More winners

On Wednesday, the final night at the Basil Sellers Art Prize 2010 two associated awards were presented. Ponch Hawkes won the 2010 Basil Sellers National Sports Museum Creative Arts Fellowship. The fellowship is valued at $50,000 dollars. And Juan Ford for won the $5,000 Yarra Trams People’s Choice Award voted by the visitors to the exhibition.

Unlike The Gaurdian’s art critic, Adrian Searle, who recently wrote about this year’s Turner Prize, I do not prejudge the judges of art prizes. I do not think that it is the art critic’s role to do this (unless they are the appointed judge) any more than it is a crime reporter’s role to judge the case (if they did it would be contempt of court). It is the art critic’s role to explain, examine and comment on the art prizes and awards not to prejudge them.

The novelty of Juan Ford’s series of anamorphic images proved popular with the visitors to the exhibition. The visitors would have been familiar with the use of anamorphic images employed by advertisers in major sporting events – the logos that are designed to be viewed at particular angles. The visitors might have also been comforted by Ford’s familiar reference to sports art history with his anamorphic version of ancient Greek runners. Or, maybe they just enjoyed the theme of running.

The openings of Juan Ford’s exhibitions have always been packed with people – his art is popular. This is not just because of his fine figurative painting technique but because his engages the viewer with anamorphic images that emphasising the viewer’s relationship to the image.

Melbourne photographer Ponch Hawkes has worked with Circus Oz since its inception, the unresolved narratives in her photographs invite the viewer to speculate. So expect to see some of Hawkes dramatic photographs at the National Sports Museum at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. It is good to know that art at the MCG extends beyond the dozen bronze statues of sporting heroes by Louis Laumen.

My congratulations to Juan Ford and Ponch Hawkes.

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Curators & Current Exhibitions

Some current exhibitions that I’ve seen in Melbourne made me think about the curators. In reviewing exhibitions in this blog I have endeavoured to give credit to the curators but it also time to give them some critical attention.

Bernhard Sachs and Brad Haylock curate the current exhibition at West Space. I don’t know why they bothered. The title of the show is a beautiful work of art in itself: “The Office of Utopic Procedures Presents: The Aesthetics of Joy – The Infinite International of Poetics” but the exhibition doesn’t support it. Both curators are also exhibiting in the show along with a more or less random selection of artists. Was the exhibition about the aesthetics of joy or was the title so vague that anything could be included? The works in the exhibition are diverse in every sense and there is little cohesion, even the hanging on deep blue walls didn’t create a unity. The exhibition contains the usual contemporary curator’s mix of video art, installation and wall painting. I expect something more from a curators than this exhibition with its pretentious title.

The curators do hit the jackpot with a work by Kellie Wells, a video installation with wall painting that actually appears to be on the exhibition’s theme. Kellie Wells is jumping for joy amongst horizontal strips of elastic. These horizontal strips appear in the minimalist wall painting. It was like the children’s game except played by an adult. The ominous rumbling soundtrack to the installation is the only discordant note in the work.

At Michael Koro Gallery I saw a simpler exhibition. It is simply titled with the names of the participating artists: Ash Keating. Andrew Hutson, Daniel Du Bern and Marcin Wojcik. No curator credited but the hanging was elegantly simple. Ash Keating likes to separate rubbish – it is the environmentally responsible thing to do. And Ash Keating takes rubbish separation to an art – a black pile of plastic waste and white pile of plastic waste. Andrew Hutson is exhibiting three sculptural scenes made of painted paper-mache. They have a whimsical mood, a simple direct style and clear ideas. Daniel Du Bern is showing 10 oil ink prints of strange handmade weapons, perhaps handed in during a police amnesty, as suggested by the series title: Amnesty. These crude but deadly weapons are depicted in a cool, neutral and grey style as artefacts. In the laneway next to Michael Koro Gallery Marcin Wojcik has made small sailing ship made of sticky tape over a wooden frame.

I also saw the Shilo Project at the Ian Potter Museum of Art is curator by Dr Chris McAuliffe. In the exhibition pop music album covers, and dot to dots, meet contemporary art. It is a curatorial dream of an exhibition to include so many artists with a theme exhibition with iconic pop status. The 100 works of art looked coherent because they were all on 100 copies of Neil Diamond’s Shilo album with its dot to dot drawing cover art. There are no breathtakingly great art in this exhibition but the installation of the exhibition is a curatorial work of art incorporating the record store style, a record player and even imitation record store bins full of Neil Diamond records. CDs, with their smaller format, killed the art of the album cover – this exhibition does not attempt to revive it but to redirect it.