Welcome to GR Online, a new series of short-form articles that take aim at the moving target of contemporary culture as it’s whisked along the guide rails of innovations in digital media, globalisation and late-stage capitalism.
In 2023, we’re delighted to be publishing three regular online contributors: Jumaana Abdu, Sam Elkin and Amber Gwynne. In addition to work by these three stellar writers, we’ll also be publishing occasional pieces by other contributors throughout the year. Stay tuned!
Strike a pose
I grew up when women were viewed as decorative, appraised for their sexual currency. It’s hard to disassociate from powerful formative experiences. Particularly my childhood observations of glamour fused with my interest in the macabre.
A passing phase
I went to Tim’s Guitars years ago and I saw Grant Hart from Hüsker Dü do a solo thing and he had a Q&A after the solo. And some guy went, ‘How often do you practise guitar?’ And then Grant Hart said, ‘I never practise guitar, practising guitar gets in the way of my personality.’ And I was like, ‘Oh wow, that’s actually really true.’
Body of work
The ’50s were a time of tremendous optimism and energy, yet they also had a dark underbelly...
A serving of home
think we should be proud of where we come from and be proud of what this country can offer us. We’re unique in our food culture here – we should be embracing it, and we should ask for native produce.
Gut instinct
Using identical, machine-made food items accentuates the traces of consumption. In works where participation is open to the audience as co-creators, I have found there’s not just one way to consume...
Changing palates
We were accidental arrivals, I think is the best way to put it. My parents were refugees from Poland. They were Jewish citizens of Poland and they basically flipped a coin and made a run for it.
Recognition
In the second of a series of intergenerational exchanges and reflections on the links to and legacies of the...
Radical hope in the face of dehumanisation
First Nations peoples in settler-colonial Australia know what it is to be dehumanised, to exist in systems and structures...
Supercut
For emerging Brisbane printmaker Ruth Cho, art cuts both ways: it helps us reframe the past and understand who...
Enter the internationalist
What we can do is to look back on the time of Whitlam for encouragement – especially young lawyers and young citizens. Seize the moment: carpe diem. He sure seized the moment. That’s why learning from him in my own life – I think all of us can learn to be more courageous. Where there is injustice, we should seek to right the wrongs. That is what Whitlam demonstrated. That we could do a lot as a democratic nation.
The Whitlam legacy
In this first of a series of intergenerational exchanges and reflections on the links to and legacies of the...
Musique concrète
BRUTALISM IS THE Yoko Ono of architecture: love it or hate it (and most people land firmly on one...
