Issue 42

EDITOR’S NOTE

MANY OF THE ARTICLES IN THIS issue are concerned with the evolving nature of artists’ practices and the cycle of curatorial presentations. The daily uncertainty of making art is matched by the need for an audience to receive their art.

‘Everyone likes to remember the big things, but they’re not what make up the days,’ Honor Freeman tells Fulvia Mantelli. Her ideas and objects are drawn from the everyday of domestic and industrial objects, and yet evolve from one piece to the next in an unusual but insightful way. The way some ideas and objects are interpreted highlights whether there is an audience commitment to a variety of options.

In the Issue section of Artist Profile, artists Justine Varga, Michael Buzacott, Coen Young and Andrew Christofides discuss whether there is a need to reduce options in the expansive field of portraiture in nonobjective art.

This issue’s cover artist, Dale Frank, says, ‘There is no such thing as an error, nothing is a mistake’ – an attitude that has provoked the evolution of his work since the 1970s. His new films are fresh elements in his ever expanding practice that includes painting, performances, drawings and installations. A lengthy interview and illustrations of his work reveal some of his ideas.

Simone Mangos’ ideas and objects have evolved from emotive site-specific spaces to more complex socio-cultural spaces full of monumental histories and politics which she reworks to provoke audiences anaesthetised to genocide and multi-national pharmaceutical disasters. Her interview reveals the sedated in unexpected places.

The important occasion of the re-staging of National Gallery of Victoria’s exhibition The Field after 50 years gives Katrina Noorbergen an opportunity to look at the cycle of Col Jordan’s life and work since that show. Mary Place has been a space for many ideas and objects since it became an off-and-on gallery in 1979. John McDonald describes how Campbell Robertson-Swann and Lauren Harvey, art dealers from Defiance Gallery in Newtown, NSW, plan to re-open Mary Place as a gallery for quality international and national artists.

Since Watters Gallery’s sad announcement that it will close by the end of 2018 there have been other more positive developments similar to Mary Place in both the private and public sector to meet the growing population of artists and audiences in the visual arts. The recent opening of The Michael Buxton Centre of Contemporary Art in Melbourne, and Cement Fondu, Sydney, the expansion of King Street Gallery on William in Sydney, the anticipated relocation of Milani Gallery to larger purpose-built galleries in Brisbane, the multi-million-dollar Sydney Modern in Sydney: there is no doubt of the growing importance of the visual arts sector to the cultural and economic vibrancy of cities. All this encourages optimism about 2018 and beyond.

– Kon Gouriotis

COVER

DALE FRANK by Kon Gouriotis

ISSUE

Non-objective Art and Portraiture by Kon Gouriotis and Lucy Stranger

PROFILES

GEORGE TJUNGURRAYI by Camilla Wagstaff
CONSUELO CAVANIGLIA by Louella Hayes
DALE FRANK by Kon Gouriotis
IAN FRIEND by Lucy Stranger
SIMONE MANGOS by Kon Gouriotis
FRANCK GOHIER by Bridget Macleod
GORDON SHEPHERDSON by Louise Martin-Chew
HONOR FREEMAN by Fulvia Mantelli
COL JORDAN by Katrina Noorbergen
BOB MARCHANT by Judith Pugh

INSIGHT

Preview: Adelaide Biennial by Ted Snell
Preview: Mary Place by John McDonald
Preview: David Serisier by Lucy Stranger
Process: Hannah Quinlivan
Process: Robyn Sweaney
Review: 3rd Tamworth Textile Triennial by Jelle van den Berg
Book review: Who Runs the Artworld by Ann Finegan
View Australia
Discovery: Alana Collins