Showing posts with label Installation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Installation. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
REVIEW: In the Year 2525
This selection of Grays newest work revolves around the same concept realised in three different ways. Gray examines the Moiré (pronounced: mwa-rei) effect: an optical illusion which occurs when two sets of grids or sets or parallel lines are overlaid at slightly different angles.
This work is a departure in terms of aesthetics and mediums compared to Grays previous work of delicately sculptured miniature craft forests of paper tendrils and fern fronds or organic colourful chaos, which was a notable presence in his 2010 solo exhibition (‘Attack Decay Sustain Release’) at Craft Victoria and which was the sole focus of his exhibition (another solo: ‘Tudo Que Acho/ Everything I Think’)the previous year (2009) at The Narrows.
The moiré effect is an illusion, a suggestion of something that doesn’t exist and Gray likens this to anthropological forecasting: seeing what is present within contemporary culture and trying to predict the as yet unrealised, undetermined and unknown future. This act of seemingly logical-soothsaying by some individuals has had devastating effects, like the Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski, although more often it has been responsible for envisioning optimistic future utopias as dreamt by writers and dreamers of science fiction, such as musicians Zager and Evans who penned the song ‘In the year 2525’ which forms the title of the exhibition.
These thoughts of the far off future was also inspiration for Grays sound work exhibited as a part of The Zero Dollar Show at West Wing gallery (a temporary space run by West Space) a month before ‘In the year 2525’. Gray recorded an audio tour of Melbourne Central as though the shopping centre were a complex projected reality used as a teaching device for students in the far future as a part of a history lecture.
Grays musings of the moiré effect are manifested as three distinctly different types of work: a large scale installation, smaller drawings, and framed moiré patterns screenprinted on mylar which have then been placed over moiré screenprints on paper, which capture the effect in action.
The installation (above) is comparable to his miniaturist jungles of vegetative paper works, except on a larger scale and utilising more industrial materials. Multiple A2 sized sheets of Perspex with parallel lines created with black electrical tape are suspended from the ceiling, which demonstrate the visual interference of the moiré pattern in the wild, a natural environment of angled planes (ply wood panels) and bold straight lines ruling their way through the chaos (long strips of electrical tape).
Grays framed works (above) act like smaller versions of the installation: live captured moiré patterns, confined to a restrictive enclosure, living examples of visual interference keep in captivity and trapped for its privileged owners wall.
The drawings are perhaps the most curious of the trio. Being works on paper, the lines share the same flatland and fixed positions, the human eye (and mind) can’t compensate for the discrepancy caused by the mismatched angle of lines.
The exhibition will also host a series of ‘acoustic tests of pre-post-human perception’, which is a pre-post human way of saying 'gig', which will include Snawklor, Mof Far Far Rah, Julian Williams, and Northlands at Utopian Slumps gallery on Sunday 20th of Feburary from 6:00 til 9:00pm.
The present is just a suggestion of a future illusion.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
ToonaParstaBongMyst- Simon McGlinn
"ToonaParstaBongMyst"
Simon McGlinn
West Space
6 November - 28 November 2009
How it all works is a big joke. On entering the gallery to view McGlinns ‘ToonaParstaBongMyst’ at West Space, the viewer encounters a seemingly minimal installation of three video works shown on TVs sitting (meditating? drug affected?) on the floor. Each different, seemingly without connection despite sharing an off-beat, slightly bleak humour and that each video is named after its duration in minutes and seconds. The three video works are all short, almost seamlessly looped, and convey their message regardless of whether they’re viewed for a second or their entirety (perfect for our generations attention spans that have been raped by 30 second advertising, bite-size youtube clips and sugary, gurana infused energy drinks). McGlinn uses the repetitive nature of the videoworks, which is usually common in works of this type, to highlight the bleakly humourous nature of the redundant, incessant echoing actions of a satirical, Sisyphean nature.
Each work features a single focus or feature: Wide-eyed eyeballs floating in a black void, the planet earth spinning in outerspace, and the coming and goings of urban dwellers in a street over 24 hours. The featured subjects can be simplified to be representative of: god (or some divine being who exists as crazy excitable planet sized eyes darting around in an abyss), our planet (as spaceship, home, vessel, bio-sphere), humanity (temporary, mortal, creatures of habit and familiarity). Humanity habitats the Earth, Earth exists in space and god is all. McGlinn makes a mockery of all three. The all seeing eyes, gods embodiment hover peacefully in a starless vacuum, without warning they become comically frenetic, darting about, crossing each other’s paths, no longer respected but certifiably idiotic. The earth itself is viewed from afar, an indeterminate speck among the stars and as we zoom in on this life harboring vessel turning on its axis we realize it is a charade, a cheap parody of our planet, a plastic dime-store globe. Not even our existence is spared from the cynicsm of McGlinns observation, he depicts us in a generic pixilated town akin to an 80’s video game, coming and going, seemingly without purpose, day in day out, trapped in a futile existence.
A lot of McGlinn’s work (including that which he does with collaborative ‘Greatest Hits’) seems to be about taking a format, a blueprint, a procedure, an underlying structure of how a certain system, tradition or concept works, goes by and then subverting it, debasing it, either by highlighting its simplicity, mocking its authority by representing it in low-fi reproduction and or materiality.
There is a subtle fourth work in the gallery, an installation work that can be easily missed because of the dominance of the video works, a single nail at average viewing height in the middle of an unused wall, rotating slowly in the vast white painted space, mirroring our planet, hanging in a black abyss, turning fruitless, seemingly without purpose, as meaningless as an illogical god, a planets orbit or our own limited mortal lives.
Simon McGlinn
West Space
6 November - 28 November 2009
How it all works is a big joke. On entering the gallery to view McGlinns ‘ToonaParstaBongMyst’ at West Space, the viewer encounters a seemingly minimal installation of three video works shown on TVs sitting (meditating? drug affected?) on the floor. Each different, seemingly without connection despite sharing an off-beat, slightly bleak humour and that each video is named after its duration in minutes and seconds. The three video works are all short, almost seamlessly looped, and convey their message regardless of whether they’re viewed for a second or their entirety (perfect for our generations attention spans that have been raped by 30 second advertising, bite-size youtube clips and sugary, gurana infused energy drinks). McGlinn uses the repetitive nature of the videoworks, which is usually common in works of this type, to highlight the bleakly humourous nature of the redundant, incessant echoing actions of a satirical, Sisyphean nature.
Each work features a single focus or feature: Wide-eyed eyeballs floating in a black void, the planet earth spinning in outerspace, and the coming and goings of urban dwellers in a street over 24 hours. The featured subjects can be simplified to be representative of: god (or some divine being who exists as crazy excitable planet sized eyes darting around in an abyss), our planet (as spaceship, home, vessel, bio-sphere), humanity (temporary, mortal, creatures of habit and familiarity). Humanity habitats the Earth, Earth exists in space and god is all. McGlinn makes a mockery of all three. The all seeing eyes, gods embodiment hover peacefully in a starless vacuum, without warning they become comically frenetic, darting about, crossing each other’s paths, no longer respected but certifiably idiotic. The earth itself is viewed from afar, an indeterminate speck among the stars and as we zoom in on this life harboring vessel turning on its axis we realize it is a charade, a cheap parody of our planet, a plastic dime-store globe. Not even our existence is spared from the cynicsm of McGlinns observation, he depicts us in a generic pixilated town akin to an 80’s video game, coming and going, seemingly without purpose, day in day out, trapped in a futile existence.
A lot of McGlinn’s work (including that which he does with collaborative ‘Greatest Hits’) seems to be about taking a format, a blueprint, a procedure, an underlying structure of how a certain system, tradition or concept works, goes by and then subverting it, debasing it, either by highlighting its simplicity, mocking its authority by representing it in low-fi reproduction and or materiality.
There is a subtle fourth work in the gallery, an installation work that can be easily missed because of the dominance of the video works, a single nail at average viewing height in the middle of an unused wall, rotating slowly in the vast white painted space, mirroring our planet, hanging in a black abyss, turning fruitless, seemingly without purpose, as meaningless as an illogical god, a planets orbit or our own limited mortal lives.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
SOON- Over Here Over There- Bonnie Lane
“Over Here Over There”
Bonnie Lane
BUS117 gallery
20 May -7 June 2008
SOON
Bonnie Lane graduated from the VCA (painting department of the Art school) at the end of last year and proving there is life after 'art school' she has been in a number of exhibitions and competitions, exploring personal and relational qualities within her own life. Bonnie walks a fine line between being, in essence, an installative artist and a sculpture/object maker. He work focuses closely in on one of three people orientated subjects: herself, her boyfriend Matthew Findlay and/or their relationship together.
Her work in the graduate show was a timber, boxlike structure, in which life size photo’s of the walls of Matthew’s home were hung to give the impression of being in their space. It was personalised further with an audio component: a recording of ‘live’ homely conversations between the two. Some of his furniture also included in the space and a pile of their laundry next to the couch, gave the impression it had been pushed aside, evidently unfolded.
More recently she took out the 2008 Moreland Sculpture Show Ephemeral Award by reconstructing a lounge room again, this time it was one that focused on the objects within by not including walls and placing the furniture within an invisible floor plan in the outside area of The Coburg Leisure Centre. The work also hints at sustainability as all the suggestively personal items were collected from street side hard rubbish.
Bonnie describes “Over Here Over There” as being: “a video installation that creates a multi-sensory experience of sight, sound and touch that explores the longing to be utterly and entirely connected to another person”. Whilst “entirely connected to another person” sounds a lot like she’s suggesting intimate, sexual closeness, don’t be disappointed if there is nothing in any way sexual when the work is revealed. Bonnie has a penchant for exalting the more sweet, pure and demure aspects of a loving relationship rather than the cheapness of the act itself.
Bonnie Lane
BUS117 gallery
20 May -7 June 2008
SOON
Bonnie Lane graduated from the VCA (painting department of the Art school) at the end of last year and proving there is life after 'art school' she has been in a number of exhibitions and competitions, exploring personal and relational qualities within her own life. Bonnie walks a fine line between being, in essence, an installative artist and a sculpture/object maker. He work focuses closely in on one of three people orientated subjects: herself, her boyfriend Matthew Findlay and/or their relationship together.
Her work in the graduate show was a timber, boxlike structure, in which life size photo’s of the walls of Matthew’s home were hung to give the impression of being in their space. It was personalised further with an audio component: a recording of ‘live’ homely conversations between the two. Some of his furniture also included in the space and a pile of their laundry next to the couch, gave the impression it had been pushed aside, evidently unfolded.
More recently she took out the 2008 Moreland Sculpture Show Ephemeral Award by reconstructing a lounge room again, this time it was one that focused on the objects within by not including walls and placing the furniture within an invisible floor plan in the outside area of The Coburg Leisure Centre. The work also hints at sustainability as all the suggestively personal items were collected from street side hard rubbish.
Bonnie describes “Over Here Over There” as being: “a video installation that creates a multi-sensory experience of sight, sound and touch that explores the longing to be utterly and entirely connected to another person”. Whilst “entirely connected to another person” sounds a lot like she’s suggesting intimate, sexual closeness, don’t be disappointed if there is nothing in any way sexual when the work is revealed. Bonnie has a penchant for exalting the more sweet, pure and demure aspects of a loving relationship rather than the cheapness of the act itself.
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