Experiment
Issue 32:3 | September 2012
This issue questions international and Australian experimental models and practices. Are funding models stifling experimentation in Artist Run Initiatives? Are Biennales a seedbed for testing new models? What happens when art escapes the gallery and goes underwater or into space? Political radicalism and experiments in propaganda in art from the occupy movement.
In this issue
Editorial
This country is broader than our accents and older than almost any other place on the planet, yet there is a great untruth at its heart that we are still not confronting as a people.
On seeing the pattern
Emeritus Professor of Visual Arts at Flinders University and Founder of the Experimental Art Foundation, Donald Brook takes on the March 2012 issue of Artlink titled 'Pattern and Complexity' and guest edited by well-known curator Margot Osborne.
Street legal: unmediated exchange
Eco-architect Paul Downton gets down with street artist Peter Drew who endorses Adelaide's mayor Stephen Yarwood's statement: “Art isn’t just for art galleries… Cities are the best art galleries you could possibly have.” Yet Drew also thinks that street art will maintain its authenticity “because there’s always going to be an illegal aspect to it…"
Trying to burn a rainbow
Artist, writer, history/theory lecturer at RMIT’s School of Architecture and Design, and ex-Director of West Space, Phip Murray riffs on and includes comments from curators and artists about experimentality and ARIs, including the contradictions of their potential radicality and their co-option as incubators.
Why the Guerilla Girls don't have to be naked to get into the Met
Curator Laura Castagnini interviews Guerilla Girls founding members Frida Kahlo and Käthe Kollwitz on the past, the present, the legacy of feminist activism and the institutionalisation of experimental practices.
The grey space between art and politics
Curator and Artistic Director of LUMA, La Trobe University Museum of Art, Vincent Alessi discusses art that is political and experimental focusing on the recent work of Melbourne-based Carl Scrase who describes the Occupy Movement as: “one of the greatest social art experiments the world has ever seen."
Artist run spaces of the future
Christopher Lee Kennedy plays inside a living museum called Elsewhere, and is pursuing a PhD at the University of North Carolina. Here he culture-jams with Erica Curry of Lousiana, Paula Damasceno of Brazil, Aislinn Pentecost-Farrin of North Carolina, Wythe Marschall and Ethan Gould of New York, and Capp Larsen of Halifax, California, about their experiences of artist-run spaces, their passions, joys, discontents and plasticities.
Biennale of Sydney - Catherine De Zegher
Guest editor of Artlink and writer Din Heagney interviews Catherine De Zegher, one of the Directors of the 18th Biennale of Sydney (the first she curated) who is now the Director of the 5th Moscow Biennale 2013. De Zegher acknowledges the balancing act between the conventions of Biennales and attempting to experiment and step beyond them.
Adelaide Biennale of Australian Art - Alexi Glass-Kantor & Natasha Bullock
Artlink Experiment Guest Editor, writer and critic Din Heagney probes the curators of the 2012 Adelaide Biennale of Australian Art and in particular their approach to the embedding of artworks in the colonial Elder Wing of the Gallery.
Experimental International Biennial of Media Art - Abigail Moncrieff
Guest Editor of Artlink on Experiment and writer Din Heagney interviews Abigail Moncrieff, the curator of the '2012 Experimenta: speak to me' which explores 'interconnectivity' through the commissioning of new works and their location around Melbourne.
The original model - Australian Experimental Art Foundation
Long term resident artist at the department of Medical Biotechnology, Flinders University in Adelaide, Niki Sperou describes the fluidity of the Experimental Art Foundation (now the Australian Experimental Art Foundation)which is now almost four decades old.
Writing with art
Melbourne-based writer and curator Anusha Kenny discusses the writing about art that she likes by poets Ken Bolton, Alex Selenitsch and John Forbes and contrasts it with the situation described by Adrian Martin in a recent article in 'Discipline' lamenting the fact that so much art writing is chained to “the hit-parade values of the art market”.
No hotheads in this hothouse - Adhocracy
Self-confessed techno-evangelist and nomadic geek artist Fee Plumley is about to head off on a reallybigroadtrip. Before she left Adelaide she participated and revelled in Vitalstatistix's live art incubator Adhocracy. She suggests: "We should [all] take full advantage of Regional Arts Australia’s conference, Kumuwuki,(18-21 October 2012 in Goolwa, South Australia) where Sara Diamond (the creator of the Banff New Media Institute) will speak.
Every map has an agenda? PVI
Kellie McClusky is an artist, writer and Head Girl of the celebrated PVI Collective in Perth. She describes their new work 'deviator' and some of the experimental thinking and working processes of PVI including a wiki-map of connections.
On SafARI in Sydney
SafARI is the unofficial fringe event to the Biennale of Sydney, presenting the work of unrepresented Australian artists across multiple artist-run initiatives and public spaces in Sydney. It was founded in 2004 by Lisa Corsi and Margaret Farmer. Artists are selected after an open call for submissions.
ARIna spaces for the unexpected
Curator Brianna Munting, who co-organised (with Georgie Meagher) the We Are Here Symposium of ARIs in Sydney in 2011, describes the new ARI online resource ARIna and asks: "Perhaps what we really need is to spend a lot more time asking each other whether our architectures and images, our hierarchies and ambitions, our ideas and narratives, are really any good for us or simply cultural fictions?"
Remembering: Rethinking a place in the sun
Alice Springs-based writer Kieran Finnane writes a tribute and homage to the work of Pamela Lofts who died on July 4 2012 of motor neurone disease. Since 1992 Lofts held 27 solo shows across Australia and was the founder in 1993 of the Alice Springs artist-run initiative 'Watch This Space'. Her legacy in the desert is profound with a singular and generous body of work arising from the contact zone between white and Aboriginal Australia. She will be deeply missed.
18th Biennale of Sydney: all our relations
Artistic Directors: Catherine de Zegher and Gerald McMaster Museum of Contemporary Art, Cockatoo Island, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Pier 2/3, Carriageworks 27 June – 16 September 2012
18th Biennale of Sydney: all our relations
Artistic Directors: Catherine de Zegher and Gerald McMaster Museum of Contemporary Art, Cockatoo Island, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Pier 2/3, Carriageworks 27 June – 16 September 2012
unDisclosed: second National Indigenous Art Triennial
Curator: Carly Lane National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 11 May – 22 July 2012
dOCUMENTA (13)
Artistic Director: Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev Kassel, Germany 9 June – 16 September 2012
Camouflage: Visual Art and Design in Disguise
Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art Helsinki, Finland 15 June – 7 October 2012
No Added Sugar: Engagement and Self-determination
Curator: Rusaila Bazlamit Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre 12 May – 18 July 2012
Contemporary Australia: Women
Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) and Queensland Art Gallery (QAG), Brisbane 21 April – 22 July 2012
Theatre of the World
Curator: Jean-Hubert Martin MONA (Museum of Old and New Art) in collaboration with TMAG (Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery), Hobart 23 June 2012 – 8 April 2013
The Kick Ass Painting Show
Curators: Brigid Noone, Ben Leslie Fontanelle, Adelaide 24 May – 30 June 2012
In-Habit (Project Another Country)
Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney 22 June – August 2012
We are all Flesh: Berlinde De Bruckyere
ACCA (Australian Centre for Contemporary Art), Melbourne 2 June – 29 July 2012
South Australia Illustrated: Colonial painting in the Land of Promise
Curator: Jane Hylton Art Gallery of South Australia 2 June – 5 August 2012
