Day 78: Breaking News?

Only 5 days to go and I just received the following from the BoS, “Liam Gillick has decided to transform the lecture format of a public conference into a series of personal discussions with the audience over email and/or the telephone. If you would like to be included in Gillick’s new project of individual talks, I encourage you to authorise the Biennale to send the artist your name and direct contact information, if you have not already done so.”

Gillick was previously scheduled to actually meet the public, including drinking sessions at the pub, in a series of lectures called Relations of Equivalence: Three Potential Endings. More

Not sure how active Yoko is with her NY/Sydney phone calls. To let you know I spoke to her on Saturday August 23rd 08. Weird experience but very exciting. It was definitely her! wish I had had something insightful to say….but we did talk about Tokyo….
Diane

p.s. by the way, Cockatoo Island is FANTASTIC..and as my 5 year old says “do we have to see william Kentridge AGAIN…!”

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Tracey Moffat’s collaboration with Gary Hillberg, REVOLUTION, 2008 made for this Biennale is one of the most engaging works at the MCA. Although León Ferrari’s, La civilización occidental y cristiana / Western Christian Civilization, 1965 (Jesus nailed to a airplane cross) and Maurizio Cattelan’s, Novecento,1997 (stuffed dead horse) * have both received a lot the media attention, however it was works like Moffat’s and Hillberg’s which really stood out. *Brackets my addition More

“If This Fall into they Hand, Revolve”!

Now I trust a few of my smarter readers have recognised the quote above straight away. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, of course, one of the greatest comedies ever written. And the recipient of that instruction is the overwheening Malvolio; he’s reading a letter purporting to come from his boss, Olivia – in fact it’s from his enemy Maria.

In most productions of the play, poor old Malvolio turns round at that point – as you would! But, just last week on the Phillip Adams program (ABC Radio National), I learnt to my joy that the old Bard didn’t have anything as mundane as circular movement in mind at all. He understood ‘revolve’ to mean “Think about it real hard”!!! More

A couple of weeks ago (14th-16th of August) I attended the Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair as well as the 2008 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards. The weather in Darwin was rather warm (34 degrees celsius every day) which made a nice change from the particularly cold Sydney weather that we have been plagued with of late. For those of you not familiar with the Telstra Awards, the award was established in 1984 to recognise the important contribution that Indigenous artists make to the visual arts in Australia. According to the awards website ” The Award attracts a range of Indigenous artists from all parts of the country and about 100 works are selected each year from around 300 entries. The diversity and style of work submitted each year reflects the changing face of contemporary Aboriginal art practice”

In total there five different prizes given in four different categories. The prizes are:

* Overall Award - $40,000 prize
* the Telstra General Painting Award - $4000 prize
* the Telstra Bark Painting Award- $4000 prize
* the Telstra Work on Paper Award- $4000 prize
* the Wandjuk Marika 3D Memorial Award (sponsored by Telstra)- $4000 prize

You can see a list of the winners here:
http://www.nt.gov.au/nreta/museums/exhibitions/natsiaa/25/pdf/room_brochure.pdf

What does the Telstra Aboriginal Art Awards have to do with the Biennale I hear you ask, well, the winner of the general painting award was Doreen Reid Nakamarra (see bio details here) who happens to be one of the artists who created a work for the biennale. The work that won the $4,000 Telstra General Painting Award (image 1) is an untitled work that depicts designs associated with the rockhole site of Marrapinti, west of the Pollock Hills in Western Australia. “The lines in the painting depict the creek at the site and the sandhills that surround it. In ancestral times, a group of women of the Nangala and Napangati kinship subsections camped at this site during their travels towards the east. While at the site the women made nose bones, also known as marrapinti, which are worn through a hole made in the nose web. During ceremonies relating to Marrapinti, the older women pierced the nasal septums of the younger women who were participating in the ceremony. Nose bones were originally used by both men and women but are now only inserted by the older generation on ceremonial occasions. Upon completion of the ceremonies at Marrapinti, the women continued their travels east passing through Wala Wala, Ngaminya and Wirrulnga, before heading north-east to Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay)”. (description from Papunya Tula Artists)

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