the art life

On Saturday October 13, The Art Life were lucky enough to be guests of ARC - Art, Design & Craft Biennial 2007. We were invited to speak on a panel discussion called The Cult of The New. Here is an edited version of our presentation...




The contemporary art world runs on the fuel of the new. We need it to power our conversations, to push the next thing forward, to define ourselves against the forces of reaction. The new is an ideology, a descendant of the Enlightenment, a grandchild of Modernism.

Yet we’re also deeply ambivalent about the new, perpetually worried that it’s nothing more than a fad or a craze, a superficial fascination that will fade away just as soon as the next thing arrives.

Let's discuss a few aspects of the new. Some of them are related to the art world, some are more personal, others are about the bigger picture, about how these ideas of the new inform how we think and feel and act in the world.

So let’s start there, in the bigger picture and something that’s on a lot of people’s minds.

Very soon we’re going to be voting in a Federal election. There will only be one of two probable outcomes. A vast amount of time and resources are being expended on thinking about and discussing what the ramifications will be if one or the other of those options come to pass. The election will be a point from which the future of this country will head in one of two directions. Those directions are largely speculative, but one of the interesting aspects of this future event is that one side of the debate brand themselves “New Leadership.” The idea is to evoke newness as a concept of possibility over and above the concept of continuation. Newness is invoked as a future state under which we will be potentially happier with more possibility. This future state we’re heading towards is emblematic of certain aspects of the new – the new as a looming change, a speculative mind state about which many are hoping on a certain outcome.

This pre-election scenario also highlights other aspects of the new. One is the uncertainty we feel about what the future will bring; the other is the frustration that the future hasn’t arrived yet. In this sense newness is also a state of anxiety.

We were recently doing some freelance work for an advertising agency that is producing political ads for one of the parties. One ad they did had nothing more than text on a coloured background, but there was a great deal of discussion about what certain fonts meant and whether that meaning changed when the font was placed on different coloured backgrounds. Copperplate on a blue background as opposed to Helvetica New on a blue background? Should that be a rich deep blue, or an airy sky blue? The thing is, the minutiae of the ad and the type and the background all carried particular meanings that would be understood by various test audiences. In this case, the familiar was needed for the message to succeed.

Newness is a diverse state that is implicitly political.

The features of the new are fairly easy to recognise since we are so attuned to the familiar. Like those test audiences who will be asked to respond to something they already know, the implications of a set of understood variables are of limited interest. It’s only when two or more already known things are put together in an unexpected way that we encounter an authentic kind of newness.

In the art world, newness is nearly always a combination of things that already exist.

Take video art for example. Over the last couple of years there has been an increasing awareness in the general media that video art has become popular. By extension it’s often said video art is new. Of course, that’s nonsense. Video art – a vast, hard to define variety of art practices - has been around since the early 1960s, and even earlier if you extend the definition to include artists’ use of TV in the 1950s. So how could anyone say that video art is new?

What’s changed, and what gives video art an aura of newness, is that it exists in a different context. The proliferation of affordable video production equipment has meant that artists can make a video for comparatively very little. Where video art was once the province of artists with access to expensive equipment, now anyone with a Mac and iMovie and a DVD burner can get a show at an artist run space.
The general media can be forgiven for mistaking video for something that’s new, because on a greater time line compared to drawing or painting it is relatively new. But in the strictest sense, video art just seems that way – it’s more visible and more distributed. To say its new is shorthand to say it has been admitted to a different order of consideration.

The title of this session is called Cult of The New. To be part of the new, to advocate it, is to believe that newness is worthwhile. It has cultish qualities and the information of what is new, or said to be known, is passed around, an information commodity.



As writers we are often asked to help keep this economy going by writing about people or things that are new. What's interesting about this aspect of newness is the way certain artists come to embody the idea while actually being quite the opposite. Ben Quilty, for example, has made a name for himself as a deft and precise painter, his big thick impasto works mining Aussie culture for its imagery. Or perhaps the King Pins whose performances, videos and paintings provide a commentary on Australian middle class values while ironically mocking them. Or maybe Shaun Gladwell, whose formalist videos conflate drawing and dance and movement into hypnotic, repetitive screens.

All of these artists have enjoyed degrees of celebrity over the past few years, yet none of them are particularly new in the sense that what they are doing is unprecedented. All their work is accountable; all of it is connected historically, it comes from an explicable context. But more than that, all of these artists and their work are supported and promoted within the art world not because it’s new, but because it’s old. These artists represent a tradition of thinking, a desire to create newness, not exactly an institutionalised avant garde, but an ongoing commitment to the new even if it is paradoxically old.

And that is the weird thing about the new in the art world - we are both accepting of the new, acutely self aware that it’s pointless in a way, and willing to entertain it as a notion at least for a short while, yet reject the new as the new becomes dominant. We replace the new with something more new, even when, again, paradoxically it’s not.

There are a number of factors working together to create newness in the art world. One is the subjectivity of an artist. You never can tell how an individual is going to synthesise influences. Another is the audience that looks around for something different. Another is the market forces that push the idea of newness to create novelty and exoticism and sell the idea of the new back to the audience.

So is it possible for there to be anything really, genuinely new? Let's take a longer view.

We were born in the early 1960s at the tail end of the baby boom. For the first eight years of our lives, the western world was enraptured with the space race. Everywhere you went, there was talk about space. At school, on the bus, in the newspapers, on TV. Corn Flakes and Coco Pops cereal packets came with plastic moon landers and Saturn V rockets, there was a afternoon TV show hosted by an astronaut, every other movie was about space and the only good things on TV were Star Trek, Captain Scarlet and UFO. That was an incredibly optimistic side of the Cold War. There was a real war going on and the world, yet the idea that we were about to step into space was actually taking place. It was real. And it reeked of the new.

We think back on that time as adults and wonder whether we were was duped by Cold War propaganda or whether people really did feel those things. They must have because everyone certainly acted as if they did. As that sense of newness faded away, space became Star Wars and no one was actually on the moon.



Despite the fade, the technological imperatives of the Cold War and the space race filtered out into the public sphere and became integrated into our lives. Throughout the 1960s and 70s - and even into the 80s - there was a semi-regular feature in the newspapers and magazines where a journalist would ask; what will life be like in the year 2000? We remember one feature about how, in the future, you’d be able to go into a shop and use a plastic debit card to buy your groceries rather than use cash, or how, one day, you’d be paid electronically instead of waiting for a brown envelope stuffed with cash and coins to come from the pay office. It all seemed amazingly exotic.

This stuff is incredibly old hat, an antique type of new. But what’s significant about the technological imperatives of the mid-20th century is that they did change the way we live. It could be argued that the driving forces of our lives remain significantly the same, yet we are now being faced with variations of the past that are new – the web, social networking, an even higher integration of technology. These are genuinely new things, yet we are actually attuned to accepting that sort of newness because the last 50 years have primed us to accept innovations as just another part of the landscape.

The long range view of how things come along and change the way we live our lives is the only one that actually demonstrates that there can be new things. The smaller stuff, the pop cultural and art world newness are more like window dressing on the big picture analysis of the new.

While we were writing this essay we discovered fururetrendsgroup.com the website of a professional trend forecaster, a “business futurist”. His web site has a downloadable PDF of a big chart that traces trends from 1740 to 2100. There are three connected graphs – social, technical and economic. According to this graph, from here until the end of the century, we can look forward to the end of petroleum, the rise of fusion power, massively complex, distributed and sophisticated information processing, nanotechnology and biotechnology becoming the key drivers of the next 93 years. Interestingly, the part of the graph that charts social and economic trends is blank.

We mentioned that the idea of the new is political and discussed the advertisement where everyone at the agency was agonizing over what font and colour to use. It would come as no surprise to you that the final decision was totally predictable. But let’s say that they had decided to use, instead of Helvetica new on a mid-blue background, a gothic script on a tartan background... That kind of political ad simply would not have been taken seriously because it would have disrupted too many preconceptions about what a political ad is supposed to be.. Take the GetUp climate change ad that was run on TV recently. Hardly anyone realised it was a parody because it was so closely styled on a real political ad. It looked completely authentic. That’s an example of the old becoming so familiar that the message is lost in the medium.

The traditionalist, quality driven world of art – the world that runs parallel to contemporary art – is a world that has a lot of allure. History and tradition is deep grain, rich and inviting. The new, fashionable avant garde – it could be argued - is like Formica, a plastic that looks great at a distance but which lacks detail close up. But the problem with traditionalist view is that art becomes a generic expression – the individual artist is judged on how they deploy a set collection of cues within a limited range of expressive possibilities.

Contemporary art on the other hand - and the concept of the new - about disrupting those possibilities. These things do not go together, these colours are wrong, this art is ugly, it has no meaning – all of these are expressions of the new. They are the gothic script on the tartan background of the world. The idea of progress is a discredited notion yet without it at some level, art becomes moribund. We need the new to fill in that huge blank nothing of the future. That’s what the new is. And we like it.

Labels: article

It's that time of year again, end-of-year best-of's and meaningless lists... And we love 'em. The Art Life was recently asked to contribute to a glossy magazine ranking celebrities in the art world. Unfortunately, our nominations didn't make the cut, but it got us thinking that it was high time we threw down the gauntlet, opened up the floodgates, mixed our metaphors and came up with a list of our own. From here until the end of the year we're asking you, the discerning readers of this blog, to help create the ultimate art world thunderdome - most influential galleries, best shows, highest hijinks... Two artists enter, one artist leaves... Vote as you see fit [at right]

[If you're viewing this post via email, click here to vote...]

Labels: poll

Dear Folks,

Just a reminder that TOMORROW [Tuesday, October 30] at 10pm on ABC is the FINAL episode of Not Quite Art!

The good news is that the show has been very successful. The audiences have been very good, the reviews have been incredibly good and the sheer amount of discussion on the Internet has been amazing.

If you've missed any episodes they are available to download from http://www.abc.net.au/tv/notquiteart but will only be available for a limited time - so make sure you grab while they're up!

If you want to leave any feedback about the show and you're not part of the Friends of Not Quite Art Facebook group you can also leave feedback via the ABC TV Guestbook (the show has no guestbook of its own) or you can just email me with your thoughts. On the off chance that I might get to do something like this again it would be great to get a wide range of feedback about what did and didn't work.

Anyhow, I hope you enjoyed it!

thanks,

marcus.

PS A soon to be unemployed former television presenter is currently looking for a job! All zany suggestions seriously considered!

Ep.3 THE BUSINESS OF CULTURE
Tuesday October 30 10pm, ABC TV Australia

Where does art stop and business begin? Is the difference between art and commerce whether you make money out of it or whether you are making it to make money? Why does Melbourne have laneway bars and NSW have poker machines and what the hell does that have to do with art?

Marcus Westbury ventures into a video art bar, meets an artist who sells ideas, reveals the angst of being a sneaker designer and comes across a magazine that you can only read on a wall. Along the way he asks if are artists are just the underpaid R&D; guys for big fashion, design, music and business?

With sneakers on show at the National Gallery of Victoria and every new art movement the basis of an advertising campaign, as a society, are we just better consumers than art critics?

This episode features Marcus in a suit.

Labels: tv show

Ian Houston writes from Sydney...


Neo Rauch's Mazernacht.

I have seen the future of painting and his name is Neo Rauch.

The Art Gallery of NSW has recently hung two works by the East German painter Neo Rauch, Gebot and Mazernacht.

These two works caught my eye quite some time ago, but I dismissed them initially for what ever shallow prejudice that happened to be running through my embittered mind at the time. Yet they would not be ignored. Every time I have visited the gallery since, they have tugged at my eye, the flat colours, just back from gaudy, their muddied brilliance, disdainful of any obvious pleas for attention eventually seduce with their wilful obstinacy.

But it is the forms they take on the paper that truly captures your heart. What strange men and women inhabit this world? What beast is this, so loosely sketched, so bizarre in form and manner, with its human face and blue fur? Yet despite its ludicrous invention it insists that it be taken seriously, its depiction almost cursory, as if its existence were commonplace and need only be briefly alluded to. It stands there like a creature from a dream, appearing at every juncture, its melancholy face, sphinx-like, inferring the possibility of a secret knowledge, a codex for an impossible world. And on its side, its name, “Hirst” the stag. The creature stands on all fours in a boxing ring. A fighter sitting on his haunches grabs the creature’s front legs and stares at the ground as if contemplating some great truth that he’s been told.

Standing behind the creature is another boxer, who holds a painter’s palette, its colourful pigment dripping down to land on another palette that seems to be there by chance, though it seems ridiculous that that should be so. The boxer’s hands are ungloved though it seems as if the two have just been fighting. The ropes of the boxing ring closest to the viewer are broken and sheer toward the picture’s surface in abstract loops and skeins. Has the referee been ejected? Above the ring, folded sheets of colour drift in the wind whilst in the background arcs of paint stain the night sky and there amongst them is the word – “Marznacht”, the painting's title.

Neo Rauch’s work seems always to be swollen with meaning and yet opaque and resistant to interpretation, his figures so complex, the allegories so arcane and personal as to confound the possibility of explanation. Yet it is this that makes them compelling, like the dream that one turns over in your mind as you move through the day puzzled as to its meaning but reluctant to let it drift away losing the beauty of its secret. I think it may be this possibility of meaning that has made his work so popular.

In an artworld as vast and diverse as the contemporary milieu it is ridiculous to make universal claims, yet there is some truth to the idea that “meaning” has become either the object of derision in the wake of Buren-styled nihilistic post modernism or else tied more directly to causes, or ideals (often curator driven). The notion that an artist, particularly a painter, should develop a language of imagery and iconography that is personal and in a certain regard consistently applied (figures such as the “Hirst” stag make regular appearances) seems old fashioned and yet Neo Rauch’s work is startlingly fresh. Perhaps the reason lies in the fact that he seems to have incorporated all of the ideologically driven discourse that has politicised the act of painting over the years and then incorporated it into the figurative play of his work. If the boxers in Marznacht have fought, then it was art that was at stake. His ouvre has such a sophisticated sense of the painting’s surface, of composition and colour that you cannot doubt the integrity of his thought. Just trace the manner in which the figures in Marznacht are rendered, the immediacy of paint and line and the way in which marks trail off from representation to expressive gesture. The work achieves a wholeness that is not just a matter of balance across the surface and the elements of the composition but an acknowledgement of the problem of painting itself.

And then there is the question of semiology. Rauch’s works are redolent with symbols, each figure seemingly standing in a careful relation with others as if they were part of a sentence. If the unconscious is structured as a language, then Rauch understands its grammar, elegantly mobilising a surreal sublimity that inveigles even as it confounds. Perhaps such talents arose in his time as a painter in East Germany. We have seen before the manner in which totalitarian governments tend to improve their artists, who, forced to rely on subtle gestures, heavy coding and the repression of revolt become adept at suggestion rather than statement. Rauch revel’s in this coded gesture, yet without the strictures of a despotic government to test, he has instead turned to his own identity, as if he were trying to find some outer limit of meaning, the creation of artworks whose worth is undeniable yet inexplicable. They are machines for implication, drawing your attention into a world of allusive play, suspending you above the ordinary dynamics of the work-a-day world and challenging you instead with your desire to understand the inexplicable.


Neo Rauch's Gebot

Beside Marznacht, is Gebot, a later picture from 2002. Three men and a woman are in a room. One appears to be a labourer. He wears shorts and a blue singlet and stands on a square of turf that sits on the floor. A small tree grows from the turf; its leaves rendered as expressive squirts of red. In the labourer’s hands is a strawman or scarecrow whose head has been removed. Across from him a man stands behind a bench. He appears to be quite stern and in his left hand he brandishes the head of the strawman. In his right hand is a hammer. In front of him sits "the accussed", his hands bound, his feet covered over with sacking as if he has just been released from a bag. To his side is a women. She touches his shoulder and shows him what could be a Stanley knife. The walls are decorated in a checkerboard fashion the centre panels of which seem to contain speech balloons. In the “speech balloon” directly behind the "judge", there is the drawing of a jawbone. Just as with Marznacht, there is an immediacy in the imagery that seems to suggest that the allegory is in some way obvious, that demands you participate with these figures and try to understand this narrative. But just as with Duchamp’s bride stripped bare, meaning is constantly deferred, slipping away from you like the meaning of a dream.

It is interesting to think of these paintings as part of a German tradition that trace, in their absurd profundity and surreal meta criticism, a line through the actions of Beuys back to Grosz, Dix and even onto the late pessimism of the Blau Reiter's post war paintings by Kirchner and Beckman. They are ultimately sad songs, paen's to the loss of innocence but with no understanding of the crimes, like Kafka's Mister K. A haunted visionary who tries to chase away sin only to find that the blood is on his own hands. You should see them before they go back to the warehouse. You never know, it might even make you want to paint again.

Labels: guest blog, painting

Dear Art Life,

For your information and to clarify some apparent misunderstandings appearing on the thread discussion in regard to the Shaun Gladwell project at Artspace, Sherman Galleries did not 'put up the money to stage what must have been a very expensive show...' (fred friendly). That assertion is incorrect. They did, as did Gladwell himself, loan Artspace some technical equipment. Most of the equipment was provided by Artspace and/or hired/loaned from elsewhere. This isn’t unusual for Artspace with large technology-dependent installations. The exhibition was otherwise developed and produced by Artspace.

Best regards

Helen Hyatt-Johnston
GENERAL MANAGER
ARTSPACE

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DORKBOT-SYD : OCTOBER

Tuesday the 23rd October


Usual times and places. See you at 19:00 for a 19:30 speak off at Sydney (302 Cleveland St)

Two super presentations this month! And a show+tell.


1. Stephen Jones will be demonstrating and talking about a number of video synthesizers that he built between 1978 and 1986 (see pictured below for one). Stephen used these synths when performing live with Australian electronic group Severed Heads and in other projects.



2. Nick Wishart will be presenting CeLL, a MIDI controlled pneumatic orchestra he has created in collaboration with Miles van Dorssen. They will be opening up CeLL to new composers via a new software interface that can receive compositions by email, play and record the composition then send that recording to the composer.
www.cell.org.au



3. Show + Tell is open to anyone who has something they wanna bring along. Can be something interesting you have been working on or perhaps an event you wish to share with people. Just as long as it has something to do with electricity!

Also: Taking suggestions and volunteers for presentations for November's Dorkbot which shall be the last Dorkbot of 2007. Get in while the year lasts!


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Click to enlarge

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Ben Denham, no strings: pre-cursive, performance/video, 2007.
Courtesy of the artist.
between you and me explores ways in which artworks propose, present and perform mediating gestures. Taking as a starting point the particularities of viewing in a gallery context, these works interrogate the apparatus of their own making from various perspectives. Ideas are revealed by way of a certain self-awareness: a consideration of process, context and reception as it relates to the work’s own operation.The exhibition considers how the reflexive mode of ‘60s conceptual practices informs current strategies in art making, particularly in relation to performance and installation. A catalogue with in situ documentation and an essay by the curator will be available following the opening. Artist talks will be held on Saturday 17 November. Part of the Firstdraft Emerging Curators Program.press release

Ben Denham uses the concept of ‘re-writing’ to interrogate relationships between the body and the production of texts. Denham’s experimental performances use gesture, inscription, and the experience of text-as-matter as means to investigate the divide between expression and interpretation.Sam Smith investigates the relationship between the real and the virtual, using the processes of video making as visual content. In Smith’s work, the manipulation of space, time, matter and perception that is integral to video is exposed to viewers’ scrutiny and curiosity.

Paul Greedy creates environments that integrate sonic, kinetic and visual elements to reveal aspects of how we understand and relate with the physical world. Greedy’s installations render viewers conscious of their own bodily responses to different phenomena, and in turn register participatory interactions.

Sarah Jamieson uses the parameters of her body as a starting point to conduct speculative and temporal research that reflects on how we define our physical and social interactions in space, via such concepts as interior and exterior, self and other, public and private.

Rachel Scott works across installation, painting, video and performance to investigate the human subject in relation to the production and reception of art. Scott explores the slippages between unconscious and contrived actions, as well as the processes of obscuring and revealing that are integral to making and exhibiting work.

firstdraft: 116-118 Chalmers St. Surry Hills NSW 2010 t: +61 (0)2 9698 3665mail(at)firstdraftgallery.com open hours: Wednesday to Saturday 12-6pm

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JAMES DORAHY PROJECT SPACE is pleased to present


ELVIS RICHARDSON

THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF LOSING IN THE MIND OF SOMEONE WINNING

23 October - 4 November 2007

Opening Wednesday 24 October 6-8pm



Elvis Richardson’s art practice incorporates found objects such as 35mm slides, photographs, VHS recordings and trophies as raw materials in video and sculptural installations. She chooses these discarded items to investigate ways personal and social identity are constructed and as primary evidence of material culture and history itself. Richardson's interest in undermining the heroic iconography of trophies as emblems expressing social status, success and ideals of sportsmanship to question notions of desire, failure and nostalgia.

The works in THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF LOSING IN THE MIND OF SOMEONE WINNING are from the artists silver trophy collection ranging from premiership cups and 21st mugs to wedding goblets, making explicit the competitive references of trophies to all facets of our lives. Richardson has then poetically transformed these items through an experimental trial by fire resulting in a variety of shocking but beautifully slumped and shattered outcomes. These fragments are then re-silvered and polished for public display.

Elvis Richardson has recently been selected as a finalist in the inaugural $100,000 Basil Sellers Art Prize with her sculptural work field. Sixteen contemporary artists have been chosen for the award reflecting on one of the central elements of our cultural and social life - sport (www.sellersartprize.com.au). This exhibition is reflective of the work Richardson is developing for the finalists exhibition at the Ian Potter Centre in July 2008. It is a very exciting nomination in recognition of the artists continued investigation and use of trophies and their meaning in her practice.

Please join us for the Opening on Wednesday 24 October 6 - 8 pm

JAMES DORAHY PROJECT SPACE Suite 4 1st floor 111 Macleay St Potts Point NSW 2011 ( enter 1st door in Orwell St ) Gallery Hours Tuesday - Sunday 11am 6pm Wednesday 2pm - 8pm Ph 02 9358 2585 www.jamesdorahy.com.au

Labels: press releases

Not Quite Art - Ep. 2 THE NEW FOLK ART
Tuesday October 23 10pm, ABC TV Australia

Is culture a set of elaborate and elaborately funded life support systems, or an infection that’s trying to attack us? What’s the difference between a Symphony Orchestra and a covers band (apart from about $40million dollars a year) and why does the Australia Council spend more money on A SINGLE opera company than all the visual artists and musicians (not including symphony orchestras) in the country combined?

This week presenter Marcus Westbury meets artists that have turned the laneways of Melbourne into one of Australia’s prime tourist attractions (whilst dodging the police), finds out what uncollectable art is, hangs out with multi media musicians The Herd and wonders why the computer games industry has so much money and so little content. Creator of the Australian game, Escape from Woomera, Katharine Neil has some ideas why, which she shares with Marcus.


WARNING: May contain traces of criminal activity!

Labels: tv show

Francis Bacon, from Palletes/Figures De L'Exces from YouTube

Labels: cinema

Hey Folks,

Just a quick (and final!) reminder that Not Quite Art FINALLY goes to air TUESDAY night [Oct 16]on the ABC at 10pm for the next three weeks.

The Age's Green Guide have listed NQA is this week's PICK OF THE WEEK and according to Jim Schembri, "Not Quite Art is the freshest, most illuminating, thoughtful and funny locally made arts program in years." (Ok, so that may not be the most competitive category going around, but still!)

Over at The Sydney Morning Herald Robin Oliver has nominated "this extremely watchable series" as their SHOW OF THE WEEK. They also printed this excellent story about it in the TV Guide.

Now, if all that sounds like it's carefully selected and mad crazy positive well it is. For the sake of balance I should warn you that over at The Australian Giles Auty described my views as "resolutely juvenile", said that I was "play[ing] the part of a disillusioned teenager on television" and that I should be congratulated for "being granted 90 minutes of good TV time to explore his grievances against the adult world."

Well, you can't win them all!

Anyhow, if you are in Melbourne, please come along to our LAUNCH PARTY at:

Horse Bazaar,
397 Little Lonsdale Street,
Melbourne

from about 9pm (Tuesday 16th) - the show is on at 10pm. If you aren't in Melbourne watch it on TV!

Afterwards, feel free to email me and let me know what you think.

Thanks,

Marcus.

Labels: personalities, tv show

The National Gallery of Australia and its presentation of The Aboriginal Memorial have a long and chequered history. Originally conceived by Djon Mundine at the time of the Bicentennial as a memorial to 200 years of the victims of white occupation, it was bought by James Mollison after its first exhibition at the Wharf during the 1988 Biennale of Sydney. Once it arrived at the NGA it has been bounced around that infelicitous building in different configurations and contexts, from the downstairs sculpture gallery (where it was once contextualised as "installation art" in the Islands exhibition), to upstairs in Gallery One just inside the front door, to its present corridor location at the confluence between International abstraction and the shop. The Art Life, like everyone else, now scoots past it on the way to the temporary exhibitions area where the current exhibition Culture Warriors is to be found.




Under Brian Kennedy there seemed a concerted effort to de-sacralise the Memorial, to the extent that it was uprooted and sent with other Aboriginal art on an international tour, fetching up as far away as St Petersburg, the site of the infamous falling out between Consultant Djon Mundine and then Curator Wally Caruana. Last night, as part of a chilly and chaotic 25th birthday bash son et lumiere, the NGA wowed its masses with the projection of its collection on the exterior walls of the building. Including The Aboriginal Memorial .

This left the Art Life somewhat bemused. There was discussion that the new building extension would include a glass pavilion for the Memorial, which would at least be an expansive solution to the continual problem (which no curator has tackled in its nearly 20 year history) of the work being unable to be seen except against a cacophany of Indigenous Australian art from everywhere else. But now, as we see, it has become an emblem, a party trick. The Art Life now wonders whether it has become another victim to the symbol wars.

Ian Houston writes from London...

The work, entitled Shibboleth 2007, runs the full 167 metres of the cavernous hall on London's South Bank.

It begins as a crack then widens and deepens as it snakes across the room.

Colombian artist Salcedo said the work - on display to the public until April next year - symbolised racial hatred and division in society.

"I always try to relate my work to tragedy," she said.

Salcedo added: "It represents borders, the experience of immigrants, the experience of segregation, the experience of racial hatred.

"It is the experience of a Third World person coming into the heart of Europe."
BBC news website 9 October 2007

Colombian artist Doris Salcedo’s Shibboleth, the latest installation at the Tate Modern’s cavernous turbine hall is a huge crack in the ground that runs the entire length and width of this forbidding space, branching out in filigrees of doom, an intriguing, darkly mystifying piece, – well it was darkly mystifying, until she opened her mouth, “It represents borders, the experience of immigrants, the experience of segregation, the experience of racial hatred.” Thanks. Great, now I know what to think. No need to see it anymore really.



There is little in the world of art more deflating (aside from the news of another $100,000 plus auction for a Tim Storrier work) than hearing an artist tell you what a work represents. This ascribing of absolute meanings to a work of art by its creator really puts the kibosh on any of the allusive, associative detective work that makes art fun, dare I say it, worthwhile even. Indeed, the idea that an artist sits in their studio and decides that they are going to create a work that “stands for” something is vaguely nauseating. The language games of the art and text people aside, shouldn’t art be doing its best work when it stands beyond the interface of meaning and identity beckoning us instead into the deeper water, where we can stand no more? Where we might drown? Choking our last on the pure waters of a “meaning” beyond attribution, distillation or comprehension? Otherwise we could all save ourselves some time and have the artist email us their wall texts,

Doris Salcedo would like you to know that a crack in the floor represents borders, the experience of immigrants and the experience of racial hatred. She would also like you to know that racism is bad and that Europeans are bad for being racist.

Sure the notion is worthy, and it received plenty of press. No doubt people will read it, nodding their heads and inwardly agree “hmmm poor refugees, nasty racism” and who am I to differ with that sentiment? I rush to assure you that I don’t. But what about the poor crack in the floor? The artist has gone to so much trouble to make it and now with a few short words to the press it has become one thing, a simple placard in a protest, rather than the myriad, elusive, wonderfully poignant things it might have been.

Before she opened her mouth and started to blab, it could have been a humorous commentary on contemporary architecture, or a representation of Marxist Dialecticism, or maybe Saussure’s division between the signified and the signifier, or language and parole, or the haves and have notes or the fracture line of a soul whose heart had been broken, or a discussion of plate tectonics, maybe even the crack in the liberty bell and all of the references to American attacks on freedom around the world that would conjure. Or else it was clearly Freudian, a dirty crack in the floor, “a crack” which is a joke, which is an absence. Absent of what? The Phallus, of course. You could have visited the work and walked its length examining the depths it plunged, as you thought about your own dark nights of the soul, following the jagged architecture of its path as you traced the manner in which your life had unraveled over the years. But no – not anymore. Now it’s about racism. Good thing to, since we all know racism is bad. Still, what a killjoy. That crack could have been so much fun.

Labels: guest blog, sculpture

The Australian Centre for Peace & Conflict Studies

PeaceMAPP Workshop

Art, Artists + Conversations = Peace Talks?

Ms. Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox
[Artist, B.A - Double Major Art History, University of Queensland]

Tuesday, 16 October 2007
1:00 – 3:00 pm

Sustainable Mining Institute Seminar Room, Level 4,
Sir James Foots Building (no.47A)
(Corner of Staff House Road and College Road, St Lucia,
Please check with Reception on Level 4, if you arrive early)
http://www.uq.edu.au/maps/pdf/StLuciaMap.pdf at J11 co-ordinates

This PeaceMAPP workshop will investigate the connection between peace and art. Conversations stimulated by looking at art have the potential to take people to places of intimacy and commonality which are not normally accessed over the boardroom or diplomatic table. These conversations are not elicited via Art Therapy or preconceived mode. They are natural discussions of story telling and feelings between the artist and viewer, each one bouncing off the other, ultimately taking both to a realization that fundamentally we are all the same. Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox has experienced these types of conversations in the Middle East where she has exhibited her paintings. Comments by men and women from all over the Middle East, Africa and Eastern Europe have compelled her to think about the potential for art to stimulate peace talks of a different kind and ask the question: What is it about how an artist thinks and ‘sees’ that holds this potential?

Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox has an extensive exhibition history in South East Queensland and internationally with solo exhibitions in London, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and group exhibitions in New York, Dubai, Seoul. Kathryn completed a Bachelor of Arts [double major Art History] at the University of Queensland in 1980. Upon graduation she became a curatorial assistant at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. After marrying and moving to Goondiwindi where she lived for eighteen years, Kathryn undertook part-time curatorial work at various regional galleries. She also returned to her love of painting. Kathryn is the immediate past Chairman of the Australia Arab Chamber of Commerce & Industry [Qld chapter]. Her next solo exhibition Prayers For The Planet: We are all the same opens @ Doggett Street Gallery, 85 Doggett St, Newstead October 12 until November 3. www.kathrynbrimblecombe-fox.com & BLOG www.kathrynbrimblecombeart.blogspot.com

Kathryn has teamed with War Child Australia for her exhibition. %9 of exhibition sales proceeds will be given. War Child is an international relief and development agency dedicated to providing immediate, effective and sustainable aid to children affected by war. www.warchild.org.au

For enquiries please contact: Executive Assistant, ACPACS 336 51763 or [email protected]

Where have we been? Unfortunately we can’t tell you. Let’s just say that we have been working to make the world a better place, free from sadness and want, indeed, a broadband nation dedicated to education and the advancement of, you know, whatever… Our mission has taken us to Brisbane there times, once to Adelaide and innumerable trips around Sydney. None of this will make sense to you now but take our word for it – it will very soon.

We have seen some art and some it was good too. The exhibition Cross Currents on at the Museum of Contemporary Art is the third in their series of shows featuring the work of mid-career artists. This one has been curated by John Stringer and has the advantage over its predecessors of being good. Yes, it’s true, it’s a far more conservative selection as far as the kind of art on show – lots of painting, a tiny bit of sculpture, photography and installation - but what a refreshing change. The smell of paint wafts through the MCA like baking day at the bread shop. Mmmm.

Elisabeth Cummings is an artist who a lot of people that like good quality art really admire. And we admire her work too because whenever we look at it, you can just feel the goodness and the quality oozing off the canvas, or in the case of the works in Cross Currents, wafting off the oil based inks on paper. Ah Xian’s celebrated ceramic heads – the Bust series - offer a similar sort aesthetic reassurance. Both artists’ work is like taking some money you won at the track and investing it in real estate.


Gareth Samson, The Keep [detail], 2004.
Oil and enamel on linen.
Private collection.
Two artists work who we haven’t given much thought to for a long time are Gareth Samson and Dale Hickey. Samson kept entering garish and unlovable photos into the Citigroup Photo Prize at the Art Gallery of NSW, yet kept producing supple paintings for that benighted Sulman comp. His big paintings in Cross Currents marry both strands of his practice and we can say this about Samson; he’s a dirty, dirty, dirty boy. If he isn’t dolled up in leather he’s got a lady’s part between his legs. Doesn’t he know the MCA is a family institution? Hickey’s work meanwhile shows that artists can get a second, third or fourth wind and make paintings just as alive and vital as they did 40 years ago.


Glenn Sloggett, 666, 2006. Type C Print.
Courtesy Stills Gallery. Copyright the artist.
Across town at Stills Gallery Glenn Sloggett’s solo show Decrepit finds the artist making an unexpected trip out into the country, but just like his big city work, he finds the same bleak ennui in tree stumps as he finds in Melbourne shop windows. As beautiful as they are despairing, the quietness of the work is overwhelming. The show’s saving grace is its sense of humour. Like his stable mate Roger Ballen, Sloggett’s stock in trade are surrealist shocks that trip you up every time no matter how familiar they feel. Perhaps it’s that very familiarity that creates the fuel for the images. When we went to interview Sloggett for The Art Life TV show, we had imagined the artist to be a Shaun Gladwell-esque skater who maybe took his shots with an expensive digital camera, perhaps selling editorial work to the likes of Vice. How wrong could we have been? Instead, Sloggett had a framed poster of Ran on the wall and a DVD of Barton Fink on the coffee table. He’s living the dream.


Shaun Gladwell, Woolloomooloo Night [Production still], 2004.
Courtesy the artist and Sherman Galleries.
Speaking of Sean Gladwell, you may have noticed the artist is having a major show- In A Station At The Metro - at Artspace. The show got a glowing write-up by Sebastian Smee in last weekend’s Australian. The review was remarkable for two things – Smee got through the entire thing without mentioning Matthew Barney, his favourite all-purpose point of reference for video and performance art - while he waxed lyrical about the associations of the exhibition’s title - noting the lift from a poem by Ezra Pound - but neglecting to mention anywhere that Pound, an expatriate American who lived in Italy before and during World War 2, was both an apologist for Mussolini and an arch anti-Semite.

We mention these unsavory facts about Pound because no one else seems to have thought it apt to do so in relation to Gladwell’s work, and not in keeping with the usual litany of reference points - le flanuer, old skool sk8, interventions into architecture, the dance nature of everyday movement, etc, etc, etc. Certainly, Gladwell certainly wasn't making reference to Pounds shady past, it’s just that Gladwell's work is so open to interpretation it’s just as reasonable to conceive that the artist is making an anti-fascist statement as he might be saying something about something else.

It is a rare feeling to be in agreement with Sebastian Smee. Artspace should be congratulated for mounting the show, and doubly so for what is the handsomest installation we’ve ever seen there. The place sparkles with video screens, iPods and Playstation PSPs mounted to the wall, multiple bodies moving, mirror images and endless repeats. The galleries hum with the low tones of immaculate electronic soundtracks. Suddenly, all those clichés of video art that Gladwell has made his own make sense. Individually or in group shows, Gladwell’s work doesn’t really shine. But collected together the work is genuinely arresting. More importantly, however, it doesn’t matter what any of it means. It doesn’t matter what anyone says about the work. It doesn’t matter if the subcultural signifiers are as relevant as winkle pickers. What matters is that it is. And that’s all anyone should care about.

Labels: painting, photography, video art

Todd McMillan, Back In Your Life [2007], from YouTube

Labels: video art

Just type in your email address in the Email Subscription box on the right, and follow the instructions... You will now receive an email whenever we post new updates.

Labels: site news

Post Secret

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"The referencing of historical styles or iconic works has been popular since the 1970s, but it seems that since Julian Schnabel, Sherrie Levine, and Richard Prince, the conceptual nature of this sort of work has become shallow to the point of engaging viewers on about the same level as commercial graphic design. Don't get me wrong though, I really do enjoy the works of John Currin and Richard Wathen, despite their reliance on earlier artistic imagery."



"The problem with this sort of work is that often I find my level of interest no deeper than the thickness of paint on the canvas. The notion of putting contemporary figures and personalities in a classical setting, or of depicting historical figures in a contemporary form is as conceptually engaging as those old-timey photographs you can take at fairs and amusement parks."

Experimental and referential histories, Lightening Histories

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"I feel the blogging tool is an excellent medium for artists, it has so much potential for networking and sharing ideas. Not only can you present your work and receive feedback, there is also potential for sales. The challenge is to make the most of this incredible tool, while it is not controlled and still free. Where else can you connect with other artists without selling your soul. Although I love visiting galleries, I find the supporting culture at times exclusive, snobby and overly protective. Why can't the new contemporary art gallery in Brisbane, show at least once a year a survey of various Queensland artists who are subsisting in the undergarments of contemporary art. There are quite a few out there, and there work at times is very interesting. I for one would love to see a big gallery represent the culture that supports it instead of the usual suspects, who have risen to the top of the heap."

Other places, other times, Art Smelter

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"The First Appearance of Street Art In Tehran Galleries .... As the first experience of graffiti in Tehran has happened by artists involved with “KolahStudio” Project, we are undoubtedly going to present some in Tehran galleries."

Art Hot Spots

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"Artopia pays no attention to the Chinese art bubble, nor to the bigger art bubble in general. Bubbles come and go. The Bigger Bubble is tied to the stock market. The stock market drops and the art market follows one year later. It has happened twice on my watch. Now it is real estate, everywhere but in New York City high-income zip codes, that is plummeting. Will art follow? Some say that the economy is now worldwide and that money piling up in the oil states will rescue art from the mortgage mess. Tell that to the citizens of Great Britain who are taking their money out of the banks..."


Zhang Huan, Stark Naked and Covered With Flies, Artopia

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Grant Beran, Life In The North


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"Photography is, by definition, about the interaction between time and light. In Hiroshi Sugimoto's photographs we are able to engage in a conversation with light. In a very real way, he opens the light to us. He lets the light speak to us in a way that would be impossible in any other medium. Sometimes the light is fast like in the Seascapes and the dioramas where the exposure time is some small fraction of a second. In other work the light is slow, so slow that one photograph is exposed for the length of an entire movie. In most of his photographs the light is reflected, so that the light seems to be emanated from the subject that he is photographing. This gives the dioramas, the wax figures and even his Sea of Buddha series an uncanny, life-like feeling as if the figures only settled into position a split second before he clicked the shutter. We feel the life of the objects that he photographs and not the hand of the photographer. He heightens the interchangeability between time and light in a way that gives his photographs a remarkable presence. Whether he is looking at animals, the plaster cast of a mathematical formula or even on a cliff high above the ocean, you can sense that he begins to learn about an object by the way that it interacts with light. The Hiroshi Sugimoto Retrospective that is currently on display at the De Young Museum in San Francisco until September 23 is a record of the themes that he has explored for the last thirty years..."

The Wisdom of Light: The Hiroshi Sugimoto Retrospective at the De Young Museum, PORT - Portland art + news + reviews

Labels: blogging, hip hop, hot pot

Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev
public lecture

When: Tue, 9 Oct, '07
Where: COFA UNSW




Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Artistic Director of the 2008 Biennale of Sydney.

Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Artistic Director of the 2008 Biennale of Sydney, Revolutions – Forms That Turn, explores the "biennale syndrome" which seems to have taken over the art world in the last fifteen years? Why are biennales so attractive? And to whom ? Why are they also so unattractive for some audiences?

Christov-Bakargiev will look at the rise of biennales, how they have decentralized art and created multiple art systems while at the same time allowing for new possibilities of disempowerment.


When: October 9, 6.30 Where: Main lecture theatre (EG02) COFA FREE

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SMASH HITS will be a loosely curated group show to be held at Parramatta Artists Studios during December 2007 and January 2008 (opening on the 6 th December).



As a celebration of the Studios' first year, SMASH HITS uses the genre of the much celebrated compilation album to invite all artists to recreate their Best or Worst Moment of 2007.

Artists will be provided with a 12 inch LP sized board with which to illustrate their own smash hit. Thematically, these moments may be anything real or imagined; a response to a news story, a melodramatic personal saga or an experience of extreme banality.

Works are not limited to 2D images but artists should make use of the 12 x 12 inch board.

To receive your panel, send your name, phone number & mailing address to: [email protected], [email protected] or phone: (02) 96876090 before the 16th November.

Opening Night: 6 December, 2007
Curated by Tom Polo in association with Parramatta Artists Studios

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PRESS RELEASE: ROSE ANNE McGREEVY

Opening Wednesday 10 Oct, 6 - 8pm.
Thursday 11 Oct to Saturday 20 Oct, 1 - 6pm
At Factory 49, 49 Shepherd St, Marrickville 2204



Rose Anne McGreevy's work is essentially form interacting with space to create a relational architecture of the mind.

This "architexture" is not a physical thing like a building but a psychological perception. The question arises "does this psychological perception aid in the creating of desire?"

Factory 49 Director Pam Aitken BVA(HONS), MVA
Showroom 49 Shepherd St, Marrickville, Sydney 2204
Hours Thurs - Sat, 1 - 6 pm (+61) 2 9572 9863
[email protected]

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Hello,

Mambo has a really cool event coming up and i am trying to get the word out.

The art-based event is being held this Saturday the 13th.

Basically the idea is in the morning of the event we will hand out a load of cryptic clues which will lead people around the city and then eventually to one of 15 final secret locations which is where we will have placed 15 one off pieces of art. Whoever gets to the art first gets the art.

The locations are all significant spots, some landmarks, some great art institutions, and all great cultural promoters within Sydney.

It is going to be great fun, widely publicized and like any cultural event the more people joining in the better it will be.

Please see attachments for all the information. It's completely free and anyone can join in as long as they register. They can register by going to our website - http://www.myspace.com/mamboaustralia.

It would be great if you could put our information/flyer (attached) on your "what's on" page and any other pages you think would spread the word.

Thanks

Matt Owens


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(a) Bird In (a) Space Project

A exhibition of new sculpture by
BENEDICT ERNST

at First Draft Gallery
116-118 Chalmers St, Surry Hills

Opening Wednesday 10th October 6-8pm

Running until the 27th October

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Presented as a part of The Art Life's ongoing commitment to serving the community and staying out of jail.

Labels: press releases

We have to admit it - it didn't work, we messed up and now we're sorry.

We're talking about the venerable Art Life mail outs we've been sending to subscribers since we launched in 2004. A year ago our relationship with Hotmail hit a rocky patch and after dozens of emails between Art Life HQ and Hotmail HQ in Hyderabad, we moved the whole operation over to Gmail. Unfortunately it then turned out that one giant heartless email provider was much like another giant heartless email provider. We discovered that no matter how hard we tried we couldn't send more than 100 emails a day with the mighty Google-owned behemoth. Although we've had hundreds of new subscribers submitting their names and addresses we couldn't service the readership.

Until now! Introducing the Art Life Feedburner Subscription email list. This is how it works. Enter your email address into the Email Subscription box at right [just under the poll and Recent Posts] and hit Subscribe. You'll then be asked to type in a verification code. An email will be sent to your email address. Open the email, click on the link... and that's it. Each morning, between 9am and 11am Sydney time you'll receive notification of any new posts and even better, if you are set up to read HTML, the email will even carry links, pics and other blog goodness.

"Wait a minute," you ask, "Does this mean I have to re-enter my email address even though I've been subscribed since March 2004?" Unfortunately it does, but look on the bright side, at least you WILL get emails now.

For the more tech savvy reader, we're also offering an RSS Feed. If you know what an RSS feed is, then we don't have to explain how to use it. If you don't know, maybe you should, because then you could get Art Life updates on your mobile phone.

What a modern world we live in.

Labels: announcements, site news

Tired of MySpace? Fed up with FaceBook? Looking for something that will waste time until the coffee break? Just relax and enjoy...

We get sent a lot of links to artist sites and blogs and one of the most interesting to come our way lately is the site of Peter Callesen , an artist working in the medium of cut paper. There are a lot of artists using the old scissors-and-paper medium [cheap to buy, hard to master] but few are as quite as good as this.


A couple of blogs recently brought to our attention really stretch the limits of taste. The blog Illustration Art is a celebration of illustration for all manner of outlets, from pop culturally acceptable comics, illustrated novels and poster art through to the pop culturally unacceptable outlets such as greeting cards, car company ads and fantasy art. That the blog makes no value distinction is refreshing and challenging.



The blog Tomorrowland is an old fashioned blog that wanders around many subject areas for kicks, from pot addled cult leaders to a post about why some gut got tasered by the cops. On a more art related front, the blog does have the occasional architecture related story, such as futuristic architecture in Dubai and the speculative art of NASA that envisions what a 1970s space habitat would have looked like.



It was through Tomorrowland that we discovered the joys of Astrona: Space & Astronomical Art, a copyright busting blog dedicated to gathering together the work of artists such as Chris Foss, Chesley Bonestell and Shigemi Numawaza. If you're asking "who?" then clearly you didn't spend the better part of your teenage years reading crappy SF novels and wondering why the cover paintings weren't in "proper" art galleries. Well, the answer to that last question is fairly obvious, but we're way past caring and Astrona is a mixture of nostalgia and guilty pleasure.


Judith Van Heeren, Garnet red birds in grey landscape, 2007.
86 x 183 cm.
We're always looking for suggestions from artists for new additions to our list of artists sites and blogs. A blog we found through a gallery invitation is the work of Judith Van Heeren, an expat Dutch artist living in Melbourne who is currently having a show at MurrayWhiteRoom. Just the right side of kitsch, Van Heeren's work is moodily abstract with a lovely addition of birdyness.

Finally, a site you might want to visit before you've had your lunch is the work of New Zealand artist Angela Lasinger. It's creepy and frankly disturbing. You have been warned.

Labels: blogging, web sites

Dear Lino,

I am writing to inform you about the Shellywood™ project in Kevin Grove, Brisbane, Australia from October 2007 to January 2008.

Shellywood™ is a massive 45m x 9m fake movie poster, inspired by my recent residency with a group of Bollywood billboard painters in New Delhi.

Shellywood™ forms part of the Innocence series (2004-2007) in Melbourne and recent projects in India’s Bodhgaya (Enlightenment) and in New Delhi (Planet Shellywood).

A Melbourne version of Shellywood™ will be displayed outside Conical Inc. in Johnston Street, Fitzroy, Melbourne from Oct 29 – Nov 25.

I have attached some further information and images for your interest.

www.shellywood.com

www.ciprecinct.qut.com

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Raise The Bar

Do you think you have time to sign this petition in support of relaxing the liquor licensing laws in NSW? A bill is being presented this week to Parliament, so sign up now (its not too late)! As they currently stand, licenses are too expensive for small operators to set up little bars like those we love in Melbourne and other great cities in the world, where we can enjoy a quiet drink and a maybe a gig. So Sydney’s drinking venues are dominated by big boozy, sporty, pokie pubs and clubs where we all go home husky with beer on our slippers. It would be nice to end the big operator monopoly. Some resourceful individuals set up this site to provide you with more reliable information than I can provide, and to garner support from the public:

www.raisethebar.org.au


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JAMES DORAHY PROJECT SPACE
is pleased to present

STEPHANIE MONTEITH
DIRTY SWITCH



Opening Wednesday 3 October 6 - 8pm

Exhibition Tuesday 2 October - Sunday 21 October

JAMES DORAHY PROJECT SPACE Suite 4 1st Floor 111 Macleay St Potts Point NSW 2011
(Enter 1st door in Orwell St) Ph (02) 9358 2585 www.jamesdorahy.com.au
Gallery hours Tuesday - Sunday 11am - 6pm Wednesday 2pm - 8pm

Image : Dirty Switch, 2007 oil on linen, 30 x 20 cm

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Labels: press releases