2009 AAANZ Conference Abstracts - The Art Association of Australia ...

The paper presents the artist’s experience of a cultural interface
between distinct operating systems. These systems represent
the various stakeholders in the project and their objectives.
The paper will review the imperatives of Triennial director Fram
Kitagawa, his organization Artfront Gallery, the Australian
Embassy in Tokyo (the primary financial backer of Australia
House), the Toyoda Community (and their expectations for
business and community exchange), and my personal objectives
to make a critical contemporary artwork and to meaningfully
engage with the community. The presentation examines the
process of seeking common ground between these disparate
intentions, how this interface is not a fixed zone, more an
intuitive undertaking.
The presentation will consider how events such as these
contribute to an evolving language of local Japanese/Australian
and international Contemporary Art exchange.
Lucy Bleach works within a cross-disciplinary installation based
practice, developing works that explore and reflect the way we
engage with our world. She lives in Tasmania exhibiting locally,
nationally and internationally, and lectures at the Tasmanian
School of Art, University of Tasmania, in Sculpture and Core
Studies. She completed her BFA from COFA, University of
N.S.W, 1990, and was awarded a MFA from the Tasmanian
School of Art, University of Tasmania in 2007.
5. Playing by their Own Rules: Pushpamala N. and Tracey
Moffatt
Anne O’Hehir
This illustrated paper considers work by two contemporary
photomedia artists, Pushpamala N. from the South of India and
Tracey Moffatt working in Australia/USA.
Appropriating historical imagery and re-presenting it to say
something about present political and cultural concerns is a
conceit that runs consistently through contemporary art practice
particularly since the 1980s.
Pushpamala N.’s work explores – through humour and
appropriation – the role of women in India: how identity is
shaped by popular culture, traditional imagery and the media.
Informed by her wide knowledge of the history of photography
and film in India, she is acutely interested in how her art practice
is perceived and accessed locally and further a field. Tracey
Moffatt is one of Australia’s most internationally recognised
artists whose work has consistently explored issues of race,
gender and identity – through a humour which can be biting. The
work is at times violent, at other times, tender.
Many parallels between the oeuvre of Pushpamala N. and
Moffatt are immediately apparent. Particularly striking is their
approach to narrative and how they create stories into which
the viewer is drawn and then thrown out of through intriguing
stylistic devices. These artists ask much from the viewer once
the laughter has faded.
Explorations of indigeneity – and where they themselves fit in
and who defines that – are central to both women. This paper
explores how these artists battle – often through provocative and
controversial discourse and career decisions – the trap of being
stereotyped. Is this is indeed possible What price may be being
paid
Anne O’Hehir is the Assistant Curator of Photography at the
National Gallery of Australia where she has curated a number of
exhibitions.
6. Framing Dance and Photography: Dis-orientalizing
Spaces of Intersubjectivity in Tess De Quincey’s
embrace: Guilt Frame and Mayu Kanamori’s In Repose
Georgette Mathews
I explore the spaces of inter-subjectivity created by the art
practices of dance, photography and documentary in embrace:
Guilt Frame and In Repose. Indian aesthetic theory of rasa
and audience responses participate in the practice of dance
morphing contemporary expressions and Japanese butoh to
open up the dividers between self and other and to expose in
slow-motion ‘frames’ of emotions (embrace: Guilt Frame).
In Repose, a documentary performance combining photography,
installation and dance, and inspired by the Japanese graves
in Australia, translates the migrant efforts of connecting with
the land under the pressures of social, religious and cultural
hybridity.
I argue that in both performances, the portrayed intersubjectivities
become dis-orientalizing spaces (Said 1978)
where Asian and Australian imaginings are interconnected and
overlapped.
Georgette Mathews is a MA student in English Studies, The
Australian National University. Her research interests in Asian-
Australian visual culture are embedded in art and literary history,
comparative literature and philology, photography and short
documentary production.
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