Writing the Square: Paul Carter's Nearamnew and the Art of Federation

Main Article Content

Jennifer Rutherford

Abstract

Visiting Australia for "The Year Of the Built Environment City Talk" Beatriz Colomina said of Federation Square" It wears crazy-paving clothing all over it. What is it saying?" In this paper I focus on some of that "crazy paving", Paul Carter’s artwork Nearamnew, a work that marks the ground of Federation Square as a site of historical, social and political negotiation. Nearamnew, I argue, is a strangely joyous promise of a different kind of locality and a different way of thinking, writing and speaking into the impasses of Australian place.

Article Details

Section
Special Issue Articles (Peer Reviewed)
Author Biography

Jennifer Rutherford, Macquarie University

Jennifer Rutherford is a Research Fellow in the School of English, Art History, Film and Media at the University of Sydney and a Senior Lecturer in writing and critical theory at Macquarie University. She has published extensively on the psychopathology of Australian cultural relations including The Gauche Intruder; Freud, Lacan and the White Australian Imaginary (M.U.P.) Her documentary on the One Nation movement Ordinary People, (a Film Australian Special Interest Project), has screened on the ABC, on Finland’s YLE, and at numerous local and international Festivals. Current projects include Hansonella and Other Tales (forthcoming Giramondo Press);and a novella April in Kumrovec. In 2006 she is guest editing a special issue of Southerly, "Shared Space; Brokered Time" around the work of Paul Carter.