Recent activities, exhibitions and publications undertaken by SECAP researchers.
- Planet Ueno: Musings from a cross cultural exchange project
For centuries the lure of other cultures has pulled dreamers, explorers, traders and artists towards the shorelines of elsewhere. This story traces another tale of such adventures, one where the possibilities of wilful mistranslations offer ways of seeing the world anew again.
- Tiny Little Wonderful Worlds
Tiny Little Wonderful Worlds was curated by Pat Hoffie and featured artists Zoe Porter, Abe Garcia, Dacchi Dang, Jennifer Herd, Madeleine Kelly, Gordon Hookey and Arryn Snowball.
- Windwells: Channelling and Divining: Pat Hoffie and Stefan Purcell
Drawing from significant and obscure aspects of the history of South East Queensland in the late 1890s, the installation used film, sound and kinetic sculpture to raise questions about the interaction of science, art and magic.
- Brisbane Magistrates Court (Art Built-in project)
In an attempt to utilize the universally recognized benefits of art in place making and establishing cultural identity, the Queensland Government established the Art Built-in policy where any State capital works with a budget over $250,000 allocate two per cent of that budget to expenditure on art in public places.
- Saga: Mostyn Bramley-Moore
Over recent decades there has been, particularly in Australia, an ongoing interest in visual art that addresses issues relating to identity and cultural/geographic location. This area of focus has often been generally referred to as Genius Locii (accepted as meaning the spirit of a place). In this solo exhibition Bramley-Moore extended his ongoing engagement with this subject.
- The Peel Island Artists' Residencies
In early 2008 an artists’ residency was established at Peel Island as a collaborative venture between the Environmental Protection Agency, Queensland, and the Queensland College of Art.
- Pop Gan Eek Krang Nueng (Meeting Once More): Debra Porch
New installation work, from here to nowhere, created for this exhibition extends and addresses current research in relation to place and memory. The everyday and the extraordinary are examined through images and materials that transcend cultures and boundaries, providing links that can be conjured between Western and Asian cultures to provide links to that which is absent from sight.
- Folly (Themeda tiandra syn.T australis): Sebastian Di Mauro
The significance of this research lies in the fact that it reflects current dialogue on the colonization of Australia and its continued effects historically, culturally and environmentally. This significant work of art by Di Mauro was purchased by Bendigo Art Gallery for their collection, a major regional gallery in Australia. It is on permanent exhibition in their grounds. Bendigo Art Gallery is an appropriate venue for Folly as it is one of Australia’s largest and oldest regional art galleries and has one of the largest collections of colonial art in the country.
- fugue for submerged memories
fugue for submerged memories is a kinetic sculptural installation by Pat Hoffie (collaborating with Stefan Purcell) that was set in a small lake at the Woodford Folk Festival in 2009/10. It comprised of two upright pianos that played their own tune, 36 violin bows, two violins, a lounge chair and a water pump.
- Carnivale Collaborata
Held at the Woodford Folk Festival 2008/09, the exhibition event drew from Bakhtin’s idea of Carnivale, and brought together a range of visual art expressions in a total event that celebrated chaos, anarchy and debate.
- Madame Illuminata Crack's Phantasmagorical Invention for an Ecologically Sustainable Future: Pat Hoffie
This kinetic sculptural installation by Pat Hoffie was installed at the University of Queensland Art Gallery and Museum (UAM) in 2008.
- Utopia / Dystopia / Disturbia
Utopia/Dystopia/Disturbia, curated by Pat Hoffie was the visual arts component of the 2009/10 Woodford Folk Festival featuring artists Heri Dono, Dadang Christanto, Harada Akatsuki, Jennifer Herd, Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan.
- Scope of Hope: A World Music Concert
For many years East Timor has been associated with bad news, but times are changing. Pride in this still very new nation is starting to be built, not least in the area of culture. An exciting development is the beginning of a creative industry in East Timor. Griffith University Queensland College of Art is playing an important role in this with support from the Commonwealth Government’s AusAID program. For the last eighteen months, researchers have been working in East Timor compiling an archive of cultural resources.
- Ooga Booga
The Brisbane based collective know as ProppaNow has developed a national reputation by questioning the expectation of what Indigenous Australian art should look like. The curator, George Petelin conceived this exhibition in consultation with this group and a 'token white artist' Luke Roberts also known as Pope Alice.
- Evergreen: Sebastian Di Mauro
This work extends the parameters of abstract sculpture and eschews traditionally weighty materials such as steel or bronze in favour of a contemporary synthetic material. Di Mauro’s collective practice explores an interest in the transformation of ordinary objects into something poetic and metaphoric. In particular these works reflect the traditional European art of topiary, which has been embraced by many Australian’s in the pursuit of a manicured, formal garden.
- Cantchant: Vernon Ah Kee
This installation by Vernon Ah Kee received critical acclaim and was chosen by Doug Hall to form the basis of Vernon Ah Kee's representation in the 2009 Venice Biennale. The work has been acquired by a public gallery in Canada.
- Harvester for Disappearing Dreams of Wildness
The interactive kinetic sculpture Harvester for Disappearing Dreams of Wildness by Pat Hoffie (collaborating with Stefan Purcell) was made for a sculpture and installation festival in Yokohama, Japan in 2009.
- troop drill: Pat Hoffie (with collaborators)
Troop drill was an installation/performance event held at Fort Lytton in November 2009 as part of the arc Biennale held by the Queensland Artworkers Alliance.
- Fallen Series: Donna Marcus
The Museum of Arts & Design inaugurated its new premises at Columbus Circle, New York City with Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary, a special thematic exhibition featuring 44 contemporary artists from 17 countries. Donna Marcus was selected as the only Australian representative in this important exhibition staged to reflect the museum’s core mission of celebrating materials and process.
- Figuring Landscapes
This curatorial collaboration brought together short moving image works by fifteen artists from Australia and fifteen artists from the UK in a screening exhibition that examined changing approaches to landscape in new media. The exhibition toured Australia and the UK (nine venues) where it was launched at the Tate Modern.
- We're talking... anyone listening?
"We're talking...anyone listening?" addresses issues of agency for marginalized and indigenous youths in a regional town in Queensland. It uses documentary practice as an innovative method of inquiry and gives voice to those people who are too easily viewed by mainstream society as the collateral damage of inaction, ineptitude, and policies gone wrong in Australia's history.
- Channels of History: Trish Fitzsimons
Channels of History is part of a recent international trend to explore intersections of documentary film and digital technologies to create media rich exhibitions as part of the ‘new museology’ (Witcomb 2003). It is ‘relational art’ (Bourriaud ...
- Quarantine
Featured as part of the Queensland Artworkers Alliance’s 2009 arc Biennial, this three person site specific exhibition curated by Pat Hoffie was installed in the old quarantine station at ort Lytton and drew together the work of three artists: Eric Rossi, Zoe Porter and David Spooner.
- Carnivale Extremis: Pat Hoffie (with collaborators)
Designed as a site-specific work to accompany the Carnivale Collaborata series of exhibitions and workshops, this work drew from medieval imagery and images of the monstrous in a moving assemblage that reflected the robust insurrection of the carnivale ethos.
- The Wrong Crowd: Debra Beattie
"The Wrong Crowd: Inside the Family, Outside the Law" is a public history recounted through the prism of a "bildungsroman" narrative. Theoretical issues emerged around the nature of the documentary form and its inherent truth-claim as the work traversed intersections between documentary evidence, history in the public domain and personal memory on the internet.
- Recent Paintings: Arryn Snowball
Works from this series were selected for the ARC Biennale (2007), reviewed in Art and Australia Magazine, included on Sunday Arts ABC television program, as well as inclusion in significant solo and group exhibitions in Brisbane, Sydney and Tokyo.
- Habitus Habitat - Art and Environment in the Great Walks of Queensland
Habitus-Habitat is a Museum and Gallery Services Queensland touring exhibition that features the work of artists who were involved in the artist in residency programs that were initiated as part of the Great Walks project. The rationale for the res...
- Enigmatic: Paul Cleveland
Digital illustration has a history of using appropriation of various digital images to construct new works. These are often identified as pastiches which are recognised by their singular elements. This research looks at ways of combining various elements into an integrated narrative composition which reflects the inscription of photography.
- Artists X HMAS Diamantina
Artists have increasingly attempted to escape the restrictions of the white-cube environment of the modernist gallery space and find alternative spaces to exhibit their work. Part of this movement has been the realization that artists can act as agents to activate historical or socially significant sites. This project was an experiment in having artists create works out of the safety of the gallery and most importantly having them respond to a very potent historical site and artifact — a warship from the second World War.
- Accounting for the Collector: the Brian Tucker Collection
Accounting for the Collector: the Brian Tucker Collection was a collaborative exhibition project between Brian Tucker, a Brisbane based collector of contemporary Australian visual arts, Logan Art Gallery Redcliffe City Gallery public and the Queensland College of Art Griffith University.
- Queensland Films 1930-1960: from Talkies to Television
Queensland Films 1930-1960: from Talkies to Television is the consolidated single text refined and postproduced from the curated presentation of some 32 individual film sources at the 2009 Brisbane International Film Festival. In late 2009 this nar...
- Memory Boxes: Sam Di Mauro
These works are now on permanent display in The Palace, in Childers (the Regional Gallery is also in this building). The significance of this project is evidenced by the large contribution (c. $100, 000) towards its creation made by the Australian Federal Government, British Government and the Netherlands Government. Because of the success of this work in dealing with a most sensitive event, the artist has been commissioned to produce a number of major public works.
- Flight to the Death: The Saemangeum Reclamation Project
The significance of this research has been established through the wide distribution or exhibition of the photographs across Korea and Australia. It is very significant to have such a longitudinal study crystallized into such compelling visual images.
- Out of Country: Contemporary Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art
This exhibition contributed to launching Indigenous Australian artists from Queensland, and it raised further interest in high profile artists, including, Ken Thaiday, Dennis Nona, Aaron Raymond Meeks, Richard Bell, Judy Watson and others.
- Material Evidence: Jenny Watson Works on Fabric 1981-2005
Since the impact of post-structuralist and postmodern cultural theory in the early 1980s [Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard et al.] there has been considerable debate over the role of intentionality in painting and the possibilities for an autobiographical basis to painting practice. This is despite the fact that in the popular imagination there has always remained a strong belief that any artist's work contains significant autobiographical reference. Jenny Watson is perfectly placed to explore such potentialities because her practice has always drawn directly from her life experience and her career spans the significant theoretical shifts that have occurred through the last three decades.
- Darby Ross Jampijinpa: Make it good for the people
Research for this project extended over a number of years and involved Indigenous artists, community members, curators and directors of many major Australian museums. Full acknowledgements are listed in the catalogue (p.65) The aim was to bring to nati...