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SameDifference: 04 Biennale of Electronic Arts, Perth (BEAP)
SameDifference 04 Biennale of Electronic Arts, Perth (BEAP). Director: Paul Thomas www.beap.org DistributedDifference: Cultures of Conflict The Bank, Midland, Perth, 10 Sept -12 Nov. Curator: Jeremy Blank. SonicDifference: Resounding the World The Moores Building Contemporary Art Gallery, Fremantle, 9 Sept 10 Oct. Curator: Nigel Helyer. Drift Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, 26 Aug -26 Sept. Curator: Bec Dean.
SameDifference: 04 Biennale of Electronic Arts, Perth (BEAP)
PerceptualDifference John Curtin Gallery, Perth 8 September - 12 December Curator: Chris Malcolm BigDifference Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, Perth 12 September - 3 October Curators: Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr
Out of the Dark
Out of the dark - night shots from indigenous artists is an exhibition I experienced online via the cyberTribe website. If you have not browsed the site, then you should. WiseART Gallery in Brisbane presented the physical exhibition from 7 –27 August.
Instinct
Emily Floyd, Sharon Goodwin, Irene Hanenbergh, Louise Hearman, Rebecca Ann Hobbs, Ronnie Van Hout, David Noonan, Lisa Roet, Kathy Temin. Curator Lisa Vasiliou Faculty Gallery, Monash University 9 September - 5 November 2004
[in]stall(s)
Rebecca Coote, jonathan Hodgkin, Kylie Johnson, Nick Maxwell, Mish Metjers, Hanna Parssinen. Sally Rees, Tristan Stowards, Tricky Walsh, Matt Warren and Tiffany Winterbottom Long Gallery, Salamanca Arts Centre, Hobart 19 August - 5 September 2004 A Tasmanian Living Artists' Week Exhibition
1/2 Way: Scott Redford the Collages
Dell Gallery at Griffith University Queensland College of Art, Brisbane 13 August - 19 September 2004
Savvy: New Australian Art
Savvy: New Australian Art QUT Art Museum, Brisbane 6 August - 17 October 2004
Michael Jagamara Nelson Gives It A Go
Michael Jagamara Nelson is an artist who love - maybe even needs - a challenge. As Johnson examines, he has had his fair share. With his first painting, a piece he did for his uncle Jack Wayuta (a senior custodian for the Flying Ant Dreaming for Yuwinji) going unrecognised as one of his own for fifteen years, Michael Nelson made his mark in the indigenous art scene after his big break from Daphne Williams of Papunya Tula Arts.
The Sea Is In Them: Narelle Autio and Trent Parke
Narelle Autio and her partner in life and work, Trent Parke, completed a 16-month journey around Australias coastline in 2004. The two set out to document the culture of Australian coastal dwellers with an exhibition lined up at the Australian Centre for Photography the following year. Baxter speaks of her first encounter with the works of these remarkable photographers and goes on to offer some insight into the profundity encapsulated by these images.
The Poetics of Agoraphobia
Polish/Australian artist Gosia Wlodarczak draws obsessively, as a means of engaging with a biological cognitive bedrock. By drawing out the duration of her being she avoids the burden of memories and hope. This, she thinks, will lighten the weight of ideology that oppresses her with its exaggerated claims of authenticity...Ideology is already manifest in her sence of self, freedom and individual consciousness. It is even there in the languages she lives between; in her name, in her history, a graduate of the Poznan Academy of Fine Arts in Poland, now living in inner-city Perth.
Raw and Cooked Margins
A series of journeys and pilgrimages characterise Paul Hobans life, his account of which is spotted with significant exhibitions, readings, people, music and events. It wasnt until 1993, when he was 39, that Hoban first had a one man exhibition at Greenaway Art Gallery. Radok here paints a clear picture of his work - A sense of surfaces and layers; words - intelligible, unintelligible, back-to-front, upside-down; wrinkles and transparency; colour and pattern; modernism and archaism, and so on. A myriad of conceptual and stylistic devises that exist largely within the margins of art conventions.
What's Mine Is Yours: Touching the Surface of the Practice of Sue Ford
Melbourne artist Sue Fords 2003 photographic series Continuum is a suitable portal through which Stanhope looks at aspects of Fords work, a practice that has consistently evinced strength of vision and a humanistic philosophy, rich in connecting personal and local subjects to the field of national culture, social politics and the nature of individual existence. Continuum looks at the aftermath of bushfires and is aligned with her passionate reflection and documentation of the nature of our being in both time and place. If there is one medium that records time it is photographs - Sue Ford.
That was Then, This is Now: New Work by David Wadelton
David Wadeltons artistic career took a dramatic turn in the years 1997-98 after he purchase an iMac computer. Prior to this time he had been painting hybrid canvases and creating refined pencil and silverpoint drawings that displayed a unique quirckiness that was informed by the artists affection for the culture and language of Pop art. Gott explores the apparent shift in Wadeltons work, from the assemblages of the everyday objects that he first exhibited to his new works; mesmerising, hypnotic, dizzying.
MFC's and Gunter Christmann
Gunter Christmann was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1936. After two years in Canada, he arrived in Australia in 1959 and studied, somewhat casually, at the National Art School, Sydney, from 1962 to 1965. This article looks at the life and work of Christmann, that shambolic figure who, even as he is approaching his seventieth year, shows something of the perpetual youthful student. From his dress and demeanour to his his sloping walk and willingness to talk to the people he knows. A self taught artist, Christmann once saw his work as Geometric Abstraction and now states that the only major difference in style is the lack of intellectual order imposed on the work.
That Strange Quivering of Substance: The Recent Paintings of Catherine Woo
Many years ago the Chinese writer Lin Yutang expressed that, from an Oriental perspective, Western artists always seem to depict objects from the outside, whereas those from China and Japan express their experience of them from within. This Eastern approach is inherent in the culture, not a position able to be merely adopted, and springs in part from religious inheritance, but also from the pictorial nature of Asian written languages. This inherent approach can be found in the recent work of Catherine Woo, expressing some sort of biological affinity. If the paintings can be said to be about anything, it is a the fine balance between energy and rest rather than the apparent subject matter.
On Your (Motor)bike - REVIEW: Reason and Emotion, Biennale of Sydney, 2004, and 2004: Australian Culture Now, Melbourne
Sydney Biennale bad, 2004 in Melbourne good. The artworld's consensus locked in quick and hard. Fair? Of course not. Why compare the two, anyway? Because the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) seemed to set it up that way, by the timing of their show. They certainly took as 2004's model the nationally bound Whitney Biennial and, in particular, the Art Gallery of New South Wales's Perspecta exhibitions (last one 1999) - in turn established to counter the perceived internationalism of the Sydney Biennale.
21st Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award
Museum & Art Gallery of the Northen Territory 13 August 7 November 2004
Jacky Redgate: Survey 1980-2003 [Three Exhibitions]
III, V, VI of Contemporary Art Projects SA 2004 Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia Curator, Alan Cruickshank 23 April - 23 August 2004
Sue Richter. On Colour: Whiteblack Red
24HRArt, Darwin 9 July - 7 August 2004 Araleun Arts Centre, Alice Springs 3 April - 9 May 2004
Three Colours: Gordon Bennett and Peter Robinson
Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne 8 April - 4 July Travelling to Victoria, Tasmanaia, Queensland, NZ July 2004 - July 2006
Barking Up the Wrong Tree
Carnegie Gallery, Hobart 10 June - 4 July 2004 Curators: Stephen Mori, Felicity Wade & Raquel Ormella
Octopus 5
Raafat Ishak, Horst Kiechle, Kaji Ryui, Grant Stevens. Curator: Nicholas Chambers Gertrude Street Contemporary Art Spaces 9 July - 21 August 2004
Philip Wolfhagen
The Inner Edge Academy Gallery, University of Tasmania, Inveresk 14 June - 9 July 2004
Peter Timms' 'What's wrong with contemporary art'
Blak Insights Queensland Art Gallery 3 July - 30 October 2004
Joan Kerr, Art Historian: February 1938 - February 2004
Joan Kerr, Art Historian, February 1938 - February 2004
News from the Front
Its less than a centimetre long, but the weapon of mass distraction on Artlinks March cover was deemed unacceptable for US audiences. For those who missed the media frenzy, our US distributors refused to put the Adelaide & Beyond issue of Artlink on the shelves of Barnes and Noble. The reason given was the completely nude male on the cover (would a hat have rendered it incompletely nude? Would it have mattered if it was a female nude, neatly packaged away?).
Artlink on the Road: a China Diary
March saw a little bit of history being made in Sino-Australian cultural relations with Artlink being the first Australian art magazine to be launched as well as offered for sale in China. Perversely we were not offering the Chinese an issue of the magazine about Australia, our normal subject area, but about China, a subject area we have only visited occasionally. In the manner of all human vanities that may have been one of the reasons we received such a warm reception. Imagining the reverse - reading an issue of a Chinese art magazine about Australian art is in the current state of art writing in China unlikely.
Tokyo Shopping Mix: An Email Saga*
It is not hard to shop given the entire city of Tokyo seems to be premised on the activity. Tokyo is a space as complex and flowing as the most convoluted natural system. One may be in a train station but it is filled with shops. Above ground, below ground, on the ground - shops. Haley documents his activities over a period of a couple of months in what is most likely the worlds largest consumer oriented city. He discusses the somewhat surreal and absurdist nature of this environment and paints a picture of the plethora of advertisements, signs, extreme fashion trends and other visual paraphernalia that consume the city.
Flatness Packed
While the idea of modern and contemporary art are located in a fairly nebulous discursive realm, the notion of modern or contemporary lifestyle (the two seem, in fact, interchangeable) are very much a part of the familiar rhetoric of consumer spending. No Nonsense Return Policy (2003), Pat Foster and Jen Bereans installation at BUS Gallery, documented six miss-assembled items of IKEA furniture and dissect the curious aesthetic cycles that drive the commercial products in both realms. Taylor looks at this work and others which are focused on drawing attention to the formal and ideological intersections between modernism and the stuff of homes and home decoration.
One or Two Things about Art and Shopping
This article explores the relationship between art and shopping, in particular the contemporary alignment of the two as one and the way feminist identity is largely constructed through the media and consumption. Wilson looks at the work of Barbara Kruger and her critique of Western consumer habits, in particular the way Kruger explores the different shopping patterns of men and women to reflect some inherent gender traits.
How Much is that Artwork in the Window? Notes on Shops and Art
Through reference to Walter Benjamin's writings, Peers suggests that it has become commonplace to describe the city in terms of the progress of the flaneur, the middle class bohemian who strolled through the city, moving in the ephemeral sphere of impressions and images. This article looks at shopping as a central feature to the manner in which Australian art and culture has developed. The artist is a shopper and collector, moving through the materiality of things. Australian culture has itself become flaneur-ised over the past decade in the expansion of new museums and cultural precincts inviting discovery and added pleasure to the experiences of viewing and consuming art.
Food Slut > Manifesto
Food increasingly became alienated from the body over the latter half of the twentieth century. Its material, its preparation, its distribution and its consumption became hostage to the banal aesthetics of the food stylist, the aridity of cultural studies and the repressive partnership of the public health zealot and the liability lawyer. Paul van Reyk here presents a manifesto on the food slut, a model for the examination of current food consumption trends in our society. As he states, a food slut is never indifferent to food, any more than a sex slut is indifferent to sex.
Pornography and Photography
A series of three exhibitions which appeared to erase or at least redraw the boundaries between art photography and pornography was seen at the Australian Centre for Photography in Sydney in 2003. Helen Grace talked to Alasdair Foster, Director of the ACP and curator of one of the exhibitions, about this timely and challenging project.
The Perverted Gaze of the Artist: Recent Work of James Guppy
James Guppy has a curiously ambiguous place in contemporary art. This is not because of his subject matter, but rather because of his technique. For the most part Guppys recent work is not about fun, nor is it even really about sex. Rather he argues it is about the nature of exploitation. He argues that artists by their nature are voyeurs who see the world around them and all its objects as items to be used as visual product. His recent Peeping Box series taps into this idea where images of sexual activity with a particular sadistic overlay are presented behind thick glass to incite some vain attempt on the part of the viewer to engage in such voyeuristic acts.
Chaotic Attractors: Jake Chapman Lecture Tour 04
The two hours of Jake Chapmans lecture at the Capitol Theatre in Melbourne in March 2004 were in many ways a homage to Modernism and the aesthetic of industry - albeit back-handed. The hierarchies of art history, the possibility of the poetic and the tradition of humanism all came under attack. The core issue circled around throughout the discussion was the degree to which art was simply a diversion for the middle-class: a market-responsive product or cathartic moment in which people could be and even pay for the privilege of being shocked.
Enchantment/Disenchantment: The 2nd Auckland Triennial
The generic theme for the 2nd Auckland Triennial Public/Private sought to address central issues concerned with the relationship of the visual art scene to that of the everyday life (to banality), the potential or otherwise of new technologies to engage with the conditions of modern society and the ability of art to deal in specific ideas of a social and political nature. Furthermore in bringing together artists projects that are cross-cultural and transgenerational, the curatorial aim was to make connections which would intensify the privacy debate. Edward Hanfling examines some of these works with regards to such issues and concerns.
Transmission and a Selection from 32 Cars for the 20th Century - Play Mozart's Requiem Quietly
Nam June Palik Sydney Opera House Forecourt 8 -26 January 2004 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 26 February - April 2004
2004 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Contemporary Photomedia
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide 29 February - 30 May 2004
Repercussions: Individual and Collaborative Works
Peter Hennessey & Patricia Piccinimi Greenaway Gallery, Adelaide 28 February - 28 March 2004
Songs of Australia: Volume 16
Aleks Danko The Ian Potter Centre, NGV Australia Melbourne (and touring) 7 February - 18 April 2004
Group Material
Ben Booth, Neil Haddon, Anthony johnson, Anna Phillips, Lucia Usmiani and Kit Wise The Queen's Warehouse Gallery Tasmanaian museum and Art Gallery, Hobart 18 March - 2 May 2004
Allthatglitters: Contemporary Visions of the Gold Coast / Allthatglitters: 50 Years of Gold Coast Kitsch and Memory
7 February - 21 March 2004 The Gold Coast City Regional Art Gallery 14 February - 9 May 2004
Art of the Biotech Era: Art, Culture and Biotechnology
Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide 27 February - 3 April 2004
New 04
Guy Benfield, Nadine Christensen, Stephen Honegger & Anthony Hunt, Tom Nicholson, Sangeeta Sandrasegar, Parekohai Whakomoe Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne 23 March - 16 May 2004
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Two Faces of Contemporary Art in China
In these days of 'Theory', innovative curatorial practice calls for a certain empirical discipline; by revealing the arts subtle and yet detectable connections with the social world. Having established this position, Souchou looks at the controversial performance work of Chinese artist Zhang Huan; a practice which displays a confronting yet contemplative look at the relationship between people and society in a post-Mao and contemporary China. An ongoing process of losing oneself in order to understand the effects of cultural and material life, and to animate the desire for release.
The Cost of Creativity?
The fabric of the contemporary art scene in China comprises the densely woven strands of politics, economics and aesthetics specific to the immediate socio-cultural framework: a cloth that is today increasingly more sophisticated that the coarse serge of the past. A vibrant contemporary art scene which emerged in the early 1980's following years of rampant cultural destruction and rigid doctrinal control over its form and content. This article focuses on the economic viability of contemporary Chinese art, a movement that found its key members a part of the lower socio-economic class.
Backflow: Returned Chinese Artists
The decades since China's Great Proletarian Cultural revolution (1966-1976) have witnessed a tide of artists leaving China, and now returning, propelled in part by the desire to locate a healthy climate for art production. There was a time when western society provided a climate more conducive to creativity and these artists sought better living conditions and freedom of thought and expression. Now many of these artists fight a battle over the encroaching forces of materialism and globalisation and there is an increasing backflow of these artists returning to China in the light of new policies valuing creative output and generally higher living standards.
Chinese Art Sydney Style
After more than a decade since many of the Chinese artists who have the highest profiles here migrated to Australia, several of them are currently at a crossroads with respect to their careers and what their next steps will be. As is the case with Guan Wei and Ah Xian, two of the best-known mainland Chinese artists working in Sydney, there has been an invested interest in exposing their work to local and international audiences. Teo looks at some of the initiatives which have propelled these artists work both locally and internationally and the various approaches in bringing together aspects of Australian and Chinese life and culture.