Christine Judith Nicholls

Watch Your Language, Eh?

The first and probably most important piece of advice that anyone can give to prospective teachers of Aboriginal children is to ‘watch your language’. Whether or not the children speak an Aboriginal language as their first language, a Creole or a Pidgin or a version of Aboriginal English, with standard English as either a second language or second dialect, opportunities for miss-communication and non-communication abound.

Sculpture Meets Ecological Science: Marijana Tadic's Wandering Albatross Exhibitions and the Concept of Philopatry

The concept of philopatry is most often applied to animal, bird and insect populations. As such, it is closely connected to the disciplines of zoology, animal science, behavioural ecology and non-human genetics. Only rarely (in reality, almost never) is this concept deployed in relation to human population movement. Yet, as a result of colonisation, globalisation, intermarriage, wars, political unrest and other diasporic forces, increasing numbers of migrants and asylum seekers now settle in places far away from their countries of birth. Travel, often involving long distances back and forth between peoples adoptive and natal homelands, and frequently taking place on a repetitive, seasonal, basis, has become a significant contemporary phenomenon. In the Yugoslav-born, Australian conceptual sculptor Marijana Tadics recent installation and sculptural exhibitions, collectively titled Wandering Albatross, exhibited in South Australia February-March 2011, the artist has appropriated the concept of philopatry, applying it to ideas about contemporary patterns of migrancy with thrilling conceptual and aesthetic results.

Conceptualisations of Self in Contemporary Interactive Artwork: A Case Study of Lynette Wallworth's Duality of Light

This paper, which is contextualised in terms of the broader history of the moving image, examines new media artist Lynette Wallworth’s installation Duality of Light with respect to recent advances in neuroscientific research [1, 8]. These have led to greater understanding of how the brain processes visual imagery. Of greatest relevance to Wallworth’s work is the discovery that the binding of the largely anatomically segregated attributes of colour, motion and faces occurs asynchronously and is subject to a temporal hierarchy. Moreover, such binding is post-conscious. Further to this, following Gansing [3], while simultaneously factoring in these recent neuroscientific advances, the idea of ‘interactivity’ is challenged. The inadequacy of ‘interactive’ as an undifferentiated descriptor, often uniformly applied to diverse new media works, is also highlighted. Works such as those created by Wallworth – whose work is informed intuitively by these recent neuroscientific findings – reveal the shortcomings of such homogenising terminology. Finally, this exploratory paper, which will form the basis of further work, demonstrates the interwoven nature of the aforementioned subject matter and thematic concerns.

Embodying Affect: The Stolen Generations, the History Wars and PolesApart by Indigenous New Media Artist r e a

In her 2009 new media artwork PolesApart, Australian Aboriginal artist r e a, of the Gamilaraay people in northern New South Wales, explores issues relating to the Stolen Generations of Aboriginal children. Based on the personal experiences of her grandmother and great aunt as ‘stolen children’, r e a amplifies the work’s familial dimension by enacting the role of the protagonist fleeing from forced servitude. This paper looks at PolesApart in the broader context of the interrelated phenomena of the stolen generations and the so-called ‘history wars’. It is posited that the power, immediacy and affective dimensions of (moving) visual imagery have been instrumental in shifting Australians’ knowledge about the stolen generations from the margins into the mainstream. The capacity of the moving image to ‘embody affect’ [13], it is argued, has enabled many more Australians than previously to appreciate the historical implications and continuing ramifications of this prolonged episode in Australian history. This has in turn led to the development of a more sympathetic public understanding of the phenomenon of the stolen generations as ‘lived experience’. In turn this broader social knowledge, and its integration into our shared cultural heritage, has contributed to Australians’ general receptiveness to the official Apology issued to members of the stolen generations by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in Federal Parliament (13th February 2008). It is also the case that the popular reception of mainstream stolen generation-themed movies has influenced Australians’ openness to the themes and issues explored in contemporary non-mainstream new media work such as r e as PolesApart. In the latter work, through the use of the vehicle of her own body, r e a demonstrates that the personal is inescapably political, and vice versa.

God and Country: An Analysis of Works by Three Contemporary Indigenous Artists

The author examines three works by three contemporary Indigenous artists all of whom are practising Christians. Their art works incorporate Christian imagery, themes or messages in ways that merge with some aspects of Indigenous religion or spiritual practice.