Latest Programs
Sunday 29 June 2008
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NAVA, The National Association for the Visual Arts, and the group Watch On Censorship recently convened a public forum in Sydney on art and censorship. On the panel were Art Gallery of New South Wales curator Tony Bond, child protection advocate Hetty Johnston, barrister Julian Burnside, and public ethics commentator Clive Hamilton. They each come to the issue from different places, and have quite different perspectives.
In your idle moments, do you ever wonder what your desert island book would be? For me, I'd think seriously about choosing an atlas, then I could dream about all the places in the world that I might be if I wasn't washed up on this island. Maps have always had a mythical element to them, combining science, art and imagination: from clay tablets, to river charts, to Google Earth.
In our continuing series on ISMs that shaped the world, one of the most influencial of all was Modernism. Anthony White is a lecturer in art history at Melbourne University, he teaches the history of European and American modern art and he's a former curator of international art at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra.
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Pack your bags, we are off for a trip to Avoca, in central Victoria, where performance and video artist Lyndal Jones is taking some big ideas to country Victoria.
Sunday 22 June 2008
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In 1909, a group of wild, speed-worshipping Italian boys wrote a manifesto they called 'Futurism'. Thus was born one of the most politically incorrect but dynamic ISMs of the 20th century.
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Motti Lerner is an Israeli playwright and screenwriter who's in Australia at the moment to work on a project with theatre artists. All of his writing for theatre, film and television has a strong political dimension to it -- he also lectures in political playwrighting at Tel Aviv University and he's an activist in the peace movement.
Charles Darwin's book on sexual selection, Descent of Man, has inspired an exhibition called 'Darwin With Tears' at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne. It's a survey show of thirty years' work by the pioneering video and performance artist Lyndal Jones.
American artist Michael Rakowitz is here for The Biennale of Sydney currently underway. Michael's been described as an artist who creates 'social sculpture, that addresses social problems'. He's also fascinated by visionary architecture -- imaginative, idealistic designs, that have never actually been built.
An exhibition of photographs called House of Muses, featuring Egyptians and Australians recently caused a minor storm when the Consul General, Mr Tarek Abousenna, censored 12 of the images. The exhibition was held at the Egyptian Consulate, a place where politics triumphs over art.
Sunday 15 June 2008
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The Australian Dance Awards recognise dancers and dance-makers across ballet, contemporary dance, stage musicals and film. Apart from the prizes and perfomances, two of Australia's best-known male dancers, Paul Mercurio and Steven Heathcote, are giving a special presentation on the subject 'Why Dance?'
Steven Heathcote was a principal dancer with the Australian Ballet. He's now coaching and performing character roles with the ballet, as well as having a part in the new Bruce Beresford film Mao's Last Dancer.
You've heard of the Stockholm Syndrome when a hostage falls in love his or her captors and even starts to defend their cause? Patty Hearst is famous for doing this with the Symbionese Liberation Army in the 1970s.
A new play called 'Poster Girl', poses the question that if someone like Patty Hearst was kidnapped today, how different would it be?
When Circus Oz began 30 years ago, it turned the circus world on its head. Coming out of the social and political movements of the 1970s, it forged a distinctly and defiantly Australian performing style. It's brash, it's hip, it's political and world famous.
We talk to founding members Jon Hawkes, Robin Laurie, Tim Coldwell, Sue Broadway and the current artistic director, Mike Finch.
The Children's Bach is the name of the new Chamber Made opera -- after the Helen Garner novel which refers to the collection of short pieces of music by JS Bach. It opens in Melbourne at the Malthouse Theatre and Andrew Schultz is the composer, Glenn Perry the librettist.
Remember that famous moment in art -- some called it the end of art -- when a urinal was submitted to the Society of Independent Artists' show, in 1917, by R. Mutt, otherwise known as Marcel Duchamp? It was the first of the 'ready mades', found objects, that have come to be associated with the Dada movement. Another of Duchamp's pieces, his Bicycle Wheel, is on show at the up-coming Sydney Biennale.
For the lowdown on Dadaism, self-confessed Dadaist and artistic director of the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art Juliana Engberg takes us back to those crazy, heady days.
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Sunday 08 June 2008
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Imagine a boot, an old boot of a soldier; the leather has moulded to the shape of the man's foot that once belonged inside it. Or an old army drink bottle. Or a gas mask or helmet. Now imagine these remnants of war painted in the style of ancient Greek red-figure vases; with scenes from Greek mythology on them.
One of Australia's best-known living artists is Jeffrey Smart. He was born in Adelaide in 1921, meaning he's now 88. He left Australia nearly 40 years ago, to live and paint in Italy. Like the painting he's done in Australia, Jeffrey Smart's Italian landscapes are urban and industrial; freeways and street signs and trucks and containers.
The first in a special Artworks series investigating 'isms'. Today it's Cubism -- to co-incide with the opening of Picasso and His Collection at the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane.
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Now do you remember back in the 1980s, when that whole new wave of stand-up comedy was sweeping the country? And into what had always been a male domain, women comedians started to gain prominence: people like Wendy Harmer and Maryanne Fahey; and then Judith Lucy. It made you think that in no time at all, female comics wouldn't be such a rare breed anymore; soon no-one would think women couldn't do comedy, because so many of them would be.
Have you ever wondered why we collect art? What the impulse is? Beyond the possibility of making money out of it, is it to support and encourage artists? To leave something of value for posterity? Or is it to create your own little world? Some kind of obsession? These are questions that we put to a panel of experts for this week's Artworks Feature.
Sunday 01 June 2008
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Before 1800, the sky was seen as the realm of the divine. It couldn't be explained or contained and certainly couldn't be reproduced. However, early into the nineteenth century, an atmosphere of scientific discovery flourished -- along with the Romantic movement in art. It was at this time that the English painter John Constable became fascinated by the meteorological discoveries that were being made and began his 'cloud sketching'.
The Australian Ballet is about to open the Melbourne season of works by the American choreographer Jerome Robbins, to mark the tenth anniversdary of his death. It features works he originally created for the New York City Ballet but he's perhaps best known for directing and choregraphing West Side Story. Jerome Robbins was not only a versatile dance-maker, he was also an interesting and complex character.
We begin with an interview from 2003 when Bill Henson spoke to Julie Copeland about the relationship between people and place in his photographs - between his dark urban landscapes and the young figures he depicts in them.
The president of the Law Society of New South Wales Hugh Macken believes whilst it will be very difficult to prosecute the artist, people publishing and accessing the images electronically, could be in trouble.
Vivien Gaston is an art historian and critic and an honorary fellow at the University of Melbourne and has mixed feelings about the art of Bill Henson.
The Alice Prize is a national contemporary art award run by the Alice Springs Art Foundation. Worth $15,000, this year it was won by local artist Pip McManus. Pip is known primarily as a ceramacist but she's ventured into video art, with a piece called Ichor (the ethereal fluid flowing in the veins of the gods, but poisonous to mortals) which features a clay figure slowing dissolving in water.
Dear Art, Please Touch Me is the name of an event in the Next Wave Festival of young and emerging artists that's been on in Melbourne over the last month.
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