
How to be a prime minister
The task ahead for Anthony Albanese in restoring the idea that governments should seek to make the country betterOctober 2011
Arts & Letters
Performance art masterpiece
A man sits slumped in a chair; he wears a black suit, white shirt and no tie. His right trouser leg is ripped across the thigh revealing the word ‘alien’ branded into his skin. This is a six-hour endurance piece. During this time his lips, eyes and ears are sewn together, rough surgical sutures cross his face, blood and iodine solution run from the wounds onto his white shirt. The man can’t speak; his vision is impaired. Before him a huge mirror reflects the viewers, mostly standing back against the clean white walls, secondary witnesses to the trauma enacted on the artist’s body.
The text along one wall incites us to ‘CLOSE THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS’. In a separate room excerpts from Not the Hilton: Immigration Detention Centres: Inspection Report, published in 2000, are projected onto the walls. Parr’s action is an empathetic gesture, in recognition of the trauma experienced by ‘illegal’ immigrants who were, at the time, sewing their lips shut as a protest against their prolonged incarceration.
Mike Parr consistently uses his body as a site for radical actions that explore the psychopathology of people and society. Staged almost a decade ago, this powerful work still resonates politically and speaks to the nation’s shame.
—Anne Marsh
How to be a prime minister
The task ahead for Anthony Albanese in restoring the idea that governments should seek to make the country betterThe edge of their seats
Lessons from Gilmore, Australia’s most marginal electorateThe future of the Liberal Party
Peter Dutton doesn’t just have a talent problem on his handsGhosts in the war machine
Does the military attract violent misanthropists, or are they forged in murky theatres of war?The dream machine: The 59th Venice Biennale
Curator Cecilia Alemani’s long overdue Biennale overwhelmingly features female artists and champions indigenous voices and other minoritiesMission statement: Daniel Boyd’s ‘Treasure Island’
An AGNSW exhibition traces the development of the Indigenous artist’s idiosyncratic technique, which questions ideas of perceptionShades of grey: Kerstin Thompson Architects
The lauded Melbourne-based architectural firm showcase a rare ability to sensitively mediate between the old and the newFear as folk: ‘Men’
Writer/director Alex Garland’s latest film is an unsubtle but ambitious pastoral horror, mixing the Christian with the classicalGhosts in the war machine
Does the military attract violent misanthropists, or are they forged in murky theatres of war?A dog’s breakfast
Notes on John Hughes’s plagiarism scandalApp trap: ‘Chloe’
‘Sex Education’ writer Alice Seabright’s new psychological thriller probing social media leads this month’s streaming highlights‘The Picasso Century’ at the NGV
The NGV’s exhibition offers a fascinating history of the avant-garde across the Spanish artist’s lifetime