Three sentence reviews of four exhibitions in Melbourne’s Nicholas Building, where there is always more than you expect to find.
In Response, Craft Cubed Festival, Cathedral Arcade
A video loop of a site-specific performance piece by two dancers, Briarna Longville and Elise Drinkwater using jewellery by jewellers Ruby Aitchison and Annie Gobel. One of the necklaces of made of metal strips is on exhibition along with the video. At times it looks like puppetry of necklaces, at times a fashion parade but the work does succeed at a hybrid event.
Alex Walker and Nick James Archer, Visible Absence, Blindside Gallery One, Level 7
The empty experience of missing the building next door which has been demolished to build the Metro tunnel. The absence is made visible by some sheets of acrylic with minimal images printed on them. Some of the sheets of obscure the window that looks out on the demotion site, one is on a trolley and another is out in the corridor.
Jeremy Bakker, Unfathoming, Blindside Gallery Two, Level 7
“Unfathoming” suggests a reduction in depth and this witty little works by a clever artist plays on shallowness. In his Manifest density (2018) various glasses have been melted down and poured into a mould made from the negative space of the glass. I could have lived without so much text accompanying the exhibition; the work spoke to me more than the printed words.
Matlok Griffiths, Hole of Mirrors, Reading Room, Level 6
Painted bronze hanging on the wall, a high art materials meets slacker art attitude in a dull resolution. Dumb doodling with a square of wax that was then cast in bronze and then painted. The Reading Room is a beautiful gallery space occupying one corner of the sixth floor.
Black Mark 