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Airdate: Hannah Gadsby’s OZ

Hannah Gadsby looks at our history of art and whether it represents a one-sided view of us.

2014-03-08_1305Hannah Gadsby gets her own series on ABC1 this week, Hannah Gadsby’s OZ, in which she looks at our history of art and whether it represents a one-sided view of us.

If our great artworks are to be believed, the average Aussie is a bloke in a hat who is hell bent on conquering our gum tree-infested landscape singlehandedly. Why has this mono-vision of Australia persisted for so long? Surely there is more to us than our most famous works suggest?

Australian stand-up comedian Hannah Gadsby is a closet art scholar. Over three weeks, armed only with her rapier wit and a desire to pick beneath the paint, she will travel across the continent on a mission to debunk the myths of the Australian identity as defined by our art canon.

Knocking on the studio doors of some of this country’s most interesting contemporary artists including Ben Quilty, Liam Benson, Rosemary Laing and Jason Wing, Hannah will engage with them to ignite issues still haunting our political and cultural landscapes.

Hannah appears inside famous artworks, sniffs craft glue, contemplates getting a Southern Cross tattoo and goes on a picnic to Hanging Rock.

In the first episode, Hannah re-examines the colonial era paintings and sees that White Australia’s sense of ‘belonging’ has a complex and troubled past. She asks a number of artists why they are so intrigued with reimagining our colonial history and what relevance this has to our present.

Hannah has teamed up with award-winning director Matthew Bate to create an iconoclastic Australian art series that is the bastard love child of Robert Hughes and Sister Wendy.

10pm Tuesday, 11 March ABC1.

2 Responses

  1. I’d consider watching it if it were repeated somewhere less dangerous. No hurry because non-ratings wouldn’t be a problem. Otherwise I hope it finds a receptive audience.

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