Drawing with sound underground: Jason Maling’s magnum opus Diagrammatica
Jason Maling works in the expanded field where — through the interface of technology, screens and a sound system — the sonic and the visual are conducted before a live audience. Diagrammatica was inspired by physics diagrams, but it's grown into a beast: part drawing, part durational performance and part musical composition. And it all takes place underground — in a gallery known rather ominously as Slot 9 — sandwiched between two rail lines under Melbourne's commuter transit hub, Federation Square.
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Thai-Australian artist Nathan Beard’s ironic take on museum artefacts
Recently on the show we met Filipino artist Pio Abad to hear about his Turner Prize nominated exhibition 'To Those Sitting in Darkness' which re-presented museum objects to reveal hidden histories and the deep legacies of colonialism. Thai-Australian multidisciplinary artist Nathan Beard takes a different, less didactic, approach but, like Pio Abad, is working with cultural objects that are largely unseen. In Beard's case, Buddha heads made for ritual use, squirrelled away in the British Museum. The exoticisation and familiarity of Thai culture has proved to be fertile ground for Beard's artwork — where he gives free rein to his critical approach and his broad, irreverent sense of humour.
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Frank by name: Dale Frank on taxidermy and his greatest living artwork
Although he's one of Australia's most established, commercially successful and prolific artists, Dale Frank is a reluctant interview subject.Eccentric, reclusive, visionary, trailblazer — a sublime colourist, even a likeable arsehole — these are just some of the ways he's described.Which makes it even more remarkable that he agreed to be the subject of a documentary feature film — a rare thing for a living Australian artist.With a menagerie of exotic taxidermied animals and the odd studio assistant for company, Frank not only produces enormous bodies of work, but he is realising another artistic vision: a botanical garden filled with dry climate species from all over the world.He does all this while managing acute pain from a debilitating illness, and the wear and tear of an embodied artmaking practice that stretches back four decades.
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Olfactory artist Nadia Vitlin infuses her artwork with scent
Sydney-based artist Nadia Vitlin works with olfaction — our sense of smell — infusing her artwork, whether it be clay or paint, to create bespoke pieces that mimic the transportive power of scent: one of the most evocative, deeply personal and memory-laden senses humans possess. She experiments in the fourth dimension, and it all began with leaves from the garden and spices you might find in your kitchen. Vitlin's background is in science, a helpful start when you consider that scent is carried in molecules, which bypass our brain's central operating system to work on a different region wired to feel emotions.
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Pio Abad on his 2024 Turner Prize nominated body of work
Just as historical objects in museum collections embody certain histories — of British imperialism and modernity — they also map loss and disappearance for those in former colonial states.Pio Abad, whose work is "concerned with the personal and political entanglements of objects," has mined the stories embedded in certain cultural material such as kris, ceremonial swords from Mindanao, and a tiara worn by Imelda Marcos, the wife of Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos. The result, To Those Sitting in Darkness, earned the London-based Filipino artist a nod for Britain's most high-profile art prize, but Pio Abad says reviews of the work — and that of other POC nominees — ranged from asinine to borderline racist.s.
Visual artists tell you why and how they create! From studio visits, intimate interviews, and live issues, we take art out of the gallery and into your ears.
Australia