Latest Programs
Sunday 11 May 2008
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From medieval manuscripts to contemporary artists' books. Creating a hand-made book has always been a skill that involves dedication, imagination and even ecstasy. Lyn Gallacher speaks to Bruno Leti, whose exhibition 'The Cross And The Matrix' is on in Canberra at the Impressions on Paper Gallery, and to Cambridge University medievalists Christopher deHamel and Stella Panayotova.
Robert Dein's collection of old amateur photographs is now on show at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, in an exhibition called 'Ghosts In The Machine'. We hear from Judy Annear, senior curator of photography at AGNSW, and from Robert Dein.
Imagine a film where there's nothing on the screen—no music, no special effects—all you see see is the cast of the film, sitting in a line, up the front of the cinema, reading the script. Script Alive is hosted by Cinema Nova and Film Victoria, where the audience get to experience a film in development, and to have their say. With Colin Cairnes, co-author of 100 Bloody Acres.
The three artists taking part in this year's Transmediale festival in Berlin have been risking broken ribs, chopped off fingers, and radiation poisoning—all for the sake of making an artistic point about contemporary culture. And it's proved to be surprisingly popular with the public.
Sunday 04 May 2008
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Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's international reputation is based on his diverse range of work—from conceptual art to video, photography, architecture and design. Amid all the displays of Chinese nationalism we've been seeing lately, Ai Weiwei is definitely not joining in. He might have designed the Beijing Olympic stadium, but he's no booster for the Games or the government.
Sweet and Sour, the first official animated co-production between Australia and China, is an international phenomenon involving both the venerable Shanghai Animation Film Studios in China and the Adelaide based People's Republic of Animation.
It's the story of Errol the street dog, who has a bittersweet relationship with all things Chinese. With executive producer Barry Plews (who is also the creative producer for Reckless Moments) and Eddie White, director and writer of Sweet and Sour. SBS is screening it on Saturday 2 August.
The Future Australian Race is the subject and the name of a new play by Sue Gore and Bill Garner. Structurally it's a simple two-hander; an old man and a young one having an argument. But the two characters are actual historical figures and the issues they confront complex. The play is subtitled 'Redmond Barry versus Marcus Clarke'. Redmond Barry, the older man, is best known as Ned Kelly's Hanging Judge, but he was also the founder of the Royal Melbourne Hospital, the University of Melbourne and the State Library of Victoria. The younger man, Marcus Clarke, is the author of For The Term of His Natural Life and he's also a bohemian journalist with a subversive wit who's determined that Austraila should find its own identity rather than simply adopt all that is British.
The looting of ancient treasures from around the Mediterranean is nothing new, but this week's Artworks feature focuses on the most sensational of recent cases involving the former curator of antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, Marion True.
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Sunday 27 April 2008
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Think of surrealist art, and you probably think of Salvador Dali, and his melting clocks and strange landscapes—or the men in bowler hats in strange situations that Magritte painted.
It's officially Frock Time of the Year—otherwise known as Australian Fashion Week. And as the fur flies about who's wearing who, a more serious note has crept into the otherwise effervescent proceedings. It's PETA, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and their ongoing campaign to stop fashion houses across the world draping models in fur. They have also been very vocal in the controversial anti-mulesing campaign, pressuring big fashion houses like Hugo Boss to boycott Australian wool grown by farmers who mules their sheep. Dan Mathews is the public face of PETA and he is speaking with Suzanne Donisthorpe.
Woyzeck on the Highveld is an adaption of an old idea conceived by the South African artist William Kentridge and Handspring Puppet Theatre. In this version, Woyzeck is a black migrant worker in 1950s apartheid Johannesburg.
This is the story of how a local boy got caught up in an international argument—an ancient feud about loot. Australian-born Michael Brand is director of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and since his appointment in 2006, he's had a rocky time with the Getty's former classical art curator Marion True, facing charges over looted artefacts from the Roman antiquities collection.
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Sunday 20 April 2008
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At the beginning of WW1, the young artist Otto Dix enthusiastically volunteered for the German army. In 1924, he produced a series of etchings, called 'War' a response to his terrible experiences on the Western Front, but also as a reaction to the forces gathering in Germany, that were re-casting the German defeat as heroic and noble. Considered subversive in the 1920s - and even more so by the 1930s, Otto Dix was among the many artists denounced as a degenerate by the Nazis.
The question we put to you in the lead-up to the 2020 summit was this...
For nearly forty years, the arts philanthropist John Kaldor has been bringing contemporary artists from around the world to Australia, to create site-specific work here. It started, famously, back in 1969, when Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the Sydney coastline in a million square feet of fabric.
The story of the Tower of Babel is one of those foundation myths that just keeps on re-appearing.
When you think of cultural treasures and Afghanistan, what's the first thing that comes to mind? The looting and smashing of tens of thousands of objects under the Mujahideen and Taliban rule? Or when the two massive Buddhas of Bamiyan were destroyed?
Sunday 13 April 2008
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China is definitely in our sights at the moment, because of the economic boom, because of the Olympic Torch Relay, because of Tibet and because of our Mandarin-speaking Prime Minister's visit there. In all sorts of ways there's interest and there's tension.
Contemporary Chinese artists -- painters, performance artists, and photographers -- many of these artists are representing and commenting on the tensions and contradictions in modern Chinese life. But so too are the architects, because the cities of China are developing and expanding at an unprecendented pace.
Lin Dong Fu is an entertainment polymath. He presents his own show on Shanghai Television called Sleepless Tonight; he's the voice of countless foreign actors in films that have been dubbed into Mandarin; he's played lead roles in Chinese films and plays; he runs a jazz club in Shanghai and he's in Australia performing stand-up comedy -- in English and in Chinese.
Now they say you can't judge a book by its cover. Or can you? If a book's got embossed gold lettering on it, for example, you know it's a certain kind of novel. Similarly is there anything you can tell about a painting by its frame? Can a frame lure you in to a picture? Is there a right frame for a painting -- or is it all to do with taste and fashion? This Artworks feature is all about the frame and not the picture.
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