the art life

Although not a movie about art or artists, John Malkovich’s debut 2002 feature The Dancer Upstairs contains an exquisite art moment. Set in an unnamed South American country, a police detective named Agustín Rejas [played with aplomb by Javier Bardem] begins to notice a number of bizarre acts taking place in the capital city, namely the hanging of dead dogs from lamp posts with cryptic messages from “Ezequiel”. Since detectives always want to know who did it and why, Rejas begins to investigate the possible identity of the mysterious dog killer. Meanwhile, the repressive regime that governs the country starts to come under random attack with a rising death toll from assassinations and bombings. It is only then that Rejas connects the dog killer to the terrorist acts and realises that “Ezequiel” is the leader of a revolution – albeit one with no demands, no claims of responsibility and no manifesto. It is a revolution without any apparent aim except the creation of complete anarchy. In the middle of all the destruction, a crack down by the government, - which institutes a police state with military control over the police and new, ever more repressive laws - people somehow still find the time to visit the theatre to see bad performance art.


Is everyone in? The performance art is about to begin...
The audience is led into a makeshift theatre inside the gym of a local Catholic girl’s school. Like most classic performance art, people are there to be confronted and soon half naked women and men appear daubed in fake blood with the arms and legs of dolls stuck to their heads and bodies.


Shock tactics.
Performance art is about breaking down the bourgeois boundaries of theatre by destroying the proscenium or “fourth wall” of the stage, addressing the audience directly, involving them in the drama or provoking an extreme reaction. In The Dancer Upstairs, the film captures the moment perfectly when a beautiful woman dressed as kind of nurse/angel comes forward from the dancers, hisses at the audience, then after picking out a nicely dressed young woman to her left, dumps a bucket of water over the young woman's head. Sticking close to reality, far from being outraged, the drenched young woman laughs meekly as the audience roars with laughter.


Excuse my arse, sir.
The aim of this performance art/contemporary dance troupe is to confront the audience. A smartly dressed man and his wife – later identified as the government minister in charge of culture – are picked out for special treatment by the performers who climb over the front row seats and rub their pantyhosed arses over their heads and shoulders. The audience is tittering, but more is to come…


Audience participation may be dangerous.
In a moment dreaded by anyone who has ever attended a performance evening, the audience in The Dancer Upstairs is asked for volunteers to come forward and be part of the action. Keen to be seen as enthusiasts of the arts and good sports, the minister and his wife and a third bloke in a business suit do not protest when they are taken forward by performers and asked to sit in chairs facing the rest of the audience. The crowd menwhile is starting to get justifiably annoyed at this relentlessly pretentious performance, one audience member cat-calling “Bring back Robert Wilson” while another yells back “No don’t!”. Much laughter ensues as a third person yells “GET ON WITH IT”. Suddenly the lights go down. In the darkness, three shots ring out… The audience laugh nervously.


Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
As someone grabs a flashlight and shines it on the floor, the now terrified crowd discovers that the gunshots were real. Instead of a lame work of art, they had witnessed the execution of government members by Ezequiel’s hit squad – leggy women in leotards. The performers disappear leaving Rejas to try to piece together what happened. Unfortunately, as the movie progresses, it turns out that Ezequiel’s revolution has wide spread grass roots popular support and although the government begins round ups of political prisoners and imposes imprisonment of all suspects – not to mention to the widespread militarization of the country and its culture – nothing can stop the revolution.

Art Performance Overall Accuracy: 7/10
Actual Art Performance Motivational Accuracy: 1/10
Art World Wish Fulfillment Accuracy: 10/10

It’s enough to make you so proud - Australia is home to the world’s oldest hole. Scientists using clay-dating technology have determined that the Jenolan Caves in the Blue Mountains are 340 million years old, not the measly 90 to 100 million years as previously thought. Dr. Alan Osborne of the University of Sydney told NineMSN, “340 million years is a very long time. To put it into context, the Blue Mountains began to form 100 million years ago; dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago, Tasmania was joined to the mainland as recently as 10,000 years ago and John Howard has been Prime Minister since 1996.”


A hole, 350 million years in the making.

Did you notice something there? We added in that last comment about John Howard. Dr. Osborne never said it. We just made it up and put it in because that’s the kind of people we are here at The Art Life – we're interventionists. Getting between you and the facts is our artistic medium and it gives us the chance to use the word ‘interstices’ – that lovely little snuggle space where we can get warm between things. Not everyone is qualified to make interventions. You need to be a drug counselor, a member of the military, or an artist, and you need skills to make sure that your intervention isn’t mistaken for being a part of the scenery, or so obvious people ask “what’s that doing there?” Artists love doing interventions into spaces, sometimes they are uninvited [which are the best sort of intervention] but most times it’s an official intervention where they come along and set up their stuff with full approval and support from management. We’ve seen artistic interventions in department store windows, public libraries, memorably at The Australian Museum, and we even saw an intervention in an art gallery. The exhibition Ten[d]ancy at Elizabeth Bay House, the historic house built between 1835 and 1839 and once home to the McLeay family, is just such an official ‘intervention’.


Martin Blum, Sean Cordeiro, Simone Fuchs, Claire Healey,
Doily of terror! the devil will find work for idle hands, detail, 2006.
Mixed media, various dimensions.
Courtesy Historic Houses Trust.
We have for many years been huge fans of the parenthetical aside in titles, and we like it even better when you get a mid-word parenthesis such as in the title Ten[d]ancy. It’s what the professionals in the advertising world call a “twofer” – a two for one deal - it’s both “Tenancy” and “Tendancy”. It’s as though the curators of the show Sally Breen and Tania Doropoulos just couldn’t make up their minds until they thought - why not just have both? Certainly they might have hesitated since “Tendancy” is a spelling mistake, but let’s not sweat the details here. On the one side you have the tenants of the house, the historical context of the space, and on the other the artistic tendencies represented by the artists Gary Carsley, Shaun Gladwell, Hannah Furmage, Jonathan Jones, Claire Healy, Sean Cordeiro, Martin Blum and Simone Fuchs, The eight artists have been allowed to come in an mess around with the installation of period furniture and fittings in the historic house inserting their own artistic creations between the apparent historical accuracy and the minds of the hapless visitor who now must interpret what is intervention and what is not. The marooned [d] of the title is emblematic of the sandwiching effect of the various interventions. Just when you think that the whole parenthesis thing is a tired out old wank, it’s completely appropriate.

Inserting your artistic practice into a space such as Elizabeth Bay House is problematic to say the least. The artists in the show run the gamut from subtle and nuanced works that actually play with the space in a knowledgeable and fun way to cack-handed demonstrations of excruciating obviousness. Some are just plonked in there and still look good, while others are plonked in there and look terrible. The most successful works in the show are those by Shaun Gladwell. He’s constructed some very subtle sculptures using various objects, some from the house, others brought in. In one room he’s stuck two gorilla skulls under a glass case, surrounded by various pine cones, on a nearby table some contemporary drawings of Australian birds. In a bedroom upstairs, there’s a table with an array of drug taking paraphernalia – a bong, a bottle, spoon, sugar bowl and glass of water for absinthe. Elsewhere there are more bongs. Gladwell has cleverly brought his own practice to the house – the skulls and the bongs a nice little emblematic insertion of contemporary ‘youth’ culture – while at the same time reminding you that the Victorians were by today’s standards absolute drug fiends. The connections are obvious but subtle too and of all the artist’s work in the show, Gladwell's works are seamlessly inserted into the theatrical historicism of the space. Healy & Cordeiro were joined by Fuchs and Blum to create Doily of Terror! The devil will find work for idle hands… the title being a play on the time it probably took them to crochet dozens of doilies. All done in red, there are doilies for everything in one room, from the objects on a breakfast table to the chairs and tables to individual chess pieces. You’d think eagle-eyed art reviewers would have taken this in immediately but to perfectly honest, we blanked the entire room. It looked exactly like a bad museum. It wasn’t until we had the installation pointed out to us that we even recognised that an egg cup had a doily on plate that has a doily on a table that has a doily for each of its four legs. It was horror vacui filled with wool.

Gary Carsley’s work has always tended towards the baroque, visually involved with decorative elements coupled with an elaborate conceptual scaffolding. The work has ranged from his early paintings in the 80s through to installation and cut paper pieces and, more recently, settling on a computer-aided visual process that creates landscape images from photographs combined with scanned wood grains. On their own, the images are striking and beautiful, but with the connections Carsley has created between seemingly disparate subjects such as drag, the landscape, colonial history, decoration, and his own subjectivity, the collective experience is baffling. Perhaps this elaboration is part of the baroque urge but in the installation at EBH, an avalanche of fraudulent history arrives through Carsley’s invented historical persona Daguerre [or Draguerre] as well as other simulated real objects dragooned for the occasion – “imitation fake hair” for example. If one is meant to feel the weight of the invention, the work is successful, but we have to admit to feeling like it was like a lot of hard work for not much reward. It has always been our belief that an artist’s work is at its best when it is unadorned. Carsley has demonstrated he can do that with past shows such as his solo outing at Cross Art Projects and we urge him to get back to basics.

Jonathan Jones meanwhile could not be accused of unnecessary decoration. He has placed a series of fluro light tubes across the floor of an EBH bedroom in an installation called Gurrajin [Elizabeth Bay]. We’re assuming that the name is a clue that the pattern, as in other of Jones’s work, makes reference to Aboriginal art of the neighborhood’s original inhabitants. Conceptually it is extremely tight as well as being visually impressive – all those lights lined up in intersecting rows look amazing. We can’t imagine what visitors to EBH would have made of it as, when we arrived, there were no plaques or indications in each of the rooms as to who was responsible for what and the catalogue for the show was MIA, just some laminated printers proofs were supplied at reception for the curious. A giant sign in the entrance way with a description of the project gave little away so far as specific information was concerned. [Some people did get it and weren’t that impressed. “Did not think the art display was good” – Jasmin Curtis, France.] Whatever, Jones’s work looked great. Tucked away in the last room of the house’s two room cellar is an installation by Hannah Furmage called Pig Town. The room has tiny speakers on a wire hung around the wine racks. Voices emerge from the speakers, recordings of people on the street saying things like “I have a dug habit, I admit that, and I take responsibility” in a voice so out of it it’s amazing they were awake at all. Hey rich people, there are poor people out on the street right now! Does your champagne make you feel good? Yes, it probably does.


Bill Henson, Untitled #19, 2005/06.
Type C photograph, 127 x 180 cm. Edition of 5.
Courtesy Roslyn Oxley Gallery.

At Roslyn Oxley, Bill Henson’s latest show offers no real surprises. You know what you’re going to get – naked teenagers, sylvan woods, country roads at dusk, cloudscapes. For this show Henson has a done a couple of eerie landscapes with lighting effects we haven’t seen before as well as some shots of ore carriers sitting in the ocean in half darkness, like industrial barks ready to take you off to the land of the dead. But in the context of the body of his work, they are minor detours in what is otherwise a wholly predictable visual language. Henson has the undoubted ability to conjour up a mood with his sequences of dark, untitled images, but it’s a kind of magic that quickly fades. His strength as a narrative photographer is also without question and there aren’t many other photographers who come close to what he does – Gregory Crewdson for frozen moments and looks or Helmut Newton and his use of nudes and classical interiors, but while these artists share some similarity, Henson stands pretty much alone. We have to admit to feeling somewhat resigned to the idea that Henson seems to have learned from bitter experience that his audience isn’t much interested in torn up photographs, or images of carnage on the streets of LA – what they want is naked girls in the dark, perhaps with a chest wet with water, maybe a road in the countryside. It’s what sells and these were the ones at the current show that had the biggest sequence of red dots.

Henson’s photography is talked about in terms of its connection to Romanticism and indeed many of its features can be found in the work. Romanticism by definition rejects the rationality of post Enlightenment civilisation and yearns for the natural alternative of landscape, emotion and beauty. Hegel described Romanticism as being a kind of art where the forms in the work are determined by an idea of its content. In other words, although the images seem to exist within an external world, they are very much the imaginings of the artist. The Romantic artist shows us the way they imagine the world should be, how it might reflect the way we feel about the world rather than the drab way it really is. As you look at these works you can see that although the images are indeed taken from the “real world” they are framed, ordered and selected from a very specific aesthetic view, from Henson’s point of view. Particular images in Henson’s works are things that you might actually see in real life, perhaps just for a fleeting moment, but what state of mind you’d have to be in to see the whole world like this all the time we’re uncertain.


Bill Henson, Untitled #10, 2005/06.
Type C photograph, 127 x 180 cm. Edition of 5.
Courtesy Roslyn Oxley Gallery.
The recurring motifs in Romanticism feature in Henson’s work, albeit it in modernized form and sometimes he has become quite specific in his references such as his Egyptian series of ruined temples set next to images of Melbourne suburbia, and again in this new series of works where he evokes savage teenage glades of tossed away porn mags, bikes and cans of UDL. This is another classic theme of Romanticism, the idea of man [or girl] in a semi savage state lost among the ruins of classicism, itself suggesting the impermanence of existence in time. Before the Gods we are ants. The most telling and troubling aspect of Henson’s work – and indeed its most popular aspect – is in his use of the exotic. Side stepping the potentially demeaning aspects of exotica for the safe haven of white trash suburbia, Henson is allowed to objectify his subjects by avoiding any unpleasant and unsightly political readings that might have been created if he used, for example, non white models. Something within this exotica is extremely disturbing because, while some have thought of his images of models as being manipulative, it far more upsetting that what he is in fact doing is luxuriating in a kind of respectable high class kitsch. We do not deny that Henson’s work looks good, and many, many people agree with that assessment, but we cannot escape the thought that in the future these images might have about the same cultural respectability as those green faced Islander girl paintings with the tits out and a piece of fruit on the shoulder. The only difference to that low brow non Romantic wank mag art is that now we choose to find the exotic within white culture rather than in the other.


Christopher Hanrahan, Our Still Lives [keep on coming], installation view.
Mixed media, variable dimensions.
Courtesy the artist.

Evoking the Romantic in art is as much an act of faith as it is of cultural archaeology. It would be nice to think that we are individually special creatures with much to offer from the vantage points of our subjective creativity, but the brutalism of psychology exposes the fact were are all one of maybe a dozen personality types. Since art is usually made by people within an even more limited range of personality types looking for difference is incredibly hard. But like great fiction, art rises from an acknowledgement of commonality, not from the misty-eyed wanderings of the artist poet experiencing profundity in the mountains. Christopher Hanrahan’s show Our Still Lives [keep on coming] at MOP Projects fits the bill very nicely. Like his recent work in Rectangular Ghost at Oxley and his solo gig with Esa Jaske Gallery, Hanrahan’s work is a series of figures of speech rendered as sculptural objects. The artist works as one of those guys who sets up shows for other galleries and it was hard to not read the new show as an autobiographical riff on the existential angst of lugging boxes around full of other people’s art. One piece is in fact a big wooden box used for transporting art. Using a hole punch, Hanrahan has drilled the words KEEP FALLING into the side, illuminated from within by a weak light bulb. In another work, Our Still Lives [old grey mashy], the artist spells out the title with his body while singing "the old grey mashy she aint what she used to be". He does ten times, each repeat getting looser and slower until he’s just flailing around. Mug Tree is a tree built from Ikea wood and has a selection of coffee mugs hanging from it – some for Irish coffee, others with corporate logos, and one with the classic 80s Triple M and angel-guitarist. There is another video of the artist accidentally, but repeatedly, breaking the same coffee cup over and over. Trapped in a loop, the cup rematerializes again with Hanrahan looking glummer and more remorseful every time. If one wanted to look for an image that truly evoked the Romantic notion of man lost in time, then this is it.

Funding bodies are great. They give artists money to realise their dreams, to travel the world and raise their work to new levels of professionalism. The National Association of The Visual Arts [that’s NAVA to most people] last Thursday announced the lucky winners if the Freedman Travel Scholarships. The winners were Mimi Tong, Lori Kirk, James Hancock, Astra Howard and Jade Boyd. Australia likes to reward its younger artists with the opportunity to get out of the country and see how the rest of the world treats its artists and, hopefully, get inspired while they’re away. The Freedman Travel Scholarship is $5000 and although that’s not a huge amount of money to travel and live on, it’s surely better than nothing. Reading through NAVA’s press release, you also get an insight into what young artists are doing and what they hope to achieve.

Mimi Tong, it says, whose work “often crosses the divide between painting, architecture and traditional paper-folding” is participating in the artist-in-residence program at Red Gate in Beijing and will “investigate local construction techniques such as the use of bamboo scaffolding” and “further her investigation of contemporary Chinese urban environments.” Hopefully that investigation will not involve a mini-spy camera. Another Sydney-based artist is James Hancock who will be winging his way to Old Vienna is hoping to “develop his city-based artworks and curatorial projects. ‘My fascination with what lies beneath the surface of the urban environment often leads me to collect pieces of the city to become a part of my artistic expression’.”

Astra Howard's work is also based in the “urban environment”, but rather than the super clean, hyper-efficiency of Vienna, she’ll be heading off to the slower paced, perhaps not as sparkling Delhi. While there she will work as part of the Cybermohalla project which “undertakes visual arts and social work with the slum communities of Delhi.” With the money from the Scholarship, Howard “will extend upon previous research investigations into how city residents manipulate public spaces in order to survive. For the duration of her project, Astra will be a resident at the established artist community of Sankriti Kendra and work with mentors at Sarai: New Media Initiative.”

The other two artists – Jade Boyd from Tweed Heads and Lori Kirk from Melbourne – both have interesting travel plans for places not usually visited by artists. Boyd is travelling to Norway, Iceland, Germany and Romania where she will “continue investigating the supernatural landscape” and “research Nordic/Scandinavian mythological landscapes and areas important to Romantic history, with a journey to the site of the film set for Werner Herzog’s 1979 film, Nosferatu.” Kirk, meanwhile has a far more ambitious project taking her to Kyrgyzstan:

“Lori Kirk from Melbourne will join with an artist from Kyrgyzstan to erect a traditional yurt and adorn the surrounding area with agapanthus flower sculptures and other Australian popular culture icons, to create a “hybrid mix of the traditional and foreign”. The Scholarship will enable the collaborative project, Home Extension, to be developed by Lori and Kyrgyzstan artist Shaarbek Amankul (who was represented at the 2005 Venice Biennale) to be installed in the mountains of Bishkek in 2007.”

A yurt, recently.
In the context of the above, it’s hard to believe that artists could once just say to a funding body, “hey, chumbo, give me some money so I might paint my glorious pictures”, or if in a traveling frame of mind, “Hey, I’m off to Italy in spring.” But indeed it was was once possible. These excerpts from a 1973 Australia Council press release explains who got what, and most interestingly, what for:

Grants to artists
Press statement no. 150, 23 November 1973
List of grants

Sydney Richard Ball (Painter), NSW. Assistance with materials and equipment for painting and printmaking and construction of studio facilities. $5000

Alan John Oldfield (Painter), NSW. Assistance with costs for tour of Italy to study 16th and early 17th Century painters. $2500

Grant Leighton Mumford (Photographer), NSW. Assistance with fares and living expenses for 12 months study and photographic tour of U.S.A. $5000

Anthony John Coleing (Sculptor), NSW. Assistance to make sculpture, enlarge studio space and with fares for study tour of Japan, U.S.A. and Mexico. $2500

Richard John Watkins (Painter), NSW. Assistance with fares and expenses for study and painting tour of U.S.A., U.K. and Europe. $5000

Guy Wilkie Warren (Painter), NSW. Assistance to continue investigation into certain aspects of painting. $5000

Alexander Danko (Sculptor), NSW. Assistance with materials and equipment for series of sculptures and multimedia projects and assistance with fares and expenses for 12 months study at the California Institute of Arts. $2000

Michael Johnson (Painter), NSW. To continue painting in New York, and to return with an exhibition of paintings. $5000

Peter Allen Powditch (Painter), NSW. Assistance with fares and living expenses to set up studio in New York for 12 months and return through Europe for study tour of major galleries. $7500

David Aspden (Painter), NSW. Assistance to obtain more adequate studio space, materials and equipment for painting and silk-screening and provision to establish representative set of colour slides. $5000

Geoffrey William Prosser Lowe (Painter), Tasmania. Assistance to enable full-time devotion to a series of paintings on the relationship between the human being in basic dilemma with his physical reflections and nature. $5000

Miriam Helen Stannage (Painter), W.A. Assistance with purchase of art materials and equipment for 12 months painting and assistance with transport costs to send paintings to galleries in the Eastern states. $700

George Baldessin (Sculptor), Victoria. Assistance to complete purchase of printing press. $2500

Michael Challis Brown (Painter), Victoria. Assistance to further develop his painting. $5000

Frederick Harold Cress (Painter), Victoria. Assistance to full-time devotion to painting. $5000

Dale Keith Hickey (Painter), Victoria. Assistance to devote full time to painting. $5000

Allan Adam Mittleman (Lithographer), Victoria. Assistance to purchase etching lithe press. $1500.

Andrew John Sibley (Painter), Victoria. Assistance to continue painting. $1000

Peter Julian Tyndall (Silk-Screen Printer), Victoria. Assistance for studio equipment. $2000

Kenneth Ronald Whisson (Painter), Victoria. Assistance to be able to paint full-time. $5000

If it’s 10.30am or 3pm it’s time for coffee. Skinny flat white. Lunch is between 12.30 and 1.30pm. A salad if at home, a Regular Bondi Burger, fries and Mountain Dew to drink if we’re out. Knock-off time is 5.30pm. Simpsons at 6pm - and again at 8pm - the news in between. We like a little bit of routine, markers in the day that let us know where we are and what we’re doing. We haven’t quite got to the point of having a wardrobe full of the same style and coloured clothes, or locking and unlocking the door an even number of times before we go out, or brushing our teeth downwards as many times as upwards, but it’s always a possibility. When it comes to art galleries, there are the ones we know are going to be a pay off no matter what, and if they don'tt, there’s a number of practical considerations to take into account anyway. All that aside, however, it had played on our minds that the cow track of our incessant art gallery wanderings was a well known route. We needed to get out of the comfort zone and see some galleries and artists we’d never seen before.

After The Winter is an exhibition at the mysteriously named Horus & Deloris Contemporary Art Space. It’s a well known fact that Horus was the Egyptian God of the Sky, but a lesser known fact that Deloris was the Sumerian God of the catalogue essay [spreading havoc and random parenthesis among the wicked] and taking such a name for your gallery is certainly tempting the gods. Located in Pyrmont at 102 Pyrmont Street, the gallery is in an otherwise vacant building with a sign outside advising that there is art “inside”. You need to press a buzzer to get in and even when you walk in the door, the woman who runs the place seems completely surprised that you’ve come for a visit. How did you know about us? she asks. The ad in Art Almanac. It turns out she’s been absorbed in playing Warcraft so no wonder the real world seems a bit strange.


[left to right]: Wendy Shaw Skulls, Adam Laerkesen Windchasers (detail),
Martin McEwen Last Light’
The H&D; exhibition features work by three artists – Adam Laerkesen who makes small scale sculptures, Martin McEwen who is a painter and Wendy Shaw, a photographer. It was Laerkesen’s sculptures that initially caught our eye, a big image of his work featuring in the full page gallery ad in Art Almanac. Using cast resin, the artist has created a little figure with a vaguely Asian look in a standard bearer pose, repeated 11 times, holding up various found objects from plant fronds to rusted metal and a plastic bag. Repetition always looks great – anything in threes or more creates a nice symmetry – and Laerkesen’s works has a cartoonish Terracotta Warrior-esque feel. The dominant artist in the show however is McEwan, who has 17 oil on paper paintings of Sydney scenes – red brick flats in Bondi, palm trees, telegraph poles and skies at dusk – and a series of dancing bodies. The landscape paintings are more than reasonable images, the artist having a very nice technique of underpainting and scratching back. Nothing fancy mind, a bit like spiritual meat and potatoes. Shaw’s photographs are all night scenes and she’s clearly influenced by Bill Henson, but going a bit further into darkness to the point of virtual invisibility in a work called Red Car, Kings Cross. Printed on silk, the three images are very tactile and if you could buy them as printed pyjamas, she might be on to something.

Another group show is Teasers: Mid Year Group Show at Groundfloor Gallery in Balmain. Known to locals and visitors alike as the “insular peninsula” we were mindful of the need to keep our visit to Balmain brief lest the siren song of cafes, semi-hippy homeware stores and Zen chiropractors keep us forever. The star of the Teasers is Ilya Volykhine, an artist with a profile thanks to placings in various competitions including the Blake and the Archibald. With works in the window, and several large canvases in the gallery, everything else feels additional to the artist’s well worked collage/paintings. Volykhine is unafraid of brown, a colour that has been known to send lesser artists into a state of terror and shock, nor is the artist concerned with mixing it with black and turps to give it a smeary, streaky, gestural stain. In a similar state of tonal fearlessness Timothy Preston has a work called Mortal Instruction – Triptych, a three panel brown and blue abstract that sent us into a deep, nervous sweat. So too Amanda Dumas-Hernandez’s ceramics.


Simon Joannou, Goulbourn Rail, 2006. Photograph. Series of 3.
Courtesy Groundfloor Gallery.
Unusually for a commercial space Groundfloor Gallery has wall texts explaining what the artist was aiming for in each of their works, some biographical details and other relevant information. The texts are written in the first person or in a distant and authoritative third person. In some cases, this was very helpful, in others perhaps a little unfortunate. Patrick Donohoe, for example, writes about his older work as being “simplistic line drawings”. Simon Joannou, describing his photographs, explains they are called Unlikely Places Series because they are a series of unlikely yet interesting places. And indeed they are. Joannou’s images were by far the most compelling works in the show, displaying a sure and certain approach to composition as well as having a knack for framing a shot to evoke a blank narrative. The show’s other photographers Gareth Jolly and Barbara Doran work in familiar territory. Jolly’s reportage shots from South East Asia, Sydney and Cuba are admirable if workmanlike examples of photojournalism but it is Doran’s fantasy images that are the most confronting. Called the Vardy Doll Series, a generously proportioned woman is dressed in bustier, frock and other accoutrements l made from cake icing. She seems to be having a whale of a time seen in the last frame eating her own clothing with a big grin on her face. It’s not an experience we’ve had ourselves but it looks like fun.


Pam Aitken, Texts for nothing 12, 2001.
Oil paint on flute board, 286x753 and 286x579cms.
Photo Pam Aitken.

If only for the sake of contrast, one could not pick a more different gallery from our first two than Sydney Non Objective in Marrickville. Known simply as SNO [and happily leaving itself open for all sorts of jokes - it’s sno-good, it’s snot open] it turns out that the relatively young gallery is a utopian experiment in radical minimalism. SNO is a home for artists who work in a tradition that began with Alexander Rodchenko. Billy Gurner, one of the gallery directors, talks in terms of “post-20th century abstraction” which in practice is a pared down, highly individualised art making, devoid of reference to anything other than its own terms of creation – an investigation of, for example, the formal qualities of colour, shape and repetition – and perhaps the history of such a practice. The easiest reference point in this kind of work is that of John Nixon. His series of non objective self portraits run now into thousands of individual pieces, which have appropriated Malevich’s cross, used a restricted colour range and spread out into the utilisation of similar forms – ceramics being a good example from Nixon’s work at the Adelaide Biennial. Non objective art is hermetic, a self contained practice that is both open and closed – open to history, yet closed to invasion by openly expressive elements. Ironically non objective art is also perhaps the most expressive non expressive art there is, a model of expressionistic impulses contained within incredibly tight formal parameters, yet evidence of obsessive physical repetition.


Daniel Argyle, World Records, 2005-6.
Mixed media, variable dimensions. Installation view.
Courtesy the artist.
SNO has four exhibition rooms in what was once an upstairs apartment above a shop at 175 Marrickville Road. Pam Aitken has two of the rooms in which she has mounted flute board [a kind of plastic panel] in two grids of 5x5x11 boards, the corner of the room intersecting the middle of the grid. The boards have been painted with oil paints in shades of blue green, most of them just a gestural wash, some with a few dribbles here and there. One room mirrors the other, a right hand corner in the left hand gallery, a left hand corner in the right hand gallery. If you stand in SNO’s adjoining corridor and look back at the two rooms, the two grids can appear as a cube. In the middle room, Marcus Bering has a series of drawings on paper mounted behind glass, a mounted circular object and a piece of steel with holes punched randomly in it stuck to the wall. The drawings continue the circular motif, some scribbles in orange, others filled in. As far as allowing an outside influence into the works, Aitken and Bering’s work are armour plated, free interpretation bouncing off their art like a tennis ball thrown at a tank.


Daniel Argyle’s work is just as contained – indeed, it literally comes with a container – but its edges are more shaggy, allowing curiosity and interpretation to grab a hold. Argyle’s work, World Records 2005-2006 collects together record covers from the legendary World Record Club, a pioneering label from the mid-60s that was a kind of proto-world music label which released a wide range of material including exotic classics such as Dr. V. Balsara and His Singing Sitars [an Art Life office favourite] as well as classical works and disco hits. Argyle has taken the covers to Igor Stravinsky, Ron Goodwin and His Orchestra, Cleo Lane and other dance favourites, carefully cut the back covers off, sliced them into a pattern lifted from an Islamic ceramic design, then placed the back covers over the front covers. Arranged in a grid, the work is visually dazzling, continually pulling you into details before being throwing you back out again into the complete design. Argyle has also constructed a case for the work so it can be packed up and stored away. You get both a complete abstract design and an attractive storage solution – now that’s what we call modern art! Rodchenko said in rejecting pure art as a parasitical activity that “the art of the future will not be the cosy decoration of family homes”. Ironically that is exactly where non objective art can now happily live.


Stephen Birch, Accumulations/Accretions, 2006. Installation view.
Mixed media, variable dimensions. 9 parts. Courtesy Kaliman Gallery.

Hermeticity is not just a problem for interpreting abstract art. Using figures, recognisable objects or pop culture references is no guarantee of an explicit or obvious intention either. On our return to the apparent safe haven of lower Paddington and Kaliman Gallery we were confronted with Stephen Birch’s show Accumulations/Accretions which is as hermetic and inscrutable as the spots and circles, dribbles and dashes at SNO. In the installation which takes up the entire gallery space, Accumulations/Accretions features a figure in a Spiderman suit who is being menaced by a spider with a human face. The dude in the Spiderman suit is revealed to be none other than Peter Criss, the original drummer in pomp-rock legends Kiss, his secret crime fighting identity revealed by the unveiling of the mask to be another alternate [and equally fake] identity beneath. The spider meanwhile, recalling monsters from John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing, comes with a human face. Who is it? The beard of course suggests Osama Bin Laden, but we were also thinking of famed Russian dissident and author Alexander Solzhenitsyn. It might also be Syd Ball. A compare and contrast comes down on the side of Solzhenitsyn. The two figures – Spiderman/Cat/Peter Criss/Peter Parker and the Solzhenitsyn/Spider – are surrounded by various bits of sculptural detritus including two casts of plastic buckets – one with gravel – and amorphous forms that might be arms. Did we mention Peter Criss was missing an arm?


Stephen Birch, Accumulations/Accretions, 2006. [detail].
Mixed media, variable dimensions. 9 parts. Courtesy Kaliman Gallery.

The story of Peter Criss is rock tragedy at its most piquant. Starting out as a jazz drummer in the 60s, Criss met fellow band members Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons after placing an ad claiming that a hard rocking drummer wanted to meet similar - object; starting a band. Kiss was born. One might argue that Criss was as much Kiss as the other two but it was he who left in 1980 to start a solo career leaving the others to head off into panto history. Ill-fated from the start, his solo albums Out of Control (1980) and Let Me Rock You (1982) stiffed and not even a later collaboration with Simmons could muster anything like a hit. Rumours began to circulate that Criss was an alcoholic drug adict living on the streets. Celebrities Roseanne Barr and Tom Arnold came to his rescue but a homeless man found living under a bridge who claimed to be Criss turned out be a hoaxer. In a strange moment, the hoaxer Christopher Dickinson appeared with the real Criss on The Phil Donahue Show in 1991. Criss, meanwhile, was in and out of Kiss for reunion tours, sometimes playing sell out shows, other times ignominiously replaced by other fake “Cats” – Eric Carr and Eric Singer.


Stephen Birch, Accumulations/Accretions, 2006. [detail].
Mixed media, variable dimensions. 9 parts. Courtesy Kaliman Gallery.
Birch’s work toys with the vagaries of identity – Peter Criss being a vessel for the true revelation of the fiction of identity - but there is also a palpable sense of frustration here as well. Criss is menaced, or perhaps giving birth to, a principled monster of resistance, a Gulag hold out against the depersonalization of the Soviet state, nay, of all totalitarian systems. One may wish to be as famous as Criss, but rock fame will mess with your head - or you’ll lose an arm - or something something something...

MOP Projects




Christopher Hanrahan - Our Still Lives (keep on coming)

20 JULY - 6 AUGUST 2006

Opening: Thursday, 20th of July from 6pm.


I’m fatigued, but I guess so is everyone else. On radio 702, it seems to be the topic that every presenter falls back on when there’s not much else to talk about. ‘Today, we’re wondering – Why are we so tired? It’s seems now more than ever that all around us the ubiquitous response to how are you, is I’m tired. But are we really busier and doing more than the generations before us?’

It actually makes for pretty good radio, this said, there’s not much I don’t like on 702, except perhaps the guy on Sunday mornings. While I don’t like him, I don’t mind it at all when his brand of us against them city vs. country styled banter is echoed when the phone lines are opened to good Australians that want to weigh in on the debate about our seemingly relentless pursuit of lethargy. I’m not sure why, but it’s nice to be contraire sometimes.


PROJECT ROOM

Paul Ferman

Civilise

Even though global political and social climates are in a constant state of fluctuation, it seems western communities and the communities that negotiate with them have been on a slow wind backwards.

As a way of promoting right-wing rationalism, more governments are playing the nationalist card. The impact of this as proven around he world is an inward gazing that leads to fear-driven self policing and intolerance around issues of ‘difference’.

With a boom in information technologies these conservative governments are accessing new ways in which to infiltrate the wider community. This in turn is leaving more marginalized groups (race, sexuality, disability, class, etc) facing even further isolation, intolerance and discrimination.

The works in civilise are ‘tampered’ older children’s books. Books that can be viewed as historical indoctrination documents to assign ‘normative’ social and gender roles to children.

The books messages have been subverted using techniques similar to graffiti’s culture-jamming processes against contemporary forms of marketing. Turning the enemies message against itself with a quick change of its glossy skin, highlights the absurdity and transitory quality of the message. This process encourages playful refection by the viewer, on current issues such as racial intolerance, heterosexism, power and gender stereotypes.

Cilvilise is a subversion of agenda, asking audiences to question notions of difference and how we account for ourselves as ‘evolved’ social beings.

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Firstdraft

Leahy + Watson - Forest Work

Tom Wallace - Progress Report III: Geometry and Its Divisions In The Visual Field

Mitch Cairns - Outlands: We Got The Bright Lights Shining On Our Backs

...

Leahy + Watson - Forest Work


Leahy + Watson, Yellow Coat, C-Type Photograph, 2006.
Forest Work is an exhibition of new photographic work by Jennifer Leahy + Vincent Watson. The imagery epitomises vulnerability and heightened imaginings experienced within remote forest landscapes. The Forest has a rich history in literature, film and oral narratives, and Leahy + Watson flirt with a myriad of references. Drawn from folklore, circumstance and contemporary culture the images are able to present as a paradox: they may be dreamlike and detached, but as a cultural artefact they resonate with the familiar. These staged tableaux locate and reissue collective fears of wilderness, with focus on the disempowerment and vulnerability that can take place when we feel intimidated by our environment. In essence, Leahy + Watson’s stark and haunting images are intended to correspond to the human subjects’ disengagement from the land.

The images were shot on location near Hampton NSW, which adds further texture to the theme of disengagement. The pine forest is not a native environment, so the location suggests that introduced landscape can advance the uncoupling of a subject from the land. Accordingly, the pine forest embodies a convergence of fears: as a landscape it is isolated, foreign, invariable and impenetrable. In Forest Work the distant landscape becomes a stage for psychological suspense and suspended realities, where fear is born from detachment and anyone can lose their way in the dark.

Leahy + Watson are Firstdraft’s third studio residents for 2006. Firstdraft’s Emerging Artist Studio Program is supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.


Tom Wallace - Progress Report III: Geometry and Its Divisions In The Visual Field

Tom Wallace presents a series of photographic diptychs which pivot between two and three-dimensional interpretations. The use of contradictory perspectives, the isolation of formal elements through repetition, and a focus on geometric subject all lend to the diptychs’ coding of modern, abstract painting: constructivist, cubist and precisionist codings. Given the dominance of mimetic or ‘representational’ interpretation in the communication of photographic imagery, Wallace aims to place an emphasis on such readings. In the rifts between our understandings of mimetic visual communication and the less conscious stimulations product of abstract imagery continues to lie the beauty and mystery of our unconscious motivations for being attracted to imagery.


Mitch Cairns - Outlands: We Got The Bright Lights Shining On Our Backs


Mitch Cairns, Together We Can Build A City, A City of Steel, 2006.

In a conversation I had with my Dad recently, he remarked “All those old outposts, the outlands, that’s where the game’s going. The city can no longer sustain itself”. He was referring to the take over bid by Russel Crowe of the South Sydney Rugby League club and suggested the team should relocate to Gosford, former home to the now defunct Northern Eagles.

My Dad’s vision for the flailing club to me didn’t exactly amount to promise. South Sydney I figured wouldn’t take too kindly to an identity crisis, let alone the stigmatised failure some regional cities encounter. In response I cited Wollongong. Wollongong had lost their team the ‘Steelers’ to the St George Dragons in a merger deal in 1999, it left the city with basketball as the only sport it was able to identify with, “Basketball?” I repeated. I felt for those on the Central Coast, but adopting South Sydney would have made the ‘Steelers’ demise look credible, or worse, given the NBL an amazing leg up.

Having lived in the Illawarra and seen its many attempts to emulate the success of Sydney, it seems no number of catchy tourist tags will be able to shake that of being an ‘outland’. The loss of the ‘Steelers’ and being forced into an awkward solidarity with St George only rubs more shit into the wound. For fuck ups like these to have happened, I’m sure the city was busy sustaining itself.

Exhibitions open: Wednesday July 19 to Saturday August 5, 2006

Opening night drinks: Wednesday July 19, 2006 6-8pm

Firstdraft opening hours: Wednesday-Saturday 12-6pm

Firstdraft: 116-118 Chalmers St, Surry Hills NSW 2010
t: +61 (0)2 9698 3665 e: [email protected]
Hours: Wednesday-Saturday 12-6pm

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Loose Projects

An ongoing feature of the Loose projects program is the LOOSE week.

One week of each month is dedicated to impromptu and quick response events, projects and activities (talks, sound nights, publications, workshops, exhibitions, production space) coordinated by the rotating roster of Loose players. This month...


Kim Connerton

IPSO VIDEO

Jasmine Avrill, Kim Connerton, Kylie McKendry, Andrew Newman.

July 20 - July 22

Opening: Wednesday July 19, 6 - 8 pm

Curated by Ryszard Dabek


+ ongoing in the BLACK BOX

Ahead of Time (1992-2006)
Agatha Gothe-Snape


Loose projects
2nd Floor, 168 Day Street, Sydney
gallery hours: Thu-Fri 12-5pm, Sat 1-6pm.
0417 024 957
[email protected]
Loose Projects

Loose projects acknowledges the support of dLux media arts.

It’s 11am, Sunday morning, outside the Museum of Contemporary Art. We have returned to have another look at the Biennale of Sydney and to take note of the contributions of the seven Australian artists in the show. As we are about to enter, a young man lurking near the main entrance to the gallery suddenly steps forwards and asks us if we are here to see the Biennale. When we tell him we are he wonders if we will do him a favour – would we have a look at a special work installed near the children’s section of the gallery? This is all very confusing. First of all, this young man is wearing a black, beautifully cut suit with a black shirt and tie and has a red dice ear ring. Second, a group of his friends are sitting on the fence nearby snickering at his question. Thirdly – is there a children’s section of the gallery? This all seems very suspicious. Is he an artist? Artists don’t wear suits! Sure, he says, my name is ____________ and I have been making contemporary art for the past few years. There is a sculpture of a spider on the ceiling of the children’s section of the Biennale. He says it’s very hard to see, but if we’d just have a look at it and when we leave the gallery, tell him what we thought. He seems sincere and so we agree. Of course, there is no ‘children’s section’ and as we walk around looking for spiders, realise the whole task is some sort of gag. When we leave the gallery he is long gone and as we have coffee and laugh at being so good naturedly duped, we realise his name was an anagram of Biennale of Sydney: Zones of Contact. Oh you crazy artists….


Strongest of the Strange - paintings by [clockwise from bottom] Isriel Adams, Conrad Ross-Smith, Tamara Mendels and Nicholas Pike.
Courtesy G&A; Studios.

Gags and art. Art and gags. There just aren’t enough of them. Certainly not many good ones. The four person painting show The Strongest of The Strange at G&A; Studios frames its action with some jokey profiles of the artists. For example, Nicholas Pike [it says on the room sheet] is “king of the Sydney underworld. He spends his time in Kings Cross and Woolloomooloo dispensing justice on behalf of his red right hand.” Describing herself as an orthodox Jew, Tamara Mendels’ mission is to “placate the unfortunate by providing calming, lyrical abstract paintings” while Isriel Adams is “a direct descendent of Master John Adams, sole male survivor of the Mutiny on The Bounty” and “is well qualified to present guttural abstract expressionistic paintings.” Conrad Ross-Smith “is wanted on charges of conspiracy by numerous secret societies.” Far be it from us to criticise anyone for their jokes, but the problem here is this: if you’re going to make jokes about yourself, you’d better be sure the work lives up to the quality of the joke – or in some cases, lives down to it. Accompanying these admittedly amusing profiles are some fake quotes from Liz Ann Macgregor, Gene Sherman, Anne Gregory and Matthys Gerber each saying silly things about the artists. Enough already!

It was our first time to G&A; Studios and we have to say it’s a very handsome space – high ceilings, good lighting and the red strip on the floor that leads you from the front door to the gallery is a welcome sight for those scared witless by the unkempt bohemian surroundings. Once inside, The Strongest of The Strange – apart from all the slightly tiring gags- is an interesting insight into the miniature world of painting at Sydney College of The Arts. All recent SCA graduates, each of the artists in the show seem to embody a particular and currently popular approach to making paintings. Ross-Smith paints on old paintings, blocking out backgrounds, leaving tiny details, turning what had been a field into a solid yellow wall. The best of these works is called Ship and it’s a junk shop picture of on Old Spice style vessel with its sails painted out an unsightly red. Ross-Smith’s closest cousin in the show is Pike, who’s on a Shrigley-esque trip of fast, gestural paintings with ironic text painted over the top. Our favourite was one which featured words that didn’t quite fit on the canvas - A little speed and housework turned out to be Special K – and everyone knows how that feels. In contrast to these two painters, Adams works on paper are a little bit of everything – splash, dribble, scribble, a little figure swooping up, all of it done very fast. Mendels too is gestural, but probably more calculating – she works with acrylics, resin, enamels and varnish on board, painting patterns, then pouring paint over the top. The result looks like a three-way fight between David Larwill, white-on-black period Imants Tillers and Matthys Gerber smoking a rollie - and it looks like Larwill wins. Mindful of the shellacking we got two weeks ago when we reviewed Rob McLeish’s show at Esa Jaske Gallery, let us just say this. It was really great to see young painters getting together and having a show of their work because it’s quite rare in the artist run gallery scene, but the jokes sort of ruined the experience. If you don’t take it seriously, who will?


Tim Silver, Untitled (killling me softly) version 4.11, 2005/06.
Archival ink on archival paper, 30x45.5cm. Photography: Jamie North.
Edition of 6. Courtesy GrantPirrie.
Speaking of getting a drubbing, we were upbraided by some readers for not going to certain galleries, not agreeing to certain points of view and – in general – not trying hard enough. We stand before you ashamed. We missed Tim Silver’s show Killing Me Softly at GrantPirrie. It had been well received by movers and shakers including Rene Block, who was in town for the BOS, and who has selected Silver’s work along with recent series of photographs by Rosemary Laing for the forthcoming exhibition Art, Life & Confusion: The 47th October Salon staged in Belgrade from September 29, 2006 [not the Budapest Biennale as we initially reported here]. We did catch the second last day of Silver’s show and have to admit to being a bit disappointed. Silver’s early works utilised their materials in a very clever play with what they purported to represent. Our favourite earlier work Untitled (Adrift) from 2004 boat made out of reconstituted blue watercolour pigment which sat in a tub of water slowly dissolving into the liquid. Silver documented the process with a series of simple images. It was an elegant conceptual piece, thoughtful and multilayered in possible readings. In Killing Me Softly, Silver used the same kind of process, this time making skeletal bodies out of compacted soil. The still images and the obligatory DVD documented the slow disintegration of the “bodies” - one in a Belangalo style bush grave, the other on a beach, unavoidably evoking From Here To Eternity, a clever play on the process and the image. Despite the conceptual continuity, the show seemed oddly unresolved adding in new theatrical layers that obscured and confused what had been such a pure process. The eccentricity of the work is still refreshing and despite our misgiving you can see why Block was so taken with it.


Diena Georgetti, When I'm suffering, bring me an animal, I don't care if it's alive or dead,2005. Acrylic on canvas, 88x73cm.
Courtesy Darren Knight Gallery.

The eccentricity of Diena Georgetti’s work is hard to deny. We had seen a selection of pieces from her latest show The Humanity of Construction Painting at Darren Knight Gallery in the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art when we were in Adelaide in March. Context is everything. Her work in that show seemed too much effort to take in but in her show at DKG – seen en masse – we rather liked them. What had changed? The Adelaide Biennial had gathered together scores of works which made explicit reference to Modernist art and in that context Georgetti’s work seemed unusually orthodox. In her DKG show, however, the feeling of the show is one of a fascinating expose of the artist’s intense enthusiasms, some of it bordering on the obsessive. The small-scale paintings, done on board and canvas, combine motifs gathered together from various early 20th century modernist art movements - patterning courtesy of Bauhaus fabric design, a little bit of Suprematism, a dash of Futurism, some nods to Alexander Archipenko, a bit of Outsider patterning - all of it coming together into museum-like framing. You can see why Linda Michaels, the Adelaide Biennial curator, snapped them up for her show. On one level they seem to conform to the idea of orthodox Post Modernist appropriationist painting, but on another they seem far more loving and downright perverse than clinical, museum-ready examples. Apparently the artist imagines a perfect space where these paintings might hang, Darren Knight informing us that one would be best seen hung over a Parker credenza. We imagined the wood grain of such a furniture item and Georgetti’s painting hanging over it, and with it came thoughts of deep carpet and the loud ticking of a clock in the hallway.


Sarah Ryan, Sun, 2006.
Digital lenticular photograph, 60x60cms.
Courtesy the artist, Gitte Weise Gallery, Berlin & UTS Gallery.

Another artist whose work we didn’t appreciate much on first viewing is Sarah Ryan, one of the seven artists included in the superlative new show Art Movement: Explorations of Motion and Change at the UTS Gallery at the University of Technology. Our first sighting of Ryan’s lenticular photography was in the Citibank Photographic Portrait Prize where she had done a portrait of someone not famous lying on a floor in a big room. Called Tender, we couldn’t quit get why she had used lenticular photography for the subject – it seemed like a gimmick – or maybe she just liked it. Either way it didn’t really work. In Art Movement however, Ryan has done an image of light as seen through tree branches and leaves. Lenticular photography is type of imaging like those 3D post cards where you change the angle slightly and you get a slightly different picture. In Ryan’s Sun, the process has captured the exact experience one has when you alternate opening and closing your eyes one at a time, or perhaps moving your head ever so slightly. The effect is mesmerizing – like the warm sun on your face and the wind in the trees – it makes you sleepy.


Daniel Crooks, Elevator No. 4, 2003.
Still DV/DVD, 6:645 mins dur.
Courtesy the artist, Sherman Galleries and UTS Gallery.
Curated by Ricardo Felipe, the man behind the excellent Avalon book and exhibition, Art Movement brings together a range of artists [and architects] who address motion as metaphor in their work. Daniel Crooks video works Static No. 9 [a small section of something larger] 2005, and Elevator No. 4 2003 would be the best known works in the UTS show, both having been seen in exhibitions before at Sherman Galleries and the MCA, but are the perfect starting point for metaphor. Crooks’s videos are among the best video art made in this country for the simple reason he uses the medium in a way that no other medium could capture. Instead of the lo-fi pick-it-up-and-shoot-edit-it-in-iMovie ethos of so much video work around, Crooks uses it to make something absolutely magical that would not be able to be achieved outside the digital realm. While the work does indeed echo the work of film makers like Paul Winkler, video technology is the centre of its own possibility. And more than that, every time we see Crooks video work we feel good. Yeah.


John Tonkin, Time and motion study [holding on, letting go], 2003-2006.
Interactive installation. Courtesy the artist and UTS Gallery.

Another outstanding work is John Tonkin’s Time and Motion Study [holding on, letting go] 2003-2006. As you walk into a darkened room, a web cam captures your image and feeds its low grade jittery frames on to the expanse of an LCD widescreen TV. As each new image overlays the last, the older image appears to fade into the background. [Tonkin in his catalogue notes cites Amy Stewart's Knock on Wood and Michael Jackson’s Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough clips as historical examples of a similar technique]. Next to the screen in a plinth with a computer mouse on top of it. As you pull the mouse towards yourself, the decaying images that faded away behind your face march backwards, revealing all the shots of your face but then, the further you pull the mouse towards yourself, the older the images become until you start to see the captured faces of people who walked into the installation before you. Move the mouse side to side and you see the images from the side in 3D, like a parade of cut out faces. Tonkin might be thinking King Of Pop here, but we immediately thought of Plato and his allegory of the cave. Tonkin’s work is a contemporary oracle, revealing the faces of time present and past. Like Crooks’s videos, Tonkin’s piece demonstrates why contemporary art - when it combines technique, idea and execution so brilliantly – truly matters.


Robert Pulie, Task for no pencil sharp enough, 2005.
Looped DVD, 10:38 mins dur.
Courtesy the artist, Mori Gallery and UTS Gallery.
The rest of the show is up and down, not quite equaling these three excellent works, but come awfully close. Robert Pulie, on a similar Plato-esque tip to Tonkin, attempts to trace his own shadow in the video work Task For No Pencil Sharp Enough, 2005 and in Auto-Propulsion Bit [prototype] 2006, Pulie offers up a joke shop object by which the purchaser can pull themselves along, both works playing on their own impossibility as an action and as an idea. The inclusion of the architecture firm m3architecture may be some sort of sly reference to Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe's remark that architecture is frozen music and, while certainly demonstrating the curator’s pleasingly wide definition of what constitutes movement, the inclusion of plans for a building at Brisbane Girls Grammar School is still a little perplexing. A building that moves? We’d like to see that! Elsewhere in the show the concept goes a little astray – Tonkin’s second interactive computer work was frozen while Tom Burless’s Anything Can Happen, especially nothing/This is where I came in, 2006 lives up to its title. These are minor quibbles though as the show overall – including an excellent essay by Gabrielle Finnane – is the kind of thing people who love contemporary art know should exist but so rarely does. Mr. Felipe, move back to Sydney immediately.

It is with great sadness that we report the sudden death of artist Bronwyn Oliver. Her gallery, Roslyn Oxley 9, has announced the news on its website. A statement posted by the gallery earlier today says in part:

"Bronwyn was single-minded in her approach to her art. She worked with an unwavering sense of discipline and commitment. She blinkered herself from the intrigues of the art world, working largely in isolation and on her own terms. There was an extraordinary refinement to her work. She combined an obsessive drive with a highly refined technical ability to produce intensely articulated works of great ease and beauty that engaged with timeless forms of geometry and the natural world. Bronwyn’s work thrills peoples’ hearts and minds.

"Bronwyn showed with Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery from the beginning of her exhibiting life. She was a very important part of the gallery. We will miss her terribly."

Reports inidcate the artist took her own life. All here at The Art Life send our deepest condolences to Oliver's family, her many friends and gallery associates.

Update: The funeral ceremony for Bronwyn Oliver will be held in the South Chapel at Eastern Suburbs Crematorium, 12 Military Road, Matraville on Tuesday July 18 at 2.15pm. Two obituaries have appeared, one by Sebastian Smee in The Australian on Friday, the other by Sunanda Creagh in The Sydney Morning Herald Monday July 1.

Memorial Service at University of NSW College of Fine Arts. Joanna Mendelssohn writes: "Because Bronwyn Oliver's funeral service is in a chapel that can't hold many people, Huon Hooke has asked for family and close friends only. COFA will host a memorial ceremony in EGO2 at 4 pm. This will include a visual journey as well as memories of Bronwyn as a student, teacher, artist and person. All are welcome."

To celebrate my [X] decades in the art biz I will

Promptly go out of business 8 votes
Diversify from painting and sculpture into video art 7 votes
Get in a whole lot of new artists to smarten up my act 2 votes
Get in a brand new grand piano for the front room 5 votes
Publish a limited edition book documenting my greatness 17 votes
Move shelf companies from Switzerland to Bahamas 6 votes
Go to Europe for the art fair season 6 votes
Open up an annex to quietly deal secondary market leftovers 1 vote
Finally cave in and pay for a full page ad in Art Collector 7 votes
Write off donation to AGNSW as a tax deduction 7 votes

66 Votes total

Press Release
John Mallett
Performance Video: Mt Little P-ness



The work of John Mallett explores the liminality of personae and the pliability and instability of socially constructed systems of visuality that reinforce such a liminality. Working in the medium of DVD, installation and still images, Mallett’s work seeks to question the authority of state-created systems of culturally framed communication methodologies while mobilizing a range of fictions to undermine just such an authority. Using parody, eroticism and notions of abjection, Mallett’s video works reperform classic comedy tropes in an attempt to reveal the hidden culturally specific messages in classic ‘girls only’ cartoons such as My Little Pony, bringing an undeniably “masculine” yet openly “feminine” take on the horse. In the work My Little P-ness Mallett’s video reveals the socially and culturally framed delivery of gender specific messages targeted at children while subverting just such an authority. Using confronting nudity, duration and debasement, Mallett’s work questions the notion of “pony-ness” and its relation to contemporary gender politics. Performances at 2pm daily.

Join the artist for drinks and a pony ride, opening Thursday July 13, 6pm. Performance at 7pm.
Sport Space ARI
Thursday to Saturday, 12-4pm, Sunday, 2-4pm.
Unit 112A, 75 Rifle Range Road
Castle Hill.
Sport Space is supported by a grant from the Australia Council.
Web: Sport Space

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You Are Invited
To View
A Selection of New Work by Hedley Grange
Value Pack of 4: 75 Watt Clear Bayonet Cap


Hedley Grange, 75 Watt Pearl, 2006.
Lambda print, 70x120cms.
Courtesy Astrid Weller Gallery

The figure of the light bulb is a potent theme in our cultural remembering and has recurred throughout art, film and literature, for example, in the paintings of Gerhard Osram and in films such as Lights Out by Peter Mirabella. In his latest series of 12 lambda prints, Hedley Grange explores this theme photographically, investigating the ironical interface of the light emitting device and the photographs of various bulbs, some working, others not, in a variety of wattages – from the dull 40 watt pearl through to the industrial 120 watt clear - all set against neutral and opaque surfaces. Referencing recent works such as Martin Creed’s celebrated On/Off, Grange accompanies the new sequence of stills with a limited edition DVD of the work Replacing The Globe in which, over a duration of some minutes, the artist painstakingly paints a globe of the Earth on to a light globe, then inserts the bulb into a socket. The work plays on notions of safety, suitability [in the context of lighting] and insertion. Commenting on the work Grange says, “For your added safety, every light globe has two in-built safety fuses – so always switch off the electricity before removing and replacing light globes.”

Opening: Wednesday July 12, 6-8pm.
To be opened by Richard W. Bratt, senior curator of photography.

Astrid Weller Gallery, Orchard Parade Art Centre, 84 Orchard Parade, Beaconsfield.
Email: [email protected] Web:www.astridwellergallery.com

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Dirty Birds
Salo Viczxnecz


Salo Viczxnecz, Dirty Birds #2, 2006.
Lambda print, 90x120cms.
As part of Galleries Feldspar’s ongoing celebration of their 26 years of exhibitions, Angela and Teddy Feldspar have great pleasure in inviting you to the preview of Dirty Birds, a new exhibition by Salo Viczxnecz. In a series of 12 new large scale lambda prints, Viczxnecz investigates notions of gender signification while playing games of free association that trade on the stereotypical motifs of women’s erotica, referencing the intrusion and manipulations of contemporary media tropes. Subconscious hybrid notions of cultural non-identity emerge in the stereotypical motifs of “lesbian” erotica manufactured for a primarily male audience and are subverted and replayed in a series of images that constitute a playful narrative of “camping” while simultaneously creating a meta-narrative of surprise and intrusion, release and regret. The artist’s masquerade literally holds up an ironic critique of subjectivity tortured by space in a masochistic desire for integration. In Making Dirty Birds, an accompanying limited edition DVD also screening at the exhibition, Viczxnecz apparently explains the “making” of the “images”, yet inserts a new story of familial pressure, sales anxiety and aborted desire which again, and ironically, is exposed as another fictive layer in an exegesis of hypermodal metafictional discursivity.

Opening: Thursday July 13, 6-9pm.
Galleries Feldspar, 98-100 Martins Road, Avoca.
Gallery opens Tue-Sat, 11am-6pm or by appointment
Email: [email protected] Web: www.galleryfeldspar.com.au

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Private View: Join Us for a Preview of New Works in Oils
By
Craig Johnson-Newman AM


Craig johnson-Newman, Miniature Car, 2006.
Oil on board, 80x120cms.

A selection of new works in oils by Craig Johnson-Newman AM, teacher, painter, poet and author, many painted over the last eighteen months since his last sell out show with Peate Street Gallery, others recently acquired from select secondary market sales, now offered to private collectors for the first time. Johnson-Newman is a highly respected artist, his work finding its way into many prestigious collections including the Bosworth Childers, Mellancamp & Partners collection, the corporate holdings of the Australian Wheat Board and the collection of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade Tokyo Trade Mission. Containing many of the themes of his best loved work, this exhibition features scenes of fecund pastoral landscapes, miniature cars and horses, many of these motifs combined in the same picture. Writing on his work in the Australian Reference Dictionary of Art & Artists, Sarah Woodley described the artist’s work as “competent” and “popular.” Accompanying this exhibition will be the release My Slim Volume of Verse, a book of the artist’s poetry, and sketches of birds seen on his property, with a forward by poetess Professor Glenda O’Riley, of the University of the Central Coast.

Opening Saturday, June 15, 1-3pm. Poetry reading by the artist at 1.30pm. Organ recital ongoing. Peate Street Gallery, 10 Peate Street, Umina [near the Shell Museum]. Web: www.peatestreetgallery.com.au

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this place meant (pretext)

Pelt

Opening: Wednesday 12 July, 6-8pm
Exhibition Runs: Thursday 13 July - Sunday 23 July

Opening hours: Thu - Sun, 12am-6pm Unit 2, 46 Balfour Street Chippendale, Sydney, NSW 2008.

-language; acting upon and altering body/consciousness




This Place Meant (pretext), is a collection of video works which have emerged out of an interest in the body as the catalyst for shifts in language and meaning.

The exhibition focuses on the work "Pulling Strings; instructional alphabet a-z" which maps out an alphabet of bodily movements, as both arms and legs are used to write by pulling and releasing strings.

Whilst the "instructional alphabet" is a set of movements which are necessary before a particular body can create words in the written form, the "Viewing Aspect" pieces produce a set of meanings generated by words whose repetition reveals something of the transformational nature of language in the spoken form. The work is a series of three pieces that involve a mantra-like repetition of certain phrases implicit in the relationship between the artist and the viewer.

Ben Denham completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Western Sydney in 2002. In that same year he received the Helen Lempriere Travelling Art Prize which, in 2003 and 2004, saw him present work in Mexico, Florida in the United States and also in Singapore. Ben is currently completing an MA at the University of Western Sydney. This is his first solo show in Sydney.