Tacit Art Galleries September 2018

Tacit Art Galleries in Collingwood is a well designed series of small to medium sized spaces. To avoid people’s minds become numb the gallery floors, walls and ceilings varied. Floors of wood, concrete and even a carpet. High ceilings with skylights and low ceilings with more artificial light. The carpet was in the black walled print room where in small individually lite niches where Mel Kerr was exhibiting digital drawings of menacing black birds. Aside from appreciating the design of the gallery amongst the dozen exhibitions that I saw at Tacit this week were:

Brenda Walsh, Sad Clown

Brenda Walsh’s “The Ark” is a series of oil paintings that references to art history in a drowned world, the climate catastrophe for humans and animals. A polar bear dressed as the clown in Watteau’s Pierrot; Walsh chooses images from extinct art movements from French Rococo to German Romanticism. These catastrophic scenes, the lamb of god staying afloat with a yellow buoyancy vest replacing the halo, are so much deeper than Walsh’s earlier paintings with cats and dogs in parodies of famous paintings.

Eugene von Nagy, various still life paintings

Eugene von Nagy in “Painting IRL” is showing twenty-eight small canvases, mostly still life, in a practiced painterly technique. Brachiosaurus and flowers, watermelon with stegosaurus, T. Rex vs Pumpkin; perhaps the toy dinosaurs are a references the dinosaur tradition of traditional oil painting. The choice and arrangement of the readymade objects to include in still life paintings is not doomed to be only fruit and flowers. The juxtaposition of flowers, fruit, plates, toys, lamps, small brass statues of Shiva and liquorice all-sorts creates a poetry.

Peter Ward, Industrial Heartland

Another artist working on a small scale is Peter Ward’s “Small Tunes”. It is an exhibition of linocut prints; Ward has been exhibiting prints since 1973 but in the last six years Ward has concentrated entirely on linocut printing. For an exhibition emphasising small I enjoyed Ward’s two large quilted prints, that assembled the tunes into a larger vision.

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Unveiling the Molly Meldrum Statue

At the unveiling of a new public sculpture, after customary the welcome to country; the politicians and philanthropists make speeches to thank everyone involved, often forgetting the sculptor. But Molly Meldrum did not forget to thank the sculpture Louis Laumen.

Meldrum had a signed cowboy hat, as well as, words of thanks for Laumen. He spoke about Laumen’s other sculptures at the MCG, gushing how much he loved all of them. (He didn’t mention Laumen’s most recent statue of Nicky Winmar or the argument over its location.)

Meldrum was the last to speak, after Uncle Colin Hunter, Mayor of City of Yarra Daniel Nguyen, Minister for the Arts Martin Foley, Eddie McGuire and founder of Mushroom Records Michael Gudinski. And, as usual, in spite of his slurred speech, it was difficult to get Meldrum to shut up. He did say that he resisted the proposal to honour him with a bronze statue and tried to derail the plan by insisting that his dog, Ziggy, was included.

It was a cold grey Tuesday in Richmond and a crowd of about three hundred people had turned out. They were patiently waiting through the speeches to see the new bronze sculpture unveiled.

It turned out to be a very colourful statue as it turned out with plenty of gold, white, black and brown patination. Now that it is well known fact that classical sculpture was painted people are not shy about polychromatic patination. It is on a very low plinth, a little more than a step, because it wouldn’t do to put Meldrum on a pedestal.

It is located in a micro park opposite to the stairs going up the beer garden at the Corner Hotel, a somewhat fitting location given that it is a notable band venue. Along with the statue, there is a new mural by 23rd key on the train embankment wall. A green and white image of a concert crowd bookended with painted copies of band posters.

The Message at Yarra Sculpture Gallery

An exhibition of four installations that “transform language into visible and physical forms”, curated by Sarah Randal and the YSG. The curatorial conceit of transforming language into visible and physical forms is too easy, I’ve just done it myself with text. I doubt that half of the installations have anything to do with language.

There are other curatorial connections to be made in the exhibition; the four women artists have all transitioned between places with different dominate languages. And otherwise, the curators have made excellent use of the space.

Annette Chang, Shopping Net #3

 

In the largest of the YSG gallery spaces, Annette Chang, Shopping Net #3 hangs from the ceiling, flowing in and around itself, finally draping on the floor. Since 2012 Chang collects all her receipts folds them on to the net and taped closed. The paper flags recording her purchases as days go by.

In Senye Shen, Shifting Field #1 and #2, print installation of lino and relief prints, footprints and petals, cut from the prints, leads you through the space to the next space. Shen has been cutting many lines cut into lino to deploy the moiré effect; bubbling and rippling along her series of prints. (Sorry I forgot to photograph them.) Shen was gallery sitting on the day that I visited.

Anwar Anwar, Dancing Letters

Anwar Anwar invites the viewer to carefully navigate around, Dancing Letters, the long hanging Arabic letters cut out of paper that almost fill YSG’s projection room. It is a delicate journey around them. Avan Anwar is a Kurdish artist who is referencing the Nalî, a 19th Century Kurdish poet and fellow exile.

Pimpisa Tinpalit, Silence is like an illustration of an unknown, unspoken sutra. The ladder of linked arms reaches to the heavens or at least the ceiling. The gold leaf applied to the hands emphasising their importance to the lesson that we can only imagine. To indulge in language for a moment; the word ‘sutra’ comes from Sanskrit sūtra ‘thread, rule’, from siv ‘sew’, like the black rope that ties the arms together.

Pimpisa Tinpalit, Silence

 

Nicky Winmar Statue – Significance and Beauty

Hanging above my desk is HaHa’s stencil portrait of Nicky Winmar and I have long wanted to see a public bronze statue of Winmar ever since that football match at Victoria Park in 1993. I’ve never been interested in Australian football nor do I think that more bronze statues are a great addition to a cityscape. I wanted one because Winmar’s gesture in reply to racist taunts is both significant and beautiful.

HaHa, Nicky Winmar, 2009

Australia is still in love with monuments and memorials. There is no shortage of recent official monuments and memorials in Melbourne from traditional bronze figures to abstract monuments, like the Great Petition. These permanent monuments express the desire to establish a national mythology but given the lack of statues of both women and Indigenous people it is not representative.

Public sculpture is an obvious indication of the political and social values and structures of a place. Public sculptures make obvious public statements, from the choice of subjects to the style of the finished work it is all deliberate. This is why Australia needs a statue of a proud Noongar man standing victorious in defiance racist taunts.

If someone had asked me which sculptor I would like to sculpt Winmar I would have picked Melbourne-based sculptor, Louis Laumen because of his experience in sculpting sporting heroes around the MCG. Not that anyone asked me (nor I am surprised that they didn’t, I have no power or influence) but the commission did go to Laumen. I don’t like Laumen’s style but I know that it will be appreciated by the crowds of football supporters. My one criticism is why Laumen keeps on making statues with their mouths half open; Wayne Ludbey’s photo shows that Winmar was tight lipped as he points to his chest.

The only problem now facing the statue of Winmar is that it hasn’t been decided where to install it: Melbourne or Perth. Perth because Perth’s Optus Stadium on Noongar land. It is a strange problem for a sculpture and the Indigenous Past Players Association is right to question the process because generally a location for the sculpture is agreed before it is commissioned. There is an obvious solution to this problem; bronze sculptures can be made in multiple additions. So lets put our hands in our collective pockets and pay Louis Laumen and Fundêre Foundry in Sunshine for another edition of this important sculpture.

Friday Night in Docklands

It may surprise you but I’m glad that I went to Warf Street, a shopping mall in Melbourne’s failing Docklands on a cold Friday night. The first Friday of every month is like a small art fair there with multiple galleries opening exhibitions.

My terrible photos of the Cultural Candy exhibition.

The manufactured inner city suburb of Docklands failure to create a liveable space without adequate public transport nor any good reason to even go there meant that much of the shopping mall on the pedestrian zone of Warf Street was unoccupied.

Last year a plan based on the successful Renew Newcastle project offered over a thousand square metre of rent free space to “makers, creators, artists, and local enterprises.” The result was that art galleries and others moved in and given the place a bit of attraction and life on a Friday night.

The largest of these, Blender Studios and Dark Horse Experiment had three exhibitions and an open studios that night. Downstairs at Dark Horse Experiment there was Cultural Candy – Taiwanese Artist Residency / Exhibition, a group exhibition of fine arts students from the National Taipei University of Education, Taiwan who were at a one month residency at Blender Studios. Upstairs there were gallery exhibitions by two street artists, Sunfigo and Astral Nadir. Whereas the Sunfigo exhibition managed the jump from the street to the gallery unfortunately for Astral Nadir those same patterns done on the street did not have the impact when on small canvases.

Crowther Contemporary had an exhibition of photography and video installations; One hand washes the other by Madeline Bishop. Bishop was exploring the borders of intimacy in friendship in an awkward suburban aesthetic: how close would you get? Could you carry your friend?

The Australian Cartoon Museum had its “Footy Finals Spectacular”, a topical exhibition featuring cartoons by HarvTime (Paul Harvey), Mark Knight and a dozen other cartoonists.

Resident artist Malini Maunsell had a dull solo exhibition of 15 almost identical blue monotypes At Current Gallery and Studios. There were more exhibitions because other studios were open and shops like Dodgy Paper, that sells handmade papers, had a small Dodgy Staff exhibition of work on their papers by Chehehe and Nathan CCP amongst the product displays. Loose Print, a shop selling printed fabric had an art exhibition of paintings hanging on one wall. Tree Paper Comics is an independent, publisher and printer of Australasian graphic novels and comics also had original work for sale. It seemed that only Magnet Galleries that specialises in photography didn’t have an exhibition opening that night.

Uncle Dickey’s Library Install

The very hungry caterpillar crawls along the fence line. Three little pigs, Winnie the Pooh, Paddington Bear and other characters from children’s literature adore more of the fence and poles.

Yarn Corner Uncle Dickey’s Library Install

Near the train line crossing on Reynard Street in Coburg is Uncle Dickey’s Library, a little free library. It is just a small, red wooden cupboard full of free books and a red garden bench by the railway fence. Uncle Dickey’s library was the first of Coburg’s free libraries starting in 2014 a little further along the line before moving to its present location after a fire.

It is now decorated with an installation by Yarn Corner. The theme of children’s literature makes it one of the most elaborate and relevant yarn bombing installations that I have seen.

What a yarn bomber with the tag of “Fifty Shades of Grey”? Yes, yarn bombers tag their work with laminated tags.

Most of what we do in public is still exclusive, rarely do we walk or talk with strangers. Yarn bombing and free libraries, on the other hand, are inclusive street activities inviting strangers to join in. If you do want to do some yarn bombing just get in touch with Yarn Corner on Facebook.

This kind of open individual initiated anarchic activities, yarn bombing and free libraries, raise the larger question of what kind of society do we want to create?

Where is Wally?

Yarn Corner Uncle Dickey’s Library Install