Art, Artists, Law and Power
The Experimental Art Foundation is presenting a major season of work by Australian artists investigating and exploring some of the power structures that surround us, including paintings and texts by Harry Wedge about black Australian experience, computer generated images and videos by Patricia Piccinini looking at tissue research, an installation by Scott Redford on ideas of genius and the transgressive icon, a World Wide Web Site and installation by Andrew Petrusevics "Liberals Descending the Staircase", and work made of chopped-up bank notes by John Reid.
Lawyers Guns & Money is a project which addresses ideas and expressions of 'law'. It explores areas such as the legislation of information, the placing of the artist, of individual 'rights' against the 'social', the relationships between western and indigenous models of law and touches on, amongst other things, multi-nationals, warfare, surveillance, biology, the police, the revolutionary, the criminal, lawyers, guns and money.
Artists, through their representation of Kings, Queens, martyrs and other figures of State and religious significance, have always been central in the iconography and understanding of the power structures of the society around us. At the same time artists have often been represented, or represented themselves, as somehow being outside of the law or as 'invisible legislators'. The romantic rhetoric of the 'outlaw ' has been given currency with present day ideas of the 'transgressive'. However these positionings can't fully express the complex dialogues and difficult complicities which we, as individuals, have with expressions of law, power, control and morality.
Lawyers Guns & Money explores the diversity of ways in which artists help make visible some of these narratives and dialogues around us. The artists represented are:
19 June-13 July Aleks Danko, John Reid, Andrew Petrusevics, Harry Wedge
17 July-10 August Sally Mannall, Destiny Deacon, Scott Redford
14 August-7 September Rebecca Cummins, Mike Stevenson, Laurens Tan, Patricia Piccinini
As part of Lawyers Guns & Money, the Art Gallery of South Australia is presenting works from its collection that illuminate and relate to the themes of the project. There will be talks on these works as part of the Art Gallery lunch-time talks series.
In development with ABC Radio National is a new sound work using anecdotes from different people around Australia about their brushes with the law: and a special feature on The Law Report in July.
The texts form part of a 84 page publication by the Experimental Art Foundation which documents the event and contains essays by curators Richard Grayson and Linda Marie Walker, and by Angus Trumble and Sarah Thomas from the Art Gallery of South Australia.
Launched by Billy Crawford, Project Officer of the Visual Arts Craft Fund, Australia Council, 6pm Thursday 19 June 1997.
Lawyers, Guns & Money has been generously assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
Lawyers, Guns & Money logo designed by Andrew Petrusevics.