Behind the Lines 2016 @ Museum of Australian Democracy

The art of cartooning is one of the great contributions to political understanding and analysis. Funny and profound are often mixed together in one space. Each year the Museum of Australian Democracy hosts a large collection of Australian political cartoons of the previous year on their walls for visitors to see clustered in topical sets.

I love these as an exhibit. It is exciting to see the differences and the similarities. They have samples of lots of cartoonists and many examples of some of the best such as Rowe. They sell the set in a paperback book but to me there is something different about standing and reading them on a wall. I enjoy it and will go back again.

Silent Tears @ Murray Art Museum, Albury

Silent Tears is a set of confronting photographs some in black and white in frames on the wall and others on translucent Perspex sheets suspended from the ceiling that enable you to walk among them seeing the photos from both sides.

The work of the photographer Belinda Mason records the experiences of disabled women who are subjected to violence or have become disabled as a result of violence inflicted on them. There is a back story to every photograph that is available in printed materials for sale at the gallery but even without the back story the photos tell a sad story in their silent testimony to misery.

What is the Meme-ing of this? @ Casula Powerhouse

The website explains this exhibition in part in the following way

CPAC Youth proudly present an array of works created by young people expressing how youth consume and interact with media, questioning what media is for young people, as well as how they are represented within it.

‘What’s the Meme-ing of this?!’ draws from a counter-culture created by millennials, and a territory often foreign to professionals to show how Memes can use humour, play and divergent thinking as vehicles to push agendas that resonate with young audiences.

The images are often fun and often confronting. A great take on Memes

Website

http://www.casulapowerhouse.com/whats-on/exhibitions2/whats-the-meme-ing-of-this

Pics

New World Order @ Casula Powerhouse

9 Dec 2016 – 12 Feb 2017

This is an awesomely timed exhibition at the end of a remarkable year of post truth, white conspiracy ascendancy. In the blurb below the ambit of the show is spelt out. I went through the exhibition without reading the blurb and well researched booklet that goes with the artworks. I found some of the works worrying with their clarity of the nature of the challenge posed by some of the issues addressed. To me the most remarkable was three and four below which addressed blockchain and bitcoin in a discomforting way. I loved this exhibition for its adventurous spirit.

Artists: Hany Armanious, Simon Denny, Beau Emmett, Eva and Franco Mattes, Soda_Jerk, Jess Johnson, Alexis Mailles and Yujun Ye, Ryan Presley, Zoe M. Robertson, Suzanne Treister and Pope Alice Xorporation.

The blurb below takes you to the heart of this exhibition

Exposés, conspiracy theories, cybernetic tarot cards, hacked city-scapes, UFO blanket paintings, alternate currencies, illusions, paradoxes and alternate endings, New World Order is an opportunity to think about how we make sense of the world in a post-internet era.

Website

http://www.casulapowerhouse.com/whats-on/exhibitions2/new-world-order

Some sample pics

Community is everything – Amnesty International @ Tuggerenong Arts Centre

In July this year there was a great exhibition at the Tuggeranong Arts Centre that told a set of hopeful stories of indigenous young lives. The blurb is in this link given and some pictures from the exhibition are below.

http://www.tuggeranongarts.com/community-is-everything-art-exhibition-canberra/

Dis-Place – Daniel Savage @ Belconnen Arts Centre

I love it when artists and artist’s statements make me reconsider my thinking. The display of photographs by Daniel Savage at Belconnen Arts Centre did just that. Daniel has created a set of photographs that use taxidermied native animals placed in social contexts allocated to disabled people. The familiar places include football grounds, trains, playgrounds and supermarket car parks.

The point Savage says he is making is that attempts to include people with disability in open societies often looks and feels like the way we treat stuffed animals in a museum, on display rather than interwoven.

The set is small but the large format photographs engage a viewer on many levels.

Pics and gallery stuff below

The Irish Rising: ‘A terrible beauty is born’ @ State Library of Victoria

I have Irish heritage. My understanding of Irish history is limited. This is the 100 year anniversary of the Irish rising. There is a small exhibition at the State Library that explores some of the background and the events of the rising and its context.

On a recent visit to Melbourne I was blessed to visit the exhibition with a highly informed tour guide who talked us through the exhibition and the events before during and after the events of 1916. It continues to strike me how skewed my high school education was when I encounter exhibitions like this. We were told the English story about history and did not get any context or any contrary view. I really enjoy being taught history from actual sources and from the voices of participants who are not the power holders.

I am thankful for the role of set ups like the State Library and the job they do in telling our stories to us.

Some pics below.

Waste in time – Giles Clarke @ Customs House Sydney

28 April – 5 June 2016

Squalor and filth photographed and put on the walls of a gorgeous light fueled library inside a carefully restored 19th century building is planed to be an interesting juxtaposition. Giles Clarke’s pictures of a community which earns its meager income from recycling plastics and other products while living on and around a massive landfill in arguably the poorest and most corrupt country are made more stark on white walls in the midst of one of the most expensive cities to live in.

The photos are grim. The people are determined. The limited colour adds to the sense of foreboding. I am writing this over a month after I saw the exhibition which is now closed but the images have stuck and I have talked about the images and the exhibition to many times since I went to it.

Images a gallery blurb below.

Behind the Lines 2015 @ Museum of Australian Democracy

The annual marvelous exhibition of the best of Australian political cartoons has opened at the Museum of Australian Democracy. These creatives always inspire entertain and educate. The curators lay them out in subject areas to show both the different takes and the similarities that flow through the artists. The magic of cartoons is they combine humour and confrontation, They expose absurdity and poke holes in hubris.

The exhibition now is housed in the lower square of corridors under Kings Hall in the Old Parliament House. It is put up and left up for the year and so I often pop in for revisits.

There is a book for purchase and the website below has all the cartoons in their subject categories.

http://behindthelines.moadoph.gov.au/2015

I have a couple of pics below for my own records but the website is better.

 

Denise Higgins and Gary Smith @ Canberra Contemporary Art Space Braddon

23 Oct- 21 Nov 2015

Denise Higgins and Gary Smith have created a thoughtful work that the blurb talks about it engaging the recesses of the mind. As soon as I heard about it I wanted to be in it. My take on it was much more tied up in detention, exclusion and fear. The barbed wire fenced maze surrounded by reflective surfaces and embedded rooms that weave other experiences into the main one is a confronting and thought provoking world to enter into. While the space is fully enclosed and sparkly in its newness it still is a very discomforting place to be.

I have put some snaps below but it has to be experienced.