Posts

Most recent post

The Art of the Damned

-
Image
  The Art of the Damned The current gallery system functions as a modern dam built right at the headwaters of artistic creation. The headwaters are the raw, bubbling springs high in the mountains—wild, uncontainable, fed by countless small tributaries of individual vision, experimentation, failure, intuition, and obsession. This is where most serious art actually begins: in studios, bedrooms, sketchbooks, late-night arguments, personal crises, and private obsessions, long before any curator or collector ever hears a name. Once a handful of major galleries, institutions, auction houses, and their allied gatekeepers (collectors, critics, fair directors, residency programs) gain decisive influence over those headwaters—deciding which artists get early solo shows, which receive press, which enter the "right" conversations, which are anointed with blue-chip representation—they effectively place the dam. From that point forward: The flow of visibility, legitimacy, money, and audien...
Post a Comment
Read more

Social Networking and Teaching

-
Image
Simply put, Social Networking is big business.  In regards to schooling, there are high gains and big risks. Social Networking holds a significant skill-set which is increasingly becoming an important part of contemporary life. Students need to learn how to effectively and efficiently employ the tools for their working life. How do students gain the required skills set whilst advancing the required subject knowledge? Social Networking has added complexity to the teaching environment. It is not a question of open exploration, suck and see, or for the teacher to step aside and assume the role of a friend. The interconnecting role of a teacher and student should not be compromised. Teachers are the experts who set standards, who hold the knowledge required, who provide an instructional environment that enabled clarity of purpose.  This is not the era for teachers to provide a fuzzy environment where students have to guess what they need to know or are graded without knowledge of ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Anzac Day supports our continual efforts of invasion.

-
Image
--> ANZAC Day has ceased to be a day where we commit to 'never again'. Anzac Day has become a shallow glorification of Australia's capacity to make war. It is a celebration of Australia's capacity of invasion. In contemporary multicultural Australia Anzac Day is appearing as the last stand of our mono-cultural past. ANZAC Day should be a remembrance for the futility of war and to support efforts towards a pacifist Australia. It should not be employed by sporting leagues as a selling point to enable blockbusting displays of digger fortitude and bravery. Anzac Day is a celebration of protection, but what did the Anzacs protected us from? Who would have invaded Australia had Australia. What would have changed in Australia if we had not sent our military to Europe to be slaughtered. Why doesn't the bombing of Darwin gain more attention if Anzac Day is about the brave who stands by his mate? Anzac Day has moved from the regret of war to a he...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bill Henson is Innocence

-
Image
Bill Henson is innocence I recently received an Art Monthly (Australia) April 2009 edition as a present. Whilst in the past I collected and read such publications avidly I now read them only by chance. Interestingly in the edition there is an article by Paul Rapoport on a book by David Marr about Bill Henson the photographer. Bill Henson has been a controversial artist not because of any overt behavior but because of his subjects and how he portrays his subjects. The subjects are pubescent boys and girls and their portrayal is both sensual and interpreted sexuality. Bill Henson's photographs are well supported by the 'cultured elite' and by state and federally funded galleries. The issues are; Henson does poach his subjects from primary schools for a photo shoot and the Prime Minister described one of his nude pubescent girls as 'absolutely revolting'. The article defends both issues. The primary school poaching was dismissed as a 'fear-mongering fabricati...
Read more