Portraits of Ben Roberts-Smith

Consider all the dictators, the murders, and the rapists who have been celebrated with bronze statues and portraits. Considering these commemorations, think of the artists who made them and the institutions that acquired them. What happens when Achilles tries to sue for defamation, and exposes himself as a narcissistic killer, a war criminal who murdered civilians?

There are currently three portraits of Roberts-Smith in Australian national collections, a large portrait in fatigues, a small portrait in dress uniform and a half-naked portrait. These were acquired when he was Australia’s most decorated war hero before being exposed as a war criminal and abuser of women. The topless photo by 2017 Julian Kingma is in the National Portrait Gallery’s collection. The two other portraits are in the Australian War Museum are by Michael Zavros.

I haven’t seen many works by Zavros; I remember seeing some at Sophie Gannon, a painting of a centaur in a tuxedo. Zavros’s art focuses photo-realistic paintings depicting male vanity. Among the things that Roberts-Smith’s defamation case makes clear is that he is as vain as he is violent.

What will the National Portrait Gallery and the Australian War Museum do with these portraits? They can still be viewed on the institutions’ websites (I don’t know if they are still on exhibition). Will they end up in a crate stored in a climate-controlled storage facility? Never to be exhibited again. An ongoing cost with no possible return. An albatross hanging around the neck of the institution, condemned, like the ancient mariner, to carry this ill-made decision with them.

What happens to the artists? Consider Edwar Hydo who once painted portraits of  Saddam Hussain and is now painting Australian prime ministers. He is still painting the powerful but isn’t getting paid as well.  And now there is Michael Zavros; perhaps now, after knowing more about Ben Roberts-Smith, Zavros might want to amend his artist statement about the portrait.

For about Ben Roberts-Smith VC (2014, oil on canvas, 30 x 42 cm, Zavros says: “I like the idea that we see him momentarily isolated, at one with himself, potentially in a moment of reflection. Less the brave war hero, rather a man, singled out and celebrated. It is an honour that sits well on him at the same time that it sits heavily.”

And about, Pistol grip [Ben Roberts-Smith VC] 2014, oil on canvas, 160 x 220 cm: “He went to this whole other mode. He was suddenly this other creature and I immediately saw all these other things. It showed me what he is capable of … it was just there in this flash.” What Roberts-Smith is capable of the murder of civilians and war crimes.

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Urban Folk Art in Melbourne

Just as there is rural folk art, there is urban folk art. The urban scarecrows, topiary, handmade grave markers made by relatives, scratches in wet cement… So here is a look at various urban folk arts in the vast metropolis of Melbourne.

Folk art is made by amateurs, not professional artists or even students, and there is no intention to be taken seriously or do anything but satisfy themselves. (In this respect, graffiti is a folk art). It is not intended to be assessed, discussed or traded. It is not an art form that is mediated financially or academically.

However, urban folk art shouldn’t be ignored because it is not professional. It is done for pleasure, not profit or glory. It is part of our visual culture. The aesthetics are simple, a face or other resemblance or a decoration. If there is a message, it is a direct message to a limited audience; there are no references or tributes.

The critic’s role in discussing folk art is not to examine technique, taste or quality but to look at the diversity of decorative items and their relationship to the community. In the urban world, where almost everything is done by professionals with standards, urban folk art stands out, like the homemade grave markers I saw at the Coburg Cemetery. And in this diversity, there will be impressive works because of their scale or technique — for example, the sizeable grotto and mixed media constructions at the Veg Out Garden in St Kilda.

The Moreland Free Library is a miniature version of the original train station. This was constructed during the lockdown when various urban folk arts flourished, along with spoon gardens and chalk sidewalk drawings. The impressive carpentry is the work of one local amateur. There are other miniature buildings as libraries in parts of the US.

Although some folk art is impressive, we should not ignore small juvenile urban art projects like spoon gardens or painted rocks, like the Coburg Primary Painted Rock City. Their painted rocks are the opposite of monumental sculpture, an almost hidden sculpture with multiple creators of small units where each builds the rock community.

Most urban folk art is on private property, particularly in gardens. What is public property is mostly unauthorised but tolerated, like yarn bombing, guerilla gardening, or the painted rock city. (Only graffiti seems to be objected to.) Or, the Gnome Village in Keilor Park, listed on Google Maps, is just off the Calder Freeway. Or, the toy tree in Coburg, where toys that would have been thrown out hang from a tree.

For long before recycling was a word, long before Arthur Danto wrote The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, folk artists have used found materials. Up-cycling has the cornball appeal of a something-for-nothing sales pitch. In a corny part of this urban folk art, there is the use of readymade/fly-tipping as street art.

Ten years ago, I wrote another blog post about Urban Folk Art. In it, I considered whether graffiti is folk art, as well as considering mail art, punk DIY, and Dadaist collage. Rather than examining urban folk art, I was distracted by its influence on art.

Street Comedy

The culture of the street includes politics and promotion, commerce and transport, romance and comedy. My unofficial entry to this year’s Melbourne Comedy Festival.

There is comedy behind a lot of street art; artists like Cel One, the late Sime Thornton and others specialise in that comic images. There are joke posters and other pranks. 

However, it is a humourless mistake to analyse a joke unless you are Sigmund Freud, whose book Humour and Jokes is a surprisingly good read, although the section on black humour is far too brief. So I will post and not comment.

Cthulhu in Brunswick

Saw Cthulhu at the Brunswick Mechanics Institute, not the Great Cthulhu that Lovecraft wrote about (I’m not mad), but one of the lesser Cthulhus. Presented by the Centre for Projection Art as part of Frame: a biennial of dance 2023 Cthuluscene by transmedia artist Megan Beckwith was a combination of dance and technology.

The Centre for Projection Art is best known for presenting the Gertrude Street Projection Festival. The Centre’s objective is to activate spaces, and the Mechanics Institute’s forecourt is one of the closest things to a civic square in Brunswick. Various things have been tried for decades to activate it with more or less success. They probably discussed this in very different terms when it was a Mechanics Institute in the 1890s.

Cthuluscene is a dance and video work looping on four screens in the front windows of the white neo-classical building. The windows hadn’t been cleaned, and there were a few cobwebs, but that was the spookiest aspect. If only a spider had crawled out while I was watching.

The animation and motion capture was attractive, but the dance part was the weakest aspect, with conventional moves that contributed little to any meaning. The dancer’s gold tentacles and golden robot form spoke more of absurd luxury rather than cosmic horror. But then considering the “transformative nature of the digital to discover different notions of gender, physicality, and the post-human” is an absurd luxury.

I’m familiar with the horror stories of H P Lovecraft and the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game, as will some of my readers. So at least that gave me something to write about. Often I neglect to write about exhibitions like this because there is little to say about them. Sometimes, there is so little to them. Either way, it is a painful exercise to put into words with no pressing reason. It is not as if there is a need to warn people to stay away from a monster—the curse of the two-star review.

The Wild West of Australia

The world has now heard about the destruction of the world’s largest and oldest collection of petroglyphs (rock carvings) by the Woodside Energy Group (previously Woodside Petroleum) thanks to two protesters spraying chalk dust on the perspex cover on Fredrick McCubbin’s 1889 oil painting, Down on his luck, at the Art Gallery of Western Australia in January 2023. Further examination of their actions exposes prejudices about race, law, justice, culture, art’s value, and art galleries.

Western Australia has often been called the wild west, as it has many things in common with westerns. It is a land stolen from Indigenous peoples, ruled by cattle barons and miners.

The destruction of the world’s largest and oldest collection of petroglyphs (rock carvings) by the Woodside Energy Group (previously Woodside Petroleum) started in 2006–2007. Since then, the fossil fuel company has irreparably damaged the rock carvings on the Burrup Peninsula (also known as Murujuga) in WA’s Pilbara region.

The Australian government does not define the destruction of Indigenous art and culture as a crime (unless it is a tradable commodity). Indigenous culture, like the petroglyphs on the Burrup Peninsula (aka Murujuga), are being destroyed on an industrial scale, and even the most egregious incidents, like the damage to the Kuyang stones at Lake Bolac or the destruction of Juukan Gorge, only receive official reprimands or a fine.

However, it is a crime. Australia is an occupied territory with no treaty or other peace settlement with the land’s original inhabitants. Without a treaty, the land is an occupied territory where the ownership of the land is in dispute; therefore, the Geneva Convention applies. The destruction of the property of people whose lands have been occupied is prohibited under Article 53 of the 4th Geneva Convention. The situation is analogous to Russian claims to annex parts of Ukraine, a unilateral declaration that they are now legally part of another country. No, where in the Geneva Convention are occupied people, or their allies, prohibited from destroying the occupiers’ property. This does not give Russia the right to destroy Ukrainian property. Australia is a party to GCI-IV, but Australia’s word is worthless.

The actions of the two protesters, Perth ceramic artist and illustrator Joana Partyka and Ballardong Noongar man Desmond Blurton at the Art Gallery of Western Australia is the best art gallery demonstration yet. A symbolic attack on a symbol of the colonial power to draw attention to the actual crime of destroying the world’s oldest art gallery. Partyka’s damage was symbolic, as was the choice of McCubbin’s painting and the location. The chalk spray, used for marking sports grounds, would not damage the painting—indeed, no damage compared to the actual irreparable damage done to the ancient petroglyphs.

McCubbin’s painting symbolises European colonisation as he depicts European settlers in the Australian landscape. And also because it is a tradable commodity exchangeable for dollars, unlike rock art, which is not tradable because it belongs in its original location.

The Art Gallery of Western Australia is used symbolically by the occupying power, as a token of civilisation, as a venue for state functions, a beautiful decoration for the ugly iconoclasm and state violence.

WA police charged Partyka with one count of criminal damage, nobody has yet charged the so-called Commonwealth of Australian and Woodside Energy with war crimes, but it needs to happen.

Whitewashing Pentridge Prison History

I want to see Ronald Bull’s mural for myself, and I’m sure others do too. To physically look up at it, not just look at a photo of it, to be able to appreciate its size and the stone prison walls it’s painted on. Now that Pentridge is no longer a prison and is being developed as a housing estate, I don’t see why I can’t.

I enquired about the heritage-listed Ronald Bull mural in F Division to Pentridge Village, but there was no response. This is because Bull is not mentioned in the “Former HM Prison Pentridge Heritage Interpretation Masterplan” by Sue Hodges Productions. The masterplan makes almost no reference to Indigenous people, with a single reference to “Aboriginal troopers”. 

Ronald Bull is a significant Indigenous artist, and his mural in F Division is his most important work. The mural is on the Victorian Aboriginal Heritage Register and protected under the Aboriginal Heritage Act 2006 and the Heritage Act 1995 because it is on the Victorian Heritage Register as part of Pentridge Prison. The Office of Aboriginal Affairs Victoria liaised with the developers and their heritage consultants, Sue Hodges Productions. Box-ticking exercise over consultations ignored (I assume this is how the Indigenous voice to parliament will be treated, please correct me if I’m wrong about this).

Writing out Indigenous people from the Heritage, whitewashing history with the erasure of Indigenous people. The developers have been allowed to exploit the history for their profit. The interior bluestone walls were all cut by prison labour. Not to forget that prison labour is disproportionately Indigenous.

The historical interpretation of the site is inadequate. More than one room with photographs, texts and a few objects is required. Decorative motifs of the panopticon are one of the most grotesque pieces of carceral torture ever invented; solitary confinement combined with continuous observation. If the old bluestone walls, gates, and towers are selling points, then some sensitive historical interpretation is needed.

Sue Hodges Productions were approached to comment on the absence of Bull’s mural and the Indigenous people from their masterplan but hadn’t responded at the time of publication. They are still welcome to comment, just fill in the comment box.

For more about Bull and his mural see my post, the life and art of Ronald Bull.

Ersatz culture

Not that I approve of throwing trash into rivers, but I sympathise with the guys who threw a Gillie and Marc bronze statue of baby Sumatran orangutang into the Yarra last month. For post is about rejecting substitutes filling in for culture rather than sending sculptures to a watery grave. 

It is possible to produce something made from acorns that almost tastes like coffee. Like ersatz coffee, ersatz art provides aesthetics without any stimulating quality. The borrowed German word for a substitute implies a diminished experience rather than an alternative.

Ersatz culture is presented as a substitute for something of superior quality. It is fake, a pretend, simulated or imitation culture that can be used to fill a space that would contain culture. It might appear to be the same as the real thing on a quick pass, but there is no depth. It does not comment on current issues or events. It does not risk failure. It uses sentimentality, nationalism and other affiliations to distract the audience from thinking about what is in front of them.

It occurs when an artist’s or organisation’s ambitions fail to rise above being popular with the public or the ruling elite. When the expedient, cost-effective and safest options are taken. If sincerity is the credit rating of an artist, the insincerity of ersatz culture bankrupts the future. Sure it fills the space and tastes like it, but it does not make for a meaningful life.

I’m not alone in describing statues as ersatz. When the U.S. Postal Service mistakenly featured a half-sized Las Vegas replica of the Statue of Liberty on a new stamp, a “stamp collector noticed the error when he spotted differences in the ersatz statue’s eyes and hair.” (Slate, April 15, 2011) And Melbourne, like Las Vegas and most big cities, is full of substitute culture, from statues by Gillie and Marc (or David Bromley) to reality tv shows.

The problem is culture substitutes fill in the space that culture occupies without providing a sense of identity or recognition of your existence (aside from selling you the t-shirt and other merchandise). Cultural impoverishment results in a lack of meaning in many people’s lives; an empty psychic space filled with addictions, despair and rage.

If hotel room art and other such vacuous stuff is the only part of your cultural diet, then there are problems. Sugar is not a substitute for fruit. It is why I prefer to look at, and even review, exhibitions by amateur artists rather than work by competent artists/designers like Ken Done, David Bromley, or Gillie and Marc. There is something essentially different between art desperately trying to achieve something, even if it fails, then commercially successful stuff.

Bad art is only a failure, but ersatz art occupies the space that would otherwise be filled with art. Bad art rots and rapidly breaks down, an actor dies on stage, and from that compost heap, new art grows. Ersatz art does not decompose as rapidly; nothing grows from it, as it fails to inspire. It neuters the generative power of art and will generate nothing but superficial sentimentality communicated in easy-to-read images. It has no impact on future arts and culture.

Gillie and Marc’s sculptures have no value other than a selfie feedback loop of ever-diminishing relevance. They tempt city councils and other controllers of property with the offer of free sculpture exhibitions that do nothing but raise the profile of Gillie and Marc. (Read an earlier post about a street artist’s reply to Gillie and Marc’s “Paparazzi Dogs”.)