‘I wouldn’t know how to tell you what I do … I’m a respirateur — a breather’.[^1] — Marcel Duchamp In 1919, Marcel Duchamp was waiting to board a ship in Le Havre, bound for New York, when he decided to present a work to his affluent New York hosts, the Arensbergs, whom he believed […]
Office of Australia 23 January – 20 February, 2010 Box Copy, Brisbane Joseph Breikers of Boxcopy is also present David M. Thomas : How do you see a strategy such as institutional critique functioning within a space like Box Copy? Dirk Yates : For me the initial impetus for providing a critique about this small […]
The monument as a public art form has had a significant impact on art history and the way in which civic space and the geography of cities have been experienced. Yet the monument has a more complicated function than its official status as memorial. Its heroic subject matter and dominant presence in public space allow […]
In 2006, French artist Marie-Jeanne Hoffner undertook a residency at Monash University and it was during this period that she and Melbourne-based artist Stephen Garrett discovered an affinity in their approaches to making art. In the same year, Garrett in fact built part of Hoffner’s work for her exhibition Heimlich — What Belongs To The […]
Street art constitutes a diverse set of acts, gestures and mark-making insinuated and acted out within the physical space of our daily lives.[^1] The unsolicited creativity evidenced within the public sphere is a means of expression not only restricted to rebellious spasms, but more expansively to an articulation that seeks the pleasure of taking an […]
The following is a recent interview with Eugenio López Alonso, the Mexican art patron responsible for facilitating La Colección Jumex, the singular largest art collection in Latin America, funded solely on the profits of the Jumex Group, one of the biggest juice producers in the world. Credited with single handedly pushing contemporary Mexican art and […]
There are some activities in life that have a natural way of bringing people together. Real things: talking, cooking, craft. With each of these communal rituals, the central act of coming together is often more important than the products produced. Long before the concept of community art centres or Stitch ’n’ Bitch cafes,[^1] women were […]
‘If the success or failure of this planet, and of human beings, depended on how I am and what I do, how would I be? What would I do?’— Buckminster Fuller Sydney painter Tom Polo is an advocate of eavesdropping on public transport and at exhibition openings. His ear is a funnel to an internal […]
Surveying the lands of the 21st century, we can’t help but notice a few things. The first observation relates to the revered shaman and charlatan Joseph Beuys, who was overheard making the histrionic claim that ‘everyone is an artist’. Twenty-four years on and it is clear that Beuys’ idea was more an act of imagination […]
TS2Slow Art CollectiveIncinerator Arts Complex, Moonee Ponds5–13 September 2009 Focusing on issues of sustainability, the Slow Art Collective presented itself as a group of canny gleaners at its inaugural exhibition, TS2 (Transfer Station 2). Utilising in-kind sponsorship, the collective networked extensively with a number of recycling services to bring over 15 tonnes of ‘e-waste’ to […]
A small block of tofu makes inroads into an emerging discourse. Operating out of Tokyo since 1899, the Morinaga Company might be said to manufacture a fairly standard block of soya bean curd. The label on their prime-selling foodstuff — a firm, long-life block of the stuff — reads: ‘This revolutionary package locks out light, […]
Jenny Holzer ACCA, Melbourne 17 December 2009 – 28 February 2010 The question of how art can respond to the politics of war hangs like a guilty cross about the neck of contemporary art. With an eye to the — often art-fuelled — activism of the Vietnam war era, there is a growing sense that […]
‘Images proliferate. Am I wrong in being reminded of the printing of money in a period of wild inflation? Do we know what we are doing? Are we able to evaluate what we have done?’[^1] — Wright Morris, ‘In Our Image’ In August last year, I made my first ever trip to the Museum of […]
Omega Alain Declerc, (France), Tony Garifalakis (Australia), Joaquin Segura (Mexico), Jeanne Susplugas (France) and Ewoud Van Rijn (Netherlands) Curated by Tony Garifalakis VCA Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Melbourne 26 March – 24 April 2010 Curated by Melbourne based neo-gothic artist Tony Garafalakis, this powerful group exhibition included five artists from France, The Netherlands, Mexico and Australia […]
‘…But these langues that fragmented open up a multitude of lingwix can extend to a liquid form that is ever changing and not with surface, but open, closable, but with effort opennable again. Like with a loop of talking the words can sound like completely different words and once they do you can’t hear the […]
Karaoke Theory Andy Thomson Light Projects 12–31 October 2009 Visually sparse, Andy Thompson’s Karaoke Theory saw the gallery at Light Projects almost empty. The sound of a woman singing, however, filled the gallery — her voice emanating from two small speakers on the gallery floor. The lyrics were passages from the writing of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, […]
The cinematic works of the legendary New York filmmaker Jack Smith and the lesser known, but equally important, Brighton based filmmaker Jeff Keen, present us with two highly developed versions of the trash aesthetic. In his oft-cited appreciations of Maria Montez and Josef von Sternberg, Smith rails polemically against the hegemonic naturalism of both Hollywood […]
Canadian Pharmacy Dan Arps, Hugo Atkins, Stuart Bailey, Mike Brown & Jan Lucas, Stephen Bush, Danielle Freakley, Greatest Hits, Ian Haig, Andy Holden, The Kingpins, Sarah Larnach, Jan Lucas, Rob McLeish, Elizabeth Newman, Alexander Ouchtomsky, Sean Peoples, Gareth Sansom, Gabrielle de Vietri and Alex Vivian. Neon Parc, Melbourne 3–27 February 2010 Canadian Pharmacy is the […]
Jake Wotherspoon’s Opening Performance (2010) for Re/Gendered at Platform featured a creature, too hairy to be human but not hairy enough to be ape, reclining in a cabinet.[^1] With a derisive stare articulating the boredom and misery of the caged curiosity, its gaze was directed at the crowd and the cabinet beside it housing two […]
Facts Charlie Sofo Utopian Slumps, Melbourne 5–19 December 2009 Charlie Sofo is a collector. This was made patently clear in Facts, an exhibition in which Sofo carefully accumulated, categorised and displayed items and mementos that constitute the by-products of everyday urban life. From scraps of paper and discarded rubber bands to private phone numbers and […]
In Marina Abramović’s recent retrospective, The Artist is Present, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, a naked man and woman stood facing each other in a doorway. As patrons were confronted with the challenge to come in close proximity to a naked stranger, they were simultaneously required to decide which anatomy was […]
Welcome to the new look un. It’s smaller, fatter and more colourful. While it feels like a journal, it’s still very much a proposal-based, critical arts publication — essentially we dumped the bathwater but kept the baby. un also has a new team, and so we welcome administrator Melody Ellis, sub editor Helen Hughes, and […]
Lately I’ve been having these visions. Glimpses. An outline, a figure — an icon. A ‘black’ bearded man brandishing a pistol. No ill premonition, rather the assured revelation of Anthony Martin Fernando. There’s not a lot we know about Fernando. He was a sailor, an engineer … a toymaker? He was Aboriginal, and also a […]