Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia - Queensland Art Gallery

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Ghana
Hand-painted movie banners are created as advertisements posted outside Ghanaian video stores. They reflect the
global culture of movie distribution, advertising films ranging from Hong Kong kung-fu titles such as Operation Scorpio
and Nigerian productions such as My Father’s Love 2 to the Hollywood-produced Species. While an array of foreign
movies — particularly from the Chinese, Indian and US film industries — are consumed by local audiences in video
format, Ghanaian and Nigerian productions shot on video have increasingly been distributed through networks of video
shops and clubs since the 1980s. The local video industry now also exports titles to other African nations, including
Benin, Togo, Zambia and South Africa.
Sharif WAKED
b.1964 Palestine/Israel
Lives and works in Haifa and Nazareth, Israel
Sharif Waked uses video, installation and painting in an ongoing examination of the complexities of Middle Eastern
histories and politics. His art reflects on the propaganda strategies within the region as well as globalised images of
conflict that have emerged in the media. In his work, Waked strives to remind viewers of the rich heritage of literature
and art that binds Islamic cultures but which is often buried in media clichés.
Kara WALKER
b.1969 United States
Lives and works in New York, United States
Kara Walker is best known for her large room and wall installations of life-size silhouettes made from black paper and
video projections. The narratives that unfold are set in the pre-Civil War south of the United States. Walker often sources
her images from historical textbooks and illustrated periodicals, transforming them into nightmarish graphic narratives
that evoke the legacy of slavery.
WANG Qingsong
b.1966 China
Lives and works in Beijing, China
Wang Qingsong’s art comments on the consumer merchandise and commercial imagery that has flooded the Chinese
market over the past two decades. In the late 1990s, Wang gained notoriety as a proponent of ‘gaudy art’, a term coined
by the Chinese art critic Li Xianting to express the appropriation by artists of kitsch motifs from popular culture and the
media. Although he began as a painter, Wang soon moved into photography. His photographs are characterised by
theatrical, highly constructed sets and poses that draw on elements of traditional art, socialist realism and commercial
iconography.
Louise WEAVER
b.1966 Australia
Lives and works in Melbourne, Australia
Louise Weaver’s sculptures engage with representation, evolution and metamorphosis. Her painstakingly crafted
menagerie re-imagines taxidermy models in decorative ‘skins’ created with crochet, appliqué and weaving. This process
of fantastic reinvention is transformative, and illustrates Weaver’s ongoing interest in the perceived distinction between
artificial and natural, the ephemeral and the imperishable, the beautiful and the bizarre.