Although the Centenary Venice Biennale has a number of faces, the primary one is to represent the face of contemporary art through international participation of 43 countries at their official pavilions.
Each age has apparently had some theory of the face. Article links to the exhibition 'Faciality' curated by Zara Stanhope at the Monash University Gallery. Includes the work of artists Geoffrey Dupree, Chris Barry, Maria Kozic, Gordon Bennett, Peter Kennedy and others.
Rei Zunde is a photographer and painter working in Melbourne. His recent photographic work records specific cultural or sub-cultural worlds - rodeos, tattooed men and women, suburban football teams and their supporter and circus workers and their animals.
Australia now has an embryonic National Portrait Gallery in five small rooms, one larger room and three corridors in Old Parliament House, Canberra. Photos of the opening and the inaugural exhibition 'About Face'.
Exhibition review Contemporay arts of the South Pacific
University of New South Wales
Held in the Gallery of the Alliance Francaise de Sydney
9 May- 2 June 1995
Historically, depictions of Aboriginal people have their gaze diverted away from the viewer. The work of Julie Dowling confronts the viewer to acknowledge the Aboriginal individual communicating as one human being to another.
Review of the 'About Face' exhibition: Angela Stewart and Jenny Loverock. The last 15 years has seen portraiture rise to particular importance in relation to the politics of representation, particularly self representation by women.