Fever Dreams of a Critic

The fever dream, only a couple of degrees of body temperature (the same increase projected for the global average temperature) influences both the body and the imagination — the embodied aesthetic hallucinatory experience of the strange — the delirium accompanying a fever. It is also the title an exhibition of ten Melbourne-based contemporary artists (Ingmar Apinis, Naomi Bishop, Mitchel Brannan, Harley Ives, Luke King, Elyss McCleary, Ted Mckinlay, Valentina Palonen, Bundit Puangthong and Paul Yore) at the Counihan Gallery in Brunswick, curated by Mitchel Brannan.

Bundit Puangthong, Run Wild, 2023

How to describe the neon graffiti obscured fragments of historical references and gestural brushwork in Mitchel Brannan’s two paintings? Or the tumult of signs, symbols, patterns, and blotches in Bundit Puangthong paintings?

Should I describe any of the art in the “Fever Dreams” as “sick” or even “fully sick”? Given the exhibition’s title, would it be appropriate to employ the late-80s skateboard slang to describe the paintings? Engaging with the disturbing, the lurid colours, the ambiguity of using a word for unwell as complimentary. What subtle differences does its meaning have? What baggage from the skateboarding era would the word bring with it? Do the strange nuances of ‘sick’ imply something cooler but less strange? Is a sick colour palette different from ‘feverish’ ones like those in Valentina Palonen’s paintings, where bright colours discordantly vibrate, melt and drip?

Consider the vocabulary used to express approval and the subtle variations in meaning between these terms. These words are not the same as a ‘like button’, and even the meaning of positive emojis varies. “Sick” is not interchangeable with all other positive assessments, for example, “elegant” or “graceful”. It raises the question does a poverty of vocabulary leads to a deprivation of aesthetic experiences? The newspeak world with only “good”, “plus good”, and “double plus good”, or the equally limited like-buttons of social media. And does an extensive vocabulary expand aesthetic possibilities?

Such are the fever dreams of a critic; I hope I’m not coming down with something.

Installation view of Mitchel Brannan paintings

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Views of Iran and Myanmar

Three exhibitions by women from Iran and Myanmar as part of International Women’s Day is a remarkable and timely achievement for a local council gallery like the Counihan Gallery in Brunswick. A time when we need to see different views and hear different voices from these countries.

Installation view of Shwe Wutt Hmon’s Portraits of the Anonymous

In “Portraits of the Anonymous” Shwe Wutt Hmon the works hang like washing on a line. In Myanmar, it is considered bad luck for men to walk under the washing line of longyi dresses.  So they turned into a symbol of protest, slowing the military advance as they cut lines hung across streets. The works hanging in the Counihan are portraits and statements with texts in Burmese and English. Shwe Wutt Hmon is one of the founding members of Myanmar-based women photographer group Thuma Collective (see the Julius Baer Next Generation Art Prize website for more about her work.)

Setareh Hosseini, the visual artist, not the creative Canadian make-up artist of the same name, is exhibiting “I Take My City”. Memories of Tehran from an exile taking geography as a memory, holding the buildings in her hand. The universal and the personal, the public and the personal combined. These lyrical works are typical images by Hosseini, a hand holding buildings against a marble background or a sky, or another open background.

And in the final gallery is “The Elysian Fields” is a multi-channel video installation by Sofi Basseghi, the exhibition design is by Ehsan Khoshnami, with music composition by Ai Yamamoto and performances by actor Salme Geransar and courageous women of Iran on the videos. People say that Paradise is a garden, crossing over into the realm of houries, fairies and genies. Female power in nature, a mystical gateway to the other side, which in the profane world, outside of the sacred garden, could simply be immigration.

Setareh Hosseini I Take My City 2016 digital print

Counihan Gallery summer show 2022

The end-of-year exhibition at the Counihan Gallery’s summer show has the theme of Future Tense.

Tense? I am still masked up amidst a crowd of people at the opening, still concerned about the current wave of COVID. I can’t remember ever seeing so many people in the gallery.

Why am I writing about this exhibition and not others? Hyper-local interest, this is where I live, with the added bonus that Merri-bek has more than its fair share of visual artists living in it. Congratulations to Emily Simek, the recipient of this year’s Noel Counihan Commemorative Art Award, and to Stephanie Karavasilis and Carmen Reid for being highly commended by the judges.

But at my back, I always hear four horsemen drawing near. War, plague, famine and death have been harnessed to the chariot of unimaginable climate catastrophe. Many of the works in the exhibition were activist, most environmental, followed by disability. Pamela Kleemann-Passi Trolley Trouble in Troubled Times records an action by Extinction Rebellion that took place at the intersection just outside the gallery. The fluttering flags contrast the still bodies, their bright colours stand out against the grey tarmac, concrete and stone. It is a combination of protest with aesthetics.

Of course, there was a wide range of interpretations of the theme in a great variety of media and styles, including imitations of cubism, futurism, abstract expressionism and Francis Bacon. However, there wasn’t enough about the location. Kyle Walker’s photographs, The Cat, capture scenes of everyday Brunswick. The photographs are well-composed and poetic without being sentimental.

Another with a focus on the local was Carmel Louise, The East Brunswick, combining photograph and mixed media in a collapsible accordion pop-up book. It is based on the original East Brunswick Hotel and was meant to be critical of the recent high-rise developments along Lygon Street. However, this criticism is muted by the beauty of the paper folding.

Carmel Louise, The East Brunswick, 2022

Bright colours abounded this year; I suspect the cumulative result of many lonely lockdowns. One of these bright works was Claire Anna Watson’s Once when I was six III. An inflated plastic creation involving a mirror, lime green ring, floaties and aubergine. This a contemporary art take on a yoni and a lingam, complete with the aubergine in the middle – emoji reference. Air and inflation have been art components since Duchamp’s Air de Paris (50cc of Paris Air) and early Koons buoyancy basketballs in One Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (Spalding Dr J Silver Series). And Watson has used vegetable material in previous work. Her artist statement records “floating, hovering between an abstraction of the mind and a nostalgia for what was.”

Claire Anna Watson, Once when I was six III, 2022

While the artists in Future Tense were looking forward, I was reminiscing. Not that want to use Van Der Graff’s Time Pair-a-Docs to go back to the past, but for me, there was a note of past tense in the show. That sentimental, seasonal event, end-of-year feeling, but that’s just memories. seeing new work recognisably by artists I know or have previously written about conjuring ghosts of past years, the evoking of spirits. Shout out to Alister Karl, Julian DiMartino, Marina Perkovich and Carmen Reid glad that they are still alive, creating art and kicking.

Although it is the season of end-of-year shows, the Blender Xmas Party and the 32^nd annual Linden Postcard Show are coming up. I am going to take a summer break (if ‘summer’ is the word I’m looking for, given the recent wintery weather).

Thanks for reading.

Cheers, Black Mark

Leon Van Der Graff, Time Pair-a-Docs, 2022

From Counihan to Camp

Three exhibitions with very different objectives at the Counihan Gallery in Brunswick. Modern and contemporary art, with aesthetics ranging from realist to camp, and goals as diverse as to activate, educate and entertain. (So, watch me do the critical equivalent of a high dive with triple summersault to tie this review up.)

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When the Counihan Gallery was established in 1999, it was named after the artist Noel Counihan (1913-1986). The inspiration came from the proximity of Counihan’s anti-fascist protest/performance, his ironic free speech in a cage on a busy Sydney Road, Friday evening, 19 May 1933. Remembering that Victoria Police was run by fascists in 1933 and it is doubtful that they have ever relinquished control of the force that “upholds the right.” 

The Counihan Gallery has acquired a collection of Noel Counihan’s paintings, drawings, lithographs, linocuts and other prints, primarily through donations. “Counihan Collection – Noel Counihan works from the Moreland Art Collection” is the first time exhibition from this collection. This is possibly the first retrospective exhibition of his work since the one at the NGV in 1973.

Counihan’s art was intended as political consciousness-raising when it wasn’t a portrait or the head of an attractive woman. Amongst the heads, I am caught by the mad stare, the simple graphic eye that Counihan gives to both Jesus and the Collingwood supporter in The Barracker.

The next exhibition, “Leftovers of a Ghost”, is a science experiment of an exhibition by Melbourne-based artists Emme Orbach and Noah Spivak. Chemical reactions as visual arts, part of National Science Week 2022. Spectacular crystal growths of monoammonium phosphate and huge blue copper sulphate crystals (British artist Roger Hiorns used copper sulphate with stunning effect in Seizure, 2011). The chance and natural forms suggest that they could be the work of anyone, with only the elegance and formal qualities of Orbach’s and Spivak’s work saying otherwise. I only wish there was about how the images were made, but that could have made the exhibition more didactic than artistic. Spivak has a background in photography, an art that relied on chemistry until it was replaced by digital technology.

In the third gallery, there is work by Mark Smith, an Arts Project Australia artist who works in ceramics, video and soft sculpture. His exhibition “Malleability” has a camp aesthetic of inverted commas (ref. Susan Sontag “notes on camp”). Smith’s soft letters, wall-works and ceramic words have the quality of ironic inverted commas. His graffiti bubble letters had odd, naive calligraphy with letters acquiring a base rather than simply sides. Soft sculpture has been around since Oldenburg only with Smith, the material used is over-the-top. “Choice” in stripy fur with green sides, but given society (Counihan), chemistry ( Orbach and Spivak), and disability (Smith), what choice do we have?

Two Exhibitions at the Counihan

Ancient mythology is full of sewing metaphors. The words ‘sutra’ and ‘suture’ share a common Sanskrit origin, a thread. Atropos, the eldest sister of the three ancient Greek fates, cuts the cord of someone’s life.

Pimpisa Tinpalit Silence #1.6.1

“Silence #1.6.1” by local artist Pimpisa Tinpalit is a meditative consideration of mortality. Tinpalit can create spectacular arte povera pieces using simple ordinary non-art materials like ropes and old pillows. The golden colour of sweat-soaked pillows glows in contrast to the black ropes. While tying up loose ends in knots, the other end of the rope is cut.

It is not all made from arte povera non-art materials. There is a video going forwards and in reverse, as the artist covers her face with gold leaf. And there are three ink paintings on large sheets of paper. I saw an earlier one of her Silence series at Yarra Sculpture Gallery in 2018. 

Two exhibitions at the Counihan Gallery opened on Saturday afternoon. It was the first exhibition opening that I’ve attended in years. The first time the Counihan has held a catered exhibition opening in years. The food was from Zaatars, and the wine was made by a former detainee, Farhad Bandesh. I went back for a second glass of the smooth red. 

Held over from last year was “Means Without Ends” by local documentary photographer Hoda Afshar: two series of photographs, Remain (2018) and Agonistes (2020). What these series have in common is that they depict people who have suffered at the hands of the Australian government. Cruelty is the point, amoral demonstrations of power by elected criminals desperate to feel in control. 

On one wall, Agonistes these “3D photographs” that look like images of white busts, like rough 3D printings of scans of heads of whistle-blowers. Recognisable even though the eyes are blank and there is no colour. Under each portrait, a panel explains what crimes and abuses of power the person reported and what was then done to them. Some of these whistle-blowers exposed abuses of refugees linking to Afshar’s other series of photographs.

On the other wall, Remain a series of black and white photographs staged images of refugees who were indefinitely detained in conditions equivalent to torture. Large-format inkjet prints of men who remained in detention camps on Manus Island for more than six years. The focus varies from sharp to blurred; is the image of the individual or a person? What would be the point of making them recognisable or identifiable?

Two of Hoda Afshar’s Remain series

One of Hoda Afshar’s Agonistes series

Banj Banj/nawnta

Banj Banj/nawnta (meaning “sisters” in Taungurung/palawa kani) is a joyful collection of paintings with bright colours vibrating and lots of birds. Art that is the antidote for a post lockdown brain, the first exhibition that I saw after Victoria’s fifth lockdown. Eyes dulled with repetition pop. The backstory to these paintings is not so joyful.

Thelma Beeton, A Sign from Our Ancestors

Stacey (Taungurung /Boon Wurrung) and Thelma (Palawa) are close enough to be sisters. The two Indigenous women are from the same regional town and met up again when they were incarcerated at Dame Phyllis Frost Centre, Victoria’s maximum-security women’s prison in Deer Park.

Their artistic origin story of these two jailbirds watching and laughing as two galahs flew down to look at them is told in an animated video narrated by the artists. Thelma Beeton records the story in one of her paintings, A Sign from Our Ancestors. She depicts the artists as a couple of emus with big brush stroke feathers behind a bluestone wall.

Beeton’s emus and bees have a cartoon simplicity with their bold outlines and colours. In contrast to Stacey’s meticulous art, a fusion of ancient and contemporary images with the traditional diamond pattern forming a background for her realistic depictions of birds, animals, and insects. There are subtle colour gradations and combinations in these backgrounds that are intensely beautiful.

The two artists works have a different mood and tone that works together in harmony. I wish that there were more collaborative works between these two artists. However, I understand that might be logistically difficult given that Stacey is still in prison.

Stacey and Thelma’s corkboards (installation view)

The two prison corkboards are displayed on a background of bee wallpaper, evoking the decoration that Thelma painted on her cell’s walls. The corkboards are similar to the ones that can be found in every cell at Deer Park. They are self-portraits of each artist, represented who they are personally, socially and culturally in a mixed media of cards, letters and drawings.

The exhibition at the Counihan Gallery in Brunswick is organised by The Torch. The Torch works with incarcerated Indigenous people in Victoria, the most incarcerated people on the planet, providing artistic training, materials, exhibitions and opportunities for sales. I would have seen their art before at the Torch’s annual Confined exhibitions. However, there are hundreds of paintings all competing for attention, so I’m not surprised that I don’t remember them. After this exhibition, I won’t forget them.

Stacey My Children Coming Home

Rendall’s Plastic Things

The last time that I saw Steven Rendall’s art was at John Buckley Gallery; I wrote a blog post about it over a decade ago. It included two large paintings about things on shelves. This time I’m looking at his Things Between Other Things on window frames of the Counihan Gallery in Brunswick. The exhibition is “The Space We Live, the Air We Breathe”, curated by Jan Duffy and Matthew Perkins. And Rendall is still making art about things.

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Things Between Other Things is a collection and a reference to filling in time with this project. For time makes an appearance amongst the materials listed: “scavenged plastic, time, polymer emulsion, glue, screws and various other things”. A metaphor for life, sandwiched between things, waiting for the next thing.

As Rendall’s artist statement iterates. “These are the things between other things. They are sculptures in the domestic filed. They find their place between other moments and actions, between breakfast and going to work. They are easy to store and transport.They are endless and can be made of anything. They are a subsets with the overall scheme – some are more like fantasy gaming figures; some are more like modernist found object assemblages; some are made from a unified colour range; some are painted; some aren’t; some are inspired by practical special events; some can relate to art historical references. They exist.”

Rendall’s things are evenly spaced along the gallery’s window frames. This means that they can be seen from both inside and from the outside on Sydney Road. I wonder what the people waiting for a tram will make of these beautiful and frightening Anthropocene mash-ups. Cthulhuloid monsters with scuttling claws glued together with other broken toys. The true horror is the materials sourced from the infinite amount of plastic in our time. It gets everywhere, from the depths of the oceans to placental fluid.

Many creative people are trying to use what they can of this pollution, recycling, or just up-cycling. For art is about using up the surplus materials, as well as, time. Lego Lost At Sea (@LegoLostAtSea) documents and creates photographs of carefully laid out collections of plastic found on the beach. For more plastic recycling see my post on local jewellers.

The other two exhibitions at the Counihan, Jessie Boylan’s “The Smallest Measure” and Mikaela Stafford “Proximity”, are presented in association with CLIMARTE: “Arts for a safe climate”. Boylan is about air and measuring gases in the atmosphere. And Stafford has a strange beauty, both digital and biological. However, Rendall’s Things Between Other Things really made me think about the environment, the space we live, and the air we breathe.

My view of parts of Mikaela Strafford “Proximity”