Artscape

Tuesday, 21 October 2008
10pm

Not Quite Art series 2 is an insightful and humourous journey through an increasingly fragmented cultural landscape - where the internet and communications have given us a set of cultural choices and influences unimaginable even a decade ago.

Tuesday, 14 October 2008
10.00pm

Not Quite Art series 2 is an insightful and humourous journey through an increasingly fragmented cultural landscape - where the internet and communications have given us a set of cultural choices and influences unimaginable even a decade ago.

Presenter and writer Marcus Westbury is back and has unearthed an eclectic and amusing mix of artists, writers, critics and musicians whose work has found their audiences - often in the millions - through networks well outside the traditional ideas of where 'Australian culture' lives. Not Quite Art traces how our culture is shifting from the hierarchical, local and parochial structures to a global and networked world where Australian artists have audiences around the world, yet often remain relatively unknown in their local community.

Episode 1: Culture Shock

Tuesday, 09 September 2008
10.00pm

Is Chinese modern art the greatest movement since Cubism? That's the opinion of many western experts stunned by the quality of work in China today and the pace at which it has emerged on the world scene since the end of Mao.

Artists who lived in rural poverty only a decade ago now shake their heads in wonder as their works fetch millions of dollars in London and New York. So dramatically have their lives been transformed that they've swapped their rickety bicycles for the latest in luxury cars. And Beijing now stands as a major art centre alongside New York, London and Paris.

In this program, art historian Evan Hughes visits some of the most interesting and important artist studios in Beijing today. These artists, whose fortunes have been transformed by the vast sums now being offered for their works, include Yang Jinsong, Qi Zhilong, the Luo Brothers, Chang Xugong, Le Jin and Chen Weimin.

Tuesday, 12 August
10.00pm

Widely regarded as Australia's greatest living artist, the exuberant 80-year-old John Olsen talks with acclaimed art commentator Betty Churcher about his life's work.

Still painting with all his creative energy in his studio in the NSW Southern Highlands, Olsen speaks of the influence of poetry and Spain on his art and his restless love of Sydney Harbour and the Australian bush.

Now at the height of his creative powers, Olsen has won many awards including the prestigious Archibald Prize in 2005 for his self-portrait Janus Faced, in which he is depicted as the ancient Greek god who is capable of looking both ways at once.

"Janus had the ability to look backwards and forwards, and when you get to my age you have a hell of a lot to think about," he says.
Olsen offers a rare insight through his private journals and sketchbooks into his creative process and love of painting.

Tuesday, 22 July
10pm

Revolutions: Forms That Turn is the 16th incarnation of the Biennale of Sydney and is curated by artistic director Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev.

Artscape: The Art Life at The Biennale of Sydney looks at the work of some of the 186 artists represented in this year's Biennale and their individual approaches to the notion of revolution - from the literal to the ideological.

Presented by Andrew Frost, the program takes a tour of the Biennale's various venues, meets and talks to key artists, curators and organisers behind the scenes, samples fine wines at the show's rolling series of grand openings and contemplates a revolution led from the top down.

Artists' work featured in the program includes Mike Parr, Dora Garcia, Pierre Huyghe, Stuart Ringholt, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, and Sharmila Samant.

Tuesday, 08 July
10pm

Welsh-born Peter Greenaway is best known for his filmmaking during the 1980s and 90s, directing visually sumptuous films such as The Cook, The Thief, His Wife And Her Lover, Belly of an Architect and A Zed and Two Noughts. His films have polarised viewers, garnering international accolades and audience walk-outs. A fearless visionary and provocateur, he rejected narrative storytelling in favour of his trademark exploration of sex and death.

Visiting Australia as the keynote speaker for the 2008 Australian International Documentary Conference, Greenaway spoke to Virginia Trioli about his body of work, and also what he's been up to since his last major feature film release in Australia.

In 2002 he declared cinema dead. "Well, I'll give you a date, it's the 31st of September 1983, which is the date now that most people reckon that the zapper or remote control was introduced into living rooms of the world…"

Tuesday, 17 June
10.00pm

Jandamarra is the epic theatre event produced by the Black Swan Theatre Company and Bunuba Films for the 2008 Perth International Arts Festival.

This week, Artists At Work's special on Jandamarra follows the production's move from the rehearsal room onto a massive set with seven-metre high facades representing the Napier Range.

Tuesday, 13 May 2008
10.00pm

Artscape's popular documentary series Artists At Work returns to ABC TV.
This week we enter the rhinestone-studded, fertile and fruity world of William Eicholtz, one of Australia's most distinctive contemporary sculptors.
"With my sculptures I'm trying to create a feeling of sensuality- but also a sense of fun with a very camp sense of the truth revealed through artifice", says Eicholtz.
Winner of the 2005 Helen Lempriere Sculpture Award, William's work respectfully nods to European art history whilst winking wryly at Australia's pastoral heritage. In William's world, bush icons, like his favoured sheep, are given a baroque make-over complete with adorable dog-like faces and abundant fleeces overflowing with leaves, flowers and fruit.

In the remote West Australian Aboriginal community of Bidyadanga, a new art movement has emerged. At its helm, is a young Aboriginal man, Daniel Walbidi, who lives in a modest home with his parents and extended family.

Daniel was born and raised in West Australia but his parents, grandparents and extended Yulparija tribe come from an area around the Percival Lakes in the Great Sandy Desert (Wirnpa country).

From the 1950s the Yulparija gradually drifted towards the coast, either lured in by pastoralists and missionaries, or to rejoin family who had already left the desert due to severe drought.

Elizabeth Jolley, the great Australian scriptwriter, novelist and teacher is the subject of this week's Artscape documentary series.

The half-hour documentary examines the writer's life and work and looks at her legacy through the eyes of three former students.

For many who encountered her, Elizabeth Jolley was an enigma. Those who loved her subversive humour and striking characters of fiction were baffled when they met a woman who was very polite and perhaps a little dotty. But whether or not this public persona was a deliberately constructed Miss Marple routine, those who knew her well saw the sharp mind that informed the acutely-observed worlds of her short stories and novels.

10:00PM
ARTSCAPE: IOU: MARY HARDY
New Series Tuesday, 12 February 2008

This documentary is the first in a threepart series examining the life and work of three major Australian artists; comedian Mary Hardy, painter Lloyd Rees and writer, Elizabeth Jolley.

The half-hour documentary, IOU: Mary Hardy, celebrates the brilliant but largely forgotten talent who paved the way for female entertainers in this country.

Mary Hardy is an unwritten chapter in the history of Australian television. She was the Queen of television and radio in Melbourne in the 1960s and 1970s and won seven Logie awards for the 'Most Popular Female' in Victoria. She was a maverick who redefined women's roles in the medium for decades.