The use of animals in art – mixed responses to Bennett Miller’s Dachshund UN

47 Dachshunds get together for the conference

Last Saturday I attended Perth based artist Bennett Miller’s installation/performance Dachshund UN which is part of this month’s Next Wave Festival. Dachshund UN is exactly that – a scaled replica of the UN office in Geneva, only this time each 47 countries are represented by dachshunds.

Tags: Bennett Miller, Dachshund UN, dogs, From the archives, Melbourne Museum, Next Wave Festival

Melbourne’s best figure drawing workshops

Finding the city’s best figure drawing class is like playing lottery. Finding the class that’s right for your taste and skill level can be an adventurous journey full of surprises, but there can be some disappointments along the way.

Tags: figure drawing, From the archives, life drawing

Ilia Farah Rosli – Everything and nothing at the same time

Ilia at home

I’m standing in Ilia Farah Rosli’s kitchen, slouching over the kitchen bench as she makes me a cup of tea. I glance at the gigantic fruit bowl near the window, which supplies every common fruit imaginable. “We’re a fruit house”, she proclaims, “we eat a lot of fruit!”.

Tags: Bus Gallery, From the archives, Ilia Farah Rosli, Y3K

Moving to higher ground

Utopian Slumps in Collingwood

‘The Slumps’ is moving up in the world. No more smelly rodent infested back alley, smoker packed balcony or sweaty arm-pit art-gazing. This might be a drastic change for the Slumps, but don’t worry —the art is staying — it’s just going to be a bit classier. Melissa Loughnan, the young curator turned gallery owner of not-for-profit Utopian Slumps, has had three years of sell-out shows in her Collingwood space, but a shortage of public funding has made it tough.

Tags: From the archives, Melissa Loughnan, Utopian Slumps

The uncertain future facing artist-run galleries

Our unique, artist-run galleries are under threat. Rising rents, fewer interested artists, and the effects of the current economic climate mean galleries already struggling may be forced to close their doors.

Tags: DIY, From the archives, gallery, maara serwylo, palomar

Ricky Swallow – The Bricoleur

Killing Time (detail), Maple Bracing, 2003-2004, 108 x 184 x 118 cm

Ricky Swallow works in exchanges; exchanges of materials, time and space. Relationships between things, between lives, and the stuff that makes up daily life.

Tags: Ian Potter, Ricky Swallow

The ‘Whiteness’ in Australian Aboriginal Art

Emily Kam Kngwarray, Big yam Dreaming (1995), 291.1 x 801.8 cm. Taken from National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Presented through The Art Foundation of Victoria by Donald and Janet Holt and family, Governors, 1995 © Emily Kam Kngwarray/Licensed by VISCOPY, Australia

You can not categorise Aboriginal art within the same sphere as Conceptual and Contemporary art—it stands apart, even though both practices resemble similar aesthetics. Aboriginal art has long been squeezed and labelled into the Western art paradigm; this is a problematic notion. It is crucial that Aboriginal art is to be removed from Western conceptualisation, both in the way it is handled in the art system, and as well as the understanding of the artwork itself.

Tags: Aboriginal Art, Emily Kam Kngwarray, NGV

Alice Byrne – Into the wald

The Fox's Sun, oil on linen, 122 x 168 cm

Luminous verdure encircles completive abodes in Alice Byrne’s new series of works Into the Wald. Glowing oils and delicate, intimate watercolours hang side by side on the walls of the James Makin Gallery in Collingwood, cushioning the viewer who enters this space from the galleries urban surroundings.

Tags: Alice Byrne, James Makin Gallery, Landscape, Painting