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May

Exhibition: ‘Andy Warhol: Polaroids / MATRIX 240′ at Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University of California

Categories: American, american photographers, black and white photography, colour photography, designer, documentary photography, exhibition, existence, gallery website, intimacy, light, memory, photographic series, photography, portrait, printmaking, psychological, reality, space and time
Tags: advertising, afterimage, andy warhol, Andy Warhol Billy Squier, Andy Warhol Daryl Lillie, andy warhol foundation, Andy Warhol Heather Watts, Andy Warhol Pia Zadora, Andy Warhol R.C. Gorman, Andy Warhol Tom Seaver, Andy Warhol's Exposures, Andy Warhol: Polaroids, Andy Warhol: Polaroids / MATRIX 240, arts, Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Billy Squier, branding, celebrity portraiture, Daryl Lillie, depiction of everyday people, Diane Von Furstenberg, flash photography, Heather Watts, high-fashion photography, interview, Jade Jagger, MATRIX 240, O.J. Simpson, Pacific Film Archive, paparazzi, photographic legacy, Pia Zadora, Polacolor 2, Polacolor ER, Polacolor Type 108, polaroid, Polaroid Big Shot camera, R.C. Gorman, Renaissance portraiture, silkscreen portraits, Studio 54, Tom Seaver, Unidentified girl (blue t-shirt with teddy bear), Unidentified woman (blond with bangs), University of California, university of california berkeley, Warhol’s Polaroids

Exhibition dates: 27th January – 20th May 2012

ONE PERSON has found one of the images below offensive; so just for them please note that his posting has a PENIS and A-RRRRRR-SE rating. For all others, enjoy another spectacular Andy posting!

Many thankx to BAM/PFA for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image (especially the two images directly below). View the complete The Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Program Vol. III as a pdf (3.7Mb pdf)

“I’ve never met a person I couldn’t call a beauty.”

.
Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol
Untitled
Pages 8 and 9 of The Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Program, Vol. III
of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Twenty-Year Report, 1987–2007

Andy Warhol
Untitled
Pages 38 and 39 of The Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Program, Vol. III
of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Twenty-Year Report, 1987–2007

“The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive presents Andy Warhol: Polaroids / MATRIX 240. The exhibition features a selection of Warhol’s Polaroid portraits drawn from an extraordinary gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts to the museum. From 1970 to 1987, Warhol, armed with his Polaroid Big Shot camera, captured a wide range of individuals – the royalty, rock stars, executives, artists, patrons of the arts, and athletes who epitomized seventies and eighties high society, but also as many unknown subjects. From January 27 through May 20, 2012, BAM/PFA will feature a group of approximately forty of these photographs, including portraits of Caroline, Princess of Monaco; Diane von Furstenberg; and O.J. Simpson.

Famous for his contributions to Pop Art, Warhol used photography as a central part of his art-making process. Before turning to fine art, Warhol worked in advertising and commercial art, experiences that informed his approach to portraiture. In 1962, he debuted his first silkscreen paintings of celebrities, serializing pictures he pulled from magazines and press photos. In addition to using found images, Warhol eventually incorporated his own photography into his practice. In 1969 he launched inter/View magazine, which featured his photos of celebrities. By the 1970s and 1980s, portrait commissions were a major source of his income, and many of his Polaroids would serve as the basis for these works.

While each of the images in Andy Warhol: Polaroids is unique, the consistency of composition, poses, and plain white backdrop equalizes the superstars and lesser-known subjects. To Warhol, they were all beautiful people. But even within this uniform staging, we see the artist finding numerous ways to create memorable, varied, and iconic compositions. Though these photos may be small in size, together the Warhol Polaroids provide a glimpse into the artistic process of one of the twentieth century’s most important artists.

From 1970 to 1987 Andy Warhol took scores of Polaroid and black-and-white photographs, the vast majority of which were never seen by the public. These images often served as the basis for his commissioned portraits, silk-screen paintings, drawings, and prints. In 2007, to commemorate its twentieth anniversary, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts launched the Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Program. Designed to give a broad public greater access to Warhol’s photographs, the program donated over 28,500 of Warhol’s original Polaroids and gelatin silver prints to more than 180 college and university museums and galleries across the country. Each institution received a curated selection of over one hundred Polaroids and fifty black-and-white prints.

The number of images he took at each session varied as greatly as the figures he photographed. Repetition, a recurring motif in Warhol’s paintings, plays both a conceptual and practical role in his photography. By making several Polaroids, he had more material from which to work. By shooting at length, more about the sitter was exposed. Seen all together, the Polaroids destabilize the iconic status that a Warhol image assumes when displayed singly. On its own, a Polaroid image is fully identified with the artwork that ultimately grew out of it; the face depicted becomes a kind of signifier for larger cultural concepts of beauty, power, and worth.

Text adapted from “Andy Warhol’s Photographic Legacy,” in The Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Program, Vol. III of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Twenty-Year Report, 1987–2007 (New York: The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc, 2007), 4-5.”

View the complete Vol. III as a pdf (3.7Mb pdf)

Text and press release from the BAM/PFA website

Andy Warhol
Billy Squier
1982
Polacolor 2
4-1/4 x 3-3/8 in.
Gift of the The Andy Warhol Center for the Visual Arts
© The Andy Warhol Center for the Visual Arts

Andy Warhol
Daryl Lillie
11/1978
Polacolor 2
4-14 x 3-3/8 in
© The Andy Warhol Center for the Visual Arts

Andy Warhol
Heather Watts
after June 1986
Polacolor ER
4-1/4 x 3-3/8 in.
© The Andy Warhol Center for the Visual Arts

“From 1970 to 1987 Andy Warhol took thousands of Polaroid pictures, the vast majority of which were never seen by the public. These images often served as the basis for his commissioned portraits, silkscreen paintings, drawings, and prints. Warhol captured a wide range of individuals with his Polaroid Big Shot camera. The royalty, rock stars, industrialists, artists, patrons of the arts, and athletes who epitomized 1970s and 1980s high society, as well as unknown sitters, are represented with a sense of dignity and verve. Warhol was interested in a new definition of ”Society” that emerged in this period. In the introduction to the 1979 publication Andy Warhol’s Exposures, the artist wrote:

“Now it doesn’t matter if you came over on the Mayflower, so long as you can get into Studio 54. Anyone rich, powerful, beautiful, or famous can get into Society. If you’re a few of those things you can really get to the top.”1

Warhol’s images not only documented, but participated in, the creation of this new social world, satisfying both the need of his subjects to be seen and the desire of the viewer to gain access to this milieu through the act of looking. Warhol worked in advertising and commercial art before turning to fine art, experiences that informed his approach to portraiture. In 1962, he debuted his first silk-screen paintings of celebrities, serializing pictures appropriated from magazines or press photos of the time. In addition to employing found images, Warhol eventually incorporated photography into his practice and, in 1969, started a magazine (originally called inter/VIEW) that often featured his own photographs of celebrities. By the 1970s and 1980s, portrait commissions became a main source of his income.

Warhol’s Polaroids are strikingly intimate, an effect achieved in part by his personal relationship with the sitters and in part by formal aspects of the images. The artist often provided a luncheon in advance of the photo session, establishing a bond with his subject and a tone for the shoot. In the resulting Polaroids, the sitter is in direct eye contact with Warhol and the camera. The strong sense of immediacy created by the sitter’s open gaze is enhanced by the tight compositions in which the subject, pressed up close to the picture plane, is isolated from any context. A feeling of vulnerability appears in some of the portraits (as suggested by the bared shoulders of Unidentified woman (blond with bangs), for example), indicating a willingness to be exposed as well as the seductive nature of the artist and the photo shoot itself. The closeness forged between photographer and sitter and captured by the camera offers an illusion of sharing these private moments and of entering into Warhol’s circle of beautiful people and their glamorous lives.

While each image is unique, the consistency of composition, poses, and plain white backdrop equalizes the celebrities and the unknown subjects of Warhol’s Polaroids. After all, to Warhol, they were all beautiful people. Polaroids of individuals who are not immediately recognizable pique our curiosity. Who is the enigmatic Frau Buch? Like many of Warhol’s subjects, she is photographed with a prop. The small dog that she hugs may not identify her, but it suggests a dimension of her personality. In other Polaroids, Warhol used props as identifying elements like the attributes in Renaissance portraiture – major-league baseball pitcher Tom Seaver is shown with his mitt and NFL legend O.J. Simpson clutches a football. The teddy bear in the arms of the subject of Unidentified girl (blue t-shirt with teddy bear) represents an aspect childhood that everyone can relate to, although the girl is actually a scion of the new high society: Jade, the daughter of Mick and Bianca Jagger.

Warhol’s Polaroids were designed to be source material for his canvases. He would direct the sitter in a series of poses, which gave the artist ample material from which to create the subsequent silkscreen portraits. Subjects such as fashion designer Diane Von Furstenberg and patron of the arts Daryl Lillie are photographed wearing thick white makeup, black eyeliner, and bright red lipstick that evoke the stage or a high-fashion photo shoot; however, the makeup also served to flatten the images for a smooth effect in the screen-print transfer. The Polaroid Big Shot’s strong flash overexposes many images and increases the contrast, an effect Warhol deployed in the subsequent silkscreens; the flash also seems to catch each sitter – celebrities and unknowns alike – in the sudden glare of a paparazzo’s camera.

Warhol’s Polaroids borrow from paparazzi and high-fashion photography and at the same time elevate an inexpensive, everyday medium to the realm of high art. Warhol embossed his name in capital letters in the lower right-hand border of most of the Polaroids, marking them as a painter would sign a canvas. For Warhol, coming from the world of advertising, this was also a kind of branding. He wrote of Jade Jagger: “She never calls me Andy always Andywarhol, as if it were one word – or a brand name, which I wish it were.”2 Warhol’s portraits confuse the boundaries of advertising and art, high and low, celebrity portraiture and the depiction of everyday people, and even photography and painting. His subjects are perpetually illuminated by the afterimage of a flashbulb, their faces immortalized by Warhol’s style”

Fabian Leyva-Barragan, Curatorial Intern
Stephanie Cannizzo, Assistant Curator

Andy Warhol
Pia Zadora
1983
Polacolor ER
4-1/4 x 3-3/8 in.
Gift of the The Andy Warhol Center for the Visual Arts
© The Andy Warhol Center for the Visual Arts

Andy Warhol
Tom Seaver
1977
Polacolor Type 108
4-14 x 3-3/8 in.
Gift of the The Andy Warhol Center for the Visual Arts
© The Andy Warhol Center for the Visual Arts

Andy Warhol
R.C. Gorman
1979
Polacolor Type 108
4-1/4 x 3-3/8 in.
© The Andy Warhol Center for the Visual Arts

1. Warhol, Andy and Colacello, Bob . Andy Warhol’s Exposures (New York: Andy Warhol Books / Grosset & Dunlop, Inc., 1979), p. 19.

2. Ibid., 28 – 29.

Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Woo Hon Fai Hall
2625 Durant Avenue #2250
Berkeley, CA 94720-2250
T: (510) 642-0808

Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive website

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May

Exhibition: ‘Warhol and Cars: American Icons’ at The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh

By Dr Marcus Bunyan 1 Comment

Categories: American, designer, drawing, exhibition, gallery website, painting, photographic series, photography, printmaking and works on paper
Tags: 1958 Cadillac Coupe DeVille, 1959 Plymouth Sport Fury Convertible, 1978 BMW 320i Art Car Maquette, America and cars, America and the automobile, American cars, American consumer society, American Icons, andy warhol, Andy Warhol 1958 Cadillac Coupe DeVille, Andy Warhol 1959 Plymouth Sport Fury Convertible, Andy Warhol 1978 BMW 320i Art Car Maquette, Andy Warhol 5 Deaths, Andy Warhol BMW M1 Art Race Car, Andy Warhol Car, Andy Warhol European License Plate, Andy Warhol Female Fashion Figure, andy warhol foundation, andy warhol museum, Andy Warhol Police Car, Andy Warhol Police Car (from the series Paintings for Children), Andy Warhol Seven Cadillacs, Andy Warhol Truck, arts, automotive vehicles, BMW Art Race Car Projects, BMW M-1 racing car, BMW M1 Art Race Car, cadillac coupe deville, cars, European License Plate, European License Plate 1976-1986, illustration, Montclair Art Museum, Pittsburgh, Seven Cadillacs, The Andy Warhol Museum, transportation, Warhol and Cars, Warhol and Cars: American Icons

Exhibition dates: 5th February – 13th May 2012

Many thankx to The Warhol Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs of the art in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

I think of myself as an American artist; I like it here. I think it’ s so great. I feel I represent the U.S. in my art but I’m not a social critic: I just paint those objects in my paintings because those are the things I know best… I’ve heard it said that my paintings are as much a part of the fashionable world as clothes and cars.

.
Andy Warhol, 1966

Andy Warhol (1928-87)
Car (1958 Cadillac Coupe DeVille)
ca. 1958
Ink and Dr. Martin’s Aniline dye on Strathmore paper
13 ¼ x 25 5/8 in. (33.7 x 65.1 cm.)
The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the VisualArts, Inc., 1998.1.1096
© 2010 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Andy Warhol (1928-87)
Female Fashion Figure (with 1959 Plymouth Sport Fury Convertible)
ca. 1959 Ink and Dr. Martin’s Aniline dye on Strathmore paper
20 1/8 x 24 7/8 in. (51.1 x 63.2 cm.)
The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol, Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. 1998.1.1194
© 2010 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Andy Warhol (1928-87)
5 Deaths
1963
Acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas
20 1/8 x 30 in. (51.1 x 76.2 cm.)
The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the VisualArts, Inc., 1998.1.19
© 2010 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Andy Warhol
BMW M1 Art Race Car
1979

Andy Warhol
BMW M1 Art Race Car (detail)
1979

“Warhol and Cars: American Icons is the first exhibition to examine Warhol’s enduring fascination with automotive vehicles as products of American consumer society. This exhibition features more than forty drawings, paintings, photographs, and related archival material spanning from 1946 to 1986. As one of the most iconic and influential artists of the 20th century, Andy Warhol has helped to define America. His signature images of such American products and celebrities as Campbell’s soup cans, Coca-Cola bottles, Marilyn Monroe, and Elizabeth Taylor have become instantly recognizable. The majority of the work in the exhibition is from The Andy Warhol Museum’s collection.

The exhibition, organized by the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey, traces the development of Warhol’s work with cars throughout his career. Warhol and Cars highlights include drawing created in the 1940s; works on paper of the 1950s, as well as paintings and prints from the 60s, 70s and 80s. The exhibition is organized chronologically and thematically, tracing the development of Warhol’s work with cars throughout his career. Exhibition highlights include a rare, spontaneous drawing of the 1940s featuring a produce truck operated by Warhol’s brother Paul; works on paper of the 1950s, dating from the era of Warhol’s commercial magazine illustration; and paintings and prints from his important and poignant Car Crash series.

A key work is Twelve Cadillacs, part of a group of nine Warhol car paintings published in the November 1962 issue of Harper’s Bazaar, which commissioned Warhol to make a visual commentary on the phenomenon of the iconic American motor car. The repetition and grid organization became a central feature of Warhol’s work. For the first time, Twelve Cadillacs will be juxtaposed with potential source images, as well as the related Seven Cadillacs and the hand-painted Lincoln Continental, both of which were also part of the Harper’s Bazaar commission. Also on view will be a related drawing and car model of Cadillacs from the Jean S. and Frederic A. Sharf Collection of American Automobile Art.

Warhol’s continued engagement with the theme of the automobile is seen in prints and paintings of the 1970s and 1980s based on Volkswagen advertisements, as well as in multiple photographs of European and American cars sewn together with thread into a format evocative of Warhol’s characteristic assembly-line aesthetic. An original BMW M-1 racing car that was hand-painted by Warhol will be on display in the entrance gallery. A film of Warhol painting a BMW in 1979 as part of the BMW Art Race Car Projects introduced by French race car driver Herve Poulin will be on view during the exhibition. The car is part of the BMW Museum’s collection in Munich and was last displayed in the United States at Grand Central Terminal in New York City in 2009.”

Press release from The Warhol Museum website

Andy Warhol (1928-87)
1978 BMW 320i Art Car Maquette
1978

Andy Warhol (1928-87)
Police Car (from the series Paintings for Children)
1983
Synthetic polymer and silkscreen inks on canvas
The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the VisualArts, Inc.,1998.1.23
© 2010 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Andy Warhol
European License Plate, 1976-1986
1986
© AWF

Andy Warhol
Truck
1985
© AWF

Andy Warhol (1928-87)
Seven Cadillacs
1962
Silkscreen ink on linen
56 x 19 in. (142.2 x 48.3 cm.)
The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the VisualArts, Inc.,1998.1.23
© 2010 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

The Andy Warhol Museum
117 Sandusky Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15212-5890
T: 412-237-8300

Opening hours:
Tues, Wed, Thurs, Sat and Sun 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Fri, 10 a.m. – 10 p.m.
Mon closed

W: www.warhol.org

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Apr

Exhibition: ‘Cy Twombly: Photographs 1951 – 2010′ at the Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels

By Dr Marcus Bunyan 1 Comment

Categories: American, beauty, colour photography, existence, gallery website, landscape, light, memory, painting, photographic series, photography, pictorialism, printmaking, psychological, reality, space, Tacita Dean, time and works on paper
Tags: arts, Bassano in Teverina, brussels, By the Ionian Sea sculpture, Centre for Fine Arts, Cy Twombly, Cy Twombly By the Ionian Sea, Cy Twombly Cabbages, Cy Twombly Cabbages Gaeta, Cy Twombly Foundry, Cy Twombly Foundry Rome, Cy Twombly Interior, Cy Twombly Interior Rome, Cy Twombly Painting detail of Roses Gaeta, Cy Twombly photographs, Cy Twombly Roses, Cy Twombly Roses Gaeta, Cy Twombly Sunset, Cy Twombly Sunset Gaeta, Cy Twombly The Artist's Shoes, Cy Twombly The Artist's Shoes Lexington, Cy Twombly Tulips, Cy Twombly Tulips Rome, Cy Twombly Untitled, Cy Twombly Untitled (Rome), Cy Twombly Untitled Lexington, Cy Twombly Yard Sale, Cy Twombly Yard Sale Lexington, Cy Twombly: Photographs 1951 - 2010, Dryprint on cardboard, Gaeta, grease crayon on canvas, Lexington, polaroid, Polaroid photographs, Rome, Tacita Dean

Exhibition dates: 1st February – 29th April 2012

“In a certain sense, Twombly operates like the pictorialists: his photographs look almost like paintings in which light is captured in brushstrokes.”

Text from the press release

Many thankx to the Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Cy Twombly
Foundry, Rome
2000
Dryprint on cardboard
43.1 x 27.9 cm
© Schirmer/Mosel Verlag – Nicola Del Roscio Foundation

Cy Twombly
Untitled (Rome)
1966
Oil, wall paint, grease crayon on canvas
190 x 200 cm
Sammlung Lambrecht-Schadeberg / Rubenspreisträger der Stadt Siegen im Museum für Gegenwartskunst

Cy Twombly
Yard Sale, Lexington
2008
Dryprint on cardboard
43.1 x 27.9 cm
© Schirmer/Mosel Verlag – Nicola Del Roscio Foundation

Cy Twombly
Untitled, Lexington
2008
Dryprint on cardboard
43.1 x 27.9 cm
© Schirmer/Mosel Verlag – Fondazione Nicola del Roscio

Cy Twombly
The Artist’s Shoes, Lexington
2005
Dryprint on cardboard
43.1 x 27.9 cm
© Schirmer/Mosel Verlag – Nicola Del Roscio

“As a tribute to the recently deceased artist, the Centre for Fine Arts is turning the spotlight on a less familiar aspect of his oeuvre. The exhibition includes more than 100 dryprint Polaroid photographs (selected by Twombly himself), along with a selection of other works by Twombly and a film portrait by Tacita Dean.

Cy Twombly (who was born in Lexington in 1928 and died in Rome in 2011) was one of the most important US artists of his generation. He made his name with large-scale abstract paintings whose free form and spontaneous dynamism recall calligraphy and graffiti. In his work Twombly often referred to the myths of Classical Greek and Roman Antiquity, to literature and to art history.

The exhibition focuses on a less familiar aspect of Twombly’s oeuvre: his photographic work. The photographs are an addition to the artist’s creative world and throw new light on it. At the request of the publishers Schirmer/Mosel, Twombly selected more than 100 never previously published Polaroid photographs for a catalogue that was published just before his death on 5 July 2011. This selection is the subject of a travelling exhibition that has already been seen in Germany at the Museum Brandhorst (in Munich) and the Museum für Gegenwartskunst (in Siegen). At the Centre for Fine Arts the exhibition is being expanded, in collaboration with Dr. Hubertus von Amelunxen, who wrote an essay for the Twombly catalogue and who has made a selection for BOZAR of drawings and paintings by Twombly that reveal in greater depth the interplay of lines and light in his work. In addition, the exhibition is complemented by the screening of Tacita Dean’s intimate film portrait “Edwin Parker” (which takes its name from Twombly’s official given names).

Twombly and photography

Twombly took up photography back in his student days in the 1950s and continued to take photographs throughout his career. It was only in the 1990s, however, that he went public with his photographic work in gallery exhibitions and publications.

All the photographs in the exhibition were taken with a Polaroid camera, enlarged, printed using a special kind of dryprint, and reproduced in limited editions. This procedure, developed by Twombly himself, gives the photographs a hazy glow and a coarse grain. Twombly further reinforced this impression of blurring by playing with light and shade, by overexposure and sophisticated colour saturation, and by employing extreme close-ups. The lack of definition gives his photographs a certain indefinable quality and a poetic dimension. Our attention is no longer drawn to the subject, but to the texture of the picture. In a certain sense, Twombly operates like the pictorialists: his photographs look almost like paintings in which light is captured in brushstrokes.

The subjects of his Polaroid photographs are extremely diverse. There are traditional still lifes with tulips, lemon leaves, and angel trumpets, alongside photographs of temples and atmospheric landscapes. Twombly surprises the viewer with intimate images of everyday objects such as his slippers, a detail from a painting, his brushes, a snapshot of his studio, etc.

The photographs are fascinating because they throw new light on Twombly’s creative spirit and visual language. These intangible, fragile images are permeated by the same themes that inspired the artist’s paintings, drawings, sculptures, and graphic art. The atmospheric colours and diffuse motifs of his photographs are an unexpected addition to his creative universe. Twombly’s oeuvre, moreover, is all about light – and is photography not the medium of light par excellence?

Tacita Dean

In the course of the exhibition circuit visitors can see an intimate film portrait of Twombly, Edwin Parker by the British artist Tacita Dean. The film takes its title from Twombly’s official given names (“Cy” is a traditional nickname in his family). The publicity-shy Twombly had become a mythical figure in the world of contemporary art. Dean’s film offers a rare insight into the artist’s life. The camera follows Twombly as he looks at his pictures in his studio, reads letters, looks through the louvres at the traffic in the city of his birth, or sits around a table with old friends and orders a meal. Tacita Dean is a British contemporary artist, known above all for her films. Her latest work to date is FILM, a 35 mm film continuously projected on a 13-metre-high monolith, which can be seen in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern until 11 March 2012.”

Press release from the Centre for Fine Arts website

Cy Twombly
Tulips, Rome
1985
Dryprint on cardboard
43.1 x 27.9 cm
© Schirmer/Mosel Verlag – Nicola Del Roscio Foundation

Cy Twombly
Cabbages, Gaeta
1998
Dryprint on cardboard
43.1 x 27.9 cm
© Schirmer/Mosel Verlag – Nicola Del Roscio Foundation

Cy Twombly
Painting detail of Roses, Gaeta
2009
Dryprint on cardboard
43.1 x 27.9 cm
© Schirmer/Mosel Verlag – Fondazione Nicola del Roscio

Cy Twombly
Sunset, Gaeta
2009
Dryprint on cardboard
43.1 x 27.9 cm
© Schirmer/Mosel Verlag – Nicola Del Roscio Foundation

Cy Twombly
Painting Detail and “By the Ionian Sea” Sculpture, Bassano in Teverina
1992
Dryprint on cardboard
43.1 x 27.9 cm
© Schirmer/Mosel Verlag – Nicola Del Roscio Foundation

Cy Twombly
Interior, Rome
1980
Dryprint on cardboard
43.1 x 27.9 cm
© Schirmer/Mosel Verlag – Fondazione Nicola del Roscio

Centre for Fine Arts
Rue Ravenstein 23
1000 Bruxelles
Info and Tickets 02 507 82 00

Opening hours:
Tuesday to Sunday, from 10.00 – 18.00, and until 21.00 on Thursdays

BOZAR website

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Mar

Notes from the lecture ‘Anti-Entropy: A natural History of the Studio’ by William Kentridge at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), Melbourne

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: designer, digital photography, drawing, exhibition, existence, film, gallery website, light, Melbourne, memory, painting, photography, portrait, printmaking, psychological, quotation, reality, sculpture, space, time, video and works on paper
Tags: A natural History of the Studio, A view of Philip James de Loutherbourg's Eidophusikon, ACMI, Anamorphic Mirror, animation, Anti-Entropy: A natural History of the Studio, appearances, architecture, Australian Centre for the Moving Image, carrousel, cinema, Claude Glass, Congealed time, disappearances, Edward Francis Burney, Edward Francis Burney A view of Philip James de Loutherbourg's Eidophusikon, Eidophusikon, elision of time, etching, First History of the Cinema, George Méliès The Living Playing Cards, Georges Méliès, history, illustration, Johannesburg, landscape with no edge, looking, memory, multimedia, Noh theatre, On Looking, On memory, On play, On self-doubt as an artist, opera, Pen and grey ink and grey wash, performance, performance art, Performances of Transformation, Philip James de Loutherbourg's Eidophusikon, play, Pre-cinematic devices, quick change artist, reconfigured seeing, repetition, reversal of time, Second History of the Cinema, self doubt, shadow dancing, Six different degrees of tension, South Africa, South African, South African artist, stage magician, stage sets, stereoscope, Stopping time, tearing of time, Technologies of Looking, the body and the construction of the image, The Etching Press, the process of seeing in the world, The space of the studio, the studio, Third History of Cinema, walking, walking around the studio, watercolour, William George Horner, William Kentridge, William Kentridge Drawing for the film Stereoscope, William Kentridge: Anti-Entropy, Zoetrope

Date: 8th March 2012

A munificence of Minor White and the revelation of the object through contemplation could be found in the lecture by William Kentridge. As an artist you must keep repeating and constructively playing and something else, some new idea, some new way of looking at the world may emerge. As a glimpse into the working methodology of one of the worlds great artists the lecture was fascinating stuff!

Images in this posting are used under fair use for commentary and illustration of the lecture notes. No copyright breach is intended. © All rights remain with the copyright holder. My additions to the text can be found in [ ] brackets.

On self-doubt as an artist
“At four in the morning there are no lack of branches for the crow of doubt to land upon.”

.
On Memory
“Memory – both memory and the forgetting of memory. For example, the building of monuments [monuments to the Holocaust, to wars] takes the responsibility of remembering away.”

.
On Play
“We absolutely want to make sense of the world in that way. That’s one of the principles of play – that however much you distort and break things apart, in the end we will try to reconstruct them in some way to make sense of the world. I think that every child does it. It’s fundamental.”
.
On Looking
“It’s the capacity for recognition that makes a difference between order and disorder in looking at visual images. And it’s the vocabulary of recognizable images that we have inside us, which is completely vital to what it is to see. I don’t really buy the idea that order and disorder are the same.”

.
William Kentridge

Edward Francis Burney
A view of Philip James de Loutherbourg’s Eidophusikon
c.1782
At left a man bowing to a woman, to right figures seated on a bench in the foreground, watching a scene titled ‘Satan Arraying his Troops on the Banks of a Fiery Lake, with the Raising of the Palace of Pandemonium’ during a performance of Milton’s “Paradise Lost” on a stage labelled EIDOPHUSIKON in a cartouche above
Pen and grey ink and grey wash, with watercolour
© The Trustees of the British Museum

First History of the Cinema

Performances of Transformation

Cinema
Shadow dancing
Eidophusikon (The Eidophusikon was a piece of art, no longer extant, created by 18th century English painter Philip James de Loutherbourg. It opened in Leicester Square in February 1781.Described by the media of his day as “Moving Pictures, representing Phenomena of Nature,” the Eidophusikon can be considered an early form of movie making. The effect was achieved by mirrors and pulleys.
Quick change artist
Stage magicians

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All work against the time of the audience e.g. the quick change artist may take 3 seconds, the sunset in a Georges Méliès film may take 2 minutes instead of 2 hours. The technology /scrims / screens happen at different speeds but the different times become one in the finished film. There is an elision of time: appearances / disappearances. Stopping time [changing a scene, changing clothing etc...], starting time again.

George Méliès starring in The Living Playing Cards (1904)

Second History of the Cinema

The sedimented gaze of the early camera. The slow chemicals meant that the object had to wait under the camera’s gaze for minutes. People were held in place by stiff neck braces to capture the trace of their likeness. Congealed time.

On the other hand, in cinema, a tear forward becomes a repair in reverse.

By rolling the film in reverse there is a REVERSAL of time, a REMAKING of the world – the power to be more than you are – by reversing to perfection. You throw a book or smash a plate: in reverse they become perfect again, a utopian world.

YOU MUST GIVE YOURSELF OVER TO PLAY!

Giving yourself over to what the medium suggests, you follow the metaphor back to the surface. Following the activity [of play] back to its root. Projecting forwards, projecting backwards. There is endless rehearsal, constant repetition, then discovering the nature of the final shot or drawing to be made. New ideas get thrown around: leaning into the experience, the experiment, the repetition, the rehearsal.

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Four elements

something to be seen
the utopian perfection: perfectibility
the grammar of learning that action
Greater ideas, further ideas and thoughts; potentiality and its LOSS
Further meanings arise

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How is this achieved?
Rehearsal, repetition

New thoughts will arise being led by the body in the studio NOT in the mind. Not conceptual but the feeling of the body walking in the studio.

The physical action as the starting point not the concept.

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Six different degrees of tension

Least tension in the body possible: slumped
Relaxed
Neutral
Purpose: an impulse to make things happen – desire
Insistence: listen to me, this is very important
Manic: Noh theatre with its rictus of the body

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What the body suggests is the construction of an image.

There are different degrees of tension in these performances. What do they suggest? This reverse osmosis from one state to another?

Third History of Cinema

Technologies of Looking

Pre-cinematic devices – a process of seeing in the world, of looking. Produces a reconfigured seeing, the invisible made [moving] visible.

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Stereoscope

3D world made into a 2D image put back into 3D by our brains. The nature of binocularity, of depth perception. We see an illusion of depth, a construction by the eyes. Our brain is a muscle combining the two images. Depth of Field (DOF): focusing at different distances, we are inside the field of the image. Peripheral vision is blanked off; we look through a magnifying glass. A machine for demonstrating seeing.

William Kentridge
Drawing for the film Stereoscope
1998 – 99
Charcoal, pastel, and colored pencil on paper
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
© 2008 William Kentridge

Zoetrope by William George Horner, 1834

Zoetrope

An illusion of movement not depth. Double revelation:

A/ the brain constructed illusion of movement
B/ Caught in time [as the action goes around and around] and wanting to get out of it!

THIS IS CRITICAL – THE ACTION OF REPETITION IS IMPORTANT!

In the reordering, in the crack, something else may emerge, some new idea may eventuate. The tearing of time.

[Marcus: the cleft in time]

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The Etching Press

There are erotics built into the language of the etching, but there is also a logic built into the machine used for etching. The Proof print, arriving at the first state. Going on the journey from artist as maker to artist as viewer through the mechanism of the etching press.

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Claude Glass

“A Claude glass (or black mirror) is a small mirror, slightly convex in shape, with its surface tinted a dark colour. Bound up like a pocket-book or in a carrying case, black mirrors were used by artists, travellers and connoisseurs of landscape and landscape painting. Black Mirrors have the effect of abstracting the subject reflected in it from its surroundings, reducing and simplifying the colour and tonal range of scenes and scenery to give them a painterly quality).” From Wikipedia.

“The Claude glass was standard equipment for Picturesque tourists, producing instant tonal images that supposedly resembled works by Claude. “The person using it ought always to turn his back to the object that he views,” Thomas West explained in his Guide to the Lakes. “It should be suspended by the upper part of the case… holding it a little to the right or the left (as the position of the parts to be viewed require) and the face screened from the sun.”" From the V & A website

Claude Glass, manufactured in England, 18th century. V & A.

Anamorphic Mirror

A counter intuitive way of drawing; turning 2D into 3D. The landscape has no edge, like a carrousel.

A LINK TO THE ENDLESS CIRCLING AND WALKING AROUND THE STUDIO!

Anamorphic drawing and cone shaped mirror

William Kentridge studio
Photo by John Hodgkiss
Art Tatler

The Studio

In the studio you gather the pieces together like a kind of Zoetrope. You may arrive at a new idea, a new starting point. Repetition, going around and around your head (at four in the morning!). There must be a truce between the artist as maker and the artist as viewer. As in earlier times, you walk the cloisters, you promenade.

You find the walk that is the prehistory of the drawing, that is the prehistory to the work.

A multiple, fragmented, layered performance of walking. You are trying to find the grammar of the studio – the necessary stupidity. Making a space for uncertainty. The conscious suppression of rationality. At some point, emerging, escpaping the Zoetrope, from the physical making, something will be revealed. The spaces open up by the stupidities. Something new emerges.

THIS IS THE SPACE OF THE STUDIO.

Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI)
Federation Square, Melbourne, Australia

William Kentridge: Five Themes

Thursday 8 March – Sunday 27 May 2012
Exhibition open daily 10am – 6pm

ACMI website

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Feb

Exhibition: ‘The Prints of Martin Lewis: From the Collection of Dr. Dorrance Kelly’ at the Bruce Museum, Greenwich, CT

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: American, Australian artist, drawing, exhibition, existence, gallery website, portrait, printmaking and works on paper
Tags: American city life, aquatint, Bruce Museum, Castlemaine, castlemaine victoria, city life, commercial illustration, Connecticut, dockworkers, Dr. Dorrance Kelly, dry point, Drypoint, Edward Hopper, engraving, etching, Fifth Ave Bridge, Glow of the City, Grandpa Takes a Walk, Greenwich CT, Julian Ashton, Late Traveler, Little Penthouse, Martin Lewis, Martin Lewis Bay Windows, Martin Lewis Chance Meeting, Martin Lewis Fifth Ave Bridge, Martin Lewis Glow of the City, Martin Lewis Grandpa Takes a Walk, Martin Lewis Late Traveler, Martin Lewis Little Penthouse, Martin Lewis Politics, Martin Lewis Quarter of Nine Saturday's Children, Martin Lewis Relics (Speakeasy Corner), Martin Lewis Shadow Dance, Martin Lewis Snow on the "El", Martin Lewis Windy Day, mezzotint, National Gallery of Australia, new south wales australia, pedestrians, printmaking, Quarter of Nine Saturday's Children, Relics (Speakeasy Corner), Shadow Dance, skyscrapers, The Prints of Martin Lewis, The Prints of Martin Lewis: From the Collection of Dr. Dorrance Kelly, tugboats, Victoria, William McKinley

Exhibition dates: 2nd October 2011 - 26th February 2012

One of the great pleasures of presenting this blog is introducing myself and my readers to forgotten artists. Here we have a dazzling Australian artist who died largely forgotten, especially, it seems, in his native country. He does not deserve this fate!

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How many works does the National Gallery of Australia hold in its collection?

6

Count them … 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

(and none displayed online)

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AGNSW 5, NGV 0

(and none displayed online)

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Tell me, is there something wrong with this picture?

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Many thankx to the Bruce Museum for allowing me to publish the images in the posting. Please click on the images for a larger version.

“Martin Lewis (1881-1962) was born in Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia on June 7, 1881. He was the second of eight children and had a passion for drawing. At the age of 15, he left home and traveled in New South Wales, Australia, and in New Zealand, working as a pothole digger and a merchant seaman. He returned to Sydney and settled into a Bohemian community outside Sydney. Two of his drawings were published in the radical Sydney newspaper, The Bulletin. He studied with Julian Ashton at the Art Society’s School in Sydney. Ashton, a famous painter, was also one of the first Australian artists to take up printmaking.

In 1900, Lewis left Australia for the United States. His first job was in San Francisco, painting stage decorations for William McKinley’s presidential campaign of 1900. By 1909, Lewis was living in New York, where he found work in commercial illustration. His earliest known etching is dated 1915. However, the level of skill in this piece suggests he had been working in the medium for some time previously. It was during this period that he helped Edward Hopper learn the basics of etching. In 1920, after the break up of a romance, Lewis traveled to Japan, where for two years he drew and painted and studied Japanese art. The influence of Japanese prints is very evident in Lewis’s prints after that period. In 1925, he returned to etching and produced most of his well-known works between 1925 and 1935 Lewis’s first solo exhibition in 1929 was successful enough for him to give up commercial work and concentrate entirely on printmaking. Lewis is most famous for his black and white prints, mostly of night scenes of non tourist, real life street scenes of New York City. During the Depression, however, he was forced to leave the city for four years between 1932 and 1936 and move to Connecticut. When Lewis was able to return to the New York City in 1936, there was no longer a market interested in his work. He died largely forgotten.”

Wikipedia entry for the artist

Martin Lewis (Australian, 1881-1962)
Glow of the City
1929
Drypoint, 11 ¼ x 14 ¼ in.
Collection of Dr. Dorrance T. Kelly
© Estate of Martin Lewis

Martin Lewis (Australian, 1881-1962)
Late Traveler
1949
Drypoint, 9 7/8 x 11 7/8 in.
Collection of Dr. Dorrance T. Kelly
© Estate of Martin Lewis

Martin Lewis (Australian, 1881-1962)
Fifth Ave Bridge
1928
Drypoint , 9 7/8 x 12 in.
Collection of Dr. Dorrance T. Kelly
© Estate of Martin Lewis

Martin Lewis (Australian, 1881-1962)
Grandpa Takes a Walk
1935
Drypoint and sand ground, 8 7/8 x 11 ¾ in.
Collection of Dr. Dorrance T. Kelly
© Estate of Martin Lewis

Martin Lewis (Australian, 1881-1962)
Quarter of Nine, Saturday’s Children
1929
Drypoint, 9 7/8 x 12 7/8 in.
Collection of Dr. Dorrance T. Kelly
© Estate of Martin Lewis

Martin Lewis (Australian, 1881-1962)
Shadow Dance
1930
Drypoint and sandpaper ground, 9 ½ x 10 7/8 in.
Collection of Dr. Dorrance T. Kelly
© Estate of Martin Lewis

“The Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut, presents the new exhibition The Prints of Martin Lewis: From the Collection of Dr. Dorrance Kelly from October 2, 2011, through February 19, 2012. Recognized as one of the premier American printmakers of the first half of the 20th-century, Martin Lewis (1881-1962) left an indelible mark on the landscape of the art world. Although not as publicly well known as some of his contemporaries such as Edward Hopper, Lewis was a highly skilled printer who was greatly involved in the artistic scene of New York City during the 1920s and ’30s. This exhibition features more than thirty etchings and several canceled plates by the artist from the private collection of Dr. Dorrance Kelly of West Redding, Connecticut.

The exhibition The Prints of Martin Lewis: From the Collection of Dr. Dorrance Kelly provides a brief biographical account of Lewis and showcases some of the artist’s best technical prints. Lewis was an acknowledged master of the intaglio techniques of printmaking, experimenting with multiple processes including etching, aquatint, engraving, mezzotint, and dry point.

In 1915 he produced his first documented etching, Smoke Pillar, Weehawken. Images like this one documented the scenes of everyday life as they played out in the thriving metropolis around New York City. Lewis portrayed all aspects of city life including dockworkers, skyscrapers, tugboats, and pedestrians – mostly the ladies. He produced magnificent prints that captured the energy, bustle, and occasional solitude of New York. With his move to Connecticut in 1932, Lewis investigated another topic through his printmaking: country life. This firmly entrenched Lewis as a prominent American scene artist, as his prints captured the intersection between the urban and rural environments and shed light on the slowly emerging suburban culture.”

Press release from the Bruce Museum website

Martin Lewis (Australian, 1881-1962)
Windy Day
1932
Drypoint, 9 7/8 x 12 in.
Collection of Dr. Dorrance T. Kelly
© Estate of Martin Lewis

Martin Lewis (Australian, 1881-1962)
Politics
1936
Drypoint and sand ground, 9 ¾ x 10 5/8 in.
Collection of Dr. Dorrance T. Kelly
© Estate of Martin Lewis

Martin Lewis (Australian, 1881-1962)
Little Penthouse
1931
Drypoint, 9 7/8 x 6 ¾ in.
Collection of Dr. Dorrance T. Kelly
© Estate of Martin Lewis

Martin Lewis (Australian, 1881-1962)
Bay Windows
1929
Drypoint and sandpaper ground, 11 ¾ x 7 7/8 in.
Collection of Dr. Dorrance T. Kelly
© Estate of Martin Lewis

Martin Lewis (Australian, 1881-1962)
Chance Meeting
1940-41
Drypoint, 10 ½ x 7 ½ in.
Collection of Dr. Dorrance T. Kelly
© Estate of Martin Lewis

Martin Lewis (Australian, 1881-1962)
Relics (Speakeasy Corner)
1928
Drypoint, 11 7/8 x 9 7/8 in.
Collection of Dr. Dorrance T. Kelly
© Estate of Martin Lewis

Martin Lewis (Australian, 1881-1962)
Snow on the “El”
1931
Drypoint and sand ground, 14 x 9 in.
Collection of Dr. Dorrance T. Kelly
© Estate of Martin Lewis

Bruce Museum
1 Museum Drive
Greenwich, CT
T: 203.869.0376

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Saturday 10 am – 5 pm
Sunday 1 pm – 5 pm
Closed Mondays

Bruce Museum website

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Oct

Exhibition: ‘A Turbulent Lens: The Photographic Art of Virna Haffer’ at Tacoma Art Museum

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Exhibition dates: 2nd July – 16th October 2011

It is such a joy constructing this blog. I get to educate myself on these wonderful, half-forgotten photographers and then bring their photographs to you. What a life Haffer must have had: she found success as a photographer, printmaker, painter, musician, sculptor, and published writer. Independent-minded and self-sufficient, as most artists are, this is an artist I would have liked to have met!

Many thankx to the Tacoma Art Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Virna Haffer
Eleventh Street Bridge
circa 1930s
Woodblock print
Tacoma Art Museum, Gift of Carolyn Schneider

Virna Haffer
Abstract #2
circa 1960s
Photogram
Collection of the Washington State Historical Society, gift of the estate of Virna Haffer

Virna Haffer
Aftermath
circa 1962
Photogram
Collection of the Washington State Historical Society, gift of the estate of Virna Haffer

“One of the most inventive Northwest artists of her time, Virna Haffer was an internationally recognized and respected Tacoma photographer who has slipped from both regional and national art history books. This summer, Tacoma Art Museum uncovers her innovative artwork.

In a career spanning more than six decades, Haffer found success as a photographer, printmaker, painter, musician, sculptor, and published writer, though she is known first and foremost as a photographer. Self-taught, she began her ambitious career in the early 1920s, both running a successful portrait studio (where she photographed the likes of the Weyerhaeuser and Chihuly families) and also exhibiting her unique artistic images around the world.

The curatorial team of Margaret Bullock, Christina Henderson, and David Martin searched through more than 30,000 of Virna Haffer’s photographic negatives, prints, and woodblocks at the Washington State Historical Society and Tacoma Public Library’s Special Collections to create this exhibition and its accompanying catalogue.

“It is an amazing opportunity to be able to bring the life and work of Virna Haffer to light once again,” said Margaret Bullock, Tacoma Art Museum’s Curator of Collections and Special Exhibitions, and a co-curator of the Haffer exhibition. “Her artistic curiosity is palpable in her work, which in itself is staggering in its volume, diversity, and range. Her role in and impact on the Northwest photographic community is just beginning to be uncovered and understood as we explore her unrivaled photographic legacy.”

Raised in the utopian community of Home Colony in South Puget Sound in the early 1900s, Haffer’s love of photography was sparked when she was just ten years old. Raised to be independent-minded and self-sufficient, she left school at the age of 15 to become a professional photographer. In 1914 she apprenticed herself to Tacoma photographer Harriette H. Ihrig where she absorbed the necessary technical skills along with the business know-how to run a commercial studio. She started exhibiting her fine art photographs in 1924.

Haffer tirelessly experimented with techniques and evolved her own rules, pushing beyond the boundaries of her medium to methodically master a variety of photographic styles and techniques. Her body of work includes images that can be classified as pictoralist, surrealist, documentary, and modernist. She experimented with a wide range of imagery, such as multiple overlapping exposures, eccentric viewpoints, composite images, and a non-mechanical photographic process called the photogram.

“Virna Haffer has been an all too well kept Tacoma secret,” said Stephanie A. Stebich, Director of Tacoma Art Museum. “Her work has been quietly appreciated for decades awaiting reconsideration. Given her Tacoma roots, pivotal role in Tacoma’s art community throughout her career, and diverse and stunning body of work, Virna Haffer is a perfect subject for the museum’s Northwest Perspective Series, which celebrates the work of regional artists.”

Haffer’s passion for photography not only brought her success in business with her own portrait photography studio, but also international recognition. Her commercial portrait work can be found in homes all over Tacoma, while her fine art photographs can be found in the permanent collections of institutions as prestigious as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.”

Text from the Tacoma Museum of Art website

Virna Haffer
Mina Quevli
circa 1930
Gelatin silver print
Collection of the Washington State Historical Society, gift of the estate of Virna Haffer

Virna Haffer
Franz Brasz, The Artist
circa 1937
Gelatin silver print
Collection of the Washington State Historical Society, gift of the estate of Virna Haffer

Virna Haffer
Old Tacoma Hotel Fire
circa 1935
Gelatin silver print
Collection of the Washington State Historical Society, gift of the estate of Virna Haffer

Virna Haffer
Self Portrait
1929
Gelatin silver print with added pigmentation
Private collection

Tacoma Art Museum
1701 Pacific Avenue
Tacoma, WA 98402

Opening hours:
Wednesday – Sunday 10 am – 5 pm

Tacoma Art Museum website

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Aug

The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), Hobart

By Dr Marcus Bunyan 1 Comment

Categories: architecture, Australian artist, Australian writing, beauty, black and white photography, colour photography, digital photography, documentary photography, drawing, existence, Fredrick White, gallery website, landscape, light, memory, painting, photography, portrait, printmaking, psychological, sculpture, space, time, video and works on paper
Tags: Babylonia, Callum Morton, Callum Morton Babylonia, Conrad Shawcross, Conrad Shawcross Loop System Quintet, Erwin Wurm, Erwin Wurm Fat Car, Fat Car, Hobart, Jannis Kounellis, Jannis Kounellis Untitled, Jean-François Lyotard, Loop System Quintet, MONA, MONA Corten Stairwell, MONA Portrait gallery, MONA The Void, Sidney Nolan, Sidney Nolan Snake, Taiyo Kimura, Taiyo Kimura Untitled (stool for guard), tasmania, The Museum of Old and New Art, The O, Victor Burgin, Victor Burgin In/Different Spaces

“Lyotard writes,”We must not begin with transgression, we must immediately go to the very end of cruelty, construct the anatomy of polymorphous perversion, unfold the immense membrane of the libidinal ‘body,’ which is quite the inverse of a system of parts.” Lyotard sees this “membrane” as composed of the most heterogeneous items: human bone and writing paper, steel and glass, syntax and the skin on the inside of the thigh. In the libidinal economy, writes Lyotard: “All of these zones are butted end to end … on a Moebius strip … a moebian skin [an] interminable band of variable geometry (a concavity is necessarily a convexity at the next turn) [with but] a single face, and therefore neither exterior nor interior.”

Jean-François Lyotard quoted in Victor Burgin. In/Different Spaces 1

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“Taking a walk is also an extremely immediate form of experience. Serge Daney describes the act of perception while taking a walk: ‘Because I am not particularly fond of bravura pieces, I always need a transition from one thing to the next. And I am glad that I can find it through by body and experience of walking…”
The visual memory of the walker/viewer determines the sequence of the pictures. Since the 1960s Marcel Broodthaers has defined the exhibition as a cinematic sequence of pictures and objects, thereby subverting the fixity of the single object through recontextualisation.”

Serge Daney quoted in Hans Obrist. “In the Midst of Things, At the Centre of Nothing.” 2

Libidinal, Moebic MONA

My analogy: you are standing in the half-dark, your chest open, squeezing the beating heart with blood coursing between your fingers while the other hand is up your backside playing with your prostrate gland. I think ringmeister David Walsh would approve.

My best friends analogy: a cross between a car park, night club, sex sauna and art gallery.

Weeks later I am still thinking about the wonderful immersive, sensory experience that is MONA. Peter Timms in an insightful article in Meanjin calls it a post-Google Wunderkammer, or wonder chest.3 It can be seen as a mirabilia – a non-historic installation designed primarily to delight, surprise and in this case shock. The body, sex, death and mortality are hot topics in the cultural arena4 and Walsh’s collection covers all bases. The collection and its display are variously hedonistic, voyeuristic, narcissistic, fetishistic pieces of theatre subsumed within the body of the spectacular museum architecture.

The experience starts with the ferry ride from the wharf in Hobart to the museum – the only way to arrive. During the 20 minutes of the journey mental baggage seems to drop away as you look over the water to the industrial zinc works, pass under bridges and then the museum comes into view. Perched on a promontory of land the museum rises like a rusted ancient temple. After disembarking you climb a colossal staircase to the entrance of the museum, all angles and mirrored surfaces. You enter one of two Roy Grounds listed modernist buildings built in the 1950s – beautiful, crisp white spaces that house the shop and a cafe, cloakroom and inquiry desk where you collect your ‘O’, an iPhone-like device that tracks all the artworks that you look at. The are no didactic text panels in the museum freeing the viewer to just experience, all data such as artists names and educational information and the tit-bit Gonzo text being accessed through the ‘O’. Into the large enclosed forecourt space a spiral staircase with a circular lift in the centre descends into the abyss (an inspired piece of design) and your journey proper has begun. Three levels deep into the ground you travel, the space carved out of solid rock. Impressive.

The museum is the body and the artworks are the organs, fragments of the whole exhibition (that of the actual museum). The experience is very kinaesthetic as the body gets lost within the space of the gallery. We wandered like flaneurs among the darkened, cinema-like spaces, almost floating from one area to the next, discovering, feeling disorientated, following underground passages, tunnels and stairs, emerging into light and then descending into the abyss again. Hours passed. Like a Moebius strip there seemed to be no interior/exterior to the body. As Lyotard notes the membrane of the libidinal ‘body’ is composed of the most heterogeneous items: here was rock, steel, shit, bestiality, intestines, brain, touch, burial etc… the curating of the collection within the space “creating a safe space for the appreciation and consideration of seemingly extreme and subversive practices.”5

Into this space of controlled transgression, the carnivalesque mise-en-scène allow the artists to delve into the deeper and darker areas of the human condition: “as Anthony Everitt once said of Damien Hirst [to] ‘open up paths for the viewer into areas of experience which are not anti-moral or amoral but extra-moral… a world where bad taste is driven to the point of elegance and disgust is filtered into delight’.”6

While some of the works were spotlit in the darkened galleries, “this dramatic lighting working to decontextualize the art objects, evoking a crepuscular and “timeless” sense of space, out of which the individual pieces emerged,”7 there also seemed to be an affinity between the building itself and the artworks (relating to the concept of affinity in museum curation). The diversity of installation techniques made an acknowledgement of the institutionalizing processes part of the viewer’s experience of the show, disrupting a unified, totalizing presentation of these objects and their cultures as “exhibition.”8 The intertextual tableaux mixed a Damien Hirst spin painting with Egyptian sculpture, ancient artefacts with Fat Cars. The context of the objects and their relationship to each other and the architecture is how the works are “framed.” This device emphasises the aesthetic rather than information and encourages the viewer to think about the relationship between the artefacts, objects and contemporary works. These inventive arrangements create a meta-narrative that offers the possibility of multiple interpretations to the viewer, multiple truths. All of this undertaken as the body moves through the spaces of the gallery and gets “lost”. As Norman Bryson has observed, “Architecture is sensed primarily through the eye and through bodily movement, and these sensations also play a key role in the way in which the contents of museums make their impact.”9

While the items are not explicitly related in terms of subject, medium or style through unexpected confrontation the works spring to dissonant life. Most of the time. When this process doesn’t work the viewer is left a little flat feeling, and…. so? wandering from piece to piece becoming slightly disenchanted. Little of the work at MONA took me to new spaces; in fact some of it was pretty mediocre, including the very dated Sir Sidney Nolan Snake (1970 to 1972, see below) that is permanent ‘wallpaper’ and takes up a whole, beautiful gallery wall. The tri-screen video by Russian collective AES+F, the works by Anselm Kiefer and the ancient artefacts (most of all) were notable exceptions. The museum is not a place for prolonged concentration and contemplation. This is not really the point of the place. The whole museum is a sensory, immersive surprising experience that cannot be broken down to its parts. David Walsh’s collection does tick all the fashionable boxes: here a Juan Davila, there a Del Kathyrn Barton, now a Howard Arkeley as though his buyers have advised him on just what to buy, but it is his personal vision, his collection. You can’t argue with that.

On of the problems of lumping all of these works together is obvious: “Ancient objects whose meaning is lost to us, medieval utensils, Christian religious images, and art objects made by modern masters were reduced to one meaning – stylistic resemblances providing evidence of the essential nature of humanity.”10 In other words a return to the globalizing view of humanity evidenced by Edward Steichen’s MOMA world touring photographic exhibition of the 1950s ‘The Family of Man’. Conversely, when this strategy works well it promotes for the viewer different modes and levels of ‘interpretation’ through subtle juxtaposition of ‘experience’. As Emma Barker has observed, “we still need a curator to stimulate readings of the collection and to establish those ‘climatic zones’ which can enrich our appreciation and understanding of art… Our aim must be to generate a condition in which visitors can experience a sense of discovery in looking at particular paintings, sculptures or installations in a particular room at a particular moment, rather than find themselves standing on the conveyer belt of history.”11 Within this plastic space experience is paramount, allowing the viewer to develop their own reading without relying on the curatorial interpretation of history, setting new parameters for the relationship between viewer and object. As Barker notes such juxtapositions are a more natural strategy for a private collector than for a museum curator, with exhibitions and displays according to this dialectical principle happening with more frequency.12 The museum looses its fundamental didactic, educational purpose.

Other problems may also become evident. In a museum whose spectacular architecture was specifically designed for David Walsh’s collection it will be interesting to see how outside, touring exhibitions (such as the recently installed Experimenta Utopia Now exhibition) display in the space, especially given the psychosexual nature of his collection and its relationship to the building. If the quality of the temporary exhibitions is overwhelmed by the architecture, if the labyrinthine, enigmatic and layered nature of the space (all those floating bridges and the huge Void that can be seen in the photographs below) engulfs lesser works then it may well fall very flat.

At the end of the day we emerged into the afternoon light, expelled from the museum in a tidal wave of humanity, exhausted, satiated. Where else in Australia could you spend all day at a museum and not have seen enough? On flying home you can log into the MONA website to retrieve your ‘O’ tour, to see what art you liked and what you didn’t; what pieces you saw and all those that somehow you missed! The physical and its remembrance transported into the virtual.

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Since Laura Mulvey’s essay of 1974 “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” we have been aware of the voyeuristic and fetishistic character of our psychosexual relation to cinema. Engulfed in the dark cube, that psychosexual panorama, the cinematic labyrinth that is MONA has the viewer absenting themselves in front of the art in favour of the Eye and the Spectator.13 Spectatorship and their attendant erotics has MONA as a form of fetishistic cinema. It is as if what Barthes calls “the eroticism of place” were a modern equivalent of the eighteenth century genius loci, the “genius of the place.”
The place is spectacular, the private collection writ large as public institution, the symbolic power of the institution masked through its edifice. The art become autonomous, cut free from its cultural associations, transnational, globalised, experienced through kinaesthetic means; the viewer meandering through the galleries, the anti-museum, as an international flaneur. Go. Experience!

Dr Marcus Bunyan for the Art Blart blog

Many thankx to Delia Nicholls for all her help and to MONA for allowing me to publish most of the photographs in the posting (all except the top two and the one of us inside Babylonia that were taken by Fredrick White). Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Zinc works from the ferry on the way to MONA

MONA exterior, Hobart

3d schematic from the O, showing the levels and nodes indicating art works visited, MONA

The Void
February 2011
Museum of Old and New Art – interior
Photo credit: MONA/Leigh Carmichael
Image Courtesy of MONA Museum of Old and New Art

B1 walkway overlooking The Void
February 2011
Museum of Old and New Art – interior
Photo credit: MONA/Leigh Carmichael
Image Courtesy of MONA Museum of Old and New Art

Loop System Quintet/Untitled (stool for guard)

Left:
Taiyo Kimura (Kamakura, Japan, 1970)
Untitled (stool for guard)
2007
Mixed media, clothes, cd player, speaker

Right:
Conrad Shawcross (London, England, 1977)
Loop System Quintet 
2005
Waxed machined oak, five light bulbs, electric motor and gearbox, drive shafts, cogs, universal joints, flange units, screws, bolts, nuts, washers

Photo credit: MONA/Leigh Carmichael
Image Courtesy of MONA Museum of Old and New Art

Callum Morton (Montreal, Canada, 1965)
Babylonia
2005
Wood, polystyrene, epoxy resin, acrylic paint, light, carpet, mirror and sound
Photo credit: MONA/Leigh Carmichael  Image Courtesy of MONA Museum of Old and New Art

Sculptor Fredrick White and myself inside Callum Morton’s Babylonia wearing the ‘O’

Portrait gallery
Various artworks by various artists
Museum of Old and New Art – interior
Photo credit: MONA/Leigh Carmichael
Image Courtesy of MONA Museum of Old and New Art

Masturbation. It is a source of endless irony to me that when I was young, and desperately in need of endless fucking, no one was interested in helping me out, whereas now, older and slower, I could fill even my desired adolescent quota. What saved me then was my right hand, even though I call myself left-handed. Surely the hand that you wank with (I guess John Holmes was ambidextrous) defines you just as much as the hand you write with? Anyway, who writes anymore? It’s so much easier to type. Mental masturbation allows me to pretend I’m a mental John Holmes, takes both hands. But no brains.

Art. I’m not at all sure that conceptual art and traditional art are the same thing. One can come from muscle memory, from pragma; at its best it’s not at all conscious. The former, though, is so self-aware it’s often targeting its own self-awareness. Check out the Hirst and the Pylypchuk at the other end of the gallery.

David Walsh 2011

Corten Stairwell
February 2011
Museum of Old and New Art – interior
Photo credit: MONA/Leigh Carmichael
Image Courtesy of MONA Museum of Old and New Art

Corten Stairwell & Surrounding Artworks
February 2011
Museum of Old and New Art – interior
Photo credit: MONA/Leigh Carmichael
Image Courtesy of MONA Museum of Old and New Art

The Nolan Gallery

Sir Sidney Nolan (Carlton, Victoria, Australia, 1917-1992)
Snake
1970 to 1972
Mixed media on paper, 1620 sheets

Jannis Kounellis (Piraeus, Greece, 1936)
Untitled 
2002
Jute coffee bags, coal; three parts

Photo credit: MONA/Leigh Carmichael
Image Courtesy of MONA Museum of Old and New Art

Erwin Wurm (Bruck an der Mur, Austria, 1954)
Fat Car
2006
Steel chassis and body; leather interior, with polystyrene and fibreglass
Photo credit: MONA/Leigh Carmichael
Image Courtesy of MONA Museum of Old and New Art

1. Lyotard, Jean-François. Économie Libidinale. Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1974, pp.10-11 quoted in Burgin, Victor. In/Different Spaces: Place and Memory in Visual Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995, p.150.

2. Obrist, Hans Ulrich. “In the Midst of Things at the Center of Nothing,” in Harding, Anna (ed.,). Curating: The Contemporary Museum and Beyond, (Art & Design Magazine Profile No. 52), London: A.D., 1997, p.88.

3. Timms, Peter. “A Post-google Wunderkammer: Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art Redefines the Genre,” in Meanjin, Vol. 70, No. 2, Winter 2011. pp.31-39.

4. Keidan, Lois. “Showtime: Curating Live Art in the 90s,” in Harding, Anna (ed.,). Curating: The Contemporary Museum and Beyond, (Art & Design Magazine Profile No. 52), London: A.D., 1997, p.41.

5. Ibid., p.41.

6. Ibid., p.41.

7. Staniszewski, Mary Anne. The power of display: a history of exhibition installations at the Museum of Modern Art. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998, p.84.

8. Ibid., p.97.

9. Bryson, Norman. “A Walk for a Walk’s Sake,” in De Zegher, Catherine (ed.,). The Stage of Drawing: Gesture and Act. London: Tate, 2003, pp.149-58.

10. Staniszewski, op. cit. p.129.

11. Barker, Emma. “Exhibiting the Canon: The Blockbuster Show,” in Barker, Emma (ed.,). Contemporary Cultures of Display. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999, p.55.

12. Ibid., p.45.

13. O’Neill, Paul. “The Curatorial Turn: From Practice to Discourse,” in Rugg, Judith and Sedgwick, Michèle (eds.,). Issues in Curating Contemporary Art and Performance. Bristol: Intellect, 2007, pp.13-28.

Museum of Old and New Art
655 Main Road Berriedale
Hobart Tasmania 7011, Australia

Opening hours:
Daily 10am – 6pm

MONA website

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May

Exhibition: ‘Kurt Kranz: Programming of Beauty’ at the Bauhaus Dessau, Berlin

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: beauty, Berlin, black and white photography, designer, documentary photography, drawing, exhibition, existence, film, gallery website, illustration, painting, photographic series, photography, portrait, printmaking and works on paper
Tags: beauty, photographer, collage, Bauhaus, advertising, German artist, Kurt Kranz, Kurt Kranz Vereinsamung, Dessau, Bauhaus Dessau, Kurt Kranz: Programming of Beauty, Programming of Beauty, Kurt Kranz Perspective, perspective, Kurt Kranz Versinkende, Kurt Kranz Sinking One, Kurt Kranz Persischer Garten, Kurt Kranz Persian garden, Kurt Kranz Selbstporträt en face (objektives Foto), Selbstporträt en face (objektives Foto), Kurt Kranz Self-portrait with face (objective photo), Self-portrait with face (objective photo), Kurt Kranz Rasterfoto, Kurt Kranz Raster photograph, Raster photograph, Kurt Kranz Schwarz : Weiß, Kurt Kranz Black: White, Kurt Kranz Schrift Entwurf aus Satzmaterial, Kurt Kranz Seven steps to the symmetrical Oval, Kurt Kranz Sieben Schritte zum symmetrischen Oval, Kurt Kranz Augenreihe, Kurt Kranz Mund-Reihen, Mouth rows, Kurt Kranz Mouth rows, Kurt Kranz Eye rows, Eye rows, graphic designer, Matrix-und Schiebebilder

Exhibition marking the 100th birthday of Kurt Kranz
19th November 2010 – 29th May 2011

One of the great pleasures of publishing this blog is that I get to research the life of an artist whose work I never knew before. Kurt Kranz is one such artist.

Many thankx to the the Bauhaus Dessau for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photograph for a larger version of the image.

Kurt Kranz
Perspective
1931
Ingrid Kranz / Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau
Foto: Lars Lohrisch / Abdruck mit Genehmigung der Kunsthalle

Kurt Kranz
Vereinsamung
Dessau
1930
Ingrid Kranz / Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau
Leihgeber: Kunsthalle Bremen

Installation photograph of ‘Programming of Beauty’ by Kurt Kranz at the Bauhaus Dessau

Kurt Kranz
Versinkende (Sinking one)
1931
Ingrid Kranz / Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau

Kurt Kranz
Persischer Garten (Persian garden)
1970
Ingrid Kranz / Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau
Foto: Uwe Jacobshagen

“The Bauhaus Dessau dedicates a comprehensive exhibition to the painter, graphic designer and photographer Kurt Kranz to mark his 100th birthday. In 1930, the then twenty-year-old lithographer came from Bielefeld to study at the Bauhaus Dessau, where he soon established himself as a pioneer of serial and generative methods. With his avant-garde work, Kranz’s methods anticipated those of later generations.

Inspired by a lecture by László Moholy-Nagy, Kurt Kranz came to the Bauhaus Dessau in April 1930. In Walter Peterhans’s photography class, Kranz began to experiment with photographic techniques and created some of the most striking abstract picture series to emerge from the Bauhaus. Alienated and abstracted faces and hands appear repeatedly in his dynamic picture series. These show Kranz’s early affinity for film as, page for page, the abstract forms interact with one another. Kranz drafted his first concepts for abstract films at the Bauhaus, although he was first able to realise these decades later in 1972.

The exhibition to mark the artist’s 100th birthday shows works from Kranz’s Bauhaus years and his later work as an advertising graphic designer, and focuses on a selection of his large picture cycles. Strikingly diverse leporellos dating from the 1960s onwards take centre stage, as do the so-called “Matrix-und Schiebebilder”.”

Text from the Bauhaus Dessau website

Kurt Kranz
Selbstporträt en face (objektives Foto) (Self-portrait with face (objective photo))
1931
Ingrid Kranz / Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau

Kurt Kranz
Rasterfoto (Raster photograph)
1932
Ingrid Kranz / Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau

Kurt Kranz
Schwarz : Weiß (Black: White)
1928–29
Ingrid Kranz / Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau
Privatbesitz

Kurt Kranz
Schrift Entwurf aus Satzmaterial (Writing draft from sentence material)
Dessau
1931
Ingrid Kranz / Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau

Kurt Kranz
Aus der Serie “Sieben Schritte zum symmetrischen Oval” (From the series “Seven steps to the symmetrical Oval”)
1982
Ingrid Kranz / Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau
Foto: Uwe Jacobshagen

Kurt Kranz
Augenreihe (Eye rows)
1931 (montiert 1981) (1931 (1981 install))
Ingrid Kranz / Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau
Leihgeber: Kunsthalle Bremen

Kurt Kranz
Mund-Reihen (Mouth rows)
1931
Ingrid Kranz / Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau
Leihgeber: Kunsthalle Bremen
Foto: Ingrid Kranz, Wedel

Bauhaus Dessau
Gropiusalle 38, Dessau, Germany

Opening hours:
daily 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Bauhaus Dessau website

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Apr

Review: ‘NETWORKS (cells & silos)’ at Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA), Caulfield

By Dr Marcus Bunyan 3 Comments

Categories: American, architecture, Australian artist, beauty, colour photography, digital photography, exhibition, existence, gallery website, installation art, intimacy, landscape, maps, memory, painting, photography, portrait, printmaking, psychological, quotation, reality, review, sculpture, space, time, video and works on paper
Tags: Blue Wall Drawing #1, Bryan Spier, Bryan Spier New descending, Bryan Spier Shadowmath, cells, Christ with the disciples listening, Dorothy Braund, Dorothy Braund Christ with the disciples listening, Extended network towards the happy end of the universe, Geraldine Barlow, heart of the air you can hear, Hilarie Mais, Hilarie Mais The waiting - anon, How Kevin Bacon Cured Cancer, Kerrie Poliness, Kerrie Poliness Blue Wall Drawing #1, Kit Wise, Kit Wise KTM SEA MOW RUH, Koji Ryui, Koji Ryui Extended network towards the happy end of the universe, KTM SEA MOW RUH, Monash University Museum of Art, MUMA, network theory, networks, NETWORKS (cells & silos), New descending, Nick Mangan, Nick Mangan Colony, Sandra Selig, Sandra Selig heart of the air you can hear, Shadowmath, silos, The waiting - anon

Exhibition dates: 1st February – 16th April 2011

This is a vibrant and eclectic exhibition at MUMA, one of the best this year in Melbourne. The curator Geraldine Barlow has gathered together some impressive, engaging works that are set off to good effect in the new gallery spaces. I spent a long and happy time wandering around the exhibition and came away visually satiated and intellectually stimulated.

The exhibition “explores the connections between artistic representation of networks; patterns and structures found in nature; and the rapidly evolving field of network science, communications and human relations.” (text from MUMA)

Networks connect – they describe (abstract) connections between people and things. Networks map simple or complex systems and can be real or an abstract representation of those systems. Networks form a nexus, “a sort of concentrated nodal point among a series of chains of markers” that reveals the centralising structure of networks (such as Facebook and Google). Robert Nelson in his review of this exhibition in The Age notes, “Geert Lovink and Ned Rossiter [in their catalogue essay] describe the way networks paradoxically disorganise you, creating a disempowering messy grid of protocols that colonise your headspace … It’s commonplace to celebrate networks because they stimulate excitement about belonging, about extending your reach and joining in. These hopes are as pervasive as the networks themselves. But in structural terms, networks are also insidiously colonising and hierarchical, built on the principle of the rich becoming richer and the poor becoming more dependent.”1

I believe that networks can also be altruistic and non-heirarchical, offering a horizontal consciousness rather than a vertical one: points of view and perspectives on the world that open up these (virtual) spaces to fluidity, mutation, transgression and subversion. Catherine Lumby observes that,

“The contradictory, constantly shifting nature of contemporary information and image flows tends to erode the moral authority of any social order, patriarchal or otherwise. It is this very collapse which has arguably fuelled social revolutions such as feminism and gay and lesbian rights, but which equally disrupts attempts by some to ground them in identity politics.“2

Critical to understanding the construction of these constantly shifting networks in contemporary society are the concepts of weaving and intertexuality. Intertextuality is the concept that texts do not live in isolation, “caught up as they are in a system of references to other books, other texts, other sentences: it is a node within a network… Its unity is variable and relative’ (Foucault, 1973)”3. In other words the network is decentred and multiple allowing the possibility of transgressive texts or the construction of a work of art through the techniques of assemblage (Deleuze and Guattari) – a form of fluid, associative networking that is now the general condition of art production.4

Infection of the network (by viruses for example) disrupts the pattern/randomness binary and may lead to mutations, ‘differance’ in Derrida’s terminology, spaces that are both fluid and fixed at one and the same time; neither here nor there.

On to (some of) the work.

Masato Takasaka’s series of fibre-tipped pen and pencil on paper, ‘Information Superhighway’ (2006-07), are wonderful, kaleidoscopic works – inventive and fun, full of rhizomic, multi-layered dimensionality. Nick Mangan’s mixed media sculpture ‘Colony’ (2005, see photograph below) is a spiky, totemic, figurative creature made of axe, shovel and hammer handles and riddled with holes like driftwood that looks like a bizarre, Medieval torture instrument.

Bryan Spiers paintings ‘Shadowmath’ and ‘New descending’ (both 2010, see photograph below) are excellent, puzzle-like reinterpretations of delicate, Futuristic movements. As he describes them, “I think of my paintings as puzzles or visual toys. They are images to be manipulated by the viewer; reconfigured, recomposed, expanded upon. Trajectories of change are implied by repeated shapes and graded colour transitions. They describe a continuum to be followed to its logical conclusion outside of the picture plane. This leads to the dissolution of the image, proposing new images yet to be made.”

Heath Bunting’s 3 panel work from ‘The Status project’ (all 2010) features interrelated data sets that reach a “level of absurdity in attempting to relate radically different but inter-related information.” This mind mapping schematic of connections (coloured connections with labels, markers and legends) based around Bristol, England has some unbelievable entries if you look really closely:

A1072 Able to provide natural person date of birth 2010
A1073 Able to access the Internet
A1003 A terrorist
A1047 Providing instruction or training in the use of imaginary firearms such as sticks
A1088 Providing training in leopard crawling

.
Aaron Koblin’s beautiful video ‘Flight patterns’ (2010) offers a mapping of thousands of plane journeys across the USA over time (based on East Coast time) so that the explosion of their frequency becomes like a fireworks display. Andrew McQulater’s fantastic acrylic paint wall drawings ‘Three propositions, one example’ (2010-11), painted directly onto the gallery wall show various people, isolated from each other and from the viewer, talking and listening to their iPhones. As Robert Nelson comments, “They’re isolated individuals, all on their own plane, presumably doing social networking or communicating. If you walked past them, they wouldn’t respond because, with heads bowed, they’re absorbed in another reality. Their hands and minds are busy with a reality elsewhere.”

Present but not present, (not) here and there at the same time. This is a critical debate in contemporary culture: do these type of networks lessen our ability to build friendships and connections in the real world or are they just another element in our rhizomic network of associations that help with our interconnectivity: utopian or dystopian or equal measure of both? Does it really matter?

From the UK Kit Wise’s large digital print on aluminium series (including ‘KTM SEA MOW RUH’ 2010, see below) are effective, offering soliarized, negative, brightly coloured collages of seemingly atomised cities (the titles refer to the cities airport abbreviation codes). ‘Mass Ornament’ (2009) by American artist Natalie Bookchin is one of my favourite works in the exhibition. In a horizontal panel of wall mounted screens play videos of people dancing in their bedroom. Bookchin has gleaned these gems from uploaded personal videos on YouTube – there are handstands, contortions, tap dancing, all manner of performances (some then deleted by the performer) – then collated by the artist and set to a Broadway-type music number. Mesmeric and amazing!

Koji Ryui’s spatial constructions ‘Extended network towards the happy end of the universe’ (2007-11, see photograph below) are made of bendy, plastic drinking straws of different colours, encased and moulded into cellular shapes (reminding me of the white of the Melbourne Recital Centre exterior). Trailing off these structures in different colours are airborne-like filaments similar to the plant Old Man’s Beard. “Ryui repeats and arranges these objects in space to create peculiar environments and accidental narratives. In his installations, relationships or spaces between objects are equally as important as the objects themselves.” Wonderful.

Last but not least my favourite work in the exhibition: ‘heart of the air you can hear’ by Sandra Selig (2011, see photographs below). The photographs do not do the work justice. Made simply from spun polyester, nails and paint this Spirograph-like construction is beautiful in its resonance and colour, captivating in its complexity. Built into a corner of the gallery the work floats at eye level, twists and turns and changes intensity of colour when viewed from different angles. From the front it looks like a spaceship out of Star Wars woven by light!

There are many other excellent works in the exhibition that I have not mentioned. Some of the work disrupts the continual reiteration of norms by weaving a lack of fixity into the network’s existence. Other work visually makes comment on and reinforces the structure of such networks. Whichever it is this is a truly engaging exhibition that no single body, let alone a networked one, should miss.

Marcus Bunyan for the Art Blart blog

Many thankx to Monash University Museum of Art for allowing me to publish the text and photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Installation photograph of one of the galleries in the exhibition ‘NETWORKS (cells & silos)’ at the newly opened Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA) with Nick Mangan’s ‘Colony’ (2005) in the foreground

Kerrie Poliness
‘Blue Wall Drawing #1′
2007-11

Hilarie Mais
‘The waiting – anon’
1986

An interview with the curator: Geraldine Barlow

Where did your interest in networks come from?

I’ve long been fascinated by network maps of human relationships – the graphical representation of something seemingly so complex and multi-layered. The structure of the brain and how this relates to theories of mind is also an area of personal interest. Our society, bodies and relationships are all made up of different kinds of networks, and artists have long been interested in mapping out these structures. I realised some time ago that the visual representation of networks might make for an interesting exhibition, from this point on I collected and ‘tested’ different ideas of what the exhibition might include.

How is this explored in the exhibition?

Human relationships feature in some of the works in the exhibition, but not all. I hope the exhibition offers a wide variety of links between people’s familiar world and daily experiences on the one hand, and more abstract ideas on the other.

There are a number of works from the Monash University Collection included in the exhibition. Can you tell us about these and why you selected them?

The Monash University Collection is a great source of inspiration, it is a wonderful collection, but also, I think any artwork considered closely and over time opens up in surprising ways and offers unexpected insights, working with the works in the collection over a period of years allows me to think about them in a long and slow way.

Dorothy Braund’s work Christ with the disciples listening 1966 was given to the University in 1974. It is a very beautiful formal painting of a series of shaded circles and ellipses. At first glance it is simple and seems to represent a ring of figures, their heads and bodies gathered together. On closer examination it is not so clear where one figure ends and another begins, as a whole the clustered forms seem to operate more like a cell. Historically this cell of men and the ideas attributed to them has had a profound impact, in their day they might have been seen as a kind of terrorist cell.

Through the sensitive composition and balance of abstract form, the artist has created a complex representation of the relationships between people: the ways in which we are both connected to each other, and yet might also circulate ideas in a tight ‘Chinese whispers’ type circle. This work was painted in 1966, long before our current awareness of social and telecommunications networks, but it can still offer us insights in our contemporary world and the way we relate to each other.

How did the new gallery space affect the installation of the exhibition?

The exhibition was slowly forming in my mind, even as Kerstin Thompson’s wonderful gallery space was being designed and built. The gallery has offered a wonderful armature and character for the exhibition to work with, hopefully in the manner of a conversation. Kerstin was been very interested in understand and reflecting the essential structure of the building, not building over what was pre-existing. The exhibition like-wise has an interest in structural models, geometries and patterns – in finding a balance between the regular and the slightly warped. In the central corridor which runs down the spine of the gallery, Thompson has chosen to leave the mechanical services exposed, to allow the essential structure of the building to be a form of ornament. Many of the artists in the exhibition also have an interest in the relationship between structure and ornament.

Sandra Selig
‘heart of the air you can hear’
2011

Sandra Selig
‘heart of the air you can hear’ (detail)
2011

Koji Ryui
‘Extended network towards the happy end of the universe’
2007-11

“The connections between artistic representations of networks and the rapidly evolving field of network science are the subject of the latest exhibition at the Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA).

Presenting the work of Australian and international artists, NETWORKS (cells & silos) reflects the organising principles and dynamics of our increasingly networked society, and related patterns found in organic, social and engineered forms.

MUMA’s Senior Curator, Geraldine Barlow conceived and developed the exhibition as a way of continuing the dialogue about the role and effect of different networks in society.

“Art and aesthetics are often treated as very separate enclaves from science, physics and mathematics,” Barlow says. “But art offers us a way to re- contextualise our associations and interactions with the networks around us and look at the effect they have on us. I hope the exhibition will prompt people to think about the networks in their lives and how they mould and shape us.”

A key inspiration for the exhibition was Annamaria Tallas’ documentary, How Kevin Bacon Cured Cancer, which features the work of network scientist Albert-László Barabási.

“The documentary explores the thesis that all networks – both natural and man-made – conform to a similar mathematical formula, with the same patterns emerging over and again,” Barlow said.

The artworks featured in NETWORKS (cells & silos) explore networks as diverse as those found in urban planning and cities, biology, organisations, travel and of course social networks, as well as the dual qualities of hyper-connectedness and isolation that technology has heightened in modern life.

Extending the dialogue about the possibilities of networks is of great interest to MUMA Director, Max Delany, particularly in the university context.

“Within a university we have a vast array of specialist disciplines – science, technology, humanities – all having conversations about how the world is and where we want to be heading,” Delany says. “Often these conversations are held in isolation from each other, but considered together, and from the standpoint of artists, the possibilities of collaborative networks become very exciting.”

This collaboration can be seen in Kerrie Poliness’ work Blue Wall Drawing #1 (2007/2011). Students from Monash University have created the piece, following the formal and conceptual guidelines set out by the artist. Each version of Poliness’ work creates unique patterns and networks as the collaborative team choose how to implement the drawing rules which are structured to allow a different outcome in each space where they are applied.

The exhibition’s accompanying publication contains essays from curator Geraldine Barlow, network and social theorists Geert Lovink and Ned Rossiter, and science documentary filmmaker Annamaria Tallas, all exploring the exhibition’s theme. Digital and hard copies are available on request.”

Press release from the Monash University Museum of Art

Bryan Spier
‘Shadowmath’ and ‘New descending’
both 2010

Kit Wise
‘KTM SEA MOW RUH’
2010
Digital photograph

1. Nelson, Robert. “Networks, Cells and Silos” review in The Age newspaper. Melbourne: Fairfax Media, 23/02/2011 [Online] Cited 23/03/2011. www.theage.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/networks-cells-and-silos-20110222-1b3zn.html

2. Lumby, Catharine. “Nothing Personal: Sex, Gender and Identity in The Media Age,” in Matthews, Jill (ed.,). Sex in Public: Australian Sexual Cultures. St. Leonards: Allen and Unwin, 1997, pp. 14-15.

3. Foucault, Michel cited in Thumlert, Kurt. Intervisuality, Visual Culture, and Education. [Online] Cited 01/04/2011 www.forkbeds.com/visual-pedagogy.htm

4. “To understand the production of art at the end of tradition, which in our lifetime means art at the end of modernism, requires, as the postmodern debate has shown, a careful consideration of the idea of history and the notion of ending. Rather than just thinking ending as the arrival of the finality of a fixed chronological moment, it can also be thought as a slow and indecisive process of internal decomposition that leaves in place numerous deposits of us, in us and with us – all with a considerable and complex afterlife. In this context all figuration is prefigured. This is to say that the design element of the production of a work of art, the compositional, now exists prior to the management of form of, and on, the picture plane. Techniques of assemblage, like montage and collage – which not only juxtaposed different aesthetics but also different historical moments, were the precursors of what is now the general condition of production.”

Fry, Tony. “Art Byting the Dust,” in Hayward, Phillip. Culture, Technology and Creativity in the Late Twentieth Century. London: John Libbey and Company, 1990, pp.169-170.

Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA)
Ground Floor, Building F.
Monash University Caulfield campus
900 Dandenong Road
Caulfield East, VIC 3145
T: 61 3 9905 4217

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Friday 10am-5pm
Saturday 12-5pm

Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA) website

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Jan

Review: ‘Unnerved: The New Zealand Project’ at NGV International, Melbourne

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: beauty, black and white photography, colour photography, digital photography, documentary photography, drawing, exhibition, existence, fashion photography, gallery website, illustration, installation art, intimacy, landscape, light, Melbourne, memory, National Gallery of Victoria, painting, photographic series, photography, portrait, printmaking, psychological, reality, sculpture, space, time, video and works on paper
Tags: Anne Noble, Anne Noble Ruby's room no. 6, Cosmo McMurtry, Digital Marae, Fiona Pardington, Fiona Pardington Sweet Kiwi from the collection 'Whanganui Museum', Gavin Hipkins, Gavin Hipkins Christchurch (Mask), Kapa Haka (Whero), Lisa Reihana, Lisa Reihana Dandy, Lisa Reihana Digital Marae, Lisa Reihana Hinepukohurangi, Max Gimblett, Max Gimblett Balls, Michael Parekowhai, Michael Parekowhai Cosmo McMurtry, Michael Parekowhai Kapa Haka (Whero), Michael Parekowhai The Horn of Africa, Māori, Māori culture, New Zealand, New Zealand art, Pacific Islander, Pacific Islander culture, pakeha, pakeha culture, Ruby's room no. 6, Sweet Kiwi from the collection 'Whanganui Museum', The Horn of Africa, Unnerved, Unnerved: The New Zealand Project, Yvonne Todd, Yvonne Todd January

Exhibition dates: 26th November 2010 - 27th February 2011
A Queensland Art Gallery Touring Exhibition

Ava Seymour (New Zealand b.1967)
State Highway I
1997
from ‘Health, happiness and housing’ series
Colour photograph of a photomontage

Ava Seymour (New Zealand b.1967)
Day Care Walkabouts
1997
from ‘Health, happiness and housing’ series
Photomontage on colour photograph

New Zealand art adrift a myriad of stories and symbols – not a brave ‘new world’

This is an underwhelming group exhibition of over 100 works drawn from the Queensland Art Gallery collection, a show to wander around on a lazy weekend afternoon and not get too excited about. The large number of works in the exhibition make it impossible to review each work individually (although I critique some works below) but one does get an overall sense of the investigation by New Zealand artists into their history, place, culture and identity. While there are a few good works in the exhibition there are also some very mediocre works as well and, other than a few splashes of self-deprecating humour (such as the wonderful The Horn of Africa (2006) by Michael Parekowhai, below) it all seems importantly earnest: an exhibition for serious people (apologies to Oscar Wilde).

On the evidence of this exhibition the country of New Zealand must be a very unnerving place to live, mainly because their artists can’t seem to keep their hand off it - cultural history that is.

Throughout this exhibition we have psychological unease, physical unease, a little humour, parody, poetry, symbology, allegory, mythology, colonialism, post-colonialism, nationalism, commercialisation, representation, anthropology, travel, landscape, topography, advertising, first contact, sacred spaces, indigenous politics, Māori culture, Pacific Islander culture, pakeha (non-indigenous) culture, tools, guns, rabbits, seals, pianos, traditional tattoos, tourist sites and museums, surfing, suburbia, personal journeys, family albums, androgyny, identity, public housing, ambiguous states, hyperreality, surreality, dislocation, disenfranchisement, alienation, bodies, portraits, subjects, past, present, future (and more!)

Ronnie van Hout exhibits three atmospheric, eerie, dark photographs of constructed model landscapes: of a Nazi doodlebug and the words ABDUCT and HYBRID. The wall text tries, unsuccessfully, to link the images to the obscure and haunted landscapes of New Zealand – a very long bow to draw indeed. Bill Cuthbert’s “nice” photographs offer generalised statements of light and place but really don’t take you anywhere and in fact could have been taken anywhere. The wall text offers that the photographs are a “self-conscious, critical response” to the dismantling of colonial ideas of empire and nation … this is art speak gobbledygook at its worst trying to justify basic photography.

Mark Adams panoramic photograph of one of the sites of first contact – an important historical moment of encounter between Māori and pakeha (non-Māori people of European descent) – are a beautiful photograph of a sound and mountains that has then been dissected, fragmented and individually framed and then mounted unevenly on the gallery wall – just to make sure we get the point about the ‘nature’ of the scenery and its cultural implications. Lonnie Hutchinson’s cut wall work ‘Cinco’ “offers an interplay between paper and space and explores the ‘va’ or space between – a relation between the Samoan people and the landscape saturated with the dialogue of our ancestors … being adrift in a sea of memories caused by feelings related to cultural loss and uncertainty.” I know how they feel: adrift, underwhelmed by the art and overwhelmed by the text.

Other than the striking photograph of the ‘Dandy’ (2007, below) Lisa Reihana’s series ‘Digital Marae’ (2001 – ) also fails to inspire. The marae is a highly structure space where Māori families come together – an outdoor, cleared area, a communal or sacred place which serves religious and social purposes in Polynesian societies. Here can be found male sculptures called poupou featuring diverse forms of masculinity, Māori gods and goddesses. The elder Mahuika, while sometimes described as male, is deliberately depicted in her female state in this series. In Reihanna’s digital interpretation of the marae her gods and goddesses become slick, media-inspired glossy magazine type images printed large, mounted on aluminium and lit for maximum theatrical effect. The unstructured spaces behind the figures have no context, no placement and give lie to the inspiration for the series (a highly structured space) and, as such, they land with a commercial thud onto the cleared earth.

The lowest point in the exhibition must be reserved for the 80 photographs of the series ‘The homely’ (1997–2000) by Gavin Hipkins. Usually when reviewing I refrain from saying anything really bad about works of art but this is an exception. This series is awful. Robert Nelson in The Age describes it as “visually and conceptually incoherent.” Taken over 4 years and supposedly “examining notions of nationhood that are unstable and fractured” Hipkins describes it as “a post-colonial gothic novel.” !!

The series features flat, one-dimensional images of symbols: sculptures, closed doors, open doors, flags, people, repeating circles and vertical elements – where the aggregate of all the images is supposed to MEAN SOMETHING. These are the most simple, most basic of year 12 images formed into a sequence that is conceptually irrelevant in terms of its symbolism and iconography vis a vis the purported critical examination it seeks to undertake. This person really needs to look at the sequences of Minor White to see how a great artist puts photographs together – not just in terms of narrative but the meaning in the spaces between the images, their spiritual resonance or, if wanting to be more literal, study that seminal book ‘The Americans’ by Robert Frank to see how to really make a sequence. Ultimately, these are images I wished I had never seen.

On to better things. For me the absolute gem of this exhibition were the photomontages of Ava Seymour from her ‘Health, happiness and housing’ series (see photographs above). These are just fantastic! Featuring as a backdrop photographs of state houses built in the 1950s and 60s Seymour assembles her cast of characters – composite figures of found limbs, bodies and faces taken from old medical text books – and creates stark, psychological sites of engagement. The can be seen as family portraits, social documents of unseen alienation and dis-enfranchisement with communities and also a comment on the conduct of the welfare system and state housing, but in their ironic, self-deprecating humour they become so much more. Even though they use old photographs the artist recasts them ingenuously to become something new, a new space that the viewer can step into, unlike most of the work in this exhibition.

Most artists in this exhibition seem intent on a form of cultural excavation to make their work, digging and rooting around in cultural history and memory to find “meaning”, to make new forms from old that actually lead nowhere. They excavate symbols and signs and reform them hoping for what, exactly? All that appears is work that is stunted and fragmented, chopped up dislocations that offer nothing new in terms of a way forward for the culture from which these histories and memories emerge. There is no holistic, healing vision here, only a series of mined observations that fragment, distort and polarise, descending into the decorative, illustrative or the commercial. The same can be said of some Australian art (including the exhibition ‘Stormy Weather: Contemporary Landscape Photography’ at NGV Federation Square that I will review next). As Robert Nelson succinctly observed in his review of this exhibition in The Age (Wednesday, December 29th, 2010), this exhibition “reveals a weakness that also exists in our scene: fertile tricks and noble intentions, but patchy skill or poetic imagination for connecting them.” Well said.

““When the soul wants to experience something she throws out an image in front of her and then steps into it.” (Meister Eckhart) It is an evocation of the image as a threshold leading to new dimensions of meaning. Symbolic images are more than data; they are vital seeds, living carriers of possibility.”1

New dimensions of meaning, vital seeds, living carriers of possibility. Everyone of us is a living, breathing embodiment of cultural history and memory. We know that intimately in our bones, as human beings. What artists need to do is observe this legacy but offer a way forward, not constantly excavating the past and hoping this is enough when creating work. These are not new spaces to step into! The cohabitation of indigenous and ethnically mixed non-indigenous cultures in both Australia and New Zealand requires this holistic forward looking vision. It is a redemptive vision that is not mired in the symbols and archetypes of the past but, as Australia writer David Malouf envisages it, ‘a dream history, a myth history, a history of experience in the imagination’.2 It is a vision of the future that all post-colonial countries can embrace, where a people can come to know their sense of place more fully.

Rather than an escapist return to the past perhaps a redemptive vision of New Zealand’s cultural future, a history of experience in the imagination, would be less insular and more open to the capacity to wonder.

Many thankx to Jemma Altmeier for her help and to the National Gallery of Victoria for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Lisa REIHANA
Ngāpuhi: Ngāti Hine, Ngāi Tu
New Zealander 1964–
Hinepukohurangi
2001
from Digital Marae 2001–
cibachrome photograph mounted on aluminium
200.0 x 100.0 cm
Purchased 2002
© Lisa Reihana

Lisa REIHANA
Ngāpuhi: Ngāti Hine, Ngāi Tu
New Zealander 1964–
Dandy
2007
from Digital Marae 2001–
colour digital print mounted on aluminium
200.0 x 120.0 cm
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane
Purchased 2008 with funds from the Estate of Vincent Stack through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane
© Lisa Reihana

Yvonne TODD
New Zealander 1973–
January
2005
from the Vagrants’ reception centre series
lightjet photograph
100.0 x 73.8 cm
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane
Purchased 2007. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant

©Yvonne Todd

Michael PAREKOWHAI
Ngāti Whakarongo
New Zealander 1968–
Kapa Haka (Whero)
2003
automotive paint on fibreglass
188.0 x 60.0 x 50.0 cm
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane
Purchased 2009 with funds from Tim Fairfax AM, through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation
© Michael Parekowhai

“The National Gallery of Victoria today opened a major exhibition celebrating the extraordinary work of 26 contemporary New Zealand artists in Unnerved: The New Zealand Project.

Unnerved explores a particularly rich, dark vein found in contemporary New Zealand art. The psychological or physical unease underlying many works in the exhibition is addressed with humour, parody and poetic subtlety by artists across generations and mediums. Bringing together more than 100 works ranging from intimate works on paper to large scale installations by both established and emerging artists, Unnerved engages with New Zealand’s changing social, political and cultural landscape as the country navigates its indigenous settler and migrant histories. These works explore a changing sense of place, the continued importance of contemporary Maori art, biculturalism, a complex colonial past, the creative reworking of memory, and the often interconnected mediums of performance, photography and video. If the vision is unsettling, it is also compelling and Unnerved: The New Zealand Project offers us new ways of seeing one of our closest neighbours.

This fascinating exhibition explores a rich and dark vein found in contemporary art in New Zealand, drawing on the disquieting aspects of New Zealand’s history and culture reflected through more than 100 works of art.

Jane Devery, Coordinating Curator, NGV said: “The works presented in Unnerved reveal a darkness and distinctive edginess that characterises this particular trend in New Zealand contemporary art. The psychological or physical unease underlying many works in the exhibitions is addressed with humour, parody and poetic subtlety.

The exhibition reflects the strength and vitality of contemporary art in New Zealand with works created by both established and emerging artists, across a range of mediums including painting, photography, sculpture, installation, drawing, film and video.

Unnerved engages with New Zealand’s changing social, political and cultural landscape, exploring a shifting sense of place, complex colonial past, the relationships between contemporary Māori, Pacific Islander and pakeha (non-indigenous) culture, and the interplay between performance, video and photography,” said Ms Devery.

A highlight of the exhibition is a group of sculptural works by Michael Parekowhai including his giant inflatable rabbit, Cosmo McMurtry, which will greet visitors to the exhibition, and a spectacular life-size seal balancing a grand piano on its nose titled The Horn of Africa. Also on display are a series of haunting photographs by Yvonne Todd, whose portrait photography often refers to B-grade films and pulp fiction novels.

Gerard Vaughan, Director, NGV said this exhibition demonstrates the NGV’s strong commitment to interesting and challenging contemporary art secured from around the world; he noted that the NGV has made a special commitment to exhibition the contemporary art of our region.

“Unnerved will introduce visitors to the rich contemporary arts scene of one of our closest neighbours, fascinating audiences with works ranging from the life size installations by Parekowhai through to the spectacular 30 metre photographic essay by Gavin Hipkins. This truly is a must see show this summer!” said Dr Vaughan.

Unnerved will also offer a strong and engaging collection of contemporary sculpture, installations, drawings, paintings, photography, film and video art by artists including Lisa Reihana, John Pule, Gavin Hipkins, Anne Noble, Ronnie van Hout, Shane Cotton, Julian Hooper and many others.”

Press release from the National Gallery of Victoria website

Gavin HIPKINS
New Zealander 1968–
Christchurch (Mask)
1998
from The homely series 1997–2000
type C photograph
60.0 x 40.0 cm
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane Purchased 2008. The Queensland Government’s Gallery of Modern Art Acquisitions Fund
© Gavin Hipkins

Michael PAREKOWHAI
Ngāti Whakarongo
New Zealander 1968–
The Horn of Africa
2006
automotive paint, wood, fibreglass, steel, brass
395.0 x 200.0 x 260.0 cm
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane
Purchased 2008 with funds from the Queensland Government’s Gallery of Modern Art Acquisitions Fund in recognition of the contribution to the Gallery by Wayne Goss (Chair of Trustees 1999–2008)
© Michael Parekowhai

Fiona PARDINGTON
Kai Tahu, Kati Mamoe, Kati Waewae
New Zealander 1961–
Sweet Kiwi, from the collection ‘Whanganui Museum’
2008
gold-toned gelatin silver photograph
61.0 x 50.8 cm
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane
Purchased 2008 with funds from Gina Fairfax through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation (2008.349)
©Fiona Pardington

Michael PAREKOWHAI
Cosmo McMurtry
2006
synthetic polymer paint on polyvinyl chloride, fibreglass, air compressor
734.3 x 506.4 x 739.1cm (variable)
Presented by the Melbourne Art Fair Foundation with the assistance of funds donated by NGV Contemporary, 2006
National Gallery of Victoria
© Michael Parekowhai

Max GIMBLETT
New Zealander/American 1935–
Balls
1990–97
brush and ink, synthetic polymer paint and pencil on handmade paper
59.8 x 79.3 cm
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane
The Max Gimblett Gift.
Gift of the artist through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 2000
© Max Gimblett

Anne NOBLE
New Zealander 1954–
Ruby’s room no. 6
1999
colour digital print
67.0 x 100.2 cm
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane
Purchased 2006
©Anne Noble

1. Ronnberg, Ami (ed.,). “Preface,” in The Book of Symbols. Cologne: Taschen, 2010, p.6.

2. Footnote 6. Daniel, Helen. “Interview with David Malouf,” Australian Book Review (September , 1996), p.13 quoted in Ennis, Helen. “The Presence of the Past,” in Photography and Australia. London: Reaktion Books, 2007, p.141.

NGV International
180 St Kilda Road

Opening hours
10am – 5pm. Closed Tuesdays.

National Gallery of Victoria website

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Dr Marcus Bunyan

Dr Marcus Bunyan is an Australian artist and writer. His work explores the boundaries of identity and place. He writes the Art Blart blog which reviews exhibitions in Melbourne, Australia and posts exhibitions from around the world. He has a Dr of Philosophy from RMIT University, Melbourne and is currently studying a Master of Art Curatorship at The University of Melbourne.

AUSTRALIAN ARTISTS AND EXHIBITIONS BY NAME AND POSTING AT THIS LINK

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Archive for the 'printmaking' Category

Exhibition: ‘Andy Warhol: Polaroids / MATRIX 240′ at Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University of California

Exhibition dates: 27th January – 20th May 2012

Exhibition: ‘Warhol and Cars: American Icons’ at The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh

Exhibition dates: 5th February – 13th May 2012

Exhibition: ‘Cy Twombly: Photographs 1951 – 2010′ at the Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels

Exhibition dates: 1st February – 29th April 2012

Notes from the lecture ‘Anti-Entropy: A natural History of the Studio’ by William Kentridge at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), Melbourne

Date: 8th March 2012

Images in this posting are used under fair use for commentary and illustration of the lecture notes. No copyright breach is intended. © All rights remain with the copyright holder. My additions to the text can be found in [ ] brackets.

First History of the Cinema

Second History of the Cinema

Third History of Cinema

The Studio

Exhibition: ‘The Prints of Martin Lewis: From the Collection of Dr. Dorrance Kelly’ at the Bruce Museum, Greenwich, CT

Exhibition dates: 2nd October 2011 - 26th February 2012

6

Exhibition: ‘A Turbulent Lens: The Photographic Art of Virna Haffer’ at Tacoma Art Museum

Exhibition dates: 2nd July – 16th October 2011

The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), Hobart

Libidinal, Moebic MONA

Exhibition: ‘Kurt Kranz: Programming of Beauty’ at the Bauhaus Dessau, Berlin

Exhibition marking the 100th birthday of Kurt Kranz
19th November 2010 – 29th May 2011

Review: ‘NETWORKS (cells & silos)’ at Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA), Caulfield

Exhibition dates: 1st February – 16th April 2011

An interview with the curator: Geraldine Barlow

Review: ‘Unnerved: The New Zealand Project’ at NGV International, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 26th November 2010 - 27th February 2011
A Queensland Art Gallery Touring Exhibition

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Archive for the 'printmaking' Category

Exhibition dates: 27th January – 20th May 2012

Exhibition dates: 5th February – 13th May 2012

Exhibition dates: 1st February – 29th April 2012

Date: 8th March 2012

Images in this posting are used under fair use for commentary and illustration of the lecture notes. No copyright breach is intended. © All rights remain with the copyright holder. My additions to the text can be found in [ ] brackets.

First History of the Cinema

Second History of the Cinema

Third History of Cinema

The Studio

Exhibition dates: 2nd October 2011 - 26th February 2012

6

Exhibition dates: 2nd July – 16th October 2011

Libidinal, Moebic MONA

Exhibition marking the 100th birthday of Kurt Kranz 19th November 2010 – 29th May 2011

Exhibition dates: 1st February – 16th April 2011

An interview with the curator: Geraldine Barlow

Exhibition dates: 26th November 2010 - 27th February 2011 A Queensland Art Gallery Touring Exhibition

Art Blart RSS feed

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Marcus Bunyan website – please click on images to view new series ‘Vertical’ 2011

Recent Posts

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Top Posts

Archives

Categories

Interesting Links

Follow “Art Blart”

Exhibition marking the 100th birthday of Kurt Kranz
19th November 2010 – 29th May 2011

Exhibition dates: 26th November 2010 - 27th February 2011
A Queensland Art Gallery Touring Exhibition