Innehållsförteckning för Issue 65 från Artist Profile

Incorporating materials related to religion is at the forefront of Kain’s current practice Kain migrated with her family from India to Australia in 1993, and during her childhood was shielded from the weight of the Indian caste system. Caste structures form the backbone of the Indian nation; it is a system in which bodies are denoted as sacred or polluted and treated accordingly. The lowest caste of this system is Kain’s own, the Dalit. Being part of the Dalit diaspora, Kain wasn’t equipped with a means to navigate or speak of the damage of the still active caste system—that is, until she attended art school. Prior to art school and following the encouragement of her parents to pursue “more traditional” studies, Kain studied psychology at Macquarie University. During this time,…

Redgate is a leading Australian contemporary artist; her on-going investigation spans almost five decades. She explores the creative possibilities and boundaries of self-knowledge through formal qualities of light and space, impersonal and personal histories, and systems. Her practice is arbitrated by intelligence and a lively curiosity for meaning in image-making and its psychological and cultural relevance. Redgate was born in London in 1955, the elder of twin girls. She grew up in a close, working class family and in 1967 the family migrated to Australia as “Ten Pound Poms.” They settled in Adelaide, and strove to acclimatise. Redgate left school at sixteen, worked in an office and studied at night for her leaving certificate. She enrolled in nursing, changed direction, pursued fine arts, philosophy and history at Flinders University for…

Artist Hilarie Mais had just arrived in Sydney from New York with her expatriate husband, the late painter and educator William “Bill” Wright, who had been appointed the director of the 4th Biennale of Sydney (Vision in Disbelief, 1982). Mais recalls attending a meeting on 31 July 1981, one of several public meetings organised by the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council for the Arts to establish what at the time was described as an alternative gallery space, or as the funding proposal to the Australia Council put it, a “venue and focal point for the new developments in the visual arts.” Other terms were also bandied about to describe Artspace, or to use its formal name, Artspace Visual Arts Centre, including artist-run-space or in more contemporary parlance, artist-run-initiative,…

Leonard photographed sections of and moments along the roughly 2000 km stretch of the Río Bravo/Rio Grande flowing southeast from the twin cities of El Paso/Ciudad Juarez to the Gulf of Mexico that demarcates the USA and Mexico. Leonard’s Río Bravo/Rio Grande is a complex entity: an entanglement of historical and political interests and abrasive human intrusions. Its deep geological history is only occasionally apparent. There are images that edge towards landscape photography, particularly near the end of the exhibition as the river is photographed slipping through flatlands closing in on the coast. However, any impression of the river as a living form is largely overwhelmed by imaging of the construction to which it has been subjected, resulting from, and in turn servicing, its commercial, political, and punitive border management…

If the Powerhouse Museum’s exhibition A Line A Web A World is anything to go by, drawing is a domain to which we still look for connection with the long continuum of human ingenuity. “Drawings” the exhibition notes state, “are an integral part of the creative process for humankind,” and with 230 drawings from the Powerhouse vaults, Senior Curator Katie Dyer presents an exhibition that shifts our focus from drawings executed by artists—just a handful—to an abundance of works from the applied arts, the sciences and beyond. Vistors find their way into the exhibition by following an exceedingly long loosely drafted nineteenth century chart of of the Darling River. In a low lit room, a central row of columns impairs sightlines and movement, but the exhibits are soon found, with…

Throughout this issue of Artist Profile, inner and outer conversations that are searching for the proper order of these opposites are very noticeable. On 14 October Australians were asked to look inward and vote in a referendum on whether to alter the Constitution to acknowledge the First Peoples of Australia by establishing a body called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. Kuku Yalanji and Waanyi woman, Lydia Miller has reflected on the referendum decision. Khaled Sabsabi has, for many years, turned inwards to his Sufi faith to find the inspiration and innovation for his work, whether in video, painting, sculpture or other media. His Sufism is neither above nor below any system of knowledge. Khaled has said, “With spirituality, it is really important for individuals to find their own…

Abstraction has developed its own myths, realities, supporters and detractors since its genesis a century or more ago. The discussion on what abstraction is—its temperament, character, variety and lucidity—continues to the present day and will no doubt ensue over the next decades or longer. American art critic and writer Clement Greenberg’s formulation of abstraction’s syntax hailed painting’s objecthood over and above subjectivity and symbolism with an overriding “emphasis on abstractness, on radical unlikeness to nature.” Greenberg’s ideology removed abstract modernism from the living world. On the way to Telly Tu’u’s studio in the Sydney suburb of Marrickville, I think about how we now view abstraction: as more discursive, and capable of expressing meaning and subjectivity. In Tu’u’s studio I witness a fresh version, a syntax we could refer to as…

Cape Byron in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales was named in 1770 by Lieutenant James Cook after the Baron John Byron, notable, sober navigator grandfather of the poet Byron—the club footed, scandalous and flamboyant romantic of Regency London. Byron Bay is a surfer’s wet dream: from the macho rebel years of the 1960s to the mainstream unisex ubiquity of now. Long boarders, short boarders, retro boarders, boogie boarders and kooks invade the magnificent sweep of that peeling right-hand point break at “The Pass” when the swell is on. Overseen by the sentinel that is the Cape Byron lighthouse, guardian and protector of a multitude of esoteric ways, numbers of eccentrics invade its beaches, juggling, smoking joints, playing music and dancing. Narcissistic show-offs and the mentally ill all…

During a recent trip to the US I learnt the words tó iiná, meaning water is life in Navajo. Water is imperative to our survival and connects us all and to mother earth. Rivers are the arteries of our fragile planet and we must do more to protect them. I am interested in how art can play a role in spreading this message and what the world can learn through listening to the wisdom of First Nations People. We arrived in Phoenix, Arizona, in the midst of another record-breaking heatwave in what was to be the hottest summer ever recorded. Our group comprised academics and NGOs along with representatives of First Nations; Tati Tati, Gunditjmara, Taungurung (Australia), and Whanganui iwi (Māori, Aotearoa, New Zealand). We were in the States as…

Wim Wenders’ documentary film, Anselm, delves into the life and meteoric career of painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer. The 3D film retraces how the artist established himself as a giant of the contemporary art world. It is a testament to the seventy-eight-year-old artist’s commitment to his vision of humanity, spirituality and how we deal with history. Wenders has taken remarkable care in realising this artistic epic. I watched it in 3D glasses at the Sydney Film Festival premiere, the whole time wondering if these were really necessary. As in most art presentations now, the need for entertainment and spectacle creeps in—but hey, this was a theatre, so I went along with it. Wenders’ film focuses on the monumentality of Kiefer’s work and the sheer breathtaking ambition of scale. Rather than…

THE FUTURE DOES NOT JUST HAPPEN. IT IS MADE. AND WE ARE ITS AUTHORS. The Ethics Centre (June 2023) I have an enduring memory of my great Grandmother where I use to brush her long flowing hair as she sat in a cane chair watching the dirt path that led up to her house, to see who would be coming down that pathway. She would smile and her eyes would crinkle with delight, all the while talking in language, murmuring softly as her hair folded across my hand with each brushstroke. I never heard her talk in english. I was told by my Mother, that my great Grandmother one day decided never to talk again in the foreign language of english, and she didn’t. I only ever heard her talk…

On an unseasonably warm afternoon, Khaled Sabsabi unveils a new mystical world housed in a humble, cramped, tin shed doubling up as his studio at Fairfield City Museum and Gallery in south-west Sydney. Beads of sweat drip off him as he strips one layer of protective fabric after the next, to reveal his latest masterpiece Knowing Beyond. He is scheduled to exhibit Knowing Beyond at the 18th edition of the Adelaide Biennial: Inner Sanctum. The Biennial is curated by José Da Silva, and will be showing in March of 2024. Sabsabi’s artistic process is slow, the labour is grinding, the craft is measured. Sabsabi likes it this way. It matches his speech and his thought process in its expansiveness, its long drawn-out stretches of punctuated silences. Ultimately, at its heart,…

This year marks twenty years since artist John R Walker, moved to Braidwood in rural New South Wales. It’s also the thirty-fifth anniversary of Utopia Art Sydney, the gallery that has represented Walker since it opened in 1988. Born and raised in Sydney, Walker has always preferred being in the bush to city dwelling. For many years, he was a part-time bushwalking guide. A favourite place was the Budawangs, in the South Coast, near where he now lives. A sense of connectedness led to a passionate interest in geology, deep time, and the emerging discipline of environmental history. The term “landscape” proves problematic for Walker. Acknowledged as one of Australia’s leading painters, he says “I prefer to use ‘country’: ‘landscape’ is too passive and objectifying a frame for the way…

Light, for me, is calming, healing, energetic, grounding, and spiritual To encounter Meagan Streader’s work is to experience the phenomenon of light, not just as a series of wavelengths that bounce off surfaces to reveal the physical world, but as something itself physical, relational and emotional. Slow Rinse, 2019, presented at Dark Mofo, is one of a series of site-specific works made with white electroluminescent tape extended long strands of glowing tape across the empty space of an abandoned building. Meagan constructed the sensation of cascading light beams through an open window, pooling and reflecting along the floor; simulating light refractions that feel so physical they alter perception of the room’s boundaries. Her more recent solo show, The Space of Vibration, 2022, at MARS Gallery, included a series of wall-mounted…

Lauded for its higher dynamic range, analogue photography captures the ephemeral moment with all its nuance and detail. Colour for example is true to the moment, as are the idiosyncrasies of photographer, film, light, and exposure. It is also responsive to dark room process, where on-the-spot decisions influence tone, contrast and serendipity. As Hill End Analogue (HEA) President Bill Moseley explains, “The darkroom gives more opportunity for swerves to happen, particularly when you're welcoming the chance of things that happen, and things go off in another direction.” In 2019 when Moseley exhibited and Genevieve Carroll attended the Analogue photography festival, Revela´t Festiva in Spain, the Hill End-located pair found common ground for their own artistic direction: “They held the festival in a small village outside Barcelona; it just seemed that…

NotFair, Australia’s perpetually unruly alternative art fair, was founded in 2010 as a satellite event to the Melbourne Art Fair—thus Not The Fair, a title which was rapidly shortened. The notion was to showcase independent artists who do not fit the commercial mould, are overlooked, and under-recognized. Run every second year, with occasional off-shoot projects, somehow NotFair has grown into a popular event on the Australian arts calendar. NotFair has launched many artists into successful careers, and now in its thirteenth year, the nature of the event remains unchanged. NotFair does things differently and is delighted to announce a new curatorial team for their upcoming 2023 event subtitled Alchemy—artists Darren Tanny Tan and Linsey Gosper. “After thirteen years and a number of Not-Fair events it seemed time to allow a…

The death of artist Adam Cullen in 2012 at the age of forty-six did not shock the Australian art world. There was a feeling that Cullen had “lived by the sword and died by the sword.” His life, a self-fulfilling prophecy of drugs, booze, guns, and controversy. A new retrospective, bringing together over seventy diverse works, seeks to show both the breadth of his practice and perhaps offer a more sympathetic take on his life: not an apology, more a personal consideration of a life cut short. Cullen grew up in Sydney’s Northern Beaches, and the exhibition at Manly Art Gallery and Museum represents a home-coming of sorts for the artist. Organised by Cullen maven curator Max Germanos, and Cullen’s childhood friend—and executor of his estate—Jason Martin. The opening bought…