Nicholas Building – June

I hadn’t been to galleries in the Nicholas Building for sometime (I get tired of visiting the same galleries all the time). It is worth visiting the Nicholas Building if you are interested in art, fashion, literature, or just urban exploration but I’ll stick to the art galleries for this blog post.

I took the old elevator to near the top of the building for on the eighth floor is the Stephen McLaughlan that sells seriously beautiful art for the serious art collector. The current exhibitions featured beautiful lights and a video installation. The light works by Veronica Cavern Aldous are beautiful, simple and effective – I saw another work by her last year in a group show at Guildford Lane Gallery. Josephine Telfer’s installation “Billabong” is a romantic multi-layered work that combines text and two videos of the moon reflected on a billabong.

I walked down the stairs one floor to Blindside, an artist run space supported by the City of Melbourne, on the seventh floor. Blindside has two gallery spaces. In Gallery One, Elizabeth Pedler’s exhibition “Interventions in the Present Moment” features two giant teleidoscopes, a kind of kaleidoscope without coloured beads, focused on the intersection of Flinders and Swanston Street. But for much of this exhibition Pedler is pushing the mirror thing to far; every couple of years I see an exhibition with mirrors in white gallery corners.

In Blindside’s Gallery Two Canberra based artist, Steph Wilson “Ain’t Got No Business Doing Business Today”. A painting and the actual thing; every couple of years I see an exhibition that does this but Wilson has done a cool corporate-style version of this trope. It creates a strange vibe; I kept on looking at the differences between the painting and the installation of coach, table, pot plant, the black border on one wall – it is like the spot the difference puzzle drawings.

I continued walking down the stairs of the Nicholas Building, taking in the ambience of the old building to the second floor where there is the Edmund Pearce Gallery (where the Pigment Gallery used to be.) Edmund Pearce Gallery is a contemporary art space dedicated to photography with two exhibitions. There was Peter Drinkell’s “The great road climbs of the Alps and Pyreness”. It is a very topical exhibition given the current Tour de France and sponsored by a cycling clothing and accessories company. And Gary Heery’s “Undergrowth”; the deathly beauty of Heery’s photographs is spooky like a butterfly collection. The young nude women are pressed on glass, this and the frame of photographic print reminded me of Laura Palmer wrapt in plastic, or Snow White in her crystal tomb. The spiky plants and thorns contrast the soft mortal flesh of the models.

Two more floors and I’m back under the lead-lighting of Cathedral Arcade. It was worth visit the Nicholas Building – I must do it again soon.

Top Arts Top Artists 2012

Every artist is influenced by proceeding generations of artists – who are the artists that influence local young artists?

I’m at the annual Top Arts exhibition of final year high school student art on the 3^rd floor of the National Gallery of Victoria Ian Potter Centre (Federation Square). I’m trying to think of what I will write in this blog – I’ve written about the exhibition in previous years, it is worth paying attention to young artists but it is always so hard to write about group exhibitions. Praising the exhibition for its youth and talent is obvious, mentioning a couple of artists that catch my attention would not improve it and vague statements like “the drawing and photography were strong” wouldn’t help either. So, I looked at who are influences on these young artists.

I looked at the artists named in their artist’s statements. Not all the young artists named artists in their artist’s statements but at least a third did. Some artists mentioned two artists. (This may not be a complete list of all the artists named.)

Ansel Adams was the only artist named twice. The following photographers are also named as influences: Henri Cartier-Bresson, Larry Clark, Bill Henson, Annie Leibovitz, Duane Michals, and Edward Weston.

The local artists named as influences are: Abdul Abdullah, Howard Arkley, Del Kathryn Barton, Bill Henson, Carlo Golin, Jeffery Smart, Stelarc, Justin Lee Williams (fashion designer), Brett Whitley and Ah Xian.

Young video makers in the exhibition named film directors, Tim Burton and James Cameron as influences.

The other artist’s named as influences are: Audrey Kawasaki, Käthe Kollwitz, Rene Magritte, Nam June Paik, Paula Rego, Genndy Tartakovsky, and Gaun Wei.

As would be expected, this generation of young artists are not influenced by any old masters; many of the artists are still alive, all are 20^th or 21^st century artists but still not that many women artists make the list. It is good to see so many local artists named as influences. Americans photographers dominate photographic influences but the rest of the international artists named come from around the world.

Pigment Gallery – Misses and Hits

I saw the worst exhibition of year this week at Pigment Gallery: “small works”, an exhibition of affordable art. I’ve seen some disappointing exhibitions this year, I’ve seen some boring exhibitions this year but this was awful. I felt that I’d wandered into some high school exhibition. I tried to look around to see if I could spot something that was worth looking at but I couldn’t leave soon enough. I don’t want to pick on any of the obviously amateur artists in the exhibition but hung together in a gallery the weakest work dragged the rest down.

Pigment Gallery, a gallery for hire on the second floor of the Nicolas Building, a great location in the city. It has three gallery rooms, two white walled rooms and one small space with black walls, that works well for works on paper or photographs. I wasn’t surprised by the exhibition it is kind of un-curated, group exhibition something that rental space galleries do to pay their rent (see my post about Rental Spaces). And it is not as if all the exhibitions at Pigment Gallery are that awful; I have seen some decent exhibitions there. Earlier this year I saw an exhibition there but I didn’t get far in writing up my notes about the exhibition.

Earlier this year in Pigment’s Gallery 1 and the Black Gallery I saw an attractive exhibition by Tasmanian artist and RMIT Masters of Fine Arts graduate, Carol Batchelor. I preferred her small paintings in the Black Gallery to the large colour field oil paintings in Gallery 1 because of the variety of forms and the movement and interaction of the wet ink meeting a different dilution of wet ink.

At the same time in Pigment’s Gallery 2 a Monash Masters of Fine Arts graduate, Erica Tandori (aka Erica Peril) was exhibiting “Landscape and Desire”, a series of digital photographs about her Hungarian Australian background. The digital montage of images mixed Australian landscapes with Hungarian elements like Hungarian dancers or the long horn cattle. Some of images seemed a bit obvious: “Budapest exit 15544.44km” on road sign along an Australian highway, many were more obscure, like all the Hungarian grey cows. The digital montages were not slick, they were obvious on close inspection, but digital perfection wasn’t the point of the images.

 

Not Overlooked

On Wednesday night “Looking at the Overlooked” opened at the George Paton Gallery in the Union House at the University of Melbourne. Curator, Joleen Loh has balanced the art of three Melbourne artists: Brooke Williams, Leah Williams and Mia Kenway in an exhibition of calm visions of the constructed world. Joleen Loh is an art history student at Melbourne University who also works at Fehily Contemporary in Collingwood.

Brooke Williams is in her final year at the Victorian College of the Arts. Her impressive installation, “Circle” is a series of dry mounted lithographs on metal brackets mounted floor to ceiling.

Leah Williams is showing two graphite drawings of paint splatter concrete floors, three videos of the play of sunlight and three photographs of views through partially curtained windows. Leah Williams’s art has the serene objectivity of relaxed observations of the ordinary world.

Mia Kenway has a scatter of objects in the gallery, fleshy blocks of pink colored plaster, the sheet of aluminum and tiles on the floor, a piece of glass leans against one wall, a screen hangs on the wall. Although this untitled work does fit with the rest of the exhibition I’ve seen too much of this kind of work in the last year.

The exhibition focuses on the subtly of material, the overlooked in a meditative mood. Of course, at the opening, with about a hundred people drinking wine and talking in the gallery it is hard to even remember such a mood.

The little ‘L’ shaped George Paton Gallery has regular exhibitions every two weeks. There is an old  poster by Peter Tyndall advertising the gallery at the entrance. The gallery has been around since the mid-70s and was one of Melbourne’s first contemporary art spaces but it has been overlooked as more and more spaces have opened.

RMIT Variety

I saw exhibitions in the various galleries at RMIT in May.

Sharon West, who also has work in the exhibition, curates “Girt by Sea” at RMIT School of Art Gallery. (See my reviews of Sharon West’s earlier exhibitions – just enter her name in the search box on the top of the right column). “Girt by Sea” is in observation of Reconciliation Week 2011 and combines the art of indigenous and non-indigenous artists. Maritime themes are not usual for Australian contemporary or indigenous art even though Australia is surrounded by oceans. The most popular work of the exhibition is Kirsten Lyttle’s “Kuki”, the three Hawaiian shirts with images of a dead Captain Cook. They are cool, self-referential (as Captain Cook was killed in Hawaii) and graphically appealing. The variety of art, from Simon Rose’s video work to the folk art paintings of Aunty Gewen Garoni and Aunty Frances Gallagher, in the exhibition is fun and engaging.

First Site had 3 photography-based exhibitions looking at the human subject: subjectively, objectively and “transpersonally”. The 3 photographers were working in different directions looking at the body or thinking about the self as a subject with memories as in Stephanie Peters “I Know You’re Stalking Me”. This installation using video, photographs and online interactions deals with idea of identity, truth is distorted and rearranged, who are you dealing with – I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. Kawita Vatanajyankur takes an external view of bodies as beautiful objects, combining still and video photography, water or sand and the body. In Luciana Vasques “Transpersonal Photography” personal exploration finds new meaning in the interaction between people, objects and photography. Vasques makes excellent use of the space in First Site, a cluster of peep viewers attached to ribbons flutter in front of the air vent and a convex mirror. None of these photography exhibitions are great but they are not bad, there are some good parts and there is nothing wrong with the directions that these photographers are exploring.

Things were not working for me at RMIT Gallery. In Chelle Macnaughtan “Spatial Listening” I tried to listening to “Listening through Stillness” 2011 but my black Dunlop Volleys made no sound on the etched aluminum plates – there was some irritating electric whine going on somewhere in the gallery. I twice became trapped in dead end parts of Ainslie Murray’s “Intangible Architecture”. I didn’t have any problems with Malte Wagenfeld’s “Aesthetics of Air” even though there were warning signs about the lazars. Aside from the warning signs the “Aesthetics of Air” was like a disco without the music or the mirror ball but with the smoke machines and lazars. The aesthetics of air is lightweight.

Variety in Photography

To see the diversity of photography in the digital age the 2011 Kodak Salon at the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP) is a good place to start as this open-entry exhibition has hundreds.

And contemporary photography, or rather photo-media, is a varied practice for the photo is no longer confined to a format or support, it can be printed on t-shirts, canvas, metal and paper or shown on a video screen. We could get very technical and discuss the variety of printing techniques currently available for photographs. The subjects of the photographs range from the subjects from the sublime to the profane, from the documentary to digitally manipulated, nature, glamour, landscape… This is not simply an example of the sheer variety of things that people take photographs but it is influenced by the many prizes on offer, including prizes for documentary, landscape, environmental theme, portrait, animal image, conceptual photography and many others. With so many photographs the exhibition is hung salon style – from almost the floor to ceiling where the photograph would fit, filling the main gallery at the CCP. This hanging did not impede the exhibition people are used to focusing and isolating images in their mind, but rather gave it a feeling of vitality and variety.

Just around the corner from the CCP at the Colour Factory Gallery more photography was on exhibition. The gallery is located at the Colour Factory, a business producing various types of prints, and the gallery, unsurprisingly, specializes in photo-based art. I thought that I might be wasting my time because it looked so much like a factory and all the advertising for “colour reproductions” made me wonder what I was going to look at. Inside it there was a small white walled gallery adjacent to the factories office space with an exhibition by Christopher Tovo “Italia Mia”. Tovo’s atmospheric photographs of Italy are not surprising in their subjects but they do capture classic Italian images.

January 2011 Exhibitions

Not that there are a lot of art exhibitions on in Melbourne at the moment as most of the galleries are closed in January but I did get to see a couple of other exhibitions (besides Reframed @ Counihan Gallery).

“Look! – the art of Australian picture books today” at the State Library of Victoria features the original artwork for picture books by some of Australia’s best illustrators including Graeme Base, Shaun Tan, Jane Tanner and many other  artists. Amongst all the art there are a few exhibits that show the development of artwork including one from Graeme Base showing the progress from photographs, pencils drawings to the finished illustration with a blank frame for text. This exhibition is not only well timed for the school holidays but also for the new audience for illustration in Melbourne that grew out of the street art scene. There was plenty for the kids to do at this exhibition and some of the exhibits were designed specially for them but this is not an exhibition that is just for children.

Phil Soliman’s best photographs are grids of close up details. Spread across one whole wall of Hogan Gallery in Collingwood is a grid of images of male skin. So many individual hairs, spots recorded in the photographs that Soliman (?) describes as “between the erotic and clinical”.  This series of 7 photographs, “Surface Data” gives its title to the exhibition and is by far the best work in the show. There are also several good close up photographs of the male body but the rest of the photographs in the exhibition are more ordinary but competent images of male nudes. The DVD projection part of the exhibition was not on when I visited during the week. The exhibition is part of the arts programme of the Midsumma Festival – see my reviews of exhibitions in Midsumma Festival in previous years.

Hogan Gallery has comfortable suede benches to sit and contemplate the images. There was jazz playing on a sound system along with the thwack of the staple gun from the frame making business at the back of the gallery.