FAUX THRILLS- GREATEST HITS

Faux Thrills is a curious title for Greatest Hits exhibition, kind of a self-depreciating joke that beats the harsh critic to the punch, or punch-line, the title ‘fesses up to its own shortcomings before you’ve seen the show and come to your own conclusion.

Faux Thrills is also a pretty good summary of where art ranks in the entertainment stakes of modern culture today, it kind of falls short in comparison to all the other facets of our lives that bombard us with activity or amusement. It’s no wonder that painting, and by extension: ‘art’, is repeatedly declared dead, gallery attendance numbers have fallen, patronage of the visual arts has declined because as opposed to the days of olde when salon shows were blockbuster crowd summmoners, we can get our fill of amusement and entertainment from pocket sized personal video media or gaming devices, (I’m looking at you Nintendo DS and iProducts), or movies at the cinema which are feature entirely new imagined worlds in all the glory of the gimmicky 3-D, and let’s not forget to mention all the time-eating, internet platforms like chatroulette which can instantly connect you to a live streaming video conversation with a complete stranger from anywhere in the world. How can art compete with these attention grabbing fixtures of our daily life? To engage with art seems laborious in comparison, when instant gratification is a click away in the form of gaming, video clips, music, movies or websites designed as tools of procrastination.



“I know what he’s talking about, its all, like, there’s so much to do, yeah? And so like, people have just forgotten about art, yeah?”
“yeah, like, just painting and shit is boring now, it’s all-”
“-yeah like painting, is just like something to look at, and like, but like, even if I’m at the tram stop I’m checking my email or like playing games and shit on my phone, yeah?”



This sense of failure, or potential failure is a recurring element in Greatest Hits work, an example of this is the way that often there will be components of their exhibitions that are constructed haphazardly, as if they were constructed, or deconstructed, without thought or care, and other components which juxtapose this seemingly slap-dash work ethic which are finely crafted, well made and represent a considerable amount of time or skill, or both, in their construction.

This way of working has usually been directly employed in making some kind of intervention with the exhibition space itself. Upon entering CCP, from the first step, the Viewer is inadvertedly interacting with one aspect of the artists’ intervention with the gallery environment, because they’ve ended up carpeting Gallery 1, so there’s no way around ‘touching the art’ so to speak, the ‘art’ being the carpet added by Greatest Hits, because you’re in fact walking on it, the audience is literally walking all over the artists action. The carpet is very much noticeable as so few galleries or exhibition spaces are carpeted, and it’s not a terribly great carpet either which only adds to your attention being drawn to it. It in itself is a kind of failure of carpet, if carpets were able to fail, then this carpet would be.

“Dude do you remember those carpets at your Mums?”
“when we were kids yeah?”
“And they were all sticky and shit?”
“Yeah like you’d get your burger and shit and you couldnt even walk to your table”
“hahaha, oh yeah, classic.”
“hahahahaha, oh yeah man, gotta love it huh?”
“hahahahaha”
“hahahaha”

The second element is more constructed: It’s a wall, like any other gallery wall at first, centered in the space so that foot traffic entering the gallery have to split and pass around it, and as soon as you do pass it, you realise that it isn’t a temporary wall that the gallery have installed in the space because its only half-built, the side facing the inside of the gallery doesn’t have plasterboard covering the cross beams, it’s just a fake, or unfinished, probably the later because there’s a glass of cola sitting on the floor. Even on its finished display side, the side that you see as you enter the space, doesn’t have work hanging on it or a TV bracketed to it, its potential is intentionally underutilised and features a ripped-out magazine page.

It’s a joke on exhibition presentation, but not in malice because they’ve gone to the effort to emulate, it’s more of a joke between friends, if it is possible to be friends with something abstract, like the concepts of exhibition installation. This denial of the spaces’ use reminded me of their work in an exhibition at Platform in which they’d spray painted the glass panel of the window box, essentially making it redundant.

“Oh yeah, yeah, I saw that show man.”
“Yeah it was good, huh?”
“Yeah i think I seen that movie at the same time yeah?”
“Which?”
“that zombie one man, with uh, Woody Harrellson”
“it wasn’t out then, was it?”
“Nah, man Jas downloaded it and burnt it for me”



The show-grabber was an object installed on two metal braces or stands. It appears to be a roughly cut or chiseled block of ice with a Hawaiian shirt frozen inside. Two separate people after the show admitted that they thought the sculpture was actually real ice, frozen water and were briefly perplexed as to why it wasn’t melting. It’s preservation of bad-taste: today’s fine weather is tomorrows ice age and our cultural and aesthetically embarrassing, mass produced, commercial items of today will be tomorrows fossils. Who knows, in a thousand years time, when the fragile, delicate artworks don’t survive, maybe the crazy frog ringtones, talking Andy Millman dolls and Happy Meal Toys will be elevated from common, crappy landfill to a useable resource commodity like oil, or worse, from our point of view, they’ll be collected and treasured as ancient oddities of a time long gone. Machine made, plastic molded novelties may sit alongside handmade relics and artifacts. Why wait a thousand years for that discrepancy to evaporate?

Outre is contemporary cool. Cool for cats.

"Outre is contemporary cool. Cool for cats."

The Outres collection of prints and artifacts is the epitome of cool. It's difficult not to biblically covet every single image and object in their commercial collection: cooler than frost on an Eskimos’ ice-cream and hotter than a chili cookout on the surface of the sun. They are the dealers of contemporary pop and we are the addicts of slick aesthetics.

Derek Yanigers beat generation inspired paintings on wood panels. Using the wood grain as a warm background each work uses a minimal colour scheme and painted super flat, which only adds to the crisp cool taste of the work. He must have a secret stash of sweat from the endless finger-clicking that ‘niks would have bopped along to in the ‘60’s whilst listening to avant-garde minimalist jazz, ‘cause I cant think of any other inducible substance that’d transport ones mind to a realm as hip as images he produces,
Daddy-O.

‘Incarnation’ by Mark Ryden was a showstopper at Melbourne Art 2010, perhaps made popular in part by a Youtube timelapse video showing the artist working on the painting, but even without knowing of the creative process, theres no denying Ryden credit as a master of his craft when face to face with the finished image. Incarnations flesh is porcelain and sickly pure, her gown is lush, fatty protein filled flesh. Even a middle-aged accountant whose last contact with any kind of academic arts training was over 20 years ago in the form of ‘Arts and Craft’ classes during high school was able articulate the nauseating juxtaposition of the pale, white figure and her fleshy, bloody gown.


There was nothing but love-love-love at the outré stand/stall/booth during Art Melbourne 2010 and with the application of liquor people’s nerves, eyes and souls were satisfied. There was a communal state of bliss generated by the amount of people interested in the same thing being in the same place all together. One of the most common actions by the public was ‘pointing and smiling’. There was some great original works as well: hand painted bongos by Yaniger, super-superbly crafted paper silhouettes by Beci Orpin, a gorgeous orange clucker by the king’o’kool 50’s styling SHAG (Josh Agyle) and Angelique Houtkamp with her tattoo styled tattooed ladies.

The collaborative team Friends with You received a fair share of attention with their minimal anthropomorphized works. Their works are celebrations of colour and shape, similar to the minimalist colourfield paintings except given cute oval eyes and smiles, making them so much friendlier, particularly Plasma Eyes and Friendship Flag. It’s this melding of a homage to a serious part of art history with the fun child-like instinct of personifying everything with a smiley-face that is both cheekily amusingly clever , and . A war directed by the FwY would be a colourful onslaught of bright chaos, water balloons and waterpistols filled with paint would be standard issue, as opposed to rifles and grenades.


Thankyou Outre for scouring the earth
(earth = pop culture magazines)
and gathering together some of the coolest looking prints this side of the afterlife.

http://www.outregallery.com/

You’ll be the Death of Me: Bridie Lunnney and Meredith Turnbull

"You’ll be the Death of Me"
Bridie Lunney and Meredith Turnbull
Platform

In the Degreaves St subway, (commonly known as the Flinders Street Station subway for those of us who have trouble remembering the multitude of alleys and laneways in Melbourne) exists the Platform exhibition space. The Platform space is a series of window boxes set into the wall of the underground thorough fare, an expressway for commuters exiting and entering the train station. Ordinarily these window boxes contain the artworks that are being exhibited (objects, images), so that passers-by, if they have enough time to throw a passing glance during their busy commute, may be visually appeased by some artifact of some aesthetic value, made by one of the many artists that belong to the plague that is choking or city with creativity and culture.

Bridie Lunney and Meredith Turnbull have proposed something a little more bold: a concept (heaven forbid, I can already see our major selling newspaper, the rag newssheet for the common man, crying out that artists are gobbling up our tax dollars with their superfluous existence and needless, functionless arts practices). As opposed to a constructed object or image, like a sculpture or a painting, what they have done is physically change the space: the duo have painted a coat of mid-grey onto the outside of the glass, so that the window boxes now appear to just be flat grey panels exhibited on the wall, as opposed to three dimensional enclosures within the wall.

The grey shares multiple commonalities: it reflects Melbourne’s drear weather, the cities mass of concrete and bluestone, and even the average commuter, the common people, anonymous in the peak hour, grey-men. It almost appears to be the same colour used by city councils to buff (paint over) graffitied walls, which in a way is exactly what they have done; they’ve buffed out, or over, erased a physical three dimensional space used for exhibiting art. Ordinarily this action would mean that they’ve erased an opportunity to display.

What Lunney and Turnbull have done is provided a space for people to exhibit their own work or words by encouraging the public that pass through the area to graffiti the painted glass by scratching the paint off, thus revealing the negative space, both pictorially and literally, because as the paint is scratched off in letters and words or shapes, a peephole is created to look into the empty space of the unused window box behind the grey façade.

The irony is that usually audience participation and interaction is seen as a positive force of collaborative creativity, yet the more the public create, the more they destroy the result of the initial action and efforts of the artists to facilitate such an opportunity. The line between the creative act and the destructive act disintegrates when we realize that the only action a public participant can execute without destroying anymore of the artists original glass painting, would be to refurbish, or repaint the glass as well, essentially an act of graffiti because it would destroy what others have done, yet it would also adhere to the artists initial intentions.

The works title, “You’ll be the Death of Me”, is a great summary of this creative-destructive dichotomy and a chance for the work to speak to the Audience, the participators, not in condemnation but merely alert them to the truth of the relationship that they have together.

A work that destroys itself is perfect in this push and produce world. If you’re going to bring anything new into the world, it should be this: action.

OMEGA

"OMEGA"
Alain Declercq, Tony Garifalakis, Joaquin Segura, Jeanne Susplugas, Ewoud Van Rijn
Margaret Lawrence Gallery

Omega: two sides to every story

Fight the power[1], fight for your right to party[2], stand up for your rights[3], because this is it, this is ground zero[4]. You can’t trust anyone, not your government, megalomaniacal corporate companies with political sway and all important sponsor money; they’re all out to get you. The people that “Serve and Protect” you and your country are the same idealist fanatics that were extremist right/left wing nutters patriotic well intentioned morally upright members of society that fell into proudly took an oath to enter into a militaristic institutions the armed forces because they are simple, easily led and lack any self direction they believe in the ideals of their country and the just causes it stands for and represents.

One man’s passion is another man’s parody.

Its only when things get serious that we’re able to see how much of a joke they are that we must take action. The UN and EU are little more than selfishly, violent, provincial, marauding motorcycle gangs and frauds. Governments are whores to capitalist payouts, built on business that promotes the gluttony of excess and instant gratification and inducing a state of constant paranoia and fear are just and righteous pillars of global peace and order.

Terrorism is a means to an end is a nice excuse for governments to gain the power totalitarian police state whilst maintaining the illusion of an independent, free, democratic nation terrible blight which more often than not affects the innocent of the perpetrators own country rather than those that they’re opposed to.

The end is nigh. Only chaos is real[5]. It will be alright[6].

It’s almost too easy to poke fun at authority, to undermine the current order of society and politics. With great power comes great responsibility comes great risk and great opportunity to inadvertently (perhaps inevitably) fuck everything up. The good guys are the bad guys are the good guys…


[1] Public Enemy, “Fight the power”, Fear of a Black Planet, 1989
[2] Beastie Boys, “Fight for your right to party”, Licensed to Ill [Album], 1986
[3] Bob Marley, “Get up, Stand up”, Burnin [Album], 1973
[4] Chuck Palahnuik, “Fight Club”, 1996
[5] Ewoud Van Rijn, “Only Chaos is Real” [acrylics ink on paper, 220 x 150 cm], 2006
[6] Ewoud Van Rijn, “Alright” [acrylic paper, 250 x 170], 2009

PlaneStars: Ross Coulters 'Prelude'

"PlaneStars: Ross Coulters 'Prelude'"

Large seemingly scientific white structural models hang from the ceiling, a video work of a melting aeroplane made out of ice flies through an unidentifiable sky, and a concrete totem sits in the centre of the exhibition like an anchor, especially when compared to the apparently intricate paper models and projected video work. These three components create the trinity that was Ross Coulters ‘Prelude’ Seventh gallery. Each portion, a different medium, size, but all virtually crying out a in chorused unison of a common ideal and all linked in their usage of one form: the humble paper plane.


The paper plane is perhaps one of the simplest most popularly known forms of paper folding that also has a function: flight.[1] This function is removed from the hundreds of actual folded paper planes in the exhibition though, instead, they’ve been taped together, all noses pointing inward, in spherical hives or cocoons of paper planes, all cluster-fucking in groups of origami orgies. Plane stars. There’s a punk, DIY immediacy of the sculptural forms suggested construction that attests to the crass interpretation of their gathering. Even their ability to be used, thrown, folded or unfolded (deconstructed/destroyed) is negated by their proximity of closeness to each other.

There seems two groups of planes within each cluster: one group seems to all be pushing towards the center with equal force to every other, and the others are pushing away from the center, heading out at every angle, all aiming for the same indiscriminate point in three dimensional space, simultaneous black hole implosion and explosion of paper planes. Their collective honing in, or racing away from this one point is suicidal for the individual as they become functionless, all simultaneously denying each other the non-existent Iliad they’re aiming for, making each ones effort a negation of anothers effort.[2]


The paper plane motif is repeated in the video work, except the paper plane in the video is made entirely of ice. Impossibly, it flies across a sky-scape, melting continuously, the further it flies, the less it exists. It’s a bittersweet existential prank bequeathed on/to it by its creator. To carry out its natural function, to fly, leads to its inevitable slow melting destruction.

Ice plane exists in a state of perpetual forward motion and continual demise. There’s no Sisyphean[3] commute, it’s all one way, but to the same ends. Smooth sailing in unknown skies, ice-planes location on this functionless flight is never revealed, all sky looks the same, with no markers, landmarks, no progress can be made or measured. Existence and actions are purposeless, it’s just a journey, details are superfluous and passed fleetingly.

Surrounded by the exploding/imploding plane stars is a concrete totem: an abstract pillar form with cubic sections, a mold. It is not a plane, but in the top most section are two planes flying into each side of it, their noses caught midflight, trapped in the stone. Its materiality is a stark contrast to the planes, weighted, hard, serious. The planes have not crashed into the stone because crashing implies an event of a temporary nature, whilst the union of planes and cement looks frozen, a moment in time caught and held.


Amusement. Boredom. Pranks. These are the states that usually precede a paper planes creation. They’re simple, cheap, functional, and inherently temporary and not the most robust construction. Coulter knows this, each work parodies it, or more correctly, the parody of itself, its own being is bought to the fore, and we realize “it’s a joke about a joke, like a joke trying to make another joke laugh”[4]


[1] Charlton Heston, “Planet of the Apes”, 1968

[2] Homer, “Odyssey”

[3] Albert Camus, “Myth of Sisyphus”, 1942

[4] Modest Mouse, “Steam Engenius”, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank [Album], 2005-2006

Caring is the New Sarcasm- Simon Pericich

"Caring is the new Sarcasm"
Simon Pericich
Block Projects
3 December - 23 December 2009

The title and nuances in the spelling give the best, most accurate view into the concept behind the work in the exhibition. Within the title, “caring is the new sarcasm”, the ‘c’ in ‘caring’, and the ‘s’ and second ‘a’ in ‘sarcasm’, are replaced with a copyright symbol, a dollar sign and a ringed anarchy symbol respectively.

The ‘caring’ mentioned in the title is that of a social nature, a sense of social responsibility, usually left on the shoulders of the protesters and anarchists working at cafes, living in share houses and completing arts and left wing politics degrees, but Pericich, using only the title, proposes that these traditionally extremist viewpoints of equality and justice are not only part of the norm, but a part of a copyrighted and profit making system: Che Guevara is an icon of fashion, stencil and graffiti artists are popular commercial money makers, water wise and recycling are everyday facets as opposed to 10 years ago, every party in today’s political arena has a pro-environmental agenda (whether they follow through with it is a different story).

Pericichs prints in the exhibition take community enagement and education of social injustice and responsibility to a whole different level, beyond the traditional propaganda flyers handed out by activists. The large editioned woodcuts are for mass education on the construction and use of tools and structures to be used by protesters and demonstrators. The social conscience and anarchist, renegade knowledge are now purchasable commodities. Available to all. Breaking down the exclusivity of the radical and unfortunately undermining the original passion of revolution.

What was once seen as fringe ideals is now widely accepted, so much so that it survives as a cliché, a parody of itself. Even terrorism is becoming cool: Osama is one of the most watched video bloggers on the planet; whenever he makes a video it doesn’t get uploaded to youtube but gets circulated worldwide by news networks. The most popular videogame at the moment is also the one most fraught with moral ambiguity in the fact that the player can play either a member of the military or an armed terrorist and in cases there’s opportunity to kill unarmed civilians. Capitalization has upped the ante and just made the extreme, a little bit more so. Or less. It depends on how profitable it’ll be.

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.

ON NOW- to boldly go where everyone has gone before- Rachel Ang

"to boldly go where everyone has gone before"
Rachel Ang
BLINDSIDE artist run space
30 April - 16 May 2009
ON NOW

Gees, I would like to be like Gombrich. Gombrich sounds like he has the story of art sorted. He knows the dates, names and years, “its comprehensive, lucid, (and) authoritive” [1], he’s already worked every thing out in advance so that it is the best, the most accurate, it can possible be. Unlike DangerDoom, Gombrich knows the formula, he speaks the language and has done the math.[2] I don’t think that knowing is the answer though. Or at least, ‘knowing’ is only part of the answer.

Rachel (that’s right, first name basis here homies) boldly goes where everyone has gone before, or so she would have you believe but the difference between Rachel’s trek and everyone whos gone before her is the recognition of going there, and the purposeful nature by boldly going there. An infinite amount of information exists within the most humble of objects, cardboard boxes, drinking glasses, cheap plastic toys, tape, sticks and light. The information and knowledge contained in the all text, mathematics, diagrams and illustrations that exists in all the libraries, museums, universities and galleries all around the world is evident and in existence all around us everyday, contained in mundane situations, conversations, coincidences and the unaware minds of strangers that pass you in the street or are seated at the opposite end of the same train carriage as you.[3]

This is how information and knowledge exists ‘in the wild’ and it is always growing, changing, evolving and mutating in a state of flux with its environment. As your body moves through space (which is a pompous way of saying: “as you walk to the shops for a pack of cigarettes…”), you displace, sorry, not displace, move, you move the air around you, you breathe and by doing so convert the (approximate) 20.95% of oxygen in the air to carbon dioxide, you apply an amount of pressure to the concrete footpath beneath your feet, you increase the strength of earths gravity ever so slightly and over a million other actions which change and adjust the percentages, weights, volumes, energy etcetera of the environment around you.

Our quest for knowledge and documenting what we ‘know’ is shallow at best, we know enough to realize that what we do not know far outweighs that which we do know. Knowing is dangerous to knowledge, in the sense that as soon as we assume that we know anything, we stop questioning or looking in that direction, even though it may only be a fraction of what is to be known. Like an iceberg. Knowing is like an iceberg to Knowledge, a great mass of ice capable of sinking an unsinkable ship, well not a ship, but sinking the possibility of learning more, attaining more knowledge.[4] When an idea is giving a name, jotted down in a book, given parameters and specific details, it is limited, and even though it may be unknown at the time of writing, there is most likely infinitely more to know than what is known. It is like trying to know a person through a single photograph of them. There are no absolute truths, there is luck, fate, coincidences, accidents, gods will and the synchrony of mysterious forces (or at least there is just as much as there is electricity, air pressure and latent energy), there are never complete answers, or if there is an answer it should only serve to remind us that there is uncertainty and it (uncertainty) is good because it enables us to discover some thing new.[5]

Art is a medium, which makes representing this kind of view of natural phenomena and experience of the world around us possible where science fails because it is not bound by the same rules. Ang (seriously now, no casual first names anymore) doesn’t need chemistry tubes, computer programs, graphs or numbers to show us how light travels in between objects and can be blocked by others: two cardboard boxes, a desk lamp, a mirror, a glass bottle and maybe a stick of balsa wood will suffice. The objects are ultimately inconsequential. Representation is kind of pointless; a child’s crayon drawing is no more the real thing than an oil painting by a Dutch master. Diagrams are fine, there’s no need to overwork an image if it communicates the message, the miracle life grows in the work as sprouts break the soils surface in tin cans and potential energy is stored in objects in the way they are placed in relation to one another. ‘To boldly go where everyone has gone before’, goes consciously, both knowingly and unknowingly, boldly and uncertainly, weighing and measuring, stacking and dissembling every step of the way without taking notes, finalizing, totaling or answering.


[1] Sir Hugh Casson, President of the Royal Academy, 1976-84
[2] Danger Mouse and MF Doom, “Sofa King”, The Mouse and the Mask (CD/LP), Epitaph, 2005
[3] Rupert Sheldrake, “The sense of being stared at”, 2003
[4] James Cameron, “Titanic”, 1997
[5] Amy Tan, “where does creativity hide”, www.ted.com, 2008

ON NOW - only from the perspective of an observer located upon the surface of the earth does day and night occur - Bianca Hester

"only from the perspective of an observer located upon the surface of the earth does day and night occur"
Bianca Hester
The Narrows
02 April - 02 May 2009

ON NOW

An eclipse is only viewable by someone standing on the surface of the earth. The same goes for the more common phenomenon of night and day... and anyone wishing to view Bianca Hester's exhibition, "only from the perspective of an observer located upon the surface of the earth does day and night occur" at the Narrows. Be aware that this isn’t only just Hester’s show, its gravity's as well. It’s a collaboration.

The door of the gallery is kept open by two forces: large, heavy, grey cinder blocks on the floor and a strip of tape passing across the space of the open door from the frame to the door itself, making the gallery space, directly interconnected to the world outside. This idea is reaffirmed as the viewer notices that the installation exists outside of the space as well, penetrating the wall of the gallery and into the hall through a newly cut hole and, out of the office window, and into another second storey window across the laneway. In this inclusive act of the outside wall in the installation Hester is making the public statement that the laws-o-physics apply inside of the gallery just as much outside, specifically gravity.

The floor is paved with the large grey cinder blocks that keep the door open, another reference to gravity, this time through weight, a couple of sparse lengths of fluoro orange rope pulled taut dart at all angles across the space and outside of it, imitating beams of light or the uninterrupted path of matter invasive particles soaring across the universe, and lastly a strip of tape gently meanders the length of the space via the walls (the height presumably limited by Hester’s reach) like a far off smokey whisp of a barely visible horizon; all phenomena unique to an observer standing on the surface of the earth. The real gold in the installation is Hester's glass of water and the lighting, but I'm not going to tell you why, for the same reason I didn’t tell you that DiCaprio died at the end of Titanic: spoilers aren’t very considerate.

"only from the perspective of an observer located upon the surface of the earth does day and night occur" is in part art-povera melded with aesthetic-pseudo-science but mostly it’s a great example of Hester’s ability to see common materials in new ways, ways in which these common materials take on new qualities and also reflect non-physical ideas and thoughts, both of which were apparently inherent the entire time but not seen.

http://www.thenarrows.org/index.html

http://www.biancahester.net

ON NOW - Drawing Folio

"Drawing Folio"
Curated by John Nixon and Justin Andrews
BLOCK PROJECTS
02 April - 25 April 2009

ON NOW

'Drawing Folio' is a real gift. Really. Honestly. Its exciting and fun and it doesnt need batteries. I'm not lying. John Nixon and Justin Andrews have put it all together (no assembly's required), its ready for viewing. Its enjoyable. Its huge. Theres 36 exhibiting artists. Its great. Its not great just because theres so many participants, its great because theres so many and all of the work is great also. Bonus. I was genuinely awestruck; I feel no embarrassment in saying so because it is backed by truth, even though its usually the social norm to be distanced, detatched and, even in the most exteme circumstances of heart felt wonder, only mildly impressed regardless of your true feelings. I'm sure the fever I was suffering from when I saw the show aided the viewing experince as well.

What the curating duo have done is gathered both preliminary and finished abstract/conceptual drawings from a broad span of Melbourne artists that work in this manner. The work is form, line, space, layers, distances, and being. Its dupilicates, singularities, webs, accidents, systems, rules, coincidence, hierarchies, order, and chaos. They are ambiguous diagrams, conveying ideas (mostly) without words, relying on the power of the image. They are a dichotomy of simplicity and complexity, and in that they scream with honesty without a hint of grandiloquence. It was fantastic to see so much free work (speaking of both the prepatory drawings and the finished) of both this nature and subject matter by such a large number of artists all in the one space, side by side, not in competition, but support, support of similarity, ideas and style.

I do have some criticisms of the show, only a few though (can I even say I have a few criticsms? Especially after so much praise in the opening paragraph? Wheres my intergrity as a writer?! Pfft, as if I care, I'd rather write this article like some common, opinionated blogger than an unapproachful, magniloquent (and delusional) art critic). Upon first entering the space and seeing the overall hang from the distance of the entrance, I was a little dissappointed that everything was clinically at eye level, without a single deviation, despite the common subject matter addressing scale, space, composition and or balance. These ideas could have been taken from the work and used in planning the exhibition layout: hanging the drawings in the space in a similiar way to composition used in the images of the drawings themselves. Furthermore, I understand that the show is called Drawing Folio and thus the participating artists were requested that all works be a maximum size of A2, but i felt this rule was a little dire, especially after seeing some of the works and being left to imagine the rousing possibillities had the artist been given freedom in the kingdom of scale. These two criticsms are of little consequence though, in comparison to everything that is amazing about this show, so by no means give them any more thought than they deserve. Which is very little. Definately don't dwell on them... the criticisms that is. Instead, dwell on the work, and the exhibition as a whole, its a gift and we have John Nixon and Justin Andrews to thank for organising it.

http://www.blockprojects.com/current/drawing-folio/

ARTICLE- "art is full of :-) at the moment"- Ace Wagstaff

"art is full of :-) at the moment"
Ace Wagstaff
2009-03-31


Is it just me or are there less and less people attending gallery opens and art events at the moment? Its a little bit sad. I thought it might be just me or my overly imaginative paranoia assuming that as soon as I turned up to an exhition, everybody left, mainly in fear of having to socialise with me. Thats not the case though. Thats rediculous. I'm a fantastic conversationalist. Ahem. Personal social insecurities aside, I can understand why gallery attendee numbers may be down at the moment, what with all the bleak news (bush fires ravaging half the state, a colossal death toll, the country sinking into a recession and the world economy imploding), it wouldn't be very considerate if we were enjoying something as socially inessential and lavish as the arts, especially in a time that calls for us to be collectively frugal and solemn. However, I feel (notice the emphasis on the "I") the melbourne art scene has been pretty full of win at the moment. I havent been to many openings, which is hazardous in an industry like the arts, which is more like a social arena that requires individuals to see and be seen, but I have seen many shows the day after, after the wine spills from the night before have been cleaned up and all the obnoxous, heavy, hot air that was issued forth from superficial conversations the night before has dissipated, which is a much more pleasent way of doing things to a degree.

Welcome to my fave's from the last month:

At Craft Victoria on Flinders Lane, the Chicks on Speed are exhibiting in the gallery space. On second thoughts, they aren't really exhibiting, they arent really using the gallery as a plinth to show their work but more as a communial space for people to interact and engage in the creative act, keeping true to the Chicks one Speed DIY ethos. The girls are running a variety of practical workshops throughout their stay in the space and invite visitors to try their hand with some needle and thread on a massive banner collaborative banner thats covered in all manner of sewn on media varying styles of stitching any time during opening hours.
http://www.craftvic.asn.au/gallery/2009/chicksonspeed-exhibition.html


"Cock and Bull" curated by Kate Daw and Vikki McInnes at the Margaret Lawerence Gallery is all about the boys. And lies. And the lies boys tell. And its about art. Its is art. Woah. The title of the exhibition ties in nicely to the all male cast, John Beagles and Graham Ramsey (Beagles and Ramsey), Jon Campbell, Tony Garifalakis and Matthew Griffin, as well as being a reference to a fictional autobiographical novel in which most of the humour comes from exageratedly complex explanations and epic, chapter-length explanitory detours ("The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" by Laurence Sterne). Beagles and Ramsey have a zillion video works playing on tables which is a feast for square eyes. Matthew Griffin's video projection in the back room is a highlight that features Griffin playing as a small handed potter, the artist as all concept and small skill, reapeating the same action to created the same object in a sisyphean loop. Jon Campbell has converted a false entrance of the gallery into a brightly coloured, circus like doorway, complete with offical looking signage above it loudly exclaiming "INSUFFICIENT FUNDING".
http://www.vca.unimelb.edu.au/EventList.aspx?EventTypeID=4


Dale Frank's exhibition "The Big Black Bubble" at Anna Schwartz is colour. Beautiful, big, glossy, sublime colour. The works size is awe inspiring, the shortest edge on any of the works being two metres. The largest work dominates the space at two sixty by five hundred, a mass field of black, varnish on linen, titled "Ryan Goslyn" after the movie star (from such films as the irratingly romantic "The Notebook", feel-good american high-school football and racial issues "Remember the Titans" and indie flick "Lars and the Real Girl"). The dried surfaces hide liquidy pools of varnish and oil, oozing away beneath the lush coloured gloss facade. Like I said: beautiful, big, glossy, sublime colour.
http://www.annaschwartzgallery.com/works/exhibitions?artist=15&year=&work=11640&exhibition=282&page=2&future=&projects=&current=1&c=m


Westspace has a hatrick with Ieuan Weinman's "The third wave of Stupa building", Nicki Wynnychuk's "A flag and a flagpole" and "A life Quite Ordinary" by Charles O'Loughlin.

Weinman combines the the method of painting through layers into a method from which to create a video work. This duality of mediums, painting and video, is strengthened by exhibiting the painted image on canvas as an installation, tacking it directly to the wall, as oppsed to stretching on a timber frame, which lets it flow down and over the floorspace and also places the screen of the accompaning videowork within the canvas, each giving the other strength in the combined concept and message of "The third wave of Stupa building".
http://www.westspace.org.au/program/ieuan-weinman.html

"A flag and a flagpole" divides the space with invisible borders, boundries, between four impromptu made flagpoles and flags in seperate areas of the space. Each constructed from found materials from in slash near the exhibiting site, bringing the normally superfluous collateral of the community outside and around the gallery, into the space and elevating it from common, invisible debris into a symbol, nay, a bearer of authority and power... but whose? The community inadvertedly responsible for the materials? The artist for the act of creating the idea and the object? The gallery which temporarily owns the artifacts through the act act of housing them? I foresee the answer being a much more complex one than these propositions and those greater answers probably belonging to an intellectually loftier idea relating to society, power and government. Good. It gives the work more weight than I can give it here in this article.
http://www.westspace.org.au/program/nicki-wynnychuk.html

In "A life Quite Ordinary" O'Loughlin has timed and recorded his daily activities and who he's interacted with, then redusced that information to numbers and colours and mapped it out, exhibiting the graphs as images without keys or legends. The idea that these multicoloured lines are true recordings of what their title suggests is quite convincing even though there is no real evidence. That is perhaps my only lament with the work, is that they appear to have such mathematical exactness, and I sort of prefer a little ungrounded magic or mysticsm with my science.
http://www.westspace.org.au/program/charles-o-loughlin.html


How very blessed we are to have all this fine work on display all at the one time, and the exhibitions coming up in the next few days promise to be grand: "Us Vs Them" an exhibition featuring Tully Moore and Taree Mkenzie at TCB Gallery, "Drawing Folio" group show curated by John Nixon and Justin Andrews at BlockProjects and, the upcoming "Hamstrung: Creativity Within Constraints" at Platform curated by Anusha Kenny. Yep. Melbourne is rockin socks aye tee em. Now I should really go as my 'cold-and-flu-day-and-night-relief' nighttime tablets are kicking in and wakefulness is fading. Yours Sincerely, Ace.

ON NOW - Look Hard - Tim Andrew

"Look Hard"
Tim Andrew
KINGS ARI
12 February - 07 March 2009

ON NOW


Kiss me. Talk to me. Love me. F-ck me. I am Tim Andrew. Okay, no, I'm not Tim Andrew, but that was the first impression I got from his exhibition. If Harrell Fletcher has taught us anything, it’s that human beings are complex and interesting. Andrew is no exception. I used the title of his exhibition, "Look Hard", as some sort of vague instruction for deciphering the enigma that is Tim Andrew. I looked at Tim Andrew. I looked hard. He writes honestly, and earnestly, addressing the reader directly, from which I guessed he'd be the stereotypical "sensitive-yet-tortured-artist"... yet some of his work is quite brazen, confident and crass. He’s doing a Masters of Fine Art so he must have some high, academic ideals... yet he does illustrative work for a men’s booby magazine (some articles being: the dodgy guide "how to make your crap car look a million bucks" and the classy "how to piss your name in the snow"). His work in the exhibition is hung salon style yet the work is stencilled and painted in bright colours. Like some sort of over eager self-promotionalist, he had three-fold, colour printed card booklets for free but also included a 'special gift' inside each one (a signed and numbered postcard size print of one of the works) which backed up his claim: "I like the idea that the work is slightly less exclusive when there is more than one, I really want everyone to own something I’ve made" printed in the booklet... how sweet is this guy?

Don’t let that last note fool you though. Sure, what Andrew writes can be, is, very sweet and endearing, but that’s just one side of him. Do a quick visual scan of a wall covered in his paintings and you'll see the crude Andrew, the horny Andrew, and the sarcastic and sardonic Andrew. Yes. Tim Andrew is anything but one sided. This is refreshing in an art world that promotes signature-styles, exclusivity, and rarity. Andrew turns up his nose, blows a raspberry, flips the bird (depending on which Andrew we're referring to of course) to these ideas and is evidently quite comfortable in his artistic and personal self to do so. He is human. His text isn’t the drivel of self righteous, pretentious up-and-comings, nor is it the soulless words that artists so often regurgitate from the well known tomes of art theory and history: Andrew is the human voice on the phone help line when you were expecting a series of computer controlled, pre-recorded, automated responses.




Andrew isn’t crude like the uncle who'd tell a grossly (in both senses) inappropriate joke to complete strangers whenever he was introduced, no, Andrew doesn’t offer other peoples uncomfortableness or awkwardness as entertainment, he offers his own. In several paintings he paints himself not only naked, but also in a series of embarrassing situations. In some of these situations Andrew is being taken advantage of, physically debased and degraded whilst being vulnerably naked, but who would do that? Who would take advantage of him whilst he was naked and physical and sexually abuse him? Of course the answer is obviously clear when looking at the image: Andrew is both the villain and the victim, the violent instigator and the fearful innocent, the devious sex fiend and the cowering, unfortunate causality. It isn’t just his own psyche we think we're privileged enough to glimpse in at through the paintings, but our own. We, however don’t want to, nor will we, admit it, and we're quite happy and thankful to Andrew for both being the monster he is and the hapless sucker, mainly so we don’t have to be that person but also so we can see what we've only thought about.



If only we could live out "you bastard, you ruined me life...", and ‘take care’ of that pesky procrastinator, lazy son of a bitch we all have inside of us, holding us back, preventing us from ever truly accomplishing greatness... or we could always threaten them with a thick black marker and ask "do I have to write it on your fucking eyeball...", that would put that good-for-nothing, deadline-misser in their place. Even the concept of masturbation looks equal parts entertaining, embarrassing and pathetic-failure in both "hey ladies, you could be one of these lucky men..." and "one man party" and furthermore, the spirit expressed in both works is sadly all too familiar. Freud would have a field day with Andrew although I'm sure it'd only be because Andrew has made these usually, inaccessible, subconscious notions of self and other public.

The back of his exhibition booklet features a dating-service style profile of information which includes his star sign, what he’s currently reading and pets along with a nice little colour photo. He’s banking on the fact you’ll feel like you’ve been long friends and know plenty about him by the time you’re walking out of the gallery after seeing the exhibition. Tim Andrew wants to be your friend. He finds you interesting and you, no doubt will find him interesting. He’s a little bit like Tyler Durden from Fight Club. Except Andrew isn’t going to make you fight anyone or blow anything up. He definitely has a similar sense of humour but in terms of similarities, that’s about it. He’s a lot like you in fact. More so than you could possibly realise and yet at the same time he’s completely different because he’ll write you only think, make visually real what you can only imagine and whilst he might appear to be a lot more immature and disgusting than you, he’s probably a lot friendlier and more loved than you. It’s okay though; he painted you a picture to make you feel better.

http://www.timandrewart.com/

http://www.kingsartistrun.com.au/

ON NOW- Lonely Sea- Paul McNeil

"Lonely Sea"
Paul McNeil
UNTIL NEVER Gallery
19 November- 20 December 2008

ON NOW

We've all picked up a shell, put it to our ear, and heard a simulation of ocean noise coming from within. We act out this little, clichéd performance to momentarily be alive in the moment, a free spirit, a hippy, a beach bum, for a fleeting moment, listening to sound sound of an endless ocean coming from deep within a tiny shell, we are no longer ourselves but higher beings, beach-Buddhists, free of worry or anxiety, completely at one with the sand, the shore and the universe. Unfortunately it’s a pile of fishcrap: we know its not true, but we delude ourselves for a moment because of the perceived inner peace it brings. We aren’t surf-shamans, we're escapists and malcontents searching for a deep, holier connection, but after we've taken the shell away from our ear and wiped the stupid grin from our face, we're back in the "real world", the depressing reality we know all too well. We trudge back to our hotel rooms, perhaps eat a meal in a restaurant, and give little thought to the small, saved fortune we're spending on decadent luxuries that would ordinarily be out of the question when working the 9 to 5 and catching overcrowded, poor public transport in order to make the most of every cent. We realise there’s plastic and rubbish on the beach but we only notice for the first time when the shell has been moved far enough away to not hear the impossible ocean within it anymore.

Sad but true.




McNeil taps into the spirit of the sea but not in the pseudo-truistic way already mentioned. He taps into the whoooooole thing: the ocean in the shell, the plastic rubbish strewn in the sand, the rhythm of the universe, the commercial nature of the culture, the beautiful melding of human being and mother nature, and the immature drug humour of the surfers. Psychic, cognitive eel-like tentacles reach out from McNeils consciousness, absorbing the collective mind space of surfer, jellyfish, great white, seadog, tourist, lout and barnacle alike, channelling them all at maximum volume simultaneously. As a surf-shaman McNeil also uses the power of icons and symbols, sometimes doubling or tripling their inherent visual power by combining them to form a single more powerful image (swastikas combine with anchors and marijuana leaves, another anchor has two eyes added to it so that it becomes a nose and a grin with hooked ends). Similarly he does the same with words and text: two old words create a new one, words of opposite meanings take on a new one when placed next to each other- McNeils insight to the specific and surprisingly adaptable meanings of these words comes from an intimate knowledge, use and familiarity of them.



What McNeil is NOT doing is: clinically observing and replicating for the viewer. He is very much involved in the subject matter, it’s a personal diary of pictures that tells a history, in both text and image, of danger, euphoria, materialism, land developers, great times, death, commercialism, big hits and near misses. Not all the information of all the stories and indeed the nuances they hold will be immediately accessible, but like the seashell with the impossible ocean, spend time with the work, get into lazy holiday mode, let your eyes wander slowly over the anthology and listen to the soft roar of the sea.


http://www.paulmcneil.com/

http://until-never.blogspot.com/

ON NOW- B-sides- Blindside Gallery

“B-sides”
Daniel Dorall, Ruth Fleishman, Cecilia Fogelberg and Tim Silver
Blindside Gallery
27 November- 13 December 2008


ON NOW


Blindside invited past exhibitors Daniel Dorall, Ruth Fleishman, Cecilia Fogelberg and Tim Silver, back to the gallery and asked the participating artists to create "B-side" work from their current practice. Traditionally, when a band released a single on a vinyl record, long before the advent of file sharing and peer-to-peer, one side of the record contained the then smash hit single and the opposite side, the b-side, often had an instrumental version, maybe a a novelty polka rendition or perhaps other songs the band deemed werent worthy for release on their own.

B-side conjures ideas of failure and novelty, often viewed as not being serious and lacking of emotional or intellectual investment from the creative mind responsible, so why explore the b-side when by its very nature is is to be fundimentally lacking? Perhaps the answer to this can best be answered by detailing the work of a couple of the exhibiting artists.

Daniel Dorall whom usually reserves his work to using 1:100 scale miniature people and mazes made out of card enlarged his small, almost hand held sculptural work a hundred fold, creating an actual maze in the space that gallery visitors were forced to interact with and traverse as soon as they entered the door. The maze though larger was still made out of Dorall's maze construction material of choice, cardboard, but we the figures interacting with the maze changed how his work is usually experienced. In this case it becomes a social work of spatial-navigation as opposed to looking down on the work, being above it quite literally, and removed. In fact I was lucky enough to witness a poor soul trying to leave the gallery on the opening night, making his way back through Doralls maze to the exit, only to come up against a group of friends standing within it blocking his escape and because of a few opening night drinks, abusing their new found power as gatekeepers with cheeky requests for a password and claims that he'd have to go back the way he came when that clearly wasnt an option.

Another artist in the show, Ruth Fleishman, whose work ordinarily consists of the generation of digital environments but given the opportunity in this show, she constructed an installative work composed of mostly readymade, common, plastic objects. The commercially avialable objects allow her to have seemingly cloned objects in the work, existing in different places of the bright, coloured, little world but more importantly needing a barrier to keep the small ground based objects and their pecarious positions in relation to eachother safe and undisturbed from viewers potentially clumsy feet. This barrier is a real boundry between the punter and the work, the inticingly playful work looks back at the viewer, safe from being upset by the viewer whilst still inticing the viewer to interact because of its implied sense of fun, albeit static appearence.

Both works possess a sort of power over the viewer that the artists ordinary practice does not. They exude a certain type of control over, or at least, denial to the viewer. The works are b-side, they are a secondary preference for the artist, an unused strand of thought or materiality and it is somewhat aware of this as it desperatly bites back at the viewer, having nothing left to lose. In short: dont trust the b-side. It may be a failed form but in being so it inherits a certain amount of forcefulness, almost a kind of defence mechanism thats synonymous with novelty and difference, in order to protect itself from being forgotton.


http://www.blindside.org.au/exhibitions/

ON NOW- I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it- Locust Jones

“I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it”
Locust Jones
Until Never Gallery
15 October- 15 November 2008

ON NOW

The gallery’s walls push forward Locust Jones work into the centre of the space. Violently. Towards the viewer. Along each wall, panels of white paper span from end to end. At first the panoramic pieces only reveal tortured black ink on thick Italian paper, the surface of which bends and warps as if its been assaulted, a result of either the physical weight of ink on the page or an after-effect of the drying process, changing the density of the affected areas surface.


This brazen attack of ink on paper is emulated in the forms created with the ink, which seem to become more recognisable and detailed the longer one looks. No more does the work appear to be an exercise in replicating monochromatic, expressive splatter paintings of the 1960's as it did when first entering the room. The vertical lines become buildings, skyscrapers, no, more like... monuments on charcoaled landscapes, burnt to the ground, precariously angled aircraft in anxious flight patterns, blackened skeletal wire bridges, men, dogs, gasmasks littering the ground. Each mark earning more respect with every passing second as more detail becomes apparent and as such becomes recognised as a deliberate process as opposed to leaving it to being a random aesthetically fortunate accident.


Looking back across the work, familiar elements that were thought to be known deliver a little more visual information than they did before and change again for the viewer: the wire bridges become rusting hulks in disrepair, the men fascist soldiers, the dogs suddenly rabid- feral, and the gasmasks become the genocidal remains: the skulls of innocent men, women and children. In this way Jones lets the viewer in on a prophetic experience, seeing through his eyes at governments falling, turbulent economies and the age-old anger man can have for his brother. Jones has only foretold to a certain point though, making the aftermath of this very real mantic vision proposedly bleak but altogether unknown.


(for additional text there is a limited supply of brochures about Locusts Jones work from a previous show, enquire with gallery staff for a copy if they are available)

Until Never Gallery:
2nd flr 3-5 Hosier Lane, (Enter from Rutledge Lane), Melbourne CBD
Gallery hours: Wednesday to Saturday 12-6pm

http://until-never.blogspot.com/

ON NOW- New Sculpture- Sam Jinks

"New Sculpture"
Sam Jinks
Karen Woodbury Gallery
15 October- 8 November 2008

ON NOW

Dead men don’t talk. Sam Jinks new exhibition of work now showing at Karen Woodbury gallery is no exception. His work, lifeless but incredibly realistic sculptures of people (flesh, hair, faces), laid out on white slabs for the viewers voyeuristic pleasure. The frozen human form is captured by Jinks (in part, or in whole) for our eyes to become lazy, to wander, and drift casually over the shells of people we don’t know. This priverlige the viewer is granted is by way of a few different factors, one of these reasons is the subdued and demure of the sculptures own eyes which are either politely closed (as is with the ‘wallwork’ faces) or looking downward, seemingly defeated (as is with the two full body sculptural works).

The scale of the work doesn’t overpower the viewer either. The work, and the space it consumes inside the gallery does not threaten the viewers own scale. Even the presentation of the work allows the viewer comfortable viewing of lifelike, intimate details. The faces, which are almost like studies are hung at a easily observable height, much like paintings and are viewed similarly, despite their dimensionality whilst the full body sculptures lay both below us, pinned to the plinth via a combination of exhaustion, gravity and judging by their expression a significant state of apathy. All these nuances within the work do cultivate an atmosphere of guilt free observance, looking upon the flaws and exposure of flesh but there is one overlying, greater cause that gives the viewer this freedom and it was difficult to pinpoint because it is so evident and that is the soulless, lifeless nature of the sculptures.

Despite their triumph of being an uncannily realistic representation of the human shell, they are dead to the viewer and don’t have or establish any personal connection. Which is good isn’t it? If that personal, intimate connection was there, strung between the viewer and the work like an invisible thread of empathy and understanding: we would be embarrassed of our gazes, looking away out of respect, not wanting to pry, one would not be able to view the detail, and skilled handiwork Jinks has to offer us.

(there is a fantastic, FREE, full colour, 8 page, folded panel, catalogue available with a written article by Mark Feary on the exhibition titled: “Coma”)

http://www.kwgallery.com/index.html

http://www.kwgallery.com/exhibitions/index.html

ARTICLE- Of Temporarily Not Writing Art Criticism- Ace Wagstaff

“Of Temporarily Not Writing Art Criticism”
2008-07-14

Art criticism, or perhaps the attempt to indulge in art criticism is “neither a recreation of nor a substitution for artistic experience”[i]. So what the hell am I doing trying to critique art? Being a supposed practicing artist, a post graduate student in a diploma of education course and now, attempting to maintain a constant critique of local artists run spaces and their exhibitions, I feel I am not really succeeding at any. Reel Big Fish echo my lament in their song “Don’t start a band”, informing those of potential not to begin anything creative, nobody wants to hear it or see it[ii]. I cant help but feel that there may be a degree of truth in this contradictory and obviously cheeky tune. I don’t even want to hear myself, why would anyone else? (bare in mind its also not my intention to write an article of self loathing but merely explore my dismay and creative block to write at present).

I have seen a lot of exhibitions and galleries in the last two months but haven’t felt either inspired enough to write of anything seen or that which I have written I feel hasn’t been any good. Obviously I do not want to make an enemy of every artist which has exhibited in the last two months in Melbourne and must inform you that these two observations are not fact: I’m sure what I’ve seen has been fantastic work and the problem lies with my inability to engage by asking the right questions of it and myself in order to form a half decent analysis of the work[iii]. When it comes to art criticism to be able to apply a series of higher level questioning is essential[iv].

The answer to getting on with viewing, enjoying and writing about art may be connected to another problem in my life. Perhaps there is a subconscious disappoint about never getting that NERF gun for Christmas as a child or the fact I’ve never had sex with maple syrup and table tennis paddles. Hmm… both are entertaining possibilities but I know they are mere untruthful distractions to seduce me away from focusing on the topic at hand and prolonging the inevitable truth as to why I cant sit down and write (which I don’t think I have the confidence to acknowledge to myself let alone divulge so publicly by writing it here).

I want to swear, Im frustrated. I want to unload a barrage of F--k’s, S--t’s and maybe even a few C--t’s but I know it would be futile. Pointless. Barbaric. All I've done is succeeded in sounding, no, writing, like a selfish, pretentious, opinionated, little twat. Maybe I should break something instead but again, a barbaric action is probably worse than screaming profanity. Best not to do anything I guess. I feel like I cant do anything, like Rivers Cuomo, I don’t do anything, I like to think that punching or swearing will not make any difference in the scheme of things[v]… not like uncouth, stupid people who know who to act and are satisfied through their impulsive yet purposeless actions. Destructive actions, in all fairness, are about as useful as art criticism.



[i] Hamblen, K. A. 1984, Studies in Art Education, Vol 26, No.1, National Art Education Association.
[ii] Reel Big Fish 2005, “We’re not happy ‘til you’re not happy”, ‘Don’t start a band’ 3:18.
[iii] Gall, M. D. 1970, The Use of questions in teaching. Review of Educational Research
[iv] Krathwohl, D. R., Bloom, B. S., & Masia, B. B. (Eds.) 1964, Taxonomy of the educational objectives: The classification of educational goals. Handbook II: Cognitive domain. New York: David McKay
[v] Schuftan, Craig 2008, “triple j: The Culture Club - Weezer's fanfare for the underground man” (http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/triplej/cultureclub/cc_weezer.mp3)

ON NOW- Eternal Life- Michael Staniak

"Eternal Life"
Michael Staniak
Metro 5 gallery
21 May- 08 June 2008

ON NOW

Skulls, still life flower arrangement, bust portraiture. All classical, painting, subject matter. These catergories of subject matter are in fact the earliest, simplest, building blocks of painted works subject matter. Artists would spend hours, capturing light, pattern, attempting to reproduce every possible iota of detail that they could seeof the real world and put it into their work. These artists relied on their eyes to see this visual data and their skilled hands to try and replicate it.

Skulls, floweral compositions, people; these are all classical examples of the temporal and fleetingly mortal nature of this world. Staniak is interested how the visual information of these objects and subjects can be stored as an image produced by the painter, existing long after the real representative of the sign on the canvas has died, withered or turned to dust.

This is compounded by the fact these images exist in a black void, which is either the unknown information of the environment that each object is within, or the negation of the information of the objects environment. They float in the black, ungrounded studies, egotistically, the only thing in existence within the picture plane.

These are not paintings that are in the business of storing information, they are only suggesting it. The images are not hyper-real, they contain the mark of the brush and the nuances of paint on canvas, another suggestion in the direction that the works are more about indicating how information can be captured with a painting rather than being actually paintings of captured information.


Lasers scan across the surfaces of the subjects, filling each minute crack they flash upon, picking up detail unseen by the human eye. Information so rich that it is incapable of being seen by even the most observant or of being produced by even the most skilled artists’ hand.

I can not help but feel that Staniak may be suggesting that painting is truly an inadequate and redundant method of representation or documentation in this contemporary world within which so many other and more efficient technological means for doing the same job, with greater ease, are available to us. This is okay though, the painting itself admits it and accepts it as it relays its own shortcomings in this area to the viewer. So where to now for painting and antiquated subject matter? Endless self analysis into the void no doubt, as places for it in this world are fast becoming scarce.

Artist's Statement at Metro 5 gallery: http://www.metro5gallery.com.au/work%20in%20progress%20Staniak%202008.htm

ON NOW- Over Here, Over There- Bonnie Lane

"Over Here, Over There"
Bonnie Lane
BUS gallery
20 May- 07 June 2008

ON NOW

Bonnie Lane is becoming quite proficient at combining her minimalist video work with sculptural or installative elements within the gallery space. In an exhibition earlier this year at Seventh gallery, Lane projected a video of her bust onto a white bed which created a ghostly double of herself, composed of light and restricted to existence inside the bed. This poor soul can never feel the sweet release of sleep, instead she lays conscious, looking up at the ceiling and the viewer, eternally living the works title: “Sleepless”.



Both “Sleepless” and “Over Here, Over There” feature the play of very selective and specific video and installation. Lane seems to prefer to create video that encompasses a minimalist ideology in the sense that, at first, the videos appear to be static images until the viewer notices the subject move ever so slightly. Lane projects both herself and he partners faces, lying sideways in bed, on two walls that meet in a corner. The figures look at eachother across the gap of the corner, the audience also getting caught in the large width of the gaze, privelidged to be involved in such an intimate connection. The floorspace between the projections, is that of an oversized bed surface, doonas and pillows repeated like it an organic bedded growth protruding from the corner and mirroring in 'real-space' the beds that form the grounding element in the video component of the work that the lovers lie on.

Lane described the work as an exploration of “longing to be utterly and entirely connected to another person” and as predicted, Lane has focused on the more pure elements of an intimate relationship. The ‘gaze’ here is the unspoken connection, a shared understanding through presence without words. Findlay (seemingly more genuinely tired than Lane) looks forward, meeting the viewer and his partners eyes, despite his heavy eyelids, to be comforted in Lanes clam, large, doe eyes. Each are both lost in eachother, serene and inviting the viewer to share that connection with them.

ON NOW- Take the Long Way Home- Rus Kitchin

"Take the Long Way Home"
Rus Kitchin
Until Never gallery
14 May- 14 June 2008

ON NOW

"Throw off your shackles, slaves! We are no longer servants to this history, this economy, these laws, these false idols. Wage-less servitude is over, where’s our backpay b*****'s!?!"

Overall, there is something subversively degenerate about Kitchin's "Take the Long Road Home". He doesnt make images for his work, he takes them. He doesnt pay homage to or elevate their respected status, he desecrates them. Expressionistic, visceral, paint-dripped lines, trap the image behind its suggested bars of imprisonment. Energetic, frenzied, unfamiliar icons, signs and symbols are drawn over the top of the authoritarian images of power: idols of gods, statues of holy men, photo's of shamans and instructional diagrams for life preserving procedures.

The exhibitions title work, "take the long road home", features only a few figures across the picture plane, seperated by empty space and hidden in a rain of vertical paint lines. There's a paranoia associated with the unknown figures, their identities almost knowingly obscured, in hiding amongst the bright, psychedelic, linear distortion. If only the information concealed in the lines could be read, maybe something could be gleaned in order to have an advantage in the bright but periless landscape, but these are not seperated or ordered like that of a barcode, these are frenzy-coloured, kineticly layered and dangerously unpredictable. Whatever information that could be deciphered has the potential to be fatally incorrect, making any effort quite futile.

Within the four canvases along the opposite wall, Kitchin has enslaved once powerful icons and god's of ancient cultures in the sterile unforgiving prison of the white surface. Futhermore, once entrapped they are stripped of their power and humiliated by being worked over, degraded. Their once fear inspiring image and names, forgotton and reduced to a print in a magazine or a book, and now, stolen by Kitchin for the canvas.

Kitchin has been busy indeed and will be showing in the upcoming "Graphein" curated by Peter Daverington at Lindberg Contemporary Art and Ash Keating's "2020?" a large-scale, evolving installation at the Meat Market. In the mean time however, get a glimpse at these ultra-slick, resin coated gallery works, fortunately on show for a month thanks to Until Never's generous exhibition lengths.


Until Never Gallery:

2nd flr 3-5 Hosier Lane, (Enter from Rutledge Lane), Melbourne CBD

Gallery hours: Wednesday to Saturday 12-6pm
http://until-never.blogspot.com/