Civil @ Tinning Street

In “Tangled Love” Civil’s stick figure folk, a mix between Keith Haring and Matisse, form a gentle community as they sit, walk, dance and ride bicycles. They occupy a large wall in the laneway outside the gallery, Tinning Street presents but sit comfortably on the smaller supports within.

A decade ago I was interested in how street art and graffiti would be exhibited in art galleries. Moving from the street into the gallery is a matter of economics, conservation and, given the structure of the art world, inevitability. At the time stencil art dominated Melbourne’s street art scene so that meant that, aside from the gallery location, the other difference was support, outside walls or other materials.

However, sometimes that location on the street was very important to the art. I have seen many artists work fail to work in the gallery. The worst that I can remember was Urban Cake Lady’s exhibition at Rist; her art which looked enchanting on the street lost its magic inside the gallery.

Often this was because isolated in the gallery is different from being collaged onto the actual streetscape. Maybe they are missing the unexpected moment of discovery on the street, that Prof. Alison Young argues is the core of the street art experience, replaced with the totally expected experience of the exhibition. Sometimes the repetition of the artist’s single iconic image looks repetitious and boring in a gallery. Sometimes it is simply due to issues of scale. Certainly the white, anaesthetic room rarely helps the art look its best.

None of these appeared to be a problem in Tom Civil’s exhibition at Tinning Street presents. Dried botanical arrangements in old milk vats engraved by Civil decorate the gallery. His stick figures appear on a variety of supports: timbre lattice, ply, green corflute (corrugated plastic), doormats, wood and clear corrugated plastic which reminds the viewer of the variety of surfaces in the city. Aside from Civil’s familiar stick figures there are images created specifically for gallery exhibitions of animals from centipedes to chooks. Print making techniques extending from his early stencils on the street to linocut, drypoint etching, screen-prints and woodcuts. These printing techniques offer new material for the exhibition. Inside or outside of the gallery Civil’s images work.

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An Average Week’s Exhibitions

There is nothing essentially wrong with two or three star art, for such passable art is the benchmark by which quality is measured.Sometimes the art has limited ambitions, content, or scope, a little idea or more of the same but well presented. Other times the art is ambitious but limited by the talent, funding, space needed in order to carry the idea. I am always hoping to see something exceptional but it is inaccurate to only write about the exceptional. For most of the time I see exhibitions that are average, slightly below average or slightly above average. Take for example the exhibitions that I saw this week in Brunswick.

TextaQueen, Muse, 2016

TextaQueen’s “Eve of Incarnation” is a solo exhibition at Blak Dot Gallery of colour nude photographs of herself on a beach. They could be from a nude calendar for like such calendars they are so carefully contrived that in 16 photographs not a single nipple or public hair is showing. However, TextaQueen does not depict herself a weak or vulnerable, but rather strong, wild and powerful. This is emphasised in the titles: ‘Agitator,’ ‘Summoner,’ ‘Harnesser’. I don’t know if the titles are enough but TextaQueen is an established artist who has worked with nudes and between low-brow and high brow art. So although this exhibition is not in her primary media is not far from her core interests of gender, race and Australia.

Hilary Dodd’s solo exhibition “Anomalous” at Tinning Street Presents is unfortunately not anomalous but all too familiar. So many artists have painted nearly monochrome paintings with an emphasis on the texture of the paint and anomalous tones or colours.

“Unhidden” curated by Kali Michailidis at the Counihan Gallery was not revealing. At its best it was clever but obvious like Kouichi Okamoto’s “Liquid taper cutter work”, 2013 where the ends of strips of tape that have been used to paint a wall black look like paint drips. At its worst it remained obscure.

Also at the Counihan was “As Above, So Below” works on paper by Charlotte Watson and Shannon Williamson. Above; Williamson’s works on paper look like outer space, like nubuela, spectacular, beautiful, random creations, over-laid with geometric notes in chalk or pastel. Below; a more difficult proposition, Watson stitches thread, like geomancy lines in the dark earth. The works are clearly linked in their mapping elements, as well as, their inspiration from Eleanor Catton’s novel The Luminaries.

A couple of exhibitions in Brunswick

In Sparta Place there is a new gallery, Beinart Gallery offering “fine art” and “curiosities”. Gallery director, Jon Beinart has been involved with pop surrealism for over a decade, publishing books for several years and collecting a coterie of artists. Beinart says that all the gallery now has a physical presence most of his business is online sales.

Pop surrealism is the bastard child of Salvador Dali and a Hollywood Blvd hooker. The child grew up in an American tattoo parlour reading underground comics and eating acid like it was candy. Like many of that generation pop surrealism traveled the world, growing bigger, fatter and more popular but is still hanging out in a tattoo parlour reading comic books, or fatter graphic novels.

One side of the shopfront gallery is used for temporary exhibitions, the other side has a selection of diverse works from the stockroom.

The current temporary exhibition is “Transmogrify” a three person exhibition by Ben Howe, Tim Molloy and Jake Hempson.

Howe’s paintings depict the point of disintegration of the head, fracturing or metamorphosing into a tangle of ribbons. I first saw Ben Howe’s work in the Melbourne Stencil Festival 2009 but this is first time that I’ve seen a series of his paintings. His current work aren’t stencil works but oil paintings; Howe completed a Masters of Fine Art at RMIT in 2011.

Illustrator and comic artist, Tim Molloy has a series of watercolour paintings of strange characters based on his work for his graphic novel, Mr Unpronounceable and the Infinity of Nightmares.

Digital animator Jake Hempson also makes actual sculptures. In a series of busts that explore alternate anatomy of human heads with a particular focus on the interior surface of the maxilla, the upper jawbone, or replacing the head with an animal skull.

At Tinning Street presents there is a tour de’force of paper cutting by Japanese artist, Akiko Nagino. Nagino explained that has only been in Melbourne for a few years and was amazed at how many people have come to see her “Cutting Nature” exhibition. It is obvious. It was also obvious when she was a finalist in the Victorian Craft Awards in 2015

Her designs are of butterflies, patterns and decay. There are lower edges that are dripping, distorted or melting, there are broken chains, all perfectly cut out of paper.

The cut paper is a substitute for clothes or jewellery; there are two butterfly patterned kimonos, a giant necklace, a handkerchief and several shawls. In some of the works the paper has been treated and coloured with iron and copper finishes.

Large scale hand cut paper pieces are complimented with dry embossed prints of the cut paper pieces. The subtle white on white of embossed paper balancing the high contrast of the cut paper piece.

Brunswick Studio Walk

I spent Sunday afternoon strolling, schmoozing and looking at artists studios in  Brunswick. It was a day funded with gold coin donations for food and drinks. An afternoon of saying: “Didn’t I see your work in an exhibition at x gallery, y years ago?”, so please forgive me if I don’t mention every artist that I chatted with.

Rooftop of Studio 23 A with Conrad Clark sculptures

The open studio event was organised by Charlotte Watson and Josh Simpson who are both at Studio 23A, a former cool-store housing warehouse before it was divided up into artist studios in 2002. Studio 23A is a very large upstairs space with a large outdoor space where they were holding a BBQ and exhibiting a few sculptures.

Starting at Studio 23A in Leslie Street and following a trail of yellow balloons to Tinning Street. Roughly the same route that I took on my recent psychogeographical walk. The narrow strip of land between the railway line and Sydney Road full of old factories and warehouses is the artistic centre of Brunswick, not just for the visual artists but street artists, musicians, dancers and circus arts.

Squishface Comic Studio

Squishface Studio is a one-room shop front comic studio with half a dozen table serving the artists that share the studio, as well as, the comic drawing classes. Three artists were working there on Sunday afternoon including one of the founders of  studio, Ben Huchtings. Jo Waite was working there now that Brunswick Arts has closed. The third artist had her headphones on and I didn’t want to interrupt her.

Inside SoCA

On Ovens Street is SoCA, School of Clay and Art. SoCA is a new well-organised space for a ceramics school, large working spaces, kilns, and a room of potters wheels.

Studio Brunswick was the midway point on the walk; an upstairs space used by mid-career artists and photographers. It has large spaces rather than little divided rooms. I was familiar of Mark Ogge’s carnival paintings from exhibitions at Flinders Lane Gallery but not the large drawings of Selwyn Rodda, who he shared a large studio with.

Main room of Studio Brunswick with drawing by Selwyn Rodda

Tinning St Presents…, the one gallery on the walk had Nut Ice, an exhibition of  subtly suggestive digital print on silk by Clare Longley.

Studios in Pea Green Boat

Pea Green Boat has a lot of little spaces, divided with temporary partitions and curtains it looks like a refugee camp for artists. Especially when compared to the studio next door, the attractively designed 33 Tinning Street with the transparent corrugated dividing walls set with recycled glass doors.

One of the studios at 33 Tinning St

33 Tinning Street is the most recent of these studio spaces, it is only 10 months old and has the unusual combination of selling rugs, life drawing classes and studio space.   In the studio spaces, along with the visual artists, there is a fashion designer and a composer.

The most northerly creative hub in Brunswick, the cluster of galleries and studios at Tinning Street only happened after it was made into a cul-de-sac with the closer of the railway crossing.

Psychogeographical Walk: shoes and artists

A small group of determined psychogeographers set off heading south from the corner of Illan Lane and Tinning Street. We were examining the transition zone between Sydney Road and the Upfield railway line, exploring some of the streets that running parallel to the railway, before doubling back along Sydney Road for a drink at Edinburgh Castle.

We stopped at Tinning Street presents, the only art gallery that we actually visited on the walk. Michael Thomas’s photographs, Night Works looked as if they had come from Thomas’s nocturnal psychogeographical walks. The huge Duratran colour print photographs mounted in Tasmanian oak light boxes made the suburban look impressive.

Some of us were very familiar with the area but there are always something new to see when you feel like exploring. As well we had several fortuitous accidental encounters with local artists. The first was with Julian di Martino on his bicycle. I think Julian mentioned that he’d been to Soma Gallery, a shop front gallery on Sydney Road. Next we ran into Jon Beinart who was busy preparing to open a pop-surrealism gallery in Sparta Place, it is a great location for a gallery.

Then, and we had just been looking at Brunswick Kind on the Victoria St carpark wall when Trevor ‘Turbo’ Brown came along carrying two paintings. Turbo is a Latje Latje man from Mildura and the winner of the 2012 Victorian Deadly Art Award. He was hoping to raise some money by selling paintings on the street, a tough gig with colourful bold paintings. We gave him some money to pose for a couple of photos.

The larger painting is Turbo Brown Dingo Man, about his spirit animal. The smaller is about a story of hiding in the bush with his son to jump out and scare, “just to scare, not kill” Turbo explained, two white men who are running away.

The area that we were walking through is a place of shoe factories, new appartments, warehouses, art galleries and studios; this included the iconic Australian footwear of an Ugg Boot factory. The industrial machinery in the carport at the back was an interesting mystery until I noticed the shoe sizes and word “heel”.

Several shoe related warehouses and the Middle Eastern Bakery are still surviving. Other places aren’t doing so well.

Maybe the shoe businesses are the last hold-outs of Brunswick’s industrial past. There are new empty blocks and new buildings. The entrance of The Wilkinson shows the poetic spirit of real estate developers is at its best when singing the praise of one of their own.

We were an interesting mix of psychogeographers talking of such things as industrial graffiti, ghost-signs, graffiti, the surface archeology of architectural accretion in the urban environment. I am such a romantic that I have to take a photograph of love paste-ups.

I wanted to do something to celebrate my 1000th blog post, something that wouldn’t matter if there was three or twenty people and that would require almost no preparation, so a walk fitted that description perfectly. I had requested gifts, drinks and I was rewarded with both including the latest issue of the Clan McGillicuddy magazine Th’Noo, from New Zealand.

Space and Waves @ Tinning Street

Tinning Street presents Tateru, an exhibition of sculpture by Paul Gorman and Takahiko Sugawara.

Paul Gorman is exhibiting several photographs. Why is a sculptor exhibiting photographs? Although the photographs are not simply documentary images of Gorman’s sculpture, they do document ephemeral sculptural moments, moments of space and form. Ring of Confidence is a time-lapse photograph of the movement of light around a tree creating a sculptural form. This is why, in art-speak refers to contemporary sculpture as ‘spatial practice’ because it is art that uses three dimensional space.

Paul Gorman Home Built; Lego House (1,II, III)

Home Built; Lego House (1,II, III) are three simplified blocky familiar forms cast in bronze. It is Gorman’s sculptures of houses in his exhibition really hit me because I was thinking about the suburbs with all the neighbourhood events on the day I visited. (For more about that day read my post Neighbourhood.) Although Jason Waterhouse has covered similar territory with sculptures, Gorman brings his lyrical and critical thinking to the subject.

Takahiko Sugawara, Wave (detail)

The dozen sculptures of Takahiko Sugawara are post-minimalist, made up of small wooden pieces that brought together create complex rhythmic waves like a composition by Steve Reich. These are mostly wall works and a couple of small free standing block sculptures that take the post-minimalism back to a minimalist cube.

Apart from variations in size or shape Sugawara’s sculptures are of such an even quality that my attention was drawn to a large wall piece, Circles wondering why it didn’t work as well as the others. It’s flatter and the roughly circular pieces of pinewood are a less definite form. Putting these together lacked both the rhythm and the geometric complexity of Sugawara’s other sculptures.

Although both Gorman and Sugawara’s sculptures are very different they find a harmonious combination in this exhibition. Both Gorman and Sugawara are members of the committee of the Contemporary Sculptures Association.

Meditation on Songlines

“Songlines” is an installation by visual artist Kallie Turner and composer Joel Ritchie at Tinning Street Presents. It is both simple and elegant. In the middle of the gallery sits a very large cone of iron oxide red powder with a woven bag suspended above it.

It is like Anish Kapoor meets aboriginal culture; the title, “songlines” refers to the Australian aboriginal tradition of mapping routes in songs. Perhaps the powder is red ochre, an earth pigment that is widely used by Australian aborigines in a variety of traditional practices including painting and decoration.

The cone of red powder is well lite in the blacked out gallery, the shadows of the cone and bag are projected onto the gallery wall. The colour and texture of the powder stands out in sharp contrast to the darkness.

Ritchie’s powerful soundtrack of rolling deep brass lines and taping sticks makes this installation a total sensory experience; all that was lacking was a smell. The soundtrack also invited the visitors to stay longer and meditate on the cone of ochre.

Kallie Turner is a local artist; I’ve seen her work before in MoreArts 2011 (see my blog post) and, like this time, it was an impressive work.

Impressive but nothing really new for contemporary art and the documentation describing it as “a meditation on the process of renewal, transition, and illusion of life, along with a poem on the room sheet instead of the usual documentation for an exhibition is a little overblown and over directed. The artists need to be more confident that their work can communicate more than words and the mystical is often ineffable.