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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During an early morning floor talk on Saturday, 2 August, Dr Dougal Phillips offered a small crowed of Biennale goers a little insight to the mind and works of the Italian Futurist composer, Luigi Russolo. Dr Phillips was to be accompanied by sound artist, Alex Davies but he was unavailable to attend on the day. In his absence however, the talk generated a discussion about early twentieth century modernism’s foresight into the sound scape of our contemporary era.

Russolo was born in 1885 in Portogruaro, Veneto, Italy. Russolo’s father was director of the Schola Cantorum in Latisana and organist at their local cathedral. After moving to Milan at the age of sixteen, Russolo attended Accademia di Brera (the Academy of Fine Arts, Brera) where he studied drawing and painting. In his early works, Russolo employed a divisionalist, almost pointillist technique to depict the increasingly industrial landscape developing in Italian cities at the time. More

Enjoy our virtual trip to Cockatoo Island…

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A Biennale is the only big, public space left where we can play around with the idea of revolution. I have loved BoS 2008 and been provoked by little revolutions across all the venues, in the curatorial approach, the art and occasionally in problems they create.

Australian artist Mike Parr’s MIRROR/ARSE presents 17 of his works in the broken building that was formerly the sailors quarters and ‘academy’, on Cockatoo Island. Like a revolutionary pamphlet, he yells at us to see the world and be angry. More

Day 62 and I finally made it to Pier 2/3. I have to admit I’d been putting it off, never feeling quite in the mood to make the time commitment needed to appreciate the sound piece by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller. I’d heard a rumour that it took 45 minutes to get through. In the way of rumours, its length stretched and extended until my friend Vernon (and yes this is his real name, he is not so innocent as to need protection) said to me, as I tried to convince him to keep me company, “I heard it’s 2-3 hours long.” “No,” said I, “It’s only 45 minutes.” But this, it seems, was not a particularly persuasive argument.
As it turns out, the piece titled, “The Murder of Crows”, is only 30 minutes long, but the point is that even this seems like a long time to our fast paced, attention deficient, channel surfing minds. Perhaps too long? More