News Articles
Where Wombats Roved, and Aborigines Sketched
By Jane Perlez, New York Times
Dateline: SYDNEY, Australia
In a cave in rugged wilderness not far from the luxurious country resorts of this city's well-to-do, a leading anthropologist has found an unusually rare and pristine cache of ancient Aboriginal rock art.
In all, 11 layers of images of Australian animals ‚ kangaroos, wombats and monitor lizards, which Australians call goannas ‚ as well as drawings of boomerangs and half-human, half-animal creatures are scattered across the back wall of the cave in a giant mural.
The more than 200 images ‚ in faint reds and yellows, stark white and black ‚ stretch from 4,000 years ago to the late 18th century when white settlers first ventured onto Australian soil, said Paul S. C. Tacon, the chief research scientist in anthropology at the Australian Museum, who visited the site with Aboriginal consultants in May.
"I have been to thousands of places with rock art and only a few have…
Lawbreakers, Armed With Paint and Paste
By Kirk Semple, New York Times
Published: July 9, 2004
Swoon frontloads her days with caffeine and works on her art late into the night. It can take her two weeks to produce a series of the large, intricate paper cutouts and hand-pulled block prints that have gained her considerable renown in one particular sector of the art world. When she is done - her arms aching and her clothes and skin speckled with paint and ink - she takes her pieces outside, slaps them up on old walls around the city, then disappears on her bike.
That is when her work, now left to the mercy of the elements and public taste, comes alive. "You know, it's weird, but I love it," she said. "I don't feel they need to be kept in a vault as precious art."
Swoon, 26, is a luminary in a movement known, at least among many of its proponents, as street art. Two decades after the heyday of graffiti, the spray can has given way to posters, stickers, stencils and construction tools, and…