Australian Art Research Articles

Review topography of sound art

Austrian artist and director of ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany, Peter Weibel (Odessa, 1944), curates a book/catalogue of the mythical exhibition Sound Art, Sound as Medium of Art, that took place between March 2012 and February 2013 in Karlsruhe, with nearly one thousand images of sound art pieces. Along with a very detailed historical trace of sound as a form of art, the book contains different texts and essays about sound and its history written by renowned and iconic figures in art all articulated in five main sections. A very im-portant work for any artist or amateur interested in sound and music.

Biedermeier man (Adalbert Stifter on happiness)

The idea of an era is most often formed after a certain time after its end. This is the case with the Biedermeier era, the significance, and features of which have been appreciated only 50 years after its formal end. The name “man of the Biedermeier era” contains a provocation. The name refers us to the wonderful cultural period – the Renaissance, which formed the idea of “Titan-like personalities” and the greatest achievements. The Biedermeier era is a period of calm and peaceful life after the Napoleonic wars with no particular heroism or scale. The main plot of the works of this period is the search for social balance and personal happiness. However, upon closer examination, one can understand that this modest stage in the history of culture gives rise to a new type of genius who can see “the great in the small” (Adalbert Stifter, 1805-1868). The influence of this concept on the development of German literature can hardly be overestimated. The article deals with the work of the classic Austrian author, artist, and thinker A. Stifter, who is well-known to the German-speaking reader due to the creation of the concept of “the gentle law” (“das sanfte Gesetz”). The Russian reader is less familiar with the classic Austrian writer. This is because some of the codes and hidden meanings of Stifter’s texts significantly differ from the ideas accepted in the Russian cultural world. The purpose of the study is to clarify some of them (the concepts of “happiness” and “gentle law”). The objectives of the research are determined by the need to give a brief description of the Biedermeier era in its national Austrian version and, in particular, in connection with A. Stifter’s work. A hypothesis is put forward about the polystylistic nature of Biedermeier aesthetics, which influences the formation of the literary process in the German-speaking space. The novelty of the study consists in an attempt to look at the significance of the Austrian classic from a Russian perspective. This determines the theoretical framework of the study, built on the methods of comparative studies and conceptual text analysis.

The Art of Patricia Piccinini

The subject of research for this paper is Australian artist Patricia Piccinini, a speculative designer. Patricia Piccinini’s work reveals the complexity of contemporary genetic technology involved in the creation of life, expressing the interrelationship between technology and humanity. (Piccinini, 2019) Her work interprets and redefines the relationship between humanity and the creation. She focuses on the possibility of future bioethics that is, the increasingly complex development of and integration between humans, nature and other living creatures.

Kurt Badt. Verlust der Mitte (On the Question of Modernism and the Anti-modernism in mid-20th Century German Art History)

On the example of the activities of the German art historian Kurt Badt, the article reveals the complex relationship between modern art and contemporary art history. The outstanding and, obviously, underestimated figure of the scholar, who throughout his long life was ready to confront the rest of the discipline unwilling to become a part of the university system, with all his creativity embodied the very idea of freedom that modern artists and sympathizing art critics strove for. Due to the availability of English-language versions of the art historian’s texts mainly on the masters close to modern art — Delacroix, Constable, and Cézanne — his position in the dispute about modernism seems more or less unambiguous. The aim of this article is to show that this is far from the case, discovering the points of contact of Badt with many of his colleagues who have earned a reputation as unconditional conservatives. First of all, it concerns the Austrian art theorist Hans Sedlmayr, an interest for whom, especially in recent times, is predetermined by widespread ideas about the fundamental incompatibility of academic art history with attempts of unbiased consideration of the history of modern art. Moreover, a deep kinship of such research activity with the most reactionary political ideas is also widely discussed, which, as it should be noted, this outstanding critic of the modern culture was not absolutely innocent of. Nevertheless, his clash with Badt, a polemic that took place in the 1950s and 60s, centered on the work of not Cézanne, but Vermeer van Delft, can be considered from the point of view of the attitude of the two scholars to phenomena less distant in time. This makes it possible to raise the question of the paradoxical similarity of the views of these two authors — with such a different creative and human destiny.

Traveling with Trained Man

This article considers the railways as a decolonial option for moving toward mobility justice. It views the photographic artwork Trained Man by Ngalkban Australian artist Darren Siwes through a mobilities lens, considering how the artist plays with time and attends to space, making visible what colonial projects of protection and assimilation have attempted to erase. Attending to the truths and imaginaries that reside and move with Trained Man, it draws on the work of Aboriginal and Black artists, scholars, and activists to trace Australia’s past and present colonial history of training Aboriginal people into whiteness. It considers the railways as carrying “two lines of destiny” with potential moving in both colonial and decolonial directions. The article concludes by suggesting that shared spaces such as the railways open possibilities for mobilizing the decolonial project.

Traveling with Trained Man

Abstract This article considers the railways as a decolonial option for moving toward mobility justice. It views the photographic artwork Trained Man by Ngalkban Australian artist Darren Siwes through a mobilities lens, considering how the artist plays with time and attends to space, making visible what colonial projects of protection and assimilation have attempted to erase. Attending to the truths and imaginaries that reside and move with Trained Man, it draws on the work of Aboriginal and Black artists, scholars, and activists to trace Australia's past and present colonial history of training Aboriginal people into whiteness. It considers the railways as carrying “two lines of destiny” with potential moving in both colonial and decolonial directions. The article concludes by suggesting that shared spaces such as the railways open possibilities for mobilizing the decolonial project.

Remembering and forgetting the arts of technical education

PurposeTechnical education in the twentieth century played an important role in the cultural life of Australia in ways are that routinely overlooked or forgotten. As all education is central to the cultural life of any nation this article traces the relationship between technical education and the national social imaginary. Specifically, the article focuses on the connection between art and technical education and does so by considering changing cultural representations of Australia.Design/methodology/approachDrawing upon materials, that include school archives, an unpublished autobiography monograph, art catalogues and documentary film, the article details the lives and works of two artists, from different eras of twentieth century Australia. Utilising social memory as theorised by Connerton (1989, 2009, 2011), the article reflects on the lives of two Australian artists as examples of, and a way into appreciating, the enduring relationship between technical education and art.FindingsThe two artists, William Wallace Anderson and Carol Jerrems both products of, and teachers in, technical schools produced their own art that offered different insights into changes in Australia's national imaginary. By exploring their lives and work, the connections between technical education and art represent a social memory made material in the works of the artists and their representations of Australia's changing national imaginary.Originality/valueThis article features two artist teachers from technical schools as examples of the centrality of art to technical education. Through the teacher-artists lives and works the article highlights a shift in the Australian cultural imaginary at the same time as remembering the centrality of art to technical education. Through the twentieth century the relationship between art and technical education persisted, revealing the sensibilities of the times.

Palestine Is Not a Drawing Board: Defacing the Street Art on the Israeli Separation Wall

Unraveling the entanglements of fetish and secrecy bound up in the graffiti on the Palestinian face of the Israeli Separation Wall, this article analyzes the proliferation of defacements of the Australian street artist LushSux’s meme-graffiti on that wall in Bethlehem. In visually tracing and analyzing these successive moments of defacement, this article ethnographically captures a popular performance of collective Palestinian sovereignty within the borderlands of the Israeli Separation Wall. Celebrating defacement’s generative power to create a new face, this article demonstrates how defacement was an assertive act of unmasking the raw power of Israel’s colonial project.

A typology of social change agendas in Australian arts organizations and NGOs

An increasing number of creative artists, arts organizations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are working on socially-engaged initiatives that aim to bring about positive change in communities. Examples of outstanding arts practices can be found throughout the world; however, there are major gaps in our understanding about how this work operates. Drawing on insights from 100 Australian arts organizations and NGOs working in this field, this article aims to address some of these gaps. It outlines a typology of change agendas in these organizations, in order to advance a deeper understanding of this field and inform future research, practice and policy.

The Photograph as Archive, Reimagining the Archive, the Living Archive of Aboriginal Art

In 2008, an Indigenous Australian artist based in Melbourne – Maree Clarke (Mutti Mutti/ Wemba Wemba/Boonwurrung) – created a kangaroo-teeth necklace, revivifying an art and cultural practice for the first time in over a century. She was inspired to do so after viewing an 1880 photograph of an ancestor – Yarruun Parpur Tarneen – wearing such adornment, and by visiting with extant examples of such adornment in museums around the world. This photo-essay seeks to both represent Clarke’s collaborative work, and invite others in to learn, share, and co-create. We argue that photographs are archives themselves: sites and sources of creative co-production. Photographs are inextricable from their people and their relations (with Ancestors, Country, kin, and community). The holistic integration of Indigenous knowledge transmission, contemporary art-making, archival photographs, and extant artifacts offers a radical re-imagination of what archives are and can do.

Too big to fail: rethinking the foundations of Australia’s performing arts policies

ABSTRACT This research examines three political moments in the Australian theatre sector as turning points in contemporary understanding of the sector’s financial foundations. Socio-cultural and economic conditions leading to the establishment of The Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust in 1954, the instigation of the Industries Assistance Commission Inquiry in 1976, and the commissioning of the Major Performing Arts Inquiry in 1999, and their impact on the theatre sector, are reviewed in this paper. These political moments took place against changing economic policies in Australia. By reviewing the economic transition from Keynesian 'welfare' to economic rationalism, the interventionalist nature of these policy moments and their effect on the artistic vibrancy of the sector is understood. This paper reveals a tension between the sector’s Keynesian foundations, which underpinned the Trust's intentions to establish a financially sustainable sector, and the now dominant economic rationalist model which restricts the performing arts’ capacity to flourish. Through analysing secondary documents and scholarly discussion, this research reconsiders the legacy of the Trust as a key policy landmark. It proposes that The Trust succeeded in delivering artistic outcomes, but failed in its financial objective to establish a sustainable sector. The role of the Trust is often misconstrued in scholarly and professional discussions about the necessity of arts funding, and by reconceptualising these political moments as interventions of policy, a new perspective of the foundation of Australian arts funding can be appreciated.

The Aboriginal Artists Agency and the Prominence of Indigenous Music and Dance in the Growth of the Australian Arts Industry

This article focuses on the formative role of the Aboriginal Artists Agency in building today’s global market for Australian Indigenous artists. From 1976 to 1986, the Agency worked with Australian Indigenous musicians and dancers to undertake many innovative recording and touring projects. This study addresses the Agency’s early innovations in encouraging and supporting the recording and touring aspirations of Australian Indigenous performers across a hitherto unexplored continuum of traditional and popular styles, as well as the Agency’s contributions to catalysing similar breadth in scholarly discourse. The study aims to demonstrate how the Agency’s ambitious program of recording and touring projects with a wide array of prolific Australian Indigenous artists contributed to generating new and diversified market demand for their talents and works both within Australia and internationally.

When Manufacturing Workers Make Sculpture: Creative Pathways in the Context of Australian Deindustrialisation

The subjects of this article are not ordinarily discussed in writing about Australian art. For that matter, the subjects of this article are not ordinarily discussed at all, in almost any disciplin...

‘Wot do u call it? Doof doof’: Articulations of glocality in Australian grime music

Grime music emerged at the turn of the millennium in the United Kingdom. While grounded and street-level at its outset, the form has since become global in reach. This article focuses on performance practice in the East Australian grime scene and its development over time. Principally, it attends to how MCs and DJs articulate a sense of belonging to both the UK and their local communities in Melbourne and Sydney, through lyrical and musical signification. These articulations are shown to be an example of ‘glocal’ performance practice, which is locally situated yet globally rendering. The article also demonstrates how these artists’ conceptions of legitimate practice are heavily mediated by YouTube videos of canonical UK practice, owing to their geographical dislocation from the genre’s initial point of origin. As a result, radio performances – known as ‘sets’ – and live shows are often prioritized over recorded releases. These findings are supported by interviews with Australian artists, and musical analysis of two key performances: a radio set on Australian broadcaster Triple J from November 2018 and a global grime showcase on London’s Rinse FM from January 2019.

Defining the art product: a network perspective

PurposeThis paper explores the nature of art as a product through a network perspective, accounting for key contributing stakeholders in shaping its essence.Design/methodology/approachThis study adopted a qualitative data collection and analysis design and is centred on a series of face-to-face interviews with established Australian visual artists.FindingsResults support the notion of an art product shaped by interconnections and interdependencies of actors in the art market. In particular, attention is paid to the roles of actors in conceptual, production and distribution networks.Research limitations/implicationsAlthough there are idiosyncrasies that (in part) define the Australian art market context, the issues identified here are nonetheless useful in determining the nature of the interconnectedness of the art market in other similar Western contexts. Many Australian artists have achieved similar recognition and status to other established artists elsewhere. Future cross-cultural comparative research should be carried out in order to assess this relationship in the longer term.Practical implicationsArtists at different stages of their careers can transfer the findings of this research into the development of a series of relevant strategies and tactics for developing their art and culture products more effectively.Originality/valueAlthough philosophical assessments of art as a product have been carried out elsewhere, there is a lack of evaluation from an art versus marketplace lens in considering the perspectives of interested stakeholders

‘Blinded by Quarry Vision’

This article explores the work of contemporary artist Nicholas Mangan, whose film and sculptural practice is concerned with capitalist extraction and colonial exploitation in Australia and the South Pacific. It addresses the amnesiac nature of Australian contemporary art, which tends to distance itself from the country’s problematic history of intensive mineral extraction and violent settler colonialism. Framing Mangan’s practice within the Australian context, the article analyses two of the artist most relevant projects to date: Nauru—Notes from a Cretaceous World (2009–2010) and Progress in Action (2013). In these films and sculptural installations, I argue, the quarry emerges as a space of colonial violence, but also one of potential creativity. The article concludes with an assessment of Mangan’s work in relation to the critical debate on the emergence of New Materialist philosophies in contemporary art. In particular, the article considers Mangan’s art in relation to the Marxist-post humanism advanced by McKenzie Wark.

The Slav Avant-garde in Australian Art

Australian art history includes a peculiar short period during which the European avant-garde values were brought to Australia by a group of Slav artists who gathered in Adelaide in 1950. They were brothers Voitre (1919–1999) and Dušan Marek (1926–1993) from Bohemia, Władysław (1918–1999) and Ludwik Dutkiewicz (1921–2008) from Poland, and Stanislaus (Stanislav, Stan) Rapotec (1911–1997) from Yugoslavia, later joined by Joseph Stanislaus Ostoja-Kotkowski (1922–1994) from Poland. Each of these artists went on to leave their individual mark on the overall Australian art practice. This brief moment of the artists’ working and exhibiting together also enriched their later individual work with the very idea of a common Slav cultural memory.

‘I see their hatred’. Ethics of witnessing and The Missing Image – an intervention in Austria’s Holocaust memory space

ABSTRACT The film installation by visual artist and filmmaker Ruth Beckermann, The Missing Image (2015) uses historic archival footage to re-configure the meaning of a contested memorial in central Vienna, Memorial against War and Fascism (1988–1991) by Austrian artist Alfred Hrdlicka. Based on first-hand research, field observations and interviews with contemporary visitors, this article interprets The Missing Image as representative of a counter-archive memorial intervention which facilitates ethical acts of witnessing and which, in their turn, help re-frame and correct public understandings of compromised war monuments. The article offers an account of how viewers create meaning out of their experiences of witnessing difficult visual material. In doing so, I emphasize the importance of empirical reception studies to understand more deeply the impact of public art and of memorial art interventions on contemporary audiences.

Antipodean Prints: Joseph Burke and the development of the University of Melbourne’s Print Collection

ABSTRACT The Baillieu Library of the University of Melbourne hosts one of the finest old masters’ print collections in Australia, the equivalent of a state institution or national gallery. Begun with a donation made in 1959 by Dr Orde Poynton, it was enriched in the early sixties thanks to bequests and acquisitions orchestrated by Joseph Burke, Melbourne’s first Herald Chair of Fine Arts, and enhanced by the participation of key figures in the Australian art world. Prompted by new archival discoveries, this paper retraces how the print collection was created, highlighting the acquisitions made in the period 1960–1966. The paper highlights the collection’s teaching function and emphasises how its development was supported by an extraordinary synergy between art historians and local philanthropists.

Leadership Reluctance in the Australian Arts and Cultural Sector

Academic approaches to arts and cultural leadership have focused predominantly on established leaders in the organizational context. Taking an alternative approach, this paper considers the identity development of emerging leaders within disciplinary-based communities. It argues that leadership is both socially constructed and not universally embraced, analyzing 41 interviews with Australian arts and cultural practitioners to demonstrate that emerging arts and cultural leaders are often reluctant to identify as leaders. The paper explores reasons for this reluctance and discusses implications for the sector. The research contributes to theoretical knowledge of arts and cultural leadership and of the development of emerging leader identity.