'Hybridity' in Australian Perspecta 1995
As this century faces its declining years, a light breeze elbows its way through the ruins that bare witness to Modernity's abandon, whispering that from the warm ashes of hybrid fires a new type of cultural production is being born. Issuing predominantly from the ranks of the 'different' and the 'displaced', this emergent body of artistic work represents something more than just a marginal response to those opportunities and anxieties characteristic of our present historical moment. In fact as the discourse of postmodernism wallows in gloomy self-referentiality, centre stage has been usurped by the project of a new cultural politics of difference.
In view of these remarks it is not surprising to find that over the past few years an extraordinary number of both local and international exhibitions have been organised on or around the theme of hybridity.1 In a wave of militant rhetoric and carnivalesque pluralism, these exhibitions are overwhelmingly characterised by a series of inflated claims to displace discriminatory cultural hierarchies and restrictive binary oppositions. In curatorial terms, however, they are linked by a common preoccupation with hybridising strategies as a model of resistance and reinvention.2
Almost to the letter this is the point of departure for Australian Perspecta 1995, curated by Judy Annear, at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Established by Bernice Murphy in 1981 as a broad survey exhibition of contemporary Australian artistic practice, the eighth Australian Perspecta represents something of a radical break with tradition in that is it the first to be both organised by an outside curator and structured around a unifying theme. In many respects, this shift in focus and direction means a total redefinition of the role and position