ILLUSTRATED REVIEW: Deep Time- TCB Art Inc.

REVIEW: The Band, It makes no difference- Rohan Schwartz

Apathy. Pathos. Everything is the same, it may as well all collapse, or condense, whatever, either one, it doesn’t matter which, and that’s the point: artistic apathy. That’s what is happening in the magazine, ‘Bohemia’ (below), produced by Schwartz: layers of images and text all flattened out to one plane, unreadable, indistinguishable, a huge mess of corrupted visual data, all of it as equally important, or as unimportant, as each other.

Forget art history, or arts theoretical frameworks, the ideology for an artistic practice or exhibition can be formed song titles that express the aforementioned lament (below). Abandon thought and consume popular music in lieu of reading philosophy.

On one table is a copy of The Labyrinth of Solitude with a colour photocopied selection of Australian currency peeking out from the pages (below). If we are to learn anything from Octavio Paz, it’s that ‘Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition’ and because it’s so universally familiar, you could probably make a buck out of every single person on the planet by exploiting it.

Pop-musicians (inadvertedly?) use it to convince millions of hormone-riddled teenage girls all over the world that their clichéd sonnets are actually personal messages of love and devotion directed to each and every hopeful, naive, little Miss. Religion takes full advantage of the inescapable truth of solitude and death and sets its sights on a target audience well beyond the small demographic of prepubescent fan-girls. Religion aims at everyone, even members of other religions, no holds barred.

Before you even enter the exhibition you’re faced with a free-standing promotional banner guarding the entrance, however the message it delivers isn’t trying to sell us anything but instead proclaims ‘GOD IS IN LOVE’ (above), but it may as well read ‘SANTA CLAUS IS IN LOVE’. The absurd announcement is printed in virginal, holy white text on a blue skyed photo background, the visual elements amplifying the insanity of speaking for an omnipotent, omniscient, deity whose existence is questionable.

An exhibition review probably shouldn’t be written in suite with the show itself, but (just as Schwartz asks via The Smiths) ‘what difference does it make’?

REVIEW: Mantle- Alanna Lorenzon and Lucy Berglund

Mantle sits upon, is the holder and supporter, the upper that is propped and the propped uppera.

Alanna Lorenzon and Lucy Berglund’s exhibition ‘Mantle’ is a selection of completely differing objects and images on display: small, palm-sized, peaceful drawings on paper pinned straight to the wall, a handmade, hooded jacket prototype, a video work, and an installation which engages floor and wall space. This varied itinerary may give the impression of a disjointed and unorganised presentation of separate exploratory artistic material-based experiments, but, in truth, the wide spread of approaches point conceptually inwards to one thoroughly considered idea: the stoic nature of the earth.

The unified collection collectively emphasises the earth as: stone, granite, strata’s of thick, densely packed rock, that are still, that are immobile, worn, heavy. Mantle is the earths cloak and covering but also the planets exoskeleton and innards.

This idea of appearances is directly referenced by one of the works within the exhibition: a small, handheld, plastic, make-up mirror (above) has been converted into an artworks frame. The mirror, a tool to feed vanity and superficiality, has been made redundant and removed, in favour of an image representative of eternal strength, which in comparison is no match for the fleeting, passing of youthful beauty.

Visual cues to stone are repeated throughout the exhibition, from the gentle soft slopes of the grey slate coloured jacket, to the faux-marble finish of a table supporting a television showing a video work comprised of noir-documentary footage on caves.

Lorenzon and Berglund show how stone is both macro and micro: stone is on the inside as it is on the outside, regardless of scale. This idea presents rock, at least in concept, as an equal to both the greatest and smallest examples of matter, a partner to atomic particles and celestial planets alike. It is matter which has been and will be.

‘Mantle’ rocks like geology.

REVIEW: Goblin- Grant Nimmo and Adam John Cullen

After seeing Grant Nimmo and Adam John Cullen’s ‘Goblin’ at TCB and realising the work was based on fluke similarities and meaning born from the unplanned meeting of phenomena/forces/objects/bodies/thoughts/etcetera I decided to google the main idea of everything being connected, followed by a ‘man’ for good measure, because, like, that’s the way that clichéd and stereotyped hippies who believe in such concepts talk, man.

Goblin (exhibition view)

The very first result from searching ‘everything’s connected, man’ was an article titled with virtually the same phrase from a sustainability site (2), and as with everything on the internet, the main protagonists are cats (coincidence?).

In the 1950’s Borneo was plagued by malaria, so they called up the friendly folks at World Health Organisation who recommended they cover the island with DDT. Sure enough all the mosquitoes carrying and spreading the malaria died but so did all the other insects, including the wasps which’d usually eat the caterpillars that’d consumed the thatched roofs of the locals.

All the lizards that lived on the island dosed up fairly highly on the DDT as well, which caused the cats that, ate the poisoned lizards to die. With the cats out of the way the rats saw their chance to rise up, overpopulate and begin spreading septicemic plague. Goodbye malaria, hello plague.

The World Health Organisation decided the cure to Borneo’s septicemic plague being spread by rats by using the Royal Air Force to parachute live cats in with ‘Operation: Cat Drop’. Oddly enough, despite happening over nine thousand years before the beginning of the interwebz, the very true tale mirrors the fictional, and lulzworthy (2), worlds that exist in lolcat image macros (parashoot kat: i kan haz plague ratz naow?).

‘Goblin’ encompasses all of these ideals: death, humour, cuddly animals, bright colours, chance juxtaposition and visual puns. The work has been created with the recognition that the chaos governing much of fate can often be interpreted in multiple ways, sometimes with acerbic irreverent humor that could see even the most stoic soul turn maudlin: the bones of the dead are decorated with thick coats of desecrating spray paint, corpses are hung on fences in positions to mimic a cheerful or celebratory high-five with plush children's toys and collaboration between Nimmo and Cullen means organising images of what was once pornography alongside photographs of endangered species and popular 1980's action film icons.

Goblin tears up conventional associations until April 2nd at TCB gallery.

(1) http://www.jacqueslecavalier.com/like-everythings-connected-man/

(2) Lulz: Beginning as a plural variant of ‘lol’, ‘Lulz’ was originally an exclamation but is now often just used as a noun meaning interesting or funny internet content- Encyclopedia Dramatica