Debates about what is mainstream, whether in global or national terms, seem to perennial. Some have claimed Aboriginal art is now mainstream. Stephanie Radok takes this notion apart.
Bridget Riley is an artist who has pursued her own agenda for over thirty years with no concessions and has made a place for herself within the heart of the art world not only with her work but through her extraordinary desire and willingness to communicate. On the occasion of her major survey exhibition in Sydney in the summer of 2004 at the Museum of Contemporary Art she kindly assembled for Artlink some excerpts from some of these interviews.
As with Feminism in the 1970s certain ideas are in the air and finding widespread expression amongst artists and art institutions. Globalism impacts upon artists options and this phenomenon of artists and curators on the move is the result of the explosion of communication around art. Peers looks at the influx in globalism and its various influences in the Australian and international art scene.
Melbournes Moomba festival held in 1956 replaced the annual celebration of the winning of the eight-hour day. Thus an occasion that had originally been devised to commemorate an important victory of the Australian labour movement was transformed into a bipartisan celebration of civic pride and family values.
Subsequent to Nicholls three month residency in several European regions, she has been examining some of the ways in which Australian Aboriginal art is currently being perceived, received and curated in this part of the world. As she states, the Salzburger Kunstvereins programme, juxtaposing photographic works and video installations by Destiny Deacon and Lisl Ponger was the only one of the four European Indigenous art exhibitions she saw that made any serious and genuine effort to address the postcolonial legacy of Anglo-European colonialism.
Asian Traffic was, outside the Asia-Pacific Triennial (APT), one of the most ambitious efforts undertaken in Australia aimed at exploring the multifarious nature of new Asian art and its complex intersection with contemporary Australian culture. Visitors were forced to join the Asian Traffic coming and going from the Asia-Australia Centre in Chinatown, Sydney, and in its ever-changing guises and fluid shifts in direction, the project successfully circumvented any traffic jams.
During his visit to Melbourne in April this year, Bombay-born, Oxford-educated, Harvard professor, Homi Bhabha spoke of Vernacular Cosmopolitanism, the global citizenry of refugees, economic migrants and minorities within cultures who must learn about translation because you survive that way.
Back in 1998, the PVI (Performance, Video, Installation) Collective were a neat group and a fledgling collective. In 2004, seven years and eighteen major works later, the group has expanded to include new members, in addition to remote cells and networks of groups and individuals across Australia. The PVI refer to themselves as shape-shifters, and in this sense the shifting evolution of the collective has been influenced as much by the consequences of their national and international residencies as their addoption of new technologies.
The recent initiative of the Adelaide City Councils Public Art Program Luminosity has seen the commissioning and exhibition of five temporal public art projections between June and December of 2004. The objectives of the initiative aim to foster the Citys image as a centre of creativity and innovation, supporting established and emerging artists through the encouragement of quality new media art, thus making a contribution to the social and cultural substance of the city space.
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