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Xiandai Shufa: Brushes With Modernism
As similar to the changes that came to be called 'modernism' in the West in the nineteenth century, the nature of changing artistic traditions in the East are as far-reaching and as significant in that they also prefigure a contestation of the tradition/modernity duality. This article looks specifically at the tradition of Chinese ink painting and calligraphy and the insistence by Chinese critics that evolution - if not revolution - in these forms is occurring. Moreso the concentration here lies with modern calligraphy (xiandai shufu) and the distinguishing of calligraphy from the generalised use of Chinese characters in contemporary art.
Broadening the Scope
The First Beijing Biennale, held in September of 2003 somewhat echoed the Venice Biennale in it's approach to expansive venues and activities. Although Chinese Officials are realising the importance of contemporary art and its role in promoting international activities in Beijing, it is the artists themselves who have managed to expand the scope of contemporary art events in the city. Furthermore the event hosted a series of forums and international conferences to promote dialogue between Chinese experts and their international counterparts.
Thinking About Guan Wei
With Traditional Chinese art education requiring students to master the painting styles of each historic period, it is not surpirising that Guan Wei's own style (having painted systematically from Impressionism to Postmodernism over ten years) has rendered his work appealing to Australian audiences. His works are cool in colour, surreal in style, quirky in wit. Wei's work displays a graphic sensibility and visual language similar to that of Leunig's cartoons and is successful for these exact reasons.
A Lens on Diversity
'To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life' - Ludwig Wittgenstein. So to it is that to read the works of contemporary Chinese photography is to read Chinese social life. During the middle of the 1990's photography was admitted to the canon of contemporary Chinese art and the Chinese economy started to reflect a 'glocal' trend through the merging with the global economy. As a result Chinese artists began experimenting with new media and dialogue between Chinese and international artists became more frequent. This article looks at the diversity and proliferation of contemporary Chinese photography and the shifting perceptions of Chinese society from an international perspective.
Wang Jianwei: Working on the Boundaries
New media in China is probably the most rapidly developing medium used by contemporary artists in that country. As an art form new media characterises a form of communication with an almost endless capacity to be manipulated, making it the perfect tool to express a new artistic confidence. The intent of this article is the concentration on the work of one artist Wang Jianwei, whose work typifies many of the issues being expressed nationally through contemporary art. His is a practice differentiated by the way he slides from media to media allowing the intent of the art to govern the form of expression.
The Decade of the Rise of Chinese Women Artists
Socio-economic conditions and traditional ethics encourage Chinese women to maintain the ideal of harmony between genders, whilst certainly pursuing and endorsing independence. The state of women's art in China is an increasingly pluralistic art establishment within which international feminist thought has been a great source of energy but where there exists a clear opposition to the 'we don't bite' attitude. This article examines the impact of western feminist thought on a group of Chinese women artists who studied in Europe and America and the new awareness of their own feminist identities that came as a result.
Alors, La Chine?
Alors, La Chine? was a major exhibition of contemporary Chinese art at the centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, from 25 June to 13 October 2003. An exhibition of this kind had been planned for several years and included several research visit to China by Pompidou curators. Eventually the French government intervened when it decided that such an exhibition should be part of a planned two-year series of Franco-Chinese exchanges. Clark examines some of the political and ethical issues which surfaced as a result of this major event being held.
Changchun, China: to Confront or Confirm
Scarlett pays homage to the opening of an International Sculpture Park at Changchun, northern China, which bosts 315 works by numerous international and local provincial Chinese artists. Scarlett looks at this event and examines how audiences react to both controversial and more accepted and confirmed art within a society.
Economic Downturn in Hong Kong Breathes New Life Into Culture
The situation today for creative, especially cultural, industries in Hong Kong is perhaps better than it has been for many years. Tsong-Zung looks at the effects of a dramatic economic downturn in Hong Kong as it is providing artists with two of the most defining conditions for creative work, leisure and space.
The Meaning of Aboriginal Art
This essay is not about interpreting Aboriginal art rather it is about the wider issues raised by Aboriginal art, issues that tear through the discrete context of contemporary art and connect it to history, to the everyday, to politics and to the future.
Loop-Back: New Australian Art to Berlin
Engberg writes about FACE UP, a large museum exhibition curated for the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum in Berlin in October 2003. Britta Schmitz who curated FACE UP was intent on extending the discussion surrounding conceptualism and modernism that is reflected backwards with a sideways glance created by a slow burn effect. Photography was delivered in the works of Rosmary Laing, Simryn Gill and Darren Siwes. Installation, in a variety of manifestations, was offered in works by Patricia Piccinini, Mikala Dywer and Fiona Hall.
Why Correggio Jones is not The Hero of the 2004 Biennale of Sydney
The title of the 2004 Sydney Biennale was Biennale Of Reason and Emotion, the curator was Isabel Carlos, a Portuguese woman who will stress her cultural links with the New World, but in her case it is South America rather than North. One of the ideas she wished to explore through the Biennale was the concept of 'south' in a world dominated by the culture of the 'north'. As she states - "what I really want is to create a Biennale that works on the borders of the perception and on artworks that change our way of seeing the world around us."
A Leaf May Become a Forest
Like nature itself, Hossein Valamanesh's artistic oeuvre is inextricably articulated as an evolution which is cyclical. Following his emigration to Australia in 1973, the diverse, but thematically unified art practice of Valamanesh has come to encompass installation, sculpture and works on linen and paper in addition to substantial public artworks. The intricate patternings of Islamic architecture play out in his work which are consistently fragile and subtle in both appearance and approach.
The Entire Life Behind Things: David Keeling's Little Epiphanies
Timms paints a vivid picture of one of David Keeling's paintings, simultaneously posing questions surrounding how we as audiences deconstruct, interpret and therefore place values on certain images. His argument clearly lies in the appreciating of a process, a journey over the final image, especially when the image is as seemingly banal as that which typifies Keeling's practice. Keeling's previous works tended to acknowledge the traps of both the dewy-eyed romantic and the coldly rationalist approach. With his recent shift from a surreal satirical atmosphere to the common everyday, though the subject matter may be different, the locating of meaning is still the same.
Thinking Big: Spatial Conception in the Art of Dorothy Napangardi
The Warlpiri artist Dorothy Napangardi was born in the late 1940s or early 1950s in the bush near Mina Mina, northwest of Alice Springs at a time when colonisation meant that whites were increasingly encroaching on Walpiri land. Although Napangardi did not begin painting until much later, her childhood spent in the bush gathering the plentiful bush tucker and watching family members catch animals for food has had a critical influence on her artistic work. Because Napangardi did not live in a house in her formative years, the ability to view the landscape in its full 360 degrees enabled a different kind of 'eye' which plays out extensively in her visual scapes. It is in this sense that Nicholls looks at the spatial conceptions of the work of Napangardi.
Warped Reflections
Through this article Clement examines the idea that, as human beings we never tire of looking at ourselves, and we particularly seem to like looking at a self we recognise. In this sense it is not hard to see why Mueck's sculptures are so popular, not only in their satisfying familiarity but also in the sheer technical virtuosity they display. The same cultural anxiety that subtly animates Mueck's seemingly ordinary human figures deforms the flesh of Patricia Piccinini's hyper-real creatures. Subsequent to this idea of self observation, Clement looks at the increasing fluidity of the boundaries of the human body and, through examples of such artistic concerns, questions what it means to be human.
Stone Into Flesh: Julie Rrap
Australian artist Julie Rrap has consistently explored issues of corporeality and history. Her recent Fleshstones series expands upon these interests by directing her attention to public sculpture and, in particular, the relationship between landscape and the body. Using digital photography Rrap questions the hierarchical organisation of space through fusing figure and ground relations together. These images refer largely to the sculptural work of Henry moore and the myth of Galatea, the tradition of figurative sculpture in which stone is transformed into flesh.
Place-Urbanity: A Psycho-Ethnographic Portrait of Melbourne by Jeffrey Shaw
Australian artist Jeffrey Shaw has been at the forefront of interactive new media practice for the past two decades. He has used complex technologies to create large-scale immersive experiences that explore the meeting point between physical touch and human motion, and fantastic and uniquely conceived digital landscapes. He is also the founding Director of the Institute for Visual Media at the ZKM Centre for Art and Media in Karlsruhe in Germany. Right looks at Shaw's film piece Place-Urbanity which premiered in November 2002 and which has proven to be one of the most popular works in the ACMI's collection.
Impressive Risk-Taking: The Ideal City at the Valencia Biennial 2003
While the Venice Biennale remains the pre-eminent visual arts event on the international calendar there are now over 40 similar events that claim to be truly international. One of the newest is held in Spain and its second addition in 2003 gave us a tightly curated, human-scale celebration of ideas with some outstanding exhibitions. Developed expediently over the last five years, taking the community with them, the government is changing face and mindset of what was only ten years ago a city in the grip of chronic decay. Paul Greenaway reports.
Colin McCahon: A Question of Faith
Colin McCahon was born in 1919 in the South Island of New Zealand, in the town of Timaru, that is to say, about as far from the centres of modern art as it is possible to get. The early Italian Renaissance as much as the work of Gauguin and Picasso provided McCahon with his lead in these paintings. Raw and strange, they were greeted with puzzled and angry responses whilst at the same time these profound works secured a number of loyal and powerful supporters. McAloon looks at what was initially a slow and meandering ascent to his career and examines one of McCahon's most well known exhibitions which included 78 of McCahon's works covering the span of his career from 1946 to 1982.
Sideways Glances: South Africa, Australia and Intersections
With the showing of the BHP-Billiton collection of South African art at the RMIT Gallery in late 2002 early 2003, Australians not only saw convincing artworks, but also contemplated a culture that is both akin and alien. Synchronicities and differences in these two cultures and specific artistic experiences played out through the Intersections exhibition, with a recognition of the two nations being joined by mediating a white culture, looking upwards to Europe for inspiration and validation. Peers explores these and other parallels drawn between Australian and South African art and culture and addresses some of our own countries ongoing inequalities and historical misfortunes.
The New Brisbane
Brisbane's coming of age has been announced a number of times, most recently with millennial-expansiveness, in its claim to be the Creative City leading the Smart State. Over the past 15 years the city has spawned new enterprises, a new generation of artists, new cultural policies, new public buildings, and a new sense of grace. With an ugly past left largely unexplained, the focus is on the present and the ambitions for the city. While government and the mainstream media look to the future of the New Brisbane, it has been the role of writers, artists and a few historians to examine the past as part of the task of fully inhabiting the city. This article provides a discourse with Ross Fitzgerald about some of the above mentioned issues.
A History of Forgetting
Anderson looks at one of Brisbanes formative cultural events, The Demolition Show, an exhibition curated by John Stafford in 1986 to mark to demise of the relatively short lived Observatory artist run space and in the fact the whole city block that surrounded it. This notion of demolition is raised in this article not only in the context of this particular event but also as a way of exploring a past which has for the most part fallen through the cracks. As Anderson states: Long after the dust has settled, the perception that Brisbane has no past in visual art, no critical mass, still lingers. Yet it is far from a new issue.
Is Art Built-in Built-out? debating public art
In 1999 Art Built-in was declared public policy by the Queensland Government, mandating that two percent of all construction budgets over $250,000 across governments be allocated to the artworks equating to some $15m worth of arts projects annually. Recently the first in a series of formal debates took place to canvas opinion on results so far. The topic was that the role of the curator is essential to create great public art. Looks at the role of local artists such as Jay Younger and her collaborative partner, architect Michael Rayner as well as Wendy Mills and Jill Kinnear.
Next Wave Coming
A conversation between Jennifer Herd, artist, curator and convenor of the BOVACAIA program at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Richard Bell, artist and activist, Gloria Beckett, an artist who is currently completing her Masters candidature at the QCA, GU, and well known artist and lecturer, Pat Hoffie. Together they discuss some of the personal and artistic struggles of the Aboriginal Murri community and the role of performative and visual arts in recognising a history largely understood.
The Campfire Group
The Campfire Group is an independent cultural enterprise where Indigenous and cross-cultural perspectives provide the organising principles. This article talks briefly of Balance 1990, the first exhibition held by The Campfire Group, open to Murris and whitefellas alike with curatorial efforst by Michael Eather, Marlene Hall and Marshall Bell. The diversity of Campfire Group's projects over the past few years is testimony to its members ability to transform and reinvent artistic practices and introduce those practices to new audiences. Carrolli looks at the various projects, both local and international, which have contributed to the success of the transitional authorial figure that the Campfire Group has come to be.
Hybrid Arts, Cultural Policy and Chinese Whispers
Recently some of the individual, performance and new media artists who have been collaborating across borders in Brisbane and Queensland have networked their way out of the city and into Europe and Asia. With cross commissions and research and development for contemporary performance work there is a new and vibrant creative export. This article explores some of these artists and their international work and looks at how such collaborated efforts are contributing to a new examination of what culture actually is for a country steeped in its European heritage. Follows the practice of local performance artist Lisa ONeil and her collaborations with Keith Armstrong as well as examining The Bonemap Project initiated by artists Russell Milledge and Rebecca Youdell.
The Artists
Notable for their ability to conduct practices from Brisbane over recent years are Luke Roberts, Scott Redford, Eugene Carchesio, Leonard Brown, Sebastian de Mauro, Gordon Bennett, Joe Furlonger, and Jay Younger, who have all emerged since 1980 into the national (and several into the international) marketplace. These practice are here explored in all their diversity. Martin-Chew looks at the increase in available resources and some of the opportunities that Brisbane has to offer for young and emerging artists wanting to break into the local and international art scene. Other artists discussed include Jemima Wyman, Lisa Adams, Rod Bunter, Vernon Ah Kee, Sandra Selig, Andrea Higgins and Michael Zavros.
New Media Art in Brisbane
The investigation of New Media Art is especially relevant in a city that is hyped with the rhetoric about critical mass in the New Media and Creative Industries. Machan here attempts to redraw some lines of definition in what the term New Media Art actually means, as it is often seen as a doomed and short-lived handle. She does this through examining some of the key New Media artists (including Craig Walsh, Keith Armstrong, Tim Plaisted, Bonemap, Trish Adams, Di Ball, Grant Stevens, Jenny Fraser, Simone Hine, Alex Gillespie, Jay Younger, Adam Donovan, Andrew Kettle and Molly Hankwitz) and the difference between New Media and other visual arts as well as looking at government support and initiatives in the line of New Media Arts.
Fuelling Innovation: Starting Young
Over the last two decades, Queensland has generated an arts and innovation culture for children and youth. Brisbanes distinguished reputation in the arts for young audiences rests on several solid foundations, most developed with support from major civic organisations, cultural institutions and successive governments. To understand how critic mass for childrens participation in the arts has been achieved, this article looks at a few of the formative events such as Play and Prime held at the Queensland Art Gallery and the popularity of artists such as Yayoi Kusama and Cai Guo Qiang amongst young audiences.
Prime Two
With the redevelopment of many inner-city dwellings which in the past were alternative hot spots for the local youth, Brisbane was left with very few arts venues catering for youth-specific programs, and limited opportunities for young artists to present their work. In 2001 the Queensland Art Gallery appointed an Access and Youth Program Officer and 2003 saw Prime Two, a six-hour long celebration of youth culture for National Youth Week. The intensity of Prime Two transformed the gallery into a festive and lively venue and created an experience that was reminiscent of an adventure rather than a visit to a state institution. Featured artists include Jemima Wyman, Arryn Snowball, Anne Wallace, Brett Whiteley and James Gleeson.
Moving Beyond Pragmatism: filmmaking in Queensland
The local film production community in South-East Queensland has come a long way, and over the past decade it has been important for local filmmakers to lay claim to an authentic local production that has achieved commercial if not critical success in the box office. Ward looks at those feature films and documentaries (Blurred, Under The Radar, Getting Square and Feeling Sexy) which have contributed to the emerging critical mass of the local film industry and the current debate surrounding creative pragmatism within this fledgling sector.
'Glocal' Government: Cross Cultural Understanding
David Hinchliffe has been a Councillor with Brisbane City for 15 years. He is also a photographer and exhibiting artist with 16 exhibitions to date. His background makes him a powerful supporter of Brisbanes art scene. Artlink asked him to tap into his experience and tell us how the new Brisbane came into being and where it is headed next.
Always Remember: there is no past
This article examines Brisbanes steeped conservative polical history and looks at the radical changes which occured as a result of the early 1990s shift to a Labour goverment. As an aftermath to the anti-climax that was the 1988 World Expo, the 90s was a decade which saw the Queensland Art Gallery embark on new avenues of experimentation and a new confidence was in the air. Furthermore Hoffie addresses the ongoing lack of substantial criticism in relation to arts and cultural development as many saw this as the single most pressing problem dogging the local scene.
Great White Sharks
Holubizkys article deals with the ever present attitude that Brisbane is a city 20 years behind the times in the cultural sector and poses the question as to what this really means? Culture has become a business only within the relative scheme of things, and ahead may only be the false competitive edge and gamesmanship of regional-urban cultural ambition. Comparisons, therefore, should not be made lightly, nor benchmarks for the vitality of a cultural milieu. Discusses the works of Craig Walsh, Eugene Carchesio, Caitlin Reid and Vernon Ah Kee.
Parallel Precincts
Once depressed inner-city suburbs that were havens for students, migrants, artists and fringe communities, the high profile precincts of South Brisbane/West End and Fortitude Valley/New Farm have developed into fast-growing centres of urban residential and cultural development. The Millennium Arts Program now underway will see the expenditure of over $100 million on the development of a new Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) through the Queensland Art Gallery's Two Sites-One Visionstrategy. Heather locates the diversity of Brisbane's arts and culture scene through such new and existing precincts, establishments which mark an exciting transformation in the future of the cities art scene.
The Gay Museum – a history of lesbian and gay presence in Western Australia
A history of lesbian and gay presence in Western Australia 22 January - 31 May 2003
A Memory of Times Past
Australia's 'official culture', the face that government puts on to show the country to the world has changed, and although those changes were set in motion well before the events of 11 September 2001, they are only now beginning to emerge as defining forces. Mendelssohn looks at the role of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games as a celebration of Australia's diversity and one of the main catalysts for such change. However, there is a darker side to all of this celebratory glory which Mendelssohn has addressed with reference to Australia's political climate and the granting of permission to express its collective worst feelings of fear and loathing.
Refugee stories: Afghanistan & Iran
The Migrant and Workers Resource Centre (MWRC) was established in Brisbane in 1995 by a group of migrant factory workers, with the aim of providing assistance to migrant communities. Recently, the MWRC conducted an independent investigation into the condition of refugees released from detention centres and now residing in Brisbane. The MWRC coordinator and the centre's consultant psychologist, Madonna Abella, visited the homes of refugees for face-to-face interviews, assisted by an interpreter. This article presents the findings of these interviews and the individual experiences of the refugees.
Borderpanic: open channel on refuge
Borderpanic was a conference and tactical media lab hosted by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, a seminar hosted by Metroscreen and an exhibition at the Performance Space. It was a coming together of artists, activists, cultural theorists and people of social conscience examining a world of burning borders. Many of the artworks exhibited at the Performance Space reflected in positive mode the documentation, connectivity and networking between people around the planet. Some of the artists included in these shows were Julian Burnside, Ghassan Hage, Mickey Quick, Geert Lovink, Stephen Best and Peter Lyssiotis.
The Pathos of Boat People
On 10th April 1999, a large boat carrying 60 passengers and crew who had travelled all the way from China seeking asylum arrived on the shores of the small town of Scotts Head on the mid North coast of NSW. Shayne Higson created a series of poetic images in response to this desperate attempt for freedom. These poignant photographs present the remnants of these asylum seekers, the striped plastic bags and rusting hulk which were abandoned and replaced by suits, ties and good shoes, items worn by the refugees in an attempt to fit in with the mainland surroundings.
Ambient Fears
Artlink here prints a slightly abbreviated version of Nikos Papastergiadis essay which was first delivered as a lecture in Finland on 30 September 2001. This essay covers issues surrounding the idea of the other, the enemy, and discusses some of the ramifications of the events of September 11. In november that year it was used as a companion piece to the exhibition Fallout at the Victorian College of the Arts. The Exhibition featured artists Destiny Deacon, Elizabeth Gower, Homi Vesal, Jarrad Kennedy, Justine Khamara amongst others. Nikos Papastergiadis is Deputy Director of the Australian Centre, University of Melbourne.
Fallout: Quick Response to 9/11
Fallout was a quick response exhibition that only lasted for one week. The show examined the impact on art of the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington, globalisation and the refugee crisis. The thirty-seven artists who participated, each at different stages in their careers, contributed their work purely on political conviction. Many of the works in the show were quite raw, and captured this desire to re-express the shock of the violence towards the western world, but also the violent and brutal way the western world sought revenge. Sanja Pahoki and Rowan Douglas were amongst those to exhibit.
Pat Hoffie: Compassion and Anger
The element of denial ingrained in Australian society provides the basis for much of Pat Hoffie's work. The popularly constructed myths, histories and relationships that reinforce Australian society involve a certain amount of self-delusion, and Hoffie uses her work to amplify this fact. This article explores some of the political and humanitarian issues at the core of Hoffie's artistic practice, with specific reference to the 'children overboard' incident and Australia's role in the 'war against terror'.
Disorientation: Afghan War Rug, No Easy Answers
Lendon takes up the idea of cross-cultural interpretation and exchange as exemplified through the symbolism imbued in a traditional 'Afghan war rug', an item which was part of the exhibition 'The Rugs of War' held in June 2003. Through deconstructing the seemingly violent and barbaric visual imagery, Lendon is posing some important questions regarding the role of traditional artefacts and the valuing of such hand made craft once it has reached its destination in the west.
Afghanistan Unveiled: Four refugee artists from Afghanistan
Afghanistan Unveiled was an exhibition in South Australia of paintings and drawings by four refugees from Afghanistan: Ali Reza Ramzi from Western Australia, Ghulam Sakhi Hazara from Queensland, Sayed Mansoor from South Australia and Shafiq Monis from New South Wales. All of these artists have recently lived in detention and one is still in detention. The artists use art as a way to depict their lives under the Taliban regime, their flight to Australia and their experiences in Australia. The exhibition received television, radio and newspaper coverage, both locally and nationally and over 200 people attended the opening with many more viewing the exhibition over the following two weeks.
The Ballet of Nothing More
Megan Keating's installation The Ballet of Nothing More uses sources from international military and propaganda imagery in order to allude to the present state of unrest within the world. Although no particular campaign or situation is specifically referred to, the paintings and papercuts aim to evoke an awkwardness or ambivalence indicative of contemporary experience. This work is not about war or the experiences of war but people's acceptance, detachment and displacement of such issues fuelled by the media and its methods of reportage.
Viet Nam Voices: Lessons of History
Viet Name Voices was a unique exhibition, striving to give all major groups of participants the opportunity to be heard impartially, often in direct opposition to each other. The voice that is most passionate in this exhibition is that of the Viet Name veterans, who are speaking out after twenty-five years of silence. The issues raised by the unjust treatment of the veterans on their return to Australia are vividly addressed through their artworks, including the legacy of chemical defoliants such as Agent Orange, their betrayal by the Australian government, the mass media's complicity in wartime propaganda, and the enduring and unfulfilled need to honour and remember the dead.
Tasmania as Haven
Despite its troubled history, Tasmania has managed to offer quiet sanctuary for a remarkable range of peoples, natures and ideas. Much of Tasmania's political muscle has been exercised around environmental issues, backed by world heritage listing. Artists in the Haven exhibition which toured in 2003-4 each chose a biographical subject that dramatised the utopian appeal of Tasmania. Artists included Pip McManus, Geoff Parr, Patrick Collins, Anna Phillips, Jennifer Brook, Penny Carey Wells, John Vella, Helena Psotova and Judith-Rose Thomas. Each of these artists created works as tributes to various historical figures and all contain within them the thin glimmer of hope that beckons the darkened mainland above.
Terrorist Training School: PVI Collective
Contemporary performance often seems bent on escaping the theatrical frame, eroding the boundaries, and making problematic the relationship between theatre and reality. In Terrorist Training School, the Perth-based performance group PVI abandoned traditional theatrical space altogether, opting for tour buses and trams. Wilson here sets the scene for the 2002 performance and discusses the performative and prescriptive aspects of both the theatrical and real life terrorist attacks taking place in all parts of the contemporary world.
Queue Here
One of the key works in the 2002 exhibition Queue Here is by Pat Hoffie, an artist long concerned with issues of social justice. A frieze of paintings, lifted from portraits on the web of Australian Federal Members of Parliament, become, as Hoffie says, the 'horrific scared smiles of those we trusted to speak for us'. The artists featured in Queue Here (Pat Hoffie, Peter Latona, Holly Williams, Aseem Pereira, John Vella, Angelina Brazzale, Margaret Baguley, Penny Cain and Paul Gazzola) have all adopted tropes that point to the heart of the problem. If we are dealing with perceptions, then these are a truthful reading of Australia's current vision of its own culture.
A4 Refugee Project: Artists in Solidarity
The A4 Refugee Project began in July as a response to Austcare's call for participants in Refugee Week 2002. Letters, flyers and e-mails were sent to contemporary artists throughout Australia with the request to submit a work as a gesture of support for refugees. The works addressed all sorts of issues surrounding the topic of refugees: alienation, lip sewing, consumerism, wire fencing, loneliness, nationalism...and punctuating these were abstract works that allowed some breathing space. The works were donated to the James Hardie Art Archive at the State Library of Queensland and will provide a permanent document of the artistic response from the community to this issue.
The Pacific Highway Solution
Wayne Barrow provides a humorous dialogue between himself and two of his mates Boney and Dazza, the three of them on their way back to Sydney after a week of concreting. This article raises issues surrounding the problems with the construction of the Pacific Highway, the government's policies on mandatory detention and the shocking state of take away food along the way.
Our Voices: Living with Trauma
Mammad Aidani was born in the port city of Khorramshar in South-West of Iran and later born into the English language and the complexities of the Australian environment in 1982. He here writes about his ongoing struggles since fleeing his country during the Shah's regime when the war between Iran and Iraq ultimately led to the loss of his family and friends. He speaks out about the current political and humanitarian agenda in Australia and the role of creativity in providing rich human emotions as noble causes to unite people.
The Promised Land
Linda Jaivin tells an imaginative story of Moses' plight to the Promised Land, imparting an additional reading to this historical tale, one very much aligned with contemporary society and the struggles of refugees seeking asylum in Australia. The story depicts the promised land as 'a liberal democracy which respects human rights and international conventions as set out by the United Nations' with the story leading the refugees to the ultimate reality of this supposed liberated new land.
Museums For the 21st Century: Entertainments or Big Challenging Ideas?
Museums both reinforce one's views and challenge them, encouraging innovative connections we hadn't thought of before, driving us on to expanded understandings. Griffin addresses some of the controversies surrounding museums in the age of technology.
Scaling Up at ACCA
Opening in mid October 2002, the new ACCA is a purpose built complex designed by Melbourne- based architects Wood Marsh. An architectural marvel and simultaneously a contemporary art space, at last the ACCA is moving to a building that lives up to the portent of its name. Haley spoke to the new Creative Director Juliana Engberg in August of 2002.
Documenta 11 Takes On Masters of the Universe
Every five years the sleepy little German town of Kassel is invaded by the international art world. The 2002 Documenta exhibition staged here, which have traditionally played second fiddle only to the Venice Biennale, was eagerly anticipated as the first genuinely postcolonial Documenta, due in large part to the appointment of the expatriate Nigerian curator Okwui Enwezor as Artistic Director.
Cacophony + Cramp for the Sensory Bundle
Digital media provides intuitive contemporary ways for storytelling in our times. dLux media arts, based in Sydney, this year curated a selection of installation works derived from their annual d>art program, and for the first time showed it outside Sydney. The five works selected for the Adelaide exhibition were complex and esoteric: a gorgeous array of storytelling techniques which explore and exploit narrative and interactivity.
A Stitch in Time
Peter Callas' show held at Stills Gallery in 2002 Vinculum + Orison resulted from his Asialink residency in Delhi, India and comprises of digital prints on photographic paper and an artist's book. Both the scale and choice of images in this exhibition are seductive and enthralling; deceptively innocent moments in daily and century-old rituals and routines.
Uncertain Terrain
Modern physics suggests we are living within an expanding universe. We are, it seems, still moving away from our point of origin (the singularity of the Big Bang). The intersection of new physics and Buddhism provides pathways into Julia Ciccarone's landscape paintings (exhibited at Niagara Galleries in Melbourne in early 2002), elucidating the narratives and suggesting relationships between the metaphors and symbols she uses.
Small Deaths
Australian artist Kate Breakey, who now resides in Tucson, Arizona, caught up with Sarah Thomas to discuss the impact of growing up in the coastal town of Port Lincoln and the impact her childhood upbringing is having on her recent work. 'I think my childhood proximity to nature turned me into a naturalist...Growing up around animals you learn that life is complicated, survival is a struggle, death usually isn't quick or clean, and nature doesn't make any allowances for love and attachment'.
Lawrence Daws: From Mandala to Full Circle
Australian artist Lawrence Daws speaks of seven phases of his work, based on specific themes that have guided his development as an artist. There has been a gradual trend in his work from themes of archetypal symbolism and exotic portent towards the more local and personal.
Singapore Opens Up to the World - Site + Sight: First Major International Show
Using Singapore as the first 'site' for the exhibition, Site + Sight: Translating Cultures from 7 June to 26 July 2002 brought together 26 international artists from 11 countries to discuss and present artworks relating to the theme of globalisation and its cultural impact on the world.
Marine Nature in Porcelain: The Recent Work of Robin Best
Ceramic artist Robin Best became fascinated by a complex marine world which included sea-invertebrates/filter feeders like bryozoans, sea sponges and ascidians (sea squirts) during walks on the beach in her seaside suburn of Semaphore. Here Walker discusses some of Best's recent work and conceptual concerns.
Fashion Infiltrates the Galleries
Even if one's first reaction upon hearing the sound of the words 'Melbourne Fashion Festival' is not to reach for one's gun, but to condemn the dumbing down of 'culture' into Madonna or Barbie 101, bemoan the melting of the abstract expressionist/tachiste snows of yesteryear, it has unquestionably enriched the city's art experience.
Jewel Mackenzie: Gemini Paintings
Jewel Mackenzie's practice explores both the understanding and experience of the world and the history and legacies of painting. Her background in both dressmaking and in public administration has informed her project to provoke and explore the positioning of the artist within contemporary bureaucratic culture.
I Wonder Where the Public Art Went?
During the first half of 2002 the Danish champion of pedestrians, Dr. Jan Gehl and his team from GEHL Architects were commissioned to analyse the City of Adelaide in terms of its viability as a pedestrian city.
The Possibility Forum - Institutional Change and Modest Proposals
This text takes up some of the broader concerns of Tony Bond's initial questions to an Australian panel at ARCO 2002 Madrid, particularly 'can there be a benign global capitalism?' and 'how do we address the value of exchanges between artists?'.
Asia Pacific Triennial 2002 - Starry Night
When talking about non-Indo-European cultures, we are taking on board profound differences in how we arrange our worlds. The 2002 Asia Pacific Triennial endeavours to present art from these cultures through various treatments of time and space relations.
Breathing/Diving/Dreaming/Dancing to the BEAP in Perth (You Can't Buy These Emotions off the Hollywood Shelf)
Immersion was part of the Perth Biennale of Electronic Art (BEAP), a selection of some of the most important international immersive, interactive and virtual reality artworks from the last decade, created by Chris Malcolm and presented at the John Curtin Gallery.
The Generosity of a Light Touch
For the more than 15 years that the Australian organisation Experimenta Media Arts has metamorphosed through various ideological, aesthetic and technological identities, its one constant has been a passionate involvement with and championing of the new and experimental. Prototype, exhibited in Melbourne in 2002, carried on this tradition, more than living up to the title.
