Opening night crowd in front of the work In-Sight (2009) by Lisa Roet at Karen Woodbury Gallery, Melbourne
Another excellent opening this time of the work of the delightful Lisa Roet. If you visit the gallery don’t forget the upstairs exhibition space with further work by the artist including a marvellous large bronze Orangutan Foot.
McLean Edwards (Australian, b. 1972) Fifty-Fifty 2009
The next show on our marvellous walkabout were the eclectic paintings of McLean Edwards at Karen Wodbury Gallery, Melbourne. Continuing the carnivalesque theme from the previous review these heterogeneous paintings are a knockout with their wonderful, layered presence – they really command the viewer to look at them and celebrate the characters within them. Whimsical, ironic and full of humour these phantasmagorical images of creatures cast adrift with the night sky as background are fabulous assemblages of colour, form and storytelling.
Further to the evidences noted in the text on the website (the coils, the curling smoke, the starry night sky) one can also say other things about the paintings. There is an effervescence of colour within the blocking of clothing areas. There is the disproportionate size of the hands and bulbous noses of the characters, the shortening of the feet so that the figures almost become caricatures – but hold back from this through the mastery of the painting, through the intent of the artist. There is the symbology of other elements within the pictures: a doll with pins stuck in it’s body being clasped in a clumpy hand, a small house protruding over the protagonists shoulder (Fifty-Fifty); beetles on tree stumps with human faces (Hey, Bastard, Hey); and flowers, teapots and small humans appearing from around the edges of the larger characters in several of the works (Julia 1 and Night Nurse #2 for example). The numbers in the paintings were also puzzling but it turns out that they represent the age of the artist when he painted the works.
Finally one must acknowledge the carnivalesque in the paintings – their fun at playing dress-ups, the almost Alice in Wonderland fantasy and humour of the characterisations. There is an almost androgynous feeling to these characters as some of the female faces seem almost male. Personally I had a feeling that the artist is investigating the subconscious of Carl Jung’s ‘anima’ and ‘animus’ – the feminine inner personality of the male (anima) and the masculine inner personality of the female (animus). These states are manifested by appearing as figures in dreams and so they seem here: the anima or animus vies for attention by projecting itself onto others, here projecting itself outwards onto the painted surface.
My friend and I really enjoyed this exhibition. We were captivated by these songs, going back to the work again and again to tease out the details, to feel connection to the work. These are not lonely isolated figures but sublime emanations of inner states of being expertly rendered in glorious colour. And they made us laugh – what more could you ask for!
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to Karen Woodbury Gallery for allowing me to publish the art work in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Installation views of McLean Edwards: Songs from the Ghost Ship at Karen Woodbury Gallery, Melbourne
McLean Edwards (Australian, b. 1972) Venus 2009
McLean Edwards (Australian, b. 1972) Hey, Bastard, Hey 2009
McLean Edwards (Australian, b. 1972) Restoration 2009
“McLean’s works are theatrical, comical, eccentric and often political with the employment of symbolic imagery. His painting technique involves a painterly layering to create a defined and textured surface.
In this most recent series, Songs from the Ghost Ship, semi-fictional characters are set against the dark starry night sky. The exhibition includes nine oil paintings in addition to four works on paper. One of the works on paper shares its name with the exhibition, depicting a jumpered man with a white ghost looking over his shoulder.
The ink on paper work introduces a theme prominent throughout the exhibition, that of wafting smoke. Emanating either from a clasped cigarette or an iconic green curled mosquito coil, the smoke, in elegant strokes of white, grey, tan or black, draw the eye to the face of the central figures. The figures, often with the light of the moon or stars behind them only partially illuminating their faces, stare into the distance or coyly at the viewer, almost unaware of their solitary state against the night sky. The coil appears elsewhere, surreptitiously working its way into the dark pink weave of Twiggy’s jacket, or the blue and red dress of Venus, in the tyre marks of the Arctic Traveller or the grassy landscape in Hey, Bastard, Hey. The soft curl and filigree detail of both the smoke and the mosquito coil are similarly echoed by elements in other works, through the organic features of flowers, leaves and bugs.
Adrift at night, these haunting figures are about to embark on a journey, either from the wharf at the edge of an ocean, as in Venus, or across the vast ice of the Arctic, through the mist and smoke.”
Text from the Karen Woodbury website [Online] Cited 28/05/2009. No longer available online
McLean Edwards (Australian, b. 1972) For Elsa (Twiggy) 2009
McLean Edwards (Australian, b. 1972) Night Nurse #2 2009
In a mad dash around town I managed to see the Derek O’Connor and Peter Cole exhibitions before they finished and also the Siri Hayes En Plein Air exhibition of photographs at Gallerysmith (see next post).
Marcus
Please click on the art work for a larger version of the image.
Derek O’Connor paintings at Karen Woodbury Gallery
An intense show of small oil paintings that really draw you into their composition. They are paintings of tremendous energy and layering, the surface being in a constant state of flux. The paintings become metaphors for the bodies existence in space, corporeal landscapes full of sensation ‘neither rational nor cerebral’. They become a mediation and a meditation upon life itself – complex, convulsive, concentrated energy that focuses the viewers attention so that they cannot look away.
Derek O’Connor (Australian born England, b. 1959) Horizontal 2008
Derek O’Connor (Australian born England, b. 1959) Horizontal 2008
“Working with his tools of palette knives and brushes, he sets into motion a train of repetitions, of speeds and slowness1 applying and scrapping paint away in an attempt to move from a position of not knowing towards knowing. He brings … an intense physical and mental awareness to the rhythms of his own movements, his own body. At such moments time seems to expand – to become infinite.
In erasing from his project the world of appearances, Derek O’Connor embraces something else – the realm of ‘sensation’. Sensation is an open painterly expression which resists definition. The Modernist painter Paul Cezanne described sensation as a “logic of the senses” which is neither rational nor cerebral2 … For Derek, the subject of his painting appears to be the act of making itself. Here subject and object collapse (folding into itself) so that sensation is experienced through the materiality of paint, via the movements of the artists’ body to affect the bodies of others.”
Paul Uhlmann from the catalogue essay
1/ Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. A Thousand Plateaus. London: Continuum, 1987, pp. 292-300 2/ Deleuze, G. The Logic of Sensation. London: Continuum, 2003, p. 42
Derek O’Connor (Australian born England, b. 1959) Irregular 2008
Karen Woodbury Gallery
This gallery has closed.
Peter Cole ‘Elements + Memories’ at John Buckley Gallery 18th March – 9th April 2009
A decidedly underwhelming show by Peter Cole at John Buckley Gallery only redeemed by the amazing Elemental Landscape series of 64 small sculptural pieces displayed as a frieze (see below). The large free standing sculptural works fail to impress with their minimalist Ikea-esque cut out style – especially when viewed from the rear of the work. One would have thought that a sculptor, making several free standing pieces that are going to be walked around in a gallery space, would have designed the work to be viewed ‘in the round’. As it is all the perfection of the clinical front of the works is undone by brackets and screws holding the whole thing together when viewed from the flattened rump. This is pretty, surface work that lacks substance and insight, pretty shapes and cut outs and targets that allude to memory but are just stylised glossy magazine representations of it.
On the other hand the Elemental Landscape series of sculptures is just magical – playful, ever inventive, wonderfully contemporary, beautifully resolved in concept and manufacture, in their use and bending of geometric shapes, the sculptures really are fantastic when seen ‘in situ’ as a whole. Visit the exhibition just to see this work – buy some pieces and make your own elemental landscape!
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Peter Cole (Australian, b. 1947) Elements + Memories installation views at John Buckley Gallery, Melbourne (first and second image) Bar 4 – Shibuya 2009 (third image) Garden – Yoyogi 2009 (fourth image)
In Peter D Cole’s stunning and ambitious exhibition Elements + Memories he creates a playful interactive work titled Elemental Landscape. Utilising his highly stylised modernist and reductionist technique – influenced at an early age by studies of Miro and Calder – Cole presents 64 small sculptural pieces of varying colour and shape of which the audience is encouraged to create their own compositions. Cole also presents three large-scale sculptures drawing on memories of his times in Japan.
Cole’s distinct skill of distilling the landscape and architecture into separate elements and symbols is in itself evocative of traditional minimal Japanese aesthetic and he has created a series of works which draw upon Japanese interiors and streetscapes and the gardens of the Sakura Matsuri (Cherry Blossom festival).
Text from John Buckley Gallery website [Online] Cited 01/04/2009. No longer available online
Peter Cole (Australian, b. 1947) Elemental Landscape 2009
Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive 
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