The archive is built to keep out water. The archive is built on the edge of the floodplain of the Moonee Ponds Creek on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. Water is excluded from the archive because of the risks it poses to paper and other organic materials. Mould can germinate […]

Whakapapa is generally translated as genealogy. Whakapapa can mean to lie flat, to place in layers, to recite in order; or considered in parts as ‘whaka’ – cause to be, to become; and ‘papa’ which can mean – the Earth, or anything broad flat and hard. In te reo Māori ‘papa’ has many meanings associated […]

‘Did you know Barangaroo is named after a courageous and spirited Aboriginal woman?’ So says a section of the Barangaroo website titled ‘The Stories’, the question posed above an aerial image of a glass-walled building. Barangaroo is an urban redevelopment on the harbour of what is currently called Sydney; a place where the ‘past meets […]

A sunset over gentle oceans~ Bondi Beach Awakening Time-lapse shot of a waterfall~ Caressing Waters (alternatively Majestic Beauty, or, Waters of Life) The still course of a waterway,mirroring the bushland above~ River Reflections Uluru during a storm, at sunrise~ Heartland Revival People want peace in their lives and in their surroundings and nothing delivers as […]

We were trying to blast this myth that the non-Western Other exists in a time and place that is completely untouched by Western civilization or that in order to be authentic one would have to be devoid of characteristics associated with the West. It’s reasonable to say that non-Western cultures have a better understanding of […]

Beginning in March 2016, I undertook a two-year period of practice-led research as part of a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) research degree at Sydney College of the Arts. The origin of the research project lay in a self-reflexive inquiry into my attraction to working with steel and other metals in my art practice. Through […]

Our knowledge of land as its own technology is second to none. Two hundred and thirty years of adapting as necessary, often as lives depended on it, has seen us turn to other mediums. We used the tools that arrived on boats. Our storytellers use English in literature, cameras in photography, film and many other […]

Lately I’ve started driving around Tasmania again, making another film. Since 2009 I’ve made twenty-four of them, I can’t stop. Short, long, some seem unwatchable, nevertheless they record and become a record, a counter to so much that seems missing. They are my memory work. Sometimes it is hard to start, to reverse out of […]

Georgina Watson currently lives in Tāmaki Makaurau and has recently completed an MFA at Elam School of Fine Arts. Recent projects include ‘Haughty Skies’ in Distracted Reader #3, Auckland, forthcoming (2018), Anxious Garden, Enjoy Gallery, Wellington (2017), Pack Lite Organised by Stella Corkery, NY, LA, Auckland (2017) ‘Collective Fruits’ in Wormhole, Melbourne (2016), amongst others. […]

Lowlee : Can we just talk like now and you can record or … ? Beth : Yeah, yeah, yeah, OK I’m recording now Lowlee : Ye, kele. Beth : Ye, ka … Lowlee : Werte! Beth : (laughs) Werte! Ayenge Arrernte akweke ware akaltye-irre … ke, no — how do I say it in […]

What you are about to read is a demonstration of Ara Irititja given at the International Australian Studies Association (InASA) Conference in December 2016.[^1] In the darkened lecture theatre, a clip from the Ara Irititja archive is projected onto the wall. It shows old people including Rene Kulitja’s father Walter Pukutiwara performing inma at a […]

In southeast Australia the Aboriginal population is young; more than fifty percent are under twenty-five-years old. Yet, Aboriginal young people in Victoria remain a minority within the broader community. Many have limited opportunities to engage in programs reflecting their everyday experiences or to identify with others from similar backgrounds. The following is a conversation between […]

Settlers Miners Same Thing – Jacky Green Although I know Aboriginal sovereignty as always present, embedded within country, I find my strongest encounters with specific sovereignties of place often occur in unexpected moments – like a bolt of remembering – chanced upon in the presence of a scar tree or a reference found deep within […]

i wish the earth would j swallow me. Keep on dancing till the world ends. Dreams of the volcanoes in Tāmaki Makaurau violently convulsing. Clasping hands together under the table. Our breath moving in sync. Stripping back the flesh to reveal the whiteness of our bones. Grinding bones into dust. Bone marrow and blood absorbed […]

In the early years of the twenty-first century, a very clever executive producer at Bravo had the multimillion-dollar idea of pairing the character clichés of Desperate Housewives with the consumerist content of MTV Cribs. In 2006, The Real Housewives of Orange County was born. Ratings soared over the late 2000s as The Great Recession ravaged […]

Andrew Frost : Is there ever a wrong time to laugh at an artist’s work? This is a question that has worried me. I suppose the answer is, when the humour isn’t intentional. But it’s a tricky business. I remember going to a few early shows by Guy Benfield and thinking the work was really […]

Motifs in Matthew Harris’s lurid works include flowers, copulating pigs, and a gravestone inscribed with a gold sad face. Born in 1991 and raised in Wangaratta, Matthew’s artistic output to date has included video, tapestry, sculpture and painting. He works within a gay camp parlance. Artifice, riffs, cuteness, violence and comic eroticism come together in […]

We were sitting in a dark lecture theatre when it happened. I can’t believe it happened. My hand was raised. The moderator looked at me in acknowledgement. And then it happened. I asked Marcia Langton a question. I said, ‘Can you speak to the humour in Brook Andrew’s work?’ She replied with a deafening silence, […]

But that’s work that I’m doing. And if taking art out of an art gallery is a necessary step for me to enjoy myself, then surely that speaks more to a problem with galleries than anything else? What can art spaces actively do to meet us halfway? Certainly, the proper curation of comedy is a […]

Experimental music desperately needs a turn to humour, satire, parody and, most of all, reflexivity, if it is to remain listenable. I can almost see this turn taking shape in the form of a long and unfolding joke. But, like any joke, the punchline can only work if you’re alive to the setup. I propose […]

The Karrabing Film Collective (KAC) is a grassroots arts and film cooperative consisting of friends and family members whose lives interconnect along the coastal waters west of Darwin in the Northern Territory of Australia. Begun in 2008 when members of the extended family found themselves homeless in the wake of deteriorating conditions on their natal […]

SW : Can you give us more of a moving description of the video work’s narrative? MC : One of the things to note is that there’s a lot of Nepali text in the film as it was intended to be a Nepali film. Yet there’s only one scene of dialogue; one robot says ‘What […]

un Magazine got in touch with me to see if I’d write a piece on humour for this humorous issue. They asked me because I’m a woman, and I make performance-based work which always seems to have a humorous twist to it, somewhere. For instance, with my West Space show last year, I had people […]