Word: australian
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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When the six band members of the Histrionics don their Jackson Pollock-inspired "drip" suits for a performance at Melbourne's Australian Centre for the Moving Image this week, there's sure to be an art student or two in the house. And they'll feel quite at home as these self-proclaimed kings of "Concept-Art-Heritage-Rock-Covers" move swiftly through their set. With their razor-witted reinterpretations, AC/DC's '70s classic T.N.T. becomes Nam June Paik, named after the grandfather of video art; Devo's Whip It barely misses a beat as an anthem to Abstract Expressionism...
...think so. But having bitten the hand that feeds him enough times on stage, and on two CDs (Never Mind the Pollocks-Here's the Histrionics and Museum Fatigue), Kesminas, 40, has become the art world's unofficial court jester. Early next month, the band will help launch the Australian artists at the Venice Biennale, and on June 15, they'll play before Dutch royalty at the opening of a survey of sculpture from Australia and the Netherlands in the Hague. "I liked the witty comments and a sort of devilish charm and provocative fun of not taking...
...Mobilizing an army of artisans, from comic-strip illustrators to traditional wayang puppet makers, the show "Embedded with Punkasila" both tests the limits of Indonesian free speech and challenges Australian notions that its neighbor is a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism. With fun and flair, Kesminas shows that much is permissible. "It's the perfect time," he says, "and in all honesty, five years ago you'd probably be put in jail for doing this." The artist nearly was, though not in Indonesia. While lugging back one of his machine-gun guitars from Yogyakarta last year, Kesminas was detained for five...
...social liberalism of Robert Menzies"-Australia's longest-serving leader and a hero to Howard. With Howard's "market fundamentalism" taking the country to the right, Rudd sketched out a Blair-style terrain that social-democratic Labor could reclaim. "The time has come to restore the balance in Australian politics," Rudd wrote, using one of Howard's much-loved metaphors...
...hardship story tumbled out effortlessly: When Kevin was 11, his sharefarmer father died in hospital six weeks after a road accident and the family had to leave the farm; as a boy, he was smitten by China and eventually went off to study its language and history at the Australian National University. He met Therese Rein, his future wife, at ANU and worked his way through school doing menial jobs. But when asked questions about his professional career, Rudd has a tendency to overplay his breadth of experience. A week after he became leader, Rudd's eight years in Parliament...