DOCSLIB.ORG

Compasses, Meetings and Maps: Three Recent Media Works

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Compasses, Meetings and Maps: Three Recent Media Works Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon.2006.39.4.334 by guest on 23 September 2021 Compasses, Meetings and Maps: Three Recent Media Works ABSTRACT The article explores possible Rachel O’Reilly cultural approaches to new- PLACE, GROUND AND PRACTICE media art aesthetics and criticism through an in-depth appraisal of recent works by three contemporary practition- ers from Asia and the Pacific: Lisa Reihana, Vernon Ah Kee and Qiu Zhijie. Particular atten- he past decade has seen distinctive conceptual, which are instantly recognizable to tion is paid to the issues of T place, location and cultural material and political inquiries within the domain of indige- the international traveler—into a practice in their work, issues nous and intercultural new-media arts in Australia and the Pa- continuous, revolving, clockwise currently under-examined in cific [1]. Indigenous notions of place connect self and history pan of short takes. Within this rep- new-media art discourse. The to land, spirit to geography, and narratives to navigation in resentation of circumnavigation, analysis pays close attention to complex, highly diverse spatial practices that operate very dif- the strongest site of familiar dwell- the operationality of the works, ferently from Cartesian representations and imaginings. While ing seems to exist in the relation- the influence of pre-digital aesthetic histories and the richly the relationship of new-media art practices, and indeed of in- ship between the artist and his locative and virtual schemas of dividual artists, to cultural praxis is not straightforward, prac- camera. The constant ground of the indigenous epistemologies that titioners making and pursuing a field of inquiry that continues artist’s self pragmatically displaces serve to meaningfully expand to draw its conceptual references, terminologies and histories a need for lived place, and expe- Euro-American notions of locative media art. of activity from European and American histories of art and rience is “local” only upon his technology have opened up important questions about the body, which navigates within a frag- cultural assumptions of what new-media practice is. Qui Zhi- mented field of international vi- jie (China), Lisa Reihana (New Zealand) and Vernon Ah Kee sions and experiences. Discussing (Australia) are useful points of reference when working to con- these video landscapes–cum–temporal self-portraits, Qiu Zhi- sider notions of place and virtuality as these are understood jie speaks of the importance of the compass to ancient Chi- within contemporary new-media practice. In their videos and nese culture, understood as divining navigation by bringing installations, these artists point to a complicated set of rela- the heaven’s magnetic forces into dialogue with the earth’s tionships between place and artistic expression within new- plane. The artist’s conceptualization of “landscapes,” in which media arts—a field that has perhaps not yet fully accounted the body and technology figure prominently, highlights a num- for cultured engagements with media technologies and place- ber of key aesthetic, epistemological and representational con- informed histories of aesthetics in its focus upon the narrowly cerns in seeing and reading place in networked culture. technological new. Landscape, while questioning the mobility of identity within trans-local experiences and exchanges, points to the subtle conjoining of metaphor and math that is at the core of con- DIFFERENCE NAVIGATORS ceptual approaches to place in media arts discourse. Landscape Chinese artist Qui Zhijie, a seasoned traveler, records in Land- locates an experience of global culture within a very specifi- scape (1999) his experience of key city centers, public trans- cally “Chinese” history of technology. Navigational practices port systems, restaurant interiors, marketplaces, parks and are an interesting referent here, because their comparative museum spaces with a portable camcorder. In the work’s open- study reveals great discrepancies in the actual tools, meta- ing sequence, time-lapse photography of a public park in physical assumptions and computational systems used by some China is used to represent local meaning in fast-forward. Peo- of the most reputed navigators of land and ocean [3]. The ple walk hurriedly past the camera as slight changes in the lack of any foundational mathematic or trans-cultural princi- weather and the flow of traffic accumulate in the viewer’s mind ples of spatial practice through which the competency and ac- to indicate the nature of the everyday in that location. The curacy of specific, highly functional and spiritually elaborate way in which this fixed shot captures and compresses local ways of seeing and reading place might be investigated [4] ex- inhabitants’ movements and interactions over time suggests pands locative discourse in significant ways. Here we might initially that the artist understands “place” as a function of alternatively appreciate “place” in sociological terms, as a cul- dwelling [2]. Thereafter, however, a close-up image of the turally specific assemblage of local realities, and “spatial prac- artist’s face links disparate international scenes—many of tices”—methods for knowing and practicing location—as variable concept-objects [5] subject to critical and compara- tive review. If Western maps are merely one means of expe- Rachel O’Reilly (curator), Video and New Media, Queensland Art Gallery Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, P.O. Box 3686, South Brisbane, QLD, Australia 4101. riencing the local, enabling mobility and constructing the E-mail: <[email protected]>. global, we might read Qiu Zhijie’s gesture as at least implic- itly grounded in an appreciation of the existence of other pos- Article Frontispiece. Lisa Reihana, Marakihau from Digital sible matrices and contemporaneous interpretive practices. Marae, limited edition color cibachrome photograph mounted The artist’s visualization of circumnavigation, beginning and on aluminum, 200 × 100 × 0.35 cm, 2001. (© Lisa Reihana. ending through the self, also recognizes the embodied na- Collection Queensland Art Gallery.) ture of belief invested in spatial practices in order for them ©2006 Rachel O’Reilly LEONARDO, Vol. 39, No. 4, pp. 334–339, 2006 335 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon.2006.39.4.334 by guest on 23 September 2021 Her representation in photographed form as part of Digital Marae is an inno- vation that has been accepted by the artist’s Maori community [8]. Kurangai- tuku appears in dual emotional states: saddened by the death of her exotic birds at the hands of Hatupatu, who covets her feather coat, and frustrated from a failed attempt to rip Hatupatu from his hiding PLACE, GROUND AND PRACTICE place behind a rock face [9]. She warns of the spiritual imbalance that accom- panies greed and retaliation. Marakihau (Article Frontispiece) is an ocean tani- wha, an ancestor usually represented in the form of a “merman” who embodies the ocean’s power. With a hollow tongue, Reihana’s female Marakihau is able to suck whole people and boats from the waves. Together the ancestors take up the four walls of the gallery space and look down onto viewers—the inhabitants of Reihana’s virtual marae—to create an aura of instruction and inspiration and a deeply physical sense of habitation within this ancestral experience and wisdom. In Maori epistemology, all living things are descended from the ancestors, which are embodied within particular moun- tains, rivers and lakes. Central to Maori community life, the traditional meet- ing place of the marae—both an area of sacred tribal ground and a physical architectural space—is a richly locative institution in that it is positioned in dia- logue with this spatialized, spiritual or- Fig. 1. Lisa Reihana, Hinewai from Digital Marae, limited-edition color cibachrome der. The marae generates a strong sense photograph mounted on aluminum, 120 × 140 × 0.35 cm, 2001. (© Lisa Reihana. of belonging for those affiliated with the Collection Queensland Art Gallery.) meeting house. Assemblies literally take place within the body of the ancestors [10]. The Wharenui (literally translated to be sense-making and truly operational. Pouwhenua was undertaken by men. Rei- as the big or main house) symbolizes the Here, Lisa Reihana’s work is of great hana has used contemporary color pho- ancestors’ body, the central roof beam its relevance. tographic techniques to render her Pou backbone, and the rafters its ribs. The Pou as lush, impassioned female charac- back wall represents death and darkness, ters, both as a tribute to the importance and the front doorway, usually facing east CYBER-MYTHOLOGIES of matriarchy in Maori culture and to the to greet the rising sun, represents life and Conjoining Maori and cyberculture contemporary dynamism of Maori lore. creation [11]. The architectural framing mythology, Lisa Reihana constructs cul- As reworked traditional stories, the fig- of spiritual landscapes before and behind turally salient, richly ordered interactive ures outline a series of archetypal narra- the marae presents concepts of enclosure meeting places. Her installation Digital tives concerned with risk and becoming, and cultural openness in concrete form, Marae (2001) suggests that the principles desire, greed and consequence. Mahuika, which are experienced and performed of virtual culture [6] extend usefully out- the anchor figure of the marae (Color with the body [12]. Public meetings, de- side material relationships to networked Plate G), symbolizes tradition in Maori bates and ceremonies are given an ulti- machines. Visitors to the artist’s recon- culture and is surrounded by smoke and mate expression in this context through ception of a traditional marae (Maori hot lava. Living in the underworld, she complex cultural protocols and oral tra- meetinghouse) greet four life-sized por- was tricked by her grandson into pass- ditions. Here landscape, architecture and traits of lustrous, spectacular women rem- ing on to him all the power that she pos- ancestral narratives engage the visitor iniscent of otherworldly characters from sesses in her fingernails [7].
Load more

Recommended publications
  • 2018 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art
    DIVIDED ART GALLERY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA WORLDS 2018 ADELAIDE BIENNIAL OF AUSTRALIAN ART The cat sits under the dark sky in the night, watching the mysterious trees. There are spirits afoot. She watches, alert to the breeze and soft movements of leaves. And although she doesn’t think of spirits, she does feel them. In fact, she is at one with them: possessed. She is a wild thing after all – a hunter, a killer, a ferocious lover. Our ancestors lived under that same sky, but they surely dreamed different dreams from us. Who knows what they dreamed? A curator’s dream DIVIDED WORLDS ART 2018 GALLERY ADELAIDE OF BIENNIAL SOUTH OF AUSTRALIA AUSTRALIAN ERICA GREEN ART ARTISTS LISA ADAMS JULIE GOUGH VERNON AH KEE LOUISE HEARMAN ROY ANANDA TIMOTHY HORN DANIEL BOYD KEN SISTERS KRISTIAN BURFORD LINDY LEE MARIA FERNANDA CARDOSO KHAI LIEW BARBARA CLEVELAND ANGELICA MESITI KIRSTEN COELHO PATRICIA PICCININI SEAN CORDEIRO + CLAIRE HEALY PIP + POP TAMARA DEAN PATRICK POUND TIM EDWARDS KHALED SABSABI EMILY FLOYD NIKE SAVVAS HAYDEN FOWLER CHRISTIAN THOMPSON AMOS GEBHARDT JOHN R WALKER GHOSTPATROL DAVID BOOTH DOUGLAS WATKIN pp. 2–3, still: Angelica Mesiti, born Kristian Burford, born 1974, Waikerie, 1976, Sydney Mother Tongue, 2017, South Australia, Audition, Scene 1: two-channel HD colour video, surround In Love, 2013, fibreglass reinforced sound, 17 minutes; Courtesy the artist polyurethane resin, polyurethane and Anna Schwartz Gallery Melbourne foam, oil paint, Mirrorpane glass, Commissioned by Aarhus European Steelcase cubicles, aluminium, steel, Capital of Culture 2017 in association carpet, 261 x 193 x 252 cm; with the 2018 Adelaide Biennial Courtesy the artist photo: Bonnie Elliott photo: Eric Minh Swenson DIRECTOR'S 7 FOREWORD Contemporary art offers a barometer of the nation’s Tim Edwards (SA), Emily Floyd (Vic.), Hayden Fowler (NSW), interests, anxieties and preoccupations.
    [Show full text]
  • MCA, Qantas and Tate Announce First Series of Australian Artwork Acquisitions
    MCA, Qantas and Tate announce first series of Australian artwork acquisitions [Sydney, 13 May 2016] The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA), Qantas and Left: Vernon Ah Kee, Tate have today revealed the first five artworks in their International Joint Acquisition tall man 2010 four-channel video Program for contemporary Australian art. The Program promotes Australian art globally, installation, sound, Tate helping Australian artists reach new audiences. and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, purchased jointly These joint acquisitions by MCA and Tate include two large video installations, one by with funds provided by the Susan Norrie (Transit 2011) and another by Vernon Ah Kee (tall man 2010), two paintings Qantas Foundation, 2016, image courtesy Museum of by Gordon Bennett (Possession Island (Abstraction)) 1991 and Number Nine 2008) and an Contemporary Art Australia artist book by Judy Watson consisting of sixteen etchings with chine collé (a and Milani Gallery, Brisbane © the artist, photograph: preponderance of aboriginal blood 2005). Carl Warner Right: Gordon Bennett Three of these artworks will be on display in the MCA Collection Galleries starting this Gordon Bennett, Possession month, and two more will be included in the new MCA Collection exhibition opening in Island (Abstraction), 1991, oil and acrylic on canvas, September. The artworks will then head to Tate to be displayed in the UK in the near Tate and the Museum of future. Contemporary Art Australia, purchased jointly with funds provided by the Made possible through a $2.75 million corporate gift from the Qantas Foundation, this Qantas Foundation, 2016, ground-breaking collaboration is enabling an ambitious five-year joint program through image courtesy Museum of Contemporary Art Australia which a range of major artworks by contemporary Australian artists will be acquired for and Milani Gallery, Brisbane the collections of MCA and Tate, owned and displayed by both institutions.
    [Show full text]
  • Indigenous Archives
    INDIGENOUS ARCHIVES 3108 Indigenous Archives.indd 1 14/10/2016 3:37 PM 15 ANACHRONIC ARCHIVE: TURNING THE TIME OF THE IMAGE IN THE ABORIGINAL AVANT-GARDE Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll Figure 15.1: Daniel Boyd, Untitled TI3, 2015, 56th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia, All the World’s Futures. Photo by Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy: la Biennale di Venezia. Daniel Boyd’s Untitled T13 (2015) is not an Aboriginal acrylic dot painting but dots of archival glue placed to match the pixel-like 3108 Indigenous Archives.indd 342 14/10/2016 3:38 PM Anachronic Archive form of a reproduction from a colonial photographic archive. Archival glue is a hard, wax-like material that forms into lumps – the artist compares them to lenses – rather than the smooth two- dimensional dot of acrylic paint. As material evidence of racist photography, Boyd’s paintings in glue at the 2015 Venice Biennale exhibition physicalised the leitmotiv of archives. In Boyd’s Untitled T13 the representation of the Marshall Islands’ navigational charts is an analogy to the visual wayfinding of archival photographs. While not associated with a concrete institution, Boyd’s fake anachronic archive refers to institutional- ised racism – thus fitting the Biennale curator Okwui Enwezor’s curatorial interest in archival and documentary photography, which he argues was invented in apartheid South Africa.1 In the exhibition he curated in 2008, Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art, Enwezor diagnosed an ‘archival fever’ that had afflicted the art of modernity since the invention of photography. The invention, he believed, had precipitated a seismic shift in how art and temporality were conceived, and that we still live in its wake.
    [Show full text]
  • Vernon Ah Kee 7$//0$1
    BRISBANE MILANI GALLERY Vernon Ah Kee 7$//0$1 Vernon Ah Kee’s “Tall Man” is a smartly composed yet painful examination of race relations in Australia. The exhibition takes as its theme the subject of the 2004 Palm Island riots that occurred in the wake of Indigenous Australian Cameron Doomadgee’s murder at the hands of a white police officer, Chris Hurley. Anchoring the show was tall man (2010), a four-channel video installation, which was accompanied by a drawn portrait of Lex Wotton (the man convicted of inciting the riots), and a text- covered piece of linen titled fill me (2009). Using footage obtained from anonymous sources—including clips from mobile phones, handheld cameras and TV news reels—tall man constructs a visually arresting narrative of the day’s events, during which the island residents, angered by the coroner’s report that stated Doomadgee had died from an “accidental fall,” razed the police station and Hurley’s home. Ah Kee uses the Australian society. The larger-than-life portrait of footage—which the prosecution used to convict Wotton as tall man is rendered in Ah Kee’s now- Wotton—to ironic effect, showing how in different signature portrait style—an extreme close-up of hands it can tell an entirely different story. a face, realistically rendered in charcoal, crayon Each of the installation’s channels presented and acrylic on canvas. Wotton, who according a different perspective of the same event; some to the artist has been deemed a hero by many fragmented, others conventionally shot. Clips of Palm Islanders for “standing tall” and “speaking the officers arming themselves in order to, as one out so strongly,” is depicted as a monumental, of them says, “scare the shit out of these cunts,” are nonthreatening figure, with a slight smile and kind juxtaposed against aerial shots of the island as a eyes—in short, as a tragic hero.
    [Show full text]
  • Saltwater Country Background Flyer
    BACKGROUND —— IMAGE South Stradbroke Island South-east Queensland, Australia. Photo: Jo–Anne Driessens. NATIONAL & INTERNATIONAL TOUR FOR NEW EXHIBITION OF INDIGENOUS ART Evocative images of the coast, sand and sea and their cultural importance are the subject of Saltwater Country, an internationally travelling exhibition of new Indigenous art from Queensland that traces the cultural connections between some of Australia’s most acclaimed artists and their saltwater country. This exhibition explores the cultural connections between on a national tour through QLD, NSW, VIC, SA and WA artists and their coastal country. While Aboriginal and (2015–17). Saltwater Country is curated by Michael Aird Torres Strait Islander artists are known for their connections and Virginia Rigney, and was developed in partnership to ‘country’, less understood are equally strong by Museums & Galleries Queensland and Gold Coast connections to the sea and waterways on the coastal edge. City Gallery. It is this unique story that Queensland Indigenous artists Co–curator Virginia Rigney said, “The saltwater country is a share within Saltwater Country, an important exhibition place of bounty and these places facilitate movement and that captures and presents an image of Australia that is contact, with tidal and seasonal flows structuring the rhythms distinctive, culturally vibrant, beautiful and evocative. of the day and the year, with dramatic times of flood and storm bringing renewal and change. The coastal edge is also Saltwater Country includes acclaimed Australian artists currently charged with concerns over environmental change, Judy Watson, Fiona Foley, Michael Cook (star of the 2014 pollution and human impact. In making artworks about these Biennale of Sydney), Alick Tipoti, and new talents Megan issues artists are redefining the practice of caring for this Cope and Ryan Presley.
    [Show full text]
  • Series Two Press
    www.abc.net.au/artandsoul Series Two Press kit Revealing the heritage, politics and Directed by Steven McGregor imagination in contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art Produced by Bridget Ikin and Jo-anne McGowan A three-part documentary series for ABC1 written and presented by Hetti Perkins Premiering on Hibiscus Films Pty Ltd Tuesday July 8, 2014, 268a Devonshire Street as part of NAIDOC week Surry Hills NSW 2010 Australia Phone +61 2 9319 7011 Screening on Fax +61 2 9319 6906 July 8, 15 and 22, 2014. mail@hibiscusfilms.com.au Series Two TITLEPAGE: HETTI PERKINS ! THE ABORIGINAL MEMORIAL, 1987!8 THIS PAGE "TOP TO BOTTOM#: CHRISTIAN THOMPSON, UNTITLED #4 "YELLOW KANGAROO PAW# COLLECTION TITLE: AUSTRALIAN GRAFFITI, 2008; HECTOR BURTON, RAY KEN, MICK WILKILYIYRI, BRENTON KEN, PUNU$NGURU $FROM THE TREES%, 2013, COURTESY TJALA ARTS; VERNON AH KEE, AUSTRACISM, 2003. ALL WORKS COLLECTION NATIONAL GALLERY OF AUSTRALIA, UNLESS OTHERWISE CREDITED 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS SUMMARY INFORMATION Partners Technical information Key credits 4 Synopses 5 Featured artists 7 EPISODE BY EPISODE SYNOPSES Episode one: pride and prejudice 8 Episode two: beauty and cruelty 9 Episode three: love and longing 10 PERSONAL PERSPECTIVES FROM THE CREATIVE TEAM Hetti Perkins, writer/presenter 11 Steven McGregor, director 12 Q&AS WITH THE CREATIVE TEAM Hetti Perkins, writer/presenter 14 Steven McGregor, director 15 Production notes 17 BACKGROUND TO THE KEY CREATORS Hetti Perkins Steven McGregor 19 Bridget Ikin Jo-anne McGowan 20 4 SUMMARY INFORMATION Partners
    [Show full text]
  • Standing Committee on Indigenous Affairs
    PARLIAMENT OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA STANDING COMMITTEE ON INDIGENOUS AFFAIRS Exhibit 15 The content of this exhibit is in video format please click on the link to view https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary Business/Committees/ House/Indigenous Affairs/The growing presence of inauthen tic Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander style art and craft/ Videos. Bec Mac: Hi. Bec Mac here with Fake Art Harms campaign, and I'm in another incredible artist's studio. We're still here in Brisbane and we're still in the Yeronga precinct, where all these incredible artists are, and I'm with the one and only Vernon Ah Kee. How are you? Oh, not Vernon Ah Kee! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! I knew I'd say that. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! I said that to you at the Brisbane Writers Festival. Ha, ha, ha! Gordon Hookey: Vernon, you hear that? Bec Mac: Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Gordon Hookey: I got called Vernon Ah Kee! Bec Mac: Gordon Hookey. I'm with Gordon Hookey. Oh, my God! I'm so embarrassed. I'm so sorry, Gordon. Do people often mistake you two? Gordon Hookey: Oh, yeah. Vernon Ah Kee here! Bec Mac: Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Gordon Hookey: I normally paint portraiture and draw and do text work and film and video, and I've also represented Australia in the Venice Biennale, yeah. And yeah. Bec Mac: You're very practised at this fake art—ha, ha, ha, ha! I'm so sorry. I apologise.
    [Show full text]
  • Bianca Beetson S296856
    Exploring Aboriginal identity through Self- portraiture Author Beetson, Bianca Renee Published 2017-07 Thesis Type Thesis (Professional Doctorate) School Queensland College of Art DOI https://doi.org/10.25904/1912/3196 Copyright Statement The author owns the copyright in this thesis, unless stated otherwise. Downloaded from http://hdl.handle.net/10072/376769 Griffith Research Online https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au Exploring Aboriginal Identity through Self- Portraiture Bianca Beetson Queensland College of Art Arts, Education, and Law Griffith University Submitted in partial fulfilment of the degree of Doctor of Visual Art July 2017 2 Abstract This exegesis examines my practice through my identity as a Kabi Kabi, Wiradjuri, Kuku Ylandji and Pita Pita woman with English, Scottish and Romany Gypsy heritage. It contextualises the development of my practice from 1997 to 2017, which is the period immediately following my graduation from an undergraduate degree until now. The major focus of the exegesis, however, is on works from the last decade, when self-portraiture became a prominent part of my practice, which I explore through a variety of media: photography, performance, painting, drawing, and sculpture. To contextualise my practice, I also examine contemporary artists who utilise Indigenous frameworks to disrupt the traditions of Western portraiture. My own work uses humour and ideas of performativity as tools to positively intervene into debates about Aboriginal identity. For example, my use of the colour pink can be understood as candy coating a difficult conversation around colonisation. I also reclaim the language of the coloniser through serial portraiture and challenge ideas of Aboriginal femininity. Contributing to identity politics art, I refuse the idea of an essential self through the idea of a performative self-portrait.
    [Show full text]
  • Video Ground
    MAAP - Multimedia Arts Asia Pacific Film Studies Center presents MAAP was established in 1997 to bring focus to new media cultural content emerging from the Asia Pacific regions and Australia. Now in its 11th year, MAAP has produced several media art festivals encompassing 14 different countries including events and exhibitions in Brisbane, VIDEO Beijing, Shanghai and Singapore. MAAP explores media art from a research and program- ming perspective and partners with arts organizations in the region (and internationally) to activate projects involving the region’s major and emerging media arts practitioners. MAAP GROUND creates new networks increasing cultural contact and understanding through the experience of media arts. MAAP is run from Brisbane, Australia by founding director Kim Machan and a dedicated incorporated board. RECENT MOVING IMAGE WORKS FROM Curator Biography AUSTRALIA AND AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND Rachel O’Reilly is an independent curator and writer based in Brisbane, Australia. Between A Multimedia Arts Asia Pacific program curated by Rachel O’Reilly 2004 and 2007 she worked as Curatorial Assistant, Video and New Media at the Australian Cinémathèque, Queensland Art Gallery |Queensland Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, home of the Asia Pacific Triennial. She recently co-curated The Leisure Class with Kathryn Weir, an Australian Cinematheque exhibition of contemporary international moving image work by artists exploring conspicuous leisure, consumption and waste (www.qag.qld.gov.au/ cinematheque/current_programs/leisure_class). She was a member of the Place, Ground and Practice working group of the Pacific Rim New Media Summit, ISEA, 2006. Her writing has been published in Postcolonial Studies, Leonardo, Realtime, Artworks, Queensland Art Gal- lery publications and independent exhibition catalogues.
    [Show full text]
  • Indigenous Art: from Appreciation to Art Criticism1
    David Garneau. Indigenous. Academic. Solidarity. 2019. Acrylic on canvas, 92 x 76.5 cm. (Image courtesy of the artist) Indigenous Art: From Appreciation to Art Criticism1 David Garneau (Métis) Visual Arts, University of Regina The Brisbane-based Australian artist, Vernon Ah Kee, recently lamented the “dearth of criticism of Aboriginal art,” and suggested that the reason “no-one had ever criticized his work” was because “they were afraid.”2 This plea, posing as a dare, expresses the ambivalent relationship many Indigenous3 artists have with the dominant artworld. Ah Kee intimates that the artworld, happy consumer of Aboriginal art, has yet to engage it critically because its critics know that in engagement they would be found wanting. But until there is this intercultural discourse neither party will know for sure. Many Indigenous artists in the territory now known as Canada, where I am from, echo Ah Kee. They reckon that the lack of critical attention is one of the barriers keeping them in a bubble at the edge of the artworld pond. If published criticism is what separates works of art from works of culture, then the refusal to treat Indigenous art critically may represent a race-based impediment, or, as Alfred Youngman describes it, a buckskin ceiling.4 However, there is also concern among Aboriginal artists and their allies that bursting this protective sphere would lead to assimilation. But Aboriginal art is appreciated. In Canada and Australia it has a paradoxically liminal yet central status. It is produced by tiny populations5 that nevertheless play an out- sized role in shaping the visual identities of nations that are not their own.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Rewriting Ethnographic Photography Reuse Of
    REWRITING ETHNOGRAPHIC PHOTOGRAPHY REUSE OF ETHNOGRAPHIC PHOTOGRAPHY BY CONTEMPORARY INDIGENOUS ARTISTS by Marina Amber Eldh Tyquiengco Bachelor of Arts, University of Virginia, 2011 Master of Arts, University of Pittsburgh, 2016 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of History of Art and Architecture Department in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts University of Pittsburgh 2016 1 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH The Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences This thesis was presented by Marina Tyquiengco It was defended on January 2015 and approved by Dr. Joshua Ellenbogen, Director of Graduate Studies, History of Art and Architecture Thesis Director: Dr. Terence Smith, Andrew W. Mellon Professr of Contemporary Art History and Theory, History of Art and Architecture 2 Copyright © by Marina Tyquiengco 2016 3 REWRITING ETHNOGRAPHIC PHOTOGRAPHY Marina Tyquiengco, M.A. University of Pittsburgh, 2016 For over thirty years, artists from all over the world have recycled, reworked and repurposed visual imagery from popular and commercial cultures, both those contemporary with them, and those from past periods. The postmodern practice was known as “appropriation,” and attracted controversy from those who expected art to be original, and those who valued the temporal authenticity of imagery. Within this context, particular Indigenous artists have used this approach as a means to articulate the complexities of Indigenous identity-formation. They deliberately reuse images of their people, or of their direct ancestors, that were taken by non- Indigenous anthropologists, official recorders, or commercial photographers. Through these processes of artistic transformation, they inflect them with new connotations, above all those that attribute agency to the person or people depicted, or those that manifest the contemporary artist’s own agency.
    [Show full text]
  • Beyond the Aesthetic a STUDY OF
    Beyond the Aesthetic A STUDY OF INDIGENEITY AND NARRATIVE IN CONTEMPORARY AUSTRALIAN ART – VOLUME ONE – Catherine Slocum December 2016 A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of The Australian National University © Copyright by Catherine Slocum 2016 All Rights Reserved INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIANS SHOULD BE AWARE THAT THIS DOCUMENT CONTAINS NAMES AND IMAGES OF DECEASED PERSONS. ii THE TERM ‘INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIANS’ HAS BEEN ADOPTED AND MAINTAINED THROUGHOUT THIS THESIS. THERE ARE MANY DIFFERENT DISPLAYS OF THIS TERM, HOWEVER THIS TERM IS USED AS IT INCLUDES THOSE WHO IDENTIFY AS ABORIGINAL, TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER AND ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER. iii DECLARATION I declare that this thesis is wholly my own original work unless otherwise referenced or acknowledged. ………………………………………… Catherine Slocum December 2016 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor Professor Paul Pickering for the continuous support of my PhD study and research. His insightful comments and valuable discussion are gratefully acknowledged. My sincere thanks are extended to Dr Thuy Do for her useful comments in the final stages and Dr Lan Tran for her valuable assistance during the course of my study. A very special thanks to Vernon Ah Kee, Tony Albert, Brook Andrew, Daniel Boyd, Dianne Jones, Christopher Pease and Christian Thompson whose work I feel privileged to have been given the opportunity to study at length. The project would not have been possible without the specialist Indigenous Australian collection at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) Library in Canberra. I gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the College of Arts and Social Sciences at the Australian National University.
    [Show full text]