Stirring
Issue 25:3 | September 2005
Editor: Stephanie Britton
This edition addresses a variety of stirring issues and provocations central to the Australian artworld and our broader ambitions right now. These include myth-busting the recurrent international biennales and triennales, the star-curator circuit, and the persistent challenge to our national culture: Is Aboriginal art just a white thing? See full contents list of artist and project profiles, including artist pages by Deborah Kelly, Stuart Ringholt, Stephanie Radok, Sarah Jane Pell, and Kim Guthrie.
In this issue
Here Come the Jets
Current trends in image reproduction, addressed through the introduction of giclee technology and industry. Neylon deals with issues of prints authenticity and some of the controversial debates surfacing within Australias art community.
Give Wings to the Arts
This article outlines a radical new model for arts funding in Australia which will seek to adequately address many of the economic and creative necessities of young and established artists. Hall clearly sets out the proposal for the model, pointing out the four wings which would come into place to assist various sectors of the creative industries including Visual Arts, Literature, Crafts and Composition and Choreography and would replace both existing Fellowships and New Works Grants.
Philanthropy, Sponsorship, or Dinner?
On July 29 2005 the Prime Minister, John Howard, was guest of honour at the annual Australian Business Foundation for the Arts (AbaF) Awards Dinner. Joanna Mendelssohn reports on the event.
Biennials of the World: Myths, Facts and Questions
In recent years, in the rarefied world of high art, in the places where international curators meet and work, amongst critics, commentators, artists, sponsors and collectors there has been no subject more widely discussed than that of the international recurrent exhibition. While Stephanie Britton recognises that the more closely it is examined the larger and more complex the subject becomes she has set out to tackle some of the essential ideas and questions surrounding these exhibitions. Includes two double fold out charts exclusive to Artlink: 1) a map of the world showing all the current biennales and triennials plus a new analysis of the 112 most frequently invited artists; 2) a star chart titled Artlink's Intergalactic Guide to the Curators of International Biennials and Triennials which lists the most frequently employed curators on these events and which events they have worked on.
An Inauspicious Occasion
In May 2005 Brisbane lost a landmark. Wendy Mills water sculpture On this auspicious occasion, commissioned in November 1998 as part of a major refurbishment of Brisbanes Queen Street Mall and a broader attempt to achieve a more culturally sophisticated city, came down in the dead of the night.
Public Interrogations
Architecturally-trained artist Richard Goodwin regards built and urban spaces as his performative stage. He has sought out parks, passageways, plazas, under and overpasses and other connective, forgotten and in-between spaces to insert an often absurdist mark of his presence.
Qin Ga: 'Miniature Long March'
The Long March A Walking Visual Display is an international collaboration involving over 250 Chinese and international artists taking place along 20 sites of the historical Long March. Each site was chosen for its symbolic import; the Long March was tatooed onto Qin Ga's back transforming his body into both an artwork and a Long March object.
New Museum Creates Cafe Society in Shenzhen
At the end of January 2005 in the He Xingning Art Museum in Shenzhen, a conference was held to coincide with the opening of the first dedicated Contemporary Art Museum in China named OCTA Contemporary Art Centre. The conference was essentially looking at the major issues confronting contemporary art in China as it goes through yet another dramatic evolution.
Gleaning Relational Aesthetics
The term Relational Aesthetics was first coined by Nicolas Bourriard, French curator and, since 1999, co-director with Jerome Sans of the Contemporary art centre Palais de Tokyo in Paris. Relational art doesn't produce a product but focuses on relations between audience members, events and ideas.
Depravity-in-Wharfedale
Founded as recently as 1888 the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum in Wharfedale was by reputation the biggest madhouse in Western Europe, and Brooks small village lay huddled beside it. Brook tells the story of living in sin, celebacy and the wall that proposed a division between madness and sanity.
Fremantle Print Award 30 Years Later and Still Standing
One of the many pleasures of running an annual award for excellence in printmedia is the thrill of unpacking the entries and encountering a work that takes your breath away. That thrill can evaporate when the judging panel dismisses the favoured work, or simply die away amongst the endless piles of entries waiting to be processed before you.
22nd Telstra NATSI Art Award
Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT) 13 August - 23 October 2005
Sculpture by the Sea
Artists and the public converge on Cottesloe Beach, Perth for the WA incarnation of the famous Bondi Beach event, 17 - 28 March 2005
Intimate Transactions 3:2005
QUT Creative Industries Precinct, Brisbane The Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne 25 - 30 April 2005
Ghost River Paintings
Jo Darbyshire Span Galleries, Melbourne 1 - 19 March 2005 Gallery East, North Fremantle 13 May - 5 June 2005
Barney and Tibby Ellaga
New paintings from SE Arnhem Land at Raft Artspace, Darwin, 1- 23 April, 2005
The Dreaming Festival
The Dreaming Festival, director Rhoda Roberts, Bush Galleries, Woodford, Queensland, 10 13 June 2005
Pantjiti Mary McLean: A Big Story
Pantjiti Mary McLean: A Big Story, Paintings and drawings 1992 - 2005 Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institute Inc., Adelaide 7 May 7 August 2005
Pitch Your Own Tent
Curated by Max Delany Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne 23 June - 27 August 2005
Degenerates and Perverts
Degenerates and Perverts: The 1939 Herald Exhibition of French and British Contemporary Art by Eileen Chanin and Steven Miller, with an introduction by Judith Pugh Miegunyah Press, 2005, RRP $69.95 Reviewed by Paula Furby