Australia’s Aboriginal cave art is at risk of disappearance within 50 years, according to an expert quoted in the Guardian‘s recent investigation of the the threats facing the prehistoric art.
Australia
Posted inArt
A Documentary for the Witch of Kings Cross, Australia’s Persecuted Occult Artist
Filmmaker Sonia Bible considers Rosaleen Norton “the most persecuted artist in Australian history.” With a new documentary, she’s hoping to set a more accurate record of the life of woman who in the 1940s and 50s scandalized the country with her occult art, and bold sexuality.
Posted inNews
Australian Government Cuts Over $100M from Arts and Culture
Australia’s conservative government will nearly halve its budget deficit in the coming fiscal year, in the process eliminating more than AUS$100 million (US$93.6 million) in funding for arts and culture programs, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
Posted inNews
Five Artists Officially Withdraw from Sydney Biennale
Five artists have announced their withdrawal from the Biennale of Sydney, ArtsHub reported today, the latest in an ongoing controversy over one of the Biennale’s major sponsors, Transfield.
Posted inNews
Artists Call for Boycott of Sydney Biennale Over Sponsorship
A group of artists have threatened to boycott the Biennale of Sydney in protest of one of the exhibition’s major sponsors, a company called Transfield, which contracts with the Australian government to manage mandatory detention centers for asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus Island in Papua New Guinea.
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Digital Repatriation Through an Aboriginal Art Archive
Artifacts in museums — in an effort for preservation — are often placed out of reach of the communities with which they are entwined. One way museums are bridging this divide is digitization, and with this purpose in mind, the South Australian Museum is currently undertaking a massive project to photograph and catalogue each and every one of the objects in their Aboriginal Material Culture Collection.
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Burning Suburbia With Paint and Flames
The American suburbs are already surreal places, perfectly planned roads dotted with identical homes infinitely replicated across the country. In his two-year Suburban project, Australian artist Ian Strange radically transformed these places into something even more otherworldly with paint and flames.
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Peripheral Visions: Contemporary Art from Australia at Garis & Hahn
Distilling the ethos of a national avant-garde is a daring act, but curator Marissa Bateman’s goal is to accomplish just that in Peripheral Visions: Contemporary Art from Australia at Garis & Hahn. The exhibition aims to showcase the most effervescent artists of Australia’s contemporary art scene, marking the New York debut of the participants. Artists include Australia’s Venice Biennale representatives Vernon Ah Kee, Claire Healy, and Sean Corderio as well as Joel Beerden, Stephen Bird, Nicholas Folland, Dan McKewen, Amanda Marburg, and Phoebe Rathmell. 
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Beware Street Artists Bearing Thought-provoking Gifts
MELBOURNE, Australia — Melbourne-based street artist CDH specializes in presenting audacious and difficult challenges to institutions that explore the illicit nature of street art. Disguised in a bright safety vest, he is well-spoken and calm and on one occasion his demeanor has even been able to convince a few Melbourne police officers to help him install a street art work. He believes in giving art to the city if they want it or not and that art can be created even if permission is not granted. He dares people to destroy what is clearly art and so traps them in participating in his project.
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Largest Urban Art Festival in the Southern Hemisphere Open Nov 4
Other than having a name that sounds like it could be a gay bar in a seedy part of town, Sydney’s Cockatoo Island is going to be hosting the largest urban art festival in the southern hemisphere starting November 4 and continuing until to December 11.
Posted inOpinion
Is Australian Aboriginal Art Part of the African Diaspora?
Recently, I received a press release from the Brooklyn’s Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA) heralding their new show, Saying No: Reconciling Spirituality and Resistance in Indigenous Australian Art. My first reaction was astonishment. I didn’t understand how Australian Aboriginals fit into the mission of an institution concerned with the African diaspora?
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Australian Millionaire’s Museum Tries Something New (And Old)
In 1999, the National Gallery of Australia cancelled a planned exhibition of Sir Charles Saatchi’s Sensation, a collection of art focused on the work of the Young British Artists of the 1990s, on the grounds of the possible offensiveness of many of the works included in the show. Several of those works and artists are now on display in the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) recently opened in Hobart, a small city on the island of Tasmania in the south of Australia. Where the National Gallery quailed at the idea of exhibiting work by Damien Hirst, Chris Ofili and the Chapman brothers, MONA has no such qualms today. Works by these artists feature alongside 400 other pieces from the private collection of David Walsh, a Tasmanian millionaire gambler, art collector and founder of MONA.