Art + Australia. Issue 0 (53.1): Recomposite

ISSN 0004-301 X
129 pages | Softcover | B&W and colour images 
2016

Editor: Edward Colless
Authors: Edward Colless, Brook Andrew, David Hansen, Jarrod Rawlins, Julie Ewington, Biljana Jancic, Darren Jorgensen, Rex Butler, Daniel Thomas, Doug Hall, Adrian Martin, Victoria Lynn, John Warwicker, Vikki McInnes, Su Baker, Eleonora Triguboff

Here is our challenge—and predicament. Art. Australia. Can either of these words today be considered unproblematic or uncontested? Both words, as we have to use them now, are unfixed or besieged: their 20th-century cultural delineations detonated and diffused throughout the globalised circuitry of financial and cultural markets; their perimeters corroding or complicating into fractal dimensions; their core characteristics in dispute when not in disrepute. It's either shamefully inane commodification or else sounds pugnaciously reactionary to conjoin these words in a pacified, summative, synoptic and unembarrassed cultural banner or brand. 'Australia Art': whether as metadata, export tag, biennale label, auction-house category, museum signage, funding priority, school curriculum heading or electoral slogan, does this not all sound grossly conformist, economically expedient, a laughably fossilised anthropological tariff and ideologically hollow?