Diaspora
Issue 31:1 | March 2011
Editor: Lisa Havilah
This edition explores the phenomenon of multiculturalism in Australia. Diasporic artists contribute to the evolving geography of global contemporary art. Artists from Africa, Asia and the Middle East bring with them attachments to home as they move elsewhere for political, social or economic reasons. All these culturally resonant experiences and more are explored here.
Cover image: Gwendolin Robin, Instant no. 6899, 2011, performance still. Courtesy the artist. Commissioned by Campbelltown Arts Centre for Minto: Live. Photo: Heidrun Lohr
In this issue
Editorial: Diaspora
Last week, I was standing in front of a man called Daryl who has lived in the Campbelltown suburb of Minto for 20 years. I saw him dance some of the story of his life.
After the Deluge
Novelist, freelance writer and contributor to Inside Story website www.inside.org.au Jane Goodall writes about the recent floods in Queensland in relation to climate change and art and how "we need the merging energies of many artists to shift the consciousness of an era mesmerised by determination to perpetuate a way of life that may well be no longer viable."
Old Categories, New Frameworks: Asia-Australia
Writer, researcher and arts manager Christen Cornell studies the way China is now much more of a player on the international art curcuit than Australia and what it means to young Chinise-Australian artists.
Transcultural Radical
Director of 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art in Sydney Aaron Seeto attends to the artwork of Sumugan Sivanesan, Sangeeta Sandrasegar, Guan Wei and Kaleb Sabsabi to raise questions of experiences of cultural difference and the way they are inadequately critically interrogated in contemporary art practice.
Unrequited Language: Khaled Sabsabi
Freelance writer and doctoral candidate Farid Farid analyses the installations and videos of deep thinker Khaled Sabsabi which use sound and collaboration as a significant part of their presence.
Flight, Philippines: Nothing to Declare
Associate Professor at the University of the Phillipines and visiting research fellow at the University of New South Wales Flaudette May V. Datuin looks at the complex ideas of home, absence and presence in the work of artists examining the lives of Overseas Filipino and Filipina workers (OFWs).
Traditional Skills: Refugees
South Australia's Craftsouth ran an outstanding workshop series in May 2010 where refugees with traditional craft skills from six countries taught their secrets to Australian craftspeople.
Weeds without Frontiers: Stephanie Radok
Poet, novelist and broadcaster Cath Kenneally examines the recent work of Stephanie Radok which involves weeds painted on beer coasters and finds tenacity, diversity and survival-skills in it.
Iran: Scripts of Despair and Love: Nasim Nasr & Siamak Fallah
Curator, artist and doctoral candidate Lisa Harms writes about two artists, Nasim Nasir and Siamak Fallah, both originally from Iran who now live and work in Adelaide and make work that references their homeland.
Creative Adaption and Continuing Conversations
A flying journey through some of the Australia Council's most recent innovative projects which are also conversations with community partners and where outcomes are broad and diverse leading potentially to new forms of contemporary art practice...
Open House Singapore Biennale 2011
One of the curators of the Singapore Biennale Australian Russell Storer explains how the Biennale is a sited conversation, about place as well as process.
Curious and Collaborative: Encounters in Tokyo, Singapore & Yogyakarta
Next Wave Artistic Director Emily Sexton and Next Wave Artistic Program manager Ulanda Blair discuss the waves of Invisible Structures a project curated by Next Wave and supported by Asialink in which Australian artist collectives do exchanges with collectives in Tokyo, Singapore and Yogyakarta.
Gwangju Summer: Open 2010
London-based curator and postgraduate researcher Tania Doropolous discusses 10,000 Lives: the Eighth Gwangju Biennale as well as the curatorial summer school that accompanied it.
Reconnecting the Dots: Next Sydney Biennale Directors
Indigenous Canadian Gerald McMaster and Belgian Catherine de Zegher are joint directors of the next Biennale of Sydney. Joanna Mendelssohn interviewed Catherine de Zegher about the global and the local, difference and similarity...
Manifesta 8: Seeking a Dialogue with Africa
Curator and arts manager Alison Carroll visited Manifesta 8 the European Biennial of Contemporary Art held 9 October 2010 - 9 January 2011 in both Murcia and Cartegena in Spain and featuring over 100 artists.
Life, death and magic: 2,000 years of Southeast Asian ancestral art
National Gallery of Australia 13 August – 31 October 2010
The Quod Project: Tania Ferrier
Heathcote Museum and Art Gallery, Perth 21 January - 27 February 2011
Pmere Arntarntareme / Watching This Place
20 November 2010 – 13 February 2011 Araluen Arts Centre, Alice Springs, NT
Freehand: Recent Australian Drawing
Curator: Linda Michael Heide Museum of Modern Art 25 November 2010 – 6 March 2011
John Barbour: Work for Now
Curator: Kerry Crowley Australian Experimental Art Foundation 12 November 2010 - 29 January 2011
Home Open: Fremantle Artists and Their Collections
Fremantle Arts Centre 27 November 2010 - 23 January 2011
Hermannsburg: echoes in the landscape
Curator: Alison French Flinders University City Gallery 11 December 2010 – 30 January 2011
AlphaStation/Alphaville : Luke Roberts
27 November 2010 - 26 February 2011 IMA, Brisbane 17 June–23 July 2011 Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney
The whole and the sum of its parts: Kate Scardifield
MOP Projects, Sydney 3 December - 19 December 2010
Andrew Drummond: Observation/ Action/ Reflection
Andrew Drummond: Observation/ Action/ Reflection by Jennifer Hay et al Christchurch Art Gallery / Te Puna o Waiwhetu, New Zealand, 2010. ISBN 978-1-877375-19-4, rrp NZ $89.99.
