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Disobedience

Article released: Sunday, 04 September, 2005

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In our contemporary cultural climate artists are confronted with two choices. They can produce prototypes for social manipulation, in the service of the advertising and fashion industries, thereby lending a human face to the excesses of late capitalism, or they can continue a stubborn tradition of social criticism and subversion.

This exhibition, Disobedience, will present the work of a number of local and overseas artists who make works that register issues of social justice or protest against the brutal excesses of economic globalisation, both locally and internationally.

The artists include; Beluchi weavers from Afghanistan, Alexander Brener and Dmitry Vilensky from Russia, Shilpa Gupta from India, Michael Goldberg and Kendell Geers, who have both worked in South Africa, documentary photographer Dean Sewell, and Suzann Victor, a resident Australian from Singapore. The local housing activist collective Squatspace, and well- known Australian artists Raquel Ormella and Gordon Bennett also contribute work.

The exhibition is sponsored and curated by the Centre for Contemporary Art and Politics at the University of New South Wales. The Centre was formed in 2003 to promote new forms of political intervention in both the theory and practice of art. It has sponsored a number of exhibitions, conferences and publications dealing with the communication of political issues, and artistic intervention.

Disobedience will follow the 2005 Sydney Social Forum, and a discussion/workshop, a film showing, and talks by participating artists will accompany it.

Disobedience is curated by Zanny Begg, and David McNeill.

Opening Friday 9 September 5.30-7.30pm. The exhibition will be opened by Will Saunders, one of the two activists who painted "NO WAR" on the Sydney Opera House, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq.

Artists' talk - Friday 9 September 1-2pm at Ivan Dougherty Gallery with artists Dmitry Vilensky, Raquel Ormella, Michael Goldberg and curators, David McNeill and Zanny Begg.

Forum - at COFA Spring Fair, Saturday 10 September 12pm, College of Fine Arts E Block Room 101.

Illustrated catalogue available with an essays on the nature of current political art written by Anna Munster, Ilaria Vanni, Zanny Begg and David McNeill.

DISOBEDIENCE
9 September - 15 October 2005

Gallery Hours: Monday to Saturday 10-5 (closed Sunday and public holidays)
For further information, please contact Annabel Pegus or Felicity Fenner at Ivan Dougherty Gallery.