Brisbane Blog

Randal Breen‘s exhibition My Life as a Caravan opens at 6pm on Friday April 9 2010 at Jugglers Art Space, 103 Brunswick St, Fortitude Valley. The works in this exhibition are based on a hand-built caravan he found in his wife’s grandfather’s back shed, and are Breen’s interpretation of the stories his wife’s grandfather, Arthur, shared with him.

Click here for a Google Map showing how to get to Jugglers Art Space by public transport. To look up the timetables for bus routes 370, 375 or 379, click here, and click here for train timetables. To look up more public transport routes and times using Translink’s journey planner, click here.

The Go Font UrSelf* exhibition is all about artworks that are based on letters, on writing and on typography – “the alphabet becomes the source”. Chapter 4 of the exhibition is on tonight, Thursday March 11 2010, at Nine Lives Gallery in Fortitude Valley, opening at 6pm.

The artists whose work is on display are:

Sarah A King

Super Expresso

Raza Uno

Istvan Szugyiczky

Above

Adrian Gray

Blends

Helen Mycroft

Rob Abel

Saynt

Timba Smits

Marin Horikawa

Yok

I found out about this exhibition through This Art Attack’s Twitter account, so if you like art in Brisbane you might want to follow them too. Nine Lives Gallery is at 694A Ann St, Fortitude Valley – click here for a Google Map with public transport details. You can also click here to use the Translink journey planner to look up train times, or click here to look up timetables for the 199 or 196 bus.

[Photo of Ranjit Hoskote by flickr user mshilman]

Griffith University’s Griffith Asia Institute is putting on a free seminar with Indian poet, writer and curator Ranjit Hoskote at the Gallery of Modern Art this Thursday, March 4th 2010 at 5.30pm.

Hoskote will be talking about what creative artists are doing in India right now, and how they are thinking about their art. Hoskote is an Indian poet and art critic who writes in English. He’s been critical of Western media and culture ignoring modern thought in the Islamic world:

The denial of contemporaneity to the Islamic world can sometimes proceed from the best intentions, as when invited experts cite and discuss the Holy Koran and the Sayings of the Prophet as the ultimate and armatural texts for present-day political choices. This approach creates the impression that Islamic civilisation has made no further contribution to the history of thought since the 7th century; it also negates the role of secular philosophies in the evolution of the Muslim or Arab political consciousness. For instance, this writer cannot recall a single reference, in mainstream-channel discussions during the last 17 months, to Ali Shariati, the political visionary and critic of consumption capitalism whose teachings provided the stimulus for the first, 1978 phase of the Iranian Revolution. Or to the historian of science and gnosis, Seyyed Hossein Nasr; or the Egyptian secular revolutionary, Gamal Abdel Nasser, or the Algerian socialists Ahmed Ben Bella and Houari Boumediene. The Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi is usually mentioned only in the context of the Lockerbie case or dismissed as a maverick; his contribution to post-colonial praxis goes unremarked. These and many other thinkers and political figures from the world of Islam have been consigned to oblivion by the global media; the modernities they symbolise, their conceptions of freedom, justice and the scope of human possibility, are rendered invisible.

Hoskote has also been strongly critical of attacks on cultural expression by religious mobs and bigoted police:

The outrageous arrest of Chandramohan, a final-year fine arts student at the Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda, on May 9, has confirmed that the only right that is taken seriously in India today is the right to take offence. The right to take offence is not a fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution, but all the same, it is the most easily enforced of all rights. All you need is a local demagogue with a taste for publicity, a few rampaging goons, policemen who favour the violent over the reasonable, and a lower judiciary that is reluctant to defy the mob.
Chandramohan, who was taken into custody by the Baroda police without a proper warrant, after he had been roughed up by a gang of Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) activists, has been charged with public obscenity and an attempt to incite communal disharmony. The images to which such turbulent opposition has been mounted show a woman, perhaps a goddess, birthing a man (which is no more fearful than the Lajja-gouri of Hindu sacred art), and a crucifix with a penis (this, an obvious homage to Robert Mapplethorpe). Both images retrieve the passionate human dramas that lie at the core of sacred narratives. Both images insist upon the artist’s right to revisit inherited lore, to reinvent images and narratives, to integrate the sacred as an element of secular experience.

And also here:

The Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad activists who attacked the Garden Art Gallery in Surat, on January 29, appear to have taken destructive criticism to its extreme. Labouring under the delusion that the Hindu pantheon required defence against artistic blasphemy, these ruffians destroyed eight works by distinguished contemporary Indian painters including M. F. Husain, K. H. Ara and N.S. Bendre, and the younger Kolkata artist, Chittrovanu Mazumdar. This manifestation of a terrifyingly illiberal tendency, which has come to dominate our public life, flagrantly challenges the Constitutional right to the freedom of expression. Conversely, it champions the self-arrogated right to take violent offence at affronts, real or imagined, to belief or identity.

The Surat outrage follows the model set by the Sambhaji Brigade’s rampage through Pune’s Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute on January 5. Far from being aberrations, these incidents are continuous with a shameful series of violations of artistic and scholarly freedom in the recent past. These precedents include the vilification campaign launched by various Hindu-majoritarian organisations, during 1996, against Husain for his alleged portrayal of a nude Saraswati; the disruption of the Pakistani vocalist, Ghulam Ali’s Mumbai concert by the Shiv Sena, in 1998; the demonstrations by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) auxiliaries in Varanasi, which forced Deepa Mehta to stop work on her film, Water, in 2000; and the withdrawal of an exhibition by Pakistani artists at Mumbai’s Sakshi Gallery in 2001, under Sena pressure.

(Shiv Sena is a right-wing Indian political party allied with the Hindu-supremacist movements in India.)

In this interview with Clark Blaise of the University of Iowa, from 1995, Hoskote reads some of his poetry and discusses what it’s like to be an Indian poet writing in English when there’s pressure to not use this language:

Ranjit Hoskote interviewed by University of Iowa’s Clark Blaise 950101 by djackmanson

If you’d like to go to the seminar, email Natasha Vary at n.vary@griffith.edu.au. The Gallery of Modern Art is in the Cultural Centre at Southbank, and the seminar is in Cinema B. The best way to get there by public transport is to catch a bus to the Cultural Centre bus station or a train to South Brisbane train station and walk to the Gallery – click here for a Google Map. To check bus and train timetables, click here to use the Translink journey planner.

You’ve probably heard by now that the 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art is on at the Queensland Art Gallery‘s Gallery of Modern Art. Just in case you don’t know, there are guided tours of the free exhibition every day at 11am, 12 noon, 1pm and 2pm. The tours are free – just meet up at the information desk near the gallery entrance.

You can take photos of the exhibition: here’s a slideshow of some of the photos people have already taken:

If you can’t see the slideshow, click here to see the photos.

The Queensland Art Gallery’s Gallery of Modern Art is in the Cultural Centre in Southbank – click here for a Google Map. Public transport info is in the map – click here to use the Translink journey planner to find out public transport route and timetable info.

There’s an exhibition of war paintings and photos on right now at the QUT Art Museum at Queensland University of Technology’s Gardens Point campus in the city – click here for a Google Map.



“Portrait, Dr Jeff Brock, AME Surgeon, Kandahar” (lower panel).

The Framing Conflict exhibition is presented by the Australian War Memorial and is the work of Lyndell Brown and Charles Green who travelled in the Persian Gulf, South-West Asia and Afghanistan as the Memorial’s official war artists.

This video shows Brown and Green being interviewed about the work that led to this exhibition:

“Afghan National Army Perimeter Post with Chair, Tarin Kowt Base, Uruzgan Province, Afghanistan”

The Framing Conflict exhibition is on until Sunday February 28th 2010

Another exhibition is opening at the QUT Art Museum on Tuesday, February 9th 2010 and runs till Sunday March 7th – the KP11 Producing Communities show. This shows off work from 11 organisations that have been working with the cast-offs and people on the edge of society to help them grab hold of some power by using art. There’s an essay about the exhibition by the curators, Malcolm Bywaters and Dr David Sudmalis, if you click here.


The art works involved are from:

The Tutti Ensemble, seen here performing “How Beautiful are the feet” and the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s “Messiah”, with the Norwood Symphony Orchestra

For more work from the Tutti ensemble, click here to visit their YouTube channel.

Dadaawa‘s work “Diatribe” tries to explain what it’s like to live in a house that isn’t really a home:



ICE‘s “Urban Jungle” shows young people in Western Sydney getting a new view of the world through parkour/freerunning:

Somebody’s Daughter Theatre is displaying art by women who’ve been in prison.

Beyond Empathy is showing an exhibition connected with its Postcodes from the Edge project:

Contact Inc has videos of their Common Ground project:

Feral Arts will show off some of the stories from their PlaceStories project.

Shopfront Contemporary Arts Centre have displays based on their (lost toy story) festival held in Hurstville, Sydney in 2008:

Shopfront’s Soundcloud page is here.

The (lost toy story) Flickr account is here.

Click here for Shopfront Arts’ YouTube channel


The Footscray Community Arts Centre will show photos from it’s Crowd Theory projects:

Barkly Regional Arts are going to set up a listening post where you can hear the recordings they do of music from the Northern Territory through their Winanjjikari Music Centre. You can click on the player below to listen to a podcast they did in October last year, and you can click here to see their podcast page and subscribe to it in iTunes.

Arts Access Victoria are displaying videos of their Warm Hearted Bastards project:

The QUT Art Museum is free to enter, and it’s closed on Mondays and public holidays. From Tuesday to Friday it opens from 10am to 5pm, except on Wednesday nights when it’s open late till 8pm. On Saturday and Sunday it’s open from 12 midday to 4pm.

The best way to get to the QUT Art Museum by public transport is to catch a clockwise free City Loop bus from George St near the Treasury Casino, Adelaide St near King George Square or Adelaide St near Anzac Square. This Google Map shows those three bus stops. You need to get off the bus once it turns into George St from Alice St – click here to see the QUT Art Museum and the George St/Alice St bus stop on a Google Map. You cna also catch a CityCat to the QUT Gardens Point ferry terminal and walk to the Art Museum – that terminal is also shown on the second of those two Google Maps. You can click here to use Translink’s journey planner to find bus or ferry timetables.

Artist Sam Blanch, whose Bridges to Elsewhere exhibition I wrote about last year, has another show on right now at the Tidy art space at 27 Logan Rd, Woolloongabba – click here for a Google Map.

The new show is called “cross a fake“. Blanch  says:

This work comes out of 18 months of art therapy
sessions with Cathy Condon a Coolum artist/art therapist.  The sessions
delved deeply into the layers of my consciousness and produced a year’s
worth of experimental works one of which was in this cross style. 
After sifting through the mammoth amounts of information that came
through my sessions, crosses came up time and again.  

Crosses
have a symbolism that predates the familiar Christian crucifix and it
is these kinds of crosses that I am interested in.  For me the cross is
an important symbol of the centring of the universe, the ability of
humanity to fix things in place using mind and hands, to find meaning
in the patterns of nature (like the southern cross) and the potency of
the spirit world (the power of the use of symbols).  The process of
producing each cross is a synthesis of these above traits, with each
brush stroke and block of colour a meditation on these themes.

The exhibition runs from now until February 19th 2010. The Tidy is open 9-3 Monday to Saturday, and the best way to get to there by public transport is to catch a bus to the Woolloongabba bus station and walk from there – it’s only a few minutes walk away. See the Google Map to see where the bus station and the art space are, and if you need to find out public transport times, you can use the Translink journey planner.

From January 30 to 27 March 2010, the Institute of Modern Art will be displaying Marina Abramovic‘s 1975 video perfomance piece “Art Must Be Beautiful“. The IMA’s notes on the piece tell us:

Serbian artist Marina Abramovic has been called the grandmother of performance art. Her works have often involved pain and endurance. In Art Must Be Beautiful, her iconic 1975 performance-for-video, she agressively combs and brushes her long hair, teasing it up, while repeating ‘art must be beautiful, artist must be beautiful’. Her voice and expression betray her pain. In watching the video, one senses that the camera has taken the place of a mirror. Abramovic’s simple act is open to interpretation. It has been seen as exemplifying a feminist critique of expectations on women to be beautiful, and yet it is compelling viewing precisely because the artist is so beautiful. The work can be read as masochistic, but also as ascetic—with the artist entering a trance-like state, ‘freeing body and soul from the restrictions imposed by culture and from the fear of physical pain and death’.

There’s a long interview here at Bombsite magazine with Abramovic, shorter interviews here and here, and photos of some more of Abramovic’s work at the Sean Kelly gallery website.

The Institute of Modern Art is in the Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Art at 420 Brunswick St, Fortitude Valley, on the corner of Berwick St – click here for a Google Map. The IMA is open from 11am to 5pm from Tuesday to Saturday. The best way to get there by public transport is to catch a 199 or 196 bus from the Cultural Centre bus station, or the 196 from stop 25 or 199 from stop 26 on Adelaide St in the City, right near Anzac Square – click here for a Google Map showing those bus stops. You can click here to use the Translink journey planner to find bus timetables.

Tonight, Saturday January 23rd, Vegas Spray is presenting BEAF, the Brisbane Emerging Art Festival. The festival is at White Canvas gallery, 26 Church St, Fortitude Valley from 6pm – 11pm – click here for a Google Map.

Artists include:

Jasmin Coleman:



Jasmine Coleman’s “System”

Haruka Sawa

Reilly Smethurst

Tammy Law



Photo by Tammy Law published in Blueprint UK.

Nicola Morton

James Beattie

Warren Handley

Rachael Bartram

Drea Merkin

Peter Wilson

Ellen Stapleton


Ellen Stapleton’s “The World Inside” – buy a copy of it on Redbubble

Clarissa Bones



“Silence” by Clarissa Bones in the “Paintings” gallery on her website.

Joshua Rufford

Lucinda Wolber

Fiona Kennedy-Altoft

Laura Bailey

Carly Kotynski

Benjamin Reeve



Benjamin Reeve’s Kitty-chan, from the “Fragments” gallery on his website.

Andrew Cain

Brendan Gore

Elise Terranova (or follow her here on Twitter)



Site design by Elise Terranva for 2high Festival 2009 at the Brisbane Powerhouse. Photo taken by Yuki Nanako.

Zoe Porter



From the Cosmology album on Zoe Porter’s Facebook page

Michelle Van Eps

Amanda Heelan

Anna McMahon

The best way to get to White Canvas gallery by public transport is to catch a 300, 306 or 322 bus from Stop 23 in Adelaide St in the city, and get off at Stop 6 on Wickham St in the Valley, right near the Valley swimming pool. Keep walking 50 metres or so in the same direction that the bus was going and turn left into Church St – the gallery is at number 26, on the left hand side. Click here for a Google Map showing the bus stops.

Or, you can catch a train to Brunswick St station in the Valley, walk along Brunswick St to Wickham St, then turn left and walk about 500m up Wickham St till you get to Church St – click here to see a Google Map showing the station and Church St. If you need to look up bus or train timetables, click here to use Translink’s journey planner.

Brisbane artist Braidy Hughes is opening her exhibition “the painted girl” at Inspire Gallery Bar, 71 Vulture St West End, at 7pm this Thursday, January 21st. The exhibition runs until Wednesday January 27th.

If you’re on Twitter you can follow Braidy Hughes here, and if you’re on Facebook there’s a FB event for the exhibition here. You can also buy cards, prints and more of Braidy Hughes’ work at her RedBubble Gallery.

The Inspire Gallery Bar is at 71 Vulture St, West End – click here for a Google Map. The best way to get there by public transport is to catch a 199 bus from the Cultural Centre to stop 8 on Vulture St and walk about 50 metres to the bar. This Google Map shows the bus stops, and you can click here to use the Translink public transport journey planner.