Australia FELIX Catalogue, 2011

Australia Felix

Australia Felix AUGUST 2011

CRANE ARTS PHILADELPHIA

AUGUST 2011

CRANE ARTS PHILADELPHIA

Australia Felix

Foreword ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 7 Paul Cleveland

Introduction �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������8 Ross Woodrow

Nationality, Internationality, and Indigenous Culture ������������ 10 George Petelin

Un-Australian Visions

��������������������������������������������������������������������� 13

Maura Reilly

Artists ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 15 Angela Blakely + David Lloyd �����������������������������������������������������������������16 Debra Porch ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������20 Donna Marcus �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������24 Gordon Hookey ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������28 Ian Burns ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 32 Jay Younger ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������36 Jennifer Herd �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������40 Jenny Watson �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������44 Judy Watson ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������48 Julie Fragar ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 52 Madeleine Kelly ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������56 Marian Drew ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������60 Mostyn Bramley-Moore ��������������������������������������������������������������������������64 Pat Hoffie �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������68 Sebastian Di Mauro �������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 72 William Platz ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 76

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Australia Felix

The Queensland College of Art (QCA),

Japan, Canada, Thailand, Vietnam, China,

Griffith University, is one of Australia’s

Taiwan, Ireland, England, Armenia, France,

oldest art schools. After its inception 130

Austria, Italy, Germany, Turkey, New Zealand,

years ago, QCA occupied a number of

and Russia, to name a few. Interestingly, at

different premises before finally moving to

least three, Mostyn Bramley-Moore, Judy

the current purpose-designed campus on

Watson, and Debra Porch have completed

the South Bank cultural precinct of Brisbane

artist’s residencies in Philadelphia at the

City. Long recognized as a leader in studio

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts or

teaching across all art and design disciplines,

the Fabric Workshop and Museum. Another,

QCA, Griffith, is the premier art college in

Ian Burns, has worked in Philadelphia, at

the State of Queensland, and one of the

the Tyler School of Art, Temple University.

top-ranked art institutions in the nation.

This exhibition will cement these tentative

The seventeen artists in Australia Felix are

linkages and make a significant contribution

all staff, postgraduates, or adjuncts at QCA.

to developing further connections and

Collectively, they represent an impressive

international collaborations between QCA

snapshot of the best senior and emerging

and the vibrant contemporary-art institutions

artists working in Australian. Adjuncts

in Philadelphia.

Judy Watson and Jenny Watson have represented Australia at the Venice Biennale.

Marian Drew and Julie Fragar have recently returned from international residencies in the United States and Spain. In fact, a

Professor Paul Cleveland Director, Queensland College of Art, Griffith University

cursory glance through the exhibited artists’ biographical notes reveals an astonishing chronicle of exhibitions and residencies around the globe, in countries such as

7

In any exhibition, curating is a balancing act

In 1984, I was working in the National

between two competing demands: imposing

Gallery of Australia and was on a study

The catalogue contained a brief essay by Diane Waldman and an extended essay by

a curatorial agenda and highlighting the

tour of museums in the United States.

Memory Holloway titled “Bleak Romantics”.

individuality of each exhibiting artist. This

I anticipated that a highlight of my trip

Holloway does a very good job of attempting

is particularly pointed when the exhibition

would be my visit to the Guggenheim

to locate the work of the artists within

venue is in another country and there is a

Museum, where I would see an exhibition

an Australian historical context by

grand theme such as national identity, as

of contemporary Australian art. Apart

evoking bush fires, mining, and industrial

implied in my title Australia Felix (Fortunate

from the photographer Bill Henson, the

wastelands to explain their apocalyptic

Australia). I would hope that through

represented artists in Australian Visions

vision and to locate them within a collapse

my selection of artists I have tipped the

were all painters, with John Nixon

of stereotypes about the Australian bush

balance towards the latter pole, so that the

presenting his paintings in installation

and myths of a contented suburbia.

impossibility of any consensus in what might

format. This is probably not unexpected

represent the so-called “Lucky Country”

given that 1984 represented the apogee

of Australia is made evident. I have kept

of the international trend of, or claims

alive the ironic connotations of the title’s

for, a return to painting, mostly in a

first use, Henry Handel Richardson’s 1917

Neo-Expressionist style. In other words,

novel Australia Felix, which recounts the

the work fitted comfortably within the

fictionalized life of Richardson’s father on the

“Trans-avantgarde International” that Achille

Victorian gold-fields. In the novel, success

Bonito Oliva had identified in 1982. So

or failure brought doubt and anxiety in equal

much so, that an exhibition visitor might

measure.

have concluded that the selection was

Obviously, no curator can completely escape the imposition of their own agenda, and the very choice of the exhibition’s title fulfils an almost-thirty-year ambition to mount an exhibition in the United States that attempts to represent Australia. In particular, my motivation, which became the rationale for the exhibition, stemmed from my experience of the 1984 exhibition Australian Visions shown at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, which was curated by the Museum’s Deputy Director at that time, Diane Waldman.

Transparent in my intentions, I sent each of the participating artists the following narrative:

made to indicate that Australian artists could compete with the best from around the world in synthesizing European iconography from Classical, Christian to early Modern periods. The dominant landscape represented was the apocalypse in its universal variants of medieval, Gothic, or industrial. The stylistic legacy most evident was all European; Goya, Beckmann, and Malevich, for example. Most startlingly, from today’s standpoint, no Indigenous Australian artists were represented and Indigenous art is only mentioned in the catalogue in a list of clichéd Australian myths as, “the ‘eternal’ culture of aborigines’ [sic]”.

8

No doubt the private and public sponsors of Australian Visions, Exxon Corporation and the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council, considered the exhibition a great success since such international exhibitions are hardly ever critically measured beyond the quality of the guest list at the sponsor’s dinner. From my observations, it was a dismal failure. When I visited the exhibition it was virtually empty and staff reported that the attendance had been low with lacklustre response from visitors.

I also attended an evening public lecture on the show by one of the Guggenheim staff and at that event it became clear why the show was ill-fated. The American lecturer attempted to do the impossible by projecting Holloway’s essay onto individual works, thus hoping to demonstrate their Australianness. The audience became restless and I offered my own dissent by suggesting that the art on view made itself relevant to contemporary discourse by avoiding local reference. As a result, the hapless lecturer’s position—that the art

Australia Felix

represented the essence of Australia—

When I sent the above rationale to the

The biggest debt incurred by any curator is

became untenable, despite my only

artists, I stressed that, whether they were

to their exhibiting artists and I thank them

authority being my broad Australian

making new work or proposing completed

all for their contributions. I was fortunate

accent. In subsequent conversations

work for the exhibition, I simply wanted

that Maura Reilly joined the staff of QCA

with a number of the audience members,

them to remain conscious of the issues it

early this year, after holding distinguished

I discovered that they had been attracted

raised in relation to exhibiting in the United

curatorial appointments in the United

by the promise of the show’s title,

States under a banner of “Australian”. The

States; she has brought a fresh, critical

Australian Visions, hoping that they might

multiple viewpoints that have resulted—

eye to the project. It is the combination

catch a glimpse of a specifically familiar or

from the intensely personal to the stridently

of Maura’s essay and George Petelin’s

imagined Australia. In the case of several

political—are indicative of the range of artists

contribution that provides the cutting edge

couples who spoke to me, the last time

represented. My selection of artists has

to the ironic implications of my exhibition

the now-retired male had seen Australia

also deliberately aimed to complicate any

title, along with an essential gravitas in

was when he flew out of Townsville

deterministic view of a genetic Australian

their objective, historical perspective on my

during WWII. Naturally, I found myself

inheritance; the exhibition includes artists

narrative experience of Australian Visions.

apologizing for the fact that the art on the

with a direct Indigenous connection to

I thank them both for their essays. QCA

Guggenheim’s walls offered no insight

this country and Australian artists born

Griffith University Research Fellow, Ian

into the Australia of their memory and

elsewhere, along with William Platz, who

Burns, needs special acknowledgement for

the place and spirit they had brought

is a recent arrival from the United States,

the way he has encouraged and facilitated

their partners to catch a glimpse of, if not

and Ian Burns who has worked primarily in

the links between Brisbane and Philadelphia.

to understand. Ever since then, I have

the United States for more than a decade.

Finally, I particularly want to express my

remained troubled by the question of how

In sharp contrast to the 1984 Australian

gratitude to Nick Kripal for the invitation to

one might represent Australia through

Visions, no one medium dominates the

bring an exhibition to the Crane Arts Centre

contemporary art without recourse to the

exhibition. This reflects the current situation

in Philadelphia.

dire option of a tourist poster or kitsch

in contemporary art where painting is the

sentiment. Baz Luhrmann’s film Australia

minority inclusion in the survey show or

is surely warning enough of these inherent

international biennale. If there is any anomaly

difficulties. Twenty-seven years on, I’m

in corresponding to current practice, it is

Deputy Director (Research)

guessing that few of those American

the lack of digital or screen work in Australia

Queensland College of Art,

servicemen who visited Australian Visions

Felix. This can be accounted for by the fact

Griffith University

are still around, but it doesn’t remove the

that an exhibition of work from QCA is

imperative to test the possibility that an

scheduled for September 2012 in this venue,

Australian artist (or non-Australian artist, for

which will showcase artists using digital or

that matter) could make uncompromizing

screen-based mediums expressed through

work operating within the boundaries that

games, animation, and digital design.

Professor Ross Woodrow

define contemporary-art discourse and still remain rooted in the local geo-political situation that we know in Australia.

9

Pre-eminent Australian art historian Bernard Smith reports that the first time a receptive

“splendid if unruly soldiers overseas”, in order to support his judgement of the

tactile quality” was judged to be due to Australians’ “insurmountable dependence

audience for Australian art appeared overseas

“considerable urgency”, “shrill sweetness”, and

on reproductions”. As well as this, he noted

was in response to the June 1961 exhibition

“tightly strung lyricism” in the work exhibited.iii

that Australian painting in 1961 had “a

entitled Recent Australian Painting held at

Similarly, in 1984, Diane Waldman, Deputy

the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London.i

Director of the Guggenheim Museum, New

climate ... a harsher, more lurid version of the

He also notes that “its attempt to select

York, claimed that the work she introduced as

Mediterranean countries”. vi Waldman, twenty-

the best of what was available over the

curator of Australian Visions, “like Australia

three years later, wrote that Australian art

whole field ensured, unfortunately, that

itself ... refuses to be polite and quiet” and

was “distinct from the humanist landscape

it would be promoted and viewed as an exhibition of Australian art”. Consequently,

“does not conform to our expectations of a seemly art”. Moreover, she judged, it is

natural plastic sense fed by the sun and

and portrait painting that has evolved since the Renaissance” and expostulated about

he reports, “many futile attempts were

characterized by “a raw energy” and “a rude

made at the time to define the essential

sense of colour and form”. iv

enhances even the whitest white”. vii

As if to confirm such “foreigner’s impressions”

Both Robertson and Waldman, in their

nature of Australian art”. ii

“the heat and the intensity of the light which

Sadly, when comparing the discourse

of Australian character, even in its denial, a

respective catalogues, did their best to

found in the 1961 exhibition catalogue to

young Robert Hughes, in his contribution to

legitimate the “wild colonials” to their

that in the catalogue of Australian Visions

the Recent Australian Painting catalogue, told

compatriots. As evidence of Australians’

(1984), a significant United States-based

the English not to treat Australians as “rough-

acceptability, Robertson earnestly cited

exhibition held over two decades later, little

hewn visionaries” because we were “no

Australia’s cricketing prowess, and the fact

had apparently changed. Both catalogues—

longer the wild pets of the supercultivated”.

that the then chairman of the Tate Gallery

and indeed most catalogues of Australian

He further admonished the Britons that

had an Australian wife. Waldman, on her

international shows produced ever since—

there was “little point in looking at Australian

part, drew parallels with the legendary

have tended to pursue the same discourse

art with the slightly complacent wonder

American past; referring to Australia as

of ‘national identity’. In each case, the

with which Captain Cook regarded his

“the last frontier” and as thus having

unique Australian landscape, its harsh

first platypus”. v

“much in common with the U.S.”. viii

sunlight, its geographic isolation, and its convict origins are themes that have been routinely invoked to explain quite different stylistic characteristics in the work being described. Such discourse paints an image of Australians as “wild colonials” who are always on the threshold of a new cultural era.

Both Robertson and Waldman used themes

In both catalogues, there is a distinctly

of geographic isolation and unique climate

optimistic tone that prophesies a newly

to rationalize the particular version of stylistic

prosperous era of Australian culture.

features that each found in the Australian

For example, Robertson celebrates the

art of their respective period. Robertson

consolidation of “awareness of Australia’s

concluded that being deprived of a first-hand

fresh cultural identity” by news of “an

experience of European culture’s Renaissance

extraordinary opera house” and “an ambitious

In the Recent Australian Painting catalogue,

roots meant that Australian artists possessed

project for a new museum in Melbourne”. ix

the curator, British gallery director Bryan

a viewpoint that was not “saturated with the

He goes on to conclude that in the coming

Robertson, wrote of Australians’ “irreverence

gaze of five centuries of artists” as was the

decade Australian art would gain “a maturity”,

to authority and convention” and of Australia’s

case with British painters. A “self-conscious

and argues that further one-man shows by

10

Australia Felix

Australian artists are “badly needed” and

to his 1961 catalogue essay, exhibited

“would be of considerable interest to the

artworks in the Recent Australian Painting

an international showing of Australian art.

London public”.x In the same document,

exhibition, abandoned painting and went on

The problem is that it requires patient

Kenneth Clark affirms that Australia was

to international fame as a critic.

“about to add something entirely fresh to contemporary painting”. xi

While both exhibitions predominantly featured figurative art, almost mid-way between

In Australian Visions too, Waldman writes

these shows an exhibition of Australian

of a “new awareness of and pride in a

internationalist abstraction titled Ten

native tradition” and “a growing recognition

Australians (1974–75) toured Great Britain,

on the part of many Australians that they

France, Germany, and Italy. Its catalogue

have a special role to play in the world”. She

contained the standard themes and their

Australian remains to be witnessed within

observation and more than passing familiarity with Australia to see it. It seems incomprehensible to Australians, for instance, that New York audiences failed to recognize landscape and instead saw abstract expressionism in the sparsely distributed brushwork of Fred Williams at MoMA in 1977.xv

concludes her introduction by referencing

denial, this time by Australian Prime Minister

What the early clichés also failed to recognize

the “boldness and individuality of current

Gough Whitlam, and Patrick McCaughey,

is that, as well as “wild colonials”, Australia

Australian art”, which she sees as mirroring

then Professor of Visual Arts at Monash

contained those who were colonized by them.

“the boundless vitality and variety of an

University, and subsequently director of

Although the Papunya school that introduced

Australian society in rapid flux, poised on the

the National Gallery of Victoria. Although

Aboriginal acrylics on canvas began in 1971,

threshold of a new era”. xii Both catalogues

writing about some of the most abstract

it was not until the mid-to-late 1980s, with

thus blend a nationalist and an internationalist

paintings ever sent by Australia overseas,

exhibitions such as Dreamings: The Art of

theme within a discourse of cultural value

McCaughey gave tribute to figuration, the

Aboriginal Australia (1988), that Indigenous

and economic promise. Whether this value

Australian Impressionists of the Heidelberg

culture began to characterize Australian

and promise were, still can, or ought to

School, and the Australian Expressionists,

art overseas. The comfort with which

be, fulfilled, are questions of considerable

for shaping “an Australian consciousness”.

Aboriginal art sat on gallery walls alongside

complexity.

He then went on to acknowledge that, while

contemporary European art problematized

In terms of international cultural value, if we are to believe the later catalogue, the first era of promise was not consummated.

According to Waldman, Australian art in the 1970s, “prior to this resurgence … produced little of lasting value”.xiii However, in terms of international marketing, history indicates a different picture. The decade following Recent Australian Painting saw many Australians

“to many Australian artists of the present moment, Australian consciousness is either

previous notions of ‘authenticity’ associated with ethnographic artefacts. Aboriginal

an embarrassment or an irrelevance”, the art

painting began to be recognized as being as

in Ten Australians “embodies an authentic

contemporary as any other art form and that

Australian experience”.xiv Unimpeded by this

it belonged to a dialogue with international

apparent parochialism, McCaughey went

trends. And, at the same time that central

on to direct the Wadsworth Atheneum in

desert art moved on to canvases to become

Hartford, Connecticut, and then the Yale

an international commodity, urban Aboriginal

Center for British Art.

taking up temporary, and in some cases

While this demonstrates that Australians

permanent, residence in London, conducting

have contributed to international culture

successful shows, and generally paving

despite clichéd interpretation, it does not rule

the way for Australia’s participation in the

out the possibility that something intrinsically

artists started to make their mark on Australian culture. In 1984, Contemporary Artspace in Sydney brought together Aboriginal urban-based artists for the first time, in an exhibition called Koori Art.

world market. Hughes, who had, in addition

11

Full recognition of contemporary urban

of colonialism. Their work draws on many

Indigenous art came when Trevor Nickolls, an

international influences but always retains

art-school-trained artist who began exploring

something inimitably Australian. What that is

his Indigenous heritage from the late 1970s,

may well still be “rude and unseemly” and,

was selected along with remote-area

once again, “poised on the verge of a new

Indigenous artist Rover Thomas to represent

era”, but it cannot be reduced to clichés.

Australia at the 1990 Venice Biennale. In

Look at the pictures and see for yourself.

the same year, the Queensland Art Gallery mounted Balance 1990 curated by Michael Eather and Trevor Nickolls’s wife Marlene Hall, the first state-gallery exhibition to embrace a unity of urban and remote-community

Dr George Petelin Senior Lecturer, Art Theory Queensland College of Art, Griffith University

Indigenous art and non-Indigenous contemporary art.

Balance was more than an exhibition. It was

Notes i

Bernard Smith, Australian Painting 1877–1970 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1971), 302.

resulted from Balance included a chain of

ii

Ibid., 346.

Indigenous art organisations, a university

iii

Bryan Robertson, “Preface,” to Recent Australian Painting (London: White Chapel, 1961), 5, 8.

iv

Diane Waldman, “Impressions of Australia,” Australian Visions (New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1984), 10.

v

Robert Hughes, “Introduction,” in Recent Australian Painting, 13.

a catalyst for intercultural social networking and for social change. The associations that

Visual Art degree course based on indigenous principles, the Bachelor of Visual Art in Contemporary Australian Indigenous Art (BoVACAIA) at Griffith University, and what may be argued as Australia’s most vigorous contemporary-art group: ProppaNOW.

vi Bryan Robertson, “Preface”, 11.

As I have written elsewhere, “as central

viii Ibid., 9.

vii Diane Waldman, “Impressions of Australia,” 9.

desert art becomes ever more tourist-

ix Bryan Robertson, “Preface”, 6.

corrupted and shallow, ProppaNOW

x

represents the Australian art wave of the future”.xvi Its focus is to contribute to

xi Kenneth Clark, “Australian Painting: Whitechapel 1961,” in Recent Australian Painting, 4.

contemporary artistic debate from a unique

xii Diane Waldman, “Impressions of Australia,” 10.

indigenous perspective. Its members,

xiii Ibid.

Richard Bell, Tony Albert, Laurie Nilsen, Gordon Hookey, Bianca Beetson, Jennifer Herd, and Vernon Ah Kee all have two things in common: an Aboriginal heritage and a grim sense of humor about the tragic history

12

Ibid., 7.

xiv Patrick McCaughey, “The Australia Experience,” in Ten Australians (Canberra: Australia Council, 1974), np. xv See William Liebermann, Fred Williams: Landscapes of a Continent (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1977). xvi George Petelin, “proppaNOW,” in proppaNOW 2004–2008 (Brisbane: QIAMEA, 2009), 13.

Australia Felix

From 1978 to 1987, the Exxon Corporation

phrasing throughout harkens back to romantic,

she called it “a strong and truly interesting

sponsored nine exhibitions at the

colonialist ideals of a paradise lost, the “last

show”, and commended Waldman for having

Guggenheim Museum in New York. The

frontier”. (Indeed, she uncritically quotes a

done “a first-rate job of capturing the essence

series purported to be a presentation of the

problematic, albeit lyrical, passage from 1789

of the country”. iii

newest work from countries as varied as

written by Charles Darwin.) She describes

the United States, France, Italy, Britain, and

the Australian landscape as “unruly”, “lush”,

Australia. Over this nine-year period, the

and “fertile”, all of which smack of the kind

series introduced a total of eighty-five artists,

of descriptions made by Paul Gauguin on

some of whom are well-known today, among

Tahiti in his 1893 book, Noa Noa! Considering

them Sandro Chia, Enzo Cucchi, Giuseppe

her outdated romantic vision of Australia, it

Penone, Barbara Kruger, Martin Puryear,

should come as no surprize that as a curator-

Dale Frank, and Bill Henson.

The 1984 Exxon International Australian Visions, curated by the museum’s thenDeputy Director, Diane Waldman, was a personalized selection of works meant to epitomize Waldman’s vision of Australia. In her vision, Australian art of the 1980s was superior to the previous decade, which was described as having “little of lasting value”.

This new art was dominated by gestural and figurative painting influenced by European Neo-Expressionism. The “difference” between her chosen examples and the European ones, Waldman explains, is that the Australians responded directly to the “overwhelming presence of the land” that

explorer Waldman “discovered” artists that ostensibly epitomized the specific “raw energy” she sought. With this context, it would have been unsurprizing if she had presented Aborigines as ‘noble savages’.

Instead, they were jarringly altogether absent.

And, while the exhibition was commended at the time for being the only Exxon show to include a reasonable number of women artists (three out of nine), nothing in the

that sought to represent the essence of nations, or of minority groups––with examples including not only the nine Exxon shows, but also innumerable ones devoted to Latin American Art, African Art, Black Art, Queer Art, and, of course, Women’s Art.

and/or cultural essentialism. Since the

say the least.ii

1970s, feminist and post-colonial theorists

History has demonstrated that most of the Exxon shows were not well received critically.

shows occurred faster than their curators

to contemporary art.i

could comfortably research and select them,

of Australian Aboriginal people), but, her

common then. During the 1970s and ‘80s, there were countless exhibitions worldwide

is that they are often characterized by gender

has the sense that, above all, the Exxon

alarming comment, given the ongoing plight

Yet such ‘specialized’ exhibition models were

on the part of both curator and art critics, to

represent “apocalyptic” landscapes.

being a “pioneer in social reform” (an

In other words, while admirable in its aim, Australian Visions was doomed to failure.

The problem with exhibitions such as these

In sum, this is their “unique contribution”

Australia as having a “convict culture” and

an exhibition of works epitomizing an entire nation is truly a curatorial impossibility.

surrounding criticism highlighted the lack of

As Roberta Smith explains in 1987, “One

troubling. Not only does she refer to

must be stated that Waldman set herself up with an almost-unachievable task. To organize

Indigenous artists––a reprehensible omission

is specific to their country, and that they

Waldman’s catalogue essay is particularly

While the exhibition was seriously lacking, it

that the money would have been better used if spent more slowly.” While Smith singled out Peter Booth’s Painting 1984 as a “sprightly reprise of Neo-Expressionism” (and reproduces it), she describes the rest of the shows as “visual inertia”. (Ouch.) Yet, when Vivien Raynor reviewed the exhibition in 1984,

have been critiquing the former, arguing that it effaces heterogeneity, and does not account for cultural differences between women. These same theorists argue against a monolithic definition of woman and, by extension, that of a global sisterhood, definitions that assume a sameness in the forms of women’s oppression regardless of local circumstances. Analogously, according to Uma Narayan, cultural essentialism “often equates the values and worldviews of the socially dominant group(s) with those of all members of the culture”. iv Opponents of cultural essentialism ask questions like,

13

What is an American? An Australian? A Saudi?

Australia Felix is not an attempt at a facile

Notes

An Egyptian? An Indian? How is it, they argue,

nationalism that would claim to speak for all

that a heterogeneous group of individuals,

Australians worldwide. Instead, it recognizes

of different sexes, races, classes, religions,

that identity “itself [is] a constitutively

i Diane Waldman, “Impressions of Australia,” Australian Visions (New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1984), 9.

sexualities, and nationalities, can somehow

multi-voiced arena of struggle”, v and that no

unequivocally ‘represent’ the essence

one person can speak for, or represent, the

of a country? And how, in the context of

whole. Instead, this exhibition examines the

art production, is it that these disparate

complex relation between and within the

individuals can express a visually similar

centers and the peripheries, the local and the

national identity?

The current exhibition, Australia Felix, curated by Ross Woodrow, addresses these questions head on. As such, it is a direct curatorial response—and ‘corrective’—to the 1984 exhibition. What is most refreshing about this exhibition is that it does not presuppose an essentialist definition of Australia. The works in no way reflect a ‘national identity’ or a recognizably similar

global. Australia Felix practises a relational curatorial approach, or what Chandra Talpade Mohanty has called a “comparative studies model”,vi which aims to dismantle restrictive dichotomies (us/them, center/ periphery, white/black, east/west) in favor of examining themes about the individual and their collective experiences of individuals cross-culturally.

Because it should always be contextualized

formal style. Instead what unites the

and located, any strict definition of “Australian”

exhibiting artists is that they are all loosely

in this exhibition has been kept open and

associated with the Queensland College of

supple and has not been considered an easily

Art in Brisbane—as instructors or alumnae.

delineated term., e.g., not all Aussies ‘come

This is the only thing they share—a résumé

from the land down under’, surf, drink VB,

notation. Some were born in Australia, others

or say ‘g’day mate’. As such, it is an exhibition

the United States, and others the UK. Not all

that de-essentializes “Australia”—and in

of them identify as being an “Australian artist.”

so doing demonstrates the complexities

In other words, this is simply a representative

of contemporary art, and respects the

sampling of ‘art (shipped) from Australia’,

multifariousness of identities (class, racial,

not ‘Australian art’.

There are no apocalyptic landscapes in this current exhibition. Instead, we experience contemporary art (again, ‘shipped from Australia’) as one characterized by the use of multiple media (unlike its predecessor, which emphasized painting) and innumerable artistic themes, ranging from animal rights, fairytales, self-portraiture, migrant communities, and Indigenous politics through gestural abstraction, kineticism, and lyrical works about memory.

14

ethnic, gender, sexual), in a way that is not limiting. This is an exhibition about the polyvocal—a cacophony of voices— not a monologue of sameness.

Professor Maura Reilly Professor of Art Theory, Queensland College of Art, Griffith University

ii Grace Glueck, “At the Guggenheim: 7 Italian Shows in One,” The New York Times, 2 April 1982. iii Vivien Raynor, “Capturing Essence of a Remote Australia,” The New York Times, 5 October 1984.

As an aside it is worth noting Australian author Memory Holloway’s essay in the Australian Visions catalogue; Holloway argues against Waldman’s assertion of an ‘authentic’ Australia, stating that “There is no one Australia. It is more accurate to view this place, its culture and its art, as Meaghan Morris has recently characterized it, as ‘a compilation culture of borrowed fragments, stray reproductions and alien(ated) memories ... what we have to begin with.’ And to go from there.” Memory Holloway, “Bleak Romantics,” Australian Visions, 11. iv Uma Narayan, “Essence of Culture and a Sense of History: A Feminist Critique of Cultural Essentialism,” Hypatia 13, no. 2, (Spring 1998): 89. v Ella Shohat in the introduction to her edited volume, Talking Visions: Multicultural Feminism in a Transnational Age (New York: New Museum of Contemporary Art; Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998), 16. vi Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “‘Under Western Eyes’ Revisited: Feminist Solidarity through Anticapitalist Struggle,” in her Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2003), 242–44.

Australia Felix

Artists

15

Angela Blakely and David Lloyd lecture in

These people had been denied justice through

give voice to the people in their stories, they

photojournalism and documentary practice at

the pragmatics of national politics and the

seek to celebrate each person’s particularity,

Queensland College of Art, Griffith University.

international community’s indifference.

negate stereotypes, and identify those traits

Their collaboration began in 1994 when

Throughout this period, Blakely and Lloyd

that connect all humans. Whether working

they were commissioned by the Australian

also worked individually throughout crisis

collaboratively or alone, Blakely and Lloyd see

Army to accompany the first rotation of

areas in Somalia, Bosnia, and Malawi, as

their documentary practice as an intersection

troops to Rwanda and document Australia’s

well as in Australia, focusing on a number

of investigative journalism, ethnography,

involvement in that crises (published as

of societal issues, including sexual deviancy,

and the politics of aesthetics. Their work is

Rwanda: The Australian Contingent 1994–95,

hospice and palliative care, suicide and grief,

published in books, exhibitions, and papers.

edited by Gavin Fry). In a later collaboration,

and eating disorders.

they were commissioned by the World Health Organisation to document sensitive health-care issues in the former USSR. In 2006 and 2008 they returned to Rwanda to collect stories (visual and text) from the survivors of the 1994 genocide.

16

For Blakely and Lloyd, (visual) storytelling is a strongly political act. It can be used to challenge the boundaries that promote exclusion and establish a more universal and inclusive community. In attempting to

Australia Felix

LEFT

Clive (diptych) 2006, pigment inks on archival matte paper, 60 x 150cm

17

LEFT

Spiderman 2006, pigment inks on archival rag paper, 167 x 118cm

We’re Talking ... Anyone Listening?

In 2002 Angela Blakely and David Lloyd set

They stayed. Blakely and Lloyd had the

The new kids are bright, sassy, and full of

out to drive around Australia and document

privilege of meeting a number of youths who

potential. But it’s a potential that may never

various aspects of living in this country.

were the collateral damage of a nation unable,

be realized. At such a young age, their futures

It was intended to be a light-hearted

or unwilling, to come to grips with its past

appear guaranteed. As their hopes fade, their abuse grows. Statistically, they too will enter

celebration of the nation. However, after

and of a multinational corporation intent on

reaching Mount Isa, their project changed.

maximizing its profits while minimizing its

prisons, abusive relationships, and die early.

Stopping for petrol and something to eat,

social obligations.

And the nation will blame them.

When they returned in 2006 nothing had

In this story, there are no heroes, and the

changed save the children’s faces. Those

villains, of all colours, are disguized and often

they noticed that although the Indigenous and white communities lived in the same town, they occupied different social and political spaces. There seemed to be a tacit agreement not to venture outside of those spaces and to accept as ‘right, just, and proper’ whatever benefits, or lack of benefits, came with these boundaries.

18

whom they had met in 2002 were gone. They

move about unrecognized. Combined, they

heard stories about some of them; they were

take away the futures of many whom the

not good stories. There were no miracles or

nation will never know and of those who

exceptions to talk about. A new group had

speak to you here.

replaced them and so the cycle continues.

Australia Felix

ABOVE (LEFT TO RIGHT FROM TOP)

Black Coke from Artefacts series 2006, pigment inks on archival rag paper, 54 x 54cm Dare from Artefacts series 2006, pigment inks on archival rag paper, 54 x 54cm Australian Export from Artefacts series 2006, pigment inks on archival rag paper, 54 x 54cm Line Marking Paint from Artefacts series 2006, pigment inks on archival rag paper, 54 x 54cm Mountain Dew from Artefacts series 2006, pigment inks on archival rag paper, 54 x 54cm Pop Tops from Artefacts series 2006, pigment inks on archival rag paper, 54 x 54cm White Coke from Artefacts series 2006, pigment inks on archival rag paper, 54 x 54cm Purple Coke from Artefacts series 2006, pigment inks on archival rag paper, 54 x 54cm Silver Coke from Artefacts series 2006, pigment inks on archival rag paper, 54 x 54cm

19

Born in Chicago, Debra Porch has a

in Australia, including one at the South

at Chiang Mai Art Museum (2000),

Masters Degree in Art from San Diego

Australian School of Art (1999). Her most

Casula Powerhouse (2001), and Silpakorn

State University (1979) and a PhD from the

recent residency at the Art and Cultural

University Arts Centre (Bangkok, 2002),

Queensland University of Technology (2006).

Studies Laboratory in Yerevan, Armenia (2010),

as well as Pop Gan Eeek Krang Nueng

She is currently Associate Professor and

allowed her to explore family heritage.

(Meeting Once More) at Chiang Mai

Coordinator of Fine Art at Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Brisbane. Since migrating to Australia in 1984, Porch has presented her installation-based art in twelve one-person exhibitions and numerous group shows. Many of these exhibitions have been associated with artist residencies and crosscultural dialogues that began with a threemonth residency at Chiang Mai University in 1993. Residencies followed in Hanoi at the University of Fine Art for three months in 1996 (via Asialink), returns to Vietnam (1997 and 2001), returns to Chiang Mai University (2000 and 2008), Cité Internationalé des Arts, Paris (2000), and several residencies

20

All of Porch’s cultural experiences and connections inform her art and have resulted in ongoing projects and reciprocal events, such as MEETING, a joint exhibition between Vietnam and Australia (Performance Space, Sydney, 1997), Confluence: 25 Years of Australian−Vietnamese Relations at the Australian Embassy, Hanoi and in Ho Chi Minh City (1997), and 9 Lives, a residency and exhibition for nine contemporary Vietnamese and Australian artists at Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre (Liverpool, NSW, 1999). Others include a series of three exhibitions with artist Noelene Lucas titled Unfinished Business

University Art Centre (2008). Porch’s recent Yerevan experience has resulted in the project Tracing the Erased as part of How We Know That the Dead Return at Gertrude Street Contemporary, Melbourne (2010), and Regards to the Family at Canberra Contemporary Art Space (2011). She is represented in art museum collections in Australia and the United States, and in private collections in Australia, the United States, Vietnam, and Thailand.

Australia Felix

LEFT

From Here to Nowhere 2008, on-site installation, digital photograph, and silk thread, dimensions variable, Chiang Mai Art Museum, Chiang Mai, Thailand

21

Home Here, There, Nowhere We never lose the memories of the past,

These issues are key to Porch’s own journey

especially those having to do with our family.

of uncovering and translating her own

The work Home Here, There, Nowhere continues the dialogue between Porch and

Our recollections of childhood are naturally

history; as a member of the Armenian

her absent ancestors. It has developed out

linked with the geography of our own

diaspora growing up outside of Chicago,

of a 2010 residency with the Art and Cultural

homeland—its colours, its sounds, and

Porch remembers places and events

Studies Laboratory in Yerevan, Armenia. As

its smells.

through other people’s memories and their

the first of her family to return to Armenia

photographs. She is interested in what

since 1920, she felt the most ‘present’

— Julia Kristeva

may or not be visible from her first-hand

and yet truly absent—living between her

Debra Porch’s artistic practice explores

memory, or what could also be referred

second-hand history and the first-hand

whether the ‘everyday’ can be transformed

to as her ‘second-hand’ memory. Memory

ones encountered there. Home Here, There,

into the ‘extraordinary’ through objects and

can be defined as the mental capacity to

Nowhere reflects on Porch’s relationship to Armenia, America, and Australia, interrogating

devices that elicit or conjure up images of

retain and revive impressions, but it also

one’s past that otherwise may have remained

recognizes or recalls previous experiences

notions of where home is, at what point does

hidden (or invisible). Her installations use

and views of the past. Memory involves

the past become the present, and considering

contemporary visual art forms to identify

the length of time that recollection extends

where one’s vision stems from.

significant relationships between place,

over, and one’s response to past events and

history, fact, and fiction to generate dialogues

associations can accentuate awareness of

that vibrate between presence and absence.

the self. Porch’s practice focuses on the idea

Here, memory embraces absence as the

that memory can be preserved, or kept from

mechanism to conjure up impressions of the

disappearing, in relation to the mechanisms

past into the present. The everyday provides

that activate or retrieve it.

links to what is fact or fiction in individual or collective memory, revealing that memory is not fixed but oscillates between the ‘real’ and the ‘invented’.

22

Australia Felix

FAR LEFT

Regards to the Family 2011, installation, dimensions variable, Canberra Contemporary Art Space

TOP LEFT

Regards to the Family (detail) 2011, painting by unknown artist and DVD BOTTOM LEFT

Regards to the Family (detail) 2011, photographs and wood

23

Since 1995, Donna Marcus has held twenty-

While Marcus’s arts practice is predominantly

one solo exhibitions in public and private

studio/gallery based, in recent years she

Marcus has also been the recipient of several Arts Queensland and Australia

galleries, including Naples: The City Revisited,

has also completed a series of large

Council Grants. In 2003, she was resident

Gold Coast City Gallery (2011), Mining,

public artworks. These include Trickle for

at the Australia Council Studio in London,

Monash Faculty Gallery, Monash University,

400 George Street, Brisbane, curated by

and in 1988 she was awarded a D.A.A.D.

Melbourne (2006), Code at the Institute

Jacqueline Armitstead, Cox Rayner Architects

German Government scholarship and studied

of Modern Art, Brisbane (2004), Round,

(2009), Delphinus for KAUST, Saudi Arabia,

painting at the Hochschule der Künste, Berlin.

McClelland Gallery, Langwarrin, Victoria

curated by Urban Art Projects (2009), and

A monograph on her work entitled Donna Marcus: 99% Pure Aluminium was published

(2001) Donna Marcus: Home of Memories:

Steam for Brisbane Square in conjunction

Assemblagen und Objekte, Gallerie Tammen

with architects Denton, Corker, Marshall

by the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, in

and Busch, Berlin (1997), and Anchored

(2006). In 2010 she was commissioned to

2003, and an in-depth discussion of her work

Afloat, Australian Embassy, Paris (1995). She

create Re-entry a large-scale temporary

is included in Marita Bullock’s forthcoming

is represented by Dianne Tanzer Gallery +

installation for Federation Square, Melbourne.

Projects, Melbourne, where she has held five solo exhibitions since 1999.

24

monograph, Memory Fragments: Visualising Difference in Australian History.

Australia Felix

ABOVE

Naples 2011, aluminium, 280 x 280 x 20cm, Image courtesy of Dianne Tanzer Gallery + Projects, Melbourne

25

ABOVE

Naples (detail 1) 2011, aluminium, 280 x 280 x 20cm, image courtesy of Dianne Tanzer Gallery + Projects, Melbourne LEFT

Naples (detail 2) 2011, aluminium, 280 x 280 x 20cm, image courtesy of Dianne Tanzer Gallery + Projects, Melbourne

26

Australia Felix

LEFT

Code 2006, dimensions variable, Monash Faculty Gallery, Melbourne

LEFT

Steam 2006, dimensions variable, Brisbane Square (Photograph: Alex Chomicz)

27

Gordon Hookey was born in North

He is widely travelled having exhibited

Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2009);

Queensland, and belongs to the Waanji

and undertaken residencies in several

Australian, Casula Powerhouse, Sydney

people. Whether by means of installation,

countries and demonstrated pictorial and

(2008); Culture Warriors: National Indigenous

sculpture, painting or print media, Hookey,

lyrical narratives encompassing sculpture,

Triennial, National Gallery of Australia,

always borrowing from current events and

installation, drawing, printmaking, and

Canberra & touring (2007–09); Power and

popular culture, is razor sharp in his wit and

painting. Recent solo exhibitions include

Beauty: Indigenous Art Now, Heide Museum

uncompromizing in his responses to the

Recent Drawings, Nellie Castan Gallery,

of Modern Art, Melbourne (2007).

ironies, hypocrisies, and contradictions he

Melbourne (2010), “WHICHWAY!...?”, Milani

perceives in the social and political world

Gallery, Brisbane (2009), So Fist Tick Catered

around him. Having established a critical

Phenomenaah, Bellas Milani Gallery, Brisbane

body of work over a period of twenty

(2007), and Kopatai at Project Space, Port

years, the quality of Hookey’s work is most

Chalmers, Dunedin, New Zealand (2006).

demonstrated in his determination to deliver

Selected group exhibitions include Jus’

his ideas in as forceful and straight forward a

Drawn at Linden Gallery, Melbourne (2010);

manner as possible.

I Walk the Line: New Australian Drawing,

28

Australia Felix

ABOVE

Cross Roads 2003, oil on canvas, 120 x 80cm

29

LEFT

Conject Jar: Just Did Not Get It (detail) 2006, oil on canvas

LEFT

Conject Jar: Bananas vs Canaries (detail) 2006, oil on canvas

30

Australia Felix

ABOVE

Conject Jar: Pig-Mean-Tation (detail) 2006, oil on canvas, 180 x 400cm

Conjecture was created in Banff, Canada, in

Hookey lets his ideas unfold in a cascade

2004. In 2005 it was exhibited in the studio

of visuals and text creating a dialogue that

space of the urban Aboriginal artist collective

would often link several works into a slick

ProppaNOW in Brisbane, Australia, and at the

narrative. In realizing his vision Hookey has

Koori Heritage Trust in Melbourne, Australia,

built all of his imagery and text onto one

in 2006. Here, Hookey uses the medium of

large wall-canvas. Standing in front of the

oil painting to construct a searing narrative

work is mesmerizing. And although his work

that examines the peculiarities of Australian

can sometimes be laden in its complexity it

national culture that he feels are borne less

is never too difficult to decipher because

of fairness and openness and more of racism

of the story-teller prose Hookey employs

and myopic insolation.

to provide the viewer ready access to his

It is a metaphorical socio-political comment

cutting voice.

on Australian and world issues. The plight of Indigenous and displaced peoples is central to this statement. Aboriginal concerns are human concerns. This artwork is about humanity.

31

Educated in Australia and the United States,

Tours–The Anne Landa New Media Biennial,

Ian Burns has participated in numerous local

at the Art Gallery of NSW in Sydney, Australia.

and international exhibitions, among them

In 2011 he is presenting his first full solo

solo exhibitions in the United States,

museum exhibition at the Butler Gallery

Australia, Spain, Ireland and Austria, and

in Kilkenny, Ireland.

group exhibitions in Germany, the United States, Australia, Norway, and Italy. Recent solo exhibitions include Schrapnell from Märchenland, Hilger Contemporary in Vienna, Austria, and AND THEN… at Anna Schwartz Gallery in Melbourne, Australia. Recent group exhibitions include Almanac: The Gift of Ann Lewis AO, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia, Sensescapes at Nettie Horn in London, UK, Here, There and Everywhere, at Brot Kunsthalle in Vienna, Austria, I Want to Go Somewhere Where the Weather Suits My Clothes, at mother’s tankstation in Dublin, Ireland, and Unguided

32

His works are included in major public collections including the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, and The National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, as well as many important private collections such as the 21C Museum, Kentucky, the Jumex Collection, Mexico, the Berge Collection, Spain and the Chartwell Collection, New Zealand. Burns lives and works in New York and is a Research Fellow at Queensland College of Art, Griffith University.

Australia Felix

LEFT

From Orbit 2011, found object kinectic sculpture, live and recorded high speed video, 460 x 420 x 160cm, installed in the foyer of the Art Gallery of New South Wales

33

ABOVE

Blow-Hard (detail) 2010, video-still from Arctic performance, 7min.

LEFT

Blow-Hard 2010, found objects, pants, fan, DVD-player, TV, micro-controller, 7min. video, 185 x 200 x 81cm

34

Australia Felix

LEFT

What Might Be 2011, wood, incandescent light bulbs, lamp fixtures, magnifying glasses, purpose-built timing system, 250 x 400 x 250cm

In Search of a Good Martini…

Ian Burns’s visual arts practice investigates

In this work, text is produced from construction

the expectations of art viewing, richly mixing

lumber, incandescent light bulbs, and dozens

aggression, belligerence, and certainty

cultural and historiographic polemics with wry

of dime-store magnifying glasses, forming

(ironic or otherwise) common to neon text art.

a kind of faux neon work. However, unlike

Rather, it attempts to form a Deleuzian ‘real’

humor and audience-engaging invention.

Referencing high and low culture with equal zeal, his sculptures and installations produce events, displays, and cinema via everyday household objects and simple constructions. Burns brings the power cables out from behind the couch and combines them with the fluff of the 6pm news into an aesthetic whole, creating systems reflective of the anthropological mayhem borne of globalisation, technological seductions, and ideas over what constitutes good taste in kitchenware. Burns’s works elicit unforgettable images that blur the

It does not demand or declaim with the

neon, What Might Be is not flat to the wall.

relationship with the viewer and engages

Through its bizarre and complex physical

with the inherent nature and language of

presence, What Might Be acts against the

actual advertizing signage; it is an invitation to

trends of slick minimality normally associated

the viewer’s imagination, activated in a space

with illuminated text art. Beyond this physical

and time controlled by the artist.

departure, the nuance of the text itself also departs from the heroic certainty often associated with this form of expression.

The open-ended phrases and wordplay it shifts through and displays, accompanied by the clicking soundtrack of the electrical relays that switch the lights clicking on and off, engages curiosity and investigation.

The clunky operation and sense of this work is partly inspired by the desperate nature of some of the early illuminated signage found on the seedy end of the Las Vegas strip, where an illuminated martini glass on a sign above a bar door, giving promise by its flashing olive, is significantly more appetizing than anything on offer inside

boundaries between hope and negation,

This work is more than just a sign or

its establishment. Whether in Vegas, or

laughter and frustration.

simple trick; it is a sculpture that opens

more sophisticated venues, glitz tends to

For Australia Felix, Burns produced a new work, What Might Be, which continues his project in investigating contemporary art’s addiction to the glitz of illuminated signage.

a dialogue and forms a spatio-temporal

commonly and quickly be equated to glamour.

relationship, consciously informed by the

What Might Be deconstructs this impulse in

history of conceptual text art. As such, the

a venue safely away from the horrors of dirty

work is more than a closed-off statement

glasses and pre-mixed cocktails.

or pronouncement aimed at the spectator.

35

Jay Younger holds undergraduate

In 2002, Arts Queensland supported

Younger’s work has been exhibited

qualifications in painting and photography,

Younger’s production of new photo-

extensively both in Australia and overseas,

from the University College of South East

media work, Ulterior, which focused on

and her photographic works are represented

Queensland and Queensland College of

Queensland’s Fitzgerald Inquiry era. Ulterior

in major public collections throughout

Art (QCA), Griffith University, respectively.

was featured in Glare, a survey of Younger’s

Australia, including the Australian National

After undertaking postgraduate studies in

work from 1987–2002 that was held at the

Gallery, the Queensland Art Gallery, the

photography and educations, in 2011, Younger

University of Queensland Art Museum.

Art Gallery of South Australia, and Artbank.

completed a PhD in the arena of art in public

Glare was accompanied by the first

Her site-specific installation and two-

places, which was jointly supervized by the

monograph on Younger, with essays by

dimensional artworks have been exhibited

visual art and architecture faculties of the

Juliana Engberg and Beth Jackson. Younger

in solo and group exhibitions within the

University of New South Wales, Sydney.

was selected from the 2004 Conrad Jupiters

more experimental contemporary art-space

A practising artist, curator, and writer, Jay

Art Prize, to receive Aria’s Living Art Award.

network, including the Institute of Modern

is an Associate Professor in Photography at

Her photographic artwork, The Spin Doctors’

Art, Artspace, the Australian Centre for

QCA, and was its Deputy Director from July

Mirage IV, was enlarged to billboard size

Photography, the Australian Centre for

2005–December 2008. She has been the

on the Aria building at Broadbeach during

Contemporary Art, and the Contemporary

recipient of three significant Australia Council

2005. Younger has also been involved in

Art Centre of South Australia. In 2011, Jay’s

awards: the Peter Brown Memorial Travelling

several public artwork projects, completing

photographic works were included in Look!

Fellowship for a residency research project

two at 381 Brunswick Street and 167 Eagle

Contemporary Australian Photography

undertaken in New York, and two international

Street, Brisbane; producing numerous public

since 1980, written by prominent Australian

studio residencies in Florence and Manila.

art concept and development designs;

academic Anne Marsh.

At the close of 2004, Younger was one

and assisting as a curator within state

of three artists selected for an exhibition/

government, local council, and corporate

residency exchange between Ssamzie

contexts. Significant public art curatorial

Space Seoul and the Institute of Modern Art,

projects include the Brisbane Magistrates

Brisbane, and her most recent residency/

Courts (2002–04) and the Brisbane Supreme

exhibition was at Chiang Mai University,

and District Court (2008–12).

Thailand, in 2008.

36

Australia Felix

LEFT

Levitation: Dissolving Old Words That Live Under the Breath (detail) 1995, installation, dimensions variable, Artspace, Sydney, (Photograph: Rhonda Thwaite)

37

TOP LEFT

Intimacy Is the Shit and the Gold, But the Clean Up Is Not So Easy 2008, installation, dimensions variable, Chiang Mai Art Museum, Chiang Mai, Thailand, BOTTOM LEFT

Big Wig & Charger 1995, installation, dimensions variable, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane BOTTOM RIGHT

Gormandizor 2008, installation, 83 x 73cm (Installation photograph: Michael Cranfield)

38

Australia Felix

ABOVE

Trance of the Swanky Lump 1997, installation, dimensions variable, Brisbane City Gallery, Brisbane

Jay Younger’s artistic practice is informed by

generally presents a hypothetical scenario.

the context of being a Queensland woman

As a notion of positing different viewpoints

artist. Her earlier work reveals a feminist

in tension between a matrix of oppositional

concern that tries to understand how the

forces, ‘polemic synthesis’ is Younger’s

female subject occupies space, her position,

chosen vehicle for considering the human

and how she is held and contained or enabled

subject immersed in the conflicting agendas

to move. Each project has distinct aims

of politicized space. Specifically, Goose

within critical practice, and sidesteps stylistic

Stepper’s Tears, presented in Australia Felix,

coherence by using a diverse range of

brings together dichotomous images of

strategies and visual languages. Nevertheless,

power and decay.

behavior remains a key curiosity, whether human or material. The Spindoctors’ Mirage experiments with smoke as an uncontrollable material that takes form, literally, depending on which way the wind blows, while in Trance of the Swanky Lump, documentary footage of the expressions of women consumers shopping for diamonds is projected with a

Jay would like to acknowledge several people who have assisted her with her work: David Crouch, Richard Mansfield, Gia Mitchell, Catherine Haydock and Daryl Mappin (Mappin Nursery), Liam O’Brien, Dave Sawtell, Brad Healy, Greg Hoy / QCA Photo Store and Doug Brimblecomb (QPAC).

chaotic crowd of sixty motorized bump-’ngo pink stilettos. Whether it takes form as photography or installation, Younger’s work

39

A proud Mbarbarrum woman whose family

Jennifer Herd has curated a number of

roots lie in far North Queensland, Jennifer

major international exhibitions of Indigenous

Herd often paints about the untold history

Australian art. Out of Country toured to the

of her people. Herd has been an important

United States in 2004, showing at Gallery

leader in Queensland Indigenous theatre,

1601 Australian Embassy, Washington D.C.,

visual art, and art education. Her practice is

and the Kluge Rue Centre, University of

informed by hybrid blends of black and white

Virginia. Herd was also part of the curatorial

cultural and historical knowledge synthesized

team for Cultural Copy at the Paul Getty

into an original and legitimate composite

Gallery, Fowler Museum, University of

that can operate within contemporary art

California, Los Angeles, in 2004. Herd has

practice. She is a founding member of the

exhibited widely in group exhibitions and

proppaNow artists’ collective who formed

her most recent solo exhibition was Jennifer

to critique the sham mysticism that has

Herd: Warrior Woman at the George Petelin

become the privileged domain of non-urban

Gallery, Southport, Queensland, in 2008.

Aboriginal art. Her practice also seeks to counter the misrepresentation of Aboriginal history in a form that echoes Indigenous symbol systems. She remains alert to issues of image ownership and had been actively involved with debates concerning Aboriginal art copyright and intellectual property rights.

40

Jennifer Herd is also the Director of the Bachelor of Contemporary Australian Indigenous Art (CAIA) program at QCA. The CAIA program attracts Indigenous art students from all over Australia as it is the only such degree in the nation, taught by Indigenous lecturers for Indigenous students.

Australia Felix

ABOVE

No Room For Racism from Battle Dress for the Warrior Woman series 2011, photograph, 100 x 100cm

41

Walls of Resistance: The Shield Project (details) 2009, cane, raffia binding, fabric, solar lights, ink images on acetate

42

Australia Felix

No Room For Racism from Battle Dress for the Warrior Woman series 2011, photograph, 300 x 400cm

This work deals with multiple concerns: racism in sport and the symbolic devices Aboriginal people use to identify and defend themselves. Such devices are used as a sign of resistance to the dominant culture, and Aboriginal artists have historically made use of their own symbols of power and significance. One of the most commanding symbols Aboriginal people possess today is the Aboriginal flag. As a sign of defiance and resistance for a people still struggling for their rights, the colours of the Aboriginal flag demand attention.

43

Born in Melbourne, Jenny Watson completed

and the following year she was included in

a Diploma of Painting at the National Gallery

the major show Popism, held at the National

of Victoria Art School in 1972 and a Diploma

Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

of Education at the State College of Victoria in 1973. She currently lives and works in Brisbane, Australia, where she is Adjunct Professor at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University.

Watson has also participated in several instalments of the Biennale of Sydney, and represented Australia in numerous major international exhibitions, including the Third Internationale Triennale der Zeichnung at the

She had her first solo exhibition at Powell

Stadt Kunsthalle, Nürnberg, and the Biennale

Street Gallery, Melbourne, and has exhibited

des Friedens, Kunsthaus und Kunstsverein,

widely ever since. In 1978, her work was

Hamburg (1985), and the Venice Biennale

included in an exhibition of Powell Street

(1993). She has held numerous solo

Artists at Cunningham-Ward Gallery in New

exhibitions including Child’s Play hosted by

York and in 1980 she received an Alliance

the Yokohama Museum of Art and the Annina

Française Fellowship. In 1981 her work was

Nosei Gallery in New York in 2003.

included in the Australian Perspecta, at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney,

44

Australia Felix

LEFT

Child Ballerina 2006, oil and acrylic on printed Chinese organza over cotton fabric and additional organza band, 150 x 107cm, (Courtesy Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne and Sydney)

45

46

Australia Felix

ABOVE

I Dreamed I was a Calvin Klein Ad 2000, mixed media, dimensions variable (Courtesy Michael Buxton Collection, Melbourne) LEFT

12 August 2000 from Old Chatham, 5 Maps of Manhattan series (for Bill Anthony) 2000, framed Schminke watercolour on found map, 123 x 67cm (Courtesy Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne and Sydney)

“No dramatic gestures, no signs of depression,

On a somatic level, one recognizes in them

nor any clever symbolism or pedantic

a highly individual personality through a

intentions. In her exhibition, the artist

narcissistic awareness of a vulnerable

Jenny Watson presents a series of life-size

longing for innocence. Their expressiveness

portrayals of figures, usually women, who,

is enhanced by the intensively applied

full-length, stare at the viewer accompanied

colours, and sense of light that permeates

by a smaller-format oval area containing

the surface. Equally convincing is the episodic

text. They appear at first sight to be naïve

presentation of the figures, which, though

illustrations and, superficially at least, look

independent, are part of a series of events

a little like attractive children’s drawings:

that together form an autonomous whole.

the simple division of anatomical parts; the

The monumentality of the visuals is countered

rudimentary clothing—including a T-shirt, a

by the anecdotalism of the text. The image

somewhat old-fashioned skirt, and long socks;

is a static element and the text an action;

the frontal pose in the primary colours. And,

they form a ritual in a symmetrical interaction.

alongside them, the personal handwritten

Word and image, as if in a mirror, offer a

texts that refer to everyday memories and

mirror for the viewer.”

an anecdotal ritual. Despite this, the familiar response of ‘I could have done that myself’ certainly does not apply here. These works

Adapted from an interview with Jan Hoet, 2006.

have far too many layers for that; they have an inner tension that takes psychological hold of the viewer and disarmingly questions them.

47

Judy Watson was born in Mundubbera,

Other public artworks by Judy Watson include

Queensland, in 1959. Her Aboriginal

wurreka at Bunjilaka, Melbourne Museum and

matrilineal family are from north west

Ngarrn gi Land/Law at the Victorian County

Queensland. She has held numerous solo

Court, both 50 meter etched zinc walls. She

exhibitions and residencies in Australia and

also designed the carpet over three floors at

internationally. In 1997, she represented

Liverpool Library in Western Sydney. heart/

Australia at the Venice Biennale. She is

land/river is in the lobby of the Brisbane

the recipient of a number of significant

Magistrates Court and fire and water is at

contemporary art awards including the Moët

at Reconciliation Place, Canberra. In 2010

& Chandon Fellowship in 1995, the National

freshwater lens was installed under the Turbot

Gallery of Victoria’s Clemenger award and the

Street overpass in Brisbane. Her work shoal

Works on Paper Award at the 23rd National

wraps around a CityCat ferry, Gootcha, on the

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art

Brisbane River.

Awards in 2006. Two of her works have been permanently installed within the Musée du quai Branly in Paris.

48

Judy Watson is represented by Milani Gallery, Brisbane.

Australia Felix

LEFT

Fighting Stick, Bronze Magic, Montserrat 2008, pigment, watercolor, pencil and acrylic on canvas, 201.5 x 105.8cm

49

LEFT

Woman’s Belt, Ornamental Top Ceremonial Staff 2008, pigment and acrylic on canvas, 186.5 x 106.3cm

50

Australia Felix

Fighting Stick, Bronze Magic,

Woman’s Belt, Ornamanental Top,

Montserrat

Ceremonial Staff

The red wash work has a white image of

The forms float on a deep Prussian blue

an animal head with horns that I saw in a

background wash. This blue is liquid, dream-

museum in Montserrat, Spain. On this I

like, a memory. The woman’s belt has a

have floated a greenish form of a bronze

waist attachment made from bark with a

magic sorcery object from the Cordoba

hair-string belt. The ceremonial handle was

archaeological museum. There is a short,

in the collection of the Egyptian museum in

Aboriginal, wooden, fighting stick from a

Barcelona.

British museum, arm-like, and shell and rib/ throwing stick shapes.

When I viewed objects that included hair in British museums, some of the hair was dark

cross cultural infection / contamination

brown like mine. I imagined my Aboriginal

spores (like mould), floating through the air,

Grandmother’s Mother’s hair twined like

infecting and depositing

these into hair-string belts and skirts. The old

contaminating ‘purist’ cultural memory

people from our area and further north said

from the dominant to the collected culture

they knew where you were from by touching

trans-generational memory

your hair.

The collected culture’s artist (me) is drawing objects from the dominant culture’s collections. I am both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal. I embody the Collected (Aboriginal) and the Dominant (Scottish/English) Cultures. spillage in the museum cultures inhabiting other spaces what you bring home with you after travelling/ viewing/art/museums/other cultures: what stays, what resonates what shifts identity ‘inside museums growing cultures’ (like a science experiment), cultural memory and leakage carrying culture culture carrion

51

Julie Fragar graduated from Sydney College of

Wales, Sydney; Primavera 10 (2010) at the

the Arts, University of Sydney, with a Master

Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, and

of Fine Arts in 2003. Fragar investigates

Optimism: Contemporary Australia (2009)

autobiographical subject matter in relation

at the Gallery of Modern Art Brisbane.

to the material and historical imperatives

Fragar has also been recipient of major

of painting. Fragar uses personal images,

art awards including the ABN Amro

historical, and textual references in works that

Emerging Artist Award (2006), and the

move in and around hard edge abstraction,

Australia Council for the Visual Arts

portraits, stacked-text works, and video.

Barcelona Studio Residency (2010).

Fragar has received significant critical

Her work is held in numerous public and

attention in Australia. Her work has been

private collections across Australia, the United

included in major national exhibitions including

States and the UK. Fragar is represented

Wilderness: Balnaves Contemporary Painting

by Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney and Bruce

(2010) at the The Art Gallery of New South

Heiser Gallery, Brisbane.

52

Australia Felix

LEFT

Self-Portrait (after Ron Adams) 2010, oil on board, 180 x 120cm

53

ABOVE LEFT

Fancy Vivid Pink Diamond (Steady The Hand) 2010, oil on board, 180 x 120cm TOP RIGHT

Self-Sufficient Self-Portrait 2009, oil on board, 60 x 90cm BOTTOM RIGHT

Looking For D Rection 2009, oil on board, 40 x 60cm

54

Australia Felix

LEFT

Self-Portrait (after Ron Adams) 2010, oil on board, 180 x 120cm

55

Madeleine Kelly, who arrived in Australia in

in group and solo shows, including Primavera

1980 from Germany, completed a Bachelor

2005 at the Museum of Contemporary Art,

of Visual Arts, Fine Arts (Hons) at the

Sydney. Having held an Australia Council Paris

Queensland College of Art (QCA), Griffith

Studio Residency in 2004, Kelly is currently

University, in 1999. She has won several

completing her PhD at QCA, where she

awards, such as the Melville Haysom

lectures part-time. She is represented by

Memorial Art Scholarship in 1988, and the

Milani Gallery, Brisbane.

2004 Churchie Prize for Emerging Art. Over the years she has exhibited regularly

56

Australia Felix

BELOW

Split Unities 2011, oil on polyester, 180 x 160cm

57

TOP

Finders, Keepers 2011, oil on polyester 68 x 135cm BOTTOM

Binary Love 2010, oil on gesso board 40 x 60cm

58

Australia Felix

ABOVE

Disguise the Limit 2011, oil on polyester 95 x 180cm

Madeleine Kelly investigates the

posed and anamorphically drawn out,

Disguise the Limit presents a horizontal tree

archaeological metaphor and its potential

the image spatially focuses on inversion,

trunk Kelly photographed at Murphy’s Creek,

to create new meaning. In particular, she

on creating a field of co-existences, reflexivity,

Queensland, after the 2011 inland tsunami.

focuses on its capacity to represent human

and paradox. The emphasis on transformation,

It has been painted twice as a mask-like

relations with the environment, both natural

reflection, and the skewing of things is

configuration composed of hollows conjoins

and artificial. In her paintings, mythically

deliberately confrontational. It suggests

with a bed of flattened weathered trees.

The text in the painting, “disguise the limit”,

charged signs are replicated, recontextualized,

conflict, a “slamming” form of dualities, both

and re-scaled. By altering scale and

spiritual and material, while also paradoxically

modifies the well-known saying “the sky’s

proportions, she skews and shifts reality.

pointing to their coexistence: that their

the limit”, which suggests that there is no limit

Through anamorphic distortion, emphasis on

codependence precedes their opposition.

internal articulation, cultural mapping, and biomorphic forms, the works are composed as ‘archaeological constellations’. While her projects are not pointedly on ecological sustainability, they allude to the complexity of often politically sensitive information and its impact on humanity.

In Finders Keepers, the world is compressed under the pressure of the horizontal, causing it to look submerged. In place of the proverbial ‘key’, the figure in the work receives a deflated plastic globe, a symbol of knowledge of the world, in an almost

to growth. However, the view through the ‘disguise’ (the actual pair of hollows in the painting) reveals collapse rather than growth. A small man in business attire at the base of the text sows coins rather than grain into the earth, suggesting the scene’s economic underpinning.

unrecognisable form, of deflated and

In Split Unities, two figures are poised

amorphous order. The deflated Euclidean

back-to-back, carrying flags branded by the

lines in it that once emphasized the physical

landscape. They intersect with another set

mapping of the earth, now trace both its

of flags featuring hybrid phoenix-fighter jets,

physical deterioration and the decline in

namely a Rafal and a Nighthawk. Heavily

philosophical terms, of the ‘centre’.

59

Marian Drew is one of Australia’s most

studies in Experimental Photography at

significant contemporary photographers,

Kassel University. She has since held

with works held in numerous public and

twenty-five solo exhibitions in Australia, the

private collections, including the Getty

United States, France, and Germany and

Museum and the National Gallery of

contributed to over forty curatorial shows in

Australia. Represented by commercial

Australia, China, Germany, the UK, and the

galleries in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide,

United States. Drew recently returned from

and New York, Drew currently holds the

an Australia Council residency in New York,

position of Associate Professor at the

where she spent six months researching and

Queensland College of Art, Griffith University.

producing new work.

After completing a Bachelor of Visual Art in 1984 at the Canberra School of Art, Drew was awarded a German Government Scholarship, and went on to further her

60

Australia Felix

ABOVE

Wombat and Watermelon 2005, archival pigments on cotton paper, 85 x 110cm

61

LEFT

Emu with 2 Drawn Bowls 2009, giclée print, 80 x 220cm

ABOVE

Twelve Wishes 2006, giclée print, 110 x 750cm

62

Australia Felix

The photographic work Twelve Wishes

Through photographic verisimilitude, Drew

initially arose from Marian Drew’s personal

aims to explore ideas of death as well as

experiences of encountering ‘road kill’ in the

physical and spiritual sustainment. More

subtropical Australian city of Brisbane. Over

importantly, she hopes to create a space

time, this grew to include wider Australia.

in which to acknowledge the animals that

She notes, “Since 2003, with community involvement, I was able to include a wide range of species building a project that aimed

cohabit the country of Australia, recognizing that their lives and deaths are entwined with the country’s human inhabitants.

to honour real animal deaths while posing

An evolving process since 2003, this work

questions about our relation to animals in

has been shown at several exhibitions,

our lives.”

This particular work draws on the format of the ‘Last Supper’, while also acknowledging the

including Australiana, Still Lives, Still Life, Every Living Thing and Birds in Australia, the United States, China, and Germany.

still-life as being drawn from Christian ideology.

The still-life affirms a subjugated animal existence for human consumption in all senses of the word. Today, there is a growing shame associated with eating or wasting the lives of other animals in the race for progress, despite the offer of Christian ideological redemption.

63

Mostyn Bramley-Moore completed a

staged a large retrospective of his paintings

Bachelor of Arts at the University of Sydney

entitled Tuesdays and Thursdays. His work is

in 1974, a Master of Fine Arts in Painting

represented in numerous public museums,

at the Pratt Institute in 1977, and a PhD in

including the National Gallery of Australia,

Fine Arts at the Royal Melbourne Institute

the National Gallery of Victoria, the

of Technology in 2007. Holding his first solo

Queensland Art Gallery, and the Auckland

exhibition in New York City in 1977, Bramley-

Art Gallery. He currently lives and works on

Moore has subsequently held nearly fifty

a small farm near Brisbane, and teaches

exhibitions of paintings and works on paper

painting at Queensland College of Art.

in Australian capital cities, the UK, and China. In 2002, the Museum of Brisbane

64

Australia Felix

ABOVE

Piano 2005, oil on polyester, 149 x 120cm

65

ABOVE

Sennimbari 2003–5, oil on linen and polyester, 72 x 130cm

66

Australia Felix

ABOVE

Verandah 2011, oil on polyester, 178 x 148cm

Verandah Mostyn Bramley-Moore’s works are often

accepted artistic conventions with strategies

dominated by their verandahs, and his current

categorized as abstract, and it is true that

and ideas drawn from ‘outsider’ and tribal art.

home is no different. As well as being a basic

he was exposed to much abstraction while at art school in New York during the 1970s.

However, Bramley-Moore prefers to consider himself as a ‘literary’ painter, broadly working within a landscape tradition. In his paintings, he addresses issues of location, identity, narrative, and nature. They are often completed en plein air and nearly always refer to specific places and events. He also typically uses binary concepts and plays off

In his painting Verandah, Bramley-Moore creates a shadowy zone redolent with human movement, rustling foliage, wind, and a palpable sense of uncomfortable expectation.

Up until the 1950s, the ‘verandah’ or porch was a dominant characteristic In Australian vernacular architecture, sometimes nearly entirely encircling even simple residences.

As a child, Bramley-Moore lived in houses

architectural component, the verandah also represents a physical and mental halfwayzone between the domestic interior and the exterior world. It is a location for escaping the elements, flight from other people, easeful relaxation, fevered communication, and sleep on hot nights. It is as much a stage as it is a room. In Verandah, this space becomes one of ambiguity and intrigue.

67

Pat Hoffie is Professor at the Queensland

For many years Hoffie has been exploring

College of Art, Griffith University.

issues concerning social justice in her art

Hoffie is a visual artist who has worked extensively in the Asia-Pacific region for the past two decades and her work is included in a number of important collections and survey exhibitions of contemporary Australian art in Australia and overseas. She is a regular contributor to journals, magazines and newspapers and is currently a Professor at the research focus group SECAP (Sustainable Environment through Culture, Asia Pacific) at Queensland College of Art, and was appointed the UNESCO Orbicom Chair in Communications by Griffith University.

practice. Her curatorial projects have involved international collaborations with artists from the Asia-Pacific region and she has worked collaboratively on a number of research projects including Art and Human Rights, QPACifika, The Peel Island Artists’ Residencies, and Planet Ueno (Tokyo/Brisbane). Other recent collaborative projects include, BABELprojekt at the 2010 Woodford Folk Festival, WindWells: Channelling + Divining at the State Library of Queensland Gallery in 2010, and Troop Drill at Queensland’s Fort Lytton in November 2009. A monograph on her work, Fully Exploited Labour (ed. Sally Butler), was published by the University of Queensland Art Museum in 2008.

68

Australia Felix

ABOVE

Brother Beast 2011, mixed media, dimensions variable

69

ABOVE LEFT & RIGHT

Brother Beast 2011, mixed media, dimensions variable

70

Australia Felix

Brother Beast Beasts have provided a subject matter for

animals, Aesop’s tales force humans to see

vessels; elsewhere plastic versions of

allegory and metaphors reflecting the human

themselves reflected all the more clearly.

the Australian Spider Eucalypt Pod are

condition since at least the time of Aesop, the folk teller who, in the fifth century BCE, spun stories featuring a range of animal characters. The figure of Aesop himself is shrouded in mystery. Alternately, he is rumoured to have been a Greek slave whose cleverness as a fabulist led the authorities of his time to appoint him as an advisor, an Ethiopian storyteller, or a Nubian fantasist.

He has been variously described as a hunchback, as physically distorted, and as repulsively ugly; all of these serve to illustrate his position as an outsider, and a profoundly gifted one at that.

Pat Hoffie’s series Brother Beast is part of a larger project titled Fully Exploited Labour, which she has worked on for the past three decades. The project has looked at a range of manifestations of what society classes as ‘labour’, or ‘work’, and how it chooses to value these kinds of activities. In Brother Beast, the paradoxical work of training wild animals is considered, with other activities also

suspended from native hardwood and screen-printed imagery of an ‘imperfect’ or creolized English alphabet are arranged around the larger images. Together they suggest a range of connections and connotations—some particular to Australia Felix, the Lucky Country, which is often so cautious about sharing its sense of ‘luck’; some suggest more global interconnections.

alluded to. It presents targets featuring

Aesop suggested that the way animals treat

images of species introduced to Australia,

each other reflects the way human beings

which have been pierced by a myriad of

comport ourselves; the way people treat

arrows seeking their mark; inside those

animals may reflect also other aspects of

targets, images of idealized homes have

their behaviour. Moreover, the way they treat

Perhaps this outsider status led him to

been made by the repetitive piercing

humans who, like Aesop, may be considered

adopt animals to play out the main roles

of needles drawing threads through the

as outsiders, may also reflect their capacity

in his Aesopica—a collection of moral and

painstaking labour of stitchery.

to behave as humans beings part of a

ethical tales that have found their way into cultures all over the world and that continue to enchant even today. Through using the characters and attributes of his

Smaller panels feature more ephemeral

broader world order.

material—the ‘fragile’ icons of cardboard packing boxes carry images of refugee

71

Sebastian Di Mauro is a prolific Australian

Lethlean Landscape Architects and in 2011

artist; since 1987, he has held over forty-five

he completed an ephemeral public artwork

solo exhibitions, and been included in excess

for the Adelaide City Council.

of 100 group exhibitions held in Australia and overseas. He is regularly selected in the major Australian sculpture awards and exhibitions.

He has been awarded residencies in Australia and overseas, including one at the British School, Rome, through the Australia Council.

He is the subject of two monographs, Between Material (1998), and Footnotes of a Verdurous Tale (2009), and a survey exhibition of his work was held at Queensland University of Technology Art Museum, Brisbane, in 2009. His paintings, sculptures,

Di Mauro has also completed a number of

artist-books, and installations are featured

public-art commissions including a major

in the collections of many of Australia’s key

commission for the Brisbane Magistrates

art institutions, including the Queensland

Court at 33 Charlotte Street. He has

Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of Western

collaborated with architect Alice Hampson on

Australia, McClelland Gallery and Sculpture

several public-art projects, including Logan

Park (Victoria), Bendigo Art Gallery (Victoria),

Community Health Centre and the Gabba

Besen Collection (Victoria), Artbank (Sydney

Member’s Area (Woolloongabba Cricket

and Melbourne) University Art Museum, the

Ground). In Adelaide, Di Mauro completed a

University of Queensland Art Museum, and

commission during 2006 for Taylor, Cullity and

Deakin University, Melbourne.

72

Australia Felix

BELOW

Blind Spot 2008, woven neoprene, fiberglass, dimensions variable

73

LEFT

Drift 2005, cast aluminium, installation, 33 Charlotte Street, Brisbane, Left 120 x 130 x 300cm, Right 360 x 250 x 150cm BELOW

Folly (Themeda triandra syn, T.australiis) 2007– 08, polystyrene, artificial grass, steel, timber, 396 x 210cm diameter RIGHT

Welcome Mats 2001, artificial grass, dimensions variable

74

Australia Felix

Welcome Mats Welcome Mats addresses notions of

to come to terms with, and they had little

immigration, diaspora, and assimilation, and

communication with people outside their

Of the works, Di Mauro states, “Welcome mats are so clichéd; they welcome people

is informed by Sebastian Di Mauro’s Italian

immediate family. As a result, their world

into a home and at the same time are used

heritage. His grandparents arrived in Australia

was very limited and the words they spoke

to wipe their shoes clean before entering.

from Italy in the 1920s. This work speaks of

often combined both English and Italian. In

I find this a very fitting metaphor for the many

immigrants’ search for ‘greener pastures’, of

Welcome Mats, Di Mauro incorporates a

immigrants that enter Australia. We welcome

arriving in a new land with hopeful hearts

combination of Italian and English texts.

them to our shores but we ask them to leave

and dreams of a life better than the one left behind. After being in Australia for a number of years, Di Mauro’s grandparents realized that most of what they dreamed had not come true and that what they had left behind was not too dissimilar to what they were experiencing in the new country. Language was one of the most difficult things they had

Made from artificial grass, the nine mats include five Italian words in terracotta turf cut into the green artificial grass and four English words in green grass at a slightly lower pile cut into the green grass. The Italian words are: MEZZANO, PORTA, ALTRO, LONTANO, and VERO. The English words are: FLOAT,

some of the customs and beliefs behind.”

Many Italians who immigrated into Australia in the early part of the twentieth century have assimilated into the culture, but it is important to remember their unique contributions to the community and the ways that they have enriched Australia.

EXOTIC, DESIRE, and FUSE.

75

William Platz was born in New York. He

Studios, Thesis and Portfolio Development,

received his Bachelor of Fine Art (Drawing

as well as writing curricula and assisting in

and Painting) at the Pratt Institute, and

establishing a Bachelor of Fine Arts program

Master of Arts (Fine Arts and Art History)

at the college. In 2008, the college’s gallery

at Regents College (Excelsior). He first

was renovated and the William Platz Gallery

became interested in issues of portraiture,

was dedicated at the Albuquerque campus.

iconography, and narrative redaction while

After several years of showing exclusively

residing in a Benedictine monastery. Early

in Santa Fe, Platz began an association with

works consisted of self-portraits with strong

the International Neosymbolist Collective in

visual and literary analogies. Over the last

an exhibition in Texas. Together the group

twenty years, these themes have repeatedly

has exhibited throughout the United States

surfaced in his work. After living in North

and Europe, most recently exhibiting at the

Carolina and California, Platz settled in New

Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in Chicago

Mexico where he joined the faculty of The Art

(Neosymbolism: Bridges to the Unknown). In

Center Design College and remained there

2009, Platz permanently relocated to Brisbane,

for over ten years. Platz taught a range of

Australia, with his family and began pursuing a

courses including Art Histories, Foundation

PhD in Fine Arts at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University.

76

Australia Felix

ABOVE

Mixed Portrait of Imi with my Navel: Big Rig 2011, oil, crayon, and shellac on cast fiberglass with orthochromatic films, 102 x 102cm

77

78

Australia Felix

ABOVE

Little Rig: Self-Portrait in a Model 2011, oil, crayon, and shellac on cast fiberglass with FP-100B instant positive, 15 x 15cm

Australia Felix represents the first

encompasses both the material practice and

exhibition of Australian artists that New

the concerns of contemporary portraiture,

York-born William Platz has participated in.

Platz works extensively with professional

His recent research is based in the field

models in the studio to create his portraits.

of studio portraiture, specifically those

The ‘rig’ is constructed from fibreglass and an

TOP LEFT

constructed images known as portraits

instant photographic studio portrait. Either the

Standard Rig: Michi-Portrait Profile 2011, oil, crayon, and shellac on cast fiberglass with enlargement of bleach-burnt FP-100B instant negative, 50 x 77cm

historiés. Platz considers the transactions

positive or the enlarged negative (on polyester

that exist between the artist, model,

orthochromatic film) is laid between sheets of

and sitter, particularly during the various

woven-glass fibre cloth, which are then ‘wet-

BOTTOM LEFT

states of masquerade and impersonation.

out’ with resin to cast a resilient, translucent

Having always had a firm base in the

fibreglass panel—the substrate for shellac,

American graphic tradition, his work is

oils, and crayon.

Standard Rig: Self-Portrait 3/4 2011, oil, crayon, and shellac on cast fiberglass with enlargement of bleach-burnt FP-100B instant negative, 50 x 77cm

here recontextualized—coincidentally in Philadelphia, home of prolific portrait artist Rembrandt Peale and the Columbianum, where the American art academy tradition began.

Initially working almost exclusively on

As Platz’s practice highlights, all portrait pictures are ‘rigged’ in a manner familiar to swindlers and confidence artists.

They are set-ups for the spectator—studio theatrics—elaborate constructions in which the transaction of performance and pose

synthetic paper, film, and acrylic sheets,

culminates in a picture exhibited to a mark

Platz has increasingly experimented

(spectator). These portraits can reveal the

with a drawing and painting surface

rigging immediately, seducing the spectator

constructed of highly stable polyester

by exposing the pretence, or they can conceal

photographic film, instant photographs,

the rigging, perhaps arousing suspicion, but

and cast fibreglass. Using a process

resisting penetration.

dubbed ‘rigging’, a term that

79

Curator Ross Woodrow

Authors George Petelin Maura Reilly

Artists Angela Blakely David Lloyd Debra Porch Donna Marcus Gordon Hookey Ian Burns Jay Younger Jennifer Herd Jenny Watson Judy Watson Julie Fragar Madeleine Kelly Marian Drew Mostyn Bramley-Moore Pat Hoffie Sebastian Di Mauro William Platz

Published by Octivium Press (Brisbane, Queensland) ISBN 978-1-921760-49-5

Editor Evie Franzidis

Catalogue design Liveworm Studio Design: Zoe Keating Creative Director: David Sargent Set in Kevlar and Univers.

Exhibition ICE Gallery at Crane Arts 1400 N. American Street Philadelphia, PA 19122 215.232.3203 www.cranearts.com 4–28 August 2011 Copyright Š 2011. All rights reserved.

No image or text may be reproduced without the permission of the artists or authors.