articles

Welcome to ‘stock’ no. 7, the second last for 2008. We received a great deal positive feedback for our last edition, increasing both readership and membership. For this edition we publish views on several topical themes - Nancy Mauro-Flude writes about the artist/machine relationship and the use of computer code in art and Yvette Watt tackles the issue of artist as activist. Included, too, is a review of the work of Ben De Nardi by Craig Johnson, a curatorial essay of the exhibition Geo Nature by Lucy Hawthorne and Jack Robins has submitted edited video transcripts of two recent artists’ forums held at CAST in relation to the exhibitions Fold and Redrawing.

Lucy Hawthorne and Jack Robins have joined the ‘stock’ as editors. Their contributions are most appreciated.

I write here as a ‘nix machine neophyte or ‘newbie’ although, for at least a decade, I have been involved with human machine interaction; for example, inter-mixing dance theatre pieces with software for live and/or on-line telematic performance situations, or circuit bending (1) electronic toys in punk bands to push the instruments into other dimensions.

The role of the artist in society is complex and multifaceted, but there is a basic expectation that the work of contemporary artists will in some way respond to and/or reflect the time in which it was made. While this can mean nothing more at times than a certain stylistic or aesthetic approach consistent with the time the work was made, at the other end of the spectrum it can involve artists tackling current socio-political issues through their work.

The Drowning World assembled Ben De Nardi’s last works from Sydney’s Camperdown studios (2004–8). The exhibition was not held in a gallery, but in the artist’s private studio. The event was more like a scene out of a mythologised, vanguard Berlin than the disinfected and disaffected Sydney we are told about.

‘Geometric Nature’. The title of this exhibition seems a contradiction in terms. Geometry and nature are frequently perceived as opposites and it seems odd that artists would want to depict the natural environment with such an unsympathetic human construct.