Take off with Kimberley design

Reveal of new Qantas plane in Seattle, new-build 737-838 VH-XZJ .

Reportedly the design is based on the work of the late East Kimberley artist Paddy Bedford.
and entitled Mendoowoorrji

You can follow its journey from Seattle on the Qantas website here or on twitter #QFflyingart

Shaun Gladwell

Shaun Gladwell speaking about his video work 'Approach to Mundi Mundi' shot on same location as Mad Max II. He nods to Nolan's Ned Kelly series and describes his desire to perform ideas in his own way.

Jason Donovan on the exhibition at The Royal Academy

Cultural commentator Jason Donovan ( actor/ singer in Priscilla Queen of the Desert, theatre production touring UK; participant on Strictly in 2012) on the RA exhibition Australia:
.'.. the blue sky is a big part of the Australian landscape and the Australian paintings.'

Lou Reed

NME obit for Lou Reed here
And from the BBC site here

Arthur C. Danto

Arthur C. Danto Letter to Posterity published online in The American Scholar in Autumn 2012
A passion for philosophy led me to my first career, and a passion for art led me to a second, as a critic

'I hate the idea of dying, since I relish life, as long as I can actually live it. But death is a gift of the gods, a way of escaping life when it is really intolerable. Though I have built a philosophical system, it does not contain a philosophy of life. If I have a philosophy of life, it is to keep living until I drop.'

Arthur C. Danto

1 January 1924 - 25 October 2013

RA in Oxford Times

Theresa Thompson in the Oxford Times
Australia @ Royal Academy, London: 'Big themes without beating round bush'

Australia at the Royal Academy: liars and thieves

Nina Caplan in the New Statesman suggests using theft as the organising principle for the current exhibition of Australia at the Royal Academy.

The Royal Academy has certainly underestimated Australia, similarly trying to fit the continent into too small a space. The gallery has form on this kind of sweeping treatment – its 1995 “Africa” show triggered outrage – but the curators are also responding to Australian self-deprecation, not to mention the internal incoherence of a nation founded on theft by people who were there mostly as punishment for stealing.

Australia the embarrassment, self-inflicted

This blog is not supposed to be about Australia, the country, as such but I couldn't ignore that the country is now being managed by insulting international experts and relying on wikipedia as the source for 'facts'.
Christiana Figueres executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change is talking through her hat  says the Prime Minister of Australia, Tony Abbott. He just can't help his misogynist self shining through his ignorance.

Greg Hunt, Environment Minister, confidently uses Wikipedia as his source for claims that the devastating fires in NSW this week do not in any way have anything to do with climate change.
Sorry to burst your worldview balloon Greg but there ain't no tooth fairy:

Wikipedia itself says:

Users should be aware that not all articles are of encyclopedic quality from the start: they may contain false or debatable information. Indeed, many articles start their lives as displaying a single viewpoint; and, after a long process of discussion, debate, and argument, they gradually take on a neutral point of view reached through consensus   link to Wikipedia

Tit-for-tat or tat-for-tit

The Bendigo Art Gallery is thrilled to announce that it will be exhibiting 100 of the 'finest examples of British art' from the Royal Academy in London in 2014.
The title of the exhibition is not Britain.
The title is Ambition and Genius.
The works are dated from 1868 - 1918 and include Gainsborough, Reynolds, Sargent, Fuseli.

This is irritating. Of course British painters between 1868-1918 will be presented as ambitious geniuses to an Australian audience, whereas Australian painters in that period exhibited for a London audience
(if included) are perceived as derivative and didactic (ok not all...). But do you get the irony that I can see in the naming and framing of this work going from RA to Bendigo in the light of the NGA work being shown here in London which claims to show all of Australia just through its singular title.
More to say here but have to cool off first...

Bendigo Advertiser article

Link to Bendigo Art Gallery website here

Australia, art, sheep: but of course! Sheep at the Royal Academy.

Wool Week in UK take their campaign to the Royal Academy:

'To celebrate the final weekend of the UK's Wool Week, a flock of Australian/English Bowmont Merino sheep made a special appearance in the Royal Academy's courtyard over the weekend.'
Article here

And why not? Robert Hughes, in 1970, connected agriculture and Australian art, so its been done before . . .

‘An ebullient bourgeois society which loves culture as a badge, but lacks discrimination, has developed a desire for homogenous and self-contained – that is, purely Australian – art. It gets what it wants; but to speak of an Australian cultural explosion, for no reason but that a lot of Australians are painting, is meaningless. Australia also has a knitting explosion and a cooking explosion, equally to be accounted for in terms of the abundance of Australian wool and steak.’ ( Hughes, The Art of Australia, Penguin Books, 1970, p315)

Capon on Australia

Matthew Westwood reviews Edmund Capon's  The Art of Australia series now screening on BBC in UK and ABC1 in Australia and the RA Australia exhibition

Sandy Nairne responds to Germaine Greer, a little

Just a couple of paragraphs that the Evening Standard has published
'Following Germaine Greer’s attack on the Royal Academy for its Australia exhibition, Sandy Nairne, director of the National Portrait Gallery, has sprung, kangaroo-like, to its defence'

Nairne, director of National Portrait Gallery, reiterates that the show has an educational role for the UK audience.

Germaine Greer on that RA show

Evening Standard reports on Germaine Greer's review of Australia at the RA here

Greer reviews the exhibition in the Prospect magazine: Depths of ignorance: The Royal Academy’s new exhibition shows how little Brits know about Australian art

Brit crits

Paola Totaro in the Australian A worthy display covering 200 years or another cringe festival, insightful summary of reviews along with short history of Australia in exhibition in the UK.

Canada

Steve Loft on indigenous art history and Ghost Dance: Activism. Resistance. Art. 


Ghost Dance examines the role of the artist as activist, as chronicler and as provocateur in the ongoing struggle for Indigenous rights and self-empowerment.
Now at the Ryerson Image Centre, Toronto until 15 December 2013.

More mentions of Australia at the RA

Telegraph Luxury online says the exhibition at the RA shows 'how a nation broke free from British and European traditions to find its own artistic identity.'

FT report on Christies Australian art auction last week:Australian art gets thumbs-down

Brisbane Times, Nicolle Flint Pictures of ewe are not the whole picture of us

More crits

The ABC's summary of crits of Australia at the RA here

Marianne Templeton in Artslant Blinded by the light: Myths and Visions of the Australian Landscape says: There's something vaguely unsettling about a once-mighty colonial power filling gallery after gallery with visions of its captured lands, without engaging in any sustained dialogue about the controversial and traumatic history that has shaped this body of work.

Ed Noel in Spiked online

Finally saw the Januszczak review (p 8&9) in the Culture magazine of The Sunday Times in real life at the Hackney Library (the review is online behind a pay wall, since its published by Murdoch). His dismissive review of 'Australia' is placed within an issue of the magazine that is almost celebratory about Australian performance and music showing in the UK.
    The cover of the Culture magazine, 22 Sept 2013, has a full page photograph of Barry Humphries and Dame Edna Everage - famous Australian(s) in Britain. Inside is an interview (of sorts) with Barry Humphries on the occasion of his upcoming farewell UK tour Eat Pray Laugh . In the article Adieu Possums, the author Tanya Gold is frustrated by Humphries ducking and diving in response to her questions. The opening page of the interview is opposite a full page ad for Woody Allen's 'Blue Jasmine' consisting of text and a large photograph of Australian actor Cate Blanchett - old and new possums in a 'face-off'. Further on in this same magazine is a short article, 'Bands Down Under', by Gareth Cartwright about two popular bands (p.31). Cartwright says: 'Here they come, with their strangled vowels and year-round tans and endless good cheer - the Antipodeans are about to land'. He's writing about The Cat Empire from Melbourne and Fat Freddy's Drop from Wellington NZ and notes that they are '... unlike any British or American outfits' ..' fiercely independent- running their own record labels, rather than hoping for a recording deal here.'
    This last comment makes me wonder if that's part of the problem with the Australia show: that it's been brought here looking for the artworld equivalent to a 'recording deal'. The RA curator, Kathleen Soriano, commented that she hoped that Australian artists would have a larger audience in the UK as a result of the exhibition. Largely the local UK critics are negative about the exhibition, although Januszczak also noted that it was a 'useful and pertinent show' (pertinent to what?) and noted Namatjira's work as : 'Full of insider knowledge, they are the most sensitive works in the entire show.' Despite this  'crassness characterises these repetitive responses to Australian landscape.' Fiona Hall's work 'exquisitely crafted'; a reproduction of Robert Campbell Jnr painting Abo History(Facts) 1988 was lazily attributed to Robert Campbell. These things matter, they say something about what's not being said as well. Marianne Templeton has summed it up well ( see above). For an Australian viewer there is something uncomfortable about being represented by such a lot of colonial oil painting and so little contemporary work in comparison. Given that art history is under scrutiny here, why not use the 'Australia' show to review and complicate teleological histories driven by Euro/western canon and views of time.

Addition to the 'Flying Art' series announced

"Tell 'em their dreamin'.."  (The Castle)
What's the purpose of this exercise? Wrapping an aeroplane in an indigenous pattern doesn't give the pattern-maker ownership of transport, but gives Qantas 'ownership' of indigenous patterning/ exotic cultures. This flattens out indigenous knowledges and lifeworlds into a single, knowable and acceptable gloss for the non-indigenous.

 New Flying Art indigenous-themed aircraft to fly for Qantas in November reported in The Australian 30 Sept 2013
A well-known West Australian artist's work will decorate the Boeing 737-800,  but it's a secret just now as to who it is and what the imagery will be.

1994 Boeing 747-400 Wunala Dreaming
1995 Boeing 747-300 Nalanji Dreaming
2002 Boeing 737-800 Yananyi Dreaming,  Rene Kilitja, Pitjitjantjarra/ Mutitjulu. Here below.

1994 to paint a Boeing 747-400, Wunala Dreaming

1994 to paint a Boeing 747-400, Wunala Dreaming