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Poetry in Review
Aboriginal poet Ken Canning ( Burraga Gutya) looks at the nature of poetry. 3 poems of Burraga Gutya included in the issue.
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
The Struggle Continues
In every area of the arts where Aborigines are participating there is an intense surge of creative vitality. Once could call it a renaissance period. When I began writing poetry, Kath Walker (Oodgeroo Noonucul) was the only recognised poet.
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
Murris' Coming Out Show
Hello. My name is Marshall Bell. I live at Inala in Queensland. My father was from the famous Jiman Tribe of Hornet Hill massacre mob. My mother was from the Kamilaroi nation Gunedah/Kooma clans. I was born at the now defunct Charleville Aboriginal reserve in the desert of south west Queensland. Having been living off my art for the last 5 years in a suppressive Queensland environment, I think I know what it is like to be living in isolation.
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
A Playwrights Story
"In January 1989, I attended the second national Black Playwrights conference. I arrived at this conference feeling very unsure and insecure with nine small scenes which I had hoped would turn in to a play."
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
Jabiru
"I joined the Jabiru Cabaret in Cairns as one of the ten founding cast members in November 1988. The excitement for me as a performer, is to bridge the gap of understanding between various races, colours, cultures and countries. To witness the audience reaction to us as a group performing in three distinct areas makes us all feel very close to achieving the message of a minority through our art."
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
ANTT Aboriginal National Theatre Trust Limited
The Aboriginal National Theatre Trust Limited arose out of Forums of Aboriginal Performing Artists, Playwrights and Technicians attending the first National Black Playwrights Conference held at the Australian National University in Canberra 1987.
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
Performing in Tongues
...Underlying this linguistic fertility is a migrant intuition of the relativity of language, of the lightness and mutability of its phonology, inflections and syntax. Less portentously there is no migrant to this country who has not experienced those punning co-incidences, echoic repetitions, mutual misunderstandings and mishearings which are the basis of my scripts. It may be no accident that in 1992 Australian voices evoke first contact with the New World.
Arts in a Multicultural Australia
Aboriginal Theatre in Tasmania
"From the time that whites arrived in Tasmania and up until 1983 Aboriginal performing arts especially theatre arts, had become almost as extinct as whites would have people believe Tasmanian Aborigines were. Not so!"
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
Aboriginal Music; Broome Style: Towards Bran Nue Dae
Broome, sleepy, dusty, sub-tropical country town on the north west of Western Australia, with a population of only 7,000 has at least 5 working bands including the well known bands Kuckles and Scrap Metal - a myriad of solo performers as well as traditional Aboriginal musicians.
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
Aboriginal Rock Festival
It's now early September 1989 and Aboriginal Rock Bands from the Northern Territory and interstate are travelling by any means possible to Darwin for the Sing Loud Play Strong 2nd Festival of Aboriginal Rock Music.
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
Radio Redfern - The Koori Voice in Sydney
Located in an old terrace house in Cope Street Redfern, is the voice of the Aboriginal Community in Sydney. The terrace house is not unlike any other in the inner city. However with the Koori colours on one wall and the music of Koori bands blasting out from its speakers up on the balcony the house is fairly outstanding.
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
Black Radio in Cairns
Explores Aboriginal radio in far north Queensland.
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
Night Cries - A Rural Tragedy; A film by Tracey Moffatt
Two people suspended in a soundscape - a space punctuated by a stark and corrosive sound. The wail of a dingo, an owl, the grating beat of an iron lung, a gasp, a cry for breath and above all a cacophony of memory.
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
Australia to the World
In the choice of Rover Thomas and Trevor Nickolls to echibit in the Australian Pavilion at the 1990 Venice Biennale, Australia will present a combination that challenges many conventional attitudes to Aboriginal art. Simultaneously the exhibition offers an appropriate platform to two important if highly idiosyncratic contemporary painters.
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
Letter From Arnhem Land Where All the Real Art's Supposed To Be
"How many people still think that up north or in the centre is the only place for real Aboriginal art. You know when you work with it, selling it, buying it, you hear it all the time."
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
The Bicentenary and Beyond: Recent Developments in Aboriginal Printmaking
The period of 1986 - 1989 has been epoch making for Aboriginal printmaking, not necessarily because of an improvement in the quality of the prints produced during that time but because Aboriginal prints in forums broadly motivated by the centenary has allowed them to receive the recognition they deserve.
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
Balance Stories
Two alternative opinions on Australia's most obvious cultural exchange - Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal- was the original conception of Balance 1990 Views, Visions, Influences - a collaborative exhibition originally titled Balance 1988: Two views One Vision. Beginning by artists sitting and talking it became obvious that there were more than just two perspectives.
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
Balance 1990
Exhibition review Balance 1990 held at Queensland Art Gallery and curated by Michael Eather and Marlene Hall, March 1990.
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
Mecca for Printmakers
Looks at the Canberra School of Art Print Workshop has played a key role in encouraging Aboriginal artist to make prints.
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
From Yuendumu to Paris
Explores a historic trip for six traditional artists from Australia for the exhibition 'Magicians of the Earth'. This global overview was created to "reveal the force of communication" and was true to its title.
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
Power Institute Program on Aboriginal Art in Australian Society
The Power Institute at the University of Sydney ran a 10 week program devised by Susan Simons and Bronwyn Bancroft of panel discussions, presentations, films/videos and seminars exploring many of the issues of Aboriginal art in Australian society.
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
Narrangunnawali in Canberra
Narrangunnawali was an exhibition by Aboriginal artists from Canberra and the surrounding region mounted by the Canberra Contemporary Art Space 31 August - 23 September 1989.
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
Sally Morgan Speaks
The artist speaks about her art practice.
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
Designer Aboriginals
Looks at her art practice and design issues, copyright and textiles.
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
Jumbana Designs
John and Ros Moriarty of Jumbuna Designs in interview.
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
Desert Designs
Examines the Desert Designs Company formed by Stephen Culley and David Wroth which began in the early 1980s.
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
Tandanya: Australia's First Aboriginal Cultural Institute
Article which looks at Tandanya - Australia's first Aboriginal Cultural Institute located in Adelaide South Australia.
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
Boomalli
Looks at the artist's co-operative Boomalli located in Sydney NSW.
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
Vocational Arts Centre Cairns
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Education Centre in Cairns is a vocational school of Arts aimed at the development and realisation of Aboriginal artistic talent.
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
Aboriginal Community College - Port Adelaide
The broad aims of the Aboriginal Community College in Port Adelaide, South Australia, are to provide time, space, and resources to Aboriginal people that will allow them to make discoveries about themselves, their heritage and their environment, and to move in directions that they establish as relevant to themselves and/or their community.
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
Dumbartung Aboriginal Corporation
Dumbartung Aboriginal Corporation meaning 'we of the people' is a West Australian Aboriginal organization which aims to promote dance, drama, writing, painting, sculpture, craftwork, music and any other Aboriginal art...
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
Centre for Aboriginal Studies in Music
Located in the University of Adelaide in South Australia the Centre for Aboriginal Studies in Music was set up in 1972 in order that many aboriginal people both urban and tribal may develp effective skills of communicating their cultural, social, political and economic feelings through music to Australian people and the world at large.
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
Waringarri Arts Centre
Located in Kununurra Western Australia Waringarri Arts was set up for artists in the Kimberley region.
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
Birrukmarri
Birukmarri is an exhibition gallery and retail outlet with a commitment to the professional retailing of Aboriginal art.
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
Art After the Controversy
Looks at the art practice in Moree in north western NSW.
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
Bangarra
'Bangarra' is a Wiradjeri word meaing to make fire and the dance company so named has sparked enthusiasm for its performances in countries as far afield as Japan, New Guinea, the USA and Finland.
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
Flinders University of South Australia: Aboriginal Artists in Residence Programme
Describes the vital and valuable Aboriginal artists in residence program at the Flinders University of South Australia.
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
Aboriginal Arts Unit Australia Council
The Aboriginal Arts Board was dis-established in June 1989...the Australia Council established the Aboriginal Arts Committee to replace the Board.
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
Bibliography
Supplementary bibliography to the major work by Adrian Marrie 1987 'A Topical bibliography of Australian Aboriginal Visual Arts 3' ed ASTEC SA College of Advanced Education (now the University of South Australia) Underdale SA.
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
Looking Back: A decade of Artlink 1981 -1991
History of the trials and triumphs of Artlink over its first decade - a wonderful achievement for a small regional arts magazine.
10th Birthday Issue
Biennale of Sydney Authority = Potential
The last 10 years has seen a noticeable empowerment of the visual art institutions in Australia. As recently as the late seventies the Sydney Biennale still sometimes happened every three years. In 1980 the Adelaide Festival was as yet innocent of Artist's Week and the Adelaide Biennial.
10th Birthday Issue
Artists Week
Artists' Week was established in 1982 as an initiative of the South Australian visual arts community in reponse to the poor emphasis on visual art in the Adelaide Festival Program and to the growing need for forums to discuss art.
10th Birthday Issue
A Critical Evaluation of the First Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art
Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art Art Gallery of South Australia Adelaide 2 March - 22 April 1990 Confined exclusively to Australian art - the Whitney Biennial is a model - the Adelaide Biennials will both complement the international Biennale of Sydney and posit alternatives to the surveys of current art represented by the biennial Australian Perspecta exhibitions at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
10th Birthday Issue
Quo Vadis Sculputre: The Fourth Australian Sculpture Triennial
The Melbourne Festival and the Fourth Australian Sculpture Triennial reflections, projections, prognosis....
10th Birthday Issue
To Market, To Market: The second Contemporary Art Fair
Held Melbourne Royal Exhibition Building Melbourne 21- 24 June 1990, the success of the second Contemporary Art Fair surprised just about everyone.
10th Birthday Issue
Getting the Picture? The Visual Arts in Australia in the Electronic Media
There's no climate of criticism which takes the media themselves seriously as art, so it's hardly surprising if the media return that compliment to art.
10th Birthday Issue
Arts on the ABC: Chris Westwood and the New Deal for Radio National and ABC FM
Chris Westwood and the New Deal for Radio National and ABC FM.
10th Birthday Issue
Ausgraph 90 Arts and Video Show
Over 100 individuals, companies and institutions contributed to the success of teh Ausgraph 90 Art and Video Program.
10th Birthday Issue
Contemporary Soviet Art
How can one describe contemporary Soviet fine art? How is it connected with the heritage of the avant garde of the revolutionary years? How are they related to the urgent problems of international art?
10th Birthday Issue
What It Is Not; Misreading the East
The Wall is down. The east is no longer red. Did we win? The Washington Post has called it the end of history, so something must be happening.
10th Birthday Issue
Art in Vietnam Now
A report from a week's visit to art schools, museums, galleries and artists' organisations in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City October 1990.
10th Birthday Issue
Treading Terra Technic
Advanced Technology Artworks by Paula Dawson and Jill Scott.
10th Birthday Issue
Ripples from the Margin: Refractory Speculations on the Myths of Oz
About 95% of registered Australian architects are male. As writers on architecture, women are most likely to be found in our 'traditional' role as hagiographers - disciplinary 'handmaidens to the Heroes' - chronicling the erection of Icons and the cultural penetration of Canons - often described as 'seminal works'.
10th Birthday Issue
Art in Space
As artists strive to turn outer space iinto a new canvas for creative expression, some of their proposals have provoked controversy.
10th Birthday Issue
Fred Truck's ArtEngine
A case study in the problematics of software art. The author test drives Fred Truck's ArtEngine a robot artwork that makes art. (sic). The work is in the form of a sizable piece of software written for the Mac2 computer.
10th Birthday Issue
The Many Faces of Design
A festival for schools initiated by the Key Centre for Design at RMIT aims to encourage young people to explore aspects of their human made environment.
10th Birthday Issue
Traces of Light: An Interview with Thierry Kuntzel
The slide from film to video may perhaps one day be compared to the move away from the alexandrine and toward free verse poetry - out of this there emerged a reflection on the literary fate of language and the same is happening today for the image.
10th Birthday Issue
Parables of Criticism
Looks at the current issues in the art versus craft debate and the impact of post modern theories.
Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought
Toward a Typology of Small Objects
With increasing anxiety, we face searching questions of the viability, the integrity, the destiny of craft. In themselves, the questions are salutory and point to an intellectual vitality in craft culture, a vigour and toughness which have not existed since the Arts and Crafts Movement. Responses to the challenge vary from relish in the contradictions of craft practice to the old-fashioned despair for any debate whatsoever.
Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought
The Floating Web
For centuries now, textiles and the skills required in their creation - spinning, weaving, embroidery, sewing, quilting - have been considered women's work, occupying them indoors while men engaged in more serious activities like warfare.
Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought
Why Craftwork Does Not Compute
Will the computers, mobile or immobile, take over craft work in the near or medium future? Are craftspeople doomed to the fate of the Indian hand loom weavers of the last century-- will their bones bleach the plains? The answer is........
Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought
Craft, Science and the Natural: An Introduction
There seems to be a consensus that craft is in a state of crisis. But consensus or not, the observation of this alleged crisis is sterile if we do not place it against its background. Is this crisis unique to craft, or is it a manifestation of a more general crisis which extends across other cognate areas? If it is more general, does it nevertheless have special implications for craft?
Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought
The Watch, the Pen and the Biro
To demonstrate the extent to which our relationship to the objects we possess has changed, Kevin Murray recently gave a short impromptu performance during a recent lecture, systematically removing a number of possessions and apparel from his person.
Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought
The Archaeological Metaphor: A Personal Excavation
Now as a much older woman with another career as an artist I have been reconsidering my experience in Museums, reconsidering the structures of archaeology which grid and measure the chaotic site.
Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought
Distant Lives/ Shared Voices
Written with Janis Jefferies. Discusses the 1992 artist initiated and organised international forum for tapestry weavers in Lodz Poland.
Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought
The Reflections of a Taxidermist
I view my memories as a fragmented collage of life, constantly in review and abstracted through the shifting of time and place. Taking and putting together some of these fragments I recall how I became a taxidermist.
Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought
After the Art/Craft debate: Critical Writing into the 1990s
Most writers and researchers in the visual arts and crafts would now consider the debate about the difference between art and craft to be an old chestnut whose day has well and truly gone. Refers to the debates between David Bromfield and Anne Brennan.
Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought
Touching Things Lightly: The Furniture of Kevin Perkins
Kevin Perkins and the Parish Church of St Thomas Acquinas, Charnwood ACT. A model for collaborative design. Consummate technical skills, the continuance of long-established traditions which focus on excellence and a fundamental reverence for the qualities of the materials are discussion points that are, at times, given minimal attention when the products of today's craftspeople and designer/makers are discussed.
Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought
Design Visions: International Exchange: Time for a Stocktake
Design Visions; The second Australian International Crafts Triennial on show at the Art Gallery of Western Australia in August September 1992 provided a chance for local viewers, historians, critics, artists, designers and 'craftspeople' to discuss and possibly take stock of our place in the international arena.
Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought
Jill Smith: Artist/ Designer in Industry
Looks at the ceramic practice of Jill Smith. It often happens when people with different views and areas of expertise are brought together to solve a problem that something new emerges.
Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought
NSW Tafe: A Different Approach to Ceramics
It turned out that 95% of the symposiasts were blissfully unaware that, starting with the TAFEs, they are already in the era of funding allocation on the basis of conceptually incoherent doctrines of an 'arts industry' with about as much relevance to their interests as atonal music has to the board of BHP.
Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought
The Problem of Orthodoxy in Contemporary Glass
In her introductory notes to the exhibition 'Glass: Material in the service of meaning' the artist Ginny Ruffner comments on the current field of glass art as "being awash in objects, some beautiful, some ugly, most about glass itself - material as content."
Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought
Making a Living: The Jam Factory
In May 1992, Stephanie Radok spoke to Frank McBride, Peter Tysoe, Stephen Bowers, David Adderton and Greg Healey about recent developments at the Jam Factory Craft and Design Centre in Adelaide, South Australia.
Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought
Two Countries, One Weave?
Written with Phillip (Piri) Everett Over the last year Tandanya (National Aboriginal Cutural Institute) has received much bad publicity but is carrying on and slowly and steadily making history. It opened in 1989 with celebrations featuring Ernabella Inma and Yothu Yindi. Includes photographs of indigenous women at weaving workshops in the South East of South Australia at Camp Coorong Cultural Centre.
Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought
Marketing from the Top End
Representatives from seven screenprint workshops in remote and indigenous Australia came together in March 1992 to attend a textile marketing forum in Darwin organised by Steve Anderson, co-ordinator of ANCAA (Association of Northern and Central Australian Aboriginal Artists).
Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought
From Italowie to Chambers Gorge - A New Tapestry
When travelling by car over long distances the landscape outside the window endlessly unfolds as a field of subtly carying colour and texture punctuated by the irregular rhythm of straggling trees and bushes.
Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought
Futurology...Crafts...
Margaret Kirkwood, craft practitioner from NSW and active in the Craft Council within her State, writes her prediction for the future of crafts in Australia.
Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought
Futurology...Crafts...
David Walker, craft practitioner from Western Australia and active in the Craft Council within his State, writes his prediction for the future of crafts in Australia.
Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought
Futurology...Crafts...
Marion Marshall,craft practitioner from Victoria, and active in the Craft Council within her State, writes her prediction for the future of crafts in Australia.
Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought
4 Jewellery Co-operatives: On Staying in the Black: Fluxus
Looks at the workshop Fluxus in Dunedin in New Zealand, formed by Kobi Bosshard and Stephen Mulqueen in 1983.
Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought
Futurology...Crafts...
Helmut Lueckenhausen, craft practitioner from NSW and active in the Craft Council within his State, writes his prediction for the future of crafts in Australia.
Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought
4 Jewellery Co-operatives: On Staying in the Black: Fingers
Looks at the Jewellery Co-operative Fingers formed in 1976 in Auckland New Zealand. Fingers sells the work of 30 New Zealand jewellers with a managment partnership of 6 to 8 practising jewellers. The rest sell on consignment basis.
Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought
4 Jewellery Co-operatives: Ipso Factory Company
Ipso Facto Company formed in 1984 by 5 ex-students from the Sydney College of the Arts.
Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought
4 Jewellery Co-operatives: Gray Street Workshop
Looks at the workshop Gray Street, Adelaide, South Australia.
Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought
The Western Way - Linney's, Argenta and Others
Western Australia has a tradition of artist/craftspeople with studio - gallery -shops.
Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought
Yurundiali - Reasons for Optimism
The predominant group in Moree (outback New South Wales) are the Gomilleroi people who are considered the most cohesive moiety group in Australia. Looks at the indigenous artists co-operative Yurundiali which is marketing its screen print designs.
Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought
Screenprinting the Tiwi Way: An Element of Spontaneity
It is not accidentatl that amongst the Tiwis of Bathurst and Melville Islands, fabric printing has become such a significant craft form. Of all indigenous Australian cultures the Tiwis historically have perhaps the richest tradition of body painting.
Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought
The Hermannsburg Potters
The Arrernte people from Hermannsburg a former Lutheran mission about 130 km west of Alice Springs in Central Australia are generally known for their Namatjira style watercolour paintings. Now they are making ceramics.
Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought
Semiotically Speaking: A Craftperson's View
One need not restrict this semiotic approach to an analysis of the objects of fashion given that the major role adopted by craftspeople in contemporary times is that of drawing attention to otherwise ordinary objects and processes by remaking them in a mode other than mass production.
Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought
Tim Burns - Paintings and Drawings
Exhibition review Cape Bruny Winter 1990 - 1991
Paintings and Drawings by Tim Burns
Dick Bett Gallery Hobart Tasmania
7 - 26 May 1992
Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought
Some Thoughts on Museum Futures
The quintessential purpose of Museums is to encourage and instil the joy of intellectual and aesthetic discovery. Abstracted partly from a public lecture entitled 'Ideas -Heresies even - for Museum Futures' given in Perth for the Western Australian Government Department of the Arts Task Force on Museums in August 1991.
Museums on the Edge
From Curiosities to the Hyper-Real: Notes on Context in Museum Anthropology Exhibitions
Daniel Thomas provoked a distinct murmur at the 1990 CAMA Conference when he suggested that art museums have a greater capacity to disturb and move people than other cultural museums. If this is true and I think it is.....
Museums on the Edge
Aboriginal People and Museums: Restricting Access to Increase It
The South Australian Museum has the world's largest and most comprehensive collection of Australian Aboriginal material culture. It also has a vast archive of information about that material and about other aspects of Aboriginal life in the form of photographs, films, audio tapes, diaries and other records.
Museums on the Edge
Towards the Light: The story of One New Age Gallery's Quest for Purpose and Relevance in a Changing World
On 23 October 2002, yet another Council of Australian Museums Associations (CAMA) ran down. Conferees were already half deep in thought about melting credit cards and distant work site desks stacked high with urgent files. Well Not exactly CAMA...
Museums on the Edge
Cultural Diversity and the Challenges of Access
Cultural diversity has become a key issue in the 1990s for a number of reasons. In the United States we have recently completed a census. The results of that census indicate a dramatic change in the nation's demographics.
Museums on the Edge
Urban Regions and the City Centre: A Changing Cultural Relationship
One of the curious things about very large cities is the gulf that exists between the inner city and the outer suburbs or hinterland.
Museums on the Edge
Exhibiting Conflict - Who Dares?
Museum exhibitions tend not to challenge visitors with critical perspectives, contradictory points of view or subject matter which is controversial. I would like to explore different ways that conflict might be included in exhibitions and used to further our understanding of the past.
Museums on the Edge
To Have and To Hold: Art Museum Departments
One of the things which continues to fascinate me about museums is how, despite the vast amount of talk about displaying material culture, the often personal, often idiosyncratic, often haphazard decisions about departments are very rarely mentioned. Yet these decisions are central to much of the museum's collection, display, exhibitions and research programme.
Museums on the Edge
Whams and Whimms: An Exercise in Classification and Meaning
Interview with Louise Dauth about issues of gender. Dale Spender is a foundation member of the Women Heritage and Museums Group.
Museums on the Edge