Tag: Dr Marcus Bunyan

Review: ‘The Feast of Trimalchio’ by AES+F at Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 7th October – 23rd October, 2010

Curators: the artists

 

AES+F. 'The Feast of Trimalchio Panorama #1' 2009

 

AES+F collective
The Feast of Trimalchio Panorama #1
2009

 

 

Searching for identity like mould spore taking root

In one sense these large panoramic, digitally constructed mise-en-scène photographs by Russian collective AES+F at Anna Schwartz Gallery, (taken from the “celebrated” video of the same name which debuted at the Venice Biennale in 2009) are mere echoes of the lyrical, dance and fugue-like structures of the moving work. In another sense they work well as still photographs.

The balance inherent within the picture frame is exemplary, the use of colour and the feeling of rhythm and flow of the figures in pictorial space, wonderful. This rhythm can be called the physiognomy of the work, its style.1

In these photographs style is hard to miss and the photographs fulfil what Susan Sontag saw as one of the main prerequisites for good art: that of emotional distance from lived reality, that allows us to the look at the work dispassionately before bringing those observations back into the real world:

“All works of art are founded on a certain distance from the lived reality which is represented. This “distance” is, by definition, inhuman or impersonal to a certain degree; for in order to appear to us as art, the work must restrict sentimental intervention and emotional participation, which are functions of “closeness.” It is the degree and manipulating of this distance, the conventions of distance, which constitute the style of the work … But the notion of distance (and of dehumanisation, as well) is misleading, unless one adds that the movement is not just away from but toward the world.”2


In these photographs we have a pastiche of cultural attitudes and mores that allows us to reflect on the foibles, paradoxes, consumerism and stereotypes of identity formation of the contemporary world, mixed with a healthy serving of voyeurism. As Javier Panera notes, “AES+F’s work is nurtured from moral and cultural paradoxes: seduction and threat; hyperrealism and artificiality; classicism and contemporaneity; spirituality and sensuality; historicism and the end of history,”3 and they construct a new oligarchy within a dystopic, Arcadian world.

Variously, we have masters and servants, oriental and neoclassical architecture, haute couture, lesbianism, adoration, a youth dressed in white falling out of a priests robes (or is a kimono?) onto an altar-like table, savages and beasts, homoerotic encounters and many more besides – all constructed in an imagined world of a temporary hotel performing rituals of leisure and pleasure, an orgiastic but chaste imagining in this world, looking back at lived reality.

And for me there is the problem. While the photographs offer a vision of temptation and delight in the end they just reinforce the basis of belief in the status quo, the power of cultural hegemony. Subversion as an act, a decorative performance imbued with titillation.

As Marco Fusinato observed, using a quotation from an anarchist website in a work in his latest exhibition at Anna Schwartz Gallery (and the irony does not escape me, far from it!):

“The artist is also the mainstay of a whole social milieu – called a “scene” – which allows him to exist and which he keeps alive. A very special ecosystem: agents, press attachés, art directors, marketing agents, critics, collectors, patrons, art gallery managers, cultural mediators, consumers… birds of prey sponge off artists in the joyous horror of showbiz. A scene with its codes, norms, outcasts, favourites, ministry, exploiters and exploited, profiteers and admirers. A scene which has the monopoly on good taste, exerting aesthetic terrorism upon all that which is not profitable, or upon all that which doesn’t come from a very specific mentality within which subversion must only be superficial, of course at the risk of subverting.”4


The subversion of these images is superficial at best, a surface appearance of insurrection.

Despite protestations to the contrary (an appeal on the AES+F website to the idea of the Roman saturnalia, see text below) – where the masters serve the slaves at a dinner once a year, this reversal was only ever superficial at best: “the reversal of the social order was mostly superficial; the banquet, for example, would often be prepared by the slaves, and they would prepare their masters’ dinner as well. It was license within careful boundaries; it reversed the social order without subverting it.”5

It was a licence within careful boundaries.
It reversed the social order without subverting


The same can be said of these wonderful, colourful, rhythmic, chaste, trite, in vogue, pale imitations of subversion. The images come from a very specific mentality within which subversion must only be superficial because they are, after all, images that are searching for an identity in order to access and survive in the Western art world.

ex nihilo nihil fit (Nothing comes of nothing) and please, don’t bite the hand that feeds you.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

 

1/ Sontag, Susan. “On Style,” in Against Interpretation and Other Essays. New York: Delta Book, 1966, pp. 30-31

2/ Ibid.,

3/ Panera, Panera. “AES+F’s The Feast of Trimalchio,” on FlashArtonline.com [Online] Cited 17/10/2010. No longer available online

4/ Anon. “Escapism has its price The artist has his income,” on Non Fides website Wednesday 17 September 2008 [Online] Cited 28/12/2019. No longer available online

5/ Anon. “Saturnalia,” on Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 28/12/2019


Many thankx to The Melbourne International Arts Festival and Anna Schwartz Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting.

Viewers: please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image as it is essential to see the freeze frame action, what is actually going on within the images. All images courtesy the artists and Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne & Sydney.

 

 

 

AES+F The Feast of Trimalchio – part 1, 2 and 3

 

AES+F. 'The Feast of Trimalchio Panorama #2' 2009

 

AES+F collective
The Feast of Trimalchio Panorama #2
2009

 

AES+F. 'The Feast of Trimalchio Panorama #3' 2009

 

AES+F collective
The Feast of Trimalchio Panorama #3
2009

 

AES+F. 'The Feast of Trimalchio Panorama #4' 2009

 

AES+F collective
The Feast of Trimalchio Panorama #4
2009

 

AES+F. 'The Feast of Trimalchio Panorama #5' 2009

 

AES+F collective
The Feast of Trimalchio Panorama #5
2009

 

 

In the Satyricon, the work of the great wit and melancholic lyric poet of Nero’s reign, Gaius Petronius Arbiter, the best-preserved part is The Feast of Trimalchio (Cena Trimalchionis). Thanks to Petronius’s fantasy, Trimalchio’s name became synonymous with wealth and luxury, with gluttony and with unbridled pleasure in contrast to the brevity of human existence.

We searched for an analogue in the third millennium and Trimalchio, the former slave, the nouveau riche host of feasts lasting several days, appeared to us not so much as an individual as a collective image of a luxurious hotel, a temporary paradise which one has to pay to enter.

The hotel guests, the ‘masters’, are from the land of the Golden Billion. They’re keen to spend their time, regardless of the season, as guests of the present-day Trimalchio, who has created the most exotic and luxurious hotel possible. The hotel miraculously combines a tropical coastline with a ski resort. The ‘masters’ wear white which calls to mind the uniform of the righteous in the Garden of Eden, or traditional colonial dress, or a summer fashion collection. The ‘masters’ possess all of the characteristics of the human race – they are all ages and types and from all social backgrounds. Here is the university professor, the broker, the society beauty, the intellectual. Trimalchio’s ‘servants’ are young, attractive representatives of all continents who work in the vast hospitality industry as housekeeping staff, waiters, chefs, gardeners, security guards and masseurs. They are dressed in traditional uniforms with an ethnic twist. The ‘servants’ resemble the brightly-coloured angels of a Garden of Eden to which the ‘masters’ are only temporarily admitted.

On one hand the atmosphere of The Feast of Trimalchio can be seen as bringing together the hotel rituals of leisure and pleasure (massage and golf, the pool and surfing). On the other hand the ‘servants’ are more than attentive service-providers. They are participants in an orgy, bringing to life any fantasy of the ‘masters’, from gastronomic to erotic. At times the ‘masters’ unexpectedly end up in the role of ‘servants’. Both become participants in an orgiastic gala reception, a dinner in the style of Roman saturnalia when slaves, dressed as patricians, reclined at table and their masters, dressed in slaves’ tunics, served them.

Every so often the delights of The Feast of Trimalchio are spoiled by catastrophes which encroach on the Global Paradise…

AES+F, 2009
Translated by Ruth Addison

Text from the AES+F website [Online] Cited 28/12/2019. No longer available online. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

 

AES+F. 'The Feast of Trimalchio Panorama #6' 2009

 

AES+F
The Feast of Trimalchio Panorama #6
2009

 

AES+F. 'The Feast of Trimalchio Panorama #7' 2009

 

AES+F collective
The Feast of Trimalchio Panorama #7
2009

 

 

Russian collective AES+F work with photography, video, sculpture and mixed media. Since 1987, they have interwoven imagery relating to modern technology, Hollywood cinema, fashion photography, advertising, death, religion, the British Royal Family, mass media, popular culture and youth obsession throughout their work.

The Feast of Trimalchio is an interpretation of the witty but melancholy fiction Satyricon by the Roman poet Petronius. In the ancient version Trimalchio’s feast was portrayed as the ideal celebration that Trimalchio imagined for his own funeral. In the AES+F 21st Century version, an orgy of consumerism reflects on the contemporary state of Russia and indeed the world. Created from over 75,000 photographs, the complete work is a nine-channel panoramic media that made its celebrated debut at the 2009 Venice Biennale. For the Festival, Anna Schwartz Gallery features a set of three expansive photographic tableaux. These captivating images of a temporary hotel paradise portray opulence and excess overshadowed by a dark uneasiness.

Text from the Melbourne International Arts Festival website

 

AES+F. 'The Feast of Trimalchio Panorama #8' 2009

 

AES+F collective
The Feast of Trimalchio Panorama #8
2009

 

AES+F. 'The Feast of Trimalchio Panorama #9' 2009

 

AES+F collective
The Feast of Trimalchio Panorama #9
2009

 

 

Anna Schwartz Gallery
185 Flinders Lane
Melbourne, Victoria 3000

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Friday 12 – 5pm
Saturday 1 – 5pm

Anna Schwartz Gallery website

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Review: ‘Up Close: Carol Jerrems with Larry Clark, Nan Goldin and William Yang’ at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 31st July – 31st October 2010

Curator: Natalie King

 

Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980) 'Vale Street' 1975 from the exhibition 'Up Close: Carol Jerrems with Larry Clark, Nan Goldin and William Yang' at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July - Oct 2010

 

Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980)
Vale Street
1975
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Gift of the Philip Morris Arts Grant, 1982
© Ken Jerrems & the Estate of Lance Jerrems

 

 

“A face tells the story of what a person is thinking. The eyes reveal the suffering.”


Carol Jerems

 

 

Time and Truth: Looking again at the work of Carol Jerrems

This is a solid exhibition of the photographs of Carol Jerrems at Heide Museum of Modern Art, accompanied by small selections of the work of Larry Clark and William Yang and the sequence The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1979) by Nan Goldin.

I like Jerrems work: it is strong, frontal, direct and truthful.

What I dislike is the hagiography that has grown up around this artist, the mythologizing of Saint Jerrems. We don’t need a saint of Australian photography; what we need is an appreciation of the artist, the person and her legacy.

While the personal history of this artist is well known – facing depression, putting herself in danger, sexually active, documenting the counter-culture sharps and skinheads and urban indigenous people, the photographing of women and her death at far too young an age – few people actually look at the photographs clearly.

Most of the photographs are 8″ x 10″ prints, mainly portraits, that are usually dark and contrasty, small and emotionally intense. Jerrems images are made full frame (the modernist conceit of filing out a negative carrier, so that if the negative was printed full frame there would be a black border around the picture) to avoid cropping in the darkroom. This shows good previsualisation by the artist, the composition of the image made at the time of the exposure.

There is a closeness to the framing of the portraits and a conversant ambiguity about all of her backgrounds – mainly low depth of field, anonymous places (perhaps a brick wall or a close up of a street corner). In fact it is difficult to pin down any actual place in her photographs unless you are told in the title of the work.

The contextlessness of her backgrounds allows the viewer to focus on the people placed before her lens and here Jerrems gets up close and personal, trying to capture the truth of her subjects, their soul (in this sense she is like Diane Arbus, thrusting her camera into places it was not supposed to go until something gives – the subject gives up, drops the mask, even if just for a split second, and click, the artist has their image). The mainly head and shoulders photographs of women are most impressive in this regard as Jerrems portrays the women’s strength and vulnerability, as are the photographs of the artist in hospital fighting her debilitating illness, the most moving, emotional photographs in the exhibition.

Other photographs show constructed intimacies between people, the camera and the artist.

In Esben and Dusan, Cronulla (1977, above), Jerrems uses the yin yang black, white background to frame the two protagonists, bringing forward the body of Esben in the right portion of the frame and letting Dusan recede into the darkness. In Boys (1973) two bodies are photographed in a bed, legs and arms entwined but the print is so dark that you would never know they were two boys unless you were told – and this adds to a sense of mystery, the imaging of the most beautiful, sensitive, abstract embrace.

Mark Lean with Arms Crossed (1975) shows a cocky, self-assured Lean staring directly at the camera as though it were not there, as though he were conversing directly with Jerrems, the camera an extension of the artist, capturing his brave-aura: one camera, one lens, one vision.

And if you study the contact sheet for the photograph Vale Street (1975, above), Jerrems eventually draws the central luminous figure forward in the frame to create the now iconic image while the two acolytes hover, brooding and menacing in the darkened background.

As Kathy Drayton has observed, “Her photographs engage the viewer in an intimate relationship with her subjects. It’s not always a friendly intimacy – sometimes her subjects look defensive, irritated or even menacing, but you always sense that you’re seeing beyond the mask into the soul.”1


Jerrems saw herself as a serious photographer; if something happened she felt she should be commenting on it. She was also quite naive but always pushed herself and her art into sometimes dangerous places. She would have thought ‘how do I say something that is true’ and her endeavour, which is also constructed, was seeing things in terms of opportunities for a good photograph. Jerrems removed the safeguards; she got right in there among her volatile characters, her potential sexual predators: let’s just see what happens when the safety fence goes down.

While there are the “iconic” photographs that Jerrems captured (what I call highlight pieces, namely Vale Street, Mozart Street, and Mark and Flappers all 1975, see photographs below) there is also a consistency to her work. It exemplifies an exchange that takes place between the artist and the world. What I would call “a good deal.”

When looking at art, one of the best experiences for me is gaining the sense that something is open before you, that wasn’t open before. I don’t mean accessible, I mean open like making a clearing in the jungle, or being able to see further up a road, or just further on. And also like an open marketplace – where there were always good trades. There is the feeling that if you put in a certain amount of honesty, then you would get something back, that made some room for you in front – some room that would allow you to look forward, and maybe even walk into that space. Seeing Jerrems work gives you that feeling.

Jerrems had the power to draw themes together, to ramp up the intensity, to empower her photographs and she was possibly on the way to becoming the things that people now say she was, but her early death curtailed this journey. Her photographs have social significance and photographic integrity and evidence time in the visible – the time in which Jerrems took them, the 1970s, and the truthfulness of her self and her style.

I would have loved to have seen Jerrem’s response to the film still work of Cindy Sherman, the layering of the Sherman personas and the challenge to the feminist critique. As it is, Jerrems’s photographs are very frontal in today’s terms and, because of her early death, she lacked the opportunity to interact with the development of more complex theories. The layers present at the time are now conflated into seemingly one layer, supported by backstories and obfuscation that clouds the work – its naked frontality and boldness. This obfuscation formalises her legacy into mythology.

Jerrems work does not need this.

She struggled with her art, to get the best out of herself and her visualisation, to step into those spaces that I mentioned earlier. What we need is an appreciation of the time of her endeavour and the truthfulness of her art. To say that the work achieved fulfilment is to deny the importance of her death.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

PS. With grateful thankx to my friend and photographer Ian Lobb (who knew Carol Jerrems very well) for our conversations about the artist and his insights into her work.

 

1/ Drayton, Kathy quoted in Wilmoth, Peter. “The ’70s stripped bare,” on The Age website. July 17th, 2005. [Online] Cited 05/10/2010


Many thankx to Jade Enge and Heide Museum of Modern Art for allowing me publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on all of the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

Carol Jerrems. 'Mozart Street' 1975 from the exhibition 'Up Close: Carol Jerrems with Larry Clark, Nan Goldin and William Yang' at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, July - Oct 2010

 

Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980)
Mozart Street
1975
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Gift of the Philip Morris Arts Grant, 1982
© Ken Jerrems & the Estate of Lance Jerrems

 

Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980) 'Mark and Flappers' 1975

 

Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980)
Mark and Flappers
1975
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Gift of James Mollison, 1994
© Ken Jerrems & the Estate of Lance Jerrems

 

Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980) 'Sharpies' 1976

 

Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980)
Sharpies
1976
Gelatin silver print
© Ken Jerrems & the Estate of Lance Jerrems

 

Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980) 'Dusan and Esben' 1977

 

Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980)
Dusan and Esben
1977
Gelatin silver print
© Ken Jerrems & the Estate of Lance Jerrems

 

Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980) 'Flying Dog' Nd

 

Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980)
Flying Dog
Nd
Gelatin silver print
© Ken Jerrems & the Estate of Lance Jerrems

 

Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980) 'Butterfly Behind Glass' 1975

 

Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980)
Butterfly Behind Glass
1975
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Gift of Mrs Joy Jerrems, 1981
© Ken Jerrems & the Estate of Lance Jerrems

 

Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980) 'Evonne Goolagong, Melbourne' 1973


Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980)
Evonne Goolagong, Melbourne
1973
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Gift of Mrs Joy Jerrems, 1981
© Ken Jerrems & the Estate of Lance Jerrems

 

 

Featuring the exceptional talent of four photographers whose images capture people, places and events with candid intimacy, Up Close traces the significant legacy of Australian photographer Carol Jerrems (1949-1980) alongside that of contemporary artists Larry Clark (USA), Nan Goldin (USA) and William Yang (Sydney). According to Guest Curator Natalie King, ‘Up Close takes its inspiration from the way each artist candidly depicts a social milieu and urban life of the 1970s and early 1980s’. Sharing an interest in sub-cultural groups and individuals on the margins of society, each artist reveals a remarkable capacity to provide an empathetic glimpse into semi-private worlds through intimate depictions of people and their surroundings.

Newly discovered prints by Jerrems are included as well as rare archival material from Jerrems’ family and previously unseen out-takes from Kathy Drayton’s documentary film, ‘Girl in the Mirror.’ It is 30 years since Jerrems’ death and 20 years since the first and only survey of her work was presented. Jerrems’ photographic practice was associated with a feminist and political imperative; as she put it: ‘the society is sick and I must help change it’. This exhibition uncovers Jerrems’ preoccupation with people and their environment, subcultures, forgotten and dispossessed groups, especially Aboriginal communities of the time.

Larry Clark unflinchingly turned the camera onto himself and his amphetamine-shooting coterie to produce Tulsa (1971), a series of photographs repeatedly cited for its raw depiction of marginalized youth. This significant publication and photographic series influenced Goldin and a generation of artists who aspired to break with the more traditional documentary modes. With its grainy shot-from-the-hip style, Tulsa exposes a world of sex, death, violence, anxiety and boredom capturing the aimlessness and ennui of teenagers.

First shown at Frank Zappa’s birthday party in 1979 at the Mudd Club in New York, Nan Goldin’s The Ballad of Sexual Dependency has evolved to be an iconic work of its time. Goldin’s snapshot aesthetic is evident in this immersive installation of close to 700 slides full of saturated colour and intimate framing accompanied by a soundtrack. Mining the emotional depths of her friends, lovers and family, Ballad signals a riveting intimacy whilst uncovering the bohemian life of New York’s Lower East Side. Goldin says, ‘I was documenting my life. It comes directly from the snapshot, which is always about love…’

William Yang’s photographs from the 1970s further the snapshot aesthetic through journeying into the intimate world of his particular social milieu: drag queens, Sydney gay and inner-city culture. Yang’s direct, unpretentious photographs provide a unique chronicle of marginalised groups especially as he put it: “… people who are gay, who were invisible, who were too scared to come out. During gay liberation people became visible, people became politicised, and there was a Mardi Gras that was a symbol of the movement.”

Up Close reveals how photographic practices provide an empathetic glimpse into semi-private worlds with close up depictions of people and their surroundings.

The accompanying publication provides for the first time an in-depth account of Carol Jerrems’ work alongside that of her peers and will feature a number of newly commissioned essays. Edited by Natalie King and co-published by Heide and Schwartz City, it will be available at the Heide Store from 31 July.”

Press release from the Heide Museum of Modern Art website

 

Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980) 'Juliet Holding Vale Street' 1976


Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980)
Juliet Holding Vale Street
1976
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Gift of Mrs Joy Jerrems 1981
© Ken Jerrems & the Estate of Lance Jerrems

 

Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980) 'Lynn' 1976

 

Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980)
Lynn
1976
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Gift of the Philip Morris Arts Grant 1982
© Ken Jerrems & the Estate of Lance Jerrems

 

Larry Clark (American, b. 1943) 'Untitled' 1979

 

Larry Clark (American, b. 1943)
Untitled
1979
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 1980
© Larry Clark
Image courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York

 

Larry Clark (American, b. 1943) 'No Title (Billy Mann)' 1963 from the portfolio 'Tulsa'

 

Larry Clark (American, b. 1943)
No Title (Billy Mann)
1963
from the portfolio Tulsa
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 1980
Image courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York

 

William Yang (Australian, b. 1943) 'Peter Tully, Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras' 1981

 

William Yang (Australian, b. 1943)
Peter Tully, Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras
1981
Gelatin silver print
edition 2/10
40.4 x 27cm
National Library of Australia
Courtesy of the artist

 

 

Heide Museum of Modern Art
7 Templestowe Road, Bulleen, Victoria 3105

Opening hours:
(Heide II & Heide III)
Tues – Sun 10.00am – 5.00pm

Heide Museum of Art website

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Review: ‘John Davis: Presence’ at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 6th August – 24th October, 2010

Curator: David Hurlston, Curator of Australian Art at the National Gallery of Victoria

 

John Davis (Australian, 1936-1999) 'You Yangs' 1980 from the exhibition 'John Davis: Presence' at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Melbourne, Aug - Oct 2010

 

John Davis (Australian, 1936-1999)
You Yangs
1980
Twigs, cotton thread, papier mâché, string, wood
196 x 90 x 30cm
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane
Purchased, 1980. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation with funds from Dr W. R. Johnston
© Penelope Davis & Martin Davis. Administered by VISCOPY, Australia

 

 

“In reality, I make one work over my life, so that when it’s all finished, there are a number of parts or contributions to an overall piece, each linking to another in some way.”


John Davis, 1989

 

 

This is a superlative survey exhibition of the work of John Davis at NGV Australia, Melbourne.

In the mature work you can comment on the fish as ‘travellers’ or ‘nomads’, “a metaphor for people and the way we move around the world.” You can observe the caging, wrapping and bandaging of these fish as a metaphor for the hurt we humans impose on ourselves and the world around us. You can admire the craftsmanship and delicacy of the constructions, the use of found objects, thread, twigs, driftwood and calico and note the ironic use of bituminous paint in relation to the environment, “a sticky tar-like form of petroleum that is so thick and heavy,”1 of dark and brooding colour.

This is all well and true. But I have a feeling when looking at this work that here was a wise and old spirit, one who possessed knowledge and learning.

Since one of his last works was titled ‘Kōan’ (1999, see image below), a story “the meaning of which cannot be understood by rational thinking but may be accessible through intuition,”2 I would like to use a quotation from Carlos Castaneda and The Teachings of Don Juan (below) as an allegorical statement about the work and, more inclusively, about the human journey to knowledge and the attaining of a state of grace in one’s life.

Although I didn’t know John Davis I have a feeling from his work that he attained such a state.

Stick with the quotation for it is through this journey that we relate to ourselves and world around us. The stuff of legend.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thanxk to Alison Murray, Jemma Altmeier and 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. There is also another John Davis exhibition in Melbourne at the moment at Arc One Gallery until 16th October 2010.

 

Fear, clarity, power, death

“‘When a man starts to learn, he is never clear about his objectives. His purpose is faulty; his intent is vague. He hopes for rewards that will never materialize, for he knows nothing of the hardships of learning.

‘He slowly begins to learn – bit by bit at first, then in big chunks. And his thoughts soon clash. What he learns is never what he pictured, or imagined, and so he begins to be afraid. Learning is never what one expects. Every step of learning is a new task, and the fear the man is experiencing begins to mount mercilessly, unyieldingly. His purpose becomes a battlefield.

‘And thus he has stumbled upon the first of his natural enemies : Fear! A terrible enemy – treacherous, and difficult to overcome. It remains concealed at every turn of the way, prowling, waiting. And if the man, terrified in its presence, runs away, his enemy will have put an end to his quest.’

‘What will happen to the man if he runs away in fear?’

‘Nothing happens to him except that he will never learn. He will never become a man of knowledge. He will perhaps be a bully or a harmless, scared man; at any rate, he will be a defeated man. His first enemy will have put an end to his cravings.’

‘And what can he do to overcome fear?’

‘The answer is very simple. He must not run away. He must defy his fear, and in spite of it he must take the next step in learning, and the next, and the next. He must be fully afraid, and yet he must not stop. That is the rule! And a moment will come when his first enemy retreats. The man begins to feel sure of himself. His intent becomes stronger. Learning is no longer a terrifying task.

‘When this joyful moment comes, then he can say without hesitation that he has defeated his first natural enemy.’

‘Does it happen at once, don Juan, or little by little?’

‘It happens little by little, and yet the fear is vanquished suddenly and fast.’

‘But won’t the man be afraid again if something new happens to him?’

‘No. Once a man has vanquished fear, he is free from it for the rest of his life because, instead of fear, he has acquired clarity – a clarity of mind which erases fear. By then a man knows his desires; he knows how to satisfy those desires. He can anticipate the new steps of learning, and a sharp clarity surrounds everything. The man feels that nothing is concealed.

‘And thus he has encountered his second enemy : Clarity! That clarity of mind, which is so hard to obtain, dispels fear, but also blinds.

‘It forces the man never to doubt himself. It gives him the assurance he can do anything he pleases, for he sees clearly into everything. And he is courageous because he is clear, and he stops at nothing because he is clear. But all that is a mistake; it is like something incomplete. If the man yields to this make-believe power, he has succumbed to his second enemy and will fumble with learning. He will rush when he should be patient, or he will be patient when he should rush. And he will fumble with learning until he winds up incapable of learning anything more.’

‘What becomes of a man who is defeated in that way, don Juan? Does he die as a result?’

‘No, he doesn’t die. His second enemy has just stopped him cold from trying to become a man of knowledge; instead, the man may turn into a buoyant warrior, or a clown. Yet the clarity for which he has paid so dearly will never change to darkness and fear again. He will be clear as long as he lives, but he will no longer learn, or yearn for, anything.’

‘But what does he have to do to avoid being defeated?’

‘He must do what he did with fear : he must defy his clarity and use it only to see, and wait patiently and measure carefully before taking new steps; he must think, above all, that his clarity is almost a mistake. And a moment will come when he will understand that his clarity was only a point before his eyes, And thus he will have overcome his second enemy, and will arrive at a position where nothing can harm him any more. This will not be a mistake. It will not be only a point before his eyes. It will be true power.

‘He will know at this point that the power he has been pursuing for so long is finally his. He can do with it whatever he pleases. His ally is at his command. His wish is the rule. He sees all that is around him. But he has also come across his third enemy : Power!

‘Power is the strongest of all enemies. And naturally the easiest thing to do is to give in; after all, the man is truly invincible. He commands; he begins by taking calculated risks, and ends in making rules, because he is a master.

‘A man at this stage hardly notices his third enemy closing in on him. And suddenly, without knowing, he will certainly have lost the battle. His enemy will have turned him into a cruel, capricious man.’

‘Will he lose his power?’

‘No, he will never lose his clarity or his power.’

‘What then will distinguish him from a man of knowledge?’

‘A man who is defeated by power dies without really knowing how to handle it. Power is only a burden upon his fate. Such a man has no command over himself, and cannot tell when or how to use his power.’

‘Is the defeat by any of these enemies a final defeat?’

‘Of course it is final. Once one of these enemies overpowers a man there is nothing he can do.’

‘Is it possible, for instance, that the man who is defeated by power may see his error and mend his ways?’

‘No. Once a man gives in he is through.’

‘But what if he is temporarily blinded by power, and then refuses it?’

‘That means the battle is still on. That means he is still trying to become a man of knowledge. A man is defeated only when he no longer tries, and abandons himself.’

‘But then, don Juan, it is possible that a man may abandon himself to fear for years, but finally conquer it.’

‘No, that is not true. If he gives in to fear he will never conquer it, he will shy away from learning and never try again. But if he tries to learn for years in the midst of his fear, he will eventually conquer it because he will never have really abandoned himself to it.’

‘How can he defeat his third enemy, don Juan?’

‘He has to defy it, deliberately. He has to come to realize the power he has seemingly conquered is in reality never his. He must keep himself in line at all times, handling carefully and faithfully all that he has learned. If he can see that clarity and power, without his control over himself, are worse than mistakes, he will reach a point where everything is held in check. He will know then when and how to use his power. And thus he will have defeated his third enemy.

‘The man will be, by then, at the end of his journey of learning, and almost without warning he will come upon the last of his enemies : Old age! This enemy is the cruelest of all, the one he won’t be able to defeat completely, but only fight away.

‘This is the time when a man has no more fears, no more impatient clarity of mind – a time when all his power is in check, but also the time when he has an unyielding desire to rest. If he gives in totally to his desire to lie down and forget, if he soothes himself in tiredness, he will have lost his last round, and his enemy will cut him down into a feeble old creature. His desire to retreat will overrule all his clarity, his power, and his knowledge.

‘But if the man sloughs off his tiredness, and lives his fate through, he can then be called a man of knowledge, if only for a brief moment when he succeeds in fighting off his last, invincible enemy. That moment of clarity, power, and knowledge is enough.”

Carlos Castaneda. The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge3

 

1/ Anon. “Bitumen,” on Wikipedia [Online] Cited 02/10/2010

2/ Anon. “Kōan,” on Wikipedia [Online] Cited 02/10/2010

3/ Castaneda, Carlos. The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. London: Arkana Books, 1968, pp. 84-87

 

 

John Davis (Australia 1936-99) 'Nine through five' 1971 from the exhibition 'John Davis: Presence' at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Melbourne, Aug - Oct 2010

 

John Davis (Australian, 1936-1999)
Nine through five
1971
Fibreglass, masonite, chipboard and enamel paint
(5 boxes) 30.8 x 33.4 x 40.4cm each
Newcastle Region Art Gallery, Newcastle
Gift of Marlene Creaser through the Taxation Incentives for the Arts Scheme, 1983
Photo: Dean Beletich
© Penelope Davis & Martin Davis. Administered by VISCOPY, Australia

 

John Davis (Australian, 1936-1999) 'Evolution of a fish: Traveller' 1990 from the exhibition 'John Davis: Presence' at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Melbourne, Aug - Oct 2010

 

John Davis (Australian, 1936-1999)
Evolution of a fish: Traveller
1990
Twigs, cotton thread, calico, bituminous paint
110 x 130 x 18cm
Private collection, Melbourne
© Penelope Davis & Martin Davis. Administered by VISCOPY, Australia

 

John Davis (Australian, 1936-1999) 'Nomad' 1998 (detail)

 

John Davis (Australian, 1936-1999)
Nomad (detail)
1998
Twigs, cotton thread, calico, bituminous paint
(1-150) 163 x 1400 x 18cm (variable) (installation)
Private collection, Melbourne
© Penelope Davis & Martin Davis. Administered by VISCOPY, Australia

 

John Davis (Australian, 1936-1999) 'Journey extended' 1982

 

John Davis (Australian, 1936-1999)
Journey extended
1982
Wood, twigs, calico, bituminous paint, paper, adhesive, cotton thread
(a-b) 35 x 60 x 610cm (installation)
Private collection, Melbourne
© Penelope Davis & Martin Davis. Administered by VISCOPY, Australia

 

John Davis (Australian, 1936-1999) 'Collection 128' 1996

 

John Davis (Australian, 1936-1999)
Collection 128
1996
Twigs, cotton thread, calico
107 x 65 x 13cm
Private collection, Melbourne
© Penelope Davis & Martin Davis. Administered by VISCOPY, Australia

 

John Davis (Australian, 1936-1999) '(Spotted fish)' 1989

 

John Davis (Australian, 1936-1999)
(Spotted fish)
1989
Twigs, cotton thread, calico, bituminous paint
55 x 145 x 30cm
Private collection, Melbourne
© Penelope Davis & Martin Davis. Administered by VISCOPY, Australia

 

John Davis (Australia 1936-99) 'Fish and pebbles: I think the earth is dying' (detail) 1990

 

John Davis (Australian, 1936-1999)
Fish and pebbles: I think the earth is dying (detail)
1990
twigs, cotton thread, calico, bituminous paint
(1-104) 16 x 300 x 200cm (variable) (installation)
Private collection, Melbourne
© Penelope Davis & Martin Davis. Administered by VISCOPY, Australia

 

 

The National Gallery of Victoria has opened John Davis: Presence, celebrating the work of influential Australian artist, John Davis (1936-1999). The exhibition draws together over 40 works by the artist including sculpture, photography and installations.

David Hurlston, Curator, Australian Art, NGV, said this important survey charts Davis’s development as an artist, from his early works, produced during the 1960s, through to his critically acclaimed sculptures and installation works leading into the nineties.

“At the core of his practice, particularly evident in his late works, was an awareness of ecology and a sensitivity to the elemental forces of nature and the effect of human actions. Now, at a time when issues relating to the environment seem more pertinent than ever, Davis’s sculptures have even greater resonance.

“John Davis was a pioneering Australian artist who during his life achieved a critically acclaimed international reputation as a sculptor and installation artist. This important exhibition has a particular focus on the artist’s interest in found and fragile organic materials, and the powerful evocation of the landscape,” said Mr Hurlston.

A highlight of the exhibition is a series of works featuring fish. From the mid 1980s, Davis used fish in his work as a symbol for human movement and relationships with each other and the environment. Davis commonly referred to his fish as ‘nomads’ or ‘travellers’ and once described his works as ‘a metaphor for people and the way we move around the world; a statement for diversity’.

Frances Lindsay, Deputy Director, NGV said: “Davis’s mature works reflected his sensitivity to the landscapes that surrounded him. Visitors will be excited by the vision of this extraordinary artist as they explore his development from the early sixties through to his death in 1999. This exhibition is a special tribute to one of Australia’s great conceptual and environmentally aware artists.”

Born in Ballarat, Victoria, in 1936, John Davis studied at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. In 1972 Davis travelled to Europe and America before returning to Australia the following year to take up a position at Prahran College of Advanced Education. In subsequent years Davis was a senior faculty member at the Victorian College of the Arts and continued to travel widely and exhibit regularly in America, Japan and Australia.

John Davis was awarded a number of prizes, among them the 1970 Comalco Invitation Award for Sculpture and the Blake Prize for Religious Art in 1993. He participated in the inaugural Mildura Sculpture Triennial, and he represented Australia at the Venice Biennale in 1978.  Davis was also the first artist whose work was profiled in the NGV Survey series in 1978.

Text from the National Gallery of Victoria website

 

John Davis (Australia 1936-99) 'Traveller' 1987

 

John Davis (Australian, 1936-1999)
Traveller
1987
Twigs, paper, calico, polyvinyl acetate emulsion, bituminous paint
117 x 130 x 56cm
Collection of Ken and Marian Scarlett, Melbourne
© Penelope Davis & Martin Davis. Administered by VISCOPY, Australia

 

John Davis (Australia 1936-99) '9 conversations (and 81 drawings)' 1996

 

John Davis (Australian, 1936-1999)
9 conversations (and 81 drawings)
1996
Twigs, cotton thread, calico, bituminous paint
124 x 76 x 10cm
Private collection, Melbourne
© Penelope Davis & Martin Davis. Administered by VISCOPY, Australia

 

John Davis c. 1992. Photo: Penelope Davis

 

John Davis
c. 1992
Photo: Penelope Davis

 

John Davis (Australian, 1936-1999) 'Kōan' 1999 (detail)

 

John Davis (Australian, 1936-1999)
Kōan (detail)
1999
Twigs, cotton thread, calico, bituminous paint
(a-l) 20 x 430 x 1086cm (variable) (installation)
Private collection, Melbourne
© Penelope Davis & Martin Davis. Administered by VISCOPY, Australia

 

John Davis (Australian, 1936-1999) 'River' 1998

 

John Davis (Australian, 1936-1999)
River
1998
Twigs, cotton thread, calico, bituminous paint
(a-l) 300 x 1070 x 90cm (variable) (installation)
Private collection, Melbourne
© Penelope Davis & Martin Davis. Administered by VISCOPY, Australia

 

 

The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia
Federation Square
Corner of Russell and 
Flinders Streets, Melbourne

Opening hours:
Daily 10am – 5pm

National Gallery of Victoria website

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Review: ‘Mari Funaki: Objects’ at the Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 6th August – 24th October 2010

Curator: Jane Devery, Acting Curator of Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Victoria

 

Mari Funaki (born Japan 1950, arrived Australia 1979, died 2010) 'Object' 2008 from the exhibition 'Mari Funaki: Objects' at the Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Melbourne, Aug - Oct 2010

 

Mari Funaki (born Japan 1950, arrived Australia 1979, died 2010)
Object
2008
Heat-coloured mild steel
20 x 28 x 5cm
Collection of Raphy Star, Melbourne
© The Estate of Mari Funaki

 

Mari Funaki (born Japan 1950, arrived Australia 1979, died 2010) 'Container' 2008 from the exhibition 'Mari Funaki: Objects' at the Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Melbourne, Aug - Oct 2010

 

Mari Funaki (born Japan 1950, arrived Australia 1979, died 2010)
Container
2008
heat-coloured mild steel
(a–c) 21.3 x 40.5 x 8.5cm (overall)
Private collection, Melbourne
© The Estate of Mari Funaki

 

Mari Funaki (born Japan 1950, arrived Australia 1979, died 2010) 'Container' 2008 from the exhibition 'Mari Funaki: Objects' at the Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Melbourne, Aug - Oct 2010

 

Mari Funaki (born Japan 1950, arrived Australia 1979, died 2010)
Container
2008
heat-coloured mild steel
4.8 x 16.0 x 15.5cm
Private Collection, Melbourne
© The Estate of Mari Funaki

 

Mari Funaki (born Japan 1950, arrived Australia 1979, died 2010) 'Object' 2008 from the exhibition 'Mari Funaki: Objects' at the Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Melbourne, Aug - Oct 2010

 

Mari Funaki (born Japan 1950, arrived Australia 1979, died 2010)
Object
2008
heat-coloured mild steel
20 x 28 x 5cm
Collection of Raphy Star, Melbourne
© The Estate of Mari Funaki

 

 

Let us drop away all interpretation and look at the thing in itself.
The literal feeling of standing before these objects.

 

Form

Balance

Colour

Surface

Precision

Will

Style

Silence

 

Quiet, precise work.

Forms of insect-like legs and proboscises.

They balance, seeming to almost teeter on the edge – but the objects are incredibly grounded at the same time. As you walk into the darkened gallery and observe these creatures you feel this pull – lightness and weight. Fantastic!

The surfaces, sublime matt grey colour and precision of their manufacture, add to this sense of the ineffable. These are not mere renderings of content, but expressions of things that cannot be said.

Sontag observes, “Art is the objectifying of the will in a thing or performance, and the provoking or arousing of the will … Style is the principle of decision in a work of art, the signature of the artist’s will.”1

Sontag insightfully notes, “The most potent elements in a work of art are, often, its silences.”2


And so it came to pass in silence, for these works are still, quiet and have a quality of the presence of the inexpressible.

Funaki achieves these incredible silences through being true to her self and her style through an expression of her endearing will.

While Mari may no longer be amongst us, as expressions of her will the silences of these objects will be forever with us.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

 

1/ Sontag, Susan. “On Style,” in Against Interpretation and Other Essays. New York: Delta Book, 1966, pp. 31-32.

2/ Ibid., p. 36.


Many thanxk to Alison Murray, Jemma Altmeier and 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. All individual photographs of work by Jeremy Dillon.

 

 

'Mari Funaki: Objects' installation shot on opening night at NGV Australia

'Mari Funaki: Objects' installation shot on opening night at NGV Australia

'Mari Funaki: Objects' installation shot on opening night at NGV Australia

 

Mari Funaki: Objects installation shots on opening night at NGV Australia
Photos: © Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Opening 6 August, the National Gallery of Victoria will present Mari Funaki: Objects, an exhibition showcasing a range of sculptural objects by the renowned contemporary jeweller and metalsmith, Mari Funaki (1950-2010).

This exhibition will present a selection of Funaki’s distinctive objects, dating from the late 1990s to 2010 including four recent large scale sculptures. The artist was working on the exhibition right up until the time of her recent death.

Jane Devery, Acting Curator, Contemporary Art, NGV said: “It was a great privilege to work with Mari Funaki on this exhibition. She possessed a clarity of vision and a capacity for ongoing invention that is rare among artists. Funaki produced some of the most captivating works in the field of contemporary jewellery and metalwork. Her unique geometric objects, meticulously constructed from blackened mild-steel, stemmed from a desire to express the world around her.”

“Funaki was interested in the expressive and associative capacities of her objects, creating forms that might stir our imaginations or trigger something from our memories. It has been particularly thrilling to see her extend these concerns in large scale works,” said Ms Devery. In 1979 Funaki left her home in Japan for Melbourne where she pursued her creative ambitions, enrolling in Gold and Silversmithing at RMIT in the late 1980s. At RMIT she studied under the prominent jewellers Marian Hosking, Robert Baines and Carlier Makigawa.

In 1995, Mari Funaki established Gallery Funaki in Melbourne’s CBD which remains Australia’s most important space dedicated to contemporary jewellery. Throughout her career she exhibited widely within Australia and overseas and won many awards, twice winning the prestigious Herbert Hoffman prize in Munich. In 2007 she was awarded an Australian Council Emeritus Award for her work as an artist and for her success in promoting Australian and international contemporary jewellery.

Frances Lindsay, Deputy Director, NGV said: “The NGV is delighted to exhibit many never-before-seen works by such an innovative and celebrated Melbourne artist. The exquisite objects assembled in this exhibition allow us to appreciate Mari Funaki’s remarkable artistic achievements.”

Mari Funaki: Objects will be on display at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Federation Square from 6 August to 24 October, 2010. The exhibition will be open from 10am-5pm. Closed Mondays. Entry is free.

Press release from the National Gallery of Victoria website

 

Mari Funaki (born Japan 1950, arrived Australia 1979, died 2010) 'Object' 2008

 

Mari Funaki (born Japan 1950, arrived Australia 1979, died 2010)
Object
2008
Heat-coloured mild steel
36.0 x 47.5 x 14.5cm
Collection of Johannes Hartfuss & Fabian Jungbeck, Melbourne
© The Estate of Mari Funaki

 

Mari Funaki (born Japan 1950, arrived Australia 1979, died 2010) 'Container' 2006

 

Mari Funaki (born Japan 1950, arrived Australia 1979, died 2010)
Container
2006
Heat-coloured mild steel
26.0 x 8.5 x 6.0cm
Collection of Peter and Jennifer McMahon, Melbourne
© The Estate of Mari Funaki

 

Mari Funaki (born Japan 1950, arrived Australia 1979, died 2010) 'Object' 2010

 

Mari Funaki (born Japan 1950, arrived Australia 1979, died 2010)
Object
2010
Heat-coloured mild steel
30 x 19 x 20.5cm
Collection of the Estate of Mari Funaki, Melbourne
© The Estate of Mari Funaki

 

Mari Funaki (born Japan 1950, arrived Australia 1979, died 2010) 'Object' 2010

 

Mari Funaki (born Japan 1950, arrived Australia 1979, died 2010)
Object
2010
heat-coloured mild steel
45.0 x 52.0 3.5cm
Collection of the Estate of Mari Funaki, Melbourne
© The Estate of Mari Funaki

 

Mari Funaki (born Japan 1950, arrived Australia 1979, died 2010) 'Object' 2010

 

Mari Funaki (born Japan 1950, arrived Australia 1979, died 2010)
Object
2010
heat-coloured mild steel
12 x 44 x 14cm
Collection of the Estate of Mari Funaki, Melbourne
© The Estate of Mari Funaki

 

 

The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia
Federation Square
Corner of Russell and 
Flinders Streets, Melbourne

Opening hours:
Daily 10am – 5pm

National Gallery of Victoria website

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Review: ‘Pat Brassington’ at Arc One Gallery, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 24th August – 18th September, 2010

Curator: the artist

 

Pat Brassington (Australian, b. 1942) 'Camouflage' 2010 from the exhibition 'Pat Brassington' at Arc One Gallery, Melbourne, Sun - Sept, 2010

 

Pat Brassington (Australian, b. 1942)
Camouflage
2010

 

 

I have a critically ambivalent attitude towards the work of artist Pat Brassington. While the exhibition at Arc One Gallery in Melbourne contains some wonderful ‘images’ her work never seems to move me in an emotional sense. What it does do admirably is constantly engage me in cerebral jousting and sensory debate. Intellectually and visually I find the images stimulating, emotionally I am left a little bit cold.

Brassington’s sometimes fetishistic collage-like digital photographs occupy ambiguous spaces – fascinating ‘other’ worlds, constructed worlds that disturb and delight, drawing the viewer into subjective judgements on what, exactly, they are seeing. Brassington doesn’t need to speak about her work, much like Bill Henson never speaks about his work, because the viewer does that for her and that is the point – Brassington lets the viewer construct the story, a story that is open to multiple viewpoints and interpretations.

To see the work as just “surrealist” is to do it a disservice for it is much more than that.

Of course the work uses various surrealist tropes but the power of these images is in setting up psychological encounters that are often bizarre, confronting and disturbing at a deeper level than just surface juxtapositions. These images seem to haunt you long after you have seen them. Using a limited colour palette of washed out purples, greys, yellows and pinks with a hit of red or blue where applicable (only once a green, never any solid, bright, strong colours) Brassington’s work keeps repeating objects and themes throughout the years – the dress, fish, gloves, hands, legs and the sensual mouth – to “evoke uneasy tensions between bizarre, sinister intimations of menace and weirdly beautiful, benign harmonies.” (Diane Foster).

In these new images the lascivious tongue is camouflaged, a woman marches determinedly and blindly over a hill, a child is wrapped and taped, two sateen gloves emanate and a boy breathes life into the sea (or is it the other way around, or is the boy destroying the sea through his breath?).

The paradoxes are beautifully enacted and always challenging and that is the strength of the work of Brassington – offering us, the viewer, no easy way out as we stare at the red ribbons in a girl’s hair.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thank to Angela Connor and all at Arc One Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. All images © and courtesy of the artist and Arc One Gallery.

 

 

Pat Brassington. 'Ocean Child' 2009 from the exhibition 'Pat Brassington' at Arc One Gallery, Melbourne, Sun - Sept, 2010

 

Pat Brassington (Australian, b. 1942)
Ocean Child
2009

 

Pat Brassington. 'Like A Bird Now' 2010 from the exhibition 'Pat Brassington' at Arc One Gallery, Melbourne, Sun - Sept, 2010

 

Pat Brassington (Australian, b. 1942)
Like A Bird Now
2010

 

Pat Brassington (Australian, b. 1942) 'In Lieu' 2010 from the exhibition 'Pat Brassington' at Arc One Gallery, Melbourne, Sun - Sept, 2010

 

Pat Brassington (Australian, b. 1942)
In Lieu
2010

 

Pat Brassington (Australian, b. 1942) 'Sensors' 2010

 

Pat Brassington (Australian, b. 1942)
Sensors
2010

 

Pat Brassington (Australian, b. 1942) 'Radar' 2009

 

Pat Brassington (Australian, b. 1942)
Radar
2009

 

Pat Brassington (Australian, b. 1942) 'Double Vision' 2010

 

Pat Brassington (Australian, b. 1942)
Double Vision
2010

 

Pat Brassington (Australian, b. 1942) 'By the Way' 2010

 

Pat Brassington (Australian, b. 1942)
By the Way
2010

 

Pat Brassington (Australian, b. 1942) 'Stare' 2009

 

Pat Brassington (Australian, b. 1942)
Stare
2009

 

 

Arc One Gallery
45 Flinders Lane
Melbourne, 3000
Phone: (03) 9650 0589

Opening hours:
Wednesday – Saturday 11am – 5pm

Arc One Gallery website

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Review: ‘Night’s Plutonian Shore’ by Julia deVille at Sophie Gannon Gallery, Richmond

Exhibition dates: 28th July – 21st August, 2010

Curator: the artist

 

Installation view of 'Night's Plutonian Shore' by Julia deVille at Sophie Gannon Gallery, Richmond

 

Installation view of Night’s Plutonian Shore by Julia deVille at Sophie Gannon Gallery, Richmond
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

This is an excellent exhibition by Julia deVille at Sophie Gannon Gallery in Richmond.

Compared to last year’s ‘shock and paw’ exhibition Cineraria reviewed on this archive, this exhibition shows a commendable sense of restraint, a beautiful rise and fall in the work as you walk around the gallery space (with the exhibits displayed on different types and heights of stand) and a greater thematic development of the conceptual ideas within the work.

There are some exquisite pieces.

From the bejewelled Golden Gosling (2010), the goose that wears the gold not lays it, to the cute stillborn fawn Lenore (2010) – named after Edgar Allan Poe’s poem of the same name that discusses “the proper decorum in the wake of the death of a young woman, described as “the queenliest dead that ever died so young”” (Wikipedia text) – there is a delicacy to these sculptures that seemed absent in the last exhibition.

The sleeping fawn wears a little golden bridle and is covered in golden hearts, the harness bringing in the element of control (of life, of death, of the body, of identity) into the pieces not seen in the earlier work. This sense of control is reinforced in other pieces in the exhibition including the three pieces Charon (2010), Nevermore (2010) and Kitten drawn hearse (2010, see photographs below).

In Charon the kitten has an amazing beaded saddle and stirrups to allow the occupant to control the dead stead because in Greek mythology Charon is the ferryman who carries the souls of the newly deceased across the river Styx. Nevermore also features the saddle and bridle whilst the standout piece of the whole exhibition, Kitten drawn hearse just wows you with it’s delicacy and showmanship – the plume atop the harnessed kitten’s head faithfully replicating the dressage of a Victorian horse drawn funeral cortege.

In these pieces there is a simplification of the noise of the earlier works and in this simplification a conversant intensification of the layering of the conceptual ideas. Playful and witty the layers can be peeled back to reveal the poetry of de Sade, the stories of Greek mythology and the amplification of life force that is at the heart of these works.

Good stuff.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thankx to Edwin and Sophie Gannon Gallery for allowing me publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Another well considered response to the exhibition can be found on Karen Thompson’s Melbourne Jeweller blog.

 

 

Julia deVille (Australian, b. 1982) 'Nameless here for evermore' 2010 from the exhibition 'Night's Plutonian Shore' by Julia deVille at Sophie Gannon Gallery, Richmond, July - August, 2010

 

Julia deVille (Australian, b. 1982)
Nameless here for evermore
2010
Emu egg, black garnet beads, sterling silver, bronze, enamel paint, egret feathers
31 x 16 x 16cm
Courtesy Sophie Gannon Gallery

 

Julia deVille (Australian, b. 1982) 'Golden Gosling' 2010 from the exhibition 'Night's Plutonian Shore' by Julia deVille at Sophie Gannon Gallery, Richmond, July- August, 2010

 

Julia deVille (Australian, b. 1982)
Golden Gosling
2010

 

Julia deVille (Australian, b. 1982) 'Ghastly grim and ancient raven' 2010 from the exhibition 'Night's Plutonian Shore' by Julia deVille at Sophie Gannon Gallery, Richmond, July- August, 2010

 

Julia deVille (Australian, b. 1982)
Ghastly grim and ancient raven
2010

 

Julia deVille (Australian, b. 1982) 'Nevermore' 2010 from the exhibition 'Night's Plutonian Shore' by Julia deVille at Sophie Gannon Gallery, Richmond, July - August, 2010

 

Julia deVille (Australian, b. 1982)
Nevermore
2010
Still-born fawn, black garnet beads, sterling silver, coque feathers, chain mail, glass
27 x 41 x 59cm
Courtesy Sophie Gannon Gallery

 

Julia deVille (Australian, b. 1982) 'Charon' 2010

 

Julia deVille (Australian, b. 1982)
Charon
2010
Kitten, hematite beads, mystic spinel beads, sterling silver, chain mail, glass
30 x 12 x 19cm
Courtesy Sophie Gannon Gallery

 

Julia deVille (Australian, b. 1982) 'Lenore' 2010

 

Julia deVille (Australian, b. 1982)
Lenore
2010
Stillborn fawn, black garnet beads, sterling silver, gold plate, glass
35 x 17 x 12cm
Courtesy Sophie Gannon Gallery

 

Julia deVille (Australian, b. 1982) 'Kitten drawn hearse' 2010

 

Julia deVille (Australian, b. 1982)
Kitten drawn hearse
2010
Kitten, black garnet beads, sterling silver, egret feathers, wood, glass
83 x 30 x 15cm
Courtesy Sophie Gannon Gallery

 

Julia deVille (Australian, b. 1982) 'Bird or beast' 2010

 

Julia deVille (Australian, b. 1982)
Bird or beast
2010
Ostrich skeleton, ostrich feathers, smoky quartz, sterling silver, leather and wood
Courtesy Sophie Gannon Gallery

 

 

Sophie Gannon Gallery
2, Albert Street, Richmond, Melbourne

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Saturday 11am – 5pm

Sophie Gannon Gallery website

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Exhibition: ‘Robert Mapplethorpe’ at NRW-Forum Dusseldorf

Exhibition dates: 6th February – 15th August, 2010

Curator: Werner Lippert

 

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989) 'Phillip Prioleau' 1980 from the exhibition 'Robert Mapplethorpe' at NRW-Forum Dusseldorf, Feb - August, 2010

 

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989)
Phillip Prioleau
1980
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation
Used by permission

 

 

Robert Mapplethorpe was a classical photographer with a great eye for form and beauty, an artist who explored the worlds he knew and lived (homosexuality, sadomasochistic practices, desire for black men) with keen observations into the manifestations of their existence, insights that are only shocking to those who have never been exposed to these worlds.

If we observe that our history is written as a series of interpretive shifts then perhaps we can further articulate that the development of an artist’s career is a series of interpretations, an “investigation into the events that have led us to constitute ourselves and to recognise ourselves as subjects of what we are doing, thinking, saying.”1 Mapplethorpe was such an artist.

The early work is gritty and raw, exposing audiences to sexuality and the body as catalyst for social change, photographs the “general public” had never seen before. Early photographs such as the sequence of photographs Charles and Jim (1974) feature ‘natural’ bodies – hairy, scrawny, thin – in close physical proximity with each other, engaged in gay sex. There is a tenderness and affection to the sequence as the couple undress, suck, kiss and embrace.

At the same time that Mapplethorpe was photographing the first of his black nudes (Mapplethorpe’s photographs of black men come from a lineage that can be traced back to Fred Holland Day who also photographed black men), he was also portraying acts of sexual progressiveness in his photographs of the gay S/M scene. In these photographs the bodies are usually shielded from scrutiny by leather and rubber but are revealing of the intentions and personalities of the people depicted in them, perhaps because Mapplethorpe was taking part in these activities himself as well as depicting them. There is a sense of connection with the people and the situations that occur before his lens in the S/M photographs.

As time progresses the work becomes more about surfaces and form, about the polished perfection of the body, about that exquisite corpse, the form of the flower. Later work is usually staged against a contextless background (see photographs below) as though the artefacts have no grounding in reality, only desire. Bodies are dissected, cut up into manageable pieces – the objectified body.

Mapplethorpe liked to view the body cut up into different libidinal zones much as in the reclaimed artefacts of classical sculpture. The viewer is seduced by the sensuous nature of the bodies’ surfaces, the body objectified for the viewer’s pleasure. The photographs reveal very little of the inner self of the person being photographed. The named body is placed on a pedestal (see photograph of Phillip Prioleau (1980) below) much as a trophy or a vase of flowers.

I believe this isolation, this objectivity is one of the major criticisms of most of Mapplethorpe’s later photographs of the body – they reveal very little of the sitter only the clarity of perfect formalised beauty and aesthetic design. While this criticism is pertinent it still does not deny the power of these images. Anyone who saw the retrospective of his work at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney in 1995 can attest to the overwhelming presence of his work when seen in the flesh (so to speak!).

Mapplethorpe’s body of work hangs from a single thread: an inquisitive mind undertaking an investigation into the condition of the world’s becoming.

His last works, when he knew he was dying, are as moving for any gay man who has lost friends over the years to HIV/AIDS as anything on record, are as moving for any human being that faces the evidence of their own mortality.

Fearless to the last, never afraid to express who he was, how he felt and what he saw, Mapplethorpe will long be remembered in the annals of visual art.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

 

1/ Foucault, Michel. “What is Enlightenment?,” trans. C. Porter in Rabinow, Paul (ed.,). The Essential Works of Michel Foucualt, 1954-1984. Vol.1. New York: New Press, 1997, p. 315.


Many thankx to NRW-Forum Dusseldorf for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

Robert Mapplethorpe. 'Parrot Tulips' 1988 from the exhibition 'Robert Mapplethorpe' at NRW-Forum Dusseldorf, Feb - August, 2010

 

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989)
Parrot Tulips
1988
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation
Used by permission

 

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989) 'Ajitto' 1981 from the exhibition 'Robert Mapplethorpe' at NRW-Forum Dusseldorf, Feb - August, 2010

 

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989)
Ajitto
1981
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation
Used by permission

 

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989) 'David Hockney' 1976 © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission

 

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989)
David Hockney
1976
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation
Used by permission

 

 

Robert Mapplethorpe, who was born in 1946 and passed away in 1989, is one of the few artists who truly deserve to be known far beyond the borders of the art world. Mapplethorpe dominated photography in the late twentieth century and paved the way for the recognition of photography as an art form in its own right; he firmly anchored the subject of homosexuality in mass culture and created a classic photographic image, mostly of male bodies, which found its way into commercial photography.

In 2010, the NRW-Forum in Düsseldorf will organise a major retrospective of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs. His work was first shown in Germany in 1977 as part of documenta 6 in Kassel and then in a European solo exhibition in 1981 with German venues in Frankfurt, Hamburg and Munich. In addition to various museum and gallery exhibitions the largest museum exhibition in Germany of Mapplethorpe’s work took place in 1997 when the worldwide Mapplethorpe retrospective, which opened at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, traveled to the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart. The last time Robert Mapplethorpe’s works were shown in Düsseldorf was in the exhibition ‘Mapplethorpe versus Rodin’ at the Kunsthalle in 1992.

Both during his life and since his death, Mapplethorpe’s work has been the subject of much controversial debate, particularly in the USA. Right up until the end of the twentieth century, exhibitions of his photographs were sometimes boycotted, censured, or in one case cancelled. His radical portrayals of nudity and sexual acts were always controversial; his photos of sadomasochistic practices in particular caused a stir and frequently resulted in protests outside exhibitions and in one instance, a lawsuits was brought against a museum director.

In 2008, the Supreme Court in Japan ruled that Mapplethorpe’s erotic images did not contravene the country’s ban on pornography and released a volume of his photographs that had been seized and held for over eight years. As far as the American critic Arthur C. Danto was concerned, Mapplethorpe created ‘some of the most shocking and indeed some of the most dangerous images in modern photography, or even in the history of art.’

In Germany, on the other hand, Mapplethorpe’s photographs were part of the ‘aesthetic socialisation’ of the generations that grew up in the 1980s and early 1990s. Lisa Ortgioes, the presenter of the German women’s television programme frau tv, notes that during this time, Mapplethorpe’s photos were sold as posters; his ‘black’ portraits in particular being a regular feature on the walls of student bedrooms at the time.

The curator of the exhibition, Werner Lippert, is quick to point out that ‘this exhibition needs no justification. Mapplethorpe was quite simply and unquestionably one of the most important photographers of the twentieth century. It is an artistic necessity.’

The exhibition in the NRW-Forum covers all areas of Mapplethorpe’s work, from portraits and self-portraits, homosexuality, nudes, flowers and the quintessence of his oeuvre the photographic images of sculptures, including early Polaroids. The photographs are arranged according to themes such as ‘self portraits’, which includes the infamous shot of him with a bullwhip inserted in his anus, as well as his almost poetic portraits of his muse, Patti Smith, the photographs of black men versus white women, the body builder Lisa Lyon, the juxtaposition of penises and flowers (which Mapplethorpe himself commented on in an interview: ‘… I’ve tried to juxtapose a flower, then a picture of a cock, then a portrait, so that you could see they were the same’), and finally those images of classical beauty based on renaissance sculptures, and impressive portraits of children and celebrities of the day.

Despite the obvious references to the Renaissance idea of what constitutes ideal beauty and the history of photography from Wilhelm von Gloeden to Man Ray, this exhibition shows Robert Mapplethorpe as an artist who is firmly anchored is his era; his contemporaries are Andy Warhol and Brice Marden; Polaroids were the medium of choice in the 1970s, and the focus on the body and sexuality was, at the time, for many artists like Vito Acconci or Bruce Nauman a theme that was key to social change. Above all, Robert Mapplethorpe developed his own photographic style that paid homage to the ideals of perfection and form. ‘I look for the perfection of form. I do this in portraits, in photographs of penises, in photographs of flowers.’ The fact that the photographs are displayed on snow-white walls underpins this view of his work and consciously moves away from the coy Boudoir-style presentation of his photographs on lilac and purple walls a dominant feature of exhibitions of Mapplethorpe’s work for many years and opens up the work to a more concept-based, minimalist view of things.

The selection of over 150 photographs covers early Polaroids from 1973 to his final self-portraits from the year 1988, which show how marked he was by illness and hint at his impending death, and also includes both many well-known, almost iconic images as well as some never-before seen or rarely shown works. The curators delved deep into the collection of the New York-based Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to create this retrospective.

Press release from the NRW-Forum Dusseldorf website [Online] Cited 02/08/2010 no longer available online

 

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989) 'Greg Cauley-Cock' 1980 © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission

 

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989)
Greg Cauley-Cock
1980
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation
Used by permission

 

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989) 'Patti Smith' 1975 © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission

 

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989)
Patti Smith
1975
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation
Used by permission

 

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989) 'Lowell Smith' 1981 © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission

 

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989)
Lowell Smith
1981
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation
Used by permission

 

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989) 'Thomas' 1987 © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission

 

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989)
Thomas
1987
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation
Used by permission

 

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989) 'Self Portrait' 1988 © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission

 

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989)
Self Portrait
1988
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation
Used by permission

 

 

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Phone: +49 (0)211 – 89 266 90

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Review: ‘Warrina Portraits’ by Ewen Ross at Anita Traverso Gallery, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 14th July – 8th August, 2010

Curator: the artist

 

Ewen Ross (Australian, b. 1957) 'Plain of Mars' 2010 from the exhibition 'Warrina Portraits' by Ewen Ross at Anita Traverso Gallery, Melbourne, July - August, 2010

 

Ewen Ross (Australian, b. 1957)
Plain of Mars
2010
from the Warrina Portraits series

 

 

There is little more to say about this exhibition of works by Ewen Ross than the erudite catalogue essay by Geraldine Barlow enunciates (see essay below), except to say that the ‘presence’ of these works is extremely moving. It is difficult when viewing photographs of the work to explain the physical impact of actually standing in front of these works, absorbing their energy, examining their surfaces, their depths.

The larger photograph of Thenar Eminence (2010, below) is the closest one can get in the virtual world to appreciating the elemental quality of the work – the fire, the fragmentation and the soil, the contour-like mapping of the earth – as the work resembles a memory of earth, of place, re(as)sembles a signification, a meaning wholly of its own in the mind of the viewer. In the spectator the act of looking may turn into contemplation and this work does seem to have that effect = the context of looking at the work invites a contemplation on place and connection to earth.

Barlow asks. “Is this matter, or its coded representation? Ross sets up a liquid movement between such possibilities.”

Ross does indeed set up a liquid movement between matter and representation. But here I would offer a counterargument to the idea that matter and coded representation are binary opposites. As noted by Judith Butler in the excellent quotation below, matter is already meaningful, already coded and materialised. It always has a history and narrativisation embedded within it. Butler suggests the body is never a valueless matter on which inscription takes place because this hides the inscription already there.

Continuing this idea, Ross brings matter back into the fold, into the peeled away surfaces of his work. His process of materialisation offers these liquid movements not through an oppositional relationship between matter and coded representation but because a) his works are no longer anchored in an unquestionable reality and b) they have moved beyond coded representation. Ross reconceptualises both space and matter in his objects of place and invites us, the viewer, to contemplate these (e)motional environments.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thankx to Anita from Anita Traverso Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting and to Geraldine Barlow for allowing me to publish the catalogue essay, all very much appreciated. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

Body and Text

“Judith Butler has done much to interrogate and upset the assumes inside / outside binary of culture and nature, and has shown that what is called matter, and therefore presumed to be extra-discursive, is already meaningful. In her book entitled Bodies That Matter (1993) she argues that matter is already materialized, that is, it always has a history, is always narrativized. Any reference to matter will always be a particular formation of materiality that has been discursively set. Matter, nature or the body is never an absolute outside but is rather a constitutive outside that generates the significance of an interiority, culture or law. It is an outside that gives the inside its meaning and is, therefore, already textualized and incorporated within the oppositional space in which signification takes place. For Butler, the suggestion that the body is the valueless matter on which inscription takes place hides the inscription already there … Bringing matter back into the fold of inscription increases the manoeuvrability of political activism as it is no longer anchored by an unquestionable reality, the fixity of which is only secured by continual iteration of the norms attributed to it. ‘I would propose’, Butler argues, ‘a return to the notion of matter as a process of materialization that stabilizes over time to produce effects of boundary, fixity, and surface we call matter’ (Butler 1993: 9).

A useful analogy for this lack of fixity might be the reconceptualization of both space and matter within the new sciences, especially quantum mechanics, where matter, even that which we perceive as rigid or solid, is shown to be permanently in motion, and where the space which gives form to seemingly individual and autonomous objects is now understood to be a less dense area of matter itself.”

Curtis, Neal. “The Body as Outlaw: Lyotard, Kafka, and the Visible Human Project,” in Featherstone, Mike (ed.,). Body Modification. London: Sage, 2000, p. 258.

 

Ewen Ross (Australian, b. 1957) 'Thenar Eminence' 2010 from the exhibition 'Warrina Portraits' by Ewen Ross at Anita Traverso Gallery, Melbourne, July - August, 2010

 

Ewen Ross (Australian, b. 1957)
Thenar Eminence
2010
from the Warrina Portraits series

 

Warrina Portraits

This body of work presents as a suite of portraits, and continues my ambition to track the truth through creative practice. Metaphorically the palm of my left hand symbolises the natural patterns and rhythms of line found in the landscape along the Glenelg River in the Southern Wimmera, with particular reference to the property where I lived (Warrina).

This work presents as part of a portrait series derived solely from my left hand. It continues the story of my search for the truth of my genesis in reference to the property (Warrina) where I was raised. The notion of touching the landscape with an open hand in order to investigate the relationship between landscape and portraiture underpins this image.

The concept of looking down and across this country continues to drive the format of my work as does the idea of using fire to peel back the surface of the plywood which often reveals new and mysterious information to work with. Fire is part of the natural ecosystem and a valuable means of cleansing and regenerating new life and truth into this landscape. This premise remains integral to my practice.

The linear information gleaned from the palmar in theory creates a conduit for bridging the concept of portraiture and landscape. The notion of inlaying the narrative of my palm into the surface to construct an image of landscape underpins this body of work.

The significance of the left hand is relevant to the principle. It is controlled by the right brain (pattern recognition, relationship understanding), reflects the inner person, the natural self, the anima, and the ability to think laterally. It could even be considered to be part of a person’s spiritual and personal development.

It is also said the left hand is the one we are born with, the one the gods give you; the right is what we do it with.

Ironically, of the four descriptors allied with hands, earth, air, fire, and water, my hands are relative to fire.

Ewen Ross July 2010

 

Ewen Ross (Australian, b. 1957) 'Palmar Quartet' 2010 from the exhibition 'Warrina Portraits' by Ewen Ross at Anita Traverso Gallery, Melbourne, July - August, 2010

 

Ewen Ross (Australian, b. 1957)
Palmar Quartet
2010
from the Warrina Portraits series

 

Catalogue essay by Geraldine Barlow

Our palms and fingers each bear unique imprints. The intricate and entwined lines and loops of each palmscape have been generated from within the very core of what makes us individual, our encoded DNA.

“DNA molecules themselves, as physical entities, are like dewdrops. Under the right conditions they come into existence at a great rate, but no one of them has existed for long, and all will be destroyed within a few months. They are not durable like rocks. But the patterns they bear in their sequences are as durable as the hardest rocks.”1.


How should we read the patterned lines of a palm? The art of palmistry promised to decode the connections between this intimate landscape and our life to come. Palmistry is now dismissed as a quaint pseudoscience, yet the palm holds a special resonance, a very special part of the body from which the future might be foretold. Via the fingerprint, and now DNA traces, contemporary technology has developed seeking absolute recognition of each individual. Through our palms and fingers we hold and grip the world, we wield tools and touch those we care for. These interior sensate surfaces of the hand are at the centre of our embodied being in the world.

In his latest body of work Warrina Portraits, Ewen Ross has taken his own palm print as the starting point for a highly personal exploration of the relation between self and place. The furrowed banks of lines and shadows etched into ply sheets do not relay the literal five-fingered imprint of a hand, more a topography of interlaced systems, networks of lines which are at once familiar and strange to us.

In bringing these works into being, Ross has evolved a deliberate and multilayered process of making. He relays a detail of his palm print onto plywood, then channels the resulting lines into the layered timber surface. The finished surface of the ply sheet is then removed, to reveal an entirely new layer, with it’s own character and markings. Filler is applied, dries and the surface is sanded back, many times over. Sometimes further layers of stain or fine in-painting are added. This process involves a constant relay between layers of information, impression and counter-impression. At each stage there is the potential for slippage, opportunities for translation, room for the materials and the process of making to assert themselves. When Ross removes the finished surface of the plywood he welcomes chance into the artistic process, allowing for the planned and entirely unexpected to collide.

In Palmar Trilogy 2010 the mapped tracery of white lines and dark hollows sprawls over a surface of many parts. Various separate pieces of timber have been joined on this layer of the sheet; we can still see the remnants of the glue where the pieces were taped. Two systems of information are in conversation here, jostling against each other. Sometimes the incongruities suggest meaning; at other times they raise a series of questions. Looking at this work, I am reminded of a contour map superimposed onto a satellite image, or a geological survey. I see the echo of a tree branch in the patterns on a sheet of timber, overlaid with something more like an x-ray or a brain scan.

Is this matter, or its coded representation? Ross sets up a liquid movement between such possibilities.

In these works, palm print and wood grain take us into an intimate landscape. For Ross this is a place of memory. Warrina is the name of the Wimmera property where he grew up, where he ploughed the fields as a young man. Like Ross’ previous bodies of work Such is Dry Land, Red Gum Country and The Green Pick, these works speak of an intimate and formative connection with the Wimmera landscape. The artist works into and over ground that is familiar in the measure of his own life, as well as in the lives of previous generations.

Ross is sensitive to the connections of the many past generations associated with this land, stretching back beyond his own family’s history in this country. He works with the surface, but also looks behind it, tearing back the first skin, so that what was embedded in the substrate is now called into dialogue with other marks and textures, highlights and shadows.

In these works the artist’s hand is the model for a series of shimmering, chimera-like patterned imprints, echoes, reflections, templates and coursing sequences of code – allowing us to measure one life against many generations, the transitory against the eternal, our intimate landscape against the widest horizons.”

Geraldine Barlow
Senior Curator/Collection Manager
Monash University Museum of Art / MUMAMelbourne, May 2010

1/ Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, Penguin, London, 2006, p. 127

 

Ewen Ross (Australian, b. 1957) 'Palmar Trilogy' 2010

 

Ewen Ross (Australian, b. 1957)
Palmar Trilogy
2010
from the Warrina Portraits series

 

 

Anita Traverso Gallery
PO Box 7001, Hawthorn North 3122
Phone: 0408 534 034

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Review: ‘Sistagirls’ by Bindi Cole at Nellie Castan Gallery, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 8th July – 31st July, 2010

Curator: the artist

 

Bindi Cole Chocka (Australian, b. 1975) 'Bimbo' 2009 from the exhibition 'Sistagirls' by Bindi Cole at Nellie Castan Gallery, Melbourne, July 2010

 

Bindi Cole Chocka (Australian, b. 1975)
Bimbo
2009

 

 

The exhibition Sistagirls by Bind Cole at Nellie Castan Gallery contains some beautiful photographs and others that are less successful.

The successful portraits are the ones that depict the Sistagirls in a more natural, less stylised way – they are the more interesting photographs. The subjects seem to speak for themselves without restriction, to be not so beholden to the pose that the photographer wishes them to assume and/or the pose they wish to impose on themselves.

For example, the photograph of Jemima (see below) is just stunning in its naturalness and beauty. The two photographs of Crystal and Patricia, where the transgendered person asked to be photographed in traditional body paint with traditional objects are highly successful in their form, composition and in the ability of the photographs to challenge stereotypical notions of Aboriginal culture.

Other portraits are anachronistic and a little try-hard with the misplacing of persons and objects with regard to each other.

The portrait of Bimbo (very top photograph) did not need the two objects placed on the beach next to the person to make it a successful photograph; the portrait of Frederina (below) had enough going on in the photograph without the seemingly gratuitous placement of traditional objects in the background. We get the point and there was really no need to labour it.

One of the problems, of course, of a ‘stylised’ portrait (Bind Cole’s word in her artist statement) is that the portrait can become a double forgery, that of the pose of the person and that of the photographer imposing the style …

” … in a sense, the posed photograph is a kind of forgery, an imposition of an artificial composition before the recording instrument. On the other hand, the photo of a posing subject captures the authenticity of the practice of posing. A version of a person’s image is still an image of that person …

We are confronted with the pose, the conscious composition of the image to be photographed, the inherent constructedness of the posed photograph. Our heretofore implicit faith in the photograph as an evidentiary document is shaken. This is not to imply an outright rejection of photography … the effect is more properly an inducement to engage the document directly, personally, and on its own terms.”1


As noted at the end of the quotation, we, the viewer, must cut through this com-pose-ition to address the document directly. We must cut away the appendages of style and view the person and the photograph on its own terms.

This is why the simpler portraits in the exhibition have so much more power than the overly constructed ones – for they reach for an intangible essence that Cole is seeking by dropping away style and surrendering to the ineffable, a recognition of the lightness and joy in just being.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

 

1/ Feiereisen, Florence and Pope, Daniel. “True Fiction and Fictional Truths: The Enigmatic in Sebald’s Use of Images in The Emigrants,” in Patt, Lise (ed.,). Searching for Sebald: Photography after W.G. Sebald. Los Angeles: The Institute of Cultural Inquiry, 2007, p. 175.


Many thankx to Olivia Poloni and Nellie Castan Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. The permission is most appreciated. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. All photographs © Bind Cole, courtesy of the artist and Nellie Castan Gallery.

 

 

Bindi Cole Chocka (Australian, b. 1975) 'Buffy' 2009 from the exhibition 'Sistagirls' by Bindi Cole at Nellie Castan Gallery, Melbourne, July 2010

 

Bindi Cole Chocka (Australian, b. 1975)
Buffy
2009

 

Bindi Cole Chocka (Australian, b. 1975) 'Crystal' 2009 from the exhibition 'Sistagirls' by Bindi Cole at Nellie Castan Gallery, Melbourne, July 2010

 

Bindi Cole Chocka (Australian, b. 1975)
Crystal
2009

 

Bindi Cole Chocka (Australian, b. 1975) 'Frederina' 2009

 

Bindi Cole Chocka (Australian, b. 1975)
Frederina
2009

 

 

The term ‘Sistagirl’ is used to describe a transgender person in Tiwi Island culture. Traditionally, the term was ‘Yimpininni’. The very existence of the word provides some indication of the inclusive attitudes historically extended towards Aboriginal sexual minorities. Colonisation not only wiped out many indigenous people, it also had an impact on Aboriginal culture and understanding of sexual and gender expression. As Catholicism took hold and many traditions were lost, this term became a thing of the past. Yimpininni were once held in high regard as the nurturers within the family unit and tribe much like the Faafafine from Samoa. As the usage of the term vanished, tribes’ attitudes toward queer indigenous people began to resemble that of the western world and religious right. Even today many Sistergirls are excluded from their own tribes and suffer at the hands of others.

Within a population of around 2500, there are approximately 50 ‘Sistagirls’ living on the Tiwi Islands. This community contains a complex range of dynamics including a hierarchy (a queen Sistergirl), politics, and a significant history of pride and shame. The Sistagirls are isolated yet thriving, unexplored territory with a beauty, strength and diversity to inspire and challenge.

During August and September of 2009, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to spend a month living with the ‘Sistagirls’ on the Tiwi Islands creating a series of highly stylised portraits of them. I loaded a barge with a four wheel drive, lights, a generator, cameras and enough film to fill a suitcase. Each day brought an emotional roller coaster from moments of elation around what was being achieved with the images to complete anxiety from the many dramas that occurred. This time has affected me in a profound way. The ‘Sistagirls’ have touched my heart. I only hope that in some way I have captured the essence of who they are and the spirit of their community. I know that they will always be a part of me and that I will be a regular visitor to Tiwi to visit the ‘Sistagirl’ community for the rest of my life.

Artist statement from the Nellie Castan website [Online] Cited 22/07/2010. No longer available online. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

 

Bindi Cole Chocka (Australian, b. 1975) 'Jemima' 2009

 

Bindi Cole Chocka (Australian, b. 1975)
Jemima
2009

 

Bindi Cole Chocka (Australian, b. 1975) 'Patricia' 2009

 

Bindi Cole Chocka (Australian, b. 1975)
Patricia
2009

 

 

Nellie Castan Gallery

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Review: ‘Simryn Gill: Gathering’ at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 22 April – 18 July, 2010

Curator: Russell Storer (as an exhibition organised by the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia), with additional components at Heide curated by Linda Michael

 

Simryn Gill (Singapore, b. 1959) 'Pearls' 1999 from the exhibition 'Simryn Gill: Gathering' at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, April - July, 2010

 

Simryn Gill (Singapore, b. 1959)
Pearls
1999
Private collection

 

 

This is a strong survey exhibition of the work of Simryn Gill at Heide Museum of Modern Art. Like most survey exhibitions it suffers from a slightly piecemeal approach, dipping in and out of various bodies of work to try to make up a holistic whole. Conceptually this is not a problem as the thematic development of Gill’s work, her narrative arc if you like, is evident throughout. Visually this causes some work to seem isolated and left me wanting more connection between pieces and rooms as you walk around.

Highlights included May 2006 (2006), Pearls (1999 – ongoing), Untitled (interiors) 2008 and Throwback (2007).

In May 2006 (2006) 817 silver gelatin photographs are mounted in columns of images, each column making up one of 30 rolls of film, one shot every day of a month photographing the artist’s immediate neighbourhood in Marrickville, Sydney, in the month in which the film expiration date occurred. Each column has a different number of images and are mounted along the one of the largest walls in the Heide galleries, producing an effect almost like a DNA sequence. Abstract scenes of pathways, fences, cars in streets, broken gutters, planes flying houses, trees, people walking, abandoned telephone directories, Hills hoists, coffee shops, windows, rooftops and factories inhabit the frame of reference – the environment seeming to be abandoned both literally and metaphorically. Empty chairs move from picture to picture. No Parking here!

There are some great angles in these photographs a la Robert Frank The Americans with excellent use of short depth of field shooting across tabletops for example. Above all there is a sense of abandonment, desolation and isolation in the intersection of spaces. Even in strong sunlight there is a strange, haunting melancholy present – an innate understanding of the subconsciously known archetype of space and place, that sense of belonging – and an absolute recognition in the viewer of that.

In Pearls (1999 – ongoing, see photograph above) friends provide Gill with a book of personal value, which she then transforms into beads of paper and then strings them together as necklaces which she then returns to the owner as a gift. The colours, length and heaviness of the necklace depends on the book chosen – the reconstructed text lying like pearls of wisdom against the skin of the giver / receiver, the meaning of the book transformed through the process. What a beautiful gift to receive.

Untitled (interiors)(2008), my second favourite work of the day, features bronze sculptures cast from the empty spaces created by dry cracks in the ground found near Nyngan and Lake George, New South Wales. The sculptures present the cracks inverted so they become like miniature mountain ranges, the cracks in the earth filled and metamorphosing until they thrust into the air, the empty spaces of the earth uplifted, negative / positive spaces interchangeable. This is a simple but beautifully resolved work. Unfortunately I do not have any photographs to show you of these sculptures.

Other work includes My own private Angkor (2007, see photograph above), photographs taken at a housing estate in Port Dickson that is becoming overgrown and returning to the surrounding landscape that Gill has made into her own Angkor Wat in reverse, featuring the detritus of a vanquished, constructed environment; four black and white photographs from Forest (1996) featuring text on leaves; a glass case of curiosities like the Victorian cabinet of curiosities that includes a jar of plastic cowboys and indians, a bowl of Mindanao pearls, found and made spherical objects, cast tin and mango seeds (Some of my best friends suck mangoes, 1998) and different noses of cast tin (Bouquet 1994); Untitled (1998 – ongoing), a glass case full of found and blunt objects arranged like a seismograph recording, small at the ends and big in the centre featuring scissors, clubs, spoons, knives, bottle top openers, tweezers, letter openers and salad servers!; and Paper boats (2008, see photographs below), table and floor covered by paper boats made from the torn out pages of Encyclopedia Britannica 1968 with the invitation to “Please make boats” with no explanation as to how, exactly, to make them – human knowledge as text, detritus, object, place, manufacture and commission.

The absolute star of the exhibition is the installation Throwback (2007, see photographs below). The installation features the interior parts of a Tata truck (the engine and axles) recast in termite mound soils, river clay, laterite, sea shells, fruit skins, coconut bark, resin, and fibre laid on a huge dissecting table (much like the body in Rembrandt’s painting The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Tulp (1632)) – the layout of the engine and axles evoking the spine and interior skeleton of the body. Unfortunately I do not have an overview photograph of the whole work but parts of the work can be seen in the photographs below. The Tata truck spent its working life plying the roads of the forests of Malaysia:

“With the rise of China and India, a voracious market for scrap metal has developed, hastening the disappearance of particular objects, Gill recovers the modern forms of the truck parts by casting them in natural materials found near her studio in Port Dickson.” (Wall text from the exhibition)


This is an outstanding work that left me stunned with its beauty and insightfulness. It literally took my breath away and for that reason alone a visit to this exhibition at Heide is well worth the journey.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thankx to Jade Enge and the Heide Museum of Modern Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

“The work of Simryn Gill considers questions of place and history, and how they might intersect with personal and collection experience … Using objects, language and photographs, her work conveys a deep interest in material culture, and in the ways that meaning can transform and translate in different contexts. Through the reinterpretation or alteration of existing objects, the photographing of specific locations, and the forming of collections, Gill contemplates how ideas and meanings are communicated between people, objects and sites.”


Wall text from the exhibition

 

 

Simryn Gill (Singapore, b. 1959) 'Untitled' 1999 from the exhibition 'Simryn Gill: Gathering' at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, April - July, 2010

 

Simryn Gill (Singapore, b. 1959)
Untitled
1999
Gouache on National Geographic magazine pages (1970s)
Courtesy of the artist, BREENSPACE, Sydney and Tracy Williams Ltd, New York

 

Simryn Gill (Singapore, b. 1959) 'Untitled' 1999 from the exhibition 'Simryn Gill: Gathering' at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, April - July, 2010

 

Simryn Gill (Singapore, b. 1959)
Untitled
1999
Gouache on National Geographic magazine pages (1970s)
Courtesy of the artist, BREENSPACE, Sydney and Tracy Williams Ltd, New York

 

Simryn Gill (Singapore, b. 1959) 'My own private Angkor' 2007

 

Simryn Gill (Singapore, b. 1959)
My own private Angkor
2007
Courtesy of the artist, BREENSPACE, Sydney and Tracy Williams Ltd, New York

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Simryn Gill: Gathering' at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne showing the work 'Throwback' 2007

 

Installation view of the exhibition Simryn Gill: Gathering at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne showing the work Throwback 2007

 

Simryn Gill (Singapore, b. 1959) 'Throwback' 2007 (detail)

 

Simryn Gill (Singapore, b. 1959)
Throwback (detail)
2007
Interior parts of Tata truck, termite mound soil, river clay, laterite, seashells, fruit skins, leaves, bark and fibre, flowers, glue, resin, milk
Buxton Collection Melbourne
Courtesy of the artist

 

Simryn Gill (Singapore, b. 1959) 'Throwback' 2007 (detail)

 

Simryn Gill (Singapore, b. 1959)
Throwback (detail)
2007
Interior parts of Tata truck, termite mound soil, river clay, laterite, seashells, fruit skins, leaves, bark and fibre, flowers, glue, resin, milk
Buxton Collection Melbourne
Courtesy of the artist

 

 

This exhibition (22 April – 18 July) presents the work of leading Sydney-based Malaysian artist, Simryn Gill. Featuring objects, books, collections, photographs and text pieces from the last six years of Gill’s practice, it explores the artist’s pursuit of meaning through materials, forms and ways of working, such as collecting, reading, archiving, arranging, casting and photographing.

Described in 2009 in the New Yorker as ‘quietly dazzling’, Gill’s work is internationally recognised. She has been honoured with solo exhibitions at the Tate Modern, London and the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, both in 2006. Born in Singapore in 1959, Gill lives and works in Sydney and Port Dickson, Malaysia, and has participated in significant exhibitions internationally, including documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany (2007), the Singapore Biennale (2006), the Biennale of Sydney (2002 and 2008), the São Paulo Biennial (2004) and the Venice Biennale (1999).

An MCA touring exhibition curated by Russell Storer, it has been expanded by Heide to include the Australian premiere of Gill’s major work Throwback, originally produced for the documenta 12 exhibition in Kassel, Germany, in 2007. Throwback reworks the inner machinery of a 1985 Tata truck that plied the roads of Malaysia. With the economic rise of China and India, a voracious market for scrap metal has developed, hastening the disappearance of particular objects. Gill recovers the modern forms of truck parts by casting them in natural materials – found near her studio in Malaysia – including river mud, coconut husks, reconstituted termite mounds and fruit skins.

Gill has also produced a new work, an artist’s book reflecting on the gardens at Heide.

Gill’s practice considers how we might experience place as an intersection of personal and collective histories and geographies. Through the reinterpretation or alteration of existing objects, the photographing of specific locations, and the forming of collections, Gill contemplates how ideas and meanings are communicated between people, objects, and sites.

Several works in the exhibition invite audience participation. Paper Boats invites visitors to add their own unique paper boat to the installation by tearing pages from a 1968 Encyclopaedia Britannica and using the sheet to make an origami boat. Another work, Garland (2006) encourages us to hold, touch and rearrange objects collected by Gill on the beaches of Port Dickson, Malaysia, and the islands off Singapore – fragments reshaped by sea and sand that take on almost organic form.

A selection of books, sketches, collections and experimental pieces from the early 1990s to the present, some produced for exhibitions and others never intended as artworks will also be presented as part of the exhibition. Together they offer an insight into Gill’s artistic processes and her interest in art-making as an active engagement with the world.”

Press release from the Heide Museum of Modern Art website [Online] Cited 01/10/2010. No longer available online. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

 

Simryn Gill (Singapore, b. 1959) 'Paper boats' 2008

 

Simryn Gill (Singapore, b. 1959)
Paper boats
2008
Encyclopaedia Britannica (1968 edition)
Courtesy of the artist and BREENSPACE, Sydney

 

Simryn Gill (Singapore, b. 1959) 'Paper boats' 2008 (detail)

 

Simryn Gill (Singapore, b. 1959)
Paper boats (detail)
2008
Encyclopaedia Britannica (1968 edition)
Courtesy of the artist and BREENSPACE, Sydney

 

Addendum: A Pencil for Your Thoughts

 

Heide pencil

 

Heide pencil, the confounding pencil

I love to visit Heide, the elegant buildings, the art, the cafe, a stroll in the gardens looking at the sculpture. What I don’t like is being accosted by gallery attendants on my last three visits, twice on the last visit alone to review the Simryn Gill exhibition – accost being not too harsh a word for some of the approaches. The request: to not write in the gallery with a pen but to use a pencil (rushed to the scene of the crime post haste!)

I don’t like writing with a pencil, they go blunt and I can’t read my notes. I like writing with a pen.

This is a ridiculous state of affairs, the only gallery in Melbourne that I know of that has such a ‘nanny state’ rule.

Do they think that I am going to:

a) spear the pen into the gallery wall
b) attack the attendant with the pen (after this last visit the thought did cross my mind!) or
c) scribble all over the art work like a child …

 
The more we are treated like children the more child-like we become.

“Put the pen on the ground … Step away from the pen.”

 

 

Heide Museum of Modern Art
7, Templestowe Road
Bulleen, Victoria 3105

Opening hours:
(Heide II and Heide III)
Tuesday – Sunday 10.00am – 5.00pm

Heide Museum of Modern Art website

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