, Geoffrey Seelander, Simon Duncan, Pierre Cavalan, Stefan Szonyi, Cliff Burt, Andrea McNamara, Karen Ferguson, Constanze Zikos, Jandee Amar Leddar, Leon Pericles, Meryn Jones, Annie Taylor, Ex de Medici and Ian Mowbray.

Published December 1995

Kings of Kitsch: Big Things

Feature

John Cross

Big things have the power to make real the stuff of dreams. They have the power to make us stop at places we would never have dreamed of visiting. Grand kitsch is both art and beyond.

Published December 1995

Kitsch or Kind: Representations of Aborigines in Popular Art

Feature

Glenn R Cooke

Much contemporary Aboriginal art functions in the inappropriate melding of two visual art traditions and is kitsch within the given meaning within the article.

Published December 1995

Kitschoprenia

Feature

Robert Nelson

Our affection for kitsch is a benign form of aesthetic hypocrisy. My generation, give or take 15 years, adores kitsch. We want to have some badness; it's fun: you laugh both at your dismay for an object and your perplexity over the delight that it brings. In a broad cultural sense, my generation is kitschophilic; and this means, I suppose, not that we love the kitschy object with innocence but that we love the contempt which the kitschy object arouses.

Published December 1995

Kitschville - The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras

Feature

Craig Judd

...But the Mardi Gras will always be a child of the seventies. Remember that mantra 'the personal is political'. In spite of the co-option and mainstreaming of Lesbian and Gay culture this wonderful spectacularly amateurish display (of difference) cannot help but be a politicised intervention.

Published December 1995

Made in WA: A Sculptor's Alternative Practice

Feature

Robyn Taylor

Although well known in regional art histories, Western Australian sculptor Edward Kohler has a far wider importance. Economic survival led him to blend popular and high art long before it was standard practice. With the Piccadilly Theatre reliefs of 1938, the sheer exuberance and infectious quality of a positive (if unconscious) kitsch aesthetic entered professional Australian art 60 years ago: Hollywood meets Olympia.

Published December 1995

Mary MacKillop Kitsch

Feature

Anne Loxley

I confess to a feeling of great affection for Mary MacKillop (1842 - 1909), vernacular culture and kitsch, and great enthusiasm for the idea of an Australian Vatican - an extravagant museum which is also a major site of pilgrimage.

Published December 1995

Motor-Cross Dressing

Feature

Glenice Lesley Mathews

Issues of stereo-typing, conforming behaviour and fun and practicality are looked at in an observation of an MG driver.

Published December 1995

Museum of Shopping

Feature

Clare Martin

Kitsch is a kind of creole. It quotes and mixes references from quite unrelated sources, dresses in wildly unsuitable materials, then tries to insinuate itself using childhood wiles.

Published December 1995

Not Afraid of Flying: Fairies and Femocrats

Feature

Anita Calloway

Are gossamer wings set to supplant shoulder pads as signifiers of feminist power? Shopping malls in middle class suburbs are now sprouting fairy shops where, for only a few dollars, little girls and grown-up ones too, can sprout fairy wings that temporarily release them from the masculine world around them.

Published December 1995

Pretty Baby

Feature

Juliette Peers

Collecting and making dolls grows in popularity in Australia, but members of Australia's arts industry are relatively under-represented in the ranks of doll collectors. Original dolls speak of the culture that produces them.

Published December 1995

Tamworth

Feature

Judith Ahern

The days of the Tamworth Festival are marked with ceremonies. Stars place their hands into cement and history in the Hands of Fame Park. At the rear of Maguire's pub the popular alternative Noses of Fame honours famous noses.

Published December 1995

The Black Swan of Western Australian-ness

Feature

Dorothy Erickson

Since 1829, the inhabitants of the western third of Australia have identified more closely with the black swan than the kangaroo. The swan was and is to be found on a wide range of items from buildings to letterheads and furry toys. It crosses class boundaries...

Published December 1995

The Other Big F-Word

Feature

Juliette Peers

Monash University Gallery presented Fashion, Decor, Interiors, curated by Natalie King 7 June - 15 July 1995, high-lighting aspects of advertising, mass production and architectural design through the work of Lyndal Walker, Tony Clark and Stephen Bram -- extracts from the exhibition catalogue.

Published December 1995

The Taste Factor

Feature

Christopher Heathcote

When I was an art critic, I quickly grew to dislike the word 'taste'. It was a convenient tool used to dismiss reviews by people who didn't like what I had to say. Whenever I delivered a negative crit upon a widely revered artist, or a positive crit on a very minor figure, they complained that I was allowing my taste to undermine my professionalism.

Published December 1995