Questa settimana a Art in America

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ONLINE NOW... OCTOBER 24, 2018 In our October issue, A.i.A. contributing editor Eleanor Heartney writes about a recent trip to Brisbane, Australia, where she visited several exhibitions of contemporary Aboriginal art. Heartney surveys a range of artists—including Fiona Foley, Judy Watson, Ryan Presley, and Richard Bell—who are contesting mainstream accounts of Australian history, which has thus far been narrated from the colonizer’s position. Presley, for example, fashions bank notes in which the official motifs of schooners and parliament buildings are replaced by portraits of Aboriginal warriors, farmers, and ranchers. “For an American, the issues raised by Australia’s Indigenous artists have a familiar ring,” Heartney writes. “One hears echoes of our own debates over reparations to the descendants of slaves and land rights owed to Native Americans, our battles over Confederate monuments.” This wasn’t Heartney’s first visit to Australia. Nearly a decade ago, in May 2009, she contributed a report on the Australian art scene focusing on several Australian artists who consider themselves to be “outsiders.” In an essay for our website, Helen Shaw discusses The Mile-Long Opera, a “civic chorale” performed by one thousand singers, which ran for six nights this month at New York’s High Line. Equal parts democratic art happening and corporate publicity event, the show raises troubling questions about the nexus of art and luxury in contemporary New York. “Wandering through the choir . . . I felt like a Roman emperor ambling through my gardens,” Shaw writes. “It was as though an attentive majordomo had arranged the palace servants for my amusement—as human torchieres, human music boxes, human sculptures.” Karen Green's second artbook, Frail Sister, was published this month by Siglio Press. The book, which features collages that incorporate a variety of archival material—postcards and stationery from World War II; old tape and photo corners; ration books and stamps, to name a few—is an investigation into the life of Green’s aunt who “disappeared” from the public record sometime in the middle of twentieth century. Adan Plunkett spoke to Green about the origins of her book and the challenges she faced in completing it. HISTORY WARS Australian reformers often speak of the silence that has muffled so much of the country’s history. Aboriginal artists are speaking up to break it. —Eleanor Heartney . . . Read more FROM THE ARCHIVES: IDENTITY AND LOCALE: FOUR AUSTRALIAN ARTISTS Australian contemporary art remains shaped by an outsider identity. Artists turn inward, reworking broader esthetic developments to uniquely Australian ends. —Eleanor Heartney . . . Read more WALK THIS WAY: AN OPERA ON THE HIGH LINE Was it an extravagant free public artwork, mounted in a city park as a gift to the people? Or a very expensive billboard, a glowing arrow pointing at a big new real-estate development? —Helen Shaw . . . Read more LOST AND FOUND: A CONVERSATION WITH KAREN GREEN “What I want for the reader is that exciting, disorienting feeling of finding a box of family secrets in Grandma’s attic.” —Adam Plunkett . . . Read more REVIEWS Our critics take stock of the Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art in Latvia, Angela Heisch at 106 Green in New York, and Julie Becker at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London.