The Millennial Calendar of Samstag Classics
Shaun Kirby | Steven Holland | Paul Hoban | Christopher Howlett | John Kelly | Matthys Gerber | Julie Gough
Anne Wallace | Megan Walch |
Deborah Paauwe | Susan Fereday | Zhong Chen
The University of South Australia's Samstag Program has come up with something a little different and intriguing to celebrate the passage, this year, between old and new millenniums. The "2000/2001 Millennial Calendar of Samstag Classics", starts in July 2000 and finishes in June 2001.
The Millennial Calendar features the work of twelve, high-achieving Samstag Scholars - each work distinctively complementing a particular month and key date in the year. In this way, Queensland artist Anne Wallace's exotic bedroom scene "Boudoir", exquisitely captures the explicit possibilities of February 14, 2001 (Valentine's Day), whereas Steven Holland's forensic pompeii dogs (past tense/future tense) carries a quite different message, matched against "Hiroshima Day", the 6th August.
In the same spirit, Megan Walch's explosive work, Shocking Crashes and Chases, is an obvious choice for St. Patrick's Day (March) and, more sombrely, Aboriginal artist Julie Gough's Imperial Leather is a poignant reminder - for Australia Day 2001 - of unfinished business.
Perhaps the most entertaining and perfect millennial calendar match is provided by John Kelly, whose Man Looking into Phar Lap shows the great horse cruelly unzipped, penetrated and in the process of being stuffed by the taxidermist. Happily, Kelly's wonderful image is doubly relevant, as the Melbourne Cup and American Thanksgiving Day both fall in the same month of November.
