Issue 57 | Object Australia

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57

A celebration of Indigenous design, art and craft.

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Major SponsorBombay SapphireBombay Sapphire is a trademark

Media PartnerVogue Living

Supporting PartnersLiving EdgeCafe SydneySignwave Newtown

Offi cial Beverage PartnerClimbing Wines

Foundations and Grant MakersCity of SydneyJohn T Reid Charitable TrustsSherman FoundationThe Thomas FoundationThe Ian Potter Foundation

Corporate MembersCanvasDinosaur DesignsMisho + AssociatesSEMA Group

Donors Frankie AireyAndrew Barron & Steven PozelCas BennettobernabeifreemanLinda BiancardiJenny BonninJennifer BottChee Soon & FitzgeraldSharlene ChinDavid ClarkPat Corrigan AMSally Dan-CuthbertPamela Easton & Lydia PearsonBen Edols & Kathy ElliottStefanie Flaubert & Janos KorbanJaycen Fletcher Gowrie GalleriesSarah GardnerBradford GormanKon Gouriotis OAMGinny & Leslie GreenJudi HausmannFrank HowarthLouise Ingram

Edward & Cynthia JacksonChris Johnson & Davina JacksonJane JoseMichael KingRosemary & Robert KingKoskelaAnn Lewis AMKen MaherJanet Mansfi eldSam MeersLouise Nettleton & Michael DoweLeon ParoissienMargaret PomeranzPeter ReeveJohn Reid AO & Lynn ReidCrispin RiceDavid & Helen RohrAlan Rose AOShane SimpsonPeter ThomasDavid & Amber UngarSue-Anne WallaceTone Wheeler & Jan O’ConnorRichard Whiteley & Ann JakleTwo anonymous donations

Object proudly acknowledges the corporate partners, donors, Trusts and foundations who support our activities

We have the privilege of working alongside

We have also been fortunate to receive support from some passionate individuals who have shown their commitment to the work we do in promoting Australian designers and makers

As a collector of handcrafted jewellery for over 20 years, I am a great admirer of the work done by Object to showcase the art created by our craftspeople and designers.

When I fi rst visited Object Gallery at St Margarets in Surry Hills, I became totally enthused about the work of the different designers exhibited by Object, and the possibilities for Australian craft and design to both refl ect and shape our culture.

Object is dynamic in its support of our designers, and in doing so makes a signifi cant contribution to our cultural landscape. Object is a non-profi t organisation and needs our ongoing fi nancial support to continue to showcase the best of Australian craft and design through its exhibitions, publications and wonderful education programs.

Margaret PomeranzAmbassador for Object, and host of ABC TV’s At The Movies.

object 57 / 03

MEDIA PARTNERMAJOR SPONSOR

SUPPORTING PARTNER

OFFICIAL BEVERAGE PARTNER

CORPORATE MEMBERS

SUPPORTING PARTNER

SUPPORTING PARTNER

MANAGING EDITOR

Joan-Maree Hargreaves

EDITORIAL TEAM Stephen GoddardJoan-Maree HargreavesKathryn HunyorBrian ParkesSteven Pozel

COPY EDITOR

Theresa Willsteed

ART DIRECTION AND DESIGN

Stephen Goddard

COVER PHOTOGRAPHY Emma Reilly

ADVISORS

Stephen BowersManaging Director, JamFactory Contemporary Craft & Design (Adelaide)

David ClarkEditor, Vogue Living Australia (Sydney)

Philip ClarkeDirector, Objectspace (Auckland)

Rhana DevenportDirector, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery (New Plymouth)

Melanie EganHead, CRAFT, Harbourfront Centre (Toronto)

Allison GrayAssistant Curator, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (Darwin)

David McFaddenChief Curator, Museum of Arts and Design (New York)

Tina OldknowCurator, Modern Glass, Corning Museum of Glass (New York)

Claire RegnaultProgrammes Developer, TheNewDowse (Wellington)

Kate RhodesCurator, Craft Vic (Melbourne)

Gareth WilliamsCurator, Department of Furniture, Textiles and Fashion, Victoria and Albert Museum (London)

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PUBLISHER

Object: Australian Centre for Craft and DesignDirector: Steven Pozel

Associate Director: Brian Parkes

Object supports and promotes contemporary craft and design through exhibitions, publications and retail activities.

Object: Australian Centre

for Craft and Design

415 Bourke Street Surry Hills NSW Australia 2010 Telephone: +61 2 9361 4555 Facsimile: +61 2 9361 4533 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.object.com.au

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SUPPORTERS AND SPONSORS

Object: Australian Centre for Craft and Design is 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.

Object is a non-profi t organisation – exhibitions, programming and operations are also funded through contributions from foundations, individuals and corporations, and through commercial activities. Object thanks our supporters, partners and donors for their commitment. We depend on their generosity to continue our mission of supporting and promoting contemporary craft and design.

Object Magazine acknowledges the generous sponsorship of Creative New Zealand Toi Aotearoa.

© Copyright is held by Object Magazine. Reproduction without permission is prohibited. The publisher is not responsible for statements or opinions expressed in Object Magazine, nor do such statements refl ect the views of the publisher, its board, or Object Magazine’s Editorial Team.

ISSN 1038-1856 Post Print Approved PP242296/00126

WARNING

TO INDIGENOUS READERSThis issue of Object Magazine may contain names and images of deceased Indigenous people.

FEATURES

8DESIGNS WITH HEARTIlias Fotopoulos and Trent Jansen were joint winners of the Bombay Sapphire Design Discovery Award 2008. Rachael Bernstone takes a close look at the winning works from these innovative designers.

24FROM ULURU TO HERMANNSBURG: FIVE DAYS IN THE LIFE OF A CURATORObject is collaborating with the Australian Museum to develop a major touring exhibition of sculptural works depicting animal forms by Indigenous artists from across the country. Object’s Assistant Curator, Nicole Foreshew, reveals her observations from a recent fi eldtrip to the Central Desert region.

36THE CANNING STOCK ROUTE PROJECTThe Canning Stock Route Project is a contemporary arts and cultural initiative that celebrates the lives and stories of Western Desert Indigenous people. Carly Davenport Acker interviews senior curator, Wally Caruana, mentor to emerging curators, Murungkurr Terry Murray, Hayley Atkins and Louise Mengil.

42GATHERINGSBrisbane-based foundry, Urban Art Projects, has teamed up with private developer, The Toga Group, to engage artists from remote communities through a series of week-long workshops. Alison Kubler gets an inside look at this creative collaboration.

46POTTERY THAT DEFIES CONVENTIONAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ceramics are distinct in their form. Stephen Bowers delves into the work of emerging and established ceramicists contributing to this genre.

52

CONDENSED ARCHITECTUREArchitect Mark Gazy takes us through a selection of Japan’s beautiful and inspiring residential architecture of the moment.

PROFILES

18TRUDIE KROEFNew Zealand ceramicist Trudie Kroef honours the work of craftspeople in her new mixed-media series. Moyra Elliott profi les the artist, following Kroef ’s exceptional new exhibition, The Tomb of the Unknown Maker.

34EVA WANGANEENQueensland artist, Eva Wanganeen, has been painting on silk for more than ten years. Louise Rollman talks with this hardworking, passionate artist and designer.

OPINION

50DRIVING AN IDEA TO CANBERRAAlison Page takes us on her journey toward the creation of a National Design Policy, starting with the Australia 2020 Summit.

REGULARS

12OBJECT EYEObjects of desire and ideas to inspire from across the globe.

22EMERGINGJoan-Maree Hargreaves uncovers four up-and-coming Indigenous artists from across the country: Joshua Bonson, Gunybi Ganambarr, Archie Moore and Kresna Cameron.

58REVIEWS

contents

ABOUT OUR COVER

The cover of Object 57 features Graham Badari’s work, Kuluban, in progress. Graham took part in the Gatherings workshops – a joint initiative between Urban Art Projects and The Toga Group – creating three aluminium cast fl ying fox sculptures. Read more on page 42. Photo: Emma Reilly

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For something fresh in design, check out Object’s website! www.object.com.au

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30 January – 5 April 2009

Abundant

�� comprehensively documents

the work of Australian architects at the

forefront of contemporary practice.

18 April – 21 June 2009

Design Now! 2009

Object’s annual national graduate

exhibition �� represents

the best and freshest upcoming

designers, selected from universities

across Australia.

26 June – 30 August 2009

F!NK Fostering Design

Curated by Merryn Gates, �� highlights the role of Robert

Foster as the creative force behind F!NK

and the partnerships he has fostered with

other emerging Australian designers.

object 57 / 07

editorial

Object’s passion for exploring the culture of our Indigenous communities refl ects a desire to learn about, and celebrate, the fascinating, rich and diverse forms of expression that continue to emerge from the world’s oldest culture. It comes also from a particular perspective that we bring to the Australian cultural sector, as an organisation which aims to offer audiences a broad view of our contemporary visual culture. Working with some of Australia’s most creative and innovative Indigenous artists is a gift in so many ways – for one, it gives us an opportunity to engage with forms of cultural expression that defy defi nition and simply do not care about the Western preoccupation with categorisation.

What we fi nd in the work of many Indigenous communities is creativity and innovation of a nature we do not encounter in other creative communities. Not only does the work transcend the boundaries of art/craft/design, it engages with so many levels of historical and contemporary culture. We are also reminded of the fact that what is really important is the conceiving, designing and making of objects, and all the layers that this holds – the material, process, inspiration, knowledge and poetry that combine to make an object.

In 2001 Object presented the groundbreaking exhibition Art on a String, which represents for us the fi rst in what will be a long series of exhibitions that explore the relatively unknown world of Indigenous object-making. Art on a String opened the eyes of Australian audiences to the symbolic and aesthetic power of Indigenous threaded objects, and began the long process of giving the makers due recognition for their powerful creations. Similarly in 2005, our second major exhibition featuring Indigenous objects – Woven Forms: Contemporary basket making in Australia – celebrated the unheralded world of Indigenous basket-making. Now in 2009 I am delighted that we will explore another area of Indigenous object-making, that of animal sculptures by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists.

For curators, any exhibition is a journey of discovery. Often the original destination shifts and changes as new ideas, objects and meanings are unearthed. In this instance, the journey has taken Object’s Associate Director Brian Parkes and Assistant Curator Nicole Foreshew across the country to capital cities and remote communities. In this issue Nicole has given us an insight into part of her journey – not just the travelling for the purpose of research, but a spiritual and intellectual response to cultural insights and artistic revelations.

We are particularly delighted to present the animal sculpture exhibition in partnership with the Australian Museum, which enables us to offer Australian audiences an exhibition of greater depth and scale than we could achieve alone. The project will also become one of our most well-travelled exhibitions, touring to more than 10 venues across the country: from Alice Springs, Cairns and Launceston, to Brisbane, Melbourne and Adelaide. It is with great pride that Object and the Australian Museum will share with so many people the world of Indigenous animals – through sculptures, their spiritual meaning and their stories.

Steven Pozel

‘ Now in 2009 I am delighted that we will explore another area of Indigenous object-making, that of animal sculptures by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists.’

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feature

designs with heartbombay sapphire design discovery award 2008

For the fi rst time in its history, the Bombay Sapphire Design Discovery Award was jointly presented to two designers this year, with judges unable to choose between the works of Ilias Fotopoulos and Trent Jansen.

Left to right: Ilias Fotopoulos and Trent Jansen

Opposite page: Trent Jansen, Kissing Pendants, 2008, pressed aluminium, CAD drawing. Image: courtesy of the artist

WORDS BY RACHAEL BERNSTONE

object 57 / 09

‘The works are physically very different but conceptually and emotionally, they engaged ideas in design in the same way,’ says BSDDA judge and Object Associate Director Brian Parkes. ‘Both pieces displayed a sense of trying to produce works that are, ultimately, elegantly functional things for the lifestyle market, but that are also infused with a social awareness and eagerness for design to be more than simply styling or decor. The designs both tell stories and remind us of our humanity, and those qualities are integral to the purpose of the works themselves.’

Parkes said that Kissing Pendants, the lighting product by four-time Bombay Sapphire fi nalist Trent Jansen, was his most impressive submission so far. ‘Trent is a young designer on an extraordinary trajectory of making a design career in a short time, and he’s done consistently good work, but this piece is quite substantially better than his entries in previous years,’ Parkes says. ‘It displays extraordinary simplicity and says so much with so little.’

The pair of lights employs a magnetic reed switch – which Jansen said took considerable effort to resolve – to switch on and hold the shades together when they touch. ‘The way it switches on when they “kiss” makes you smile, and makes you think about the intimacy of that gesture,’ Parkes says. ‘The moment in which the space is illuminated becomes all the more potent.’

Meanwhile, the Braille wallpaper by Ilias Fotopoulos caught the attention of the judges for its exceptional quality and subtle message: the raised Braille dots tell a story that sighted people can’t necessarily read. ‘It’s part of an ongoing series of works, all of which are beautifully resolved,’ Parkes says. ‘As well as being a striking design, there is a story that underpins it. That story doesn’t need to be known to appreciate the wallpaper, but it adds a different dimension if you are aware of it. It allows you to engage in the work in a deeper way.

‘It also prompts you to consider the haves and have nots, and the notion of universal access,’ Parkes adds. ‘It reminds you to be mindful of things we might otherwise take for granted.’

The judges were particularly impressed by the resolution of Fotopoulos’s design, which is market-ready ‘down to the way it’s ordered, sold, packaged and detailed,’ according to Parkes. Jansen’s Kissing Pendants is similarly well thought out. ‘As a working prototype, it could be put into production very quickly,’ Parkes says.

Jansen and Fotopoulos, both Sydney-based designers who run their own practices, will share the $30,000 prize money and both will receive airfares to travel internationally to pursue their careers. Jansen intends to use his prize to ‘develop many other new ideas that are loitering in my sketch book’, and hopes to exhibit in the Salone Satellite at Milan’s Furniture Fair in 2009. Fotopoulos launched the Braille wallpaper in Australia in July, as well as in Tokyo and London, and will use his prize money to fulfi l orders for the product and develop new works.

10 / object 57

‘In both cases, the judges felt these were two designers who knew very clearly what they wanted to do, and who both had clear plans for moving forward,’ Parkes concludes. ‘Both Trent and Ilias have made signifi cant inroads with international markets and manufacturers and, in the four to fi ve years they have been practising, they have developed a cohesion that builds a picture of who they are and what they stand for.’

The strength of their designs, and their convictions, have earned Jansen and Fotopoulos Australia’s most prestigious design honour in 2008.

Rachael Bernstone is a Sydney-based freelance journalist.

Below: Ilias Fotopoulos, Listen and Record: wallpaper in Braille, 2005-07, non-woven paper, water-based adhesive, viscose fi bre. Photo: courtesy of the artist

Right: Translation of the wallpaper story, Listen and Record. Story: Juro Osawa. Image: courtesy of the artist

object 57 / 11

playing with design‘Publisher, exhibitor, mentor, supporter, nurturer, retailer …

The common thread running through all of [Object’s] roles is its

focus on making design accessible to a wider audience … ’1

This same article described Object as ‘nimble’, and that’s very much how we wanted

2008 to be for Object Magazine. We began this year with a new structure: a team of

editors and a dynamic approach to brainstorming content. We decided to

experiment: with types of articles, themes, paper, images, space, techniques …

We were equally interested in experimenting with our approach to the magazine’s

design. The rough-around-the-edges Studio issue that we published in April has

been one of our most popular yet. It seems that the fascination with the processes,

lives and loves of makers never dulls. We then invited Paul Garbett from

Naughtyfi sh to be a guest designer on Issue 56, Patterns, prototypes and blueprints.

This was a fascinating process in which we aimed to take the design of the magazine

to places that it hadn’t been for quite some time: one that was spare, less textural

and more graphic. A celebration of the clarity of space. And the positive responses

have been equally overwhelming.

Which is not to say that in either case everyone loved everything. Some wanted the

design to be a little less loose, others a little less cool. For some, the punchier writing

is a challenge, and it’s always hard to cover all that everyone wants to read about.

Some think we over-design, others that we under-design. But overwhelmingly,

most think that on the whole we’re getting it about right and moving forward every

time (and as we’d hoped just about everyone loves the new recycled paper).

Which brings us to a great moment to say thanks to the many readers and

observers who’ve given us feedback on these very different issues, and been part

of the year of playing and thinking about design.

This issue, with its Indigenous focus, marks for us the direction that we’re going to

maintain for Object Magazine, for the next little while at least. We want to balance

the clarity of strong structure with the cinematic quality of images you get lost in.

Crafted, human, insightful, challenging, opinionated. Most of all, we think we need

to be as nimble now as we were at Issue 1, and will be at Issue 100.

Stephen Goddard is Senior Creative Associate at Object, and principal of Stephen Goddard Design, Sydney.

1. Hande Ranshaw, Design Quarterly, Issue 30, Winter 2008, pp. 34–35.

editorialextra

12 / object 57

Abundant Australia

In 2008, the 11th International Venice Architecture Biennale again took up residence in the beautiful Venice Pavilions and Arsenale. Abundant Australia showcased Australia’s contribution to the fi eld inside the Australian Pavillion at the event. Curator Aaron Betsky (also director of the Netherlands Architecture Institute [NAI] in Rotterdam) entitled the Biennale: ‘Out There: Architecture Beyond Building’. ‘The challenge is to collect and encourage experimentation … toward an architecture liberated from buildings [instead presenting] site-specifi c installations, visions and experiments,’1 he said. As the world and our communities change, the outcomes from this engaging architectural forum and the fi nalists from the Everyville 2008 Biennale competition will be something to watch. A selection of 100 models from Abundant Australia will be on display at Object Gallery from 30 January until 5 April 2009.

September to November 2008 www.biennale.org.en/architecture/

1 Curator’s comments taken from the 11th International Venice Architecture Biennale website.

Above: Didascalie, Zaha Hadid Architects, Lotus, Perspective – Open, 2008, computer-generated image. Photo: Courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects and Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia

Theatre for the twenty-fi rst century

‘You don’t watch a Lepage epic, it happens to you.’ 1

For those with endurance, the 2009 Sydney Festival will feature Lipsynch, directed by theatre visionary Robert Lepage: a sweeping nine-hour performance spanning 70 years and exploring the voice as a compelling metaphor for human expression and interaction, conjuring up a hugely ambitious panorama that links nine lives, and spinning stories that often juxtapose tragedy with slapstick.

The performance has been described as visually and aurally spectacular, and imbued with a rare emotional wisdom. It journeys between war-torn Vienna, pre-revolutionary Nicaragua and contemporary London, encountering people who have lost the power of speech and those for whom it is their only lifeline. Don’t forget your cushion! Performed in English, French, German and Spanish with English surtitles.

11–18 January 2009www.sydneyfestival.org.au

1 The Montreal Gazette

Above: Lipsynch, Sydney Festival 2009. Photo: Érick Labbé

Kate Rhodes joins Object

It’s an impressive résumé: curator at the National Gallery of Victoria, Craft Victoria and the National Design Centre, Melbourne. One might ask ‘where to next?’ Object is thrilled to announce that Kate Rhodes will be adjunct curator for the organisation. From her base in Melbourne, Kate will be working on new projects for Object’s exhibition calendar. She will also be taking up the position of editor of Artichoke Magazine, which covers interior architecture and design, textile design, product design, exhibition design and graphic design.

www.archmedia.com.au/artichokewww.object.com.au

Above: Kate Rhodes and Object’s Associate Director Brian Parkes

A slice of the past

Sometimes it seems like the more we go forward, the more we go backwards. Even as designers move further towards using sophisticated manufacturing techniques to make their objects, the more their work can resemble what nature has been doing for billions of years. Since the early 1990s, Danish designer Mattias Bengtsson has been proving this fact in a collection of works that ask for a closer look. His well-known sliced chairs seem eroded by the natural elements and forces of time. But rapid prototyping with laser techniques formed each cross-section which, when assembled by hand, suggest well-worn arm and back grooves. These sliced chairs, along with Bengtsson’s synonymous carbon-fi bre spun chairs have been part of an extensive solo touring exhibition of his work, at The Hub Centre in Lincolnshire from September to November this year.

Hub Exhibition Centre, Lincolnshire, UK www.mattiasbengtsson.comwww.thehubcentre.info

Above: Mattias Bengtsson, Sliced Chair, 1999, plywood

objecteye

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Ian Potter Cultural Trust Grant for Trent Jansen

Being part of the Australian contingent of designers that fl ew the fl ag at Milan this year seems to have set Trent Jansen on a European adventure that has no end in sight. After the success of exhibiting Pregnant Chair at the Moooi exhibition stand in April, Trent won an Ian Potter Cultural Trust Grant for Design. Established in 1993, the Trust enables artists to undertake professional development travel to encourage more diversity and ingenuity within Australia’s cultural spheres. With the prize, Jansen secured a trip to visit design producers from the Netherlands, Switzerland and Italy.

www.trentjansen.comwww.culturaltrust.ianpotter.org.au

Above: Trent Jansen, Pregnant Chair, 2008. Photo: Courtesy of Moooi Designs

Jewellery of the unknown Yoko Izawa

Earlier this year, Designboom <www.designboom.com> coined the term ‘poor jewellery’ in an article on contemporary wearables in the twenty-fi rst century: value is based on innovation and artistic research rather than on what metal or semi-precious stone is used. Japanese designer Yoko Izawa epitomises this movement. In her latest collection – Veiled – Yoko works with knitted lycra, nylon yarn, perspex and polypropylene. Her interest is ‘in containing, covering or wrapping things. The search has been for something elusive.’ Moving beyond the known, and into the unknown, is at the heart of this contemporary jewellery movement. Yoko’s work will be exhibited in Dazzle London at the National Theatre, London until 10 January 2009.

www.yokoizawa.com/work.htm

Above: Yoko Izawa, Untitled (Bracelets), 2008, lycra, polypropylene, oxidised silver. Photo: Yoko Izawa

Jean Prouvé at MOMAApril – March 2009

To be able to visualise a part of the twentieth century in a single designed object is no mean feat, but that is exactly what the Standard Chair of French architect and designer Jean Prouvé achieved. In MOMA’s exhibition, Ateliers Jean Prouvé, the evolution of the Standard Chair is displayed in the several variations of the design that line the room, illustrating the lack of metal in World War II and hence the use of wood; the increased use of aluminium as a workable material in the early 1950s; and knock-down assembly modifi cations with the advent of mass-market shipping in the early 1960s. The exhibition also features working drawings and photos, and runs until March 2009.

www.moma.com

Above: Installation view of Ateliers Jean Prouvé at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2008. Photo: Jason Mandella

New Zealand jeweller is cool

New Zealand contemporary jeweller Kirsten Haydon has been making work associated with Antarctica since 2005, when she received a New Zealand Antarctic Arts Fellowship. Her upcoming exhibition, Ice Terrane, will be held at Auckland’s Objectspace as part of The Auckland Festival, AK09, and will showcase the expansive repertoire of skills and interests evident in Haydon’s practice.

Haydon’s beautiful and innovative jewellery objects are related to the restrictive climactic conditions prevalent in Antarctica. One highlight of the exhibition will be a darkened room at Objectspace, where visitors will be invited to use torches to explore and discover a variety of refl ective objects made from vitreous enamel and road-marking beads.

Ice Terrane28 February – 4 April 2009www.objectspace.org.nz

Above: Kirsten Haydon, Brooch, 2005, silver, road-marking beads, enamel

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Dining in the twenty-fi rst century

Designboom <www.designboom.com> loves to create an innovative competition to test emerging designers into thinking even further outside the square. This year the theme was ‘Dining in the twenty-fi rst century’, which received 4,843 entries from 98 countries. Din-Ink, designed by Andrea Cingoli, Paolo Emilio Bellisario, Cristian Cellini and Francesca Fontana, from Italian company Zo-loft, was one of three winners. The company proposes to discover inexpensive and sustainable technologies and materials and create products that are easy to understand and use in day-to-day living, such as Din-Ink: while sitting at your desk, you can easily slip a cap on your pen that converts it into a spoon, fork or knife.

www.designboom.com

Zo-loft Design, Din-Ink, 2008, plastic, ink. Photo: courtesy of Zo-loft Design

Light and beautiful, off and online

Sometimes it is the website of a designer that captures your attention. You may be there to look for an object, but suddenly the aesthetic and mood of a web page can make you forget what you were searching for in the fi rst place. This is what happens when looking at the website of Tokujin Yoshioka. Since he featured in the Italian design company Moroso’s exhibit at Milan Salone with the Bouquet Chair in 2008, there has been a lot of praise for this young Japanese designer. A true interest in the design philosophy of Yoshioka might begin when you view the slideshow of how the Pane Chair is created. As its name suggests, the chair’s bread-like fi bres are delicately shaped, folded, bound and then compressed to create a fi nal object that is light and beautiful. Defi nitely worth a look.

www.tokujin.com/en2/main.html

Tokujin Yoshioka, The Pane Chair, 2007, polyester elastomer. Photo: courtesy of the artist

Looking out west

Ted Polhemus, anthologist and author, suggests that ‘fashion is now predominantly an idea/concept-based industry’. Exhibitions such as How You Make It, curated by Craft Victoria, show that this theory defi nitely has legs. John Curtin Gallery in Western Australia aimed to profi le its local fashion design industry in a similar manner, with the exhibition Looking Out. Six local designers were given a forum to illustrate the nature of conceptual fashion, and to showcase how their businesses operate in local and international markets. One such success story is Aurelio Costarella, who is now a regular on the New York Fashion Week calendar. There is also a fantastic catalogue available from John Curtin Gallery to drool over.

John Curtin Gallery www.johncurtingallery.curtin.edu.au

Aurelio Costarella, Goddess Pant with Cloud Blouse, Winter 08 collection. Photo: Di Vidos. Model: Emily C @ Chadwick

Designer set to take fl ight

It’s always exciting when a new prize appears on the scene, as when the Design NSW: Travelling Scholarship was announced. Supported by the Powerhouse Museum and the British Council with Arts NSW, the prize consists of $18,000 in cash to fund an overseas sabbatical that will develop and enrich an emerging designer’s career. This year there were 32 entries, and from four fi nalists the winner was Matthew Huynh. Huynh is a Sydney-based comic creator and illustrator, who produces graphic novels that span a multitude of genres from surrealist fantasy to drama. Occasionally working under the pseudonym ‘stikman’, Huyhn plans to use the prize to learn more about the industry overseas, so he can keep questioning and re-contextualising Australia’s comic book identity.

www. matthuynh.com

Matthew Huynh, Fly illustration from Midnight Morning publication, 2008

objecteye

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A ceramic blog

Does anyone still remember that American TV sitcom Land of the Giants? Set on a planet of giants, a group of stranded humans try to survive and get back to Earth? When reading this absolutely hilarious and very cute blog, Sandwich Mountain, that TV show comes to mind. Created by the very talented ceramic artists, Kenji Uranishi and Mel Robson, this blogging collaboration has taken ceramic art to a whole new level. A group of little ceramic people fi nd themselves on adventures that take them to Japan, onto big planes, and on summer holidays by the beach. With a running script that gives them all personalities and dialogue to go with the images, you fi nd yourself swept away into another world that is fun and much needed.

www.sandwichmountain.blogspot.com

Image from the Sandwich Mountain blog. Image: courtesy of Sandwich Mountain

Phoebe Porter draws the line

We have all heard the phrase ‘the ties that bind’. These may be visible and invisible networks of communication, travelled pathways and associations to people. William Kentridge illustrated this concept in the animated work Stereoscope some years ago to great success, as he vigorously drew lines across a city in a random and complex pattern. In the new work of Phoebe Porter the concept and inspiration is the same, but the method is a little different. Location Devices, shown at eg.et.al as part of the State of Design Melbourne Festival earlier in the year, creates ‘networking’ lines in a much more ordered and linear manner. Using aluminium, steel, silver, gold and special titanium ball-bearings, these neckpieces look a little like the London underground map but are extremely malleable. The centrepiece of the collection was a map where visitors were encouraged to ‘locate’ themselves, and to purchase a location metal clip. Now we all can be connected.

www.nationaldesigncentre.com

Phoebe Porter, Transit necklaces (detail), 2008, aluminium, titanium, stainless steel. Photo: Andrew Sikorski

Anna Ter Haar’s Odd man out stools

You may have never considered the idea that a chair could be called a freak, until seeing and reading about the Odd man out stools at Milan this year. Created by Anna Ter Haar, these Buitenbeentje (or Odd man out stools) are indeed outside the square, as they seem to be missing one leg. Anna cuts a hole where a leg would normally be positioned and painstakingly drips a rainbow of polyurethane resin through the hole to create an organic and fl uid faux leg. Likened to a stalactite, the colours create a unique object, as no two chairs are the same.

www.annaterhaar.nl/#anch2

Anna Ter Haar, Odd Man Out Stools, 2007, polyurethane resin, wood. Photo: courtesy of the artist

Qui Hao wins prestigious Woolmark Prize Award

Look out for Shanghai fashion designer Qiu Hao, who has joined design greats Karl Lagerfeld, Yves Saint Laurent, Donna Karan, Ralph Lauren, Dolce & Gabbana and Giorgio Armani in the Woolmark hall of fame, as the 2008 winner of the inaugural Woolmark Prize. Since completing a degree in interior design at Suzhou University and then attending London’s Central Saint Martins College, Hao has established and maintained a signature of razor-sharp tailoring and smooth deconstruction in a largely monochromatic colour palette. The original wool awards were held between 1954 and 1992 by the International Wool Secretariat (IWS). The Woolmark Prize takes up where the IWS left off, upholding the original foundations on which the award was built: excellence, innovation and distinction.

www.woolmark.com/prize/

Design by Woolmark Prize 2008 winner, Qiu Hao. Photo: Emilie Erbin

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Weavers of the desert

Some may remember the 2005 Tjampi Toyota – a life-size woven car that won the 22nd Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award. That work was created by women from the Ngaanyatjarra Lands in remote Western Australia, and they are now also a part of the Tjampi Desert Weavers’ handwoven baskets now in Collect at Object. Aboriginal women who live in remote communities across the Western and Central Deserts began the collective back in 1995, as a series of basket-making workshops to address the need for more meaningful employment in their homelands. The weavers make beautiful baskets using native desert grasses bound and stitched with a variation of coloured wools and raffi as, decorated with emu feathers and seeds.

www.tjampi.com.au

Elaine Lane, Basketpa Pulkanya Karlitjarra Lirrupirinypa (Big Snake-Coil Basket), 2008, desert grasses (minarri and wangurnu), dyed raffi a. Photo: Jo Foster

Elegant Armor: The art of jewellery

At the newly renovated MAD Museum at Columbus Circle in Manhattan, the exhibition Elegant Armor: The art of jewellery marks a new chapter for the space. The pieces on display date from the 1940s up to the present, have been canvassed from the museum’s extensive permanent collection, and have not been displayed together for a long time. The exhibition has been curated into four themes: ‘Sculptural’, ‘Narrative’, ‘Painted and Textured Surfaces’ and ‘Radical Edge’. Many of the pieces are displayed with their designer’s drawings and sketches, giving an insight into how the pieces were constructed. Boris Bally’s Brave#2 neckpiece and accompanying sketch display this beautifully, showing the viewer how complex a piece of jewellery can be.

Museum of Art and Design NYSeptember – May 2009 www.madmuseum.org

Boris Bally, Brave #2, 2006, found steel handgun triggers, gold, white sapphire, silver, steel cable; fabricated, cuttlebone cast, riveted. Gift of the artist in honor of Alex Schaffner, Basel, Switzerland, 2006.Photo: courtesy of MAD Museum

Taking cloning to the next level

Design that works with human nature and the client’s genetic makeup? French designers, 5.5, were defi nitely something new at Milan in 2008 as they presented designed pieces that use a client’s height, weight, eye colour etc. to inform the fi nal lamp or chair that 5.5 designs. For 5.5, this concept will allow us to live in spaces that seem more human and less machine orientated. Our rooms will feel more familiar and comfortable, as the pieces in them work with our own physicality. Is cloning our furniture the next step in designing for the twenty-fi rst century? For 5.5 designers it is defi nitely on the horizon.

www.cinqcinqdesigners.com

5.5 designers, Brown Eye Lamp, glass by Livio Serena, 2007

Big things to come for Big Words

Big Words, run by Indigo as part of the National Design Centre in Melbourne, is a mighty big exhibition that is being launched in Paris in 2009 before its ‘Nomad’ tour. Starting with one word, such as ‘touch’ or ‘peace’, Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists were asked to collaborate and express that word with a visual image or language. Through these graphic languages the exhibition will ask many questions of its audience about contemporary social concerns and our ever-changing national cultural identity. Through photos, drawings, installations and objects, this diverse range of works hopes to open up some new ways of thinking.

www.indigodesignnetwork.orgwww.indigo.org.au/big_words_what_is.php

Olivia Constantopolous, Riesa Renata, Robyn Heckenberg, Too hard basket?, 2006. Photography: Mimmo Cozzolino

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A type of life

With a library of over 570 original typefaces to his name, typesetter and graphic artist Joseph Churchward has designed more fonts than any other individual in the world. The Samoan-born typographer is internationally renowned, his fonts are in use throughout the world, and he is the name behind New Zealand’s largest typesetting company, Churchward International Typefaces. And if that doesn’t sound impressive enough, Churchward (now aged 75) continues to intricately draw and measure each font by hand, some taking an arduous 300 hours to perfect! Te Papa pays homage to this designer’s epic and innovative output in an inclusive exhibition of pencil drawings, print negatives, photos and newspaper clippings.

Letter Man: Joseph Churchward’s World of TypeMuseum of New ZealandTe Papa Tongarewa21 August – 9 February 2009www.tepapa.govt.nz

Joseph Churchward, examples of freehand types. Photo: courtesy Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

Beauty in the Pacifi c

With a name that translates from the Maori as ‘beautiful’, Ataahua is a design practice that certainly lives up to its name. After entering the textile arena some eight years ago, the business produced the fi rst Pacifi c-designed, high quality bed linen on the market. Today, Ataahua’s products range from fabrics and homewares to ceramics and lighting, with commissions completed for some of New Zealand’s most recognisable companies. Concerned with the environmental impact of textile production, Ataahua Director Bernadette Casey has recently approached New Zealand coffee roasters for an alternative medium: recycled coffee sacks. The resulting ‘Trilby’ hats, bags and stunning 1950s Cuban-style light shades have retained the addictive nature of coffee, to say the least. Whether viewed online, or at the Wellington retail store, the colours, textures and patterns of Ataahua can only be described as … beautiful.

Ataahua17/14 Leeds Street, Wellingtonwww.ataahua.co.nz

Ataahua, Coffee Sack Trilby, 2008, recycled coffee sack. Photo: courtesy Ataahua

Fold here

If you’ve ever been fascinated by the art of origami, but disappointed when your paper lotus drooped and fell, Rachel Young’s Fold homewares may just provide a solution. Beginning with a fl at sheet of polypropylene, Young experiments with hundreds of origami folding variations to create a form that is functional and long lasting, while retaining the integrity of the technique. This emerging designer’s ability to transform a fl at sheet into a three-dimensional object recently scored her an invite to Designboom Mart in Sydney, where the popularity of her products has since found her folding like mad. Now back in Auckland, Young’s designs continue to evolve, and with paper experiments in everything from wallets to wardrobes, the possibilities seem surreal.

www.fold.co.nz

Rachel Young, 2007, Fold Dish, polypropylene. Photo: courtesy the artist

Tradition marries experimentation

In an exhibition at Masterworks Gallery, Auckland, Matthew McIntyre Wilson demonstrates the innovative side of a traditional craft. Taught in traditional Maori weaving techniques, McIntyre Wilson began working in fl ax, but his background as a jeweller soon resurfaced, manifesting in his use of copper and silver in the weave. McIntyre Wilson’s delicate and intricate forms include arm bands, kete (baskets) and hinaki (bags), each possessing a complexity in design, concept and historic association. For a beautiful marriage of tradition and experimentation, this exhibition of contemporary yet age-old forms will impress and delight.

Masterworks Gallery77 Ponsonby Road, Aucklandwww.masterworksgallery.com

Matthew McIntyre Wilson, Kete, 2007, woven copper and silver. Photo: courtesy the artist and Masterworks Gallery

Object Eye compiled by Michele Morcos and Kennie Ward

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profi le

WORDS BY MOYRA ELLIOTT

the tomb of the unknown maker

Moyra Elliott explores the new work of New Zealand ceramicist Trudie Kroef.

The new objects from Trudie Kroef rely upon combination, contradiction and collaboration to engaging effect. Kroef has always worked in combinations of materials, beginning with her late-1990s vessels made with porcelain and glass. Thrown and cast, the materials were entirely worked by hand despite the polished presentation and precise joining of the two-part, two-media vessels. She has progressively combined media within vessels, gaining complexity on the way, and her new work enlarges this idea, but elaborates and develops it further.

The Tomb of the Unknown Maker project honours the work of other craftspeople while lamenting the loss of skills necessary to craft prototypes for industry. Kroef posits that globalisation means we will never again require some types of, now almost redundant, skills within New Zealand and utilises these, beside new technologies, to make that point. At fi rst glance her objects are comfortably, domestically familiar but a second reveals their componential diversity. Kitchen implements such as the Tala icing syringe, the Suzy scales, the Jiffy shaker and the Bonco fl our sifter were used daily by our mothers, hence their cosy intimacy. Kroef ’s reconstructions, to perfect scale, incorporate the contributions of other skills, and each component relies upon a different craft.

Right: Trudie Kroef, Bonco Flour Sifter, 2008, porcelain, rimu, kauri, original components. Photo: Melanie Jenkins

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Coming from an immigrant Dutch family whose craft and engineering skills bestowed a respect for the skills of others, Kroef began by laminating a variety of woods with the aid of her mother. These laminations were then turned over to a skilled wood-turner and other talents made resin prototypes. Kroef engaged an industrial designer to model by CAD, and an industrial ceramics craftsman to produce moulds that Kroef used to cast in porcelain. All this necessitated careful research and painstaking mathematics, working out how to allow for the 14.5 per cent clay shrinkage. Kroef embellished the ceramic components with patterns of holes, a decorative effect that prompts images of lace and links with other craft skills while rendering the objects more obviously non-functional, changing their meanings.

The hybrid objects fi t together and interchange with precision and, for Kroef, the sound engendered as this is achieved is one of the most satisfying attributes. Porcelain, laminated wood and an original component in metal, such as the plungers on the icing syringes and the turning blades for the sifters, are incorporated within each piece. The original objects were found in junk shops and bought on eBay. For every one of her objects, Kroef had to fi nd (usually one) original, but another happy collaboration developed as dealers understood her requirements and revived a tradition of support within the community.

Aiming to challenge the value structure placed upon these somewhat antiquated everyday tools, Kroef at the same time honours the skills, still extant, that lie behind the production of everyday objects of commercial manufacture, by drawing a different audience for these communicant objects and recontextualising their status to that of art.

Trudie Kroef’s exhibition The Tomb of the Unknown Maker was initially shown as a window feature at Objectspace in Auckland, New Zealand, in July and August 2008. It then travelled to Avid Gallery Wellington for a further exhibition in September 2008.

Moyra Elliott is an independent writer and curator based in Auckland, New Zealand.

THE TOMB OF THE UNKNOWN MAKER

Trudie Kroef, Group shot, 2008. Photo: Melanie Jenkins

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‘ The Tomb of the Unknown Maker project honours the work of other craftspeople while lamenting the loss of skills necessary to craft prototypes for industry.’

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Joshua BonsonNorthern Territory

Expect big things from Darwin artist Joshua Bonson. The 19-year-

old was the youngest artist ever to be included in the Telstra

National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award in 2007

and again in 2008.

His primary sources of inspiration are his surroundings and his

family, particularly his grandparents. This can be seen in his

painting, Skin, which uses a circular design to represent the

connections between the stones of the earth, the scales of a crocodile

and his family. ‘My style of thickly-applied layered paint onto canvas

developed in high school during art classes,’ he says. ‘What I tried to

do was take traditional forms, like dot painting, and make it move

– instead of dotted lines, you have waves.’

In his next works, Joshua plans to explore using modelling and

sculpture. He has been travelling around Australia, picking up ideas

for concepts for his fi rst exhibition. ‘I know that I want people to

take pictures and to get to touch and feel the works so they can

really know what they are actually about.’

All quotes from Joshua Bonson are from an interview with Joan-Maree Hargreaves.

Above: Joshua Bonson, Skin, 2008, synthetic polymer paint on canvas.

Photo: courtesy Silva Photo graphics, Darwin NT

Gunybi GanambarrNorthern Territory

In his unique style, Gunybi Ganambarr continues to push for

innovation within the long-established art traditions of bark

painting and karrakitj (memorial poles).

Gunybi’s work has progressively gained attention over the years, and

he recently received the X Strata Coal Emerging Indigenous Artist

Award for his work, Burrut’tji at Baraltja. According to Premier of

Queensland, Anna Bligh MP, Gunybi’s work stood out to the selection

committee ‘because of its innovation within the longstanding tradition

of painting on bark in north-east Arnhem Land’.1

‘His contemporary approach to bark painting features many linear

incisions in-fi lled with white pigment, resulting in a strong sense of

movement,’ she said.

Ganambarr’s public art career began with an exhibition at

Annandale Galleries in 2004, which swiftly led to his invitation to

participate in the National Sculpture Award at the National Gallery

of Australia in 2005. Two subsequent exhibitions at Annandale

followed, and he participated in the 2007 Telstra National Aboriginal

and Torres Strait Islander Art Award at the Museum and Art

Gallery of the Northern Territory.

He exhibits with the Young Guns group for emerging artists from

Yirrkala, and is represented in the collections of the National

Gallery of Australia and the South Australian Museum.

Ganambarr is currently working on his next exhibition for

Annandale Galleries in 2009.

1 All quotes by the Premier of Queensland, Anna Bligh MP, are from a written

Ministerial Media Statement published 11 July 2008.

Above: Gunybi Ganambarr, Burrut’tji, 2008, earth pigments on incised bark.

Photo: Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre.

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Archie MooreQueensland

When you’re named after a famous African-American boxer it seems your path to eminence may be predetermined. In Archie Moore’s case, he began to build a name for himself while he was undertaking a Bachelor of Arts degree at the Queensland University of Technology. He was later awarded a Millennial Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship in 2001 to undertake a non-degree research program at the Academy of Fine Arts, Prague, in the Czech Republic.

Archie’s work communicates a deep understanding of cultural content from an urban viewpoint. His interest in language developed from negative childhood experiences. He has taken ownership of these experiences by deconstructing them and altering their meanings. This is particularly signifi cant in the series of paintings, The Archie Comic Book Series AP, 2005–06, where the artist substitutes his namesake’s adventures in a very different teenage world (one of a white American teenage male) with an Aboriginal male growing up in a relatively poor white Christian small town (himself) and depicts actual events from his teenage years.Archie was selected as a fi nalist in the 2005, 2006 and 2007 Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory. He was recently announced as a fi nalist in this year’s Xtrata Emerging Indigenous Art Award.

Above: Archie Moore, Sacred sights (The fi rst intervention), 2008, paper sculpture, folded book, 2008. Photo: Queensland Art Gallery/Natasha Harth

emerging

Kresna CameronVictoria

Kresna Cameron has a great ability to tell diffi cult stories with a dark sense of humour. She works in a range of media, including video, photography, digital software, texta, glass, paint and clay to create everything from jewellery to stop-motion animations, light boxes and works on canvas.

She creates exposing scenes of contemporary life in Indigenous communities, which show rarely explored truths about everything from Dreamtime stories to relationships, jealousy, violence and addiction. Her work has become as important as a point of refl ection for her own community, as it is an insight for other Australians. Born in 1982 in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, where she grew up and went to school, Kresna now lives in the Warburton community where she has always had family connections. Kresna is part of a founding group of young artists in Warburton whose creative energies led to the formation of the Warburton Youth Arts Project (WYAP) in 2004. She remains a key part of this group and travels with the WYAP, engaging with contemporary artists around Australia. Her innovative approach and love of trying new materials means she is a natural mentor to other emerging artists. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and fi lm festivals in Alice Springs, Mandurah, Perth and Sydney, as well as being displayed at the Tjulyuru Regional Arts Gallery in Warburton, and seen on ICTV (Indigenous Community Television). Above: Kresna Cameron, Greetings from Warburton 2008, 2008, digital print. Image: courtesy of the artist

Compiled by Joan-Maree Hargreaves

feature

Object is collaborating with the Australian Museum to develop a major touring exhibition of sculptural works depicting a wide variety of animal forms by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists from across the country.

The following pages contain images and journal notes recorded by Object’s Assistant Curator Nicole Foreshew during an exhibition fi eldwork trip to the Central Desert region in July 2008. These observations provide an intimate glimpse into the curatorial process.

WORDS AND IMAGES BY NICOLE FORESHEW

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from uluru to hermannsburg: fi ve days in the life of a curator

Arrival

Soaring over country, dry river grounds speak of life and place in the very centre of us. We establish our objective, what to expect, we try to reconcile our understanding of the project.

First stop Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, Cultural Centre. Knowledge, past and present, is layered in the space, sound, objects. Written texts fuse Anangu art, Anangu way of life, set in the backdrop of overwhelming exteriors. Later a tide of light touched ochre surfaces, like someone had turned the light on, and then slowly disappeared.

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Day 1 – Mutitjulu

Recorded bird sounds 4:30 am why? There was so much ranting going on!

We arrive at Maruku Arts Centre warehouse within the Mutitjulu Community (retail outlet at Uluru Cultural Centre) in the morning, for our scheduled meeting with Clive Scollay, General Manager. Clive was off overseas that afternoon, so we were quick to look at what he thought we should consider ... amongst the concrete fl oors, crates and structured shelving I see, I smell the earth carved, moulded and quiet. Some awaiting their destination, others in a permanent collection fi lled with ripe, red river gum.

We bring them outside amongst the dusty ground; dogs make their mark around the work, I take photos for our reference.

Andre Majdalani, Operations Assistant, polishes them; I shoot with a macro lens sealing the intricacy of wire heated on wood fi re, leaving a signature burnt design known as walka.

We all talk more about artists, print off bios and I carefully place more startling forms in front of the lens. I notice a lonesome branch with fi xed bright- coloured birds resting in silence. I ask Ben Wall, Operations Manager, who did this work? He said ‘a young fella Stanley Doolan from Ernabella, South Australia’. I remember to write his name down and spend the rest of the afternoon chasing Andre around while he unpacks huge buckets of fresh smelling punu (wood carving) from a recent Maruku bush truck visit to desert communities.

FROM ULURU TO HERMANNSBURG: FIVE DAYS IN THE LIFE OF A CURATOR

Top: Billy Cooley, Ngintaka (Goanna), 2008, Red River Gum

Above: Second stop, Maruku Arts, Mutitjulu, NT.

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Day 2 – On the road

Driving across country we make it all the way through some rocky road, deep within the dark brown dirt. We occasionally stop so we can get out and feel it standing still. I am mesmerised by the family of trees scattered. Jane Easton, Titjikala Arts Centre Coordinator, lets us know an alternative route is clear, the gates are open. We follow Jane up to (artist) Johnny Young’s place and introduce ourselves out the front and organise to meet up at the art centre the next day. We head back to council cabins, Brian and Jane fi nd wood for a big fi re ... we stay awake until the fl ames go low.

Top image series:

The journey to Titjikala.

Left: Mural detail on the road to Titjikala.

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Day 3 – Titjikala

Johnny comes in with his young nephew Kevin Campbell we sit in the back studio and talk about the project I get distracted by the paint residue on tables forming stories in my mind, who left their trace, what colours dropped from whose brush and what was being created. Jane gives me the keys to the ‘troopy’ [4WD], Johnny takes us to the river ... we have some lunch and I imagine there is water fl owing through the dry crevices ... on our way back I show Johnny a catalogue published by Object, pointing out images of artist process. We end up out the back of Johnny’s house, where he makes his work. I wait, and I listen and capture the making, a witnessed synergy, a shared coil technique, a transfer of knowledge, a tight precise connectedness. My unwritten, unspoken questions

were answered. The environment crept into the backdrop of images satisfying an understanding of works I now know. Johnny and Kevin fi ll a 2GB memory card ...

Jane suggested a worthwhile stop on the bumpy route back to Alice – a collection of messages splattered on steel surfaces. Brian points out some impressive animal tracks melting in the sun. Some realisations about the project become material. I imagine they are innovations that weave very complex and very simple systems like season cycles explaining our environment like nowhere else on earth. These ideas become organised elements of the show, weathered and changed. I think about animal habitats and their movement within country ...


Above: Artist Johnny Young holds a steel rod which he transforms into the framework for his animal sculpture.

Top: Johnny Young and apprentice and nephew Kevin Campbell creating their sculpture.

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Day 4 – Alice Springs

A general catch-up meeting with possible tour venue Araluen Arts Centre in the Alice Springs Cultural Precinct, wondering through empty spaces thinking about how audiences will connect to works from Central Australian scapes, these thoughts stimulate questions of design, display of objects, information texts, audio/visual, how do we make it accessible, how do we make it enrich each touring space ...

We head off to the Tjanpi Desert Weavers headquarters at the NPY Women’s Council not far from the cultural precinct. Karin Riederer, Manager, has set up a small display of works we should see ... feathers, minarri grass, raffi a and wool. Evidence of the handmade is contained some tight and fi xed, others free, loose and avid woven forms, locking in knowledge.

Karin reveals works developed during a recent Urban Art Projects workshop in Brisbane ... a new journey of discovery makes itself known ... aluminium now replaces the natural fi bre but somehow maintains it, thriving in another unique mode.

Above: Elaine Wanatjura Lane of the Papulankutja Community, Papa Tjitirn-tjitirnpa (Red Dog) (detail), 2008, minarri grass, raffi a and wool.

Top image series: The colourful and tactile materials of the Tjanpi Desert Weavers.

Top centre: Elaine Wanatjura Lane, Tjilkamata Yilkari (Blue Anteater) (detail), 2008, minarri grass, raffi a and wool

Day 5 – Hermannsburg

The MacDonnell Ranges set the frame for stories in Hermannsburg, our fi nal destination. Senior artist Judith Pungkarta Inkamala asked if we wanted to start ‘our meeting’. We gather around in the newly painted building still smelling fresh. We all talk in and out of animal themes relating to the show …

I like this animal ... I draw everything owl; goanna, bird, bush tucker, everything. If I see a running around bird I will come back and draw it and paint it on the pot ...

Lindy Panangka Rontji

We might make animal … round ere in Hermannsburg sometime we go out bush we saw lizard goanna, witchetty grub ... we dig ... too hot now for honey ant wait for wet time they come out … possum is in my countryside … I seen them at night in Port Augusta running around … it is my story. My father he comes from West Papunya my grandfather’s country they had some possums there … might be still there …

Judith Pungkarta Inkamala

Plenty here ... it only night time they here at night time round here yeah when children are playing, look owl there … you can see them sitting in the trees big one only night time ...

Rahel Kngwarria Ungwanaka


Top image series: Making by the hands of the Hermannsburg Potters.

Top left: Lindy Panangka Rontji, Owl, 2005, handcoiled terracotta, underglaze decoration

Bottom left: Rahel Kngwarria Ungwanaka, Sgraffi to Owl, 2008, hand-built terracotta, engobe sgrafi tto

Above: Detail of Rahel Kngwarria Ungwanaka’s well-used paint box.

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Departure

Facets of experiences continue with my surroundings, they now relate to one another ... this dialogue has engaged endless possibilities for the exhibition. I assert that relationships with these elements can only make sense when considered within the context of the whole ... My point of view has been embodied by the environment I was a part of, knowing that my actions and thoughts directly impact on the nature of ‘things’, the gathering of information, images, ideas, collections of emotions and traces of smells and environments left on shoes, clothes and ultimately within. There is a connection that I cannot control, an action that seeks no order and manifestations of complex meanings that raise awareness of issues and perspectives that may be considered hidden or obscure.

Nicole Foreshew is a Wiradjuri woman currently living in Sydney. Prior to her appointment at Object in May 2008, she has been Curatorial Assistant, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art, at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, a photographic studio assistant for Tracey Moffatt, and Multimedia Offi cer, NSW Department of Education and Training, Aboriginal Education and Training Directorate.

An exhibition of animal sculptures by Indigenous artists is being co-curated by Nicole Foreshew and Object’s Associate Director Brian Parkes. It will open across two venues at Object Gallery and the Australian Museum in Sydney in September 2009, before an extensive national tour.

Above: What is taken away, and what is left behind? Wall mural and trolley, Alice Springs, NT.

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From the back of Bourke Street, to the back of Burke!

Like a great red, we like to think we get better with age. Year on year, Object has continually grown the number of exhibitions it tours to a diverse range of galleries and venues across the country.

Our Touring Exhibitions Program has expanded to meet the need for quality design and craft exhibitions to visit both metropolitan and regional areas.

At the same time, we strive to promote and exhibit outstanding craft and design at our home, Object Gallery, in Sydney. We even have the occasional show overseas, most recently, Freestyle: new Australian design for living in Milan.

With a strong program beyond 2011, Object will continue to heighten awareness of exceptional work at a local and national level, and support our makers and designers from the big smoke to the outback!

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Born and raised in Wallaroo, South Australia, Eva Wanganeen’s family ties include the Arrente and Kokatha people (through her grandmother, Eva Kite); the Wiringu people near Ceduna (through her mother, Lena Warrior’s, father); and her father’s traditional country is the River Murray region.

Eva began silk painting over ten years ago, while part of Mara Dreaming, a women’s group based in Salisbury, South Australia. Since that time she has presented two solo exhibitions and exhibited in several group exhibitions, including Between Remote Regions, 2000, and Warna-Warni, 2006, which both toured to Malaysia. In 2003 Wanganeen was awarded an Asialink artist residency

at The Society Atelier Sarawak, where she worked with Indigenous East-Malaysian batik and textile artists to create work that she exhibited as part of The World Eco-Fibre and Textile Network Forum, 2003.

Brimming with vibrant colour, Indigenous icons and symbols, Eva’s designs refl ect Indigenous art and reveal the artist’s culture. Her subjects consistently focus on family life and stories, or bush tucker, including delicacies found in the Central Desert region, such as the swollen stomachs of honey ants that contain a sweet nectar. And the Nurrund (Love Charm), an engraved stone pendant worn by the Arrente people to attract a woman from another group (said to have been unable to resist its magical powers),

also features prominently in many of her paintings and fabrics.

Eva has a real passion for painting onto natural silks:

it has such a luxurious texture and delicate beauty. I love the magical way the dye fl ows on the silk and the way the different free-fl owing colours interact. The colours are dynamic, vibrant and limitless.1

These are meticulously handcrafted works, and Wanganeen’s attention to detail and sustainability also extends to their packaging in fl exible birch cylinders, which incorporate a corresponding wood-burnt design by Eva. They earned her a Memento Award for Best Indigenous Gift in 2007.

Nestled in the magnifi cent Daintree Rainforest near Cairns, Indigenous silk artist and designer, Eva Wanganeen, produces limited-edition silk scarves and garments for high-end boutique markets and has steadily emerged with giant, capable steps, managing multifarious infl uences.

eva wanganeen’s silk road

profi le

WORDS BY LOUISE ROLLMAN

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More recently, Eva participated in Project Springboard. In partnership with the Australia Council, this mentoring program has enabled Australia’s most promising furniture, textile, accessory and homeware designers to further develop their professional careers in local and international markets. Aimed at assisting and developing the careers of emerging designers, the program covered a range of subjects, from manufacturing to branding and marketing eco-friendly products. More important to Eva is that the program presented opportunities to relate with case studies and key speakers who could impart useful knowledge and experiences applicable to developing creative practices.

As the only designer invited to participate from Far North Queensland, Eva was pleased to represent her arts community. In addition to seeking exclusive outlets overseas, she looks forward to sharing the experience with her colleagues. For her, Project Springboard:

provided a unique insight (into) how artists, craftspeople, designers and manufacturers can collaborate and assist one another on both commercial and public projects … I feel there is a lot of scope for collaboration between the design sector and the Indigenous arts communities – a point that came out of the Australia 2020 Summit.

In addition to being invited to work with Malaysian and American artists, Eva has

also been invited to collaborate closer to home, and has currently teamed with Roula Gavalas of Argyro Gavalas, on a one-off garment for the Melbourne Cup.

Eva Wanganeen’s work represents the very best in fi ne silk fabrics, accessories and homewares, while employing symbols that evoke traditional life and important customs and enriching the buyer’s experience and understanding of Indigenous art and culture. It redefi nes the word ‘authentic’.

Louise Rollman is an independent curator.

1. All quotes are by Eva Wanganeen in correspondence with the author, August 2008.

Eva Wanganeen by the creek at home, 2008. Photo: Simon Turner

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feature

One of the overriding features of Indigenous art and creativity is its inventiveness, with ever more schools of Indigenous art styles and subsets of hypnotic variety. This multiplicity and innovation requires a curatorial response – in balance with the emerging Indigenous makers and artists, there is a need to grow young talent that can read, respond to and reposition these works. The richness and range of Indigenous art deserves to be complemented by the skills, vision and voices of Indigenous curators.

There are complex social and cultural forces to address in such transactions, particularly when those young curators are from remote areas. Acknowledging the need for culturally relevant professional development, the Canning Stock Route Project is offering realistic opportunities to three young and emerging Indigenous curators. At the heart of the Project’s content development is a dynamic team, which is building an exhibition in readiness for its launch at the National Museum of Australia (NMA) in 2010.

the canning stock route project

Indigenous art is one of Australia’s most recognisable contributions to global creative and cultural expression. In a little over 30 years, Indigenous art has moved from desert novelty through commercial overdrive to contemporary excellence, opening up unprecedented dialogue between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia.

Curator Louise Mengil. Photo: Ros Swanborough

WORDS BY CARLY DAVENPORT ACKER

‘ The richness and range of Indigenous art deserves to be complemented by the skills, vision and voices of Indigenous curators.’

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The Canning Stock Route Project (CSR Project) is a pioneering, multifaceted contemporary arts and cultural initiative that celebrates the lives and stories of Western Desert Indigenous people, their histories and their communities. Brokered by FORM, a not-for-profi t arts and cultural body, the CSR Project represents 89 participating cultural custodians and artists from across the Kimberley, Pilbara and Midwest regions of the Western Desert. The alliance of nine Indigenous cultural organisations anchoring the Project is unprecedented: Mangkaja Arts (Fitzroy Crossing), Warlayirti Artists (Balgo), Papunya Tula Artists (Kiwirrkurra), Yulparija Artists (Bidyadanga), Martumili Artists (representing Newman/Parnngurr/ Punmu/Kunawarritji and Jigalong communities), Tjukurba Gallery (Wiluna), Ngurra Artists (Ngumpan), Paruku Indigenous Protected Area artists (Mulan) and Kayili Artists (Patjarr).

In development since late 2006, the CSR Project has facilitated multiple in-country consultations and professional development workshops (in carving, weaving and painting) with artists across Western Australia, including a six-week journey back to country along the Canning Stock Route. The journey from Wiluna to Halls Creek provided an opportunity for more than 60 artists to record aspects of the region’s remarkable history, and to tell their stories through painting. The journey also marked the beginning of the Emerging Curators Program.

The Emerging Curators Program nurtures young professionals and offers atypical career opportunities for Indigenous creatives from remote area communities. Under the mentorship of senior curator Wally Caruana, the three emerging curators – Murungkurr Terry Murray (ex-Mangkaja Arts, Fitzroy Crossing), Hayley Atkins (Martumili Artists, Newman) and Louise Mengil (Waringarri Artists, Kununurra) – are gaining skills that will become

increasingly valuable to remote area art enterprises. These skills include the ability to plan and design exhibitions, research relevant information, produce public program material and communicate ideas in multiple formats. All from traditional backgrounds, Murungkurr, Hayley and Louise bring an invaluable cultural awareness to the curation of this body of work, which spans multiple language groups interlinked by a shared Law and intricate family connections.

Wally has been working directly with the three curators on the exhibition’s development. His engagement began at Lake Stretch, at the close of the Project’s trip to country in August 2007, and will continue through to the exhibition launch at the NMA. From 1984 to 2001 Wally

THE CANNING STOCK ROUTE PROJECT

Below: Curator Hayley Atkins on the paper Stock Route. Photo: Ross Swanborough

Right: Wally Caruana surveying the works produced on the Stock Route and Lake Stretch, WA. Photo: Tim Acker

Far right: Emerging multimedia talent, Morika Biljabu, of the Canning Stock Route Project. Photo: Tim Acker

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was the senior curator of Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander Art at the National Gallery of Australia (NGA), where he oversaw the development of one of the most important collections of Australian Indigenous art in a public museum. Wally also mentored some of Australia’s leading Indigenous curators.

Wally sees FORM’s curatorial framework as ‘very intensive and focused, allowing time for ideas to formulate and evolve, to thrash through issues, and revisit ideas without the interruptions of daily life in a museum or gallery’. He notes that the ‘apprenticeship’ for becoming a curator has changed dramatically in the last 15 years:

Now there are several avenues: working in private and commercial galleries, doing voluntary or casual work in a range of art spaces – from contemporary art spaces to the larger institutions – and there are

curatorship courses being taught. However, for Indigenous people in remote communities such opportunities are far from easy to take up. I guess I learnt a few telling lessons when I fi rst started work in the curatorial area. With no formal courses on offer, the mentorship system was most important – there were always certain people who were inspiring, who taught by example as much as by word. This is a useful model for developing curators in remote communities, and the CSR Project gives me the opportunity to put this into practice.

Wally fi nds the mentoring aspect of his role on the Project immensely attractive, and says that is what drew him to lead the program. ‘The Emerging Curators Program gives me the chance to share the professional experience that I have been privileged to have had over three decades, to give back from what I have learnt,’ he says. He acknowledges that the Project presents the challenge of formulating an exhibition around a theme that is at

once an aesthetic experience as well as a learning one. Wally agrees with the Project’s core philosophy:

There are talented, budding curators in Indigenous communities, and given the important part art plays in Indigenous society, especially these days on the cultural, social and economic levels, I believe there are signifi cant roles for local curators in the future success of Indigenous art in terms of how it is presented to the world.

The alchemy of Wally’s knowledge and each of the three emerging curators’ cultural knowledge is generating a new curatorial dialogue. Each of the three generously share and bring their own magical perspectives in developing the CSR Project, while simultaneously building their own goals. Louise Mengil says, ‘My role as a curator is really important in this Project and beyond.

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I’m learning things that help me with my work at Waringarri (Waringarri Artists, in Kununurra) too. One of my goals is to one day manage the art centre.’

The knowledge and cultural framework that the young curators bring with them harmonises and embodies the Project itself: it is an initiative weaving the importance of family connection, kinship and sense of one’s country. As Hayley Atkins says:

I want to work with all six Martu communities – so they know about the Canning Stock Route, so they know where their families come from, where their grandfathers and grandmothers come from. This keeps our history and culture strong. At school and home you learn two ways. My family wasn’t into art. I didn’t know about it before. When you paint a story of your life, family, history and culture, you become part of it. The kids are part of it too, but we need to teach them so they know.

Murungkurr Terry Murray agrees that everything he does in contributing to the Project is linked to knowing his history, as told to him by his grandfathers. This way he can imagine the future:

In my work, I try to always think about passing on the knowledge to the next generation of family. I’ve got three kids. Putting my footsteps in my grandfathers’, I think about how they lived: being strong, connectedto their land.

Wally acknowledges that there are many benefi ts that remote community professionals like Louise, Hayley and Terry bring to a Project like this. He says that their contribution is critical to the Project’s success, which ‘is based on the coalescing of experiences and knowledge from within the communities and those from the professional and public domain’.

The CSR Project highlights the mutuality that is possible in working with Indigenous professionals from remote communities. Wally concludes:

The three emerging curators are full of ideas, willing to experiment and grapple with new ideas. But I am particularly impressed by – and have benefi ted from – their articulation of different ways of approaching art and the exhibition and, in fact, their enthusiasm for the various processes and procedures we are undertaking to develop the show. They have a strong sense of commitment to the Project. They are sharp, they keep me on my toes and they have a wicked sense of humour.

www.form.net.au

* All quotes by Wally Caruana, Louise Mengil, Hayley Atkins and Murungkurr Terry Murray are from interviews with Carly Davenport Acker.

Carly Davenport Acker is Cultural Program Manager and Curator at Form, and Project Manager of the Canning Stock Route Project. Form is a not-for-profi t cultural organisation based in Perth, Western Australia.

THE CANNING STOCK ROUTE PROJECT

‘ When you paint a story of your life, family, history and culture, you become part of it.’

Artwork (detail) by Martumili Artists Dulcie Gibbs, Muni Rita Simpson and Rosie Williams on the Stock Route. Photo: Tim Acker

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In a bustling, cavernous work shed in the industrial suburbs of Brisbane, over a series of fi ve, week-long workshops beginning in late 2007, a quite marvellous thing transpired: having travelled great distances from remote communities, a group of Indigenous artists gathered together with a team of foundry technicians to collaborate on the creation of an extraordinary suite of cast bronze and aluminium works.

Janice Murray, Jipiyontongi, 2007, aluminium. Photo: Ben Harris

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A joint initiative between The Toga Group (the private developer for the commercial and residential elements of the Darwin Waterfront Development) and Brisbane-based foundry Urban Art Projects (UAP, headed by brothers Matthew and Daniel Tobin), Gatherings was conceived by a Public Art Advisory Panel to engage as many remote communities in the redevelopment as possible. UAP was originally mooted for the project as a result of its previous successes working with remote artists from Aurukun,

Maningrida and the Torres Strait, as well as on the strength of its impressive CV of large-scale public artworks (at, to name but a few, Sydney International Airport, the National Police Memorial and Reconciliation Place, the last two both in Canberra). Most recently, UAP collaborated with highly collectable Torres Strait Island artist Dennis Nona, on his 2007 Telstra Art Award-winning piece, Ubirikubiri.

feature

WORDS BY ALISON KUBLER

gatherings

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The Gatherings workshop’s origins build on UAP’s ongoing commitment to providing training and necessary skills to Indigenous artists to assist them in realising work for the public realm, a lucrative arena for skilled contemporary artists. For the many of the 19 artists involved – painters, printmakers, carvers and textile artists – the project marked a fi rst foray into sculpture. In terms of the sheer scale of the vast distances covered bringing artists to Brisbane, and the signifi cant cultural sensitivities that needed to be negotiated, Gatherings was a major undertaking, illustrating that UAP is not just a foundry but also a tireless advocate for the integration of Indigenous art in contemporary Australian life.

The results form part of the Darwin Waterfront, a 25-hectare former industrial site in the process of being transformed into a business, tourism and recreation precinct connected to the harbour. Although but a small aspect of the multimillion dollar development, Gatherings is the really feelgood chapter of this tale. The literal and metaphorical ‘gathering’ together of these artists and artisans produced something truly unique in the spirit of collaboration and, more importantly, practical reconciliation.

Working closely with UAP’s skilled team of pattern makers and fabricators, the Gatherings artists, chosen for their strong individual practices and reputations, were introduced to the processes of producing cast work, including a brief on pattern making, sand moulding, casting,

fabricating and fi nishing. Discussions about how to sensitively translate their traditional art practices into three dimensions were aided by the examples of work created by Maningrida and Aurukun artists and the UAP team. In addition, several of the artists visited the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, where they met curator Diane Moon.

Back in the UAP workshop, the artists created mould ‘patterns’ sculpted in plasticine and polystyrene, from which castings were taken in bronze or aluminium to produce editions of 12. Graham Badari, a printmaker from Gunbalanya, translated his skills to three aluminium fl ying fox sculptures entitled Fruit Bats. The pattern work

GATHERINGS

Opposite page: Graham Badari, Kuluban [Fruit Bats], 2007, aluminium. Photo: Ben Harris

Far right: Janice Murray, Jurriyi, 2007, aluminium. Photo: Ben Harris

This page: Gershom Garlnggar at work. Photo: Scott Harrower

Gershom Garlnggar, Burrar, 2007, plasticine pattern. Photo: Scott Harrower

Gershom Garlnggar, Burrar, 2007, bronze. Photo: Ben Harris

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eloquently echoes the characteristic lines of his prints, imbuing the creatures with a magical quality. Similarly, the exquisite intaglio work on Wukun Wonambi’s sacred designs (Wawurritjpa or sea mullet), passed on by his father from elders who had kept the information in trust, is a wonderful articulation of the artist’s celebrated traditional bark-painting skills in three dimensions.

Margaret Gamuti and Melinda Getjin, traditional weavers from Milingimbi in Arnhem Land, wittily translated their skills into a new medium: Gamuti’s Basket (Bathi) is modelled on a traditional woven form and cast in aluminium, while Getjin’s Dillybag with

Dots is a wonderfully honest response to a new material. Similarly, her Crows capture perfectly the inherent character of the subject, at once naive and slightly menacing. Overall, there is an undeniable humour inherent in the work produced, and a sense of revelling in the process of experimenting with a new medium. Janice Murray’s family of Whistling Ducks, for example, cannot fail to elicit a smile.

Importantly, the workshops with UAP are ongoing, with continuous advisory support from The Toga Group, and fi nancial support from the Northern Territory Government. UAP workshop manager Mary Stuart observed:

The workshops are very much an equal exchange. Whilst we (UAP) impart our knowledge and skills in the realm of cast sculpture, we also gain greatly from the

experience of working with Indigenous artists from many different communities. It’s an exchange that inspires the discovery of common sensibilities.

The editions produced are to be sold through the relevant galleries and art centres, with the profi ts shared between all the stakeholders. Some of the Gatherings series featured in 24HR Art’s window exhibition spaces as part of the Darwin Festival, and 17 works can be seen in November in an exhibition at 2 Dank St in Sydney, as part of collaboration with Suzie Spira and Jenny Hillman, of Waterhole Art.

Alison Kubler is a freelance writer and curator.

‘ UAP is not just a foundry but also a tireless advocate for the integration of Indigenous art in contemporary Australian life.’

46 / object 57

What is about ceramic forms by Aboriginal artists that makes them so distinctive? So compelling?

feature

pottery that defi es convention

WORDS BY STEPHEN BOWERS

The answer might lie in their grounding in heritage and tradition, and the impact they make as entirely fresh statements. As contemporary works from an ancient culture they also tell of the momentous creative evolution occurring in Australian Indigenous visual arts and culture, as artists take up new materials, explore new forms for community and cultural story telling and innovate with modes of personal expression. Alongside time-honoured traditions of community lore,

cultural storytelling and depictions drawn from a profound connection to the land, there are the experimental voices of creators responding to audience and market opportunity as they push self-consciously forward on paths of discovery and refi nement.

Opposite: Sabo Tipungwuti, Japarra (Moon Man), 2006, earthenware and underglaze. Photo: Courtesy of Fusion Design

object 57 / 47

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Aboriginal artists have only been working in this medium for a few decades – there is so much that is new. Experiment and innovation are strong and, whilst working with tradition, artists are not hostage to its limits. Working in a remote community requires resourcefulness and ingenuity. Services and facilities readily available elsewhere are not to be taken for granted, but with art centres and community and family-based group support for those producing new works, the artists are not isolated or static.

Change is in the air. Older artists are working with younger artists. There is a vigour and a connective cross-generational spirit of contemporary enterprise in these works, which in exhibitions from Alice Springs to Chicago are meeting with interest and acclaim. It is still an evolving fi eld and, as could be expected, output varies from the expediency of the ‘souvenir’ through to major rigorous works by outstanding artists.

While refl ecting their communities, each artist has a distinctive style, an original voice. For example, artists associated with Ernabella add to story motifs and cultural learning their personal symbolic designs known as walka (pattern and designs based on a personal idiom), which

might have begun in a two-dimensional context, such as painting, drawing, prints or fabrics, but which are being adapted to three-dimensional forms.

This is pottery that defi es convention. It is evolving as artists innovate with materials and techniques. In addition to the better-known styles of two-dimensional Aboriginal visual art – the ‘dot story maps’, the bush tucker plants and animals, and the parallel and crosshatched line-drawn images in prints and paintings – we encounter strong three-dimensional forms and fi gurative sculpture. Think of Hermannsburg’s quirky painted vessels and zoomorphic lids, or the hand-built symbolic fi gurative sculptural works of Tiwi, where daily life and weekend adventures may provide inspiration – fi shing expeditions when the tide is right, turtle hunting or a trip to the shop to buy cigarettes – and depictions of hunting parties, canoes and turtle boats provide refreshing inspiration for sculptural works.

Cultural symbols, stories, patterns and colours still appear strongly, as can be seen in works from the newest group, recently established in the craft centre in Alice Springs, and which includes senior artist Nyukana (Daisy) Baker. But artists

also push beyond the familiar when they work on hand-built forms or specially-made plates. Not limited only to the brush, they might also sculpt, gouge, cut and carve into the raw surface of the clay.

Names to look out for include Eddie Purutantameri, John Bosco Tipiloura, John Patrick Kelantumama, Cyril James Kerinauia, Jock Puautjimi and John Bosco Tipiloura’s nephew, Mark Virgil Puautjimi and Sabo Tipungwuti, associated with Tiwi and Munupi on Bathurst and Melville Islands. At Ernabella, they are Priscilla Adamson, Nungalka (Tjaria) Stanley, Tjunkaya Tapaya, Vivian Thompson and Tjimpuna Williams. At Hermannsburg watch for Irene Mbitjanaentata, Judith Pungkarta Inkamala and Rahel Kngwarria Ungwanaka. At the new centre in Alice Springs, you can fi nd works by Jillian Davey, Nyukana (Daisy) Baker and Karen Carroll.

Works by artists from all four centres will be shown in a major survey exhibition, From the Earth, to open at JamFactory on 12 December 2008.

Stephen Bowers is the Managing Director of the JamFactory in Adelaide, South Australia.

‘ Change is in the air. Older artists are working with younger artists.’

POTTERY THAT DEFIES CONVENTION

Cyril James Kerinauia, The Hunting Party with Dog, 2005, earthenware and underglaze. Photo: Courtesy of Fusion Design

Judith Pungkarta Inkamala, Red-Tailed Black Cockatoo, 2006, hand-built terracotta and underglaze decoration. Photo: Courtesy of Fusion Design

object 57 / 49

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I had to try and galvanise my idea for the Australia 2020 Summit in one sentence. Being such a passionate designer who loves to talk, this was always going to be a challenge. The sense of responsibility was overwhelming.

I had been selected as one of 100 participants for the ‘Towards a Creative Australia’ stream at the summit, which was held over a weekend in April this year. There was much to discuss given the economic rationalism of the previous government which, over a decade, had squeezed the creative community.

We had only recently emerged from the Howard era and suddenly we are being asked to contribute strategically to the leadership of the country. I felt warm and fuzzy at the idea that we may feel a sense of ownership over the systems that we work in, but was also anxious at the thought that I might get it wrong.

So I jumped in the car with my husband to drive my single sentence to Canberra. The drive from the north coast of New South Wales gave me plenty of time to refl ect on how this idea had taken shape.

After a decade of working with Australia’s fi rst Indigenous architecture group – Merrima Design – teaching and collaborating on public art projects, I became passionate about the unrealised potential of Indigenous design.

We had always tried to build on the strong tradition of Aboriginal design. Whether it is a product or building, we strive to create sustainable, beautiful objects that tell stories in the same way a boomerang would have been made.

I realised that we could build on the thirst for Aboriginal art by designing carpets, laminates, light fi ttings, architectural hardware and other design products. Specifying materials for buildings, I would often come across ‘pseudo’ Aboriginal designs, and realised that there is an increasing demand for an authentic Aboriginal aesthetic.

My idea is to ‘establish alliances between Australian manufacturers and Aboriginal communities to design high quality products for export’.

On one hand you have an Aboriginal visual arts industry that is estimated to

be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and a people who are struggling for employability in regional and remote communities across Australia. These partnerships offer Indigenous communities the chance of meaningful employment, and the manufacturers access to new markets with unique, high quality, authentic Australian products.

The objects sit somewhere between art and design and are a reaction to the cheap, high-volume manufacturing that is reaching unsustainable proportions in China. In some ways I am proposing a revival of the arts, and arts and crafts movement that fl ourished before mass production took hold.

Ideas are like seeds that need the right kind of soil and weather to germinate and I feel that now is the time for this idea to take root. I had often wondered how I would make all this happen until a spotlight came searching for ideas in the form of the summit. This was my chance.

In her initial address to the delegates, Cate Blanchett acknowledged the value of creativity in shaping a vibrant society and recognised that all people can

driving an idea

opinion

WORDS BY ALISON PAGE

Designer and ABC TV panellist Alison Page takes us on her journey toward the creation of a National Design Policy, starting with the Australia 2020 Summit.

object 57 / 51

harness their creativity. It set the tone for a broader discussion but, given only two days, we had a small window to pitch our practical, low-cost, high-impact ideas.

On the fi rst day, we were divided up into ten groups of ten and, as I sat looking at my group, with the likes of Ramona Koval, Claudia Karvan and Geoffrey Atherden, I wondered whether there was any logic to this grouping. By midday, when our group was allocated the task of discussing creativity and education, I realised it was a random decision that was going to waste valuable time.

Suddenly I was representing students having diffi culty accessing an arts education, knowing that somewhere in the room, people were being forced to discuss Aboriginal art. Richard Gill, Australia’s pre-eminent conductor and music educator, made a plea to us to mandate the teaching of creative arts, particularly music in schools, and I realised that the process was causing feelings of frustration and desperation. Why weren’t we asked to talk on the subjects we felt most passionately about?

That night, I sat nervously refl ecting on the fi rst day of the summit and felt a sinking feeling when I realised that design hadn’t been talked about all day. Kevin Rudd had commented, in one of his many media moments at the summit, that urban design was integral in solving many of the environmental, social and economic pressures facing our cities. How could I live this omission down?

Thankfully Michael Bryce had the same concern and we conspired early on the Sunday morning to propose the formation of a new group whose focus would be design in all its manifestations. The coup was a success and we attracted six others to spend an hour fl eshing out the potential of Australian design, which we felt was best represented with one overarching idea: the creation of a National Design Policy.

As the hour drew to a close, the sense of desperation escalated as I waited to unearth my idea to the world. Having pitched it to my fellow design group, I ran to quickly fi nd where the Aboriginal art group was, in case my idea found a more compatible home with them. It was fi ve

minutes before the end and I couldn’t fi nd the group, so, in a fi nal dash, I ran straight to our co-chair Dr Julianne Schultz to tell her my predicament. Without even looking up, she handed me her diary and said ‘write your idea in here’.

Luckily I had memorised that sentence that was on scribbled in a diary and then, to my surprise, appeared in the fi nal report that was released a month later. Although none of us know the fate of our ideas, there was comfort in knowing they are in the hands of our leaders. We have planted the seeds, let’s hope they are nurtured.

Alison Page hails from the Aboriginal community at La Perouse in Sydney. She designs jewellery, interiors and public art and is a regular panellist on the ABC TV program The New Inventors.

to canberra

52 / object 57

condensed architectureexploring the japanese condition

feature

Japan is an extreme culture. One-twentieth the size of Australia, with six times as many people, it creates a compact yet immense testing ground for artists and designers to propose ways of thinking and, more importantly, to be developed and supported.

WORDS BY MARK GAZY

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Tezuka Architects, Cloister House, 2007. Photo: © Katsuhisa Kida

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Unlike many design professions, Japanese architecture works literally within this extreme environment. Typical urban sites are tiny (compared with Australia), the cost of land is astronomical, restrictions on building heights, envelope and solar access, along with the client’s requirements, make making architecture even more challenging.

While travelling to Japan I met with three architects, who provided a vignette of contemporary Japanese architectural thinking. For most architects, houses are their fi rst commission and a testing ground for their ideas. Even though these architects have moved onto bigger commissions, I focused on their housing projects as a point of departure.

Waro Kishi describes himself as a ‘contemporary architect who makes minimal spaces. I am not a minimal architect, I am a reductionist. So stone should be stone, while white paint should be white paint. This is the same attitude for wood and so on.’1 This reductionist concept

is further expanded in the materiality of a house. For Kishi, the structure of a house is the most important element – it is the base from which the house can evolve. Material choice is based on its longevity. If Kishi believes that a wall will only survive ten years, he doesn’t use stone; paint will suffi ce.

The courtyard is an evolving theme in Kishi’s work. Depending on the limitations of the site, the courtyard can be explored in both the horizontal and vertical dimensions. In particular, Kishi explores the importance of the threshold or ‘in between-ness’: the intermediate space between the interior, exterior and the garden, as well as the interface of the house with the urban/ public realm. These form a series of layers and sequences that the viewer can experience through the house, which are constantly changing, depending upon your position and the season. They provide a valuable connection to the landscape and external environment, and a point of refl ection within a dense urban environment.

In Manabu Chiba’s latest book, Rule of the Site,2 he writes about a ‘Search for Formats’. This search is about fi nding an architectural concept that has been generated from a very site-specifi c response that could then be seen as a type of ‘Format’, which could be applied universally to other programs. As Chiba states, ‘we need to re-think our concepts after the modernism era. When you look at Le Corbusier’s houses, you can take these houses and put them anywhere. They are not affected by anything.’3

In the Studio Gotenyama project, Chiba mapped the local context at each level of the building, and windows and terraces were positioned in relation to these points of interest. The deep window reveals are clad in mirrored stainless steel, which refl ects the sky and views like a kaleidoscope, and gives a sense of depth and interest to what would normally be seen as ordinary.

Windows are a very important aspect of Chiba’s work. He was even commissioned to write a children’s book on architecture.

CONDENSED ARCHITECTURE: EXPLORING THE JAPANESE CONDITION

Right:

Tezuka Architects, Wall-less House, 2000. Photo: © Katsuhisa Kida

Below and next page:

Chiba Manabu Architects, Studio Gotenyama, 2006.Photo: © Masao Nishikawa

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ARCHITECTURE

In it, he focused on the simple concept of windows and their importance in architecture: how a window’s size and location can determine your perception of a space, the quality of light, and controls your view and your relationship between the internal and external environments.

In Villa Yatsugatake Chiba used rooms, corridors and windows to create a feeling of ‘distance’ in the house. The feeling of being close or far from others constantly changes. As Chiba describes it: ‘this is one essence of urbanity, of wanting a space to be private and at the same time you also want to be able to be with someone. I try to create the same kind of quality that you fi nd in a city even in a small house.’4

The Tezuka’s, a husband-and-wife team, grew up in Tokyo and both of their fathers were architects. Unlike fashion or technology, architecture for the Tezukas

is ‘Time-less’.5 Architecture is made up of walls, columns and roofs, which are elements that have not changed over time and nor have our relationship to them changed. ‘Architecture is a collection of many timelines, many things are happening in parallel. Technology is different, new things are always better than old things. Architecture is not like that.’6

Wall-less House locates the house in the middle of the site, surrounded by garden. The structure is reduced to two small circular steel columns and a services core that allows sliding windows to wrap around all sides of the house. Like a tree house, the relationship between inside and out is blurred.

The Cloister House is the reciprocal: a single-storey house with an internal secluded courtyard. The circulation of

the house is around the courtyard, providing a sense of distance while maintaining connectivity with the whole. Sliding doors on all sides of the courtyard stack away, opening up the entire ground fl oor, while the deep eaves around the courtyard frame and capture the sky.

Mark Gazy is a senior architect at Tzannes Associates.

1 Waro Kishi, from an interview with the author, 17 March 2008.

2 Manabu Chiba, Rule of the Site, TOTO Ltd, Japan, 2007.

3 Manabu Chiba, from an interview with the author, 13 March 2008.

4 ibid.5 T & Y Tezuka, Takaharu + Yui Tezuka Architecture

Catalogue, TOTO Ltd, Japan, 2006. 6 Takaharu Tezuka, from an interview with the author,

27 March 2008.

CONDENSED ARCHITECTURE: EXPLORING THE JAPANESE CONDITION

ARCHITECTURE

Left: Chiba Manabu Architects, House in Black, 2001. Photo: © Nacasa & Partners Inc

This page: Waro Kishi & K. Associates/Architects, House in Nakagyo, 1993. Photo: © Hiroyuki Hirai

object 57 / 57

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For this, the second of three triennial exhibitions in the Arafura Craft Exchange series, Guest Curator Mr Sudjud Dartanto selected six ceramic artists: Jenny Orchard, Asmudojo Jono Irianto, Dona Prawita Aristuta, Titarubi, Noor Sudiyati and Harvey Ottley. Mr Dartanto is a Lecturer in the Craft Art Department at the Indonesia Institute of the Arts, Yogyakarta. Over a three-year period, he visited studios in Australia and Indonesia in preparation for this exhibition.

The show features several impressive tableaux. A selection of Jenny Orchard’s carnivalesque anthropomorphic fi gures is centre stage, including Sadie, 2007. These are a celebration of the artist’s skill in assemblage and the power of the imagination. The other works on display all seem to have a relationship to this central installation, either in counterpoint or in similar mood. Dona Prawita Aristuta’s fi gures, based on characters from traditional Javanese festivals – such as the elephant Nuk Renggunuk, 2005 – usefully offer the viewer a creative ‘exchange’ with Orchard’s work. However, Noor Sudiyati’s unglazed earthenware pieces, while strongly evocative of place – the clay is hand-collected from Pacitan, East Java – sat oddly in the exhibition.

Titarubi’s receding line of balancing fi gures, brings a more serious tone to the exhibition, evoking humanist issues of individuation. Whereas each component of her The silent sound of war, 2002, is modest in scale – the fi gures are a mere 15cm at their tallest – in combination they dominate a whole wall of the gallery. Indeed, they had the strongest impact on me of all the works in Arafura Craft Exchange. Titarubi’s fi gures failed to fi nd much resonance with Australian works in the exhibition, such as Michael Doolan’s more light-hearted creatures from the world of toys and comic books. There was a nice correspondence, however, with Asmudojo Jono Irianto’s Broken Brigade, 2007, although this felt to me more as if the works sprang from common experience, rather than a situation of exchange. The technical bravura of Irianto’s work was matched by Harvey Ottley’s command of an unusual and beautiful surface treatment utilising horsehair.

The exhibition left me still curious about the process of selection. While the curator’s essay talks at length about the individual works as markers of lived experience and the underlying thesis for the show, defi ned in the catalogue as ‘the paths of memories of ceramic artists and … their response to living traditions’, how Mr Dartanto made the selection of artists remains unclear. I was also uncertain as to where the ‘exchange’ was intended to take place, although exchange at many levels is to be applauded. Bringing curators from Indonesia to engage with Australian artists and vice versa, facilitating artists to undertake residencies in the partner country, institutional cooperation – these are all valuable ways of fostering long-term cultural engagement with our nearest neighbour. However, that many of the works were several years old (some from 2002, well before the series commenced) was something of a disappointment. The ‘exchange’ aspect of the exhibition would have been more strongly represented if all the works had been current.

The last of the series, on jewellery, will take place in 2011. The fi rst Arafura Craft Exchange in 2005, which addressed works in fi bre, involved Jogyakarta-based Caroline Rika Winata’s residency at Craft NT, an aspect of the project which would be valuable to consider again. I also hope that in the fi nal exchange an Indigenous artist is again considered, as was the case in 2005. Craft has such a strong place in Indigenous art, and Indigenous exchange with Macassan traders has a long history that could be profi tably explored in a contemporary context such as this.

www.nt.gov.au/nreta/museums/

Merryn Gates is an independent writer and curator, and is currently Art Consultant to the Parliament House Art Collection, Canberra.

Arafura Craft Exchange: Trajectory of Memories, Tradition and Modernity in CeramicsMuseum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin, Northern Territory12 July 2008 – 18 January 2009

Michael Doolan, Site specifi c, 2005, ceramic, onglaze enamel, courtesy of Karen Woodbury Gallery. Photo: Andrew Barcham

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review

Narratives: Masters 2008. Installation and Sculptural Based Ceramics in Australia was the inaugural exhibition in the Ceramic Masters series curated by Sabbia Gallery’s Director Anna Grigson. The exhibition showcased a long overdue and refreshing approach to creative ceramic art practice in Australia in the twenty-fi rst century, with the participating artists showing their confi dence in dealing with the concept of narrative and storytelling in their practice.

Until recently, a strong narrative component has been missing from ceramic exhibitions. However, the works in Narratives provided the audience with a range of stories, each with its own unique voice.

Six artists – an eclectic mix – were invited to participate in Narratives: Julie Bartholomew, Janet DeBoos, Patsy Hely, Honor Freeman, Ruth McMillan and Angela Valamanesh. All have embraced the notion of the narrative in their work, moving away from the conformities of traditional vessel forms to explore areas of installation and sculpture, often incorporating imagery and text in their compositions. In this exhibition themes of domesticity, nature and the object were interpreted by each artist in their own distinctive way, each telling their stories in their own unique and innovative voice.

Walking into the gallery, the visitor was immediately aware of the persuasive use of colour and patterning on many of the works, refreshing yet not overwhelming.

Three of the artists – De Boos, Bartholomew and Hely – continued their investigations of ongoing themes, reinventing and redeveloping with the addition of colour and pattern as well as installation, strengthening the narrative component of their work. De Boos’s installation, Pour/Drink – a series of 30 porcelain pourers and receiving vessels, cups, beakers and bowls that seemed to tumble precariously down the wall – left the viewer holding their breath so as not to disturb the fragile scenario in front of them. Bartholomew’s

recent visit to China was evident in the Oriental patterns and colours fl owing through her several installations of feminine objects: a mirror, fan, pouch and Qi shoes, lavishly decorated and enhanced with colour. These works continued her ongoing narrative of branding fascination and beauty in today’s society. Hely amused with a clever play of themes and idylls based around experiences on the south-east coast of Australia. Commercially-made objects were interspersed amongst handmade and decorated vessels; yet within this exhibition, the subtlety of Hely’s narrative may have been lost to the viewer.

McMillan’s Assorted Dreams series of delicate, pastel-coloured objects, displayed in groups one on top of the other, evoked memories of china cupboards full of assorted shapes and patterns; while Freeman brought a freshness to the exhibition with her often whimsical installations of soap studies and small monuments.

Finally, Valamanesh’s installations, Outside/Inside #A and #B, although mesmerisingly beautiful, did not fi t comfortably within this exhibition. The organic, earthy forms seemed out of place with the other works; but they were exquisite, with their beautiful shadow plays within the concavities of the forms.

Narratives is one of the most stimulating ceramic exhibitions to be seen in a commercial gallery for some time, presenting a pleasurable combination of installation works not often seen in past ceramic exhibitions of this calibre.

Sandra Brown is the Touring Exhibitions Coordinator for Object: Australian Centre for Craft and Design, Sydney.

Narratives: Masters 2008. Installation and Sculptural Based Ceramics in AustraliaSabbia Gallery, Sydney6 August – 5 September 2008

Far left, from front to back:

Julie Bartholomew, LV Series – Handbag & Boots, 2008, porcelain, variable dimensions. Photo: Anna Grigson

Janet DeBoos, Set Theory Vase, 2008, porcelain, variable dimensions. Photo: Anna Grigson

Honor Freeman, Caught a Moment, 2008, slip cast, wheel thrown & hand built porcelain, variable dimensions. Photo: Anna Grigson

Left: Julie Bartholomew, Qing Armani Series – Mirror, Fan, Pouch & Qi Shoes, 2008, porcelain, variable dimensions. Photo: Anna Grigson

60 / object 57

Good design must be contagious. Since Brisbane’s new Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) opened its doors in late 2005, it has played host to a series of innovative exhibitions. Kicking off with the fi fth Asia Pacifi c Triennial, the show went on, so to speak, with blockbusters Warhol and Picasso among the recently memorable. There’s something about this grand, airy, light, white, wonderfully positioned riparian building (courtesy of Architectus) that seems to invite excitement and draw in the crowds. Elements of GoMA’s design clearly reference subtropical traditions, but there is also a distinctively European veil in its clean, crisp form. Brisbanites, it transpires, are not only proud of it, but also fascinated by it.

The time then seems ripe to celebrate architecture in the state. Place Makers: Contemporary Queensland Architects ran from 2 August to 23 November. More deliberately sober in style than some of its predecessors, the exhibition nevertheless marks an important point in history. According to its curator, Dr Miranda Wallace, Place Makers is the fi rst architecture exhibition for the institution, and the largest ever of its kind in an Australian gallery. During her research Wallace became aware that despite a rich history of innovation, Queensland architects lacked a reasoned documentation of their work, and tended to be grouped together and branded as tin and timber regionalists. The variety and breadth of work displayed here debunks the myth.

‘It is unusual to look at a whole state for an architecture exhibition, but there is a unique set of conditions in Queensland,’ says Wallace. Besides a distinctive heritage born of climate and expediency, there is also a wealth of close relationships between practitioners and with the two universities – the University of Queensland (UQ) and the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) – from which many earned their degrees.

Wallace had the unenviable task of selecting appropriate practices for the show, settling on 22, and honing in on 45 of their projects. The work exhibited spans the last 15 years, and is all extant. This brings an immediate freshness to the exhibition. Similar shows so often abound in would-be designs that never leapt off the drawing board. Here the works come to life in a mix of beautifully crafted models, walk-through fi lm footage, sumptuous photography, hand drawings and recorded interviews with various architects and owners. Tracey Moffatt’s story of her Sunshine Coast home, designed by Gabriel Poole, makes for a nice piece of voyeuristic reading. While residential work occupies a large section of the show, important public and institutional work is also covered.

For the architecturally literate, there is a signifi cant, exploratory subtext thoughout the presentation, much of which is outlined in the highly readable yet erudite catalogue essays. (The publication is a defi nite keeper that also includes glorious photography and personal insights from each of the architects.) An accompanying fi lm program in GoMA’s Cinémathèque explores architecture through an impressive list of international fi lm-makers and practitioners. Ideas, though, are not force-fed. Rather than be burdened by didactic overload, members of the broader public can meander through a series of works loosely connected by themes such as courtyard houses or public works, or simply enjoy the spectacle. It is as architecture should be encountered – immediately, viscerally and primordially.

www.qag.qld.gov.au

Margie Fraser writes for some of Australia’s leading journals in art, design and architecture. She is Brisbane Editor of Vogue Living and Indesign magazines and is a regular contributor to Queensland Art Gallery’s Artlines publication. She currently serves on the Board of Artisan.

Place Makers: Contemporary Queensland architectsGallery of Modern Art, Brisbane2 August – 23 November 2008

Far left: Installation view of Place Makers: Contemporary Queensland Architects.Image courtesy: Queensland Art Gallery

Left: Cherrell Hirst Creative Learning Centre, Brisbane Girls Grammar School, 2007, Brisbane. Architect: m3architecture. Photo: Jon Linkins

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review

As part of the 2008 New Zealand International Arts Festival, the Museum of Wellington mounted the exhibition The Gallery of Helen Hitchings – from fretful sleeper to art world giant. The exhibition, curated by Jane Vial, profi led this female art dealer and her gallery, which was of major importance in the development of contemporary art in New Zealand.

The gallery, which opened in Wellington in May 1949, ran until 1952 showing fi ne art along with textiles, craft and furniture. Many of the leading artists of the time exhibited there, including Colin McCahon, Toss Woollaston, Douglas MacDiarmid, Evelyn Page, Molly Macalister and Eric Lee-Johnson.

For The Gallery of Helen Hitchings, the interior of Hitchings’ gallery was recreated in a scaled-down version, and viewers could look in through the windows of the reconstructed exterior of the building that housed the gallery.

This space was set up with an exhibition of actual artwork that had been shown in the original gallery. Accompanying photographs of the gallery interior showed some of the same paintings and furniture in situ.

The importance of the gallery can be seen in these photographs, as they contain not only work by major artists, but also some of the major fi gurative and landscape paintings of the period, including Colin McCahon’s Takaka: Night and Day, 1948.

Ernst Plischke, the Austrian architect who brought new ideas about modernist architecture and design to New Zealand in the 1940s, designed the original Hitchings gallery interior and provided some of the furniture, and Hitchings also exhibited a number of pieces of furniture designed by Plishcke. Several of these were on display in The Gallery of Helen Hitchings, and showed his clear understanding of modernist ideas.

Helen Hitchings had a commitment to exhibiting the work of young local artists and designers, because their ideas refl ected a local ethos rather than overseas trends to a wide public. This could also be seen in the presence of pottery in the gallery, by the (then) young Len Castle, as well as in the fabrics and designs by Rex Fairburn, May Smith and Avis Higgs, who had all returned to New Zealand from Australia in the late 1940s. Hitchings said of her gallery that it was ‘not a shop, but a necessary service to us all’.

Her work underscores the crucial role that dealers have played in the development of contemporary art, and her gallery became the model for future contemporary art galleries and, in many ways, showed a more robust approach to art by including textiles and furniture. She also demonstrated a determination to bring New Zealand art to a worldwide audience, by taking the exhibition 15 New Zealand Painters to London for the Festival of Britain in 1951.

The Gallery of Helen Hitchings, designed by David Waller, carefully integrated artworks, photographic material and texts. It also featured a soundscape of the noises of the bush, the home and the offi ce created by Daniel Agnihotri-Clark.

Opening the exhibition, Brett Mason, Director of the Museum of Wellington, noted: ‘Helen Hitchings set out to expand the thinking of an insular New Zealand society and we wanted to show just how important a young woman establishing a gallery in Wellington was to New Zealand’s cultural and social development.’

John Daly-Peoples in an art critic and correspondent in Auckland, New Zealand.

The Gallery of Helen Hitchings – from fretful sleeper to art world giantMuseum of Wellington City and Sea20 February – 16 March 2008

View inside The Gallery of Helen Hitchings feature exhibition at Museum of Wellington, 2008. Photo: Justine Hall

62 / object 57

Modern Times: The Untold Story of Modernism in AustraliaPowerhouse Museum, Sydney8 August 2008 – 15 February 2009

Modern Times: The Untold Story of Modernism in Australia traces the widespread impact of European and American Modernism on Australian culture between 1917 and 1967, drawing on over 400 artworks and artefacts from diverse fi elds including art, design, architecture, advertising, photography, fi lm and fashion.

The exhibition emphasises the interdisciplinary, multidimensional and contradictory nature of Modernism, dividing the artwork and artefacts into fi ve sections: ‘Abstract in Australia’, ‘Bodies and Bathers’, ‘City Living’, ‘Designs on the Space Age’ and ‘Electric Signs and Spectacles’. Modern forms from everyday life – such as milk bars, swimming pools, clothing, fabric design, fashion, furniture and packaging design – sit next to avant-garde movements and abstract formalisms (Constructivism, de Stijl, l’Esprit Nouveau and the Bauhaus) transported to Australia by émigré European artists after World War I.

This interdisciplinary approach offers a much-needed account of Modernism’s plurality, in addition to the interstices between aesthetic movements and social, cultural and industrial phenomena. This is effective in the exhibit of an early X-Ray machine, placed next to Ernest Fooks’s 1946 book, X-Ray the City, highlighting how émigré avant-garde architects appropriated Modern technologies as metaphors for a new urban vision. However, this juxtaposition of objects from vastly different and confl icting histories is sometimes overwhelming. It has the effect of eliding the different social and aesthetic histories of the terms ‘Modernity’ and ‘Modernism’, and their very different American and European lineages. For example, the modernisms at work in Margaret Preston’s appropriation of Indigenous motifs in her artworks are incommensurate with the meanings of modernity at play in factory life in Marrickville, in Sydney’s skyscrapers or in David Jones’s Modern packaging design. This diversity is not a limitation in itself, nor do these confl icting Modernities detract from the interest of the artefacts, but it does render the exhibition too ambitious in scope to fulfi l its claim of being ‘the untold story of Modernism’.

Marita Bullock teaches Australian Studies at Macquarie University, Sydney. She is currently writing a book titled Memory Fragments: Excavations of trash in contemporary visual culture.

Craft RevolutionQUT Art Museum, Brisbane5 June – 13 July 2008

Proof that less is most often more, QUT Art Museum’s exhibition Craft Revolution succinctly and elegantly left one wanting precisely that, beginning with the exhibition title’s intriguing invitation to be challenged: ‘craft’ and ‘revolution’ are not usually sentence companions.

Curator Cate Brown, QUT Art Museum’s 2008 intern, sought to inject some fresh brio into the debate, rejecting negative connotations by celebrating capital ‘C’ craft in both its naive and sophisticated forms and drawing together the work of local practitioners with standout pieces from the QUT Art Museum collection.

Though modest in scale, the works in Craft Revolution delivered a sizeable punch across media as broad as fashion, jewellery, glass, weaving and ceramics. The scope of the exhibition was further extended with a blog (craft-revolution.blogspot.com), taking the handmade into the cyber realm.

Subtle highlights included Ann-Maree Hanna’s exquisite Our Father Who Art In Heaven, 2008, a scroll of diaphanous material with the Lord’s Prayer delicately embroidered in Arabic in golden thread. Suspended from the ceiling, the familiar words took on magical poetic properties, eloquently illustrating Brown’s curatorial premise that craft is a ‘rejection of the dominant consumptive culture and the return to historic or traditional practices’.1

Marisa Molin’s fantastical jewellery pieces, collectively titled Symbiosis, take their inspiration from fungus found in the Tasmanian forest. Challenging jewellery’s wearability and traditional role as adornment, Molin’s ‘jewels’ are at once both baroque and abject. Ankle Fungus is designed to adorn one’s literal and metaphorical Achilles heel, while Ear Spores is a harvest of fairy-like mushrooms that literally sprout from the wearer’s ear. In contrast, Andrea Fisher’s brutally political shackles could hardly be worn as bracelets. Embossed with ‘Always Plotting’ and ‘Just is our land’, they are a savage comment on the artist’s Aboriginality, and exemplary of Craft Revolution’s boldly subversive approach. The revolution, it seems, will be handmade.

Alison Kubler is a freelance curator and writer based in Brisbane.

1 C. Brown, ‘Craft Revolution’, Craft Revolution exhibition catalogue, QUT Art Museum, Queensland, 2008.

Marisa Molin, Ankle fungus, 2007, bronze and sterling silver. Courtesy of the artist

Cover of Ernest Fooks’s X-ray the City, Ruskin Press, Melbourne, 1946. A Viennese émigré, Fooks believed that Australian cities were in need of serious urban research – a city should be ‘X-rayed’ to fi nd its ‘anatomic atlas’.

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review

Refashioning the FashionObject Gallery Project Space, Sydney21 June – 24 August 2008

Refashioning the Fashion asserts itself before one even enters the exhibition, as a fl urry of cut-jewel geometric shapes tumble down from Object’s mezzanine Project Space, beckoning to follow them upstairs. Closer examination of these jewels reveal them as wire wound onto an array of nails, humbly made from humble materials, contrasting with notions of preciousness and the rarefi ed art of gem cutting. In its location on the body of a building rather than of a person, this work by Chelsea Gough and Gabby O’Connor, along with that of the fi ve other jeweller–artists, introduces some of the complexities surrounding adornment.

Tiffany Parbs pushes commonplace body augmentation to hyperbole through photographs of herself with the word ‘raw’ sunburnt onto her chest, with simulated sheets of skin peeling from her face and with preposterous eyelash extensions. Julia de Ville taps into the tradition of memento mori jewellery, utilising delicately embalmed animal corpses, hair, and fl ocked or gilded bones to simultaneously intrigue and repulse. The wearable sculptures of Alice Lang imitate internal organs – fl eshy tentacles, meshes of tissue, ruffl es and pleats – now repositioned onto the body’s surface. They echo Melinda Young’s series of brooches, their knotty mess of pink rope resembling bejewelled entrails, brains or tendons, which when worn could be half-parasite, half-rupture. Leah Heiss’s jewellery, by contrast, seeks to heal and protect the body by facilitating medical intervention. Her rings and necklaces administer drugs such as insulin, thus becoming even more inseparable from the body.

Unlike many jewellery exhibitions where the body seems to be entirely absent, in Refashioning the Fashion it is everywhere, not only in imagery of the jewellery in situ but also embedded into the works themselves. The way they toy with our fragile corporeality is confronting, triggering a certain awe borne of the grotesque mixed with the beautiful. They conspire to reveal the body itself as gemlike in its multiple facets, and endorse curator Debbie Pryor’s observation that, more than simple adornment, ‘jewellery is an experience’.

www.object.com.au

Emily Howes is a freelance design writer currently undertaking postgraduate research at the University of Technology, Sydney.

4th Australian Poster AnnualMelbourne International Design FestivalFederation Square, Melbourne17–27 July 2008

Given the theme of this year’s poster annual – ‘Strength in Numbers’ – it’s fi tting that discrete patterns emerged over the 43 entries. Some exercised their design muscle with a literal defi nition of strength: a shelf threatened to collapse under the weight of a cluster of paper-sculpted numbers in Andrew Wong’s (John Wardle Architects) Critical Mass. Neil Keighley (ectavo) spelled out the word ‘strength’ by only using digits from selected fonts inverted and splayed across the canvas. Josh Cohen (Lemonade), in one deft move, horizontally fl ipped the digits 3 and 0 in 30 Strong to create a schematic outline of a strong man in the iconic pose of fl aunting his heft. In minimal white on black, the simplicity packed a punch.

Amidst a swag of stylish but lightweight works, the posters that concern themselves with how numerical values intersect with political issues proved most absorbing. Environmental sustainability and conservation animated Emma Rickards’ (Minno) A Delicate Balance, where pictograms of threatened native species like the quokka and helmeted honeyeater aggregate to form a human fi gure. Typographic play interlocks with social justice in 1 Percent by Fiona Sweet (Sweet Design), which used the emblem of a gun to create the percentage, accompanied by text stating that less than one per cent of the world’s military spending would put every child into school by 2011. The politics of reconciliation fi re Matthew Bagley (MLB Design), who presented an abacus in the map of Australia, the beads forming the Aboriginal fl ag in Australia Says Sorry.

The problematic of numbers was further explored by Sam Frith (Rhodes Wingrove), who linked statistics on the global presence of fast food multinational McDonald’s to increasing rates of obesity in the Australian population. Of most sociological interest was Julian Melhuish’s (Saatchi Design) The Trouble with Numbers, which appropriated an historical image of Irish protestors in Belfast in 1970 and captioned it with text claiming that groups make both oppressors and the oppressed capable of extremism that individuals would never contemplate. While one may disagree with the implied dismissal of civic action, the reality of collective agency that massed numbers confer, remains. Numerical mass is power, but, as knowingly suggested by the examples above, one that can wield productive or destructive might.

Sophie Knezic is a Melbourne-based visual artist and writer and Committee Member of Kings Artist-run Initiative.

Alice Lang, Sternobiosis Portrait, 2008, metallic print. Photo: Carl Warner

Fiona Sweet (Sweet Design), 1 Percent, 2008, digital print on photo quality paper. Photo: Courtesy of the artist

Issue 57 | Object Australia

Documents

object gallery

australian designers

best of australian craft

different designers

ongoing nancial support

nonpro t organisation

wonderful education

margaret pomeranzambassador