True Beauty @ First Site

Last Friday night at a party the printmaker Joel Gailer was stamping “THE TRUTH IS A COPY” on people – I got one stamped on my arm. I love the anti-Socratic statement as Socrates held that reality was but a copy of the true form. However, if the truth is not a good copy of reality than it not true.

The three current exhibitions at 1^st Site Gallery at RMIT combine to further complicate any ideas you might have about truth, beauty, copies and reality.

“Render Complete” by Spencer Lai, Matthew Berka and Hamish Storrie, reflects on ideal beauty in “a society that is obsessed with the act of imaging itself and the spaces in which we inhabit.” It is like a digital Han Belmar doll with an Ikea catalogue. The digital simulacra are an ideal dream as the computerized narrator keeps on confessing in the video.

“Trashland” by Lucie McIntosh is about an enhanced reality, a better than real party. Naked Barbie dolls in glitter gimp masks, the repeated photographs of a head with all the details sprayed over except for the glitter lips, real glitter lips stuck on to the photographs. At one end of the space three television sets form “a shrine to instants passed by, trash punk, wasters and party people”. The only problem with “Trashland” is that there is not enough of it – the space is too empty to convince me that the exhibition really is over the top.

“Cardboard Cabin” by Harry Hay is an installation with a few paintings leading up to it. The installation is like a physical version of Hay’s paintings, with the same run-down Australian shed aesthetics. The installation of a cabin with furniture, tools and walls all made of painted corrugated cardboard. The photographs hanging on the wall of the shed in cardboard frames are photographs of a cardboard world contributing another level of simulacra. Creating a caricature copy of part of the world out of a different material has a special kind of appeal. (I was just watching the episode of James May’s Toy Story with the plasticine garden last night.)

Getting back to the old philosophical stamping grounds truth, beauty, copies and reality. “Render Complete” proposes that true beauty is an ideal dream that cannot be copied. Whereas, “Trashland” argues that reality can be beautiful but trashy. And “Cardboard Cabin” is an enjoyable copy of an ugly truth. I love the way these exhibitions confute (confutation, to confuse an argument, is less strong than a refutation but tactically can be just as successful as it is less aggressive) ideas of truth and beauty. I think this is one of the reasons that I love art because there is confutation in way that artists explore ideas.

“And let us not forget those auditory hallucinations which, as ‘Socrates’ demon’ have been interpreted in a religious sense.” – Nietzsche

Urban Intervention @ YSG

Urban Intervention: a street sculpture exhibition and art trail opened on Friday night at the Yarra Sculpture Gallery, part of the Sweet Streets festival. (I must declare that I am the festival’s secretary, a volunteer position but it does give me a bias in my reports.)

Opening "Urban Intervention" @ Yarra Sculpture Gallery

People don’t often ask what is the future of street art? Very few people are asking this question because street art is ephemeral and it is perceived as fashionable fad (although the fad has lasted some 30+ years). The whig history of art dismisses street art as a fad because it doesn’t fit with art history’s idea of progress. But there is a lot of progress in street art scene: street sculpture and yarn bombing.  There are other aspects that are not easily packaged like culture jamming and site specific installations.

There are a lot of impressive elements to this exhibition; a whole painted ute was parked in the gallery, a shopping cart covered in knitting and an installation of light, smells and sounds. There was street sculpture from Mic Porter, Nick Ilton, Will Coles and Junky Projects. The Melbourne Light Painters exhibited photographs and the objects that emit light (sparklers, toys swords and other things). Van Rudd exhibited a work protesting Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. Phonenix brings Banksy’s “The Little Diver” from Cocker Alley in Melbourne back from its destruction with a paste-up that was recreated and documented in the exhibition.

Nick Ilton's "Suggestion Box" and suggestions

Importantly for a street art exhibition the exhibition is not limited to the gallery there is an associated art trail where the artists from the exhibition have work in context with an online collaborative map. I haven’t walked the trail yet but I have looked at it online – the detail in this Google map is fantastic. It is important for this to exist in both the virtual and actual versions because so much of street art scene exists online, as well as, the streets.

I was disappointed that there wasn’t any guerrilla gardening in the exhibition, maybe I will find some on the art trail. I must do that when the weather improves.

Curated by Anna Briers and Kelly Madigan this is an important exhibition about under-represented trends in street art: “site specific installation, culture jamming, underground light painting, yarn bombing…” It also sets new benchmarks in quality in exhibiting street art.

September 2010 @ Blindside

I’m thinking about how to write art reviews/criticism as I consider how to review the two exhibitions at Blindside: Amanda Airs “Beach Box Blue” and Jacque Drinkall “Weather Underwater”. Should I bother to review bad exhibitions when I could just use my energy to write about the ones that I liked? But if I were to only review one of the two exhibitions at Blindside it would imply that I didn’t like the other without exploring the reasons for this choice.

Karen Thompson, Melbourne Jeweller wrote in her blog: “I find I can be affected by reading other reviews and media before seeing or writing about an exhibition, such that my reaction can sometimes be unconsciously formed a little by what I read. I counter this by usually not reading anything before seeing the show and writing my initial response, to be sure I understand my own opinion, and then find it really interesting how that can change with further reading etc. So, I’ll write my initial response before doing any research into the exhibition, and then write more after doing some more reading.”

I agree with this approach; in doing further reading I will first try to find out what the artist has done before this exhibition. I will further investigate the ideas behind the art, where it fits into the history of art and what it means to a culture. I will then read other critics opinions on the artist. So where does reading the artist’s statement fit into this program?

Blindside has been providing single A4 sheet folded catalogues with all of their exhibitions this year. Along with a couple of colour images of the work and exhibition details there is always a statement by the artist in these catalogues.

Jacque Drinkall’s artist statement for “Weather Underwater” is pointless nonsense, as opposed to nonsense with a point, like satire, parody, Dada or Surrealist nonsense. It is mental diarrhea – incoherent and messy. Like her exhibition the initial attraction of the photographs, videos and sculptural objects quickly breaks down on realizing that there is little connections between them. It appears irrelevant, so why bother trying to read Jacque Drinkall’s mind when all indications suggest that it is scrabbled?

“The culture and aesthetics of telepathy and psychic life permeates the ‘everyday’. My art works creatively with telepathy to better understand and change the world.” – Jacque Drinkall (“Weather Underwater”, catalogue)

Amanda Airs exhibition statement for “Beach Box Blue” was both coherent and expanded on what was already visible in her exhibition. She has located her work within the history of art (Bridget Riley and op art), she has explained her technique (spatial distortion through colour and the illusion of movement “through the use of contrasting colour and repetition of line and angle”) and, finally, she has added her personal experience of optical effects.

“Beach Box Blue” is a post-minimal installation of colored threads creating optical effects. I have seen other artists in Melbourne using thread to divide up spaces but “Beach Box Blue” is the most intense and optically satisfying of these works due to Amanda Airs choice of colors and painting the gallery wall to emphasize the contrasting colors.

I don’t think that artist’s statement should be included as a matter of course for all the art exhibited. My advice to most artists is not to write artists statements. Artists are often not the best people to write about their own art – how many media do you expect them to master?

Sunny Saturday

The sunny weather on the weekend inspired me to ride by bicycle down the Upfield bike path from Coburg to Brunswick. I had pulled over to the side to photograph a new piece of aerosol art when two cyclists announced: “Two cycles passing”. When I caught up with them at the Moreland Road lights one of the cyclists asked if the piece was one of mine. “No, I just photograph them.” I explained. “There are plenty of good new pieces further on.” They replied, the lights changed and they rode on. I was rode more slowly enjoying the sunshine and keeping my eyes open for new pieces.

I stopped in at Brunswick Art on Little Breese St, out the back of Alasysa Restaurant where I could smell the Turkish bread baking. A guillotine stood ready in the white gallery space; black guillotines are especially theatrical. The guillotine was garlanded with dead and unnatural flowers sparkling with red glitter. There was a pillar toppled by iconoclastic revolt and a new obscured hero on a reinforced plinth; both were painted black with more black garlands. Along with these objects there are two wall paintings, line drawings in black paint. This is “Revolt” by Benjamin Webb. Benjamin Webb told me that it started with the line drawing of the horn of cornucopia that he saw repeatedly in his work at the NGV indexing etchings and lithographs from the 17^th Century. The horn of cornucopia spewing out foliage, the spontaneity riotous of growth and life is the inspiration for “Revolt”.

“Revolt” is an image of an expression of the body politics vomiting out new growth. It is a more symbolic exhibition than Webb’s usual materialistic approach to sculpture. I’m not sure that “Revolt” is as well constructed conceptually as it is physically but it was fun and dramatic to look at it.

While I was at Brunswick Arts talking with Benjamin Webb, Michael Scorge dropped in to promote bands and BBQ that afternoon at his Shop31 in Coburg.

This will be Benjamin Webb’s last solo exhibition in Melbourne for a while as he is relocating to Germany. So, I said “bon voyage” to Ben and continued to cycle around Brunswick and photograph more street art. I could have gone on to look at the Counihan Gallery or Ocular Labs but I was curious about Shop31.

I stopped at 696 Ink where Karl Persson was exhibiting more of his macabre and sadistic paintings (see my review of his last exhibition). His current exhibition lacks the quirky details of his earlier paintings; his version of one of Francis Bacon’s “Three studies for figures at the Base of a Crucifixion” looses some art but the sadistic image remains.

Shop31, at 31 Sydney Rd. Coburg, has a bit of everything from local CD, t-shirts, second hand LPs and punk-style stencil art. I had seen the stencil art in the window of the shop when I had passed by before but this was the first time that I had seen it open.

That was a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours in the afternoon around my neighbourhood on probably the last warm weekend that Melbourne will have until the end of winter.

March @ Platform

I always try to see the monthly exhibitions at Platform when I have a few minutes before my train at Flinders Street Station. It is a very accessible artist-run-imitative with several separate spaces in the subway going to Degraves Street from the station.

The highlight of this month’s exhibitions at Platform is Bernadette Trench-Thiedeman “Patient” – a feasting vignette, commission for the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival 2010 (there is always some kind of arts festival on in Melbourne, often more than one). It is a small attractive, mouth watering, combination of sculpture and gardens. Even the drip-feed intravenous drip system and the blue hospital sheet doesn’t put me off the garden fresh vegetables on display. Lettuce, chili bushes, basil, chives, and thyme – a full salad is growing in form of the patient. Bernadette Trench-Thiedeman is a set designer, illustrator, photographer, puppeteer and installation artist. She has created an ice clock room in the famous Ice Hotel in Sweden and helped plant the vertical garden in Melbourne Central. This is not her first garden exhibition at Platform, in 2008 she had “Eat the City”. (See my entry on Artist-Gardeners for more about this growing art movement.)

Lucy Farmer, a performance artist, visual artist and jewellery designer, is exhibiting “Review” at Platform. Her statement about the exhibition reads: “What you see is quite clearly fake yet the constant surveillance of a public space is now visible and remembered, not half forgotten through a camera lens. Who is critiquing whom? Review is a site-specific exhibition created to challenge psychological and social readings of value, class, status, control and power through portraiture, installation and a heightened awareness of the physicality of the audience in relation to the work and their necessary participation with the work.” It is a bit much of an explanation for a series of portraits and I don’t see where the surveillance cameras come in. I kept on thinking: should I know these people? The theatricality of the red backgrounds, the gold frames and dark portraits all created out of paper taped together, made me think about the superficial nature of self-image.

Emma Anna combines sculpture, installations and printmaker at Vitrine. Her installations are always appealing but I can never really get into them. I’m not sure why, but they feel thin, as if to examine them to closely might just poke holes through the paper. As if to make up for the paper-thin content there is a lot to look at in the installation ranging from Surrealism to post-minimalist printmaking – her USB fitted flying ducks have an inescapable and appealing logic to them but why are they not connected?

Kim Summer and Clea Chiller have a great installation at Sample. The intensity of examining another person’s living room/bedroom along with the reality of homelessness makes this a successful installation. It has been composed with great care. The TV flickers across empty channels, there is a pin-board of photos, a mirror, books, toiletries – some of basic aesthetics necessary for survival. The figure of the sleeping occupant transforms this stuff into a portrait of a life in need of shelter.

Bus Projects – January

There is a lot to see at Bus Projects in January with five artists exhibiting in five different spaces. It is a good first start for the new year; I didn’t dislike any it but I enjoyed some more.

In the main space is “For Illusion Isn’t The Opposite Of Reality” by Dida Sundet, an RMIT fine arts student. It is a fun exhibition with lots to look at and look at again. Her surreal photography is excellent, carefully staged with beautiful chiaroscuro lighting. It is like the Mad Hatter meets Hannibal Lector. The series of photographs was awarded two honorable mentions in the 2009 International Photography Awards. Along with the photographs there are elements that have been used in the photographs: painted animal masks are held out by plaster hands and in the center of the gallery there is an installation of a bloody dinning room.

Leo Greenfield’s “The Coverings Project” is installed in the “Sound Space” although not a sound installation. Greenfield is exhibiting a deceptively simple installation; a circle made of recycled t-shirts, titled “My teenage life”, on the floor and a series of six collaged photographs, “Garments in Motion” on the walls. It is almost an anti-fashion exhibition if his photographs weren’t so stylish – complete with Doc Martens boots. They continue the late-modern tradition of documenting body art through photographs but they have been altered with subtle and stylish collage. For more about Leo Greenfield’s art visit Fashion Hayley’s blog entry about him – The Bride Stripped Bare.

Jodi Cleaver’s video, “Little Machine” in the “Window Seat” space in the stairwell, is basically a good music video (without the industry standard images of the band playing) with music by the Ice Cream Creatures. And, why not? Music videos have done some of the most interesting film making for years. It didn’t have much of a narrative; Cleaver describes it as: “A little girl tries to fly her kite while being tempted and pursued by both a machine and a magician.” The video uses stop motion animation like those of Jan Svankmajer where ordinary objects that become magically animated.

In the “Skinny Space”, Brooke Wolsley’s “Feast” is a series of now rather traditional, that is Dada and Pop influenced, mixed media collages. The wall painting by Jessica Wong, “Parallel Universe”, in the Foyer reminded me of Tom Civil’s use of stick figures to draw worlds of people, but I didn’t take a close look at it as all the other exhibitions had distracted me.

Lunch & Last Supper

On Sunday Catherine and I had lunch at the Queen Victoria Market; spicy bratwurst with sauerkraut from the Melbourne Bratwurst Shop. Although it was nothing like the food served at the last supper but it was a delicious lunch – I picked up a flyer advertising a “Last Supper Foodies Tour” at the market, if the hyper-real experience of Peter Greenaway’s Leonardo’s Last Supper wasn’t enough for your senses.

Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper was a failure. Ask the monks of Sta. Maria delle Grazie in Milan who commissioned it. They were calling for Leonardo to come back and repair it shortly after he completed it. It was a failure of technique and materials. Restorers have been trying to repair it ever since. Like the restorers many artists have been inspired by this magnificent failure to attempt to complete it themselves.

Peter Greenaway version of Leonardo’s Last Supper at the North Melbourne Town Hall is a triumph of technique and technology. The installation is the same size as the refectory of Sta. Maria delle Grazie. The Last Supper, a portion of surviving frescoed wall with a window (allied air forces bombing destroyed much of refectory in WWII) and the opposite Renaissance fresco of a crucifixion are projected onto the space. In the middle stands a table covered in a white cloth. The table is laid out corresponding with the painting in all white plates, mugs, bread and chicken as in the painting. This three-dimensional hyper-real and arty white simulacrum is the least tasteful aspect of the installation.

The light projection onto the painting was impressive and dramatic; there is no narrator or a narrative to the 20-minute audio-visual experience. Days pass by as the light from a window crosses the painting. Greenaway plays with the image creating a baroque quality with chiaroscuro lighting, highlighting the variety of hand gestures, options for a restoration and explorations of light sources. For me the extreme close-up of the painting was the best part, the isolated and cracked bits of paint become a landscape that you travel across, as viewed through an art restorers lens. The last of the paint is about to fall off the wall. Leonardo’s Last Supper raises the question how much does the technical success matter compared to the content and composition?

I’ve enjoyed many of Peter Greenaway films and other productions for decades. I enjoy his love of intrigue and ability to assemble information into a dramatic presentation, as in his Rembrandt’s J’accuse (2008) or Darwin (1993). Leonardo’s Last Supper is part of Greenaway’s series of “Nine Classical Paintings Revisited” returning to the ambition of his youth to be a painter. Although the audience was encouraged by the ushers before entering the exhibition to move about during the exhibition there was little reason to do anything more than turn around to look at the screen on the opposite wall.

“Look beyond the surface. You won’t believe your eyes” is the sales pitch for this multimedia installation at the North Melbourne Town Hall. The festival website also suggested visiting “Domov Gallery, adjacent to Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall, and see the series of prints that demonstrate Andy Warhol’s fascination with The Last Supper.”  I haven’t heard of Domov Gallery before; it is a small white walled gallery next to the North Melbourne Town Hall with half a dozen small prints by Andy Warhol. Warhol’s Last Supper series are just another popular image copied by Warhol.

Catherine and I walked back through North Melbourne stopping to look at the Thread Den on Webbs Lane. Thread Den has local independent designer clothes and jewellery, along with vintage clothing for men and women; it also runs sewing classes and has children’s craft room. We went down Webbs Lane so that I could photograph some of the street art there and had a look at the exhibition in Famous When Dead – Urban Art Agenda #3, an exhibition of international stencil artists from Europe, Brazil, USA, Iran and Australia. We then bought some bargain priced meat at the Victoria Market (there are always some good deals around closing time) had a coffee and took the tram home.