Contemporary Australian Drawing #1
Palgrave Macmillan, $99.95 hb, 240 pp, 9781921394539
Contemporary Australian Drawing #1 by Janet McKenzie, with Irene Barberis and Christopher Heathcote
Just because something is being done right now doesn’t make it contemporary. On the contrary, the predicate ‘contemporary’ in contemporary art is the name for a problem, not a clarified or self-evident state of affairs. As Boris Groys puts it, ‘This is because the contemporary is actually constituted by doubt, hesitation, uncertainty, indecision – by the need for prolonged reflection, for a delay.’ Such experiences, however, are not especially high priorities in the world of corporate rationalisation.
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