Close Quarters: Contemporary Art from Australia and New Zealand
Dates:
9 October – 28 November 1998
Artists:
Lyell Barry, L. Budd et al., Destiny Deacon, Mikala Dwyer, Simryn Gill, Eugene Hansen, Michael Harrison, Gail Hastings, Sean Kerr, Danius Kesminas, Tony de Lautour, eX de Medici, Ani O’Neill, Natalie Robertson, Marie Shannon, Terry Urbahn, H.J. Wedge, Constanze Zikos
Curators:
Christina Barton, Zara Stanhope, and Clare Williamson
Location
Monash University Gallery
Monash University, Clayton Campus
About the exhibition
Presented across Monash University Gallery and the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art before touring nationally and to Aotearoa New Zealand, Close Quarters: Contemporary Art from Australia and New Zealand featured new work by nine artists from each country. With a curatorial aim to extend trans-Tasman artistic dialogue, the exhibition created a visual conversation whereby local specificities were brought into relation with other realities beyond.
Many of the artists drew on the contemporary inheritance of colonial histories, while others engaged with popular culture and the ‘everyday’ on a personal or social scale. Catalogue essayist Christopher Chapman discussed the exhibition in relation to the global youth culture of Generation X—a generation thought to be ‘too cynical to be a target market’, yet, in fact, ‘voracious consumers of culture’ .
Acknowledgements
This project was assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body, and supported by Creative New Zealand and the Chartwell Trust.
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Image: Mikala Dwyer, I.O.U. 1998, Perspex, Flokati, television set, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist and Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney. Photo: David Corben