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Falling through time
In September 2011 at the UTS Gallery in an exhibition called The Fall before the Fall Elvis Richardson and Daniel Mudie Cunningham showed work reflecting on 9/11. Anna Gibbs analyses how their works make this trauma "articulable, shareable and ... to some extent, bearable."
Coming soon: Big mining and the question of scale
Ann Finegan raises the alarm on the fiendish short-sighted depradations of Big Coal open cut mining in the lower Hunter Valley and other places currently under threat. She describes the work done by artist/activists in response and asks: "How does one fight such incommensurables of scale and the slow unfold of food bowl and water disaster? Where do we start? With protective changes to State and Federal legislation? With commensurable economic data?"
Khmer pop-lock: saving kids through breaking
It's tough being a refugee, really tough for some. Cambodian Tuy 'KK' Sobil's story begins in a refugee camp in Thailand, travels to the US where he winds up in prison for eight years and more happily shifts to Phnom Penh where he landed as a deportee from the US and has since become an important role model teaching hiphop dancing and music to vulnerable children.
Cambodia and youth arts
Life is tough in Cambodia if you are not a tourist. Dragonfly Tours is run by a unique partnership model which results in terrific holidays as well as contributing to the betterment of life in Cambodia for its residents.
The place you stay when you visit the future today
In 2011 at Tin Sheds Gallery in Sydney as part of The Right To The City project an installation and performance by NZ/Australian artist D.V. Rogers called DISASTR explored the idea of shelter in times of disaster by building a functioning Hexayurt Hotel in the centre of Wadigal Green at Sydney University.
Somewhere: Manuwangku life with a nuclear waste dump
The current touring exhibition by Jagath Dheerasekara, Manuwangku: Under the Nuclear Cloud (2012) is a salutary reminder that the struggle for self-determination by Aboriginal people continues unabated. Jagath’s project dates back to July 2010 when Beyond Nuclear Initiative (BNI) organised a forum in Sydney to inform people of the impact of a decision made in mid 2005 by the Howard government to dump nuclear waste at Manuwangku, or Muckaty as it is popularly known, 120 km north of Tennant Creek.
Promoting the long view
Artist and filmmaker Malcolm McKinnon's current practice is focused around documentary filmmaking and social history, motivated by an appreciation of living memory and local vernacular. He writes about the Illuminated by Fire project, an initiative of Regional Arts Victoria, that involved a dozen artists working with eleven local communities in the wake of Black Saturday.
Making a virtue out of adversity: Christchurch post-earthquake
Director of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu Jenny Harper writes about the resilience and the pioneering spirit of the many and varied achievements of the Gallery since the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes in Canterbury.
Evidence of a catastrophe: The weather reports of James Guppy
The cloud/explosion paintings of James Guppy's The Weather Report series of 2006 were made as a response to 9/11.
Contact lenses: Lloyd Godman's ecological art
New Zealand-born ecological artist, Lloyd Godman, who now lives in Australia, has in his own determined way for over thirty years, pondered and acted upon questions of how aesthetics might be involved in creating sustainable solutions to environmental problems. Historian Helen McDonald uses eco-critic Timothy Morton's notion of ambient aesthetics to examine three of Godman's multimedia projects.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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?"
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.
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 elephant in the room: public art in Brisbane
Artist-activist Fiona Foley recounts a recent incident of the commissioning of a public art work for Kurilpa (place of the kuril or native water rat). Kurilpa is the cultural precinct where GOMA is located. Foley imagines works by prominent Queensland Aboriginal artists dotted along that place.
The Ballad of Jimmy Governor
Emeritus Indigenous curator Djon Mundine wrote this essay on the occasion of a production of Posts in the Paddock a play about Jimmy Governor by the company My Darling Patricia. The performance included members of the both families involved. Mundine addresses questions of familial and national forgiveness.
What lies buried on my land rises
Nyoongar artist Dianne Jones returned to York in Western Australia where her people come from and researched its tragic Aboriginal history.
Culture Warriors as cultural diplomacy
Senior lecturer at the College of Fine Arts (CoFA), University of New South Wales, Gail McDonald analyses the exhibition Culture Warriors, the first National Indigenous Art Triennial curated by Brenda L. Croft, that travelled to Washington in 2009. McDonald argues that, rather than diplomatic blandness, real political confrontation was present in the exhibition.
Artefacts of authenticity
Artist and lecturer Garry Jones is undertaking a Phd at the Australian National University School of Art in Canberra. In this article he reveals some of his investigations of Aboriginal artefacts in museum collections and questions notions of authenticity, reclamation and reinvigoration of the past in contemporary Aboriginal art.
For architecture and country
Torres Strait Islander Kevin O'Brien, who is commissioning and directing an independent exhibition called 'Finding Country' at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2012 running from August to 25 November 2012, writes about an Aboriginal architecture that is not about buildings shaped like native animals.
Tandanya: the case for home
The National Aboriginal Cultural Institute, known as Tandanya, was established in 1989 in Adelaide. Philip Watkins, Artistic and Cultural Director of Tandanya, 2006-2011, said: “This is Tandanya’s role – to show our world through our eyes, to tell our stories and to sing our songs with our voices.” Curator, educator and writer Sara White reviews Tandanya's 23 years of art and asks "Does Australia need more Tandanyas?"
Ancestral memory: out of the shadows
University of Melbourne Research Fellow Fran Edmonds along with Victorian artists Lee Darroch, Maree Clarke and Vicki Couzens looks at the story of Aboriginal art in Victoria as a determined reclamation of the past, a cross-generational celebration in the present and a visionary guide for the future.
Big wave: Desert Country
Legendary curator John Kean looks at three recent large exhibitions of Aboriginal art - Tjukurrtjanu: Origins of Western Desert Art, Desert Country and Living Water, and questions whether the same spirit sings in all of them.
Sitting & connecting: Goulburn Art Class 2-0-1-1
Goulburn Class 2-0-1-1 was an exhibition curated by Djon Mundine at the Goulburn Regional Art Gallery of work made by prisoners at the local Correction Centre in response to ten one day workshops in the prison by seven Aboriginal artists whose work was also in the show. Writer and editor Maurice O'Riordan reviews the exhibition and more importantly the processes it involved.
Reviewing Our Mob: A state-wide celebration of South Australian Indigenous art
Our Mob is a state-wide celebration of South Australian Indigenous art held annually at the Adelaide Festival Centre since 2006. Curator Susan Jenkins who worked on it for three years from 2009-2011 analyses what works about Our Mob and what the future might be.
Long Way Home: A celebration of 21 years of Yunggorendi First Nations Centre
Yunggorendi First Nations Centre for Higher Education and Research at Flinders University, celebrated 21 years of operation in 2011 with an exhibition of work selected by staff and students from the collection of Flinders University Art Museum. Artist Ali Gumillya Baker critically reviews selected works in the exhibition and the issues they raise.
No Place without Other Places: Spinifex Arts Project at fifteen years
University of Western Australia lecturer Darren Jorgensen examine the Spinifex Arts Project from its inception with reference to a new exhibition happening August-October 2012 at John Curtin Gallery and asks the big question: "What would it mean if Aboriginal artists were not tied to language groups, communities, art centres and regional styles?"
Postcards from China
Multi-disciplinary artists Jason Wing, who has both Aboriginal and Chinese forebears, undertook a residency in Xucun, a remote village in China, where Chinese artists Qu Yuan and Shen Shaomin have established the Xucun Art Commune in order to protect the village's beauty and heritage.
Tu Di Shen Ti, Our Land Our Body: the Ngaanyatjarra poetic goes to China
The exhibition 'Tu Di Shen Ti – Our Land Our Body, Masterworks of the Warburton Collection', was seen in China by about a quarter of a million people, across seven venues, throughout 2011. Director of the Warburton Arts Project Gary Proctor describes how the exhibition came about, what it looked like and what its goal are.
On the ground with Our Mob in 2011
Terry Cleary was the Statewide Indigenous Community Artists Development (SICAD) Program Manger with Ananguku Arts and Culture from 2009-2011. He reflects on the potential power of Our Mob when it works.
The inchworm revisited
Artist, writer and honorary visiting Professor at the Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics at the University of Sussex in England Paul Brown sketches out the long intertwining history of the relationship between C.P. Snow's two cultures - art and science, design and mathematics, beauty and computation, and extrapolates upon Lady Ada Lovelace's famous words: "We may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves."
Fractal food
John Walker is the founder of Autodesk, Inc. and co-author of AutoCAD. In Fractal Food he discusses the marvel of fractal forms (complex shapes which look more or less the same at a wide variety of scale factors) as they are seen in a rather wonderful vegetable - the chou Romanesco.
Openwork patterns: Love Lace
Powerhouse Museum Curator of Textiles Lindie Ward discusses the groundbreaking 'Love Lace' exhibition on show at the Powerhouse until April 2013. A globally sourced series of works it showcases 130 designs for openwork structures from 20 countries.
A Meme is born
Adelaide writer and artist Peter Drew looks at various examples of recent street art and the many ways it is circulated and reproduced as a meme in a wired and globally connected world. "As it turns out," he says, "memetics can be very useful in understanding the patterns of street art."
Not just black and white
Scholar and inaugural director of the new Godinymayin Yijard Rivers Arts and Culture Centre in Katherine Cath Bowdler discusses the work of two indigenous artists Brook Andrew and Gunybi Ganambarr and suggests that they are both operating at a conceptual level as bricoleurs in a globalised world, inventing new juxtapositions of materials and revealing new ways of seeing the world through the prism of local histories and traditions.
Chromophobes, Xenophones and Lots of Textas
Kirsten Farrell muses on colourphobia through her life, her Phd and her reading of the book Colourphobia (2000) by David Batchelor
Sara Hughes: Colour coded to quicken the heart
New Zealand-based Sara Hughes considers colour has been degraded throughout Western history. She uses coloured vinyl applied to architecture to "articulate social meaning".
World Summit on Arts & Culture
Executive Director of NAVA Tamara Winikoff missed the voices of artists at the October 2011 World Summit on Arts & Culture in Melbourne.
Good enough to eat: Katherine Hattam's paintings
Crikey.com blogger and book designer W.H. Chong describes the paintings of Katherine Hattam that "zing and crackle with edible hues."
The Digital attribution of Colour
Director of Sydney-based New Media Curation Deborah Turnbull explores the way colour choices in a digital environment involve ideological and philosophical dimensions as well as aesthetic ones.
Speaking in Colour
Artist and curator Una Rey writes about the exhibition 'Speaking in colour' that she curated for the Newcastle Gallery from their collection in March-May 2011. Her experience of working with Indigenous artists in Central Australia coloured her choices and her interpretations of them.
The Mystery of Shit: Wim Delvoye
Belgian artist Wim Delvoye is having a retrospective at Hobart's MONA. Stephanie Radok looks at the materials and concepts he uses in a broad context and asks whether his art is critical or spectacle.
The Hammer and the Screw: Thom Buchanan's drawings
South Australian artist Thom Buchanan's most recent drawing adventure was on stage with dancers from the ADT.
Radical Ethology: Jussi Parikka's Insect Media
In his meditations on the recently published book Insect Media by Jussi Parikka, the New York-based staff writer for Rhizome at the New Museum Jacob Gaboury suggests that the dehumanisation of media technologies may be seen as engaging with the world in a form of non-human affect.
Bridging the brains of humans, bees and flies: Fiona Hall at the QBI
'Out of mind' the work by Fiona Hall at the Queensland Brain Institute at the University of Queensland draws together scientific research with art research to demonstrate that both approach the world with wonder and intrigue. "Hall’s work ... is apt for neuroscientists are indebted to the neural architecture of animals. The brains of insects like fruit flies or honeybees are much smaller and simpler than ours, yet because similar molecular mechanisms underlie their operation, these creatures may very well hold the keys to unlocking the mysteries of autism, schizophrenia, depression and a range of other human disorders."
Caterpillar Country
Alice Springs-based writer Kieran Finnane describes the caterpillar dreaming in the Alice Springs area. She draws attention to changing attitudes over the years towards traditional custodians and the places they care for.
Flight of the Cicada: Susan Purdy's insect photograms
The inaugural Watermark Literary Fellow Carolyn Leach-Paholski describes the black and white photograms of Susan Purdy which were made in the course of a long wet winter.
Transplanting Life: the distributed media of embodied selves. The Body is a big place
Personality psychologist at Macquarie University Doris McIlwain does yoga and throws pots. She writes about new media installation 'The Body is a Big Place' the recent work of Peta Clancy and Helen Pynor which deals with the complexities of organ donation.
We Are Here: the International Symposium for Artist Run Initiatives
This year marks the 41st anniversary of the development of ARIs in Australia, and as both a celebration of and an indication of how far national and international ARIs have come, a four-day symposium organised by NAVA and Firstdraft was held in Sydney in September 2011.
Memoir Series: Elnathan Mews
A further instalment in the memoirs of Australia's most revered art theorist Donald Brook. Yes, he is still alive.
Jon Cattapan: Night vision goggles
Jon Cattapan is a painter who lives in Melbourne. In 2008 he was commissioned by the Australian War memorial as an official artist auspiced by the Australian Army in Timor Leste. He is represented by Milani Gallery and KALLIMANRAWLINS.
Surreptitious Pictures
Professor of Art History at Victoria University, Wellington, NZ and author of 'Photography Degree Zero' Geoffrey Batchen writes about the secret history of secret cameras.
Contemporary Chinese Art
Christen Cornell manages Local Consumption Publications and 'Artspace China' a blog on contemporary Chinese culture. Currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Sydney on China's contemporary art districts her article outlines the very latest developments in this volatile field.
Clinical and critical: From Von Trier to Haneke
Legendary film critic Adrian Martin examines the inclusion of low tech digital footage in many recent films including the 'Paranormal Activity' horror-thrillers by Oren Peli and 'The Video Diary of Ricardo Lopez' by Sami Saif.
Elizabeth Woods: There is going to be a wedding and you are all invited
Elizabeth Woods' art practice has for many years revolved around the relationship between place, artist and community and what arises from their connection to each other. Marrying a tree is its latest manifestation.
An encounter with the National Galleries
Lecturer in the Australian Indigenous Studies program at the University of Melbourne, Odette Kelada describes her visit to the National Gallery of Australia's new Indigenous galleries and the National Portrait Gallery that is just next door and views them as sites of contemporary Frontier warfare.
Fearing Truganini
Tasmanian essayist and poet, currently working as Indigenous Visiting Research Scholar at AIATSIS in Canberra, Greg Lehman looks over David Hansen's recent award-winning essay entitled 'Seeing Truganini' and finds it wanting.
Self-Abrasion of our Nations
Curator and artist Brenda Croft gets experiential in telling about Australia Day, her latest exhibition Stop (the) gap and what is shared by indigenous people around the globe.
Trevor Nickolls: Other side Art
This is the first time that noted historian and writer on Aboriginal art Ian McLean has written a substantial interpretive artcile on the work of Trevor Nickolls. Nickolls began working in the 70s and is still painting his own particular brand of cross-cultural art.