Issues

The declaration—WE DON’T GET YOUR ART EITHER—
is written into the pattern of a brick wall in Brisbane’s West End warehouse landscape. The words elude the gaze, but, once noticed, they endlessly play over in your mind. The writing is anonymous: who is the author, who is being addressed? Are these
sentiments aimed at other artists, ‘the public’, civicminded galleries, or anyone with a guilty conscience?
The frustrated clarion call awaits an answer that the ambiguity of art won’t permit. Art is a slippery slope.

Independent Press was launched to enable dialogue within and about Brisbane’s local art scene, providing
a platform for artists and writers. Since our first issue, Brisbane’s artist-run initiatives have multiplied in
number and grown in ambition. Currently, there are at least twenty ARIs operating within the inner city. They are the backbone of a frenetic, underground, DIY art scene, busily introducing new ideas and expanding knowledge.

This year’s Brisbane Artist Run Initiative Festival (BARI Festival) encompasses the efforts of these organisations, which embrace diverse artistic, musical, cinematic and curatorial agendas and the buzz of the city. Some see Brisbane’s blooming ARI scene as the resurgence of an early 1980s mentality. Back then, Brisbane’s artists, musicians, and performers experimented and collaborated for the hell of it, despite a hostile and conservative official culture. On the other hand, perhaps it is something entirely new, informed by new developments in contemporary art, changes in art education, and the perspectives of a new generation.

Brisbane’s ARIs are plugging into similar initiatives across Australia and, increasingly, the world. Enabled by the Internet, they are reaching out in ways unanticipated by cultural policy and funding programs. They are going viral. Like Graffiti Research Lab insurgents in MoMA or East London’s mole-man masterminding his underground labyrinth, they are busily infiltrating the system.

In the 2008 Biennale of Sydney, curator Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev argued that art repeats itself— that’s its nature. Revolutions are always also returns. We find patterns, ‘forms that turn’. But what shall we turn to now? This is the question artists are asking— and answering.

For this publication, the second issue of Independent Press, we asked Brisbane ARIs to contribute critical and
creative responses to their own programs. The result? An outpouring of evolutions, apologies, manifestos, confessions, and good advice; last hurrahs and birth certificates.

Enjoy.

Articles

proppaNOW More »

Lawrence English, Score for falling snow, 2010

TWO MOVEMENTS BY LAWRENCE ENGLISH More »

AASS More »

By Dr Judy Anderson

Delight runs wild through this fertile garden. More »

Sarah Werkmeister on the bad boys of art. More »

The Wandering Room (David Creed, Angela Rossitto, Sarah Werkmeister and Alex Cuffe), When Yamaguchi Isao, Communication Pods, 2009 You’re Around, 2009

A conversation between objects at The Wandering Room. More »

When You’re Around was the first exhibition in the 99 Melbourne St series that The Wandering Room curated. More »

AWKWARD by By Akiko Yamasaki. A Wandering Room show featuring work by James Watts, Kat Sawyer, David Nixon, Caselle Mountford, Alice Lang, Courtney Coombs, Kitten Party, and David Spooner. More »

To Heat, To Freeze, To Prick. By Danni Zuvela More »

I was totally fixated by the idea of an entity that disabled rational thought, that dis-embrained its subject, More »

Sally Golding and Joel Stern, Psycho Subtropics, 2010

PSYCHO SUBTROPICS, an Otherfilm exhibition. More »

City Studios offers emerging and established Creatives from a wide variety of disciplines a space to call home in More »

I love Love Love More »

Gross Bodies of Light was a site-specific exhibition, integrating the unique Brisbane colonial architecture with contemporary, ephemeral artworks that explored various concepts via light and sound. More »

Nine Lives started as a collaborative idea between friends that soon evolved into a dynamic exhibition space devoted to promoting the alternative contemporary art scene to brisbane. More »

Invitational was a collaborative curatorial project exhibited at Level in July 2010. More »

Issues

Issue 2

Independent Press #2

Spring 2010

Articles