The galleries in Albert St. are a great place to see contemporary art from aboriginal paintings in Alison Kelly Gallery; the emerging artists at Jenny Port Gallery or Anita Traverso Gallery; or the artist run gallery, Shifted; to the established artists like Gareth Sansom at John Buckley Gallery and Lisa Roet at Karen Woodbury.
Before writing anything about Lisa Roet I have to mention ‘babooneries’ (the term will appear again later in this entry). The ‘babooneries’ in the pages of 14th century illuminated manuscripts, like the Gorleston Psalter, are a medieval genre that has continued to the present. (Andrew Graham-Dixon A History of British Art 1999 p.28) The babooneries depict a medieval world where apes, not man, dominates; they are parodies, where apes dressed as bishops preach to congregations. This theme has been updated with science fiction novels like Pierre Boulle Le Plandta des Singes (The Planet of the Apes, 1963) and Will Self Great Apes (1997) but the image remains the same. I didn’t know, until this exhibition, if Lisa Roet sculptures were babooneries or a contemporary take on the 19th century animalia bronze sculptures. Now I know, the flashing LED lights are a clear indication.
Only a few doors away –
Paint is this sticky stuff in a variety of colors that you apply to a surface and allow to dry. Paint is admired for its aesthetic qualities, principally its color. Paint can be opaque or translucent. Its surface can be rough or smooth. Painters can talk endlessly about paint. You can also make images with paint. Gareth Sansom enjoys painting, no doubt about it from the exhibition at John Buckley Gallery. Look at the ways that he applies different paint in different consistencies and makes images.
I think that a key to Sansom’s paintings is the face of the painter, Francis Bacon in one of the small collages (Drawing #9) that accompany Sansom’s series of painting. “Bacon was both an iconoclast and a baboonerist” Andrew Graham-Dixon wrote. (p.224) Sansom’s paintings are post-Bacon babooneries; Skateboarding punk video shit along with the paintings with religious titles like God and Nun ape or mimic high art painting.
Across the road –
Naomie Sunner’s Instructional Guide to Femininity is at Jenny Port Gallery. Sunner combined the fun sexuality of burlesque with the formal compositions. A large wall has been covered with a huge grid of photographs of Sunner in different poses. There lots photographs of legs and calf high leather boots, close ups of her lipstick painted lips. Sunner uses of red, white and black dresses, the most symbolic of all colors. A video of Naomie Sunner in overalls digging a hole to plant a tree in an industrial location completes the picture of contemporary femininity.
Anita Traverso Gallery has a group exhibition on the theme of Cut + Collate = Construct. It is a theme that could describe so much contemporary art. Susan Baret’s patterned mixed-media paintings uses collage strips of paper to create images that are optically intense and beautiful. Constantine Nicholas uses a mix of paint with collage elements to creating landscapes like abstract maps. Also in the exhibition Tracey Potts has six stuffed fabric creations that are funky and beautifully beaded. And Robert Delves “Fall of Modern Day Man – post Horonimous Bosch” is a long title for basic but effective wooden figures.
Shifted’s exhibition is minimal and boring, there were only four works of art by four different artists in the whole gallery. And it’s a bad sign when the gallery’s director, Keith Wong, is also an exhibitor, even in an artist run initiative. As they used to say on vaudeville: “Pack your ermines Mary, the director is on stage!”
Black Mark 