Filmmaker Haydn Keenan has spent the past five years pouring through secret files that ASIO kept on potential enemies of the state in the 1960s and 1970s. The result is a fascinating exhibition of files in Sydney, writes Kate Horowitz.
Culture / The Arts / Art & Design
A real book with real hyperlinks?
German artist Maria Fischer has taken the concept of website hyperlinks and created a book that connects, with real coloured threads, keywords to related topics, writes Diana Adams.
PHOTO GALLERY 
The 54th Venice Biennale
This year’s Venice’s Biennale art exhibition contains bold and bracing works, including an eerie yellow room, a ‘Gunpowder Forest’ and an intricate cobweb-like structure made of metal poles.
My Cup Of Tea: Art galleries are still in the business of public service
The 150th anniversary of the founding of the National Gallery of Victoria is a good time to take stock of our cultural institutions. Galleries and libraries are in many ways models of what “public service” can be in the year 2011.
PHOTO GALLERY Colour photographs of the great depression
Rare colour photographs of The Great Depression, owned by the US Library of Congress, have surfaced online in a beautiful collection published by Mail Online.
Julian Assange and the wobbliness of pictorial art
W H Chong discusses the trouble with text vs. pictures in understanding the image of important cultural figures, and how with his new print of Julian Assange, what you see is what you get.
Don Whyte’s Offcuts: where art really is the bomb
Every year Don Whyte, who runs a Darwin-based framing shop, holds Offcuts, an exhibition up there with the best anywhere in the NT. Bob Gosford chews the fat with Whyte and contemplates where art and explosions collide.
Knitrocheted marsupial judges
The other day First Dog on the Moon was having a conversation on Twitter about…knitted potoroo lawyers. And low and behold: a clever soul actually made him some.
The new standard for art prizes: “It’s a lottery!”
Sulman Prize judge, artist Richard Bell, explained how he arrived at his choice: I did it by lottery,” thus setting a new precedent for judging art.
Presbyterian Jesus death notice
W H Chong spotted a couple of…unusual signs including one from a Presbyterian Church and another from a local council.
My Cup Of Tea: Hatched in Perth, visual artists make it big
One of the best-known graduate art shows iopens tonight at the Perth Institute for Contemporary Art. Hatched is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year and has again attracted a vibrant field of 35 of the country’s most promising talents.
Free speech fight at RMIT uni: sacked lecturer beats the bureaucracy
It was a court case pitting the might of Melbourne’s RMIT university bureaucracy against the artists that lend them credibility, and for once the creative community came up trumps.
My Cup Of Tea: In the world of art, everything new is popular again
New art is not just challenging — it’s also very popular. Crikey arts correspondent Ben Eltham fought through the crowds at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art to find a vibrant and pleasing exhibition demonstrating what contemporary art should be.
The prosaic magic of the post-it artiste
Sarah McConnell has an unusual hobby: whenever she sees something funny she draws it on a post-it note and marks the time. McConnell now has over 1100 “hourlies” and chats about them in this interview with SpooK Magazine.
How toy ads reinforce gender stereotypes
A look at the language used in advertisements for children’s toys finds them deeply gendered. Boys toys refer to “battle”, “power”, “hero” and “action”, while girl ads speak of “love”, “fun”, “magic” and “babies”.
The monstrous beauty of John Martin
Nineteenth century artist John Martin presented painting as theatre, with huge and colourful pictures full of shock and awe pitched to the bible reading public. Richard Dorment reflects on the provocative and enthralling nature of Martin’s “monstrosities.”
How to get started with digital comics
Digital comic books are a vast improvement from the hard copy form, offering better range and a more enjoyable reading experience. Whitson Gordon provides a how-to guide for starting a digital comics collection.
My Cup Of Tea: Shall we dance? Unique challenges confront a vibrant form
Last weekend’s National Dance Forum shows an art form building national connections. But there are challenges in its ephemeral form and undeserved reputation as being difficult to understand.
PHOTO GALLERY 
Winners of the 2011 Brit Insurance Design Awards
A stylish energy efficient lightbulb took the top gong in this year’s Brit Insurance Design Awards. Other winners include an Open Air library and robotically produced wooden chairs.
PHOTO GALLERY Guanajuato: the most beautiful city in the world?
With it’s labyrinthine streets, hidden plazas and winding subterranean tunnels, the city of Guanajuato in central Mexico may well be one of the most picturesque cities in the world. Inga Ting went wandering with her camera.
Cover design mulched on The Book Show
Book designer and blogger W H Chong was interviewed by ABC Radio’s The Book Show about the recent cover he designed for Lloyd Jones’ Hand Me Down World and the unique process that is book cover design.
graph pr0n An infographic about infographics
An infographic about infographicsData visualisation is the latest craze, both in online and traditional journalism. But let’s face it, some infographics are just information given more importance because of their interesting forms and clever use of typography.
PHOTO GALLERY 
Ten top notch iPad paintings
Artists are increasingly turning to the iPad for new, rich digital canvases. Mashable list their favourite 10 landscape “paintings” from around the world.
Why Van Gogh’s yellows went to brown
Scientists have discovered that UV and sunlight are the reasons some of Van Gogh’s paintings have deteriorated over time. UV can affect oil paintings by turning yellow into brown pigments, reports the BBC.
