IDEAS + ART + DESIGN
issue 3 issue 2009 r Editor Jo Bosben
Sub-Editor Tracey Clement
Designer Contents Christine Messinesi
Contributors Dominique Angeloro From the Editor 5 Anabel Dean Shaun Gladwell Australia’s Representative in Venice 7 Craig Judd Gill Samuel 3K Radius What’s on around town 10 Fran Strachan Sean Cordeiro and Claire Healy Happy Endings 13 Photographers At the Ludoteca with the Curator and Artists 17 Britta Campion Wilk The Fate of Five Student Contribution at Venice 22 The Education Hub Venice Biennale Toolkit 23 Illustrator Ivan Vizintin Online 09 34 The Time Magician Tanya Dyhin 36 Printed by Finsbury Green Waste Not Want Not Sustainable Design Today 42 www.finsbury.com.au Ceramics Yesterday and Today 50 Produced by Art, Sex and Eugenics Book Extract 52 Marketing & Communications College of Fine Arts Gallery Director Ursula Sullivan 55 University of New South Wales Graduate Showcase Image Credits 56 Crn Oxford Street & Greens Rd Paddington, NSW, Australia, 2021 COFA Alumni be part of something bigger 57
Contact +61 2 9385 0744 / 9385 0705 www.cofa.unsw.edu.au cricos provider code 00098G
ISSN 1833-1826
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2 / issue 3 issue 3 / 3 Editorial
This year in June, five Australian artists, a curator, five post below Illustration by Ivan Vizintin graduate students and four undergraduate students will head to Venice to participate in the oldest and one of the most significant visual arts events in the world – the Venice Biennale. For Australia, this is an important achievement. But for one institution, to which each of these people can be connected, the achievement is even greater. Never in the history of Australia’s involvement in major international art biennales has one educational institution been so represented. The 53rd Venice Biennale is COFA’s time to shine. This issue of Incubate has devoted 16 pages to the Australian artists, curator and students participating in the Venice event.
Shaun Gladwell, Australia’s senior representative in the Venice Back in Australia, design takes centre stage this winter, with Biennale and graduate from COFA, is featured as the lead emphasis placed on the importance of sustainability. In her story. The national and international buzz around Gladwell article Waste Not, Want Not, Gill Samuels speaks with two and his riveting, street-smart art is considered by many to COFA researchers in the area of sustainable design, and asks: be unprecedented. Anabel Dean describes the remarkable “How can design contribute to a better, more ecological world?” achievements of this artist on page 7. Rod Bamford and Katherine Moline provide insights as to the Selected by the Australia Council to curate the associated challenges and the possibilities in this area (see page 42). Venice Biennale show, Once Removed at the Ludoteca, COFA’s As two highly successful design practitioners, Trent Jansen Felicity Fenner is about to fast-gear the careers of four other and Elliat Rich, both COFA graduates, discuss how design Australian artists. They include the nationally celebrated can drive greater environmental awareness and change patterns artistic duo of Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro, both graduates of consumer consumption. Their own distinctive output, Jansen’s from COFA, Aboriginal artist Vernon Ah Kee and Japanese- objects (stools, lights and chairs) and Rich’s wearable art, Australian artist Ken Yonetani. Fenner, a lecturer and curator directly reference environmental concerns of today’s society at COFA, is herself no stranger to acclaim after the success (see page 44). of her 2008 Adelaide Biennale. Anyone who saw it would In connection with Sydney Design 09, Liz Williamson, head of expect no less of Once Removed (read more page on 17). COFA’s School of Design Studies, and lecturer Rod Bamford Perhaps the most unique aspect of Australia’s participation will curate the exhibition Sustain Me (opening 29 July at the in the 2009 Venice Biennale is the degree to which all parts Ivan Dougherty Gallery). Their focus is on sustainable practice of artistic endeavour, including the study and teaching of, will in the area of design. With a good mix of practitioners, be represented. Travelling to Venice to support the installation including Japanese ceramicist Yoshikazu Hasegawa, Italian of the Australian artworks are two groups of specialist art textile designer Luisa Cevese and New Zealand-based furniture students. One group, on full scholarship supported by the and object designer David Trubridge, the show aims to be Australia Council and COFA, will be integrally involved in the informative and educational across many fields of design installation and presentation of the Ludoteca show. These practice. For anyone interested in the future of design, this COFA Master of Art Administration students include Bronwyn is a show not to be missed (see page 47). Bailey-Charteris, Marissa Bateman, Marcel Cooper, Rebecca I hope you enjoy this issue of Incubate. Goosen and Danielle Hairs. The other group heading to Venice, including Jane Cleary, Jessica Haly, Lisa Rumble, and Elizabeth Thorpe, is comprised Jo Bosben of keen COFA undergraduate art education students. Tasked Editor by the Australia Council to produce an educational toolkit on the Venice Biennale and Australia’s participation for use in all Australian schools, these soon-to-be art teachers are fulfilling an official role and will leave a lasting reminder of Australia’s growing artistic status in the world (see page 23).
4 / issue 3 issue 3 / 5 COFA Heads to Venice Big Kid on the Block Australia’s Representative in Venice - Shaun Gladwell
A conversation with Shaun Gladwell always has to be brief. From San Diego to Sao Paulo, the Sydney artist is astoundingly busy escorting his work around the globe. Next Stop Venice, where he will represent Australia in the 53rd Biennale.
Gladwell is not just well known, he’s probably the best known Australian video artist, and his creation of one video in particular, Storm Sequence (2000), is credited as the flint that sparked real interest in contemporary Australian video art. “I can’t think of another Australian artist that has had the same kind of interest and focus,” declares Simeon Kronenberg, director of Sydney’s Anna Schwartz Gallery.
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From these heights, the western-suburbs boy, who might have become a professional skateboarder, chose to explore the creative possibilities of street sub-culture by transforming break dancing, BMX bike riding and graffti art into virtuoso video performances. He loves the notion of LEFT Shaun Gladwell, Apology to Roadkill, drifting like a window shopper through 2007–2009, production still, videography: urban space, fostering performance within Gotaro Uematsu, photography: Josh Raymond, landscape, while still maintaining a courtesy the artist & Anna Schwartz Gallery. Above Shaun Gladwell, Interceptor Surf: sincere interest in art history. Daydream Mine Road, 2009, production still, videography: Gotaro Uematsu, photography: Josh Raymond, courtesy the artist & Anna Gladwell undertook his Bachelor of Visual Art at Sydney College Schwartz Gallery.
of the Arts and then completed his Masters degree at the Below Shaun Gladwell, Interceptor Surf: College of Fine Arts (COFA). In 2001, he won a Samstag Daydream Mine Road, 2009, production still, videography: Gotaro Uematsu, photography: International Visual Arts Scholarship to study at Goldsmith’s Josh Raymond, courtesy the artist & Anna College in London and completed a celebrated residency at Schwartz Gallery. the Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris. “It wasn’t until art school,” he says, “that I started to think Kronenberg, predicts that Maddest Maximus will become just about ways of collapsing my interest in various extreme sports as important as Storm Sequence or Gladwell’s equally iconic into my art practice. There has been this crazy long conversation Pataphysical Man (a much quieter video of a man spinning on going on with art and life, or art and everyday experience, and his head on the floor with arms outstretched in a way that I’m interested in that.” evokes Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man). “There certainly have been many other Australian artists Gladwell’s dialogue will continue at Venice, host to the world’s For Gladwell, success is simply the means by which he is able oldest and largest biennale. This will be the second time that to dedicate his life to his art. For now, he remains focused on that have had wonderful international careers, but Gladwell has represented his country at an acclaimed ideas and production of video work with a dedicated crew of I don’t think there’s been anything quite international exhibition. But, he confides, “It’s not like you’re collaborators. “My work,” he says, “doesn’t intend to say selected to show and then all of a sudden there’s a beautiful anything in particular but is open to many possible readings. like the focus that’s been on Shaun. calm that sweeps over the studio. It kind-of throws it all into I leave the metaphors open but pregnant. I don’t try to be gear. It’s a great challenge.” didactic or pontificating.” It’s a great indication of the power of his images.” This time, as the sole exhibitor in the Australian Pavilion, Gladwell Speaking of which, time for talk is up, and Gladwell must get on. Simeon Kronenberg, director Anna Schwartz Gallery. will present his Maddest Maximus series. The world is waiting. Public acceptance and collector support coalesced around Known for his affinity with ‘street’ culture, it’s fitting that His biggest hurdle with Maddest Maximus was to develop an the iconic image of Storm Sequence. In this video, Gladwell Gladwell’s studio is perched above William Street on the evocative suite of five videos utilising the Australian desert skateboards freestyle on a flat space of concrete above the border of Sydney’s King’s Cross. It’s a zone he describes as landscape and the varied interpretations of the outback by great Anabel Dean crashing waves of Bondi, the ominous black clouds of an a “hotbed” of transsexual prostitution. “This is where it all artists of our time. Gladwell elaborates: “I’m really interested approaching storm reminiscent of a brewing Turner sky-scape. happens after nightfall,” he says. “I like that because it makes in off-road bike riding and I love a lot of the cinematic One of the four editions of this work sold on the secondary the area edgy and energetic. It’s a 24-hour environment … experiences of the kind of Australian desert landscape that market for A$120,000, while his video installation, Ghost like a mini Manhattan simulator with high rises everywhere.” exists in Broken Hill. It’s a very fertile space even though it’s Rider, from the 2008 Sydney Biennale at Cockatoo Island, arid in content.” sold for A$250,000. Gladwell’s buyers are the art cognoscenti: significant national and international private collectors and institutions such as the Art Gallery of NSW and the National Gallery of Australia. 8 / issue 3 issue 3 / 9
3K Radius
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1 Lee Grant, The Day Meg Wore a Inheritance The Quick and What Sydney Double Take F!NK Louisa Dress, 2007, 80 x 80cm, type C Large Art 1720 - 2009 Anne Landa Award 2009 print. the Dead Design 09 Fostering Bufardeci 2 Susan Hiller, Magic L antern, Rites of Passage in Art, Design 1987, audio-visual installation: Spirit and Life slide projections with synchronised soundtr ack; 3 carousels each with 12 x 35mm Until June 6 28 May − 27 June Until June 13 August 1 - 16 Until July 19 June 26 – August 30 July 28 - October 25 slides, driven by electronic pulses, 12 minutes, dimensions variable, edition 1/3. Copyright Tracey Moffatt’s photographic Curator David Elliott, Artistic The artist know as What has taken Sydney Design is Australia’s The Anne Landa Award is the first As the creative force behind Ex-pat Aussie, Louisa Bufardeci, the artist. Courtesy Timothy series, Scarred for Life, presents Director of the upcoming 17th a daring and exciting approach to longest running design festival. biennial exhibition in Australia successful design firm F!NK,R obert exhibits alongside Japanese artist, Taylor Gallery, London. tragi-comic tableaux of Biennale of Sydney, presents one making art since graduating from This year’s Sydney Design 09 dedicated to moving image and new Foster has also mentored numerous Zon Ito, in the MCA’s fourth 3 What, Swiss L andscape Paintings (detail), 1997, oil and dysfunctional family life. With these projected masterwork each by the National Art School in 1991. includes the best of both media arts. This year, guest curator up and coming talents. F!NK ‘international pairing’ project. The acrylic on 10 canvases, dimensions well known works for inspiration, Susan Hiller, Araya This presentation features a Australian and international design, Victoria Lynn asked Phil Collins Fostering Design presents a exhibition is comprised of two variable. Courtesy the Ergas Bindi Cole, Tamara Dean, Lee Rasdjarmrearnsook and Bill Viola. focused selection of pieces from showcased across an extensive (UK), Cao Fei (China), Lisa Reihana retrospective of the entire F!NK simultaneous solo shows, rather Collection. © the artist. 4 Young Blood: Designers Market Grant, June Indrefjord, Bronek As the title suggests, each artist every aspect of his career as an program of lectures, exhibitions, (NZ) and Gabriella and Silvana range alongside one-off objects than a collaboration, and Bufardeci at Sydney Design. Courtesy the Kozka, Ka-Yin Kwok, Fiona Morris, focuses on mortality and death in artist, from 1996 until the present. tours, films and other special events. Mangano, TV Moore and Mari designed by Foster and pieces has selected Ito based on shared Powerhouse Museum, Sydney. Aaron Seeto, Martin Smith and their own unique way. Viola’s video, Large Art includes painting, Sydney Design also showcases Velonaki (Australia) to consider what made in collaboration with emerging affinities. She presents selected 5 Lisa Reihana, Maui (from the Digital Mar ae Series), 2007, Toni Wilkinson use photography Hatsu Yume (1981), visually explores sculpture, performance and emerging designers through Young it means to transform the self into designers such as Elizabeth Kelly, works spanning an eight-year digital photograph, 200 x 100cm. and video to explore the truism, the classic dichotomies of light installation works, and a new sound Blood: Designers Market and another persona, as a doppelgänger, Sean Booth, Bronwen Riddiford, period, as well as a new site-specific Courtesy the artist. “You can choose your friends, but and dark, nature and culture, life piece, Chaconne, which What will WORKSHOPPED. Young Blood: a karaoke performer, an avatar, a Rachel Bowak, Oliver Smith and floor piece made for the MCA foyer 6 The F! NK Bowls, 2000, pressed anodised aluminium. you can’t choose your family.” and death. Rasdjarmrearnsook’s perform live at certain times during Designers Market is a chance to robot or a fantasy alter-ego. Rohan Nicol. This exhibition was using statistical data about Sydney’s 7 Louisa Bufardeci, Team Joy, Sometimes serious and sometimes video, This is Our Creation (2005), the exhibition. support Australia’s rising design curated by Merryn Gates and toured population. 2004, mixed media installation,
satirical, Inheritance is a warts and questions the banality of our ideas talents as they sell a wide range by Craft ACT. dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist and Anna Schwartz all family album. about life and death. Hiller’s audio of products. WORKSHOPPED, Gallery, Melbourne and Sydney. visual installation, Magic Lantern co-produced by the Powerhouse © the artist. (1987), includes a synchronised Museum, features Australian
soundtrack of Latvian scientist furniture, lighting and product Konstantin Raudive’s recorded design by emerging designers. ‘ghost’ voices.
australian Centre for Ivan Dougherty Gallery National Art School Gallery Powerhouse Museum Art Gallery of NSW Object Gallery Museum of Contemporary Art Photography Selwyn Street, Paddington. Forbes St, Darlinghurst. 500 Harris St, Ultimo. Art Gallery Rd, 417 Bourke St, Surry Hills. 140 George St, The Rocks. 257 Oxford St, Paddington. ph 9385 0726 ph 9339 8686 ph 9217 0111 The Domain, Sydney. ph 9361 4511 ph 9245 2400 ph 9332 1455 Mon-Sat 10am-5pm Mon–Sat 10am – 4pm Daily 10am-5pm ph 9225 1700 Tues-Sun, 11am – 6pm Daily 10am-5pm Tues-Fri noon - 7pm www.cofa.unsw.edu.au/idg www.nas.edu.au/Nas_gallery.htm www.powerhousemuseum.com Daily 10am - 5pm www.object.com.au www.mca.com.au Sat-Sun 10am - 6pm Wednesday until 9pm www.acp.org.au www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au
10 / issue 3 issue 3 / 11 COFA Heads to Venice Happy Endings On paper, Sean Cordeiro and Claire Healy’s story reads like a fairytale come true. They met at art school (studying sculpture at COFA), fell in love and just eight years after starting to work collaboratively, the duo is representing Australia in the 53rd Venice Biennale. As Cordeiro and Healy were getting ready for the most prestigious exhibition in the world, Incubate asked them a few of the standard questions, with a couple of tricky ones thrown in.
Incubate: Do you ever think, “Whoa Nellie, stop the horses, this is all going too fast?” Cordeiro: They say that every overnight success is the result of ten years of hard work. So maybe we are slightly ahead of schedule. We visited the last two Venice Biennales and amused ourselves by asking, “what would we do if we represented Australia in the next Biennale?” Suddenly we found ourselves in that position. So in a way we were prepared.”
Incubate: When did you first realise you wanted to become an artist? Cordeiro: I decided to follow this path while destroying a friend’s refrigerator in Redfern back in 1993. Healy: When I was secretly doing all the developing of my sister’s homework for her photography class at COFA. It occurred to me then that I did not have to be working in advertising at all, perhaps I should quit and go to art school.
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Incubate: What other careers (if any) did you consider pursuing as a child or young adult? Cordeiro: Chef, builder, garbage man, doctor, psychologist, soldier of fortune, engineer. Being an artist is one of the few professions that can combine a little of all these things if you like. Healy: I really had my heart set on being an Art Director in advertising one day.
How did your family encourage (or discourage) Incubate: Incubate: How do you approach the process of collaboration? your artistic ambitions? Cordeiro: Someone usually comes up with an idea, it’s Cordeiro: After I dropped out of a Bachelor of Maths and written down in the diary and then shelved. Science my family built me a shed for me to get my portfolio Healy: Most of our ideas get shelved in fact. But we do together. Very supportive, even if wary. document that initial concept, it gets written down in a small Healy: My family was very supportive of my interest in black book. With time and reflection, kind of like a bottle of advertising. They helped me with the very high fees for a graphic wine, the idea somehow matures with time. Usually the idea is design school. They bought me all the gear, drafting board tweaked by the other, and through the process of fabrication and all. I think it was much to their disappointment that I then the idea changes so much that you can hardly feel that one of dropped out of the advertising industry and went to art school. us owns the idea any more. On a practical level we have different They thought there was no money in the art game. Hopefully skills and we both utilse these skills to see the project to an end. we will prove them wrong! Incubate: Do either of you have solo projects on the boil? Incubate: What factors influenced your decision to Is this something you want to pursue? study at COFA? Cordeiro: We don’t really have enough time for solo projects! Cordeiro: I think I went to the open day and was very I do origami and cryptic crossword puzzles when I want to do impressed by the equipment they had in the sculpture studio. my own thing. I also have a half finished kite that I started last Healy: My sister was there and she was having much more year that is gathering dust. fun that I was in advertising. Healy: I have my yoga practice. We had always thought that we would keep up our solo practices, but there just does not Incubate: The rewards of your collaboration are well documented. What are some of the challenges involved in seem to be any time for it right now. Who knows? Maybe in working together? the future this may emerge. Too much verbal communication can destroy an idea. Healy: Incubate: Your works seem to channel an urge to create We tried an exercise or project where we created his and her order out of chaos; they embody a kind of taxonomy of the libraries that were identical, and read the books at the same unquantifiable. Is this true? time. In time, we were hoping that our thought patterns etc Cordeiro: Many of our works have an internal logic that would be the same, so that we could communicate without dictates the way in which they are ordered. Often, the idea of talking, and bring a more subconscious approach to the work movement is the starting point to the way we articulate the rather than talking something to its death. objects we work with. For instance, physical permutations derived from imagined economic or freighting parameters may be the starting point within an installation or object. In a funny sense your reference to taxonomy is literally pertinent to the Greek meaning of the word, via French taxis (arrangement) and nomia (distribution). Much of our work is about the arrangement of distribution or the distribution of arrangement!
Incubate: After Venice, what goals do you have left to achieve as artists? Cordeiro: Not really sure…. I always wanted to be the first artist in space. I’d love to do a residency on a space station. How cool would that be? Maybe a project that collects space junk. The US Strategic Command says there are about 130,000 pieces of space junk out there. Healy: To get a gig that pays well.
Sean Cordeiro and Claire Healy will represent Australian at the Venice Biennale in the group show Once Removed, held at The Ludoteca, a former convent in the Castello district, opening in June. Their first child is due one month later.
Once Removed is curated by COFA’s own Felicity Fenner and also features works by Vernon Ah Kee, Ken Yonetani. 7 June - 22 November 2009. Both Sean Cordeiro and Claire Healy have Bachelor and Master degrees in Fine Arts from the College of Fine Arts, UNSW.
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MCA_Incubate Ad_PM.indd 1 24/03/09 9:00 AM COFA Heads to Venice
At the Ludoteca
In 2008, Felicity Fenner was looking for a suitable venue for her group show, Once Removed, which would form part of the The convent rooms of the Ludoteca Australian contingent at the 53rd Venice Biennale. The convent rooms of the Ludoteca had great artistic promise, but Fenner had great artistic promise, but was momentarily more intrigued by the door in one wall. ‘What’s behind that door?’ the curator asked the Italian official who Fenner was momentarily more was guiding her around proposed sites. As Fenner recalls, intrigued by the door in one wall. he opened the door to reveal the honey-coloured marble interiors of a 16th century chapel on a canal. “‘Oh,’ I said, ‘Is ‘What’s behind that door?’ the this available for hire?’ He looked at me. ‘It would cost your country much money!’ he said.” Fenner smiles and continues: curator asked the Italian official “That was it. Negotiations were on. I was madly emailing who was guiding her around back home to the Australia Council saying, ‘Come on. You’ve got to find a way. We’ve got to have it.’” proposed sites. As Fenner recalls, In the end, it didn’t cost too much money, and the canal frontage assured that Australia would have a more commanding position he opened the door to reveal the at the most important contemporary art show in the world. honey-coloured marble interiors In some ways this anecdote is revealing. It provides an insight into a lively curator who is determined to make people take notice. of a 16th century chapel on a The last time Fenner attracted such public attention was as curator of the 2008 Adelaide Biennial, Handle with Care. The canal... For Fenner “that was exhibition drew unprecedented numbers and elicited high it. Negotiations were on.” praise from one respected art critic, Sebastian Smee, who wrote in the Australian newspaper, “This year’s Adelaide It was an intense time for Fenner, who has been the senior Biennial is the best show of its kind I’ve seen.” curator of COFA’s Ivan Dougherty Gallery and a lecturer in the Master of Art Administration course at the College for many years. Following her success in Adelaide, Fenner was invited by the Australia Council to submit a proposal for a group exhibition of early-career artists at the 2009 Venice Biennale. By then it was the last week of the Adelaide Biennial, and Fenner was in London at a Tate Britain conference talking about curatorial strategies in contemporary biennial exhibitions. “I was,” she recalls, “literally sketching up ideas on the back of my note pad, emailing artists to see if they would be in my Venice proposal, asking them to send images.”
left photo of Felicity Fenner by Wilkz.
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far left above Claire Healy & Sean Cordeiro, Life Span (detail), 2009, VHS videos, silicone, 625 x 320 x 524 cm. Photo: Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro. Courtesy the artists and Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney.
far left below photo of Claire Healy & Sean Cordeiro by Wilk.
left photo of Ken Yonetani by Glen Wilk.
right above and below Ken Yonetani, Sweet Barrier Reef (detail), 2008, installation view, Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, sugar 110 x 1250 x 360 cm, Photo: Julia Yonetani. Courtesy the artist.
The video in this monolithic meditation on the meaning of life and spirituality has a viewing time equal to the average human life span: 66.1 years. Brisbane-based artist Vernon Ah Kee (an Aboriginal Australian who also has Chinese ancestry) and Ken Yonetani (a Japanese migrant to Australia) complete the Once Within a fortnight of Fenner’s return to Sydney, the Australia Removed line-up. Their personal experiences underpin two more installations, Council announced that she would curate a group show which focus on themes of social displacement and environmental ruin. at The Ludoteca, and that COFA graduate Shaun Gladwell “My idea was to create a feeling of being slightly at odds with the world,” Fenner would exhibit in the Australian Pavilion at the Giardini. explains. “There will be a kind of suspension of disbelief in looking at all three Fenner’s ‘wish list’ for Once Removed included two other works. They depict a slightly surreal reality and for me that has a nice resonance globally itinerant COFA graduates: Claire Healy and Sean with Venice itself. Venice is like one big stage set. You persuade yourself it’s real, Cordeiro. Life Span, their towering installation of 195,774 but it’s actually being preserved, propped up to stop it sinking under the water.” obsolete video tapes, will consume the convent chapel and Water, quite literally, threatens to claim one of the installations if the tide rises. nearly touch the Ascension fresco that adorns its ceiling. “We’re hoping that the bottom layer of videos in Claire and Sean’s work will be The video in this monolithic meditation on the meaning of resilient because it normally floods in Venice at the beginning of winter,” Fenner life and spirituality has a viewing time equal to the average says. “There were 50 centimetres of water in there last year so it’s possible, in human life span: 66.1 years. October, we could get some water.”
18 / issue 3 issue 3 / 19 C Ah Kee by Wilk. Wilk. by Kee Ah 2007–09 video production production 2007–09 video Cant Chant (Wegrewhere) Chant Cant Kee courtesy the artist and and artist the courtesy Kee Milani Gallery, Brisbane. Gallery, Milani abo O still photo: Vernon Ah Ah Vernon photo: still rig FA He h v t e Vernon Ah Kee, Kee, Ah Vernon photo of Vernon of Vernon photo a ds to Veni to ds
c e “ T Anabel Dean Unmistakeable reference is made here to the mass mass the to here made is reference Unmistakeable will be on duty in the exhibition during the opening week: five five week: opening the during exhibition the in duty on be will Fenner and five fully funded C funded fully five and Fenner Fenner that no sugar sculptures or stacks of videotapes could could videotapes of stacks or sculptures sugar no that Fenner h ec nBlaogbadsot n ol ugass sunglasses. Bolle and board-shorts Billabong in beach the of cockroach baits and rat traps,” Fenner interrupts herself. herself. interrupts Fenner traps,” rat and baits by caused cockroach of damage recognise to failure human the on of alienation from the iconic aspects of of aspects iconic the from alienation of coral in his Zen garden of sugar is dead. I dead. is sugar of garden Zen his in coral Sweet Barrier Reef Reef Barrier Sweet coated sugar delicate Yonetani’s Ken sculptures explore the schism between man and nature. nature. and man between schism the explore sculptures have been delivered to Venice without the help of C of help the without Venice to delivered been have months.” six for there sitting attract growing attention. growing attract displacement of of displacement disengagement with the natural world. “ world. natural the with disengagement days straight, eight hours a day. More than enough time to to time enough than More day. a hours eight straight, days I I T n different ways, water is equally important to the other artists. artists. other the to important equally is water ways, different n n Vernon A n Vernon hinking about the practical reality of this exhibition reminds reminds exhibition this of reality practical the about hinking hat’s my fear: the vermin in Venice in summer and the sugar sugar the and summer in Venice in vermin the fear: my hat’s Chant, Cant h Kee’s A h Kee’s people and their continued experience experience continued their and people Kee’s h O F A A
A boriginal surfers reclaim reclaim surfers boriginal rt rt A A dministration students students dministration guess we’ll need lots need we’ll I guess ustralian cultural life. life. cultural ustralian 20 t’s a ghostly lesson lesson aghostly t’s /
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CHRISTOPHER IRELAND CHRISTOPHER IMAGE © Chris Ireland Dorothy 2008 (detail) australian centre for centre australian 17JULYAUGUST 16 TO Government through Arts NSW and the Australian Government Paddington NSW 2021 PaddingtonNSW an initiative of the Australian State and Territory Governments. Territory and State Australian the of initiative an body and is supported by the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory advisory and funding arts its Council, Australia the through Australian Centre for Photography is assisted by the NSW NSW the by assisted is Photography for Centre Australian 257 Oxford Street Oxford 257 tel: 02 9332 1455 9332 02 tel: SATURDAYSUNDAY TO [email protected] [email protected] www.acp.org.au photography TUESDAYFRIDAYTO 10.00AM– 10.00AM– 12.00–7.00PM
GALLERY3 6.00PM 8/4/09 18:01:51 COFA Heads to Venice COFA Heads to Venice The Education Hub Venice Biennale Toolkit
The selection of three COFA graduates as artists at the Venice One of the Art Education students, Elizabeth Thorpe, extols Biennale highlights the College’s crucial role in training the the virtues of this thought-provoking initiative. “I’ve found it next generation of Australian artists, designers and theorists. really challenging to have to start from scratch and turn our But COFA’s contribution to the world’s oldest and most research into a useful resource for teachers and students and prestigious contemporary art biennale has gone even further those without an arts background. It’s been a real eye-opener. this year with the production of an online Education Hub that You have to think very differently because it’s nothing like provides direct engagement with happenings in Venice via a writing an art essay or a critique of a show.” range of web-based resources. Kim Snepvangers, Head of COFA’s School of Art History and Six students from COFA’s Bachelor of Art Education course Art Education, says the innovative aspect of this strategic have been chosen to work with the Australia Council on a partnership between the Australia Council and COFA is its national educational resource for young people and teachers. capacity to allow COFA art and design education students to The resource will provide background and historical information engage in an authentic collaboration with key industry partners. about the Venice Biennale, Australia’s representation at the Biennale over the past 50 years and delve into the artwork of “The students act as the para-professionals this year’s five Australian representatives. Interviews with working directly with the curator, the Biennale artists and curator Felicity Fenner form a key part of the resource. artists, outside agencies like the Australia Council, the advisory panel and other universities, to provide a resource for viewers of diverse ages, backgrounds and The team (which also includes Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris, experience.” Marcel Cooper, Rebecca Goosen and Danielle Hairs) needed Kim Snepvangers to demonstrate strong academic performance, an aptitude for teamwork and some experience of exhibition installation, It will be an important learning curve for students who, with before being assigned to one of the five Australian artists the guidance of Senior Lecturer Dr Gay McDonald, must put exhibiting at Venice. into practice the real world application of contemporary ideas. It was a challenge for Marissa In assisting artist Ken Yonetani, Bateman has already been “The notion of how you engage audiences in contemporary exposed to a mind-boggling list of logistical necessities. “I’ve been art in an exhibition like this is challenging,” Snepvangers Bateman to explain to an knee-deep in things that I’ve never been involved with before, says. “Everyone wants to know about it, but contemporary Italian baker that an like talking about marine class plywood and climate controlled art is at times, confronting, and this is why it’s such an shipping containers, air versus sea freight, and how you interesting project.” Australian artist wanted him might repair a damaged sugar sculpture.” The COFA art and design education students involved in the And cakes. “At the moment I’m frantically trying to contact The COFA students have been development of the Online Education Hub are: Jane Cleary, to make cakes that looked like Venetian bakers to get 30 cakes because Ken is doing six researching and writing since Jessica Haly, Sally Leaney, Lisa Rumble, Tali Seidman and sea urchins. performances. His sculpture is about consumption and greed late 2008 developing the content Elizabeth Thorpe. and so he gives these vivid coral-shaped cakes to the audience for the online resource, which
“And that was just part of the job,” says Bateman, “to plan and while they’re walking around his Zen sugar garden.” will be hosted on the Australia Visit the Australia Venice Biennale website and check out the Education Hub at: install the exhibition, Once Removed, at the Venice Biennale.” Bateman laughs, “I have checked with Ken to see if he’s bringing Council’s Venice Biennale www.australiavenicebiennale.com.au “If I had finished my degree when I was supposed to, at the his own cake moulds if worst comes to worst with the bakers.” website. In addition to the end of last year, I would never have had this opportunity,” Bateman knows that the networking opportunities of the online Education Hub, a printed Bateman explains. “It felt like destiny because I had to drop a Venice Biennale are beyond her imagination and she feels visual resource, made possible subject last year to accept a job, which ultimately fell through, so enormously grateful to COFA for funding her, and the four by a partnership between the that meant I had to do another subject to complete my degree other student assistants, to travel to and stay in Venice. “I Australia Council and COFA, this year.” And that’s when a university special project was cannot explain how excited I am by it,” she says. “I cried when will be distributed nationally offered and, serendipitously, it ended up being the Venice I found out that I was chosen. I’ve studied for seven years and to 12,000 schools and tertiary Biennale. Bateman then became one of COFA’s five postgraduate I’ve always dreamed of going to Venice at the end of my institutions. Master of Art Administration students selected to work on university career. To be part of it now: it’s as if the world is Top cover of the Australian 53rd International Art Exhibition La Biennale Di Venezia Felicity Fenner’s group show at The Ludoteca. just so full of amazing opportunities and I could do anything.” Educational Resource, 2009. Courtesy of the Australia Council of the Arts.
below pages 8-9 of the Australian 53rd International Art Exhibition La Biennale Di Venezia Educational Resource, 2009. Courtesy of the Australia Council of the Arts.
22 / issue 3 issue 3 / 23 24 / issue 3 issue 3 / 25 26 / issue 3 issue 3 / 27 28 / issue 3 issue 3 / 29 30 / issue 3 issue 3 / 31 MAIN GALLERY VISIT Design Now! is Object’s annual graduate exhibition that presents the best and freshest work of Australia’s up and coming designers. Design Now! 2009 will showcase the work of the 18 finalists selected from over 200 applications. Object Gallery 18 April – 21 June 2009 Melbourne Museum 14 August – 22 November 2009 Design Now! 2009 presented by Object Gallery Major Sponsor Living Edge
PROJECT SPACE seize\collide explores the function and uses of visual communication Background image: within culturally diverse contexts. Harmony Lam, finalist in Design Now! 2009, Pierced from the loss.ofme collection, 2008. Photo: Jackie Adams Object Gallery 18 April – 21 June 2009 LEARN READ SHOP THINK BELONG
www.object.com.au Object Gallery: St Margaret’s 417 Bourke St Surry Hills NSW 2010 Phone: +61 2 9361 4511 Open 11am – 6pm Tues – Sun (Closed Mon) FREE ADMISSION Object Office: 415 Bourke Street Surry Hills NSW 2010 Phone: +61 2 9361 4555 Fax: +61 2 9361 4533 Email: [email protected]
Object: Australian Centre for Craft and Design is a non-profit organisation supported by the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian, State and Territory Governments. Object is assisted by the New South Wales Government – Arts NSW, and the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
32 / issue 3 issue 3 / 33
xxxx-incubate_ad_02.indd 1 3/4/09 4:47:20 PM Many teachers in the late 1980s embraced the computer, but the dominance of technologies over pedagogical outcomes quickly alienated education communities. Early online art and design education courses were often a nightmare due to a combination of inadequate technologies and inappropriate concepts, such as the central hub/fountain distance learning model or the desire to create a
left photo of Rick Bennett by Britta Campion. facsimile of the classroom. In 2009, how things have changed! right photo of Simon McIntyre by Wilk. In contrast to technologists determining how learning occurs, COFA Online courses are designed around the needs of the people who use them. They work, and they are becoming increasingly popular. These products of an intense collaborative colloquium process represent a concurrent re-conception In contrast to technologists of learning processes and behaviours for both students and determining how learning occurs, teachers. A week-long orientation is an important transition into COFA Online courses are designed this new international community. Students are asked to construct Most students find that COFA Online courses are empowering. a personal diary as a way to build a group reference point, thus The classes are always small. The fact that every interaction around the needs of the people who ensuring that those enrolled are not just mere user names. with the website platform is archived gives students great use them. They work, and they are Working with Coordinator Simon McIntyre, there are now confidence because they (and their colleagues) can see becoming increasingly popular. These nearly 1000 Australian and international students enrolled in skills develop as the course progresses. Transparency works the COFA Online art and design courses. Choosing from a both ways. The teachers are engaged, prepared and responsive products of an intense collaborative suite of 23 undergraduate and postgraduate modules, students to questions, comments and dialogue. colloquium process represent a are not actually learning to paint and draw, but rather to develop While this new teaching method liberates the time and social concurrent re-conception of learning abilities to find creative solutions, make connections, and constraints that usually occur in classroom environments, collaborate effectively within a framework of broad theoretical Philippines based participant, Jag Garcia, has noted some processes and behaviours for both knowledge across the many fields of art and design. The difficulties, for example that it is harder to discern non-verbal students and teachers. teachers who run the courses are also scattered around the nuances because he says, “you don’t exactly know what the Significantly, the diverse cohort of COFA Online cannot get world, bringing new skills and viewpoints to this unique learning other is ‘really’ saying or thinking just by what they write”. enough of their new community. Like certain websites and environment. The success is due not only to the high quality However, he continues, “the program is designed for online games, it becomes addictive. McIntrye says that teachers content, but also to the flexibility of the Omnium software asynchronous participation and deadlines are more spread often have to advise students to “back off a little” from exceeding developed in house by COFA Online director Rick Bennett. The out. It allows you to actually have a life and study at the same the required contact hours. As Head of COFA’s Digital Media delivery platform allows a raft of ongoing conversations so time. It allows for more realistic time management…with this program, Professor Ross Harley states: “Today everyone lives that the focus of all the courses is cross-disciplinary interaction. program there’s a lot of breathing space, which allows you to online, is plugged in and networked. What COFA has done is Feedback and evaluation is constructive but overwhelmingly think, and research, and compose, and work, and say hi to the develop courses and platforms that are both fluid and exciting, positive. As current student Margaret Blaszczyk comments, wife and kids. And all that comes from a virtual ‘classroom’.” enhancing the pre-existing cultural forces of online social “because of the online nature of the course, I feel that (maybe networking. I can only see this form of education expanding paradoxically) a higher level of participation is stimulated… exponentially, with COFA leading the way.” it allows, perhaps even demands a more considered exchange and more in-depth reflective comment. The emphasis in the Craig Judd course is on collaboration, and from time-to-time students experience difficulties with regard to inequity in contributions In recognition of their achievements, COFA Online has recently been awarded a two-year Learning and Teaching Grant of A$219,000 from the Australian Learning and Teaching Council. The grant within a group or team, but this is true of both online and face- will enable the development of a series training videos and educational kits for teachers around the to-face collaboration. And being online is a real life scenario, world, offering them a positive and supportive way to plan, create and teach online. The products will be freely available and disseminated through UNSWTV, the management of which is a desirable skill to have not only iTunes U and Youtube. in the education setting but afterwards.”
34 / issue 3 issue 3 / 35 Tanya Dyhin’s imagination has been sparked by photography’s ability to capture time. And while the peculiar science of the camera is familiar to us all, Dyhin’s images ignite a sense of wonder about the magic at the heart of this technology.
Much of Dyhin’s photography is marked by sensitivity to the dynamics of place, especially those unpopulated contemporary sites that suggest remnants of human presence. Her interest in transitional urban landscapes is evident in her photographs of Melbourne’s graffiti-covered laneways, with their ephemeral inscriptions of culture, and she is currently working on a project that further explores the conceptual terrain of the “contemporary ruin”. In her earlier Shadow Dancer series, the artist also examined the intersection of movement and light, using a slow shutter speed to trace a body’s journey through space. Her recent photographic series, Sites of Accumulation, reveals empty interiors ghosted by eerie streaks of light. Shot on location at the Prince Henry Hospital at Little Bay, the Sydney- based artist was granted access to the site just months before its scheduled redevelopment. “I am drawn to places and sites which display - or may be about to display - inevitable mark of change,” she explains. “There is something quite beautiful in that moment before change strikes, when histories, time, and memories converge.” Shot entirely on 35mm film, Dyhin used in-camera techniques to produce the unusual light effects, employing digital technologies only in the development and post-production stages. She says that this “intersection of analogue and digital processes is of interest to me because it allows for a manipulation of time, light and movement, and challenges our perception of what it is that we think we are actually looking at.”
right Tanya Dyhin, Sites of Accumulation #5, 2008.
36 / issue 3 issue 3 / 37 far left Tanya Dyhin, Sites of Accumulation #1, 2008. above Tanya Dyhin, Sites of Accumulation #4, 2008. below Tanya Dyhin, Sites of Accumulation #2, 2008.
In 2004, while working on her Bachelor of Art Theory at the College of Fine Arts (COFA), In her nine to five, Dyhin now teaches in the Photomedia department at COFA and works Dyhin got a serious case of ‘fine arts envy’ after an assignment wherein she co-curated as a freelance music photographer, documenting live performance and the behind-the- an exhibition of student work. Feeling “incredibly inspired to be making and exhibiting scenes action of the industry. However, artistically her practice retains a sharp focus work” herself, she switched to the Bachelor of Digital Media, where she “enjoyed the on the conceptual aspects of the photographic medium. “My interest in light crosses emphasis on developing a cross-disciplinary approach to making art.” Graduating with from the scientific to the spiritual,” she says. “I have a desire to analytically understand Honours last year, her Sites of Accumulation series took out COFA’s Lucy Aspinal Prize the world around me, and my exploration of light is an investigation of the very element for Photomedia and gained her a finalist spot in the 2009 Wilson HTM National Art Prize. that allows me to make my work. Its representation is a reflection of that exploration and also a desire to extend the capabilities of the human eye. Dominique Angeloro
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40 / issue 3 issue 3 / 41 The Challenges You do the maths. Bamford firmly believes individual designers COFA Design Studies lecturer Katherine Moline can make an environmental impact through this kind of thinking. thinks the change to more sustainable practices Another principle of C2C life cycle analysis is the optimisation won’t be entirely voluntary. She says Australia, of the way an item is created and distributed to reduce its and the developed world, view a surfeit of consumption of resources. Specifications and manufactures manufactured goods as the norm. “People need should follow “the mantra of the three Rs: reduce, reuse and to realise they can’t just accumulate loads of stuff. recycle”, says Bamford. But, he concedes that in today’s global It’s a big psychological shift and I think people economy, access to cheap labour means the most profitable have resisted until now,” she explains. choice may take precedence over ecological considerations The resistance to sustainable design dates almost from its What role does contemporary or even the wellbeing of local economies. inception. Moline cites the Global Tools group of Italian How an item is used is another consideration and one that can designers, active from 1973 to 1975, who were seeking to design design play in communicating deliver some surprises. Bamford cites research by the Dutch for more than just society’s elite. After studying how rural ecological values that are government comparing the environmental impact of communities used and maintained manufactured goods, they manufacturing a ceramic cup with a takeaway paper one. came to the conclusion that they were simply aestheticising increasingly critical to life on Perhaps unexpectedly, he says, “you need to use the ceramic poverty and abandoned their research. According to Moline, cup over 200 times before it breaks even with the disposable “the same issues hover around sustainability now. People Earth? cup. The environmental measuring stick is becoming more see it as a form of renunciation.” She says consumer attitudes important; how much energy a thing requires to be created are the biggest factor in achieving change. “We’re seeing so Four designers and design researchers versus how much it costs to be maintained.” much ‘green-washing’, where a product is repackaged printed with green ink. These items might have great supermarket talk about sustainable design. appeal, but the way they are manufactured or distributed has not changed.” Moline sees one solution at the level of infrastructure and government policy. A recent SBS television forum, in which building industry representatives discussed sustainable practices, identified the need for regulations to level the playing field. “Because,” explains Moline, “it costs more to work sustainably. The industry can’t change until there is a real mandate.” Another problem noted in commercial business is the knowledge gap between proposed government standards and sustainability policies and their implementation by designers currently working in the field. Emerging designers, says Moline, need to be more resourceful in devoting research time to the relevant technologies. She believes “the role of education is to provide experiences to enable young designers to understand what has to be rethought due to issues of sustainability”. A few years ago COFA third-year design students worked with Mission Possible non-government organisations based in East Timor, a project intended to explore what design should be, beyond luxury “Waste is basically an uneconomic concept. Why Bamford says that while there are materials with good C2C goods and expensive furniture. Faced with challenges such as waste things?” asks College of Fine Arts (COFA) credentials, “there remains a third group of materials which designing an inexpensive stage and seating to be transported lecturer, designer and ceramicist Rod Bamford, are toxic hybrids and we should try not to use them at all. Even Once the item comes to the end of its useful life there’s the by truck for travelling educational shows, Moline says some who teaches his students a structured approach, the compound used on the soles of shoes should be considered issue of how it’s disposed of, ideally through reuse of the students were motivated while others were overwhelmed. formulated to eliminate waste as we understand in terms of how it wears off and enters the environment.” component materials or embodied energy. For example, The value of the program’s challenge, however, means that it it, and transform it into... food. Bamford is optimistic about this happening. Environmental Bamford says, “in Europe they can cleanly burn plastics and will be run again this year. Think plastic bags, he instructs, that can dissolve and ecological concern over the last 30 years has yielded use the energy for heating.” Faced with a global financial crisis, Moline sees positive into a puddle of potable water; think newspaper practical models for sustainable design. He says that while Designers undertaking training in today’s world must be creatively possibilities. “There is opportunity for people to change their mulch on the veggie garden. These are what C2C designers can model themselves as aesthetic messengers, open-minded says Bamford. “They need to understand the thinking. We know this has already started. Australians have (Cradle to Cradle) environmental scientists William McDonough imbuing their designs with sustainable concepts to try to realities of day-to-day survival of the businesses they work for, stopped spending and I think there is a confluence of forces and Michael Braungart classify as biological nutrients. Their communicate those ideals, there is a checklist of fundamental and also be up to date with the latest developments. This is making it very possible, and in many cases necessary, for 2008 C2C philosophy is based on eco-efficiencies that mimic considerations to be applied. “The first,” he instructs, “is to an area that’s moving really rapidly. There’s lots of global people to rethink how they live with or without resources and cycles in nature by employing both biological and technical ask, ‘Do we need this?’ ‘Will it be better?’ ‘How can we make momentum to deal with these issues because it’s good business to make decisions. This is just the start of it. Who knows nutrients such as PET (polyethyleneterepthalate). But they it better and what are we improving?’” to do things this way. As the world economy becomes tighter, what’s going to happen.” weren’t the first to come up with the concept. This honour Bamford can illustrate this from his own experience in mass the best ideas will prevail.” belongs to Walter R Stahel, who, along with designers like production. In 2003, he designed five coffee cups (espresso, Victor Papanek, became alarmed about how industry used latte, cappuccino, mug and boule) with bases that matched one natural resources when war in the Middle East provoked the universal saucer for local restaurateurs, Manfredi Enterprises. first oil crisis in the 1973. 42 / issue 3 issue 3 / 43 Sending a Message
“Most people don’t understand what a carbon, or more Elliat Rich, another COFA design graduate, presents a piece importantly an ecological footprint is,” says furniture and in the Footprints exhibition that also engenders a conceptual object designer Trent Jansen. “I wanted to take the footprint component. Her wearable artwork is a chest panel in the form metaphor into the physical to give people a more approachable, of delicate fern fronds that light up in synchronisation with the tactile way to understand it, so it’s not just an abstract concept.” action of the lungs to express symbiotic plant and human Jansen, a COFA design graduate, recently curated the Footprints interaction. Rich says it is intended to take the sustainability exhibition for charity organisation Oxfam. He spent a week concept away from merely quantitative and materialistic lifting and carrying and covering floor spaces at the Museum considerations to look at why it is important. “The environment of Contemporary Art and Blank Space gallery with paper tulips. isn’t ‘the other’, it is the system that we too are an element The tagline for the exhibition was, he says, ‘Turn your carbon of,” she explains. footprint into a tiptoe’. The newspaper tulips crowding the Rich says she found it a challenge to express her sustainable floor space forced visitors to literally tiptoe through them to design ideals in client-driven work, especially in a commercial view the exhibition. “By the end of the day about a third of centre such as Sydney. She has moved to Alice Springs where them were squashed. They are spaced so people have to be much of her work is now related to the central desert region. extremely careful where they put their feet,” he says. These days, Rich chooses clients according to whether she As a successful practicing designer, Jansen is committed to can see the value of the organisation’s activity. “At the moment,” sustainability, using discarded road signs for his Sign Stools she says, “I’m working with the Centre for Appropriate and all-wood components for his Pregnant Chair. He is also Technology to develop water management kits for people living concerned about developing approaches that give designs in remote communities.” She is also contributing to a number lasting relevance. of Big hArt projects. The organisation is involved with
“Conceptual sustainability goes one step beyond materials and left Trent Jansen, Pregnant Chair, 2008. empowering unrepresented groups like single mothers or
processes, where the object evokes emotional attachment to top Trent Jansen, Sign Stool, 2006. indigenous language speakers. She says she does quite a
make somebody keep rather than discard it,” Jansen explains. below Elliat Rich, Two-Way, 2007. bit of work for non-profit organisations. “For example, with the Pregnant Chair, I was thinking about Photograph Alex Kershaw. This work was According to Rich, “designing sustainability into an object is developed as a result of the ANAT reSkin what is universally beautiful and important and I wanted to imbue technology lab. only one portion of the bigger picture. The overall goal of
Trent Jansen an object with these qualities.” The simple timber chair what the object allows people to do. The object is only a expresses the mother and child relationship through incorporating stepping stone to a more sustainable way of living.” two panels in the seat that flip open to allow a miniature version, the baby chair, to pop out.
44 / issue 3 issue 3 / 45 Sustainability in Action Upcoming exhibition – Sustain Me
Liz Williamson, COFA’s head of Design Studies, together with design lecturer, Rod Bamford, is curating an upcoming exhibition titled Sustain Me. Williamson has selected pieces from a core group of designers who have engaged in sustainable practices for an extended time. Each designer also has undertaken substantial bodies of research and has applied rigorous standards in the fabrication of their work. The list includes: Japanese ceramicist Yoshikazu Hasegawa; Italian textile designer Luisa Cevese; New Zealand-based furniture and object designer David Trubridge; Australian jeweller Mark Vaarwerk; and local furnishing textiles company Instyle Textiles. “All these people demonstrate very well how they engage with design practices that are about sustainable issues. I think such practices are going to become far more embedded in design. It’s already a concept that our students understand will be integral to their professional lives,” Williamson says. The exhibitors in Sustain Me cover a very broad range of design practice. Hasegawa’s research is into the process of working with pre-fired materials in mass production. Instyle, too, is involved with mass production and produces a range of vibrant and contemporary textiles manufactured to stringent ecological standards. Cevese creates works with textile off-cuts fused with plastic, including tote bags, which Williamson would love to see covering a wall. Mark Vaarwerk fabricates immensely sophisticated jewellery pieces from plastic bags and bottles and is currently researching uses for other household items, such as vacuum cleaner parts. David Trubridge, renowned for his sensitive works in ply and other sustainable woods, is submitting several two-metre tall lights in the form of Baskets of Knowledge, made from bamboo, plastic and plywood. The exhibition will also include video components, expanding on the designers’ methodologies and approaches. “The main purpose of the exhibition is to try to tease out what sustainability is all about, and to question ‘What is the context for sustainability?’ ‘How does it impact on designers? And, how are people informed about the real reasons for sustainability, including financial, economic, cultural or environmental. I see the educational aspect of the exhibition as vitally important,” Williamson says.
Sustain Me opens at the Ivan Dougherty Gallery on 29 August. For more details, visit, www.cofa.unsw.edu.au/galleries/idg
Gill Samuel
46 / issue 3 issue 3 / 47 48 / issue 3 issue 3 / 49 Another Silk Road
Ceramics Yesterday and Today
Clayton, who is the Coordinator of Ceramics for COFA’s School of Design Studies, goes on to add, “The relationship between ceramics as it has developed in the West, and the legacy from the East, is profound.” This legacy, a complex history of interaction between China and Europe (and later Australia) which includes both coveted luxury goods and two dollar shop teacups, is the subject of an exhibition curated by Clayton titled, Another Silk Road. Another Silk Road is a satellite event of the Australian Ceramic Triennale, an international conference which addresses the theme ‘Facing Asia’. Clayton narrows this focus to China and uses the phrase Another Silk Road To say ceramics has a long history is to make a massive as a metaphor that acknowledges that the flow of information understatement. Its history is in fact so long, that broken bits between East and West has always gone both ways. As Clayton of ancient pots unearthed millennia later are used to name and puts it, this group exhibition considers “the role and impact of date mysterious cultures from pre-history. For archaeologists cultural exchange between diverse individuals, all ceramic and historians, ceramics provide a tangible record of long artists, with China as the key common axis.” forgotten people from across the globe; people who didn’t By continuing an ancient tradition of reciprocity, the eight always see the need for a written language, but who had exhibitors in Another Silk Road: Jiansheng (Jackson) Li, Guang mastered the almost alchemical art of transforming clay into Hui Chen and Ying-Yueh Chuang from mainland China, Ching- objects, both utilitarian and beautiful. Yuan Chang from Taiwan, and Australian residents Tammy Wong, It may be because of its links to the very early beginnings of Douglas Cham, Julie Bartholomew and Wen Min Li, add another human material culture that ceramics is often perceived as chapter to the ongoing and dynamic history of ceramics. being stuck in a bit of a time warp; the medium of choice for mud slinging hippies wanting to work with their hands in an approximation of a simpler age. And while this use of the medium Tracey Clement remains current, in the 21st century, ceramics can also be an Exhibition: incredibly high tech material with applications in the space, Another Silk Road, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, 2 - 25 July. For opening details see www.cofa.unsw.edu.au/galleries/idg medical and automotive industries. Conference: As a medium, ceramics refuses to be pinned down. Throughout Australian Ceramics Triennale 09, July 16-20. its lengthy development, the history of ceramics has been one For more details see australianceramicstriennale.com of innovation, change and exchange. Its history spans both time and cultures, yet for centuries China has been one of its most significant players. As Jacqueline Clayton points out, smiling and indicating an eclectic assortment of cups, saucers, bowls and plates, “It’s not for nothing that it’s called china.”
top Julie Bartholomew, Qing Prada (detail),photo by the artist. top left Julie Bartholomew, Qing Prada, photo by the artist. top right Douglas Sheung, Banana-kids (detail), photo by the artist. below top Ying-Yueh Chuang, To Be…, photo by the artist. below bottom Ying-Yueh Chuang, To Be… (detail), photo by the artist.
50 / issue 3 issue 3 / 51 Making Eugenic Bodies Delectable Book Extract
On 1 January 1934, the Third Reich Law for the Prevention of Derain, Fernand Léger, Henri Matisse and Maurice de Vlaminck Darwin’s and Herbert Spencer’s sense, both internally and Genetically Diseased Offspring, better known as the Eugenic were being removed from German museums as ‘degenerate’ externally. Through the mediation of the American Public Health Sterilization Law, was applied. Two hundred and fifty thousand and selected for the Degenerate Art Exhibition (Entartete Association, 51 posters and charts from this exhibition, people diagnosed with alcoholism, manic-depression, Kunst), paintings by them were being showcased in this French together with a copy of Transparent Man, travelled across six schizophrenia, hereditary epilepsy, blindness and deafness, exhibition in Nazi Germany. Distorted, abstract, Surrealist cities of America from 1934 until permanently housed at the congenital mental deficiency, hereditary disease and physical and ‘primitivist’ art was excluded, as were all Jewish artists, Buffalo Museum of Science. Not until nearly two years after deformity disrupting locomotion were sterilized. This was the regardless of whether they were born in France. Instead healthy America had entered the Second World War was it finally first step in a complex and systematic eugenic campaign, images by French Aryans were selected, as illustrated by dismantled. culminating in the extermination of Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, Georges Leroux’s Group of Athletes Preparing for a Race. In 1940, this exhibition was paralleled by the Hall of Man at the political dissidents and others classified as physiologically Not only is it comparable to the artworks celebrating sport at New York World’s Fair. By popularizing the Nazi eugenic or psychologically ‘degenerate’. Immediately American and the 1936 Olympic Games Art Competition at which the sculptor, programme in the United States, it was designed specifically British eugenicists congratulated the Nazi government on the Arno Breker, was awarded a Silver Medal, but also to the Olympic to coerce State legislatures into passing comparable legal and ideological clarity of its law. Assistant Secretary of athletes framed by Leni Riefenstahl in her film commissioned sterilization laws. the American Public Health Association, William W. Peter, by Hitler, simply entitled Olympia. It demonstrates that such Yet well before the American Breeders Association resolution proudly announced it had been his ‘privilege to meet some of paintings were by no means confined to Nazi Germany, but in 1911 was adopted, 20,000 had been eugenically sterilized the leaders in the present political regime who are responsible were alive and well in Popular Front France. Yet long had such in the United States to control the so-called ‘feeble-minded for new undertakings in reconstruction of the social order’. artwork, including this painting, played an integral role in menace’. By 1928, sterilization laws had been passed by 24 Rockefeller continued funding the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft, popularizing French eugenics and producing desire for this states. In Canada, particularly in Alberta, the Eugenics Board while IBM initiated a commercial contract with Hitler to produce eugenic body. As illustrated by the cover of this book (see had targeted First Nation Canadians and immigrants from medical questionnaires and disability cards. In turn, the Nazi image pictured), an array of strong, muscular male bodies was Eastern Europe for compulsory sterilization. In Australia and government not just commended the eugenic research and painted and exhibited by this very artist, Leroux, as early as New Zealand, as in America, conditions for indigenous people, policies fostered in America and Britain, but acknowledged 1909 at the ‘official’ French Salon of the Third Republic, Salon Maori and Aborigine, were arguably designed to hasten their American sterilization laws as their precedent. des Artistes Français. While such artworks and exhibitions extinction. Due to the threat they posed to racial purity, Support for the Nazi eugenic campaign was galvanized by visual flowed into Nazi Germany, they also flowed out of it as Aboriginal half-breeds, quadroons and octoroons were removed cultures. The National Socialist Racial and Political Office demonstrated by the eugenics exhibition organized by the from their parents by Aboriginal Protection Officers in order to (NSRPA) produced leaflets, art, sex and eugenics posters and Deutsche Hygiene Museum (Deutsches Hygienemuseum ensure that art, sex and eugenics they would be biologically short films to be shown in cinemas, pointing out to Germans Dresden) which travelled to the United States at the behest of absorbed and culturally assimilated into ‘White’ Australia. above Cover of Fae Brauer’s book “Art, Sex and Eugenics: Corpus Delecti” the cost of maintaining asylums for the incurably ill and insane. the American Public Health Association in 1934. By 1934, sterilization laws had been passed in Western nations After lavish premieres in Berlin, the films, The Inheritance Eugenics was the major component of the International Hygiene outside Germany, affecting nearly 150 million people. Due to (Das Erbe) and The Victim of the Past (Opfer der Vergangenheit), Exhibition that opened in Dresden in 1930. Slick panels and the ‘shadow’ cast over eugenics by its association with the raditionally the occupation of art historian has not were shown in all German cinemas. Through films, posters and posters produced by professional graphic artists, using bold Holocaust, genocide and racism, this history was not told until been considered especially sexy. However, Google carefully staged photographs, Jewish people and people of Bauhaus techniques, charted population changes through birth the groundbreaking book by Daniel Kevles, In the Name of Dr Fae Brauer, a Senior Lecturer in art history at colour were inscribed as diseased and deformed, as well as and marriage rates, hereditary transmission and the disproportion Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity, was COFA, and what pops up is a series of conference morally and culturally degenerate. These images were played of degenerate to regenerate Germans. Installed alongside published in 1985. papers she has presented with titillating titles such off against the Olympian bodies filmed by Leni Riefenstahl, as photographs of muscular, Nordic bodies glowing with good Before eugenics was stigmatized by the Holocaust, and Western Tas “Bulging Buttocks: Picturing Virile Homosexuality and the well as the paintings and sculptures of Nordic bodies exhibited health, these didactics stressed the need for sexual sterilization, histories sanitized of its prevalence, the eight essays in this ‘Manly Man’” or “Fillies Fatales: Immoral Girls and the in the Great German Art Exhibitions and paraded in Festivals sexual selection and physical culture to strengthen both mind book demonstrate that eugenic societies, congresses, Paedophilic Eroticism of ‘Blessed Innocence’”. In fact, Brauer’s for the Day of German Art celebrating ‘two thousand years of and body. This eugenic ideal was epitomized by Transparent conferences, designs, exhibitions, installations, films, paintings, most recent projects focus on the human body in all its messy German art’. Man (gläserner Mensch), a clear cellon plastic version of Der photographs, posters and sculptures flourished throughout complexity. In late 2008, Ashgate Press (UK and USA) published Barely six weeks before the Degenerate Art Exhibition opened Mensch, which had been placed in the entrance hall of the America, Britain, France, Germany, Australia and New Art, Sex and Eugenics: Corpus Delecti, which she authored in Munich, the exhibition, French Art of the Present (Ausstellung First International Hygiene Exhibition. The suppliant gesture Zealand, in order to generate ‘the ideal body’ and to breed and edited along with Anthea Callen. Beginning with the 18th Französischer Künst der Gegenwart) opened at the Prussian to health as the new god was repeated with Transparent Man. ‘the perfect race’. century. This potentially controversial book examines the role Academy of Art (Preussische Akademie der Künste) in Berlin Six feet tall, blond with beautifully moulded muscles, Nordic art and sex played in promoting the Western desire to breed on 5 June 1937. Six weeks later, it opened in Munich. At almost features and internally lit, Transparent Man was a model of the Fae Brauer is co-convening the conference, The Art of Evolution: Charles Darwin and a master race. The following is an extract from this book. the same moment when Pierre Bonnard, Georges Braque, André eugenic principles of ‘the fittest’, as understood by Charles Visual Cultures, at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. 2-4 July 2009.
52 / issue 3 issue 3 / 53 Woken by the Weeping Woman Ursula Sullivan
hese days, Ursula Sullivan, is a successful art dealer, one half of Sullivan and Strumpf Fine Art. But back in 1986, Sullivan was young and transfixed by the grief-stricken and abstract female face on her TV screen. Picasso’s Weeping Woman had been stolen from the TNational Gallery of Victoria and the media was saturated with images of the missing painting. For the artistically sheltered thirteen year old, it was a defining moment. “It absorbed me,” she says. “I’d never seen anything like it before. She was both beautiful and ugly, green and abstracted and crying. I felt completely confused by it.” Sullivan admits that she discovered art slowly. Her childhood in a Newcastle housing estate was “devoid” of artistic influences, but she has since made up for lost time. The Weeping Woman moment solidified what was to become Sullivan’s lifelong interest in art. “Seeing that painting,” she acknowledges, “marked my entry point to the art world. I realised for the first time how powerful art can be and I had an overwhelming desire to know more about it.” Sullivan began her studies at the Queensland College of Art, but discovered it was art and business that really interested her. It wasn’t long before the diverse range of Sydney’s art galleries beckoned. She transferred to the College of Fine Arts (COFA), and while studying also worked part-time at Woollahra-based Eva Breuer Gallery where she first met her future business partner Joanna Strumpf. While Sullivan graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from COFA, and is grateful for the language the degree gave her to think and talk about art, she admits “that as an artist I was utterly terrible. I didn’t enjoy painting and I never had any desire to compete with all the fabulous artists in the world.” The switch from artist to art dealer suited her. She went on to manage several high-profile commerical galleries, including Savill Galleries in Melbourne and Liverpool Street Gallery in Sydney. A shared love of contemporary art, and recognition of the need for emerging artists to be represented, was what saw the doors of Sullivan and Strumpf open in 2004. Sullivan discusses the “thrill” of discovering unknown artists. The gallery’s representation of the politically subversive ceramics conservator, Penny Byrne, was one of those moments. “Artists put themselves on the line. They’re open to massive amounts of criticism and judgement... and praise. It’s a harsh life to lead, but to watch someone grow and progress in the art industry is very rewarding,” she says. When asked what criteria Sullivan and Strumpf use for choosing the artists they represent, she thinks carefully: “We try not to follow too many rules. Every artist is entirely different so it’s important to keep adjusting. Our only rule is to maintain integrity and honesty with our artists and do the right thing ethically by them.”
above Ursula Sullivan (left) and Joanna Strumpf (right), pictured with Ted the dog in front of Sullivan + Strumpf Fine Art. Photographed by Magdalena Wozniak. Fran Strachan
54 / issue 3 issue 3 / 55 2 4 24 26 28 29 30
33 40 48 51
If you are interested in finding out more about these graduates from the College of Fine Arts and their work, let us know. Email [email protected]
2 Fernanda Porto, The Living Room, 2008. 26 Kate Panzetta, Bill #5, 2008. 30 Amy Dunlop, Mumbai, 2008. 48 Giselle Stanbrough, Giselle, 2008. 4 Ivan Vizintin, Untitled, 2009. 28 Fernanda Porto, Cain, 2008. 33 Belem Lett, Fragment Studies, 2008. 51 Michelle Lundberg, A Sentient Creature, 24 Lucy Hall, A Sincere Object, 2008. 29 Fernanda Porto, Eve, 2008. 40 Darren Kwan, Fear and Self-Loathing in photo by Anthony Browell, 2008. Robonia, photo by Anthony Browell, 2008.
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