Adelaide and Beyond
Issue 24:1 | March 2004
Thinkers, artists, regional arts, art in schools, human rights, biotechnology, environmental art, youg artists in Adelaide. Cover by Kristian Burford. Guest editor Stephanie Radok.
In this issue
Signs of the Times: Stephen Page, Sacred Symposium, Adelaide Biennale
Stephen Page is the first Artistic Director of the Adelaide Festival of Arts to be indigenous and his program for 2004 includes indigenous works but perhaps not many more than most Adelaide Festivals, which have always had a significant indigenous component. Yet there is a sense that the commissions that Page has initiated represent a maturity in approach and development that signifies a watershed for Indigenous culture in Australia. Page expects it to be optimistic, philosophical, constructive, to reflect on the fusion of the old and new without bastardization.
The Dave Inside
About the work and fame of Las Vegas based art writer Dave Hickey. Like all icons Dave comes with a portable, pocketable, mythology. A pungent blend of his own statements, press hype, rumour and dubious speculation.
Virtual Adelaide
One of the leading interactive groups to come out of Britain is the Blast Theory who are making interactive gaming projects, installations and mixed reality projects in various major cities of the world. They were based in Adelaide from January to March 2004 under the South Australian Premiers Thinkers in Residence Program in partnership with various other major Australian art corporations. Through the use of real and virtual city cityscapes there is an overlapping of concepts of time and space, with a focus on ideas of absence and presence amongst players online and those on the streets.
Beyond Adelaide
Brook looks at the role of geographic location throughout the ages of art theory and practice. The metaphor of adverse location prompted some baroque theorising about the metropolis as contrast-partner to the provinces...with the onset of neo-conservatism and the supervenience of economically rational accounts of virtue and of value the idea that art is peculiarly sensitive to location because it is more cultural than clothing and footwear came under challenge.. . Addressed in a context that concerns the locality of Adelaide, and beyond.
Young South Australian Art
This article is about hip young artists working outside the field of contemporary art. Even if the changes of the last forty years have meant that liking things for being cool and fashionable has generally lost its polemical significance, my sense is that this still may hold some currency with regard to the specific condition of contemporary art in South Australia . Strickland examines the work of South Australian artist Magosia Miow.
Wet Culture - Playing With Codes
Melentie Pandilovski, the Director of the Experimental Art Foundation in Adelaide, sees the current manifestation of the word experimental in Experimental Art Foundation as relating to biotechnology, consciousness and the places taken up by artist in scientific places where experiments are the usual tasks at hand. In a move away from dry hard-wired technologies the last five years has seen a rise of wetwork and a new subculture within science as artists find new roles in scientific laboratories and ask fresh moral, ethical and aesthetic questions.
Stories: Past, Present and Future
Franchesca Cubillo, the Artistic and Cultural Director of the National Aboriginal Cultural Institute, has a broad cultural background with Spanish Catholic and Filipino cultural infuences fusing seamlessly with her Aboriginal heritage. Aside from her administrative and managing roles at the institute she is also a painter and photographer. Maughan looks at Cubillos life and work as it is shaped through an appreciation of the importance of family and community.
Isolated Interventions
This article explores the artistic and economic viability of living and working in South Australia, a state with less than 400,000 people, most of whom reside in the south-eastern corner. Theres enough professional isolation here to remind us that were living in a world where art is not a self-evident virtue . As a result of living in the geographic margins, artists require considerable ingenuity, flexibility and lateral thinking in order to sustain a viable practice.
In the Far North-West
Colin Koch is the coordinator of Ku Arts, the artists representative and development body, a role which requires him to make the journey up into the northern regions of South Australia, land belonging to the Anangu people, once every six weeks. Koch discusses the significance of Ku Arts: some of the hurdles they have had to overcome and the subsequent milestones this regional indigenous arts centre has acheived.
Can Culture Save the River and Wetlands?
This question 'can culture save the river and wetlands'was put to a debating panel at the annual conference of Country Arts SA in October 2003. The river in question was the Murray. This article takes up some of the important issues surrounding environmental degredation and focuses on the SunRise 21 Artists in Industry Project which saw the collaboration of artists and organizations working together to establish a mutual relationship between arts and the environment.
The Museum is the Message
The fifteen artists involved in Inside SAM's Place all acknowledge the shared language of art objects and museum artefacts.
The Second Experiment: Floating Land 2003
Floating Land 2003 was an event held as part of Noosa Regional Gallerys second major biennial site-specific art project that ended in high drama at 3am on the top of a mountain and one that unexpectedly created a new lobby group. The emphasis for this project was on experimentation both in terms of the art and the notion of what consitutes an event/festival that takes place over a period of time.
Ara Irititja: Protecting the Past, Accessing the Future - Indigenous Memories in a Digital Age
White fellatechnology was once considered a threat to Anangu culture and identity, but when iMacs, data-projectors and printers turned up in Anangu communities, they attracted a great deal of interest and excitement. The above mentioned title was an exhibition that opened at the South Australian Museum in October 2003 and comprised of three remarkable multimedia interactive databases which stand to offer unique opportunities to investigate pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara peoples history and culture.
Distance in our Lives
Exploring collaborations and their relationship to crossdiscipline and cross-cultural art practice is a key interest of Parallelo, South Australia's leading edge performance company. For over 18 years Parallelo have experimented with fusions of culture, media and artform as mediums for artistic expression and for new audience access.
Smart Strategy for Art Education
The marketing of senior secondary art achievement in South Australia, which has seen a rise in popularity in Year 12 art exhibitions, cannot be taken as proof of the depth and sustainability of visual art education in schools across all levels.
Community Arts and Artists in the Community
The Parks Arts & Functions Complex is situated in the Parks Community Centre in the Western suburbs of Adelaide, a region made up of many disadvantaged and minority groups. Weekly and fortnightly groups meet to explore different mediums and creative processes, and working without the assistance of a tutor means they rely on each other to develope their skills. The social benefits of these groups are often as important as the creative concerns. The centre invites guest artists to run various workshops to help sustain this interaction amongst members of the community.
The Chapman Brothers
UK artists Jake and Dino Chapman have been the subject of public and media controversy since their emergence on the British art scene in the early 1990s. The Chapmans assert that their shock tactics are in aid of an examination of cultural taboos.
Transfiguring ACMI
The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) is now just a little over a year old. Housed in a purpose-built venue at Federation Square in Melbourne , ACMI is home to two multi-format cinemas, a variety of exhibition, education and production zones and the Screen Gallery, the largest of its kind in the world and, arguably, the jewel in ACMIs crown. Gye looks at the recent success of the new Screen Gallery and the future direction of ACMI.
Sacred Food: Elizabeth Nyumi
Like many of the people at Balgo, Elizabeth Nyumis early life was a nomadic existence with her family group on the Canning Stock Route. Whe her mother died she walked with her father into the old Catholic mission at Balgo. She began painting for Warlayirti Artists in 1988. Recently a very successful painter, she was invited to show at the 2004 Biennale of Sydney. OBrien examines Nyumis life and work.
The Real Thing: Recent Art of Derek Kreckler
The twenty-first century, it seems, will not be the age of manifestos. Like advertising campaigns and the design of cars and other consumer items, contemporary art has started to look the same....there is no agenda, no politics, no historical claims . As McLean states, for Derek Kreckler, the point of being an artist today is not how well you resist this condition, but how well you can bend it to your own ends. Krecklers work is here positioned in a postminimalist rather than a postmodernist framework.
Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri
Art Gallery of South Australia 31 October 2003 - 26 January 2004 Curated by Vivien Johnson
This was the Future, the McClelland Sculpture award and Sculpture at RMIT during the Jomantas Years 1961-1987
RMIT Gallery, Storey Hall, Melbourne 21 July - 13 September 2003 McClelland Art Gallery, Langwarrin 4 November 2003 - 8 March 2004 Heide Museum of Modern Art, Bulleen 4 October - 7 December 2003
Primavera 2003
Exhibition of Young Australian Artists Museum of Contemporary Art 17 September - 30 November 2003
Counterbalance
Graduating Fine Arts Student Exhibition Queensland College of Art Southbank Campus Studios Brisbane 19 - 22 November 2003
To Begin With: Five Tasmanian Artists
Bett Gallery, North Hobart 28 November - 24 December 2003 Curated by Richard Wasteil
The Queensgate Car Park
The Australian Centre for Concrete Art Henderson Street, Fremantle Launched on December 2003
Kurtal
Nyilpirr Spider Snell Raft, 3 - 20 December 2003 Fitzroy Fusion, Mangkaja artists Raft II, Darwin 6 - 20 December 2003