Close Quarters, the title for this project, is well chosen as an expression of the often uncomfortable relationship between Australia and New Zealand. The Macquarie Dictionary proffers two definitions for the term: '1. a small cramped place or position. 2. direct and close contact in a fight'.1 As with siblings who share a room and constantly militate to express their individuality, all the while knowing they are inextricably bound together by shared histories and proximity, sometimes relative harmony prevails, often it does not. As the curators suggest in their catalogue essay, 'Speaking of Strange Bedfellows', there is a history of occasionally working together productively, but mostly there is determined independence. It is something of a surprise then that the three curators of Close Quarters have identified 'overlapping and interlocking fields of concern' commonality rather than difference as their approach to this project.2 'lt is an exhibition of New Zealand and Australian artists who have been brought together not because they match or can be paired, nor because they serve as adequate representatives of each distinct place; but because they occupy and reflect upon their deterritorialised but highly specific local terrains.'3
The catalogue essay proposes an intersection between Australian and New Zealand artists based on 'deterritorialisation': a kind of erasure apparently generated by the blanket effect of American cultural dominance. The writers imply that this clearance somehow articulates a free play of secondary associations between practices which would not otherwise be apparent. it is probable however that given the globalizing power of communications technology such a connection might just as easily be made between artists in virtually any Western country.
There are some interesting and substantial differences between Australia and