Ruth Skilbeck
Photojournalist artists feature in the Destruction & Disruption ’artists protest issue’ of Arts Features International published before the 2019 election in Australia, which documents that time of social activism by artists and local communities opposed to destruction of the natural and built environment and gentrification by acts of government and big business. And for increasing ways of community healing, engagement, and collaboration through art and generosity. Featured are pieces on local opposition to Destination NSW’s approved Supercars motor race in Newcastle, by Dr Christine Everingham, Therese Doyle, and Newcastle East Residents Group. The Big Rev Up Benefit Auction of artworks for the Stop Adani coal mine Protest; Bob Brown’s Stop Adani speech, and the residents’ opposition to displacement and redevelopment of their homes in Sydney’s inner-city Waterloo, Redfern and Alexandria, documented by Suellen Symons. The ’First Artists Announcement’ of NIRIN the 22nd Biennale of Sydney, with a healing ceremony at Cell Block Theatre at the National Art School. The (successful) artists boycott of an earlier Sydney Biennale in protest at the contract award to the Board chairman’s company (a Biennale sponsor) to profit from refugee detention camps. Works by Wang Zhiyuan. Exhibitions: Suellen Symons’ Strange Paradise (Redfern Then and Now). Ella Dreyfus’s Under Twenty-Seven and essay by Professor Catharine Lumby. Dr Deborah van Heekeren’s Disruption. A review by Silvia Pease. Jeremy Gluck’s manifesto and his collaborations with Don Tyler, and Rosemary Osbourne. Artworks by Natasha Williams, and Luciano Prisco. A play by Vee Malnar. Writings and photographs by Ruth Skilbeck.
