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 […]

1200CC Mary Tricky Walsh, Mish Meijers & Alicia King CAST Gallery, Hobart 17 October – 8 November 2009 — Reverse Cargo Adam Cruickshank Craft Victoria, Melbourne 22 January – 5 March 2010 — Year of the Metal Tiger Dan Bell (in De Tetris Totems, Lisa Radford & Kati Rule) Sutton Gallery Project Space, Melbourne 4–27 […]

Koorie Heritage Trust, Melbourne, March 2010 Originally, Lyndal Jones’ country house was imported from Europe, more than 150 years ago, and reassembled in the regional Victorian town of Avoca. Jones discovered the property, which had been abandoned and had fallen into disrepair, purchased it and then remodelled it into an artist residence and project site […]

New York City, April 2010 Katie Holten is an Irish artist who often works with the environment to produce art. In late 2007, she was selected for a major commission to celebrate the 2009 centennial of the Grand Concourse, the primary artery of the Bronx, New York. She created Tree Museum and transformed the Grand […]

Ben Forster’s practice traces the limits of logic. He uses computers as the basis of his representation of systems of logic and rationality. Yet it is this rationality that Forster employs in his work to highlight the inconsistencies of this system. The young Canberra-based artist has taught a computer how to draw and has programmed […]

As un readers already know, Melbourne has an abundant supply of independent art initiatives. We have an illustrious history of non-profit, alternative spaces and projects, ranging from the slickest white cubes to the most ramshackle pop-up shows in back yards and demolition sites. Over the past three decades, independent initiatives in Melbourne have generated much […]