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Big wave: Desert Country
Legendary curator John Kean looks at three recent large exhibitions of Aboriginal art - Tjukurrtjanu: Origins of Western Desert Art, Desert Country and Living Water, and questions whether the same spirit sings in all of them.
Sitting & connecting: Goulburn Art Class 2-0-1-1
Goulburn Class 2-0-1-1 was an exhibition curated by Djon Mundine at the Goulburn Regional Art Gallery of work made by prisoners at the local Correction Centre in response to ten one day workshops in the prison by seven Aboriginal artists whose work was also in the show. Writer and editor Maurice O'Riordan reviews the exhibition and more importantly the processes it involved.
Reviewing Our Mob: A state-wide celebration of South Australian Indigenous art
Our Mob is a state-wide celebration of South Australian Indigenous art held annually at the Adelaide Festival Centre since 2006. Curator Susan Jenkins who worked on it for three years from 2009-2011 analyses what works about Our Mob and what the future might be.
Long Way Home: A celebration of 21 years of Yunggorendi First Nations Centre
Yunggorendi First Nations Centre for Higher Education and Research at Flinders University, celebrated 21 years of operation in 2011 with an exhibition of work selected by staff and students from the collection of Flinders University Art Museum. Artist Ali Gumillya Baker critically reviews selected works in the exhibition and the issues they raise.
No Place without Other Places: Spinifex Arts Project at fifteen years
University of Western Australia lecturer Darren Jorgensen examine the Spinifex Arts Project from its inception with reference to a new exhibition happening August-October 2012 at John Curtin Gallery and asks the big question: "What would it mean if Aboriginal artists were not tied to language groups, communities, art centres and regional styles?"
Postcards from China
Multi-disciplinary artists Jason Wing, who has both Aboriginal and Chinese forebears, undertook a residency in Xucun, a remote village in China, where Chinese artists Qu Yuan and Shen Shaomin have established the Xucun Art Commune in order to protect the village's beauty and heritage.
Tu Di Shen Ti, Our Land Our Body: the Ngaanyatjarra poetic goes to China
The exhibition 'Tu Di Shen Ti – Our Land Our Body, Masterworks of the Warburton Collection', was seen in China by about a quarter of a million people, across seven venues, throughout 2011. Director of the Warburton Arts Project Gary Proctor describes how the exhibition came about, what it looked like and what its goal are.
On the ground with Our Mob in 2011
Terry Cleary was the Statewide Indigenous Community Artists Development (SICAD) Program Manger with Ananguku Arts and Culture from 2009-2011. He reflects on the potential power of Our Mob when it works.
The inchworm revisited
Artist, writer and honorary visiting Professor at the Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics at the University of Sussex in England Paul Brown sketches out the long intertwining history of the relationship between C.P. Snow's two cultures - art and science, design and mathematics, beauty and computation, and extrapolates upon Lady Ada Lovelace's famous words: "We may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves."
Fractal food
John Walker is the founder of Autodesk, Inc. and co-author of AutoCAD. In Fractal Food he discusses the marvel of fractal forms (complex shapes which look more or less the same at a wide variety of scale factors) as they are seen in a rather wonderful vegetable - the chou Romanesco.
Openwork patterns: Love Lace
Powerhouse Museum Curator of Textiles Lindie Ward discusses the groundbreaking 'Love Lace' exhibition on show at the Powerhouse until April 2013. A globally sourced series of works it showcases 130 designs for openwork structures from 20 countries.
A Meme is born
Adelaide writer and artist Peter Drew looks at various examples of recent street art and the many ways it is circulated and reproduced as a meme in a wired and globally connected world. "As it turns out," he says, "memetics can be very useful in understanding the patterns of street art."
Not just black and white
Scholar and inaugural director of the new Godinymayin Yijard Rivers Arts and Culture Centre in Katherine Cath Bowdler discusses the work of two indigenous artists Brook Andrew and Gunybi Ganambarr and suggests that they are both operating at a conceptual level as bricoleurs in a globalised world, inventing new juxtapositions of materials and revealing new ways of seeing the world through the prism of local histories and traditions.
Chromophobes, Xenophones and Lots of Textas
Kirsten Farrell muses on colourphobia through her life, her Phd and her reading of the book Colourphobia (2000) by David Batchelor
Sara Hughes: Colour coded to quicken the heart
New Zealand-based Sara Hughes considers colour has been degraded throughout Western history. She uses coloured vinyl applied to architecture to "articulate social meaning".
World Summit on Arts & Culture
Executive Director of NAVA Tamara Winikoff missed the voices of artists at the October 2011 World Summit on Arts & Culture in Melbourne.
Good enough to eat: Katherine Hattam's paintings
Crikey.com blogger and book designer W.H. Chong describes the paintings of Katherine Hattam that "zing and crackle with edible hues."
The Digital attribution of Colour
Director of Sydney-based New Media Curation Deborah Turnbull explores the way colour choices in a digital environment involve ideological and philosophical dimensions as well as aesthetic ones.
Speaking in Colour
Artist and curator Una Rey writes about the exhibition 'Speaking in colour' that she curated for the Newcastle Gallery from their collection in March-May 2011. Her experience of working with Indigenous artists in Central Australia coloured her choices and her interpretations of them.
The Mystery of Shit: Wim Delvoye
Belgian artist Wim Delvoye is having a retrospective at Hobart's MONA. Stephanie Radok looks at the materials and concepts he uses in a broad context and asks whether his art is critical or spectacle.
The Hammer and the Screw: Thom Buchanan's drawings
South Australian artist Thom Buchanan's most recent drawing adventure was on stage with dancers from the ADT.
Radical Ethology: Jussi Parikka's Insect Media
In his meditations on the recently published book Insect Media by Jussi Parikka, the New York-based staff writer for Rhizome at the New Museum Jacob Gaboury suggests that the dehumanisation of media technologies may be seen as engaging with the world in a form of non-human affect.
Bridging the brains of humans, bees and flies: Fiona Hall at the QBI
'Out of mind' the work by Fiona Hall at the Queensland Brain Institute at the University of Queensland draws together scientific research with art research to demonstrate that both approach the world with wonder and intrigue. "Hall’s work ... is apt for neuroscientists are indebted to the neural architecture of animals. The brains of insects like fruit flies or honeybees are much smaller and simpler than ours, yet because similar molecular mechanisms underlie their operation, these creatures may very well hold the keys to unlocking the mysteries of autism, schizophrenia, depression and a range of other human disorders."
Caterpillar Country
Alice Springs-based writer Kieran Finnane describes the caterpillar dreaming in the Alice Springs area. She draws attention to changing attitudes over the years towards traditional custodians and the places they care for.
Flight of the Cicada: Susan Purdy's insect photograms
The inaugural Watermark Literary Fellow Carolyn Leach-Paholski describes the black and white photograms of Susan Purdy which were made in the course of a long wet winter.
Transplanting Life: the distributed media of embodied selves. The Body is a big place
Personality psychologist at Macquarie University Doris McIlwain does yoga and throws pots. She writes about new media installation 'The Body is a Big Place' the recent work of Peta Clancy and Helen Pynor which deals with the complexities of organ donation.
We Are Here: the International Symposium for Artist Run Initiatives
This year marks the 41st anniversary of the development of ARIs in Australia, and as both a celebration of and an indication of how far national and international ARIs have come, a four-day symposium organised by NAVA and Firstdraft was held in Sydney in September 2011.
Memoir Series: Elnathan Mews
A further instalment in the memoirs of Australia's most revered art theorist Donald Brook. Yes, he is still alive.
Jon Cattapan: Night vision goggles
Jon Cattapan is a painter who lives in Melbourne. In 2008 he was commissioned by the Australian War memorial as an official artist auspiced by the Australian Army in Timor Leste. He is represented by Milani Gallery and KALLIMANRAWLINS.
Surreptitious Pictures
Professor of Art History at Victoria University, Wellington, NZ and author of 'Photography Degree Zero' Geoffrey Batchen writes about the secret history of secret cameras.
Contemporary Chinese Art
Christen Cornell manages Local Consumption Publications and 'Artspace China' a blog on contemporary Chinese culture. Currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Sydney on China's contemporary art districts her article outlines the very latest developments in this volatile field.
Clinical and critical: From Von Trier to Haneke
Legendary film critic Adrian Martin examines the inclusion of low tech digital footage in many recent films including the 'Paranormal Activity' horror-thrillers by Oren Peli and 'The Video Diary of Ricardo Lopez' by Sami Saif.
Elizabeth Woods: There is going to be a wedding and you are all invited
Elizabeth Woods' art practice has for many years revolved around the relationship between place, artist and community and what arises from their connection to each other. Marrying a tree is its latest manifestation.
An encounter with the National Galleries
Lecturer in the Australian Indigenous Studies program at the University of Melbourne, Odette Kelada describes her visit to the National Gallery of Australia's new Indigenous galleries and the National Portrait Gallery that is just next door and views them as sites of contemporary Frontier warfare.
Fearing Truganini
Tasmanian essayist and poet, currently working as Indigenous Visiting Research Scholar at AIATSIS in Canberra, Greg Lehman looks over David Hansen's recent award-winning essay entitled 'Seeing Truganini' and finds it wanting.
Self-Abrasion of our Nations
Curator and artist Brenda Croft gets experiential in telling about Australia Day, her latest exhibition Stop (the) gap and what is shared by indigenous people around the globe.
Trevor Nickolls: Other side Art
This is the first time that noted historian and writer on Aboriginal art Ian McLean has written a substantial interpretive artcile on the work of Trevor Nickolls. Nickolls began working in the 70s and is still painting his own particular brand of cross-cultural art.
Denis Nona: Art Terroir-ist
Griffith Artworks and Griffith University Art Gallery Director Simon Wright reviews the stellar career in sculpture and printmaking of Torres Strait Islander Denis Nona whose newest commission at the Musée des Confluences in Lyon is eight metres high.
Fiona Foley: Public and Political
Fiona Foley's recent public work has gone from strength to strength most recently at Mackay where her six large new works form a trail commemorating the Pacific and black history of the region.
Jason Wing: In Flight
Larissa Behrendt writes about both soothing and painful installations and paintings by Jason Wing that explore his Chinese and Aboriginal roots.
Jo Rootsey: Painting Country
Dina Ibrahim looks at the Joe Rootsey Retrospective curated by Bruce McLean at the Queensland Art Gallery in 2010 to find an artist who in his short life achieved compelling evocations of his relationship to country.
Darren Siwes: dialogue with Rembrandt
Dutch art historian Marianne Riphagen, whose PhD looked at contemporary Indigenous photo-media artists, draws togther the dark and light in the artwork of Rembrandt and South Australia-based Darren Siwes to question the Dutch Golden Age.
Yalangabara: Art of the Djang'kawu
'Yalangabara: Art of the Djang'kawu' curated by Banduk Marika and Margie West includes art made from 1939 till recently. All works are about the same creation story and all comprise a history of creative and spiritual custodianship by the Marika family of the Rirratjingu clan.
To hold and protect: Mulka at Yirrkala
The Mulka Project is a Yolngu archive and production centre incorporating a theatre, media lab, project office, audio video library and museum. “As the Mulka Project is growing up we need to be clear that it is just a resource and the law and culture is coming from the land where people are staying, even where there is no one staying, its patterns, the designs and culture, are coming from the country.” states Djambawa Marawili.
Romantic Landscapes
Laura Fisher worked for three years on indigenous artists' biographies for the DAAO (Dictionary of Australian Artists Online) and is now completing a doctoral thesis on the indigenous art market at the University of NSW. Here she brings her wide knowledge to bear on representational and romantic landcape paintings by indigenous artists.
Blandowski's Illustrated Encyclopaedia
Freelance curator, honorary associate of Museum Victoria and Blandowski-ite from way back John Kean analyses this prickly Prussian polymath's Illustrated Encyclopedia on Australia at last brought together and to light by the efforts of New Zealander Harry Allen. The book includes contributions by Mark Dugagrist, Brook Andrew, Luise Hercus and Thomas A. Darragh.
Torres Strait Islander watercolours
The Queensland State Library Executive Manager of Indigenous research and projects Tom Mosby writes about the Margaret Lawrie Works on Paper Collection and the role of art in the lives of Torres Strait Islanders. Between July and October 2011, the watercolours in the Margaret Lawrie Works on Paper Collection will, for the first time, be exhibited together as part of 'Strait Home' at the State Library of Queensland.
Yiwarra Kuju: The Canning Stock Route
Sarah Scott reviews and questions Yiwarra Kuju: The Canning Stock Route exhibition at the National Musuem of Australa. She asks: "Why don’t the NMA’s collections of Indigenous material culture feature more strongly in their exhibition program? Why are both the NMA and the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) collecting the highly sought after and expensive works produced by major Papunya artists? If the commissioning of art and associated documentary material is a priority for the NMA what other Indigenous material culture may they be neglecting?"
Remembering Forward at the Museum Ludwig
Curator at AAMU Georges Petitjean describes the 'Remembering Forward' exhibition at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne in detail, how it came about, what surrounds it and what it might mean.
CoBra and Aboriginal art at AAMU, Utrecht
Newtown fellow at the University of Cambridge Khadija La visited AAMU (the Musuem of Contemporary Aboriginal Art) in Utrecht to see "Breaking with Tradition" an exhibition curated by Georges Petitjean that hangs works by CoBrA artists together with work by Indigenous artists and Roar artists who work or worked in Indigenous art centres.
A Third Path: the Musée des Confluences
French curator Arnaud Morvan, who recently completed his Phd at the University of Melbourne on the art of the East Kimberley, writes about the new approach to showing and consulting about Indigenous art taken by the still-under construction Musée des Confluences (due to open in 2014) in Lyon. "It represents a first step towards an abolition of the segregation endured by non-Western art in Europe and an attempt to rise above the antiquated opposition between art and ethnography."
Elcho Island: Morning Star over London
Artlink's UK contributing editor Jo Higgins interviewed Melbourne-born London gallerist Rebecca Hossack about her Indigenous art program and her attempts to raise its profile in London. She has two galleries and each summer for three months both galleries show only Australian Indigenous art in her Songlines series. Recently Elcho Island art featured.
New displays at Pitt Rivers Museum
In 2009 eight new case displays were added to the legendary 1884 Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. Indigenous art scholar and lecturer Susan Lowish examines how Aboriginal art fared in this rejig of history.
Rising Queensland Indigenous artists
As leaders of unique working partnerships between the Indigenous art industry and the Queensland Government, pioneers like Judy Watson, Dennis Nona, Vernon Ah Kee, Richard Bell and Sally Gabori have established strong international reputations.
Donning Oxford
Christian Thompson who is one of the two inaugural Charlie Perkins Scholars at Oxford University writes about this experience and how it makes him think of his upbringing and the responsibility it entails. "...it is our arrival at Oxford that reminds me of how much work we still have ahead of us as young Aboriginal people and future leaders of our communities. This is something you feel as an inherent responsibility when you meet people daily from all around the world, whose communities are facing similar hardships and the symptoms of the ravages of colonisation; time is of the essence."
Action at Canopy Artspace in Cairns
Canopy Artspace first opened for the 2009 Cairns Art Fair. It houses the Australian Art Print Network, New Flames Foundation and Editions Tremblay NFP (no Fixed Press). Paloma Ramos who works at Editions Tremblay vividly decribes the intense and fertile work in printmaking and sculpture that happens at Canopy.
Euraba Paper Company, Boggabilla
Associate Lecturer at the College of Fine Art in Sydney Tess Allas writes about when she was NSW Regional Indigenous Cultural Officer and first met the women of Boggabilla who formed the Euraba Paper Company which won the Parliament of NSW Aboriginal Art Prize in 2010.
Working in Indigenous Art Centres
Felicity Wright speaks from long experience, as a worker and as a reviewer of art centres on Aboriginal lands. Her thoughtful article teases out many do's and don'ts in this highly contested field.
Old Categories, New Frameworks: Asia-Australia
Writer, researcher and arts manager Christen Cornell studies the way China is now much more of a player on the international art curcuit than Australia and what it means to young Chinise-Australian artists.
Transcultural Radical
Director of 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art in Sydney Aaron Seeto attends to the artwork of Sumugan Sivanesan, Sangeeta Sandrasegar, Guan Wei and Kaleb Sabsabi to raise questions of experiences of cultural difference and the way they are inadequately critically interrogated in contemporary art practice.
Unrequited Language: Khaled Sabsabi
Freelance writer and doctoral candidate Farid Farid analyses the installations and videos of deep thinker Khaled Sabsabi which use sound and collaboration as a significant part of their presence.
Flight, Philippines: Nothing to Declare
Associate Professor at the University of the Phillipines and visiting research fellow at the University of New South Wales Flaudette May V. Datuin looks at the complex ideas of home, absence and presence in the work of artists examining the lives of Overseas Filipino and Filipina workers (OFWs).
Traditional Skills: Refugees
South Australia's Craftsouth ran an outstanding workshop series in May 2010 where refugees with traditional craft skills from six countries taught their secrets to Australian craftspeople.
Weeds without Frontiers: Stephanie Radok
Poet, novelist and broadcaster Cath Kenneally examines the recent work of Stephanie Radok which involves weeds painted on beer coasters and finds tenacity, diversity and survival-skills in it.
Iran: Scripts of Despair and Love: Nasim Nasr & Siamak Fallah
Curator, artist and doctoral candidate Lisa Harms writes about two artists, Nasim Nasir and Siamak Fallah, both originally from Iran who now live and work in Adelaide and make work that references their homeland.
Creative Adaption and Continuing Conversations
A flying journey through some of the Australia Council's most recent innovative projects which are also conversations with community partners and where outcomes are broad and diverse leading potentially to new forms of contemporary art practice...
Open House Singapore Biennale 2011
One of the curators of the Singapore Biennale Australian Russell Storer explains how the Biennale is a sited conversation, about place as well as process.
Curious and Collaborative: Encounters in Tokyo, Singapore & Yogyakarta
Next Wave Artistic Director Emily Sexton and Next Wave Artistic Program manager Ulanda Blair discuss the waves of Invisible Structures a project curated by Next Wave and supported by Asialink in which Australian artist collectives do exchanges with collectives in Tokyo, Singapore and Yogyakarta.