Prepare to be Hijacked!

Regular MGA visitors would recall last year’s exhibition Presentation/Representation: photography from Germany which featured, amongst the other nine contemporary German artists, the work of Heidi Specker.

During Presentation/Representation’s tour to Sydney, Heidi Specker and Theo Deutinger worked together as part of an artist-in-residence project at the Sydney College of the Arts. The resulting body of work ‘Help me I am blind’ is being displayed at RMIT Gallery from 23 July–11 September 2010.

Which is just enough time to whet your appetite for some more German-Australian photographic connections. Coming to MGA at the end of October is Hijacked 2 Australia/Germany. Combining the work of 32 German and Australian photographers the book and exhibition provide an opportunity for cross-cultural conversations.

The Melbourne leg of Hijacked 2 will open at MGA on Sat 30 October 2010 and features a number of MGA Collection artists including Georgia Metaxas, Rebecca Ann Hobbs and Polixeni Papapetrou alongside some photographers whose work would be familiar from past MGA exhibitions both solo and as part of the William & Winifred Bowness Photography Prize: Louis Porter, Bronek Kozka and Michael Corridore.

Image: Heidi SPECKER D'ELSI Eis 1-3 2007, Digital Fine Art Print courtesy of the artist

Christian Thompson Survey Show

Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi has just slipped this survey show into its program, after something else fell through, but it's an inspired 'filler' - not to be missed!

"Christian Bumbarra Thompson, a Bidjara man of the Kunja Nation, is a photographer, conceptual and performance artist. He is a third wave Indigenous Australian artist whose work and unique experience come from an emersion in the social and cultural zeitgeist of the 80s and 90s as an Aboriginal person. His work is a leading force in the exploration of issues of identity, race and history in Australia. In 2009 Thompson completed a DASARTS residency (Advanced Studies for Performing Arts) in Amsterdam and a residency at The Centre for Future Art Research at Arizona State University, USA. He will be the first Aboriginal person to attend Oxford University after recently being awarded the inaugural Charlie Perkins Scholarship for International post-graduate studies and will undertake a residency at Blast Theory Art Collective in the UK in August 2010. This survey show brings together photographic and video work from the last 10 years of Christian Thompson’s impressive career." (Press release)

-Stephen Zagala

On 'Art Nation' this Sunday

For those who can't make a trip up to the Museum of Sydney to catch Up the cross: Rennie Ellis & Wesley Stacey, the exhibition will feature this Sunday on ABC's Art Nation (formerly Sunday Arts) including interviews with Inara Walden. 'Sir' Wayne Martin & Carmen.

Art Nation is on this Sunday at 5.30pm - ABC1 and 7.00pm - ABC2

Up the cross: Rennie Ellis & Wesley Stacey currently on display at Museum of Sydney explores the 'summer of 1970-71 in Kings Cross through the photographs of Rennie Ellis and Wesley Stacey, who together captured the sights, sounds and pulsating rhythms of life on the streets and in the clubs and private pads of Sydney's infamous red-light district.'