the art life

"Since 2006, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has been orbiting Mars, currently circling approximately 300 km (187 mi) above the Martian surface. On board the MRO is HiRISE, the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera, which has been photographing the planet for several years now at resolutions as fine as mere inches per pixel. Collected here is a group of images from HiRISE over the past few years, in either false color or grayscale, showing intricate details of landscapes both familiar and alien, from the surface of our neighboring planet, Mars. I invite you to take your time looking through these, imagining the settings - very cold, dry and distant, yet real...."



"Intersecting swirling trails left by the earlier passage of dust devils across sand dunes, as they lifted lighter reddish-pink dust and exposed the darker material below. Also visible are darker slope streaks along dune edges, formed by a process which is still under investigation. More, or see location on Google Mars. (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona) Martian Landscapes: The Big Picture

Labels: photography, science

The Power Series, Part One. "These are the first images in a series exploring energy production in Scotland and industrial landscapes that are concerned primarily with structure and process. However these images are also a visual exploration of these spaces: they celebrate the magnificence of industry and its place in the landscape. The status of energy production has been brought to the forefront of global concerns with environmental issues and has been made for a highly charged political debate. With the UK struggling to reduce its emission levels, Scotland’s position as a leader in wind farm technology has intensified. Part Two will be a series of images from Europe’s largest on-shore wind farm" - Leanora Olmi, Scotland. Leanoraolmi.co.uk

Got new work you'd like to share? Send a short description and images no larger than 300k each to the art life at hot mail dot com.

Labels: new work

Sydney-based artist Sam Leach has curated Extropians, a new show at Sullivan & Strumpf Fine Art. The exhibitions brings together a group of artists whose work suggests ambiguous science fictional narratives. Leach spoke to the Art Life about the ideas and themes behind the title.

What is an “extropian”?

Sam Leach: Extropians are people who believe that progress in science and technology means that humans will soon achieve some kind of immortality. The term derives from extropy - not quite, but almost, the opposite of entropy - it refers to the idea that life and intelligence will expand in an orderly way throughout the universe. The extropian view is sort of an extreme optimism about the future. I'm not totally convinced they are right, but I do like technology and I really like the optimism.


Tony Lloyd, Unique Form of Continuity in Space Time, 2009.
Oil on linen, 23x30cms.

Perhaps you could talk about the selection of works for the show – what were you looking for when you selected the artists and their paintings?

SL: I wanted works which addressed the relationship between humans and technology and I tried to think about that in a broadest sense. So there are paintings which have technology as their subject matter, as with Tony Lloyd and Giles Alexander. There are paintings in which painting itself is represented as a transformative technology as with Stephan Balleux. The show really emerged after seeing some works by Topologies (Donna Kendrigan and Chris Henschke) and, quite soon after, a show by Charles O'Loughlin. Topologies create objects which seem to appeal to a nostalgia for an historical form of futurism - beautifully crafted wood and brass instruments which present quite sophisticated optical illusions with scientific themes. Their works do not unreservedly celebrate science but they do set up a very romantic view of technology. In O'Loughlin's work data analysis based on his own social interactions is used to generate charts which the form the basis of his abstract paintings. Ultimately he aims to gather enough data to be able to forecast his own life. I could sense some connection between these works and when I came across the extropians it began to fall into place. O'Loughlin's wildly ambitious plans for his data - not to mention his use of his entire life in the cause of data collection - was related to the scientific heroism hinted at in Topologies' work. The final piece fell into place with Michael Graeve and Toshiya Tsunoda. In their works technology is already being used to extend perception beyond the limits of "natural" or un-augmented human abilities.

It’s interesting looking at the contrast between the works seen individually and then as a group. Taken individually, the paintings work in a realist mode and might suggest an ambiguous narrative, together they have a very science fictional feel, as though the exhibition works together as an overall narrative – was that your aim?

A proper geek would prefer the term speculative fiction. Yes, I do think the paintings and the especially the piece by Topologies have that feel. I love science fiction so it is probably not a coincidence that the art that appeals to me has some hint of that too. I did try to create the possibility for narrative by including works which hinted at history (Lloyd, Topologies), works which engage the viewer with the present (Graeve, Tsunoda) and works which hint at futures both near and distant (Lloyd again, Balleux, Alexander). Many of the works cover several of those at once, of course, so it is not as though it unfolds like a comic strip. In the best traditions of hard science fiction, multiple realities and timelines co-exist.

The term "speculative fiction" was coined by Robert Heinlein, who liked to call it "spec-fic" - but it seems the term has been subsumed back into the greater generic name "science fiction" - do you see a difference between the two terms? And how does that relate to the show?

SL: The term has drifted in and out of use for quite a while. Fans of this genre do tend to be enthusiastic so there are many thousands of internet pages devoted to discussing the nuances of these terms. For my two cents, I tend to think of speculative fiction as a slightly better description of the genre and a bit broader than than science fiction. Some of the most interesting books do not really go into science at all but look at alternate histories or social structures - Hesse's Glass Bead Game, Philip K Dick and Neal Stephenson spring to mind. In this show, with one or two exceptions, there is no reference to any actual science. The works deal with the relationship between humans and technology without getting too bogged down in the actual gear mechanisms.


Charles O'Loughlin, September, 2009.
Gouache on paper, 49x45cms.

The imagery of science fiction tends towards a decidedly realist mode of image making – yet you’ve also included abstract works such as Charles O’Loughlin’s mandala-like 'September'. Was there something in that juxtaposition that interested you?

SL: Absolutely. In the same way that I wanted works which specifically addressed the future, present and past I also wanted to look at artists who used a wide variety of modes in their work. O'Loughlin's practice verges on performance. His works are really charts which present information, month by month, about who he meets, where and how often. When a painting of a graph is shown, or even several of them, it is really only a tiny fragment of his overall work, which presumably won't be finished until he is dead or gives up. Or both. The paintings are presented together with books of coded data. Literally thousands of pages of the stuff. They hint at what these apparently abstract paintings represent but they are absolutely no help at all in recovering any kind of meaningful information from the charts. Where the realist paintings have a science fiction feel, O'Loughlin's work feels closer to the way imagery is actually used in contemporary science - mostly for the graphic display of statistical information (and mostly unintelligible to all but the authors).


Joanna Lamb, High Rise 8, 2009.
Acrylic on canvas, 170x120cms.
From the companion exhibition High Rise.

Joanna Lamb's latest paintings are also on show at Sullivan & Strumpf and seem like a very natural continuation of what you're talking about. The title of her show Highriseseems to be a direct reference to J.G. Ballard, whose spirit is very much present in your show too. Was putting the two exhibitions together intentional?

SL: Funny you should mention that because I spent the weekend installing a rainwater tank and Ballard was never far from my mind. Sullivan and Strumpf will have to take the credit for bringing the two shows together. It is a really great juxtaposition. Ballard consistently asked questions about the way that technology and especially urban development might impact the human psyche. The extropians themselves seem pretty unconcerned about the possible psychological implications of extreme longevity or technological augmentation of the human. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they are optimistic about the implications. The image of the highrise perfectually captures the moment of transition between utopian vision and dystopian delivery, especially as it is shown in Lamb's paintings with their idealised clean, hard edges and disturbing acidic colours. Since my show is upstairs from the highrise, maybe it could be thought of as a sort of tech version of the blood garden!


Giles Alexander, 1180 AD, House of God, 2009.
Oil and resin on canvas, 65x105cms.

You’ve often included technological objects in your own painting - how do you see your own work relating to the show?

SL: To be honest the show is a massive indulgence for me. I love the aesthetics of science and technology and to some extent this show could be subtitled "ideas I wish I'd had" or "works I wish I'd made". The themes of nature and technology are important for me but the relationship between humans and animals is of equal importance. This show allowed me to really get stuck directly into the human/technology relationship via the entertainingly extreme position of the extropians. The other thing is that my own practice is primarily painting - trying to paint well is a very time consuming process and doesn't leave a lot of room to engage with other modes of artistic production even though I am very interested in them. So it is great to be able to look at the themes and ideas I am interested in using objects, installation and sound works. Even if someone else made them.

Extropians, curated by Sam Leach, and High Rise by Joanna Lamb are at Sullivan & Strumpf, Paddington until December 13.

Labels: commercial galleries, interviews, sci-fi

"In my work there has always been a direct relationship between two components: the idea and its production. The production apsect is the result of my fascination with the technical nexus between stills and video, and the failure of either medium to capture either an elusive truth or the essence of my front-of-lens collaborators. In my current show I've harnessed a technique that crosses stills and video to explore power, ecstasy and mortality. I have been working with internationally-ranked hiphop dancers and tricksters, who arch across different landscapes in an attempt to flee from gravity for a short time.



Making of...

"The exhibition is called La petite mort (a little death) which is a French phrase describing the small melancholy after orgasm. In the same way the descent to earth from the ecstasy of weightlessness is a little death as we approach the realities of earth bound mortality. My Masters degree was an exploration of cinematic approaches to portraiture, and for this current exhibition I have built a special lighting rig that allows me to shoot bursts of 40 still frames in 4 seconds as the dancers move across the frame. These images are then composited into large format prints (90cm x 160cm) and video works. The show runs from 8th – 19th December at DEPOT GALLERY, 2 Danks St Waterloo " - Hamish Ta-mé.

Labels: new work, photography, video art

Brad Miller initially developed augment_me during a research residency at Artspace in 2004. As part of that research, he interviewed a number of young people about identity and materialism, leading to further research on the self in relation to additions or supplements. It seems that the self must be augmented, must be adorned and the reason the self must be augmented is that it is seen as inadequate for the tasks at hand. Thus began the process of materialising a critique of desire and augmentation using his own self as the locus of concern.

augment_me is comprised of a responsive database of images, sound and videos, accumulated over the past 8 years. Forming sequences in response to audience movement and position, these data ‘moments’ are animated by the augment_me software according to a set of rules applied to a live video camera feed, and then sequentially embedded into a strip of images presented horizontally. These ‘moments’ and their aggregation track relationships with people, places and moments of the everyday, intrinsically measuring change or transformation to produce a kind of memory machine — an attempt at resisting external ideas of what might be augmented.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

Labels: new media, press releases

Follow us on Twitter - The_Art_life - and get daily updates on breaking art news, stories, artist features and other time wasting crap from around the world. Every new Twitter follower receives this lovely slice of strawberry cheesecake absolutely FREE!*

Labels: cheesecake, Twitter

Jesse Cohen has followed up her previous question with a more detailed query about the art world. She asks:

Is Jasper Knight the poor man's Hazel Dooney?
Is Jon Campbell the poor man's Robert Macpherson?
Is Anthony Lister the poor man's Brett Whiteley?
Is Patricia Piccinini the poor man's Charles Saatchi?
Is Noel McKenna the rich man's Jenny Watson?
And were Stephen Mori and Juliana Engberg separated at birth?
Tell me if I've gone too far.

To take the last question first, the answer is no. Mori and Engberg are not related, and although medical science is capable of many wonders, separating such imposing figures is not possible at the moment. Thus we must conclude that they are different people. As to your other questions – ditto no. It often feels that contemporary artists are somehow ‘related’ to overseas artists or to an elder cousin in Australia, the thought being that artists today are just copying each other. This is a misconception – artists have always copied one another. And some do it very well. The ones that do it less well are thought to be “original”. This is where the confusion begins. Being original is overrated but being too derivative is seen to be a bad thing. How then do we decide who is good and who is bad? Do we rely on dubious notions of quality and originality – or do we enjoy what we see on its own terms? You have not gone too far Jesse – this is all quite normal. Hope that helps.

Labels: Ask The Art Life

From Mr. John Kelly...

We arrive in Melbourne and stay with my parents in Sunshine. I pick up Mum’s Sun Herald and read that gangs of criminal foreigners are planning on invading Melbourne to wreak havoc during the Cup carnival. These foreigners are so sneaky and clever they are going to land in other cities, like Sydney, and drive down to Melbourne to avoid police detection. Of course several refugee boats are at the same time being re-directed back to Indonesia. Maybe the two stories are related? We decide to escape the ‘foreign criminals’ and Christina, Oscar (our eight year old son) and I head to the sun on the Gold Coast where we go to Sea World, Movie World and then Dream World before heading back to the Art World.



Our flight to Sydney is as bumpy and nearly as exciting as the Lethal Weapon ride. After stopping at Luna Park (where Oscar and I are turned upside down on the vomit inducing spinning thing and we get stuck to the wall of the Rotor as the floor drops away) we head off for Circular Quay. An enormous cruise ship named Amsterdam from Rotterdam blots out the Museum of Contemporary Art as we maneuver towards the quay. The Netherlands seem far away, yet only two years ago I was there in Den Haag as the artist Jon Campbell cheekily asked Queen Beatrix to unfurl his ‘Yeah’ flag. This same logo now adorns the large advertising hoarding outside the MCA announcing the exhibition Making it New an exhibition curated by Glenn "Gnarls" Barkley. Campbell’s ‘Yeah’ flag also flutters outside the building in its distinctive green and pink colors, looking like a cross between a Rolling Stones poster and a Beatles’ lyric. I try to think of other text based flags and can only think of when my Sunshine cricket team won the Under 16 cricket flag. We were awarded a pennant.

Barkley’s survey of Australian art has a healthy eclecticism and a slightly eccentric look with the hang being not dissimilar to a chaotic bazaar. It is obvious that Barkley has taken time to visit artist’s studios and exhibitions across Australia in what for the Australian curatorial set is not necessarily common practice. However my initial observations are challenged somewhat when I realize that of the 18 artists thirteen of them have some sort of text embedded in their work even if it is hidden. Maybe there is a thread through this after all.

Those who don’t have text are generally separated out into individual rooms. They are Ken Whisson, Neal Taylor, Toni Warburton, Tom Moore and Ken Thaiday Snr. However individual works sometimes escape the segregation and can suggest text, even when none is present. For example Bob Jenyn’s battleship is squared up against a wall right next to two Ken Whisson paintings of military personnel and hardware. It’s hard not to think of the word ‘WAR’ when confronted with this juxtaposition.



The other thirteen artists all use printed/painted slogans or packaging material somewhere in their work. For example Marrnyula Mununggurr’s repetitive ‘If you love me’ might be met with Campbell’s enthusiastic riposte of ‘Yeah, yeah, and yeah’. Raquel Ormella’s ‘Am I political enough’ or ‘am I radical enough’ through to ‘I’m wondering if this says anything’ might also be answered with a disinterested yeah, yeah, yeah. Even Jenyn’s has a slogan plastered on his sculpture ‘Jesus will soon return’, oh yeah! Mathew Hunt chimes in with ‘FUCK FACE’ and ‘SHIT DID I REALLY SAY THAT OUT LOUD’ which I have to answer yeah, while Alison Alder’s polite “Sunshine instant” appeals if only to allow me to mention Sunshine again.

Neil Taylor is from Melbourne’s west, a drop punt from the Western Oval. I remember being 14 or 15 when Royce Hart was coach of the Bulldogs and addressed us under 15s. Hart walked out on the field and his words of wisdom went something like; “of the 25 of you in front of me, the odds are that one of you might make it. If its you, then you will probably have a 1 to 2 year career in VFL footy. My advice to you is work hard at school and get a good education because the odds are you will never make it at footy.” With that he turned and walked back towards the Teddy Whitten stand. Yeah, I was devastated. Taylor might have heard Hart’s advice over his back fence because he has worked hard. You can see it by the photograph of his studio in the catalogue, which looks like somebody has tried to recreate in this similar sized MCA room. However the attempt looks half-hearted. It’s a terribly unsatisfactory solution for a major sculptor of Taylor’s standing however maybe somebody will twig that Taylor’s studio in Footscray may be worth preserving. His work certainly is - but not behind glass.

Jon Campbell, another Footscray resident, uses tourist tea towels as a support. Tea towels that feature Australian road signs has ‘Underdogs’ painted on the reverse and another shouts FOOTSCRAY HALAL MEATS 100% as Ned Kelly stands defiant on the other side. The text as well as the slogan Franco Cozzo reveals the suburb where the artist works and it is not North Melbourne. It’s the same suburb where they shot Romper Stomper and by coincidence where I played cricket also at the Western oval. My abiding memory was of playing in a Colts game where Merv Hughes opened the bowling from one end and Colin Miller (who later bowled spin for Australia) bowled his medium pacers from the other (we got thrashed by Collingwood). I only mention this because another Campbell painting reads ‘Bowled Shane’, who did not play for Footscray, he played for St Kilda.

Strangely, having been alongside Jon Campbell in The Hague, I am reminded that he constantly has appeared at certain times in my life. For instance I was at the announcement of the Herald Sun art competition back in the 90’s where Jon won the prize. But it goes back further still for it occurs to me that the very first exhibition opening I ever attended was Jon Campbell’s exhibition at the Victorian College of the Arts in 1985. The work at the MCA Insufficient Funds refers to recent funding troubles at the VCA. Campbell was a classic St Kilda art student, he wore hip clothes, was in a band and had just won the Murdoch traveling scholarship – he was the Warney of the student art world and the VCA was the hippest school in town. I desperately wanted to go, however I didn’t pass the interview. I remember finding out years later that the artist Gareth Samson who chaired my interviewing panel was a keen cricketer and like me bowled a mixture of leg spin and googlies. He was also from out west having played for Essendon. If only I had known that then I might have talked cricket in the interview, which at the time I knew something about instead of art, which at 17 I knew nothing of.

I apologize for my cricketing and art school digressions as I come across Linda Marrinon’s painting Sorry! (1982). A word that for most of the past decade has been unutterable in Australia until Kenny from South Park (K. Rudd) unseated Kenny from over near Luna Park (J. Howard). However I’m not sure it relates to the political apology given to the stolen generation of Aboriginal children. Even if it doesn’t, I love this painting for its sheer politeness (I knew a psychologist who as an experiment deliberately knocked into people on the tube in London. He was amazed that a high percentage of people actually apologized to him even when he deliberately kicked them!). This work is in the MCA collection which may be there as way of offering a public apology to any African or Chinese visitors who might come across Archie Moore.

I only discover Moore’s work in the catalogue as the plane lifts off from Australia. It did not strike me as particularly interesting as I traversed the exhibition however that is because I didn’t ‘see it’. Upon reading about Moore’s work it seems the most removed from Footscray or Sunshine, from the Western Oval, the VCA, Luna Park, Shane Warne, Ned Kelly, the Herald Sun and even Jon Campbell as well as those nasty foreign criminals at the Melbourne Cup. Moore’s work demands something more from the viewer. To see it properly one need’s to stand in front of it, point your toes inwards and bounce up and down.

Whilst reading about how I should have approached this simple piece of op art, I am as dumbfounded as the time I was bowled by a ‘Chinaman’, when the words ‘MASSAI MONKEY MAN’ appear from inside the abstract black and white circles of the reproduction. It made me think again of my psychologist friend, I’ve just been kicked and I feel like apologizing! No, no, no I think before I realize that these works are brilliant in their hidden text and contorted logic.

To be done by a wrong’un in a contemporary art space is unusual, to get it a day later at 35,000 feet even more remarkable and I can only smile at the beautiful delivery. I try, unsuccessfully, to untangle these risky and complicated works that along with the others made this exhibition well worth seeing. Bowled Archie! Bowled Barkley!

John Kelly

The Art Life welcomes contributions. Send them to the art life at hot mail dot com.

Labels: exhibitions, public galleries

The Art Life: You must be very pleased to have won the inaugural B.E.S.T. Contemporary Art Prize For Painting? Were you nervous on the night?

Tom Polo: It was a complete shock! I was not expecting it at all - in fact, I wasn't even going to turn up to the gallery that night as I never got 'the phone call' people apparently get when they win something. When the judges announced my name I was lost for words. There were gasps from the crowd.

2009 B.E.S.T. Winner
Tom Polo, Continuous One Liners (Young People Today),2009.
Acrylic on crockery,23 cm (diameter)
Photography: Garry Trinh.
TAL: Why did you decide to stage a fake competition? Can you explain something of the background to this project?

TP: The 2009 B.E.S.T. (Because Everybody Still Tries) Contemporary Art Prize For Painting was a project that I had been thinking about since the end of 2007. I decided to stage this art prize as a way of discussing ideas of competition in contemporary society as I am interested in what it means to be a winner - and by association, what it means to be a loser. The art prize ran like the many art prizes that exist - with entry forms, press releases, advertisements and of course, an exhibition of finalists works at the end with an announcement and awarding of the big prize. One exception, as stated in the entry form, was that the only eligible entrants were artists born on the 1st February, 1985 and named as 'Tommaso Polo' on their birth certificates. This factor meant that anybody else who entered received a stock-standard rejection letter from the B.E.S.T prize panel. My rationale behind this part of the project was that sometimes in order to be successful, or rather, be considered successful, people go to extreme lengths to exclude every other contender. It is also a little bit of a healthy "stick it to the man" on behalf of artists to art prizes and institutions. They dictate who the 'the winner' is, which can equate to who is important and what is of value. There is often a push and pull effect with prizes that determine who artists are eligible to be compared to, who is in who's league...

TAL: Was there a particular selection process for the work that you included in the show? Was it made for the exhibition or were you looking for examples of “competition art”?

TP: There's a bit of both. I wanted to stage the exhibition so when the audience saw the work on the walls, there was both a sense of connection between individual paintings as well as the hazardous diversity that is seen in art prizes. For this reason I have hinted at the different things we have come to expect when we see these shows. There's the large, fleshy portrait that's often bigger than the rest or the minimal abstract work that no one can identify, to the still life, the found object and of course, the "my five year old could have done better" work. In the end though - beyond the art prize context - the show needed to stand as a solid group of paintings.



Tom Polo [second from left] with 2009 B.E.S.T. Judges - [l to r] Glenn "Gnarls" Barkley, Joan Ross, Vasili Kaliman & Daniel Mudie Cunningham. Photography: Sonia Uddin
TAL: You’ve been exploring this idea of “success” and “failure” in your work for awhile now – and you seem to be moving away from painting a little. Are you planning to do more of these performance style pieces?

TP: Exploring success and failure is important to me because they are two polar opposites that society inherently categorises things into. They are aligned with things being good and bad or positive and negative. I think this idea helps to make my work more approachable to an audience and not too difficult to read. I studied as a painter but I was often told - and it was only after art school that I saw it - that my work has always had a staged element - like sets for theatre - even if they were paintings hanging on a wall. In that respect, I would refer to what I do as painting/installation and I think there is a performative aspect that exists in there. Most recently, I've extended into photography and sculpture because they have been the most appropriate mediums for the ideas which I think is important to do as an artist. My interest in humour will aid my investigation into performance in my work and it is something I look forward to.

TAL: Could you talk a little about your use of text in your work – what is the need to write in a painting? What does it add?

TP: I made my first official text painting in the last few weeks of my fine arts degree when, after ruining a certain painting for the 10th time, I scrawled the words 'I fucking hate overworking my paintings'. Even though text only became a large part of my practice in 2008 I had realised that there is a brutal honesty that can be conveyed in words - statements, quotes, slogans and colloquialisms. Compared to images of things, to me text also seems more direct and less blurred by interpretation and experience. I'm also quite fascinated with hand made signs - especially the really poorly made ones with the bad bubble writing that people put out the front of their homes to sell old cars or pool tables. There's a nice sense of failure in them as to me, they defeat the purpose of what they're supposed to be doing - enticing you into buying or seeing something! These are all elements seen in the works of artists such as David Shrigley and Jon Campbell, who I both really like.




The 2009 B.E.S.T. Contemporary Art Prize For Painting
MOP Projects, Sydney. Photography: Garry Trinh
TAL: Do you anticipate a time when Tom Polo is too successful to make art about success?

TP: What is too successful? While I would describe my work as an extended act of self portraiture, its more a social reflection of ideas that everybody can relate to. So, I guess the answer is no, there will always be another mountain to climb!

TAL: Who are you tipping for the 2010 B.E.S.T award?

TP: No idea, but I hear that guy Tom Pollo or Tim Paulo or whatever is doing good things...

The 2009 B.E.S.T. Contemporary Art Prize for Painting at MOP until November 22.

Labels: exhibitions, interviews, painting

The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) present Focus on Hopper’s America, a film season examining a period of rapid social and political change in the United States and the parallel artistic transformation in which Dennis Hopper played a key role.

The program coincides with Dennis Hopper and the New Hollywood, a major exhibition at ACMI which looks at a formative era for film and art in America through Dennis Hopper’s life and work.

The corresponding film program is a complex archaeology of interlocking films, designed as a series of cinematic experiences that also provides a contextual backdrop to the exhibition.

“We’ve curated this season to be a stand-alone investigation into an enormously creative period in America and the powerful social and political change that shaped its art and its artists,” said ACMI Film Programmer, Kristy Matheson.

“It also enhances the experience of exhibition goers by allowing them to further appreciate the environment, the artistic influences and the works of one of Hollywood’s greatest and most controversial exports.”

Presented in three parts, Focus on Hopper’s America, is a program of rare and rarely seen works of new restorations, including features, documentaries and shorts (some staring, directed or produced by the man himself) that includes four Australian Premiere’s, three of which are direct from Cannes International Film Festival 2009.

More info here

Labels: cinema, press releases, public galleries

Examining the legacy of Charles Darwin on the 150th anniversary of the publication of his famed work, On the Origin of Species Opening 6-8pm, Thursday 19 November No RSVP required

The exhibition will be opened by Roger McDonald, author of Mr Darwin’s Shooter, recipient of numerous literary awards including the 2006 Miles Franklin Award and alumnus of the University of Sydney.

Guest speaker Chris Darwin, the great, great grandson of Charles Darwin will speak about his famous ancestor and his work as an Ambassador of Bush Heritage Australia.

Labels: art museums, exhibitions, press releases

The Art Life joins with Australia's art community in extending our deepest sympathies to Nick and Chloe Waterlow's families and friends.


Update, Wednesday November 11:

"Martin Sharp and Sydney's art world were in shock yesterday. He had had a long association with Nick Waterlow, who had championed his work and was a co-curator of his 2006 solo show, The Everlasting World of Martin Sharp, at Ivan Dougherty Gallery.

Only last Saturday night, Sharp said, Waterlow had been dancing with his partner, the filmmaker, writer and artist Juliet Darling, at a party at the University of NSW Roundhouse.

''He was just having a great time,'' Sharp told the Herald. ''It's hard to think of these things as memories now. But I think highly of him - in memory, now.''

Waterlow had also curated For Matthew and Others: Journeys with Schizophrenia, in October 2006. Sharp had worked with him on the show, which featured artists whose lives had been touched by the mental illness that affects one in 100 Australians. Few realised it was a cause close to Waterlow's heart.

''I never knew about it until this show came up,'' Sharp said, ''but he did mention to me that he had a son who suffered from a mental illness.''

Tributes to the Waterlows continued to flow today from friends and prominent figures in the Sydney art world.

Gene Sherman, the chairman and executive director of the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, said Mr Waterlow’s "nurturing attitude" made him stand out.

"(It was) his generosity ... the interest in the greater good as opposed to his own self interest in promoting himself, and that deep quietness about it," Dr Sherman told 2UE.

"There was very little fanfare about (him).

"One could never have anticipated that such a gentle soul as Nick could have met such a violent end." [...]

Nick Waterlow was the subject of an Archibald Prize finalist, Wang Xu, last year. Eleonora Triguboff, editor of Art and Australia, said: ''It would be hard to meet anyone kinder, gentler, or more giving than Nick. Nick was a true gentleman with a twinkle in his eye.''

He was passionate about all forms of art and suspicious about people who claimed to have all the answers. A great mentor, he encouraged the asking of questions at the college.

In an interview last November in The College Voice, he said: ''I was English-born and probably I should have gone to university like my predecessors. But I flunked that, and thank heavens I did, because it took me to Paris in the early '60s at a time of an extraordinary avant-garde activity.

''The first moment that an artist spoke to me in every conceivable way that I ever needed was Goya. He asked some very hard questions of everything that was happening in his world at that particular moment. And that is what I am interested by, and demand from artistic practice.''

New information and detail on the unfolding story.


From The Sydney Morning Herald:

"A Sydney community is in shock today after a cookbook author and her father were found dead in a Randwick home last night, and a young girl was discovered with wounds to her throat.

Police are expected to make a statement soon on the killings.

The Clovelly Road semi was purchased by cookbook author Chloe Waterlow, 37, and her husband, a digital consultant, Ben Heuston, 2½ years ago.

Ms Waterlow is the daughter of Sydney curator Nick Waterlow OAM, 68. He directed Sydney's third Biennale and is the curator of the Ivan Dougherty Gallery in Darlinghurst.

It is believed the family had been considering moving to Britain, but had recently decided against it.

The injured girl, believed to be the couple's four-year-old daughter, was in a serious condition at Sydney Children's Hospital in Randwick this morning.

Police were alerted just before 6pm yesterday when someone, believed to be a friend of the family, phoned triple-0.

They entered the premises through a side window and discovered the two bodies and the injured girl.

Another child, an eight-month-old boy, believed to be the girl's brother, was taken to hospital without injuries.

Last night, he was in the care of the Department of Community Services. Acting Superintendent Shayne Woolbank said the baby was not found inside the house.

The couple's third child is also in the temporary care of DOCS, a spokeswoman for Community Services Minister Linda Burney said.

Mr Waterlow's sister-in-law, Anne O'Brien, told the Herald Ms Waterlow was "a vivacious young mother who adored her littlies".

Police established a crime scene and questioned neighbours.

"We are still trying to piece together what happened," acting Superintendent Woolbank said."

Read more here.


From the NSW University College of Fine Art wesbite:

"It is with immense shock and distress that we heard news this morning of the death of Nick Waterlow, Director of the Ivan Dougherty Gallery at COFA and a much loved and respected member of staff.

The death of Nick and his daughter are being investigated by police [...]

Nick was a leading member of Australia's arts community, having curated three Sydney Biennales. He has been Director of the Ivan Dougherty Gallery since 1991 and was a senior lecturer in COFA's School of Art History and Art Education. His current projects included a book exploring the place of Australian art internationally and he was of course closely involved in the planning for COFA's new art museum."

Read more here.

Labels: art news

The vinyl is dead. Good. Now listen to the beautiful noise of the earth. Harvest (2009) is a new art piece for the new instrument terrafon, traditional ensemble and cropland - by Olle Cornéer and Martin Lübcke. In this performance Alunda Church Choir, conducted by Cantor Jan Hällgren, plays the soil of northern Uppland (in Sweden) on terrafon. Harvest by Alunda Kyrkokör was exhibited at the Volt Festival in Uppsala the 6th of June 2009. Terrafon is a large agricultural version of the horn gramophone, amplifying the sounds in the track it ploughs. There is more to come. There are still many croplands still untouched by terrafon. The only thing needed is a powerful local musical ensemble that can sweat it out. This is indeed a demanding piece. Watch the performance here: on Vimeo. The artist-duo has before created the sound installation Bacterial Orchestra (www.bacterialorchestra.com) as well as an iPhone-generation of the same art piece, called Public Epidemic No 1. Olle Cornéer is also a electronic musician/producer/composer, while Martin Lübcke has a Ph.D. in theoretical physics (superstring theory)" - Olle Cornéer

Got new work you'd like to share? Send JPEGs no larger than 300k each to theartlife at hot mail dot com.

Labels: new work, performance art, sculpture

To: Letters, The Sydney Morning Herald; Letters, The Australian; Letters, The Daily Telegraph; Philip Adams; The Art Life:

Bring back Young Talent Time some say: Well they brought back Hey Hey It's Saturday. So why not!

I just think it's a crass attempt to milk an old idea, so as to avoid trying any new ideas.

It's lame TV in my opinion.
What are the producers thinking?

Do they have any new ideas in Australia any more.

Recently they held sculpture by the sea in Sydney. I've been to it a few times. SOme interesting sculpture.
This year . . . .
I couldn't help but notice the SMH had a cover story about the Little Boy Lost which it featured prominently.

Just one small problem, the piece was an absolute rip off of a Ron Mueck.

Everything about it was a complete copy of his work.

So i ask: how on earth can a paper such as the SMH, get away with promoting a piece of art in a "supposedly" prestigious art show, that is in every respect intellectual property theft.

When an artist steals ideas like that _ without any changes or re contextualizing - there's a big problem.
This is a problem with lack of criticism in art, and in particular lack of attention to critical writing in the SMH and other Australian papers in general on the subject of art and culture.

This sloppy situation merely allows old ideas to thrive at the expense of any new ones, and it allows dishonest artists top be given publicity when they don't deserve it!!!

Any way, a big fucking ugly rock won in the end so i guess that is that for sculpture by the sea 2009.

next year to get the SMH to give an online feature, I 'll might well consider stealing a Henry Moore from the front of the NSW Art gallery . . . they won't know the difference!

Martin Davies

Labels: art prize, Correspondence, sculpture

From Ian Houston Shadwell...


Justine Varga's first exhibition, 2005's Placements featured surreal photographic vignettes created from pieces of string, toy animals and other odds and ends. The resulting images were exquisite, delicate, beautiful landscapes of an inner world that referenced both abstract ideals of pure composition as well moments of whimsy and nostalgia. I was particularly fond of the quality of the prints themselves, the photographs are large format and the resulting prints have a milky opalescent quality that is reminiscent of the lustre of thinly applied oil paint. Indeed all of the work seemed to suggest that Justine has more of a painter’s sensibility than that of a photographer.

Her 2007 collection Outside continued this theme, though with an interesting development. Taking that very particular Australian obsession with the landscape, a form that has attracted both photographers and painters, she created a collection of works that were at once a playful meditation on the nature of her medium as well as being a curious cultural portrait. The central motif appears to be Australia's "empty heart" the land of Voss, the interior sea, the red heart. The Australia that obsesses Australians though most have never seen it. But rather than photograph the dry, dusty interior herself, she has recreated it, in her studio, (hence the title) with playful interventions and the remarkable tonality of her photography. This series of works are double exposures, the thin nacreous quality of each exposure, blending gently into the next, producing an effect not dissimilar to the white glare haze of an Australian summer.


Justine Varga, Empty Studio #5 , 2009.
C-print, 22.5 x 28.5cms

One of the more allusive pieces consisted of a handful of red soil thrown onto the concrete floor of the studio. The immediacy of the staging, coupled with the opalescent light of the work creates a poetic reference to "the interior" that is at once humorous, yet redolent of the haunting quality these ideas have in the national consciousness. It appears at once critical, in its humorous conceit, the whole mythic notion being reduced to a handful of dirt on a garage floor, yet there is a play of light and color that brings a poetic immediacy to the idea. Australia's spiritual heart is rendered completely with nothing but a few sheets of plastic, some dirt and an odd yellow gew gaw.

It is often suggested that it is this "fear" of the interior that makes Australian's such great travelers. That they much prefer to look outward than to an empty heart. Justine's work may well be referencing such concern's with the use of a model of a Qantas jumbo. This motif appears regularly, in playful asides, the flash of red serving to structure the compositions in figure ground relationships, as well as alluding to an Australia that is literaly "passed over" by Australians as they travel to "more exciting" locales. Perhaps the "outside" of the title. Again, the playfulness is refreshing, but anchored deeply in a more serious contemplation of identity and geography.



Justine Varga, Empty Studio #11, 2009.
C-print, 22.5 x 28.5 cms

But what I find most satisfying about this work, is their deep painterliness. This is not the coy, artful, recreation of painterly techniques within another medium, but rather a deep sensitivity to the power of composition and her relationship to the studio as an expressive device. In this regard, it is not, the camera that is the tool of expression, but rather the process of creating the vignette that is photographed. Each element is considered, their placement, "just so." The result is akin to the compositon of abstract painters looking for the ideal of the sublime. A perfectly structured beauty that is satisfying in and of itself.

This deep consideration is also given to the surface of the print. She maintains a consistency of expression in her light and palette that gives the works a continuity that resonates in the viewer with the ideals of the painterly. This is not photography that captures a "moment" or is in some sense a trick for the eye. It explores a deep vein in aesthetic experience, of the things that have structured our apprehension of the art object for centuries. That they are pursued so faithfully and with such minimal means in a photographic medium may strike us as unusual at first, but upon deeper reflection, it seems an ideal means of achieving these results.

Which brings us to her last show, Empty Studio. This series is avowedly minimal, preserving the palette that has been her signature, with photographs, (though it seems ridiculous to give them such a mundane name), of a variety of elements to create works that are deeply abstract with the occasional arrangement of figurines and props,that seem to act as commentary on the nature of the process.

A favorite of mine, is nothing more than a crumbling piece of perforated white masonary stuck against a milky wall, its ragged edges, like brushstrokes. A similar pieces conspires to create a flat surface of a wall and a floor, through the mysterious figure of a thread arranged in rectangular form. These are masterful works, filled with a sublime beauty (as unfashionable as that word may be) that seeks to do that thing which art does best, answering a question, with a question, albeit poetically phrased.

The Art Life welcomes contributions. Send them to the art life at hot mail dot com.

Labels: Ian Houston Shadwell, photography