Taking as its starting point four contemporary visual artists whose work utilizes the conventions of museum display and collecting practices, Memory Fragments examines how these artists have reconfigured dominant representations of Australian history and identity, including viewpoints often marginalized by gender and race. Echoing Walter Benjamin’s reflections on history and time, this interdisciplinary volume will be of interest to scholars working in the arts as well as modern and postmodern cultural studies.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Collecting Junk/Collecting Memory
1. The Trash of History: The Timeliness of Benjamin’s Dialectical Images
2. Fossilising the Commodity: Ricky Swallow’s Art of Crafting Time in Postmodern Culture
3. "China China": Autoethnography as Literal Translation in Ah Xian’s Porcelain Forms
4. Melancholy Debris: Black Humour and Colonial Memory in Work by Julie Gough
5. Australian Modernity: The Metaphorics of Mining in Donna Marcus’ Compositions
After-Images: Visualising Difference
Works Cited
Introduction: Collecting Junk/Collecting Memory
1. The Trash of History: The Timeliness of Benjamin’s Dialectical Images
2. Fossilising the Commodity: Ricky Swallow’s Art of Crafting Time in Postmodern Culture
3. "China China": Autoethnography as Literal Translation in Ah Xian’s Porcelain Forms
4. Melancholy Debris: Black Humour and Colonial Memory in Work by Julie Gough
5. Australian Modernity: The Metaphorics of Mining in Donna Marcus’ Compositions
After-Images: Visualising Difference
Works Cited