Image: Bernie Slater, We are knowing who we ourselves are (detail) 2006.Octopus 6: We Know Who We Are is the sixth annual exhibition in a series exploring current trends in arts practice locally and nationally.
This year’s exhibition presents the work of six artists from around the country, including Ash Keating (VIC), Merran Sierakowski (NT) and Matthew Hunt (WA).
“Their art draws from living in the environment of Australian society; which recently has experienced increasingly restrictive positions from national government on the constitution of our citizenry and writing of our histories, applying pressure to prescribe who we are,” says curator Zara Stanhope.
While I thought too many of the artworks included in this year's exhibition were overly simplistic and lacking in subtlety and complexity, I do think this image (taken from the cover of the exhibition catalogue) is extremely striking. Plus I thought it was time I included a little visual art on this bloody blog of mine!
Where: Octopus 6, Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces,
3 comments:
I liked Ash Keating's Commonwealth Games ad poster creature.
Me too - it was one of the few pieces in the exhibition that encouraged lateral thought, I felt.
I like the poster monster best myself for the same reasons. Though it is nice to see some political works its good to encourage some discourse in a largly apathetic society (perhaps not in Fitzroy at a gallery though.)
I agree that subtlety was lacking but I am struggling with the same issues in my work at the moment, it is a hard to strike a balance... how didactic we want to be. Do I want every viewer to get the message, and if not, does it become esoteric?
I have been to both extremes and they have thier audiences and merits.
Cheers
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