1 NATIONAL GRAPHIC SOCIETY NATIONAL GRAPHIC MAGAZINE Perth, WESTERN AUSTRALIA TOM MÙLLER his issue of National Graphic has been published on the occasion of the exhibition Conception and Artistic Director Linden1968, a major multi-arts survey exhibition that profiles a broad cross HANNAH MatheWS sectionT of emerging and established WA-based art practices to an interstate audience. The exhibition is presented as part of the Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts’ Editor-in-Chief Innovators Program from 7 November – 14 December 2008. Assistant Editors: Rochelle Phillips and Ben Riding Designer: Tom Mùller As an exhibition, Linden1968 includes a selection of artists who have been invited by Feature contributors: Robert Cook, Rebecca Dean, Tania Doropoulos, Andrew the project curators to respond to a creative and tight curatorial brief: to devise works Gaynor, Marco Marcon and strategies within Linden’s interior and exterior spaces that will reshape, transform Other contributors: Rebecca Baumann, Marcus Canning, Brian and Martin Churchill, and comment on the site’s previous function as a private guest house in the year 1968. The project curators have asked the participating artists to consider the significant Thea Costantino, Giovanni Didio, EricaAmerica, Caspar Fairhall, Chris Hill, Thomas events that marked 1968 – the disappearance of Harold Holt, the assassination of Howie, Matthew Hunt, Shannon Lyons, Pilar Mata Dupont, Hannah Mathews, Tom Bobby Kennedy, the earthquake in Meckering, the Paris riots and the opening of the Mùller, Ben Riding, Eli Smith, Jasmin Stephens National Gallery of Victoria - in their creative response to the site. Photographs/illustrators: Rebecca Baumann, Aidan Broderick, Marcus Canning, Thea Costantino, Annabel Dixon, EricaAmerica, Caspar Fairhall, Pamela Gaunt, Linden1968 seeks to directly engage with the Linden site, including all five gallery Rodney Glick & Lynnette Voevodin, Brendan van Hek & Consuelo Cavaniglia, spaces and the gardens, by responding to its physicality and history, and using these elements as a stimulus for creation. Place, space, function and time are layered to Bevan Honey, Matthew Hunt, Laura Johnson, Shannon Lyons, Pilar Mata Dupont create a fantastic snapshot of history as both the site, surrounding St Kilda, and & Tarryn Gill, Bennett Miller, Tom Mùller & Rochelle Phillips, Tony Nathan, Poppy contemporary current affairs are reflected on by the artists and their works. By van Orde Grainger, Simon Pericich, Ben Riding, Kevin Robertson and diode, Bruce anchoring the show in this historically significant year, it is also hoped that audience Slatter, Eli Smith, Justin Smith, Ric Spencer & Peter McCaughey engagement with the site and work will be increased as they become implicated within Printer: Printezy, South Perth the exhibition context: eg. Where were you when Harold Holt went missing? Editions: 68 Linden1968 seeks to establish alternative styles and/or means of communication Price: AU$68 through focusing on a diversity of materials, working methods and site-specific Citations: approaches employed by the artists. The selected group of artists include emerging, P1 - The Sony one-two-three-go Tape Recorder advertisement, National Geographic, mid career as well as more established artists, living and working in Perth. Not all February 1968. artists were alive in 1968, which adds to the diversity of interpretations and highlights P25 - information from Linden Private Hotel promotional cards, as supplied by the the colourings of nostalgia and the influence of the annals of history. It is also hotel owners Alice & Theo van Veenendaal. important to note that the participating artists have been invited based on the strength and diversity of their individual practices. While they are responding to a specific P32 & 34 - text and images sourced from www.mrhenrysrestaurant.com site and historically anchored curatorial rationale, they are doing so with the visual P44 - 45 - 1968 Nobel Prize Winners, reproduced with permission of Pressens Bild. languages that have become recognizably their own. U.S. National Library of Medicine P67 - illustration, Birth of a Gallery, MacMillan Press, South Melbourne, 1968. Western Australia has a lot to offer in terms of the contemporary arts. Many artists P68 - Skinner Galleries advertisement, Art and Australia, vol. 6, no. 2, September choose to live and work in Perth in an effort to retain a focus on their art practice, 1968, p 94. Reproduced with permission. Sourced by Jasmin Stephens. which can often be characterised by an ambitious and inquiring interest into the world around us and our relationship to each other. There is also a sense of experimentation p69 - photo of Sweeney Reed, Melbourne in colour and black & white, Lansdowne and hybridity as visual artists often adopt performative modes within their practice, Press, Melbourne, 1967. Sourced from Annabel Dixon. while performing artists are well versed in physical presentation and interaction with P80 - Top 10 Protest Songs of 1968 prepared by Thomas Howie, 2008. space. The other defining element of those artists emerging out of Perth today is a P82 - OZ Pop In The Sixties was inspired by the cover of an exhibition catalogue sense of play and response. The work of these artists is not fixed to a certain tone or L.A. Pop In The Sixties, A Ayres, The Newport Harbor Art Museum, USA, 1989. The outcome but demonstrates fearlessness in exposing themselves and their interests as exhibition brought together work by nine artists who were associated with the pop they change with the world around them. The model of Linden1968 is a perfect fit for these artists as it is conceptually complex yet wide open to interpretation, offering an art movement as it developed in Los Angeles. The artists included John Baldessari, opportunity for the playful and improvised. Billy Al Bengston, Wallace Berman, Vija Celmins, Robert Dowd, Llyn Foulkes, Joe Goode, Phillip Hefferton and Edward Ruscha. The exhibition model employed in Linden1968, that of accessing buildings with P94 - 95 - image, The Western Australian Year Book, Commonwealth Bureau of pre-existing histories to provide active working environments and exhibiting Censors and Statistics, no 7, 1968. Sourced from Annabel Dixon. spaces for artistic inquiry, has been used to great success in Perth by the LaunchArt P100 - Wide-Track 1968 Pontiacs advertisement, National Geographic, February collective. Since 2002, this Perth-based collective have accessed spaces, including a hotel, office building and ice cream factory, and have made them available to 1968. visual and performing artists who have engaged with the inherent nature of the site Inside back cover - Black Panthers protest poster, Alabama Department of Archives by responding to its physicality and function. The highly acclaimed Hotel6151 saw and History, USA. a group of 60 emerging, mid career and established artists of all disciplines from Back cover - Australian Women’s Weekly, 22 May, 1968, p 8-9. Photograph: Ron across the globe transform a 1970s hotel marked for demolition into a site-sensitive Berg. Sourced by Annabel Dixon temporary exhibition space. The more recent Office6000 invited audiences into an empty floor of an office building for a weekend of office inspired art experiences. In this way, LaunchArt has provided new platforms for inspiring, executing and The views expressed in National Graphic are not necessarily those of the publishers. engaging with creative ideas. This publication also contains shifting realities of faction and fiction. Many characters are based on real people, however the details of their lives may have been exaggerated, manufactured or manipulated for the ocassion of this publication. EXHIBITION Curators: Hannah Mathews & Ben Riding Artists include: Rebecca Baumann, Aidan Broderick, Marcus Canning, Thea Costantino, Annabel Dixon, EricaAmerica, Caspar Fairhall, Pamela Gaunt, Rodney Glick & Lynnette Voevodin, Brendan van Hek & Consuelo Cavaniglia, Bevan Honey, Matthew Hunt, Laura Johnson, Shannon Lyons, Pilar Mata Dupont & Tarryn Gill, Bennett Miller, Tom Muller & Rochelle Phillips, Tony Nathan, Poppy van Orde Grainger, Simon Pericich, Ben Riding, Kevin Robertson and diode, Bruce Slatter, Eli Smith, Justin Smith, Ric Spencer & Peter McCaughey Venue: Linden Centre for Contemporary Art, Ackland Street, St Kilda COVER: Op art, also known as optical art, is a genre Date: 7 November – 14 December 2008 Thank you’s: friends and family, funding bodies and sponsors, peers and mentors, of visual art (especially painting), that makes use of John Stringer and all the wild spirits of the 60s who freed us up to make the now. optical illusions. Op art is also known as geometric Supporters: abstraction and hard-edge abstraction, although its preferred term for is perceptual abstraction. NATIONAL GRAPHIC (2008) © TOM MÙLLER 2 3 Editorial HANNAH MATHEWS, Editor-in-Chief, National Graphic Society As the year 1968 draws to a close we ask ourselves quietening the population and taking their own what marks its significance? What caused 1968 government hostage. Television played a key role to score itself in the history of time as a year that in linking these rebellions together; we witnessed changed the world? each other across the globe and united in numbers and determination. The year began with more deaths in Vietnam – the war uniting communities across the world 1968 in Australia was also marked by loss. The in opposition to America’s rampage on foreign search for Australia’s 17th Prime