First New Exhibitions for 2015

Melbourne’s art galleries have started exhibitions again; on 9th January, Friday evening Kings ARI opened first new exhibition for the year. A surprisingly early start with many people still on holidays and Melbourne’s fickle summer weather. A few other larger galleries, like the NGV and RMIT Gallery, have also reopened after the holiday season with exhibitions from last year.

Simon Crosbie’s installation at Kings ARI

At King ARI there are three exhibitions in their three small upstairs exhibitions spaces. In the front gallery there was a group exhibition of four women artists, Amber Stones and Green, curated by Alison Lasek. In the middle gallery, Reveal & Conceal featured a great knitted installation by Simon Crosbie, two videos by Paul Candy and a large text based wall work by Amanda Laming. In the dark of the Side Gallery, the flickering colours of the screens reflected on the white wall creating an image of such a basic beauty. This work, Flickr  Films by Christopher Handran focused my thinking about the technology and art.

Regarding technology and art I finally had the time to see Experimenta Recharge, the 6th International Biennial of Media Art at RMIT Gallery. There was a humming from behind the, now, automatic door into RMIT Gallery as if it was housing immense electoral machines, which indeed it did. There were one hundred digital televisions for, Khaled Sabsabi’s 70,000 Veils a 3D video work of transcendental beauty.

This exhibition of  international artists has been extensively reviewed so I will only add the comment that I had seen a better version of the braking mirror that Anaisa Franco presented, “Broken Mirror” by Lee Yongbaek was much smoother and more beautiful. Franco’s other work the motion activated screaming mouth was just prop comedy. Teamlab answered my question about the watchability of long works of video art with one that last for 100 years.

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Photo, Film, Tape

A few exhibitions at Artist Run Initiatives in April 2010 – Kings ARI : Eliza Gregory “The Californian” & Jessi Imam “Bereft of the Corporeal” – Mailbox 141: Sally Tape and Candice Crammer “Now”.

Eliza Gregory’s breezy series of photographs, “The Californian” are coolly exhibited on a band of fresh aqua blue painted walls, a very different feel to the usual white walls. The photographs have a relaxed personal mood but are carefully composed vignette portraits of her Californian family and friends. This is a parallel exhibition to Gregory’s, “The Local”, shown earlier this year at the Yarra Sculpture Gallery of people from Melbourne. Gregory is lightly examining her trans-Pacific identity. Like Eliza Gregory, I also have a trans-Pacific identity with a brother, niece and nephew living in California but I didn’t discover any great insights from the exhibition. It would have been good to see some but I doubt that they will be found in portraits of people. People are people where-ever they live; their identity is rarely about their appearance. Or perhaps the trans-Pacific identity has become too homogenized to be able to see differences.

Jessie Imam, Bereft of the Corporeal, 2011 Super 8 film installation (looped), (thanks to Jessie Imam for the photograph)

Jessie Imam’s installation, “Bereft of the Corporeal” is a triumph of the classic technique of Super 8 film loops. It is also the antithesis of motion picture technology as nothing moves in the installation except for the two loops of film going through the two Super 8 projectors and the dust on the two screens. The images on the film doesn’t move – the taxidermy coyote and an antelope stand in the alien habitat of a green suburban landscape. The two loops of film return to the projector after navigating around the wall of the gallery on 9-10 rollers, like many contemporary installations using string and nails to map out space. I almost missed the 3 birds nests of human hair in the installation, the space was so dark; they too are bereft of the corporeal, the body that they came from.

Jessie Imam, Bereft of the Corporeal, 2011 Super 8 film installation (looped), (thanks to Jessie Imam for the photograph)

Sally Tape and Candice Crammer’s “Now: I steal from work and I steal from You Tube” uses stolen images and stolen tape. Sally Tape, as her name suggests, has consistently used multiple rolls of commercial tape in her post-minimalist work, as well as, collaborating with other artists. In this exhibition Candice Crammer uses photographs in the mailbox like flip book frames using still images from a YouTube video “the funniest falls ever (I think)”. And Sally Tape adds lines of colored tape.

Has anyone else seen these exhibitions?