the art life

Welcome to Art Life 2.0

2010-04-29T21:18:00.003+10:00

Greetings - The Art Life is now being published at our brand new address: theartlife.com.au. Come and see!

[Email subscriber? There's no need to update your details on our new site - hopefully everything has gone to plan and you'll receive updates automatically.]

"Going, going, going..."

2010-04-26T10:33:00.003+10:00

You've no doubt been wondering what all these "May 1st, 2010" posts have been about [see comments below]. As of Friday April 30th [this Friday] this blog will cease to exist.

In its place will be a brand new Art Life launching on Saturday May 1st, with a new crew of writers and a refreshed and reinvigorated mission to clean up the art scene, right some wrongs and do some good in the world.

We'll update you later in the week about our new five year plan, but for now here are some important things to know:

The Art Life at this Blogger address will only continue until May 15th, 2010, after which we'll be redirecting you our new home.
We've migrated all our old posts, but they will all be at new URLs so if you have linked to reviews or other pieces in the past, those links won't work after May 15th. Most of the old posts will be kept, but a lot of the free ads, pr material and other stuff will be deleted - if you want to keep copies for yourself, feel free to copy them direct from the blog.
Comments left on old posts have been archived but once the re-direct is in place, you won't be able to see them. If for some twisted reason you want to save your comments, or comment strings left in the days when people didn't know how to behave online, you'll need to find the old posts and cut and paste the comments.
Links from the Art Life to artist web sites, blogs, art media and galleries are being updated -but if you're not currently listed but you want a presence at our new home - email us at the usual address.
If you're one of the 2,000 + people who receive Art Life updates via email, we're doing our best to migrate the mailing list - but there may be a few hiccups. We'll keep you updated.

We want to say a big thank you to our readers, friends in the blogosphere, allies in old media and all the artists and galleries who've supported this blog since its launch back in 2004.

See you after the jump.

May 1st, 2010

2010-04-21T14:33:00.003+10:00

"The Messiah doesn't need miracles. He is the miracle. Now he's here. Are you ready? I'm here to tear down everything around you, and you know what I'm going to replace it with? Something new. So take your bread and give it to the poor. What difference does it matter what you own? You have gold and silver? It's going to rot, and that rot is going to eat away your heart. All of you! There will be a flood, and there will be a fire. Everything will be destroyed. But there will be a new ark riding on that fire, and I hold the keys and I open the door, and I decide who goes in and who doesn't. You're my brothers from Nazareth, and you're the first I invite on the ark. Don't wait. Don't waste your life. Come with me."

There is no there there

2010-03-20T12:07:00.005+11:00

Matt Logue is a Los Angeles based artist, photographer and animator. After working for the Tippett Studio - and spending three years in New Zealand on the Lord of The Rings trilogy - he returned to the US to pursue more personal work. Logue’s Empty LA project is a stunning visualisation of a world emptied of people.

The Art Life: In your Empty LA series you’re presenting a vision of a city that could never be fully experienced. What was your inspiration for the series?

Matt Logue: The inspiration for the series came, perhaps predictably, while on the freeway, driving to work. The thoughts that kept coming back was, “How did we get here? Why did we do it like this?” From there, I imagined an empty city, the sounds you would hear in the skyscraper canyons, the animals returning to make their homes in the shelters we’d built. After that, I simply had to see it, I couldn’t not do it, so after working out a technique to do it through trial and error, spend most of my free time for the past four years working on the images.

TAL: Empty cities, ruins and vacant spaces seem very much in vogue at the moment, what with all the post apocalyptic movies and books like ‘The World Without Us’ – yet they also recall a Romantic vision of the Sublime landscape. What do you suppose the viewer feels when they look at these contemporary images?

ML: By far the most common response I’ve gotten from people is “That is so creepy/spooky/unsettling,” followed by “I wish I could experience that.” While seeing each image gradually emerge, I would experience a surprisingly intense feeling of what I can only describe as relief, finally getting to see the empty freeways and downtown. My favorite images from other artists always leave me making up stories in my head or asking questions about the work – not necessarily about the technique, but about the relationships depicted, the evolution of civilization that led to a particular image. The art that keeps me coming back leaves some room for the viewer to participate in it, and I think people feel that with these images. They’re visually striking and I think they also strike an emotional chord with people, especially citizens of L.A.

TAL: How do you see your Empty LA work sitting with your other landscape work? The juxtaposition between natural landscapes and the artifice of the empty city work is startling.

ML: Empty LA was a departure from my other landscape work. For me, taking photos for the sole purpose of making a beautiful image is becoming more and more difficult – I keep wanting to place my images in the context of humanity and where we’re going or what our possible futures are. Lately I feel like making straight landscape images is like eating dessert three meals of the day – it can be fun, but becomes less and less fulfilling. Which is not to say that I don’t admire landscape photographers, far from it, but I think I trend more towards the school of thought of people like Richard Misrach and Robert Polidori, who make some absolutely stunning images while framing them in the context of the built world rather than just the strictly natural world. The other way Empty LA was different was that I had a relatively narrow project to work on and could really narrow down my thinking – my landscape work has been mainly done during stolen time when I’m travelling with my family or riding my bike around LA.

TAL: What did you do with Tippett and Lord of The Rings? Did that experience cross over into your photography work?

ML: I started at Tippett as a kind of low-level technician, making mattes for the compositors. I actually applied as an animator, so I came in early every day and worked like a dog to get into the animation department, which finally happened after about a year there. I animated on a few shows and then my wife and I moved to New Zealand, where I was an animator on all three Lord of the Rings films. While working as an animator, we frequently have to make the best of poorly-shot background plates, while making pleasing compositions. I think that daily practice in composition really helps me in my photography, and my photography in turn helps my animation – because I know a lot about traditional and digital photography, I’ve often been called on to do jobs outside of animation at the companies I work for.

TAL: The Empty LA images suggest a post apocalyptic scenario, a sci-fi narrative of some sort, yet at the same time there’s something oddly calming about them. Is there an element of wish fulfillment or fantasy in the images?

ML: The post-apocalyptic scenario is something I thought about a lot while working on it, but I left it intentionally vague – I didn’t want it to be too much of a narrative. This goes back to that “leaving space for the viewer” idea – I purposefully didn’t go into why or how humans had disappeared, only that they didn’t exist in this world anymore. Now what? What would happen to the city? For me, and for many other people, it’s very calming to imagine the planet continuing without us – the sun rises and sets, rain falls, animals live and die, all without our intervention. I, probably like many people, would be very interested to see how the world would develop in our absence. Many people have told me they wish they could experience that, to walk the highways from the sea into downtown, but what most interests me is imagining how the planet itself would develop without us. I don’t want to read too much into people’s responses, but I believe there’s another angle to this as well, given the current situation we’re in with the climate and environment. I think there’s an underlying sense of hopelessness in many people about what we as a species have done and are doing to the planet, and underneath that, a feeling of guilt. We’re so entrenched in our way of life that it feels impossible to do what needs to be done in time to keep massive climate change from happening, and seeing the world emptied of people, if only for a few minutes in a series of photographs, gives us a respite from that.

TAL: Absence is very powerful – your removal of people, cars, aircraft also takes away the point of identification most viewers would have when looking at images of a city. In some ways these images are almost like those classical images of natural landscapes by Ansel Adams. Was that a part of your thinking?

ML: I purposefully decided on a more formal approach to this series, to try and stay as anonymous as possible in my viewpoint. I even went so far as to not caption or identify the images – aside from the copyright information and the title page, there’s no text in the book. It’s a way of treating the city that’s been built up over the years as a natural landscape, because in the absence of humans, that’s exactly what it would be. Freeways might become migration routes, office buildings might be enormous bird habitats, and so on. The formal aspect of it also provides a framework for people to hang their own narratives and questions on, as opposed to me dictating people’s individual experiences of the images.

TAL: Without wanting to lift the veil too much on your process, could you tell us a little about the way the images were made? They seem, online at least, to almost seemless – was that the effect you wanted to achieve?

ML: Well, sadly it was never much of a veil – most of the images could only have been done digitally! It’s a curious situation – when people first see it, one of the first questions they ask is, “How did you do it?” To be completely honest, discussing my own techniques quickly becomes tiresome, as people ask what lenses or cameras I used, or what version of Photoshop, etc. Of course, I’d love to know that stuff about other photographers’ work, so I suppose I’m a bit of a hypocrite. The seamless effect was something I was going for, I wanted it to look and feel as natural as possible. In a nutshell, they’re mosaics of anywhere from thirty to well over one hundred images, all taken as close as possible to each other in time, and hand-blended in such a way as to remove the cars and people. I had to work backward from the framing and final print size I wanted and reverse-engineer how and when I was going to take the pictures. Google Street View helped immensely in scouting locations, usually overpasses and pedestrian walkways that didn’t have high protective barriers.

Matt Logue’s Empty LA can be purchased from Blurb.com Originally posted by our sister-blog Science Fictional

A fabulous beast?

2010-03-20T11:44:00.004+11:00

From Julie Kearney...

In Brisbane’s new GOMA - which currently hosts the Sixth Asia-Pacific Triennial - a room has been set aside for a bubble-encrusted stuffed elk whose fur can be seen expanding and multiplying behind the distorting glass baubles. It’s one of the star attractions of the show and features as its advertising logo. Alone in the whiteness of its special room the dead animal carries the authority of Art by virtue of being so displayed. Art it undoubtedly is, but it’s also a sad slaughtered creature, killed not for eating but display, first stuffed by a taxidermist and now transformed into a bizarre aesthetic experience for bemused crowds of sightseers.

The quality of work in the current exhibition of Asia-Pacific art is far from the wonders of APT1 and APT2 but no one seems to have noticed. The tabloid reviews to date have been universally approving and the viewers, drifting through the galleries in their recently vastly increased numbers, enjoying their new-found role as public art connoisseurs, appear to be satisfied too.

On the other hand, it should be remembered that we the public, are the beneficiaries of Queensland’s woeful art education policies which deprived most of us in our formative years of our right to an education in the visual arts. And to this state of ignorance may perhaps be added the pernicious influence of house and garden magazines - the only journals concerned with aesthetics that most of us read – which for some years now have been informing us that the most desirable artwork we can hang on our living room walls is a piece of framed wallpaper. It’s a view that gives a new dimension to the hitherto derogatory term, wallpaper art. Today we live among wallpaper art. It flourishes not only above our sofas but in the public galleries to which we take our children.

The depoliticisation of art is nothing new. We have been schooled in acceptance of content-free work, art for art’s sake, ‘high art’ in other words, except for one astonishing digression: the first couple of Asia-Pacific Triennials. These earlier exhibitions, in 1993 and 1996, spectacularly broke that mould. They showed us, through the works of artists drawn from countries politicized by undemocratic structures, that art could be different, that it could be powerful and moving and deeply political while still remaining aesthetically diverse and exciting, often more so. In a range of media and genres, works by artists from our neighbouring Asia-Pacific countries gave the lie to the received view that ‘political’ art can’t be ‘high’ or even art at all because it is merely dull, dishonest work serving the needs of totalitarian states. Such propagandist political art exists, of course. We have seen it in exhibitions of Chinese art since the 70’s and we know about it from the degenerative forms of state art under Stalin which followed hard on the heels of the first fine flush of genuinely political, innovative works by the Constructivists. Non state-controlled, these earlier Russian artists left a legacy we still draw on today, in our modern concept of the artist’s book for instance, which was developed by them as a strategy for communicating with the people in the years following the Russian Revolution.

It’s interesting that the kind of state sponsored political art which followed the Constructivists is present also in the current APT, in a series of finely executed colour woodcuts and sensitive portraits from North Korea. Much has been made of the daring inclusion of these works simply because they are ‘political’ though in fact only a small proportion of them are propagandist. What is surprising about them, and political by implication in a different way, is that the non propagandist North Korean works bear a marked resemblance in style and technique to Australian work in the thirties. Printmaking flourished here in the 30s and most of the twenty-first century North Korean woodcuts on show could be mistaken for works by Jessie Traill or Violet Teague. The Korean woodcuts featuring bridges and other industrial structures are uncannily like the images of Sydney Harbour Bridge that were so popular with artists during the years of its construction. Like North Korea now, Australia in the 30’s was a culturally conservative society, the majority of its artists yet to break away from the restraining influence imposed by Robert Menzies’ feared Australian Academy of Art, in order to take advantage of the possibilities offered by Post-Impressionism and Cubism. It seems that North Korean artists today are in a similar situation. Many viewers, enjoying the accessibility of their works, would say that this is not a bad thing and this is a valid opinion though not the point here. Artists should always be free to make choices as to which direction they go in, whether we like that direction or not, for without freedom art becomes stultified and dies. Art is another word for creativity and by definition needs to be free to change if it wishes.

For those of us who remember the first Asia-Pacific exhibitions, there is another kind of political art, not state sponsored or controlled by the likes of Stalin, Menzies and Kim Jong-il, but work that comes from the hands of individuals living and working in inequitable societies or simply responding to the depredations by capitalism upon the environment. Who can forget the work of Japanese artist Shigeo Toya in the inaugural APT? Titled Woods 11 and now in the possession of the Queensland Art Gallery, it was and is a massive forest of chain-sawed trees, stunningly sculptural in its textural interplay of forms. It was also moving for many viewers as they walked among the branchless trees because it appeared to be a powerful comment on the destruction of the world’s forests.

Anyone who saw it will also remember the burning man installation in the Sculpture Garden at the second APT. The work of Indonesian artist Christanto Dadang, it was created in response to the burning and raping of many Indonesians of Chinese origin in May, 1998. At Dadang’s symbolic burnings at the Queensland Art Gallery, life-size effigies of men were slowly consumed by fire and crowds of Australian viewers, visibly moved, stood watching in total silence for up to an hour. Dadang’s hope for this work, that it would act as ‘a shock capable of illuminating our sense of humanity’ was fully realized. (APT2 catalogue p.200.)

Or who remembers the installation, also at APT2, titled All Stock Must Go! ? It was set up on the grass at the entrance to the gallery rather than inside, at the request of its designers - the Brisbane Campfire Group - and it featured a cattle truck stocked with Aboriginal artworks which were produced on site by the artists themselves and sold to anyone who wished to buy. All Stock Must Go! challenged among other things the perception of overseas buyers that Australian Aboriginal art is ‘takeaway’ art, and it drew attention, through the presence of Black artists painting cross-legged on the grass, to the reality for Aboriginal people of having to produce art for survival. The cattle truck, later dismantled and sold piece by piece, made reference to the cattle trucks used to move Aboriginal tribal people to reserves.
But most surprising of all was the Queensland Art Gallery’s connivance in a subversive act directed partially against itself. The refusal to place the installation within the walls of the gallery was a statement of outsiderness directed against the traditional practices of appropriation and decontextualistion by museums and art galleries both here and around the world. ‘We are invited to enter the museum but we choose to stay outside.’ (Margo Neale, APT2 catalogue, p.10)

Now it is possible, though perhaps not probable, that such a piece of political art directed against its host gallery would be condoned by the current gallery administration. It happened in 1996 with the help of indigenous curator Margo Neale but we have not seen its like since in any of the following four Triennials. What we have seen instead is a steady diminution in quality and diversity together with a move towards video viewing alcoves and away from the interactive installations that were enjoyed in the first two APTs. There were so many of these interactive artworks that the Queensland Art Gallery took on the atmosphere of a fun fair and resounded with chatter. People walked about with smiles on their faces and got into conversations with strangers about what they were seeing and doing. The National Committee formed to decide curatorial philosophy for the inaugural APT had clearly opted to make museum art friendly, to welcome people and make them want to come back again.

Heidegger suggests that an artwork has to be true to its name. That is, it must work. This seems a fair enough statement and if we agree with it, we should be able to ask of any given piece: is this working or is it unemployed? Does it give us joy or surprise through its formal arrangements? Does it have meaning for us, resonate with our experience of life or act to change it in some way? When we sit in a video alcove watching out-of-focus flickering images of grass which someone has taken with a hand-held camera while walking through the same grass, does it work for us in any of the above ways? If it doesn’t then it isn’t an artwork. It’s as simple as that. It may resonate for the next viewer, though in the case of the out-of-focus grass, it’s unlikely he or she will be in the majority.

In the catalogue foreword for the inaugural Asia-Pacific Triennial, Doug Hall tells us that the exhibition was designed to highlight ‘the dynamics of change, identities, and even twentieth century cultural dislocation.’ (My italics. APT1, p.6.) By the fourth APT, which also marked the launch of the opening of the new gallery GOMA, the aim had shrunk to revealing ‘the depth and diversity of individual expression.’ (APT4, p.12.) In the catalogue of the sixth APT now before us, Tony Ellwood makes no general claims for the show at all except to identify without comment the video of Reggae music, the Mekong River works and the North Korean exhibit, as being its key features.

The current exhibition is not entirely bereft of political art but there is less of it and it tends to be low-key so that often you don’t know it is meant to be political unless you take the trouble to read the accompanying placard. Political art that needs explaining, I would suggest, is not political, or at least not political enough to cross cultural boundaries and have meaning for an Australian audience.

All art does not have to be political of course. It simply has to work, but in many cases the exhibits in APT6 do not work, at least for me. There are a lot of video installations with very few people watching them, or watching them to the end, like the one of rickshaw drivers lying still and exhausted on their rickshaws. We get the point, the poor fellows are exhausted, but there’s not much motivation after a while to continue watching a moving film in which nothing moves. There’s a canopy of what looks like photocopy paper suspended by metal clips above the elevators which I didn’t know was an artwork until I learned from the catalogue that it was. There’s a wonderful old wooden house from the Sichuan Province that the artist has had dismantled by Chinese labourers and shipped to Australia for reassembly. It has real presence but is it an artwork or should it more appropriately be housed in an anthropological museum as an artefact? (Duchamp, eat your heart out.)

On a recent visit to GOMA I got into conversation with a member of the security staff while we waited for a lift. I told her I had enjoyed the interactive work called Liminal Air and she said that she had been invited by the artist, just after he finishing installing it, to try it out and that she loved it too. I wasn’t asking her any questions but she told me that the hanging photocopy paper above the escalators looked better at night when the light shone through it, making it ripple and look like a crocodile’s back. And she said that the theme of the current APT was domestic objects and repetition. I thought that sounded right and asked if it was the official theme. Oh no, she said, that’s just how it seems to me.

Everyone gets something different from art and this woman had found things I hadn’t. Perhaps I’m just a griper. Perhaps it’s the best APT ever. I doubt it though. Most of us lack the necessary tools to discriminate thanks to the failure of successive Queensland governments to address the issue of primary school art education, so most of us have to take what we can from visits to our public galleries. We will always take something away but we could take a lot more.
People know what they like. Who doesn’t? That’s one thing we can still be sure of despite being deprived of the proper tools to understand visual language. We know what we like, but because we feel we don’t know enough about ‘Art’ and therefore have perhaps failed to understand some vital point, we’re unlikely to speak up about our opinions. It’s too easy, from the standpoint of enforced ignorance, to make a fool of ourselves. We the public, products of the Queensland school system, know our place. In the case of the current APT, I would suggest, there is something to speak up about, but nobody is speaking. We have been sold a pup in return for our taxes when we could have had a fabulous beast. And by that I don’t mean a stuffed elk.

Apres Video: "F#$%ing fantastic!"

2010-03-05T10:36:00.004+11:00

From Carrie Miller

I know what you’re wondering. What’s that smell? Well, it’s the decomposing corpse of video art in the stockrooms of prestigious contemporary art galleries around the world.

Twenty years ago none of us could have predicted the breathtaking ascendancy of the video art genre and its attendant market in recent times. After years of poor old Mike Parr plugging earnestly away, it seemed that the genre suddenly exploded a few years ago.

But neither could we have predicted its demise. The so-called art expert that created this blog certainly didn’t see it coming. He put all his now rotting eggs into the basket of video art with his forthcoming book on the topic. From here on in, it can only sit impotently in his bottom drawer, a mere redundancy, a cultural irrelevance.

It’s not often that the death of an art form can be precisely pinned down. But let the record show that October the 9th, 2009 was the day the music died for video art.

Up until this point artists have only ever dealt in the perfume of the video form. Appropriately enough in this postmodern world, it’s taken an outsider to distill it to its essence. His name is Steve Walsh and he’s my hero. In a mere 47 seconds he puts an end to an entire industry of filmic pretension and posturing. With his crappy promotional video for an epi-centre of bourgeois leisure at the heart of Australia’s most vacuous city – Sydney’s Centennial Park - Walsh has done what even the great Tony Schwensen would struggle to: capture the banal truths of middle-class existence in a succinct and brutally unconsidered way. This amateur has achieved what Manet could have only hoped to with Le déjeuner sur l'herbe had he been a bit less French.

I don’t want to panic any contemporary art collectors out there, but you know those discs with that guy skateboarding in the rain that you tripped over each to acquire? The following is irrefutable proof that you’ve been had.

If you're viewing this post via email, click here to see the video. Caution: probably not safe for work.

Beyond The Edge

2010-02-16T10:24:00.005+11:00

Some months back we posted an image by Ross Racine. After the artist got in touch to ask us to let readers know that he has new work available on his web site, we asked if he'd agree to a short email interview. Conducted over the last month, Ross offered some insights into his work:

The Art Life: You've spoken before on the method you use to make your images, but could you briefly explain your combination of techniques?

Ross Racine: The note on my technical process, available on my site, gives an overview of how I proceed. In a nutshell, the process involves creating the artwork in two steps: the first and main one is drawing freehand directly with the computer, and the second one is printing the image on paper with an inkjet printer. The drawing phase involves working with Photoshop with a pen and a tablet, aside from some preparatory work in Illustrator. In Photoshop, I start from a blank ground and build up the image with a small set of basic tools, such as selection, painting and cloning tools, copying and pasting, layers, luminosity and contrast controls, grain and smoothness modifications, and automation. In short, the process is a combination of digitally drawn material and various transformations done to this material.

Ross Racine, New Foxtown and Westhaven Villas, 2008.
Digital drawing, 60x80cms.

RR: One of the main properties of digital drawing is a virtual, non-material working environment. The fact that the image is not bound to a physical base has several advantages. It allows various combinations of techniques and treatments, an ease in modifying the whole image at once, an ease in copying and cutting, moving and pasting parts of the work (within an image as well as between images), the blending of layers of variable translucency, and the creation of copies of the image in progress (to save steps in the generation of the work and to create different versions of a work). Working in the virtual world also means the image can be altered at any time, even after a final version is established, thus creating a new, different image from a "final" one. Another property of the medium is its very fast speed compared to most physical media. This allows a very short delay between intention and result, as little time is needed to try out various ideas.

TAL: The result of your approach creates pictures that land somewhere between photography and drawing, and they have an almost hyper-real quality to them - is your intention that the viewer respond in a particular way?

RR: With the medium of digital drawing and my rather realistic treatment of the subject, my aim is to work in the gaps between photography and traditional, physical drawing. I am aware that many people who happen upon my prints think that they are photos, at least initially. Digital drawing is a relatively new medium among more established visual art mediums. There are few precedents to act as visual references to help viewers approach this type of drawing. But hopefully, a tradition will gradually emerge to make viewers, including myself, more familiar with this new domain of imagery. A precedent can be found in the last two decades in photography (in art, design, and other fields), as viewers have come to expect a measure of manipulation in any photograph, whether this manipulation is apparent or not, ranging from obvious color and shape distortion to very subtle and invisible detail correction. Viewers in front of the actual prints of my work (24 x 32") are less likely to consider them photographs, as the drawing-like detail on the surface is more visible.

TAL: The aerial view perspectives of your images suggest a disconnected point of view, one that isn't necessarily experienced by many people, but are familiar from satellite imagery, weather maps, surveillance images - and seems to suggest a very eerie feeling of being watched, or targeted - is there an intention an explicit criticism of suburbia, of expansion in your work?

RR: I value the distant, aerial point of view as promoting an attitude of reflection about the world. The public in general has, in the last decade or so, experienced an increased familiarity with the aerial viewpoint, with the instant availability of satellite imagery on the Web. This type of image is quickly becoming as ubiquitous in daily experience as the map. The feeling of "being watched" you mention is not my intention, but nevertheless interesting. It depends on how much you identify with the residents of my suburbs. On the other hand, I acknowledge a feeling of "watching", as the viewer of my prints is in the position of the all-seeing observer. The watcher knows some things that the inhabitants of these subdivisions do not. My viewpoint is also that of the planner: the all-over, top-down approach of the decision maker. There is an obvious criticism of suburbia in my images, mainly through the exaggeration of certain of its characteristics. The suburbs are the fastest growing part of the urban environment in the majority of nations. But beyond the suburban example, these digital drawings are a way of thinking about design, the city and society as a whole. I would like my prints to remain as open as possible, to be triggers for reflection through analogy with various aspects of the world.

TAL: The way you use the imagery of suburbia seems to imply visual conundrums - it feels as if you're being pulled into the detail of the work trying to sort out individual houses, drive ways... What's happening there?

RR: I think the conundrum is due to the small size of the jpgs available on the Web. When in front of an actual 24 x 32" print, the viewer has the liberty to look at it from a certain distance to take in the overall composition and then to come nearer to examine the details within each "property", making the experience a more intimate one, almost like eavesdropping.

Ross Racine, Subdivision, Cedar Valley, 2006.
Digital drawing, 15 x 20 inches.

TAL: By conundrum, the suggestion was that certain of your images, say for example the views of the housing estates as circles, some like question marks, many of them isolated like desert communities or clustered together in what appears to be empty space, have a very interesting visual play, like an Escher drawing or a jigsaw - were these the kinds of references you were looking at when began to create these drawings? Or was there some other inspiration?

RR: I am inspired by diagrams, by the means by which information can be represented in visual form. The vocabulary of diagrams can be very straightforward and powerful. I use it for composition and also to imply that the suburbs' contents (material and human), seen from a high aerial viewpoint, may be also considered information. The word I use for my application of the idea of the diagram is structure. A related concern is the conflation of the macroscopic and microscopic scales suggested by the concept of structure. The observable world has many examples of organizations that are similar at both scales, for example the concentric structure. I am also interested in the implications of living within a specific structure, for example the experience of living in an endless accumulation of haphazardly connected streets.

TAL: The images imply a science fictional formulation of suburbia. Do you imagine that there is a particular scenario going on in these places?

RR: I am definitely open to a science fictional reading of my images and I leave the viewer to imagine possible narratives for an image, if a person is so inclined, but I wouldn't encourage the formation of definite scenarios. This would limit the evocative potential of the image. After all, my prints remain first and foremost images, not descriptions of established stories.

Rossracine.com

New Work Friday #40

2010-02-05T11:17:00.003+11:00

Sarah Nolan, PRETTY GOOD, 2009.
Various fabrics, beads, sequins and polyester thread. 25x51cm

Sarah Nolan, NAME, 2009.
Various fabrics, beads, sequins and silk thread. 28x51cm.

"Rewarded: This series of thirteen hand sewn pennants metaphorically represent the artist’s aspiration for a material recognition of their work. The conventional reading of these flag shapes, reminiscent of the felt pennant purchased as a souvenir or awarded for a sporting achievement, are subverted by the text, which have been sourced from art reviews, statements quoted from panel discussions, or from observations and experiences of the art world. Located somewhere between the decisive congratulatory tone to the explicit reinforcing of a fact, the reduction of this text to a single word allows the artwork to take on a more ambiguous and provocative tone. The abundance of beads, sequins and trimmings stitched on to plain and patterned fabrics imply a kitsch preciousness" - Sarah Nolan.

This just in

2010-02-05T11:06:00.003+11:00

Just as we posted our roundup of comments from our call for suggestions for influential shows [see below], we received an email from a reader we shall do the favour of calling Sgt. Schultz. Although not exactly what you'd call a "positive" suggestion, the good Sargeant remembers a stoush in the Sydney:

Well, perhaps not influential, but I'd say Tony Bond's Body exhibition at AGNSW rates a mention for the following...

A clear realization that if you really want to see particular master works, go overseas, they're never coming here. Bond's inclusion of prints of artworks he wanted for the show was a pretty stark reminder that even if they could be loaned, they won't come to the outposts. (Perhaps this has changed a little, and perhaps this embarrassing curatorial 'decision' spurred the good museum folks onto lobbying a bit harder and demanding standards that can not really be argued with. Maybe.)

Secondly, Bond's inclusion of a substantial amount of his acknowledged friend Mike Parr's work. The ensuing battle in the SMH instigated by the esteemed critic, between himself, Bond and Parr reached fever pitch. McDonald eventually publishing a fictional fantasy dialogue. Not since (I couldn't really say if before) has arts coverage in Sydney and likely in Australia (with the exception of the Henson Fiasco) been afforded such column inches, a trait more common in the British press. For once, a seriously curated exhibition of contemporary art was given a good going round in the papers. Who cares what was said - it was there. The sensation was not tabloid, it was merely a mutual distaste between the combatants - who in turn fired off by turns intelligent and amusing missives and an editor willing to let it run. If only that would continue.

And the winner is...

2010-02-04T10:17:00.006+11:00

Our call for suggestions for influential and important exhibitions brought in some interesting suggestions. The call was in two parts - you could either vote in the poll at the right of the Art Life home page, or, if you disagreed with our selection, you could suggest another or leave a comment under the post below. This seemed to confuse many people, as the poll results show:

Which of the following exhibitions would you rate as the more influential or imporant in Australian art?

The Field, NGV 1968 16% 27
Christo's Wrapped Coast, 1969 30% 52
European Dialogue: The 1979 Biennale of Sydney 7% 12
Popism, NGV, 1982 3% 5
Origins, Originality + Beyond: 1984 Biennale of Sydney 7% 12
The Readymade Boomerang: Certain Relations in 20th Century Art 11% 19
Rad Scunge, Karyn Lovegrove Gallery, 1992 5% 9
Another show [nominate in comments] 20% 35

Christo's Wrapped Coast in Sydney in 1969 was by far the winner of the poll. Another Show meanwhile scored 35 votes but we had a mere 10 comments. Ah, never mind, since we also offered a prize for the most insightful and well reasoned suggestion - a gift of a $17.99 album from iTunes. So who is in the running?

Guest was first in and wrote: "I reckon Signs of Life, Melbourne International Biennale 1999. It was ambitious...to the point where it is the only Melb Biennale to date. It used a derelict Telstra building instead of a white box. It exposed people to a lot of conceptional installation art that was coming out of Europe and the US at the time. It established Julianna Engberg as one of the more adenturous curators of contemporary art. As an art school grad at the time, it felt like a whole new world of art possibiliities had blossomed before me."

Tony Lloyd also suggested Signs of Life, but had a slightly longer memory, pointing out that it was in fact the second Melbourne Biennale - "the first From the Southern Cross being 11 years before and directed by the late Nick Waterlow. [Signs of Life] was a genuinely thrilling show with stunning works from Ricky Swallow, Maurizio Cattelan, Patricia Piccinini, David Noonan, Mariele Neudecker, Stephen Bush, Cornelia Parker, Callum Morton, Robert Gober, and too many others to recall. The raw concrete and steel of the gutted eight story building that housed the biennale lent it an apocalyptic feel, perfectly apposite to the end of a century; the new art seemingly born from the rubble of the previous hundred years. It showed that art can have power and weight outside the artificial gravity field of the institution, and most importantly it showed that art can be exciting, wonderous, witty and wise. I remember thinking at the time that this show would be the launching point and benchmark for the art of the new century."

Although The Field attracted a predictably high vote in the poll, a reader suggested an exhibition from the year before, Two Decades of American Art 1967. "Swept away the last of insipid Anglo colonial pseudo-modernism, made New York the place to go," argues Savant.

Christo's work in '69, like Nam June Paik's visit in the 70s, drew a lot of attention to what was then a marginal artistic practice in Australia. "Conceptual and installation work has dominated Australian art for nearly 40 years," says Rsrch09. "It was first widely publicised by Christo's Wrapped Coast but Australian artists working in the style only began to receive wide publicity through a series of exhibitions in the early 1970s with the 1970 Transfield Prize - curated Brian Finemore) - in Sydney, the Szeeman/Kaldor exhibition 1971 in Sydney and Melbourne, Object and Idea - again curated by Brian Finemore) - in Melbourne in 1973 and the Mildura Sculpture Triennials in 1973 and 1975 (curator Tom McCullough). Eveything since has followed in the footsteps of these artists and these exhibitions."

Daniel Mudie Cunningham had a list of three influential shows: Don't Leave Me This Way: Art in the Age of AIDS, curated by Ted Gott, National Gallery of Australia, 1994-5, Anita & Beyond, curated by Lisa Havilah, Penrith Regional Gallery & The Lewers Bequest, 2003, and Gallery A Sydney 1964-1983, curated by John Murphy, Campbelltown Arts Centre/Newcastle Region Art Gallery, 2009.

The Asia Pacific Triennial is now in its sixth incarnation, but RK thought that it's very first outing was notable: "APT 1. Ahead of the curve in so many ways. For all its flaws, it was the first major exhibition to seriously propose a framework for conceiving cultural production in Australia outside the Euro-American canon. In its subsequent iterations it became the country's most important international exhibition bar none, with a tangible effect on the way in which art in Asia, and to an unfortunately lesser degree, the Pacific, is produced and received. Both a symbol and a model of Brisbane's transformation from a cultural backwater to a half decent city."

After much deliberation we've decided to award our modest prize to Rscrch09. Sir or madam, please write to us at the art life at hot mail dot com and we'll sort out the gift giving. Thanks for your help. In the meantime the poll will live a little longer, and we're still looking for interesting suggestions.

Art Month's Shout Out to Emerging Artists

2010-02-04T10:04:00.003+11:00

Art Month kicks off in Sydney in March and features exhibitions in more than 50 galleries including public museums, commerical spaces, ARIs and auction houses. Art Month will also be staging a series of lectures, tours, workshops and symposiums. The Art Life will be taking part in a program for emerging arts writers [more details to come]. But right now, there are great opportunities for emerging artists to show their work - and schmooze and booze with art world gliterrati. Time to get on to it:

Call for Submissions from Emerging Artists

Art Month Sydney is a new event for the Australian visual arts calendar scheduled for March 2010... During a month long program we will collectively promote our industry, artists and venues. As part of the Program’s commitment to promote and provide opportunities for all groups within the arts we plan to help emerging artists to secure valuable contacts with galleries, and potential exhibition space.

Applications are open to young and emerging artists - who have not yet held a solo exhibition of their work in a commercial gallery.

A team of curators will select 40 applicants to participate in workshops run by Australian Business Arts Foundation and held at Artbank’s Rosebery premises.

Participants will then be invited to participate in a Speed Dating Program where they will have the opportunity to present themselves and their work in a short pitch to 30 of Sydney’s leading gallerists and curators.

This Event is scheduled to take place on 31st March, 2010.

Those artists participating will then be invited to stay for the Art Month Closing party for further networking opportunities with gallery owners, curators and writers.

The winner of the Speed Dating program will be awarded a one week solo exhibition at Gallery II, Danks Street Galleries in Waterloo, (kindly donated by Leo Christie to the value of over $1700) and a grant for Art materials from Eckersleys Art Supplies for $2,000 of materials.

Applications should include 5 images of an artist’s work, total not exceeding 5 mgb, together with a one page CV, and a 500 word Artist Statement. Applications Close Monday 15th February. Email Applications to: Mandy O'Bryan: speeddating [at] artmonthsydney.com

Please note that only successful artists will be notified, by telephone and in writing, by Friday 26th February, 2010.

Forms for the Speed Dating program will be available via the Sydney Art Month Facebook Page from 27th January 2010.

For further information regarding Sydney Art Month check the following links:

www.artmonthsydney.com (including registration for e-news)
Film clip/cinema ad- www.youtube.com/artmonthsydney
Social networks- www.twitter.com/ArtMonthSydney and www.facebook.com (search for Art Month Sydney)

Art Month Sydney acknowledges the support of Leo Christie, Carriageworks, Eckersley's art and craft, Artbank, and the Australian Business Arts Foundation in staging this event.

Crowdsourcing influential exhibitions [with bonus sweetner]

2010-01-11T12:11:00.007+11:00

We're in the early stages of research for series three of The Art Life and we're wondering what in your opinion have been the more influential and important exhibitions in Australia since the late 1960s?

You can vote for the sample we've posted at right in the poll, or you can nominate your own ideas, either in the comments below or via email to the art life at hot mail dot com. "Influential" or "important" are up to you to define, but a reason for the nomination would also to be helpful. In the quid pro quo of blogging we've decided to sweeten the deal: the most interesting, thoughtful and well reasoned nomination will win a $17.99 album from iTunes, gifted from the Art Life to you.

That's pretty sweet!

Trouble At Mill

2010-01-11T10:46:00.006+11:00

After the fractious campaign to secure an independent future for the National Art School, the appointment of Professor Anita Taylor as the art school director seemed to outsiders like a sober and sensible choice. For those expecting business-as-usual, however, Professor Taylor's new broom approach has prompted a vigorous internal debate on the values of the institution, its processes and staffing policies. Here is an excerpt from an open letter written by Dr. Jacques Delaruelle, who was until recently head of art history and theory:

An open letter to Mr Peter Watts AM,

Chair of the NAS Board of Directors,

(and whoever else cares about the National Art School)

Dear Peter

Allow me a degree of frankness which may not have been appropriate when we last met a few weeks ago, at the NAS end of year exhibition. I had asked you a question about your Board's involvement in the management of the school and, more specifically, its eventual function as a court of appeal. You answered that you believed it imperative for the Board of Directors not to interfere with the running of the school and implied that its CEO, Ms [Anita] Taylor, had been given carte blanche and could therefore do as she pleased. Your response, which I hope to have correctly paraphrased, filled me with dire foreboding. My anxiety that we would be treated… well, just as we have been treated... increased considerably. Yet even though my colleagues and I had for some time been aware of Ms Taylor's agenda, I wondered whether you and your colleagues on the Board would condone the destruction of our professional lives and the dismissal of our many years of service to the NAS as worthless. Now the haste of the selection process, its transparent bias and the hypocritical reassurance given to us all along by its chair does not necessarily suggest that Ms Taylor coolly planned our elimination with the Board's unanimous approval. But there can be no doubt that the manner of our execution implied at all stages, a remorseless resolution.

Much worse can be said about a selection process whose indifferent violence forced all Heads of Department out of positions some had held for many years. Were we all that bad or were we paying the price for the incompetent management of the last director and his acolyte? In any case, even though we had all been previously selected on merit and the job descriptions had not been altered in the new structure, all Heads of Department were dismissed as one. How can anyone possibly believe that due process, based on merit selection, was followed in the latest round of interviews? As far as I am aware the NAS, still being a State-funded institution (albeit through grants), is bound to follow government regulations regarding the selection of staff. But did it, and given the collective result of the selection process, how can the representatives from the State bodies on the Board of NAS Directors regard and countenance such extraordinary recruitment practices? [ At present the two stakeholders of the NAS company are the Ministries of the Arts and Education with representatives on the NAS Board of Directors.]

What can one think of a selection process that allows one of the successful applicants to grease his way to the coveted position by wining and dining the NAS CEO, who would soon interview him for a job, at a exclusive Sydney restaurant? Prior to that the same individual had likewise treated a member of your board to a similar feast. That the two guests of our entrepreneurial applicant had remained blind to the conflict of interest and nepotistic overtones of such invitations begs to be explained. And other questions, albeit tangential to the current issue, beg to be answered with regard to the NAS CEO granting the NAS artist studio to her own husband for the third time in a row. Another point of contention is related to her own appointment at the NAS. Ms Taylor was interviewed for her position by a representative from DET, Ms Sandra Yates, author of the still undisclosed report that led to the NAS becoming a public company, and Mr John Mc Donald, art critic at the Sydney Morning Herald. In November 2008, Mr McDonald was invited by Ms Taylor, the founding director of Jerwood Drawing Prize, to judge and write the catalogue essay for the show. Mc Donald was flown to London, courtesy of the Centre for Drawing, University of the Arts of which Ms Taylor is the Director, and the following month was a member of the selection panel which appointed Ms Taylor as the new Director of the NAS.

It has been said that the NAS (its staff, not its walls, I presume) had virtues which other art schools lack, and more particularly perhaps, a distaste for the kind of empty semiotic gestures which dominate the current art scene. More importantly, the NAS was alone of its kind in protecting a certain idea of art making deemed obsolete or 'romantic' elsewhere. The history of art was taught at the NAS more extensively than it is taught anywhere else in Australia and approached from a critical perspective which will no longer be tolerated under the stewardship of our decapitator ("too many heads…" she was heard jesting). The ideals of collegiality and academic freedom, which barely managed to survive under the previous regime, are strictly incompatible with the management style my colleagues and I have experienced for the past six months. The soothing contralto in which her unfathomable pronouncements are conveyed and her autocratic intolerance of debate in meetings made it all too obvious that only sycophants would be admitted in her entourage or mules, to carry the load or perform the work that she herself would not care to do.

To return to my previous point that the singularity of the NAS was its best chance for long term survival in an environment saturated with conformism and fashionable sameness, one can only deplore that this opportunity has been so gravely jeopardised by a person who showed herself as utterly indifferent to the identity of the school she highjacked as she was callous to its people. Finally, though the CEO's official task, some would say her mandate, was one of conservation, her defining action has been essentially destructive. The continuity of the NAS teaching has been interrupted in such a drastic manner that the new school will find it hard to cling to its old name with even a semblance of legitimacy.

The Friends of the National Art School (FONAS) have battled long and hard for the autonomy of the NAS, but I cannot believe that the massacre which has just taken place is what they had in mind. At this particular juncture, the NAS stands ready to be reduced to a piece of historical real estate, a shallow educational 'philosophy' (the so-called atelier model) with an obsessive emphasis on drawing, and a brand to be marketed in the hope of financial survival once the government subsidies come to an end. Since there can be no independence from money, one may be excused for suspecting that the real meaning of 'independence' for the NAS has now less to do with a freer, or more appropriate learning mode than with the departure of the school from the public system of education. Again, there is nothing here to celebrate. The privatisation of the NAS is not merely a disaster for those teachers who, having served the school for so many years, have just been rewarded with a kick in the face. It is a calamity for its future students and staff as well, not to mention the likely impoverishment of the Australian visual arts in the years to come. Does anyone here really care? I doubt it! Please correct me if I am wrong.

Dr Jacques Delaruelle
Head of the Art History and Theory Department, NAS, (1997-2010)
3 January 2010

Delaruelle's open letter has apparently prompted an emergency board meeting of the NAS, scheduled for this evening. We'll keep you updated.

2010 - The Year We Make Contact

2010-01-11T10:33:00.003+11:00

Greetings from The Art Life. To celebrate our sixth year online we've decided to make a bold decision - namely, to continue to allow our readers the ability to voice their opinions. The comments attached to this blog have a life of their own and, while many believe that the comments should have been allowed to expire like prawns in the sun - others believed they represent a history of snakrdom in the art world. Thus, for 2010, we've updated our Haloscan comments to the newer shinier ECHO platform. This means two things: all the comments left on the blog since 2004 will continue to exist; second, there is a new process for moderating the comments. We may take some time to respond, but we will. Please be patient. In the meantime, please to enjoy...

С Рождеством Христовым

2009-12-23T14:35:00.002+11:00

Via Weetstraw.com

"It's Art As You've Never Seen It Before..."

2009-12-23T14:21:00.003+11:00

Tino La Bamba's quest to ride a motorised dragster from Sydney to Lismore was an astonishing success but it is only now that the startling details of his adventure are becoming known. La Bamba, who may be somehow related to Renny Kodgers [second cousin?], made an unexpected appearance on Prime News:

More details of La Bamab's trip can be found on his webiste, such as this intriguing tidbit:

"Word is continuing to spread of my remarkable odyssey. The largest newspaper in the district, The Northern Star interviews me. They are keen to hear of the knowledge that I have gleaned by travelling through this harsh land. I speak to two men. A writer and a photographer who have been sent to cover my story. They stare up at me wide eyed as I impart my observations on the landscape that has surrounded them their entire lives. They ask me if I have encountered any hostility as I passed from pueblo to pueblo. I tell them that I have only encountered “hostility tamed”. They look at me like I make no sense. So I explain to them that if ever there was a moment of aggression it was so quickly abated that it would be incorrect to call it hostility. The appropriate term is “hostility tamed”. I tell them that yes I came across a lot of this."

Read more at Tinolabamba.com.

Media and murder

2009-12-14T13:35:00.006+11:00

Professor Joanna Mendelssohn was among those first contacted by members of the media in the immediate aftermath of the murder of Nick Waterlow and his daughter Chloe Heuston. In this article on the ethics of news reporting - originally commissioned and written for the Jesuit Communications Australia website Eureka Street - Mendelssohn describes her experiences of the subsequent news reporting.

In the early evening of Monday 9 November 2009 Chloe Heuston and her father Nick Waterlow, guiding spirit of many Biennales of Sydney and mentor to generations of artists and arts administrators, were killed in a knife attack. Chloe’s two year old daughter was injured, while her sons - aged four and four months respectively- were not.

I first heard of these events at 11 pm that evening when I was contacted by Geeshe Jacobsen of the Sydney Morning Herald, who asked me if I was aware that Nick Waterlow could be one of two people who had died that evening. When I expressed a sleepy surprise, she clarified the situation by describing it as “the murder-suicide”. My response was that if there was a murder-suicide, then the murderer could not be him. I told her that Nick Waterlow did not do murder. Again she repeated that it was a murder-suicide and that the man was 68 years old. She was so adamant about the murder-suicide that I went to bed convinced Nick Waterlow was alive. The next morning’s edition of the Sydney Morning Herald was published with Nick and Chloe’s photographs, as an accompaniment to the story of the killings, which effectively identified them as the victims. The murder-suicide story was quietly killed.

Because the journalist did not apologise either for her behaviour or her initial allegation, I later complained to the Sydney Morning Herald. I received a call from Peter Kerr, the executive editor, who apologised on behalf of the paper. The next week Geeshe Jacobsen had the new byline of “Crime Editor”.

There is a reason why police delay the naming of victims of crime. They need time to notify the immediate family, so that the news can be broken to close friends and other relatives. The decision by the Sydney Morning Herald to effectively announce that Nick Waterlow and Chloe Heuston were dead well ahead of any official notice, added an extra layer of grief to those who were close to them. Nick’s neighbours had another problem. He had lived with his partner Juliet in a block of apartments in Potts Point. That evening a journalist, identified as being from the Sydney Morning Herald, buzzed apartments in the block, attempting to contact her for an interview.

Photographers and television crews descended on the hospital where the injured child had been taken and filmed her as she was rushed into surgery. The ambulance officers did well in covering the little girl with a blanked to protect her from the flashing lights of the cameras, but the photographs still appeared in daily papers, on television and remain on the Web.

As the Sydney Morning Herald had identified Nick’s place of work; television crews, photographers and journalists made an early beeline for the College of Fine Arts, UNSW, where people were trying to come to terms with the death of one of their most loved colleagues. Fortunately the university employs skilled public relations staff, so a media conference was arranged with the Dean, Ian Howard. His voice became the formal response of the arts community to the loss of one of its favourite sons. Good media management meant that the university’s meeting with faculty staff was timed for 12 noon, which coincided with the police media briefing.

Later some journalists returned to COFA, staking out the gallery, to see who entered. Restrictions on contacting university staff didn’t stop journalists from phoning or calling in with increasingly absurd questions, or demanding that staff help them to contact the family. One of the problems the journalists faced is that those who work in the arts are reasonably used to dealing with the media, and did not see anything especially enticing about being quoted in the popular press. When no intimate details were forthcoming, the media claimed that Nick Waterlow had been “intensely private” and commented on the “tight-knit” arts community as they created anecdotes and attitudes on his behalf.

The police had indicated that the person of interest was his eldest son, Antony, who was reported as being a schizophrenic. In 2006 Nick Waterlow had been marginally involved in a major touring exhibition on art and schizophrenia, For Matthew and Others. This information triggered stories claiming the exhibition was evidence of his concern. Photographs of Antony Waterlow were distributed and published in the media. It was unfortunate that The Daily Telegraph published a photograph of Nick’s other son, Luke, and captioned it “Antony Waterlow partying with friends”.

Chloe’s husband, Ben Heuston, had been in England when she was killed. The media, including the ABC, staked out Sydney airport to record his distraught face as he returned home. Later, after he collected the children from hospital, the media pursued them, and subsequently published images of the fugitives.

That the circumstances of this family and their friends were turned into tabloid entertainment is perhaps not surprising. Frontline neatly parodied this kind of death-knock journalism years ago. However when the tabloid media hounded Lindy Chamberlain family in the 1980s they were not joined by the ABC and Fairfax broadsheets. But in 2009 “quality” press were ahead of the pack in journalistic bad behaviour.

The ABC broadcast footage surreptitiously recorded inside the church service at both funerals as a part of its evening news bulletin. In style and content the stories in the Sydney Morning Herald were interchangeable with those in The Daily Telegraph.

I keep wondering how to categorise the way news media have acted over these deaths. Is the failure to respect the feelings of those close to Nick Waterlow and Chloe Heuston a failure of ethics or a failure of empathy? Perhaps it isn’t possible to develop a functioning code of professional ethics without some sense of empathy. Whatever the reason, this has hardly been journalism’s finest hour.

Mod Off

2009-12-14T12:32:00.003+11:00

Amy Marjoram writes to The Art Life about an exciting new online project. Starting life as the exhibition Mod Off held in Melbourne last month the project has now migrated to a blog and hopes to collect the work of artists dedicated to finding new uses for old things with slight [or complex] modifications.

From the Mod Off site:

"Mod Off is now going to exist as an ongoing online archive of Modified Objects.

"In curating the Mod Off exhibition we were consistently surprised by the Mods we encountered, some were simple others incredibly complex - but they all challenged our expectations about objects, the way we relate to them, and many pushed our ideas of what a Mod can be. We look forward to the continuation of this exciting project and hope you will show us your Mods. Please email amymarjoram@gmail.com with images and any descriptions you have, please include your name as maker of the Mod (or mark as Unknown if you have witnessed a Mod of uncertain provenance) and the person who took the image.

"We will not re-post Mod’s that people have come across online but we are happy to hear about Mod’s on the internet that may expand our research. We immensely look forward to seeing the objects you have made or encountered & identified as Mods in your daily life.

Thankyou, Amy Marjoram & Yvette King"

Visit the Mod Off blog

New Work Friday #39

2009-12-10T13:16:00.003+11:00

Louise Morrison and Matt Dickmann, Mr Ernest J. Langridge's Resignation, 2009.
Found objects and painted steel.

Mr Ernest J. Langridge's Resignation, detail.
"Mr Ernest J. Langridge's Resignation is one of the artworks in the Show Character exhibition held at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA). Guest curator James Doohan (aka Jonah Dames) invited each of the artists to respond the idea of a "character". In this collaborative work, Louise Morrison's reflections on backyard inventions and the persistance of hope meet Matt Dickmann's interests in aerodynamics and structural simplicity."

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

It aint over 'til it's over

2009-12-10T12:10:00.000+11:00

The global financial crisis

Has had little or no effect on the Australian art world 6% 6
Is yet to be properly felt 30% 29
Is eating away at the bottom of the market 22% 21
Is evening out the haves from the have nots 22% 21
More hysteria than fact 21% 20

97 votes total

Brian Dunlop 1938-2009

2009-12-10T11:54:00.005+11:00

This tribute to Brian Dunlop has been released by Eva Breuer Gallery:

Brian Dunlop (1938-2009, Untitled (Self-Portrait) 1985
Lithograph 12/20, 32.5 x 31.5 cm.

"It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Brian Dunlop (1938-2009) one of Australia’s greatest painters and a dear friend. Brian died yesterday morning, 9 December, in Melbourne after a long battle with a congenital heart condition. He was 71.

"An artist of great sensibility, of great intellect and virtuosity, Brian was an exceptional professional; sought after by collectors, revered by his colleagues, and loved by all who knew him. The body of work he leaves behind includes some of the most important figurative paintings produced in Australia. The best of Brian’s works exude a poetic vulnerability and sensuality, perhaps seen in a silent pause or the lift of a curtain in the breeze. For many years Brian restricted his range of subject matter to the interior with window, often including a figure or still life. In these works "The room represents the mind, the windows the eyes looking out, curtains are the eyelids. A window is the division between inner and outer, spiritual and worldly. The figure later stood in the doorway, the threshold; then she ventured outside into the landscape." Whether painting the figure or the landscape, overpowering everything in Brian’s work is light. In April reflecting on his latest compositions he wrote, “The correct balance can be pure energy.”

"Having inherited his love of painting and drawing from his father, Brian won a scholarship to study at the National Art School from which he graduated at the end of the 1950’s. There was a strong tendency towards abstraction in Sydney at that stage and it wasn’t until he reached Rome some years later that Brian found his ‘true’ way. “Justin O’brien had looked at sketches and drawings I had done in Rome and said that they were more 'true to you' than the abstract work. He said 'Keep doing them, and they will evolve', so I did.”

"Brian had an insatiable appetite for the history of art, particularly European art, as a practising painter. “I have also always liked what I regard as the true American tradition which includes a deep respect for nature and wilderness and social comment (Frederick Church, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth).” Of continuing interest to him were artists as different as Piero della Francesco (he had seen all his paintings), Vermeer and Braque. After working for twenty years in and near Port Fairy on the south west coast of Victoria, Brian had recently moved to Beechworth, where he painted his last exhibition.

"Brian was part of the gallery family for more than 15 years. Our thoughts are with his family and loved ones. We farewell him with the greatest respect."

Easy Skanking

2009-12-06T10:06:00.004+11:00

Imagine the scene if you can. You’re at the Art Gallery of NSW, or the Museum of Contemporary Art, or perhaps at the “National” Gallery of Victoria, for an opening party. It’s the standard fair: art world people, drinks, canapés, speeches. After a couple of hours the doors are thrown open. The public streams into the gallery, all smiles, many of them extended Islander families, and head towards a stage area en mass. Reggae superstar O-shen comes on and the place goes crazy – the band kicks in, dreads flying – it’s like the second coming of Bob Marley. Not only is the band great, the crowd totally into it, but so are the art people – and even crazier – all the galleries are still open, drunk people wandering around looking at art, museum guards smiling, no doubt mentally totting up the overtime. A grand dream? Too many of Brisbane’s infamous trumpet reefers? No – this really was the opening party of the 6th Asia Pacific Triennial. All the usual art world talk of “inclusivity” and “reaching out to the community” usually amount to very little. This time GOMA and the APT made the egalitarian gesture into something real. This is how all major gallery openings should roll. [Note to the 2010 Biennale of Sydney – maybe think of combining with All Tomorrow’s Parties? You can only hope to match the fun of the APT.]

The APT exhibition proper opened to the public on Saturday morning. It made recording some of our interviews tricky. While we were in the middle of interviewing New Zealander artist Robin White and her Fijian collaborators Leba Toki and Bale Jione, people gathered around, listened quietly, walked into shot, stood in front of the camera, and took photos. The end of the interview was a write off, the sound obliterated by another NZ artist, Rohan Wealleans, screaming from the adjacent gallery. It was a performance involving a canoe. Wealleans performance was described to us by some onlookers as “showbizy” and “like a 1st year art student’s idea of a performance”. We missed it ourselves but can attest to its volume. We cannot attest to the exact identity of the performer. It was said that Wealleans, who we’d wanted to interview for our APT special, was too sick to travel to Australia and had sent his identical twin brother in his place. Yeah right. We’ve seen Adaptation and we know how that works.

Chinese artist Chen Quilin’s family home was demolished to make way for the Three Gorges Dam. All the people from her home town have been scattered to other cities, relocated, lost in the greater Chinese population. Many other towns and villages met the same fate and the sadness of losing a family home to the waters was compounded by the fact that many of the former citizens were obliged to destroy their houses with little more than a hammer. One of Chen’s pieces for GOMA is a complete reconstruction of a house from a flooded area – in fact, the house comes from a village that neighboured Chen’s, a place where she had played as a child. Accompanying the installation is a video that documents in dream-like sequences the hopes of the relocated villagers. It’s poetic, moving and rather beautiful. Talking to Chen through an interpreter it was humbling to discover an artist whose reasons for making her art were so clear, forthright and deeply emotional. Many of the artists we have spoken to such as Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmian, White, Toki and Jione – and many others – talk about their work in a manner that is both direct and uncomplicated.

What is the name of the director of the Gallery of Modern Art? His name is Tony Ellwood. Tony Ellwood. As in Jake and Ellwood, we’re on a mission from God etc. TONY ELLWOOD. Thank you.

Who You Lookin' At??!!

2009-12-04T21:43:00.006+11:00

The 5th Asia Pacific Triennial opened the brand new Gallery of Modern Art in 2006. It was a stupendous event. Interstate art lovers came to witness the cutting of the red ribbon, the brass band at the entrance playing God Save The Queen and the glorious sight of men throwing their toppers into the air. Hoorah for Modern Art! Hoorah for Brisbane!

Three years later and the media day for APT6 is a much smaller affair. The speeches - while delivered by a robust line up of dignitaries - somehow doesn’t quite match the fun of last time. Tony Ellwood, boss of GOMA, makes a silky smooth speech that is, for the listener, rather like having your fur stroked by an open fire. Some dude from corporate sponsor Santos explains why they have signed up for a 5 year support deal for GOMA and mentions some things that we couldn’t quite hear – or see. It is a professional hazard of covering big art openings to have your sight line spoiled by roving camera persons looking for a groovy angle, but it’s quite another for a man in a yellow shirt to stand right in front of you and then discover that said gentleman is wearing a yellow shirt that features life-like portraits of him in the nude, semi nude and he has images of his face on his shoes. Perhaps the man from Santos said something interesting, who knows, but the bloke in the yellow shirt was looking away from us, and giving us THE FINGER AT THE SAME TIME [see picture]. Then it was the turn of Anna Bligh to officially open the APT. How quaint to visit a state where the Premier is still the same Premier as yesterday. Good lord. Bligh, who polled in Queensland as the worst premier in 30 years, still manages to deliver her speech with warmth and a low key sense of sangfroid – a rare quality in any politician.

Your choice of travel reading does much to set the scene for your experience of another place. Our selection - largely an unconscious decision plucked at random from an ever-growing pile of unread books - was Ian McDonald’s 2004 novel River of Gods. It couldn’t have been a better choice. The novel imagines India in 50 years time and evokes the super-density of Asia and the street-level hyper reality of contemporary Indian street life. The region – however one wants to define it such a loose and Eurocentric notion - represents a present so wildly at odds with Western sensibilities that it’s more suggestive of a future than any science fictional possibility. The APT is like the 3D walk-in version of River of Gods. Thukral & Tagra’s installation of a wallpapered room replete with sculptures, a TV playing YouTube clips, bespoke furniture, a table tipping on its end, busts of the artists that protrude through the walls, shelves containing images of the artists painted on consumer goods, a small photo of Paris Hilton [and much much more] is almost impossible to take in as a collection of discreet objects. Rather, the whole room is an assault on the senses, partly a play on consumer culture, part a celebration of celebrity. Its lack of manners is charming at every level.

Kohei Nawa’s PixCell-Elk #2 is the work on the cover of the APT catalogue. It's the cool binary to T&T’s hot aesthetic clutterverse. To walk into Nawa’s pristine white room and see a taxidermied elk covered in glass and crystal balls is an eerie and unsettling experience – it feels like perception itself is being subtly tweaked. It also suggests SF, but in a smoother and more familiar mode. The artist denies the SF connection saying he imagines the usual experience of SF to be more a disjunction, a shock, like when the alien bursts out of a chest. His installation is meant to be a smoother transition, Our camera is set up in the room with the artist and translator and, when we ask his views on his own work, he is like many artists we talk to at the APT - torn between the desire to create a certain experience but just as keen to avoid an overly proscriptive reading. This is the floating world of contemporary art, and there’s no use complaining about it.

Thursday On My Mind

2009-12-03T19:50:00.006+11:00

Yoshitomo Nara [left] and Hideki Toyoshima: YNG
Nara [Yoshitomo] and Hideki [Toyoshima] of GRAF are YNG. They both wear sky blue t-shirts and blue jeans. They are a TEAM. Nara wears vintage red trainers and a Revolver period Beatles cap, Hideki wears black trainers but no cap. They both speak English perfectly but prefer to answer questions in Japanese. Happily GOMA has a translator on staff, and soon a very nice young woman named Shioko arrives and does a fantastic job. Everyone nods and smiles. Question: “Nara – the Ramones are a constant reference point in your work – what is it about them that is important to you?” Answer: “Ha ha! I was in high school when they released their first album. I am very old. I am 50. Perhaps like you?” Question: “What is the purpose of putting a studio on the back of the van?” Answer: “There is no purpose.”

It used to be that we could easily tell who was a member of the art world art. There was a dress code – especially in Brisbane. Men wore jeans and western shirts, or perhaps a suit with pointy shoes and a thin tie. Women wore flat shoes and brightly coloured sleeveless tops with matching skirts. Many people seemed to wear cool eye glasses. Nowadays it’s hard to tell who is who – everybody wears more or less the same thing and the proliferation of facial hair – beards for men [and even for some women] - has cruelled what was a very easy game. Dan from DAMP sports a Hawaiian shirt and suit, wears a hat and has a very neatly trimmed beard. Nat [formerly of Nat & Ali and now in DAMP again after many years away] wears a gold top with a ~~tiger~~ owl on it and says she wants to look like someone famous. Kylie looks like your classic image of an artist from Brisbane, but she too is from Melbourne. Damn you! At the top of their plinth we discuss what their project – is making a place for people to meet the work? Or is it the whole process? DAMP are masters of the evasive answer – they give very good interview. We ask if they have ever been on TV before – has Sunday Arts come knocking? It seems they haven’t and so we commend their skill at only giving answers to questions they wish had been asked. It’s like interviewing politicians. We ask a blunt question – is DAMP a cult? Hmmm. Maybe.

Friday is Media Launch Day and that means lots of people flying in from interstate to look at art and enjoy GOMA’s incredible offering of finger food. Our last visit in 2006 was memorable mostly for the superb quality of the buffet lunch. Freeloaders everywhere hope that one day GOMA be awarded a Michelin star or two.

Brisbane... bike city
We may have been hasty in considering Brisbane a dump. That opinion was mostly based on a) experiences in “the Valley” [a topographical impossibility since “the valley” has no appreciable hill from which to see it], b) parts of the city [making a harsh judgement on Brisbane because of the volatile street kids you encounter in the Mall is rather like judging the whole of Sydney based on the people you see on George Street on a Sunday afternoon] and c) the stinky weather. This view is both unkind and unfair. All of ese doubts were swept aside when we got a look at the city’s incredible cycle paths built along the river. Walking back from GOMA we saw dozens of people whizzing by on handsome bikes and could only wish that we had brought the GIANT Perigees with us.

Tomorrow: Subodh Gupta, Kohei Nawa, Monir Farmanfarmaian, Ayez Jokhio and the Aquilizans.

Hey Ho, Let's Go!

2009-12-03T10:02:00.006+11:00

Greetings from the sunshine state. The first thing you see out the window of the aircraft as it descends into Brisbane are mud flats. This isn’t meant to be symbolic, it’s just the way it is. In a similar fashion outside the Gallery of Modern Art is a permanently-sited sculpture by Scott Redford, a big bit of glitzy neon vintage Gold Coast signage that promises NO ABSTRACTIONS. It’s an empty promise of course, but it is appealing.

GOMA is a beautifully presented gallery with absolute water frontage, stunning city views, light filled galleries - many with ensuite bathrooms – and it’s only a minutes’ walk to nearby cafes, restaurants and Brisbane’s busy CBD. Two doors down is the heritage-listed Queensland Art Gallery, a definite fixer-upper with huge potential that would suit either young families or perhaps couples looking for a challenge. Both contain art. All of GOMA has been given over to the 6th Asia Pacific Triennial, with small portions of QAG [piano bar, water court, adjacent galleries] similarly dedicated.

We’re on a preview walk-through to see the highlights. And they are very highlighty. Shirana Shahbazi’s gi-normous painting/photographs line the walls of GOMA's Long Gallery and they overlook Yoshitomo Nara’s tiny mobile studio, the collaboration between the Japanese painter better known for his knife-wielding little girls and the Osaka architects GRAF. Together they took a Nissan campervan and stuck a wooden house on the back. On the top is one of Nara’s little girls holding a mic and yelling HEY HO LET’S GO! The immediate reaction on seeing this is to grab our imaginary air guitars and – heads down - crank out the first few bars of Blitzkrieg Bop.

GOMA’s galleries are filled with sounds of getting ready – hammers, saws, the beep-beeps of slowly reversing orange trucks. Among all the activity we see the work of numerous brand name artists whose work looks fabulous, albeit missing wall texts and bearing WET PAINT signage. At the end of the main gallery is the second biggest plinth we have ever seen. It appears to be made of marble and stands some 150 meters high. As you get close you discover it’s a sham. Inside, the edifice turns out to be hollow and full of detritus from the 15 year career of Melbourne art group DAMP. It looks like a club house inside, with crappy share-house furniture, a kettle and many mugs, t-shirts, to-do lists and assorted junk arranged just so. The idea is that you climb up to the top of the plinth via an interior stair case and once at the top, have a conversation. About what?

TEAM Art Life are in Brisbane to make a TV show. The program will be another in our series of shows where we stand around pretending to look, and then sometimes get caught in the act of actual looking, and then we talk to people about their art and what they think will happen when people look at it. The Art Life at The APT will screen on ABC1 in early February 2010. Later today, we’re meeting DAMP and then the curatorial manager of the APT Suhanya Raffel, then on to Mr Nara and Graf, and then we will go outside lie in the long grass and listen to the gentle sounds of Pacific Reggae.

"This is the plan. Get your ass to Mars..."

2009-11-27T12:22:00.004+11:00

"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

New Work Friday #38

2009-11-27T11:57:00.003+11:00

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.

The Rapture of Science

2009-11-26T10:04:00.011+11:00

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.

New Work Friday #37

2009-11-20T10:40:00.003+11:00

"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.

It's Miller Time

2009-11-17T14:56:00.002+11:00

Brad Miller

augment_me

EXHIBITION: 20 November — 20 December 2009
Opening 6pm Thursday 19 November
Artspace
43–51 Cowper Wharf Road
Woolloomooloo NSW 2011
Sydney Australia

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.

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2009-11-17T10:51:00.002+11:00

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Ask The Art Life #3

2009-11-16T13:40:00.001+11:00

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.

Got a question? Send it to the art life at hot mail dot com.

Not exactly about cricket

2009-11-16T12:57:00.007+11:00

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.

You Have Already Won

2009-11-14T09:39:00.009+11:00

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.

"There's mines over there, there's mines over there, and watch out those goddamn monkeys bite!"

2009-11-11T10:17:00.004+11:00

Focus on Hopper’s America

Thurs 3 - 13 December, 2009

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

Monkey News

2009-11-11T10:02:00.005+11:00

Please join us at the Verge Gallery for the opening of the exhibition:

Darwin’s bastards

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.

Artists:
Vernon Ah Kee
Alexis Beckett
Chinnychinchin (Ruth Bellotti)
Ruth Johnstone
Janet Laurence
Danie Mellor
Jennifer Mills
Patricia Piccinini
Ben Quilty
Lisa Roet
Caroline Rothwell
Julia Silvester
Jane Trengove

Curated by Christine Morrow
Verge Gallery: Jane Foss Russell Plaza, Eastern side of City Road,
Near the corner of Butlin Avenue T. (02) 9563 6218
Opening hours: 11am to 3pm weekdays Free entry

Nick Waterlow and daughter Chloe found dead

2009-11-10T11:13:00.003+11:00

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.

New Work Friday #36

2009-11-06T15:23:00.003+11:00

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.

An Open Letter from Martin Davies

2009-11-02T11:05:00.002+11:00

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

Justine Varga's Inside/Outside

2009-11-02T10:53:00.003+11:00

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.

New Work Friday #35

2009-10-30T10:59:00.003+11:00

PMurphy, Insides.

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

Expressway To Yr Skull

2009-10-30T10:53:00.001+11:00

"Over the 100-year history of modern neuroscience, the way we think about the brain has evolved with the sophistication of the techniques available to study it. Improvements in microscope design and manufacture, together with the development of cell-staining techniques, afforded neuroscientists their first glimpse at the specialized cells that make up the nervous system. Microscopes with more magnifying power enabled them to probe nerve cells in greater detail, revealing distinct compartments. Newer techniques expose the connections between nerve cells, revealing the complex organization of the brain.

"Nineteenth-century histologists created some of the first images of nerve cells by chemically stiffening tissue and then immersing it in silver nitrate, randomly staining a small number of cells to make them visible when they were viewed with powerful new light microscopes. The technique revealed the silhouette of the cell body and its network of extensions, and it enabled the great neuroanatomist Santiago Ramón y Cajal to prove that the nervous system consists of cells. He produced the 1899 drawing at left: it shows finely branched Purkinje cells, large neurons in the cerebellum that play an important role in controlling movement..."

More => Time Travel Through the Brain, Technology Review

Everything is like a TV show

2009-10-30T10:28:00.001+11:00

"After just 20 minutes in a helicopter above the Manhattan skyline, autistic artist Stephen Wiltshire was ready to re-create a city that took hundreds of years to build.

Wiltshire is drawing a 20-foot panoramic view of New York - all from memory.

The 35-year-old artist's autistic disorder affects his ability to interact with other people.

It has also given him a photographic memory - and a gift for putting it on paper.

"I just looked without drawing," said Wiltshire as he explained how he is able to draw the skyline without referring back to a photograph of the city.

"Everything is like a TV show," he said. "I have never drawn from a sketchbook."

Wiltshire, a Londoner, is creating the image at the Pratt Institute of Art in Brooklyn, where the public can watch him work through Friday afternoon.

New York is the last in a series of eight panoramas of major cities across the world, including Dubai and Tokyo.

"This city is very beautiful," he said, as he drew the Big Apple from the Bronx to Staten Island.

"It has got skyscrapers ...and the American people."

Read more: NY Daily News.com

Tom Polo Tipped to Win "2009 B.E.S.T. Contemporary Art Prize"‏

2009-10-29T13:42:00.001+11:00

Ask The Art Life #2

2009-10-26T14:14:00.003+11:00

Barney Rubble asks: I’m thinking of entering an art competition, should I enter? The competition asks that I send a CV and/or an artist’s statement with my entry – is it wise to do so?

Dear Barney: If the art competition is themed – say, it is a competition for religious art, or small scale sculpture – you should only consider entering if your work engages with a religious or spiritual theme, or is a small scale sculpture. But you’re thinking – hey, my work is sculpture but it’s quite big, or, my work has nothing to do with religion or spirituality per se, but could be interpreted that way, can’t I just go ahead and enter anyway? Yes, you can still enter but don’t be surprised if the work fails to win or isn’t selected as a finalist. If your work is small in scale, is a sculpture, and is a statue of Jesus, go right ahead – in fact why not enter both competitions? It can’t hurt. If the competition is an open theme or organised around some vague category [genre art, for example] enter as often as you can. But a word of warning: if the competition says that you can send multiple images, only send images that support your entry. Very often judges will look at support images or additional entries for some clarification of an artist’s practice. If you send one work that is great and two additional works that aren’t as good [i.e. they are crappy] this will almost certainly disqualify you. As for sending a CV, art can often appear mysterious and an explanation of the artist’s intentions can be quite helpful to judges who are baffled by the use of obscure symbolism, or conversely, are baffled by the use of rainbows, dolphins and/or sulphur crested cockatoos. On the other hand, an explanation can lead to more confusion. Choose your words wisely. Consulting a curriculum vitae can help determine an artist’s experience and help work out if you really are an “emerging artist”. Most CVs list educational qualifications, prizes, awards and an exhibition history, but there’s no requirement that you are limited to these achievements. Artists might like to include press clippings on their work from local newspapers, art magazines or personality profiles from naturist magazines. If this information helps the judges make a decision on your work, intention and personality, include it! Hope this is helpful – and good luck!

Got a question about the art world you'd like answered? Just send it to the art life at hot mail dot com.

F#@#ing Unreal

2009-10-23T12:57:00.004+11:00

Sylvania Waters is one of those select few television programs that became a bona fide cultural phenomenon. It had an impact more significant than anything that can be simply conferred via hype, clever advertising or sensational content. It is well remembered, its cast of personalities, its locations and conflicts are the stuff of urban legend. Sylvania Waters remains an archaeological layer in the public memory of the Shire, of Sydney and indeed, of the whole country.

Elvis Richardson, SYLVANIA WATERS / ELVIS RANTS AWAY I, 2009
Iinkjet print on vinyl stretched on wooden frame, 300 x 450 cm
Courtesy the artist & Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide

It’s odd recalling the impact it had in the light of what followed. Sylvania Waters is sometimes retrospectively referred to as “reality television”. When you think of what “reality television” now means – those competition-based shows where the only element of the production that could loosely be called “reality” is the unscripted dialogue – Sylvania Waters was a far more traditional proposition; it was a documentary.

The show’s appeal – and its enduring legacy – was based on its unblushing portrayal of a segment of Australian society that had, until that time, never been seen on television – those upwardly mobile Aussies who were making money while living the good life with views of the water – an apparently gauche lifestyle aspiration that would become the national ideal during the coming decade.

The fragmented nature of the Donaher/Baker family – its de facto relationships, the complicated emotional expectations of would-be step fathers and new children, estranged sons and daughters, the next generation and their partners – and those always-pressing questions of middle class life like HSC results, overseas trips and what to do for Christmas day – all of this made for a startling TV program that created something exotic from the mundane.

What made it all the more remarkable was that Sylvania Waters wasn’t scripted. Yes, it was edited, and narrated, and it had a narrative arc shaped and tweaked by its producers and directors where true reality has no shape, no arc – but still, Noeline and Laurie and Paul and Dione and Michael and all the rest were real people – not the creation of writers. This was the undeniable reality of this particular TV.

Luis Martinez, Macintyre Crescent, 2009
Graphite pencil on Stonehenge paper, 45 x 76 cm
Courtesy the artist & Flinders Street Gallery, Sydney.

The shock of recognition, that identification with the real, is emblematic of the whole Sylvania Waters phenomena. As Daniel Mudie Cunningham explains in his excellent Reality Check catalogue essay, in the early 90s the TV show was the subject of ridicule by a media horrified that something so crass could be held up, not just as entertainment, but something that was representative of the entire country as the show screened in the UK as a reality-based companion piece to Neighbours and Home & Away.

It was only later, when shows like Kath & Kim or the movie The Castle became hits that we started to relax and accept that this seemingly distorted televisual mirror was a lot closer to home that we could recognise at the time. How could we have known back in 1992 that the Donaher’s were part of a class that were heirs to a glittering future, the decade of power and influence that would transform the entire country into a Sylvania Waters facsimile. How quaint and silly that media outrage seems now.

The works in Reality Check deal with the complexity of identification between the mediated experience and that thing we call real life – a complicated emotional transaction between people who are only known to us as images, apparently with agency and emotion and free will, just like us, but also provocative abstractions of ideas and ideals that are shared notions of identity, both personal and public, local and national. This back and forth is a fertile, imaginative ground for the creation of art.

An edited version of an opening talk by The Art Life for Reality Check: Watching Sylvania Waters, at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery until November 29.

Leaving the forest of signs

2009-10-23T12:45:00.001+11:00

'Pierre Huyghe and the Association of Freed Time: On Contemporary History'

Public lecture by Dr Amelia Douglas

Prince Philip Theatre, Architecture Building, University of Melbourne, Parkville VIC

Tuesday November 17, 2009 5:30pm drinks, 6:00 - 7:00 pm lecture
*This lecture will feature clips of Pierre Huyghe's works not previously screened in Australia courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery, New York and Paris.

The University of Melbourne Art History program in conjunction with the School of Culture and Communications and the Fine Arts Network invite you to attend a free public lecture by Dr Amelia Douglas, Recipient of 2009 Chancellor's Prize for Excellence in the PhD, University of Melbourne.

What is at stake in the making and recording of history, and what does it mean for a contemporary artist to work as an historiographer? The contemporary French artist Pierre Huyghe is well-known for his multi-faceted works that operate in the gaps between history and story. In this lecture, Hugyhe’s practice is shown to facilitate a new model of contemporary history. History as a discursive concept is pliable; its meaning shifts depending on contexts. In presenting an historiographic reading of Huyghe’s practice, this lecture reflects upon how the coalescence of story and history may be a key factor in pulling together the diverse strands of Australian and international art histories.

Pierre Huyghe is one of the most significant artists of the 21st century. His work – encompassing film, architecture, situations, installations and events – has been shown at the TATE Modern, Centre Pompidou, the Guggenheim Museum, the Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image and recently at the Biennale of Sydney (2008), where Huyghe transformed the Opera House into a tropical rainforest. This lecture focuses on a few of Huyghe's major works, including A Journey That Wasn't (2005) and Streamside Day Follies (2003) and will include clips from several of Huyghe's works not previously exhibited in Australia, courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery, New York and Paris.

Dr Amelia Douglas is a lecturer, editor, curator and writer with a research focus on time-based contemporary art. Her prior projects include Assistant Curator, Australian Centre for the Moving Image 2008-09; guest speaker, 'Andreas Gursky', NGV International 2009; guest lecturer, 'Perspectives in Radical Art', School of Creative Arts, 2008-09; tutor, art history and curatorship, University of Melbourne, 2005-08. She is a founding co-editor of emaj; member UNmagazine editorial committee; co-curator Found Sound: The Experimental Instrument Project; board member Bus Projects; and contributor to numerous critical forums (ACMI, Conical, GCAS), exhibition catalogues (Craft Victoria, Blindside, Experimenta Media Arts, RMIT First Site, George Paton Gallery), and arts journals including Broadsheet, UNmagazine, SPEECH and The Open Space (New York). She is currently managing red gallery contemporary art space in Melbourne.

Public lecture presented by the University of Melbourne Art History program in conjunction with the School of Culture and Communications and the Fine Arts Network.

New Work Friday #34

2009-10-23T12:34:00.003+11:00

Bernie Slater, Word Situations 2, 2009.
Colour photocopy on 1971 Mike Parr artwork

Bernie Slater, Word Situations 2, 2009.
Detail.

"This work was created for Canberra Contemporary Art Space’s annual members’ show, where this year’s theme was “Fakes, Forgeries and Appropriations”. I’ve printed on some original works from Mike Parr’s 1971 series Word Situations , which Parr states are “concerned with my investigation into the problem of meaning and language” I wanted to contrast Parr’s work with my own investigation of how language, graphic design and mass media are used to shape our behaviour and create new cultural “structures” of their own. Plus, I liked the idea of destroying a Mike Parr artwork," - Bernie Slater 2009.

Don’t ask me about my family, my childhood, my friends or my feelings. Ask me about the things I think.

2009-10-19T14:02:00.002+11:00

"Whenever Ayn Rand met someone new—an acolyte who’d traveled cross-country to study at her feet, an editor hoping to publish her next novel—she would open the conversation with a line that seems destined to go down as one of history’s all-time classic icebreakers: “Tell me your premises.” Once you’d managed to mumble something halfhearted about loving your family, say, or the Golden Rule, Rand would set about systematically exposing all of your logical contradictions, then steer you toward her own inviolable set of premises: that man is a heroic being, achievement is the aim of life, existence exists, A is A, and so forth—the whole Objectivist catechism. And once you conceded any part of that basic platform, the game was pretty much over. She’d start piecing together her rationalist Tinkertoys until the mighty Randian edifice towered over you: a rigidly logical Art Deco skyscraper, 30 or 40 feet tall, with little plastic industrialists peeking out the windows—a shining monument to the glories of individualism, the virtues of selfishness, and the deep morality of laissez-faire capitalism. Grant Ayn Rand a premise and you’d leave with a lifestyle. Stated premises, however, rarely get us all the way down to the bottom of a philosophy...."

Mrs Logic: The one argument Ayn Rand Couldn't win, New York Books.

Art Life readers say: call the cops!

2009-10-19T13:53:00.000+11:00

If an artist has their work stolen they are entitled to:

The full weight of the law to regain their rightful property 46% 69
Be cool if their work was stolen by another artist 14% 21
Act like a d@#k 13% 20
Suck it up if they're a millionaire 27% 41

151 votes total

Smac-ies

2009-10-19T13:47:00.001+11:00

"We're launching the 2009 FBi 94.5 and Time Out Sydney SMAC [Sydney Music Arts and Culture] Awards this coming WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 21 at gbk, Gallery Barry Keldoulis in Waterloo from 6-8pm. The finalists for 'Best Artist' will be on display at gbk - and the rest of the category nominations will be announced on the night. So come on down, bring your friends, have a beer and celebrate the work of some of the finest creative minds in Sydney!"

Ask The Art Life #1

2009-10-14T10:25:00.006+11:00

Writes Jesse Cohen: "The MCA is desperate to find money to redevelop their building and they have at least two prominent Jewish bankers in their sights as potential donors. How to explain, then, that they decided to name their current exhibition after a book Making it New by a famous anti-semite Ezra Pound who produced propaganda for the fascists in the Second World War and famously [claimed that] Jewish bankers were responsible for the world's problems?"

Ezra Pound, captive of the Allied Forces, Italy, May 26th, 1945

Dear Jesse - Yes, it does seem odd doesn't it? "Jewish bankers" undewriting a real estate adventure of a museum of contemporary art that gives oxygen to a Fascist sympathiser and reknowned anti-semite. But the thing is this - no one cares about Ezra Pound's politics anymore. Pound is a popular reference point if you want to give an exhibition a little bit of intellectual clout and thus you will find shows such as Making It New at the MCA or In A Station of The Metro, Shaun Gladwell's survey show at Artspace in 2007 - named after Pound's poems. The art world like its politics to be as contemporary as its art and doesn't really care for battles that were fought and won some sixty four years ago. It also helps that in Pound's case he was also a pretty decent poet. Indeed, if you were a decent artist of any political stripe it hardly matters what your actual beliefs were while you were alive, with enough time it can all be happily forgotten, ignored or reinterpreted. Just take a look at the recent Futurism exhibition in London and the Tate Modern. And the great thing about the largesse of art world benefactors is that they seem quite happy to give cash to institutions, galleries and other cultural bodies to stage events that may in some form contain content they don't personally agree with. It's called democracy. It might also be a mistake to think that "Jewish Bankers" have no sense of irony.

Got a question about the art world you'd like answered? Just send it to the art life at hot mail dot com.

Exercise in Intrigue

2009-10-12T09:40:00.002+11:00

Chinese copies of Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of America’s first president were denounced by the artist, desired by collectors—and ended up in some important museums.

It’s an international exercise in intrigue,” said Douglas Hyland, director of the New Britain Museum of American Art in New Britain, Connecticut.

He was speaking about a painting that was recently donated to the museum and is now on exhibition. The label reads: “George Washington c. 1800–1805.” The work is a copy of a Gilbert Stuart painting attributed to a Chinese artist named Foeiqua—who, like other artists in China, made a number of reverse paintings on glass. (The artist paints on the back of the glass so that the image can be seen from the front.)

“The painting was donated by a Connecticut woman, Caroline N. Dealy,” Hyland said. “She said her mother had died and that members of her family wanted to give the painting in memory of their mother. Since we are the oldest museum of American art in the United States, we were really thrilled. The museum has wanted to acquire a portrait of George Washington for many years.

“As soon as it went on display, it became the subject of a great debate: Should it be at an American art museum? Is it an American work of art? The truth is that it’s a copy of a Stuart made by a Chinese artist for an American collector. It’s a compelling story. It was painted 200 years ago, and 200 years later we’re dealing with the same issues. There are still works being pirated in China today—movies, books, CDs.”

Stuart had to deal with the issues in 1802, when there was, according to Carl Crossman in his book The China Trade (1972), “a mania for Washingtoniana...”

The Many Faces of George Washington, ArtNews

Time's arrow

2009-10-12T09:28:00.002+11:00

"The Archibald-winning artist Fred Cress has made his plans for his funeral. ''I've got the grog for the wake,'' he says, knowing he has only a few weeks of life left.

The cancer that began seven years ago in his prostate has spread voraciously since autumn. It is now in his spine, his groin, his lungs.

''But the one that will kill me is the liver cancer,'' he says. ''That has spread right across here now,'' he says, drawing a line across his gut.

The 71-year-old is dealing with imminent death much better than his younger partner of 20 years, Victoria Fernandez - or his two sons, Julian and Kim, by his former wife. ''They're in denial,'' he says. ''I wish they'd get on and organise the funeral.''

After all, lots of people will want to come. When the ABC's 7.30 Report prematurely broadcast a farewell piece in July (''They jumped the gun,'' Cress says), the artist - enjoying his final summer with Victoria in their beloved second home in Burgundy - was inundated with emails from around the world.

He apologises for not replying to them all. But he was feeling remarkably good then, and thought it more important to paint his final canvases while he still had the strength. Ironically, given that Cress does not believe in any kind of after life (and certainly not heaven or hell), ''we might have to borrow a church … because quite a few people will want to speal."

No time for rage or regret, Sydney Morning Herald.

New Work Friday #33

2009-10-09T10:08:00.003+11:00

© Elodie Silberstein, Photo Kent Johnson, Model Rhiannon Bulley

Ningyo lies at the intersection of artistic and medical practice by dealing with Anorexia Nervosa. The installation will be part of Mirrors, an annual charity art exhibition addressing issues of body image within today’s society. For this site specific work, Elodie Silberstein has sought real life stories to create a tableau vivant (living picture), a screening and an intimate diary compiled from testimonies that reflect the complexity and heterogeneity of this mental illness. The model’s poses on the preparatory photographs are inspired by the ambivalent nature of dolls that are trapped in time and present many allegories with pubertal children suffering from anorexia. Elodie’s character expresses the polarity between beauty and death by starkly reminding us that the mortality rate of eating disorders is between 10-20% in Australia. This work is dedicated to Catena Di Mauro who died in February 2009 after a nine year battle against anorexia. Elodie Silberstein - More info.

Mirrors is open for artwork submission. To participate, please visit Mirrorsexhibition.wordpress.com Mirror is, supported by Yen Magazine and is the initiative of Rhiannon Bulley, a young woman in recovery from Anorexia Nervosa. All profits from the sale of nominated art works will go towards supporting The Butterfly Foundation.

Josef Beuys Says Nein Danke Reagan!

2009-10-08T22:47:00.004+11:00

"Beuys tried his luck as a pop singer as part of his political commitment. His song 'Sonne statt Reagan' attacks Ronald Reagan's arms policy. The song was issued as a record and Beuys appeared before big audiences with it during the peace movement's demonstrations and also with the group Die Desserteure in the ARD television broadcast 'Bananas' on 3.7.1982. 'Regen'', pronounced like 'Reagan', is the German for 'rain.'"

UbuWEb via Art Forum

Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun

2009-10-08T22:36:00.003+11:00

"There are over 13,000 McDonald’s restaurants in the US, or about 1 for every 23,000 Americans. But even market penetration this advanced doesn’t mean that McDonald’s is everywhere. Somewhere in South Dakota is the McFarthest Spot, the place in the US geographically most removed from the nearest McD’s. If you started out from this location, a few miles north of State Highway 20 (which runs latitudinally between Highways 73 in the west and 65 in the east), you’d have to drive 145 miles to get your Big Mac (if you could fly, however, it’d be only 107 miles).

"This map is the brainchild of Stephen Von Worley, who got to thinking about the strip malls sprawling out along I-5 in California’s ever less rural Central Valley: “Just how far can you get from generic convenience? And how would you figure that out?” His yardstick for that thought experiment would be the ubiquitous Golden Arches of McDonald’s – still the world’s largest hamburger chain, and to cite Von Worley, the “inaugural megacorporate colonizer of small towns nationwide.” That’s not the whole story: like other convenience providers aimed at the motorised consumer such as gas stations and motels, McDonald’ses have a notable tendency to occur on highways and, specifically, to cluster at their crossroads..."

Via Strange Maps.

New Work Friday #32

2009-09-25T17:58:00.006+10:00

Branislav Kropilak, Garage Series. Kropilak.com

Got new work you'd like to share? Send images and description of your work to thearlife at hot mail dot com. Images should no larger than 350k each

Too Hot for Mosman

2009-09-25T17:53:00.001+10:00

"A long-forgotten 1960s censorship scandal about nudity in art has returned to the walls of the Mosman Art Gallery, whose director, Tony Geddes, is accused of censoring the work all over again to protect the sensibilities of the suburb's ''conservative'' residents.

The gallery is in the middle of a retrospective of the work of artist and Mosman resident David Perry, 76, whose experimental film A Sketch on Abigayl's Belly was banned by the Commonwealth Film Censor in 1968.

The two-minute film of Perry's then wife's pregnancy, which features shots of her massaging oil into her breasts and other nudity, was seized by Customs officials and impounded when it returned from screening in the finals of the West German Short Film Festival in 1969.

Perry was a member of the Sydney-based film collective UBU Films. Its manager, Aggy Read, was convicted of exporting a banned film.

In 1970 Don Chipp, the minister for customs and excise, overturned the ban. The curator of the current exhibition, another UBU member, Albie Thoms, says the film has been screened without incident across Australia ever since.

Until now, according to Perry, who claimed yesterday Mr Geddes had refused to include the film in the retrospective. ''Tony Geddes said he couldn't show it in Mosman because he was concerned that some of the conservative people in Mosman would be offended,'' he said. ''It was disturbing because it is one of my best works.''

While Mr Geddes is on leave, the acting director of the Mosman Art Gallery, Katrina Cashman, said she was ''surprised'' to hear of Perry's complaint.

''From our perspective, that's not what happened,'' she said.

Mosman can't stomach '60s nude art film, Sydney Morning Herald

Boopedy Boop

2009-09-25T17:12:00.002+10:00

random image

Random Acts of Elevator Music want your building tips!

Random Acts of Elevator Music are preparing their itinerary and plan to bring productivity-raising muzaktronica to as many city office buildings as possible in Sydney and Melbourne. Let us know if you want to experience these soothing oscillations and melodies in your elevator! Email cityfreqs@akm.net.au or tweet to twitter.com/cityfreqs and we'll put your building on our itinerary. Leave a mobile number or email address and you’ll receive notification of when Random Acts of Elevator Music are about to come your way (and we won’t tell your supervisor that you gave us the inside tip…)

Melbourne office appearances: September 23rd to October 2nd

Sydney office appearances: October 5th to 12th

Random Acts of Elevator Music are back in 2009, performing live muzaktronica during office hours in buildings throughout the Sydney and Melbourne CBDs, helping to increase productivity in workplaces everywhere. Random Acts of Elevator Music is the latest project from City Frequencies, a collaboration between Matt Adair and Nick Wilson, who work together on sound projects within the metropolitan environment.

For further information visit: www.akm.net.au/cityfreqs & www.twitter.com/cityfreqs

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

The Good Son

2009-09-23T22:52:00.002+10:00

What not to do

2009-09-23T22:47:00.002+10:00

"Hou Hanru's 2007 Istanbul Biennial was a notoriously unwieldy affair. "Not Only Possible But Also Necessary: Optimism in a Time of Global War" assembled an unprecedented number of artists in multiple venues (two of them unreachable except via taxi), under an equally inflated curatorial thesis inspired by Empire, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's weighty examination of the contemporary world order. The four-member, all-female curatorial collective behind this year's Biennial, the Zagreb-based What, How and For Whom (WHW), have clearly taken Hou's version as a model of what not to do.

"What Keeps Mankind Alive?" is a line in Bertolt Brecht's 1928 cabaret-musical The Threepenny Opera. WHW summon the Marxist playwright Brecht as a general symbol of their own declared commitment to "a full-fledged political program that is also completely aesthetic." Then, they relegate him to the catalog to do what they do best: curate. A comparatively smaller number of artworks are organized according to two main curatorial premises as simple as they are effective. A selection of adroit (but not immediately familiar) works from the 1970s through the 1990s provide historical grounding, while artists scattered across the Biennial's three sites act as binding agents for the exhibition as a whole.

"Viewing a selection of artists at all three venues—the waterfront customs depot Antrepo; a former tobacco warehouse in the historically European quarter of Galata; and an old Greek school which shut down in the 1980s for lack of students—surpasses a sense of mere déjà vu. Artists KP Brehmer and Vyacheslav Akhunov recur from last time, and themselves combine into a curatorial thesis in and of themselves, one which reiterates WHW's catalog call for the "politicization of culture" in the face of the "culturalization of politics," yet doesn't stiffen into a specific art historical narrative. At Antrepo, the Tashkent-based Akhunov's "Leniniana" series of collages (1977–1982) bury Lenin, his followers, and an imposing metropolis in heavy snowbanks. Up to their knees in snow, but nonetheless pursuing their revolutionizing goals, the characters' actions are rendered both futile and entrenched in a classical, genre vocabulary. At the tobacco warehouse, a square meter pedestal is covered in open matchboxes that house tiny reproductions of nearly two decades of Akhunov's often satirical collages and sketches: a miniature rebuttal to the grandiosity of the propagandistic imagery the artist so often manipulates..."

Walking the 11th Istanbul Biennial (With or Without Video), Art In America.

Friend of the world

2009-09-23T22:37:00.005+10:00

Arteri|Art + Culture|Malaysia have published an obituary for our friend Emil Goh, whose recent sad passing was recorded here on the 9th of September:

Emil Goh (b. 1966, Malaysia) passed away last Monday 7 September at his apartment in Seoul.

Emil was an artist, designer, traveller, foodie, people person. We cannot lay claim to him in earnest as our fellow countryman – Emil really belonged to a broader sort of society, a ‘man of the world’ in a very today sense. Yet there was certainly the Malaysian in him, who loved to eat good food, banter, and kaypoh in a positive and creative way. Most of us in Malaysia will only know of Emil through his work, which has been shown intermittently here in curated shows at the Balai Seni Lukis Negara (National Art Gallery) and elsewhere. Some of us know him as the son of the painter Sylvia Lee Goh, who would be touched that those in the art world here, especially artists, have voiced real sadness and shock at the news of his passing.

Emil made an impact wherever he put down his hat. He went to Australia in 1985, studying psychology (Newcastle University) and then Fine Art (Sydney University), developing his practice across different media, particularly video and photography, while becoming a key figure in the contemporary art community down under. He was one of the co-founders of the Asian-Australian Artists Association who set up the groundbreaking Gallery 4A in Sydney. He also spent time in London in the late 90s, studying for his Masters at Goldsmiths College, which is when I met him for the first time. In 2003 he took up a residency at Ssamzie Space in Seoul and ended up staying on. It didn’t take long for Emil to ‘take root’ in any of these communities, where he made literally hundreds of friends. Emil was a super-connector of people and ideas with an unstinting enthusiasm for contemporary art and urban culture. For someone looking in, Emil’s life seemed to be very much about making things happen, and his work about watching things happen, seeing them come together.

Emil took part in over 70 exhibitions and projects across Australia, Europe and Asia and his work has been pretty widely written up in international magazines like Flash Art, Art in America, Theme, Wired Online, and Art Asia Pacific. Emil’s work doesn’t slap you in the face or make overt statements, but it finds the pulse in the life of things taken for granted, particularly in the urban everyday, appealing to the personal without taking it hostage.

He got to the very heart of the media he used. His videos harness our fascination for the moving image and film, taking the simple foundations of time and focus. He traced the passing of a day, his camera simply panning slowly through friends’ apartments in London, Hong Kong and Seoul (Between – three versions 2000-2005), he re-spliced a whole movie into three jumbled parts (Remake (Ring),2004), and raced us through the trailer to ‘Speed’ in quadruple time. He made mini-films of a cellphone ringing, feet walking along a stairmaster, a cyclist coming in and out of traffic. His photographs were just about capturing that moment with a camera, whether high-rise buildings lit like lanterns in the night, a working woman sitting asleep in an underground train, or snapshots of couples posing wearing identical clothes (couplelook series, 2004).

Read the rest of the post here .

New Work Friday #31

2009-09-18T20:19:00.000+10:00

Kazuki Takamatsu, Our Best Place, 2008.
Acrylic on canvas, 586x320mm

Kazuki Takamatsu, Target, 2008.
Acrylic on canvas, 420x420mm

Kazuki Takamatsu, Go to nest!!, 2008.
Acrylic on canvas, 586x320mm

Kazuki Takamatsu, Meal time, 2008.
Acrylic on canvas, 420x420mm

Distantfeerism: Kazuki Takamatsu

Your name in print!

2009-09-15T11:01:00.003+10:00

Of all of Australia's small press publications, one of the most exciting is the fully independent and downright eccentric TRUNK. Promoted here in the lead up to its first handsome publication, TRUNK #1 was themed on Hair, and invited writers, artists, poets, designers and any creative person with a wish to get involved to submit material for the launch issue. Now in bookshops and available online, TRUNK is calling for contributions to issue 2, themed around Blood. As their website explains:

Blood is a fluid, living tissue—a complex mix of platelets and plasma. Far more than a physical and chemical solution of red and white cells, haemoglobin and protein, blood is the most ubiquitous and profound symbol for the deepest of human concerns: life, death, love and sex.

We seek writing and art that explores the fascinating cultural, medical, geographical, historical, religious and social aspects of this abundant bodily fluid. Submissions must be accessible, curious, entertaining and stimulating.

We encourage fiction, poetry, art, photography, recipes, essays, photo-essays and interviews about all things bloody—see the list below for a comprehensive list of suggestions.

The deadline for material is October 30, 2009. Click here for the submission guidelines, or visit the webiste.

New Work Friday #30

2009-09-11T11:26:00.006+10:00

Greetings, Oh how I find it difficult to talk about my work! Let me see...

I usually work in ink and pastel; this allows me to compose my pictures very quickly. Indeed, I seldom spend more than an evening on a particular drawing. (I do enjoy painting - but it is an expensive enterprise!) My drawings are large; the photograph at the very end of my film gives you an idea of size.

The process of creation is simple. I often spread out my paper on the floor – and just sit and sketch away. A few weeks ago I constructed a drawing board (proving to be far better for my back). I work in my small (extremely crowded) bedroom, as I don’t have a studio (but I love this environment).

I think of my portraits as illustrations. I’ll work at a face until it looks ‘real’. Sometimes a draft is more favourable than the ‘final’ copy.

I like to listen to recordings of Bible passages when I work. Scripture speaks to my soul.

Eyes. I like eyes. Emotional eyes. And the chaos that surrounds them – well, I see it as chaos.

I convey emotion through line(s). I don’t really shade my works. I criss-cross. I weave. I guess that’s the best way to describe what I do.

mroa2638 - Michael.

Vale Emil Goh 1966-2009

2009-09-09T09:13:00.008+10:00

The news arrived this morning via mutual friends that much loved artist, curator, writer and publisher Emil Goh has died suddenly of a heart attack in Seoul. He was 43. After moving to South Korea on an OzCo residency in 2004 and settling there permanently, Emil made an impact on the Seoul art scene as a teacher and lecturer and as an exhibiting artist. Tributes from friends and family on his Facebook page are testimony to his status as one of the art world's great guys. Emil was equally well known in Australia, exhibiting widely in a variety of artist-run and commerical galleries, and his tireless enthusiasm for contemporary art, fellow artists and his genuine, warm and friendly personality will be deeply missed. Farewell a great friend of the art life.

Update via Studio BBQ:

Just got a sad news from Wendy Gan about Malaysian Chinese artist Emil Goh:

"Emil passed away suddenly on the morning of 7 September 2009 in Seoul. He had a seizure of some kind in the morning. The ambulance was called but his heart had stopped beating by the time the ambulance reached the hospital. His girlfriend was by his side. This has been a huge shock. He was still young and with no health problems that we knew of. We do not yet know what exactly happened. I hope you will remember him for the enthusiastic foodie and wonderful artist and designer that he was. He had a keen eye for the mundane but quirky beauty of small things and his vision, his sense of humour and his mind that bubbled over with intellectual curiosity and delight in the world will be sorely missed by all of us."

Update 2: "This Friday there will be a service for him in Seoul. 11 September 09 at the St Francis of Assisi Catholic chapel in Seoul (707-10 Hannam-2Dong, Yongsan-Gu, Seoul 140-210, Republic of Korea. Tel +82-2-793-2070)." via email.

"I was angry against god - so I said EXIST!"

2009-09-08T10:20:00.007+10:00

Who's that woman in black with the pearls? It's Emily Fitzgerald of the Australian Patrol, that's who, and she's on a mission to capture the fun and frivolity of openings, art festivals and all gatherings where the cognoscenti gather to compare opinions, thoughts and...gloves.

Australian Patrol arrive at openings with a discreete mini DV in hand and a gi-normous microphone to buttonhole people for their insights. With 73 videos and counting on their YouTube Channel their mission statement is to seek "out the eccentricities and obscurities in the Australian cultural and artistic world." Recent uploads have included such luminaries as artists Guy Peppin, Rose Vickers, Joe Furlonger and Jun Chen talking about their work, exhibitions such as The Rex Irwin Ceramics Show 09 and the Cockatoo Island installations - they even managed to buttonhole John "Daddy Mac" McDonald having a good old chinwag with an admirer about the Venice Biennale at a Ray Hughes Gallery wine 'n' cheese soiree. So far, mission statement achieved.

The Australian Patrol arrived in their Sunday best for last week's opening of the 58th Blake Prize, capturing the full gamut of the wise and wonderful opinions of people who brought with them their own axes, no doubt looking for a place to grind 'em.

Can't see the video? Click here to view.

A Meander Into Wonder

2009-09-07T13:00:00.010+10:00

From Isobel Johnston...

The raven is a bird often seen as a portent of evil or a bad omen. In their absence or their presence there lies the unsettling suggestion that something evil follows. From the six ravens that legend requires be present to prevent the fall of the kingdom at the Tower of London to the Edgar Allen Poe poem The Raven, it’s a bird that is seen as a harbinger of doom.

Matt Glenn, Raven 1, 2009.
Mirror, plastic, high gloss auto paint, 74.5 x 43.5 cm.

Matt Glenn’s exhibition Raven, recently shown at James Dorahy’s Project Space was a tight and beautifully counterbalanced show where gothic mirrors echoed gunshot car duco pieces creating a sense of unease in a space where past and future coexist. Six images reflected the other - the mirrors coated in black baked enamel and the six coloured and steel surfaces. The panels, with their immaculate surfaces ripped through by gun shots (mostly discrete bullet holes made by a .38 calibre rifle but some are blasted with lead shot) captured the feeling of uncertain times both past and present. Raven also acts as both a prompt and aide de memoir for other haunting shows.

The nature of what gets reviewed and what doesn’t seems as random as most other things in life quite often determined by space, time and deadlines as much as by merit. Some shows have a much greater lasting impact than the duration of the exhibition and become cardinal points of reference for other exhibitions, pointers to future directions, often signalling the beginning of a particular artist’s or group of artists’ emergence into the art world consciousness.

Robert Habel, Paessagio Urbano Italiano, Rogues Gallery 2008.
Oil on canvas, 170x170cms.

This afterglow impression of recalling other exhibitions was also tripped at Firstdraft with Visage shown in April this year. Curated by Felix Ratcliff this was a group show of painters. A number of these artists are represented by Gallery 9 and have had interesting shows in the last year or so. Jake Walker had work showing simultaneously at both Firstdraft and Gallery 9. As well as exploring the boundaries of portraiture the idea of small scale painting in a range of media from watercolour to oils the work signalled a shift of direction. Visage echoed a trait apparent in earlier shows by numerous artists recently where small works and assorted media have began to take hold.

In Visage, Julian Hooper’s haunting portraits whose subjects of flower/figures morphed still life and portraiture into one. Michelle Hanlin’s metamorphosis took another form as it punned Dali-esque and shadow puppets for a psychological portrayal. Colour, abstraction and a shift in scale gave the show its edgy-ness.

Julian Hooper’s show at Gallery 9 last year comprised works originally created for the frames belonging to a NZ regional gallery that he filled with his strange vegetal personages. At Gallery 9 they were shown devoid of the collection's frames and placed in a different series of frames creating a kind of additional absence. The show served as a good example of an interesting concern that has been appearing in many recent exhibitions - a focus that taps into subject matter that might best be described as ‘stretching across time’. This suggestion seems to be being made by a number of different artists in a variety of ways and deals not only with quotation or appropriation but also with a disruption of the idea of a pictorial continuity or a seamless surface; replacing it instead with absence often seen as gaps in the picture plane that are both literal and metaphorical.

Jess MacNeil’s work does this conceptually as well as actually by removing the figures but leaving their trace as they transverse their urban landscapes. This was demonstrated in her powerful show at Gallery Barry Keldoulis in March that bought together her video works and her painting in a synergistic coalescence of matter, medium and immateriality. Sean Rafferty’s Ghost Mountain at Mop in January traced a link between memory and recall of both the filmic and the real. Rafferty used cardboard, graphite and film to play off nostalgia burning it instead into the viewer’s mind as an after image rather than a recollection. And so it goes that the nature of viewing work is also about recalling absent work, it’s serendipity is our part in the process but beyond this comes hindsight - the lynchpin for generally acknowledged agreement. It is very easy to digress into a round up of the high lights every notable show and maybe that’s the clincher for why this sort of retrospection is usually anchored to a specific artist’s work and not discussed in such meandering terms.

Ben Cauhci, The Start of It All, 2009.
Ambrotype.

And with that in mind it was in fact two quite specific shows that have been doing the haunting for me - The New Victorians (University of Sydney Art Gallery curated by Louise Tegart in 2008) and A Fragile State (Martin Browne - curated by Matt Glenn in January 2009) Even the some of materials read like a list of ritual ingredients for some spell or hex- hair, bone, wax, ink and air -in both exhibitions.

The New Victorians was a great little show (little only in terms of the space and great in so far as the work went): the Sydney University Gallery is a small space and in true Victorian style it quite a tight hang. Ben Cauchi’s ambrotypes - one off photographic plates - captured the spookiness of an age where the spiritual loomed large. Liyen Chong use of her own hair to embroider pieces served as a memento mori both implied and actual. Chong’s work reappeared in Matt Glenn’s A Fragile State.

Liyen Chong, I don't know who I am but I know who I might be, 2008.
Hair embroidered on linen, 32x37cm.

A Fragile State was a marvellous wake up call. It asked us to consider not only the act of viewing and the materiality of the work but suggested a parallel thread between the experiential and the actual, the seen and the unseen as if these aspects of the art works could stand in for that lived experience. Roh Singh drilled holes in sheets of the perspex to make solid forms appear from thin air. Built up with layers of clear acrylic sheets the image was sandwiched as though it were both fixed and yet suspended, caught in the moment between one movement and the next, like a single a heart beat that divides life and death. Stuart Fleming’s mesmerising ink dot painting suggested the possibilities of phenomenology where colour takes on both the form and the idea and we are aware of another kind of perception of it. Charles Karubian and Leslie Rice’s paintings seemed to share a kind of ambiguity as if the figures in their paintings were being reabsorbed into their dark backgrounds. Destabilising the idea of painting as able to suspend time and space they too took on a fleeting quality. In various ways and to varying degrees each of the artists in the exhibition demanded some kind of reassessment of our experience of the artwork.

Isobel Johnston, August 2009

You really don't like video art do you?

2009-09-07T12:59:00.003+10:00

Under my direction the Art Gallery of NSW will:

Have many more contemporary art exhibitions 20% 33
Coast along until my forced early retirement 6% 10
Require school groups to be tethered 13% 21
Get rid of video art once and for all 22% 35
Boost the film and video programing into a thing of wonder 8% 13
Expand the bookshop to cover the entire ground floor 10% 17
Clear out all the dead wood, including actual dead wood 10% 17
Cheesecake, breakfast lunch and dinner 10% 16

162 votes total

You aint seen me right?!!

2009-09-06T15:00:00.004+10:00

"Cartrain, a 17-year-old graffiti artist embroiled in a feud with Damien Hirst, has been arrested after stealing pencils from the millionaire artist's latest installation

"Last year Cartrain was ordered by the Design and Artists Copyright Society to hand over collages based on Hirst's famous diamond-encrusted skull, For the Love of God, and pay the £200 in profits he made.

"In an act of revenge, Cartrain visited Hirst's installation Pharmacy in July, which was being shown as part of Tate Britain's Classified exhibition until it closed last month, and removed a few of the rare "Faber Castell dated 1990 Mongol 482 Series" pencils.

"Cartrain then made a mock "wanted" posted that read: "For the safe return of Damien Hirst's pencilers I would like my artworks back that DACS and Hirst took off me in November. It's not a large demand... Hirst has until the end of this month to resolve this or on 31 of July the pencils will be sharpened. He has been warned."

"But the stunt backfired when the antiques squad from the Metropolitan Police arrested the artist, informing him the pencils were worth £500,000 as part of the overall installation which was valued at £10 million..."

Teenage artist arrested for stealing pencils from Damien Hirst, The Telegraph UK

"One for the money, two for the show..."

2009-09-04T12:22:00.005+10:00

"A SILENT, ten minute video of young music fans letting loose in front of rock gods playing on stage has won the main award at this year's Blake Prize for religious art. The $20,000 prize went to 32-year-old Sydney artist Angelica Mesiti for her video work Rapture (silent anthem).It was filmed from a concealed position beneath the stage at the Big Day Out earlier this year, as hard rock and metal bands played to the audience. Mesiti, though, would prefer viewers not to place too much emphasis on the actual location of the film and concentrate instead on the ideas of spirituality suggested in the piece. She said the work was exploring the “extreme experiences” when people become lost in the moment outside sanctioned religious spaces. “I was just interested in these notions of worship and ecstasy and transcendence and where they're actually found in a contemporary setting,” she said. Christopher Allen, The Australian's national art critic, said of the winner: “Ecstasy is cheap.” And of the show overall, he was less than impressed. “The show itself is fairly lacklustre,” he said. “There's very little that has any inspiring sense of the religious or the spiritual.”

Sydney artist wins Blake Prize with 'religious' video, The Australian

"I thought it was a bit of a long shot because it isn't the most conventional treatment of religious or spiritual kind of subjects, but I'm really glad that they've shown that there's a willingness and an openness about those subjects," [Mesiti] said. The winner of the John Coburn emerging artist award, Grant Stevens, also used digital video to show how the internet is changing the way people discover themselves. "I was quite interested in how MySpace and other online forums like that are now these venues for self-definition and self-identification and self-reflection too, and often that text involves reflection on likes and dislikes," he said. "I guess I was interested in how those things now might stand in for other more traditional forms of reflection or spiritual endeavours." The chairman of the Blake Society, Reverend Rod Pattenden, says the winning works show the sometimes traditional prize is heading in a new direction.

Blake Prize awarded to video artwork, ABC News

"True to the Blake's history of provoking debate, it got a lashing last month from the Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, who cited what he saw as "anti-religious" and kitsch work, singling out among the finalists Adam Cullen's depiction of David and Goliath and photographer Belinda Mason's Christ-like 3D image of Brisbane's suspended Father Peter Kennedy. Mr Pattenden said he saw the exhibition as "wonderfully educative and I hope that religious leaders who might see this as potentially blasphemous might come along and learn something". The exhibition is on view at the gallery of Darlinghurst's National Art School, where the awards were held, until October 3."

How videos killed the painting stars, SMH

New Work Friday #29

2009-09-04T12:14:00.005+10:00

Until the Kingdom Comes, by Simen Johan

Got new work you'd like to share? Send images and description of your work to thearlife at hot mail dot com. Images should no larger than 350k each

Def mute protests Biennale exclusion...

2009-09-01T11:39:00.002+10:00

Protest at the opening ceremony of the Beijing 798 Biennale

"The inaugural Beijing 798 Biennale, held in the sprawling 798 art district in China’s capital, saw a chaotic opening on 15 August, with major works by Chinese artists widely censored by authorities. The biennale was arranged with international contributions operating independently at numerous private galleries in the 798 complex, which were not affected by the censorship and avoided the operational issues that hampered the main exhibition hall. Billed as the first non-government biennale in China, the event was hampered by a lack of funds, operational support, and some inexperience on the part of the organisers, who were predominantly Chinese art journalists.

"In steaming temperatures of around 40ºC, hundreds stood out in the sun to listen to opening speeches by assembled dignitaries. The ceremony was briefly interrupted by a demonstration and water being thrown at the platform. The demonstration, whose purpose seemed obscure, was performed by a group including a deaf mute in ancient Chinese costume, a man wheeling a cart of bedpans and another man wearing a metal mask accompanied by someone dressed as a bride. 798 Biennale’s chief curator, Zhu Qi, said they were protesting about their exclusion from the exhibition..."

The Art Newspaper

Au du grunge

2009-09-01T11:16:00.004+10:00

Hany Armanious, Sphinx 2, 2009.

"By 1992, Egypt-born Australian artist Hany Armanious had exhibited his work in five solo independent or commercial gallery and two influential institutional exhibitions —the 1991 Australian Perspecta and the 1992-93 Biennale of Sydney: The Boundary Rider. By the end of 1993 his work had been included in many more exhibitions including the Venice Biennale’s 1993 Aperto exhibition. In his review of Armanious’ 1992 exhibition at Sydney’s Julie Green Gallery, Jeff Gibson made note of the decrepit (“scungy”) aesthetic at play in Armanious’ work: “The objects (ready-mades), artworks (drawings, paintings, and sculptures), and assemblages crammed into this exhibition are mostly composed of used and abused materials—‘crippled’ armchairs, discarded appliances, packaging, plastic utensils, and so on.”

"Gibson also evoked the works’ commentary on consumer waste, but it was the humorist in Armanious that stood out: “Were it not for the extremely endearing and perverse humour that this exhibition exudes, we might not wish to further pursue such an obvious challenge to connoisseurship.” Later, Gibson referred to Armanious’ “comic-artistic terrorism”. Armanious’ early works resonated with conceptual import, flirted with transcendentalist themes, and showed an unusual sensitivity to degraded materials; however Gibson’s review of Armanious’ work made no reference to the abject or to grunge.

"The oddly comic aspect of Armanious’ work, along with emerging artist Kathy Temin and some other Australian artists who had already established careers, was explored in the exhibition Wit’s End, curated by Kay Campbell and shown at Sydney’s fledgling Museum of Contemporary Art from February to May 1993. [...] Kay Campbell explained in the book accompanying the exhibition: “[The artists] contest the modern view of the world in a way which is intrinsically comic by at once acknowledging and opposing the banality, futility, and misery of life [thus they] create a disjuncture of meaning, liberating stereotypical cultural idioms and subverting codes of understanding.” Of Armanious’ work in the exhibition Campbell said: “Works are not regarded as individual self-contained entities, they interrelate in multi-layered and witty relationships linked to the physical and contextual space in which they are exhibited.”

Understanding Grunge Art, Christopher Chapman in Broadsheet

Nurse, the screens!

2009-08-31T16:54:00.003+10:00

Nina Power: One of the most important media for the Autonomia was radio. The obvious contemporary comparison is the Internet; it offers the possibility of putting out material quickly, and of constructing para- or non-academic discussions, as you did with Semiotext(e) at a time when French theory was still mostly untranslated. Perhaps there is less room for the kind of fetish items that the early Semiotext(e) books became. Now there are blogs, online books, and so on. How do you feel about this development?

Sylvère Lotringer: It certainly offers an enormous range of possibilities that didn’t exist before, but increased dissemination and accessibility doesn’t replace hard theory. Actually the introduction of the electronic media in the late 1970s marked the end of French theory in France. Philosophers of this great generation were replaced by publicists, like Bernard-Henri Lévy. Theory is not synonymous with blogging, nor is multi-tasking with thinking. The books that we publish are a long-time intellectual commitment on their authors’ part and we have hardly scratched the surface. We are interested in everything that helps us diagnose the future, where we are going, what can be done, and that is far from clear at this point. We are presently moving from a humanistic space to a more global and ecological horizon. So we need an ever wider range of theories, not less, and the re-introduction of Italian social thinkers as well as Peter Sloterdijk’s amazing philosophical extrapolations are part of this project. Radio certainly had its time, but it is no less interesting for that. Actually it has been experiencing a revival. Technological advance isn’t everything. The Autonomists’ radios were not just radio, they were part of a total – not a global – environment, and they could mobilize the population whenever the police tried to raid them. These were political groups embedded in a local community, they knew who they were talking to. Can these communities be extended on a wider scale? Not in the same way. The Internet seemed to be the answer at the time it was introduced, but it has quickly become a new form of mental pollution. The CIA, apparently, is now working on a ‘gated’ equivalent that will keep hackers and other rogue idealists off-limits. The Internet certainly allows for a direct connection between people, but it still depends on long-time memory and a central organ. It assigns individuals a place that pre-exists them and abstracts them from their own environment. This is just the opposite of the idea of ‘general intelligence’ that Antonio Negri and Paolo Virno have extracted from Marx, which implies social creativity and public cooperation. Like other recent technological inventions, the Internet runs the risk of reproducing itself at the expense of the very sociability it was supposed to provide. It expands our world and reduces it to nothing, enforcing a culture of non-stop communication that is taking its toll on human temporality and its capacity to connect to the outside..."

Intelligence Agency: Theorist Sylvère Lotringer talks to Nina Power about art and the market, the failings of capitalism and how radical thinking can help us survive 'the system' - from Frieze.

Your chance to win - and save!

2009-08-31T16:46:00.002+10:00

Sydney arts community rallies to save one of the city’s most important venues for emerging and experimental art

Recently named by Creative Sydney as one of the cities’ top ‘Creative Catalysts’, Firstdraft Gallery - Sydney’s oldest Artist-Run Initiative, has been giving big breaks to budding artists since 1986. Some of Australia’s top young artists got their start at Firstdraft. Now we need your help.

Firstdraft lives in a building that has been served with a compulsory Council fire order. In the coming weeks and months, we must undertake significant renovations to our much-loved space in order to keep our doors open to the public.

Firstdraft will be rebuilding, rewiring and providing disabled access to our 3 galleries and 2 studios. And for that we need money we don’t have. Imagine if Firstdraft were to close... future biennale stars, gallery curators and the next generation of up-and-coming artists may not get the start they need.

That’s where you come in. Firstdraft is holding an emergency fundraiser auction at the gallery on Thursday 3 September 2009 to raise $20,000 for the cause. Former Firstdraft directors and artists, as well as fellow galleries, are rushing to donate artworks for auction in support of one of Sydney’s most important venues for emerging and experimental art. The auction will be hosted by Elizabeth Ann Macgregor, Director, Museum of Contemporary Art.

We need your support too. Come along and snap up some killer bargains. Tell your friends. Get involved! Every dollar raised will go to keeping alive a space that has added to the cultural vibrancy and creative spirit of Sydney for over two decades.

Who: works have been generously donated by artists and galleries such as: Del Kathryn Barton, Mike Parr, David Griggs, Lauren Brincat, Christopher Hanrahan, Sarah Goffman, Simon Kennedy, Brett East, Tom Polo, Agatha Gothe-Snape, Michaela Gleave, Mikala Dwyer, Helen Hyatt-Johnston, Jake Walker, Christine Cornish, Jessica Maurer, Rachel Scott, Mitch Cairns, Penelope Benton, Jess Oliveri, Sonny Day, Rod Jacka, Lionel Bawden, Jumaadi, Will French, Kate Scardifield, Tom Polo, Shane Haseman, Gallery 9, Gallery 4a, Breenspace, Stills gallery, Anna Schwartz gallery and Kaliman gallery, plus many more to come.

What: SAVE FIRSTDRAFT fundraiser art auction

When: Thursday, 3 September 2009 from 6-9pm [previews available from 12pm Wednesday 2 September 2009]

Where: Firstdraft gallery, 116-118 Chalmers St, Surry Hills NSW 2010

Further information: Firstdraft Gallery

This kid could go a long way...

2009-08-21T14:19:00.003+10:00

The two paintings entitled "Farmstead" (left) and "Farm Buildings On The River" by Adolf Hitler.

"Three signed watercolours by Adolf Hitler are to be sold at auction next month in Nuremberg in southern Germany, scene of the Nazi war crimes trials, a local paper said on Thursday. The paintings from 1910 and 1911 are entitled "Zerschossene Muehle" ("Bullet-riddled Mill"), "Weissenkirchen in der Wachau" -- the Austrian town depicted -- and "Haus mit Bruecke am Fluss" ("House With A Bridge Over A River"), the Nuernberger Nachrichten said.

According to the catalogue of the Weidler auction house, bidding will start at 3,000 euros (4,270 dollars) when the paintings go under the hammer on September 5. In April, the same auction house sold two watercolours signed by the Nazi dictator to a private collector for 32,000 euros but some works have fetched much higher sums.

In 2006, 21 works sold in Britain for 118,000 pounds (126,000 euros, 171,000 dollars). And earlier this year, a series of Hitler watercolours were sold at a British auction house for over 100,000 euros.

As a young man, Hitler had pretensions as an artist, applying to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. However, he failed to gain a place at the academy and was told his drawings showed a lack of talent. He was advised to study architecture instead but refused to shelve his artistic ambitions, making money in his 20s by copying scenes from postcards and selling the results to tourists.

via Google News

Cache of Fakes

2009-08-21T14:13:00.002+10:00

"A collection of Frida Kahlo oil paintings, diaries and archival material that is the subject of a book to be published by Princeton Architectural Press on 1 November has been denounced by scholars as a cache of fakes. Finding Frida Kahlo includes reproductions of paintings, drawings and handwritten letters, diaries, notes, trinkets and other ephemera attributed to the artist. They belong to Carlos Noyola and Leticia Fernández, a couple who own the antique store La Buhardilla Antiquarios in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. The publisher describes it as “an astonishing lost archive of one of the twentieth century's most revered artists...full of ardent desires, seething fury, and outrageous humor”.

"According to an interview in the forthcoming book, and to emails from Noyola to The Art Newspaper, the couple acquired the items incrementally from 2004-07 from a lawyer who in turn had acquired them from a woodcarver who allegedly received them from the artist. Noyola tells The Art Newspaper he has more than 1,200 Kahlo items in all. He would not disclose how much he paid, but says: “We did acquire the collection with the belief and some groundwork done to prove that it is in fact authentic and thus paid accordingly.” He states that the collection is not for sale and will not be for sale in the future."

ARt Newspaper

New Work #28

2009-08-21T13:51:00.003+10:00

Justin Cooper, Fear and Same Sex Love, 2009.

"Today, we appear to fear just about everything. One reason why we fear so much is because life is dominated by competing groups of fear entrepreneurs who promote their cause, stake their claims, or sell their products through fear. Politicians, the media, businesses, environmental organisations, public health officials and advocacy groups are continually warning us about something new to fear - Justin Cooper

Got new work you'd like to share? Send images and description of your work to thearlife at hot mail dot com. Images should no larger than 350k each

Curiously Enough - It Don't Add Up Part 2

2009-08-16T11:32:00.003+10:00

Last week's post It Don't Add Up was a contribution from a reader, an actual doctor in an actual university who knows about such things. The reader's point was simple - the formula for the creation art didn't quite mean what the Biennale of Sydney thinks it means.

Kaz Maslanka dropped by to alert Art Life readers to a post-in-reply at the group blog Mathematical Poetry. According to the blog's headache-inducing upper case mission statement:

...mathematical poetry is an artistic expression created by performing mathematical operations on words or images as if they were numbers. One may find this baffling because it seems we are confused about knowing the difference between the states of quality versus quantity. But it is through the fusion of this dichotomy that mathematical metaphor is spawned. Mathematics has always been used for denotation. However, our interest is to use math as a language for connotation.

Okey doke. So, bracing ourselves for a set-to, we clicked on the link to find the following [plus a complete repost of our own words, so we now return the favour]:

Problems Encountered With Mathematical Poetry

Here is a perfect example of why mathematical poetry will have problems at least in the near future. In the [Art Life] blog entry [...] the author is complaining that the originator for a set of equations published in the brochure for the Biennale of Sydney is numerically illiterate. Curiously enough I think they should have said mathematically illiterate for numbers are not involved in these examples. That said, I am not sure that it is true that the originator was mathematically illiterate as well. The author claims that the expression, “Art = tyranny” is a false statement yet, historically there has been countless examples of art that has been inspired by or executed to express tyranny. A good example would be the artistic turmoil created around 1911 in Zurich Switzerland, for the entire Dada movement’s intention was to be tyrannical (Anti-Art)… as well as the copy cats that came after. Obviously the problem brought to question in this brochure is how one reads an equation. Is the equation to be read as poetry or science? Too many people think that an equation is automatically scientific in its expression. If this myopic attitude is left to continue, mathematics will be in denotative chains forever. When one reads poetry one searches for the proper context to give it meaning in relation to their life. One looks at the many facets of a poem to see what it is pointing to. “Art = tyranny” is a perfect expression for Dada, Punk or any other nihilist form or art.

Now to give our author the benefit of the doubt we could agree with him/her if the originator’s intention was scientific however, I can hardly see scientific intent in this expression even if it were meant to be.

An intention not to break the law doesn't excuse someone from breaking the law, does it? [We heard that on CSI once, and it sounded good...]

Save Firstdraft

2009-08-15T12:52:00.004+10:00

Some of Australia’s top young artists got their start at Firstdraft.
Now they need your help!
Due to a council fire order Firstdraft will be rebuilding, rewiring and providing disabled access to their 3 galleries and 2 studios.
And for that they need money they don’t have...

That’s where you come in. Firstdraft is holding an emergency fundraiser auction at the gallery on Thursday 3 September 2009 to raise $20,000 for the cause. Former Firstdraft directors and artists, as well as fellow galleries, are rushing to donate artworks for auction in support of one of Sydney’s most important venues for emerging and experimental art.

The auction will be hosted by Elizabeth Ann Macgregor,
Director, Museum of Contemporary Art.

Imagine if Firstdraft were to close... future biennale stars, gallery curators and the next generation of up-and-coming artists may not get the start they need. They need your support.

Go along and snap up some killer bargains. Tell your friends. Get involved! There will be works on auction to fit all kinds of budgets and lucky door prizes!!

Further information: Firstdraft Fundraiser

FIRSTDRAFT fundraiser art auction
Thursday, 3 September 2009 from 6-9pm
[previews available from 12pm Wednesday 2 September 2009]
Where: Firstdraft gallery, 116-118 Chalmers St, Surry Hills NSW 2010

Art works have been generously donated by artists and galleries such as:
Del Kathryn Barton
Mike Parr
Lauren Brincat
Sarah Goffman
Simon Kennedy
Brett East
Tom Polo
Agatha Gothe-Snape
Michaela Gleave
Mikala Dwyer
Helen Hyatt-Johnston
Jake Walker
Christine Cornish
Jessica Maurer
Rachel Scott
Mitch Cairns
Penelope Benton,
Jess Oliveri
Sonny Day
Rod Jacka
Lionel Bawden
Jumaadi
Will French
Kate Scardifield
Tom Polo Jr
Shane Haseman
Gallery9
Breenspace
Stills Gallery
Damien Minton Gallery
plus many more to come.

Fundraiser contact: Debbie Pryor, Co-Director, Firstdraft gallery m: 0423 103 378 / e: debbie@firstdraftgallery.com

New Work Friday #27

2009-08-14T14:46:00.003+10:00

"The Hosts: A Masquerade Of Improvising Automatons extends Wade Marynowsky’s development of custom-built robotics and interactive, performative media. In this installation, Marynowsky explores roboticist Masahiro Mori’s theory outlined in The Uncanny Valley (1970), which suggests that in designing humanoid robots one should not aim for total human likeness, but for an alternative to an uncanny appearance.   Media artist/artistic director; Wade Marynowsky, Electrical engineer; Aras Vaichas, Programmer; Jeremy Apthorp, Lighting; Mirabelle Wouters Costume; Sally Jackson.  -   Performance Space at the Carriage Works

Warning: Porn Inside

2009-08-13T09:32:00.002+10:00

"Except for Ken Yonetani’s Sweet Barrier Reef, a rather dull comment on the effects of consumerism on nature, the Australian off-site project Once Removed curated by Felicity Fenner offers a refreshing insight into the predicament of displacement. Undoubtedly part of the show’s appeal is the extraordinary location, the Ludoteca, formerly a convent in a prime position between the Giardini and the Arsenale. At the entrance is a chapel, where Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro present their impressive new work Life Span. 195,774 VHS tapes are stacked into a neatly arranged plinth, responding boldly to the religious architecture of the space. What is immediately striking is the weight and solidity of this monument, an exaggerated reminder of the obsolete material packaging of globally circulated screen fantasies. But the artists also reflect on the passing of time and its multiple scales; neither the crumbling walls of the old church nor the black plastic surfaces of the tapes can speak of eternity. The combined running time of these tapes is the average human’s life span when VHS was released, 66.1 years. Thinking of how many hours of pornography fill the monolith, the idea of this content flashing before one’s eyes at death is also staggering. The rumours around Venice before the opening were that the Australians had ‘video porn’ on show. Needless to say, Once Removed has been well attended..."

the future now, minus nations, alexandra crosby: the 2009 venice biennale, RealTime Arts

A dragonfly overhead

2009-08-13T09:26:00.004+10:00

"Rhys Chatham is a guitarist-composer with an impeccable pedigree: He studied with electronic music pioneer Morton Subotnick and hipster minimalist La Monte Young, played in Tony Conrad’s Dream Syndicate (other notable alumnus: John Cale), founded the music program at the Kitchen, underwent a stylistic Damascus at an early Ramones show, and influenced Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, and hordes of younger experimental rockers. His 1977 composition Guitar Trio remains a landmark for minimalism, guitar music, and genre-bending alike.

"A 1989 work for one hundred guitars, An Angel Moves Too Fast to See, eventually led to 2005’s four-hundred-guitar epic, A Crimson Grail, which premiered at the Basilique du Sacré Coeur in Paris. The latter was the work, revised and trimmed to a sensible two hundred guitars, that was to make its New York debut in August 2008 until a heavy rainstorm forced its last-minute cancellation. With long, shallow tents protecting the guitarists and their amps, Saturday’s performance was the rain check, so to speak, though the weather was remarkably beautiful..."

Rhys's Pieces, Art Forum Diary

It Don't Add Up

2009-08-11T14:30:00.001+10:00

The Biennale of Sydney has put out an advance brochure that contains the two equations:

art + beauty + empathy = power

power – beauty – empathy = tyranny

Anyone with a primary school understanding of mathematics knows that if you solve these equations for the term ‘art’ you will discover that the claim being made is that

art = tyranny

If the Biennale of Sydney wants to communicate its ideas in the form of equations, perhaps it should run them by someone with a primary school level of numerical literacy before publishing them. Didn’t anyone in the accounts section twig that the Biennale of Sydney is spreading the message throughout the world that art equals tyranny???

Here is the mathematical solution:

art + beauty + empathy = power

art + empathy = power – beauty

art = power – beauty – empathy

given already that power – beauty – empathy = tyranny

then it follows

art = tyranny

Rider Spoke

2009-08-11T12:21:00.002+10:00

Documentary on Rider Spoke by Blast Theory, presented in Sydney 2009 as part of the British Council's Creative Cities programme in East Asia.

Can't see the video? Click here to view.

Filthy lucre

2009-08-10T10:50:00.003+10:00

"Money might be best described by Jean Baudrillard’s fabricated quotation from Ecclesiastes: ‘The simulacrum is true.’ In modern times, money’s material value is disconnected from its assumed value; it is basically nothing more than a promise. Rather than being backed by either silver or gold, it is based on confidence in a certain institution – in the Federal Reserve, in the case of the US, or the Bank of England, in the case of the UK. In an era of bailouts and the euphemistic ‘quantitative easing’, both institutions are more than a little precarious.

"In the US, designer Richard Smith wants to save our currency by re-branding it. Without waiting for government approval (or perhaps realizing that Obama has more than enough on his plate), Smith set up his own initiative to re-design the dollar. To that end he established a competition that ended – appropriately enough – on the fourth of July. A British brand consultant based in New York, Smith is already known for re-tooling the image of gold for the Gold Council, and has worked for both retail corporation Target and Exxon Mobil (all of whom may well want a say in the future of the dollar bill)."

The Buck Stops Here, Frieze

Pharmacia

2009-08-10T10:41:00.004+10:00

"Adrian Dannatt: Pharmacy, which was shown at the Cohen Gallery in New York in 1992, feels kind of religious. As a viewer, it’s like being inside one of the vitrine pieces.

Damien Hirst: I’ve always seen medicine cabinets as bodies, but also like a cityscape or civilization, with some sort of hierarchy within it. It’s also like a contemporary museum of the Middle Ages. In 100 years time this will look like an old apothecary. A museum of something that’s around today.

AD: In France they have glistening pharmacies meant to be the most up-to-date imaginable, but they already look dated because it’s such a ’70s idea of Modernism.

DH: They provoke an idea of confidence, of trust in minimalism. I love medical logos, so minimal, so clean, there’s something dumb about it. I like the idea of outside and inside. The cabinets could be people and the drugs internal parts, and they relate to different parts of the body.

AD: Is the theme of escape in pieces such as The Acquired Inability to Escape (1991) and The Asthmatic Escaped (1992) related to the idea of inside/outside?

DH: I like escape formally, as an idea. There’s a religious element to The Acquired Inability to Escape. The one at the Tate has four slits — if you took an imaginary line through from the camera lens you’d get a cross. That’s something you don’t see but which is an important part of it..."

Life's Like This Then it Stops. Interview with Damien Hirst, Flash Art, 1993

Rebels without a pause

2009-08-08T14:32:00.004+10:00

New York Beat Movie (Downtown 81) – 1981: Rambling, amateurish and often incoherent, this film portrays the day-to-day routine of Jean-Michel Basquiat: artist and (sometime) musician, as he tries to survive amidst rappers, junkies, gangsters, strippers, models and uptown art-lovers. It's an interesting time capsule of Post-Punk, No-Wave New York, with some fascinating vignettes of 80’s New York, but it doesn’t feel like a finished movie. However some rare and raw performances from Deborah Harry, DNA, James White and the Blacks, Lydia Lunch and Basquiat himself with his own band, Gray, make for moments of excitement among the tedium.

Basquiat – 1996: ‘Basquiat’ tells the real life story of an anonymous and homeless graffiti artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat, as he is ‘discovered’ by Andy Warhol, becomes an art star almost over night and then tragically dies at the age of 27 from a drug overdose. ‘Basquiat’ is stylish but dishonest portrayal of the artist. Directed by New York artist and former friend Julian Schnabel, the film seems to be a platform to aggrandize his own legacy, instead of Basquiat’s. He went so far as to paint all of Basquiat’s paintings for the film, as well as portraying his own role in the film as the sole friend and saviour to the troubled artist. The actor Jeffery Wright felt that his performance of Basquiat had been “appropriated” by the director, and the end result is an overly egoistic mess that fails to portray the purity or authenticity of Basquiat’s art.

Read more - New York Art Rebels on Screen, The Telegraph UK

New Work Friday #26

2009-08-07T12:12:00.004+10:00

Paula Garrard, Reverberate 1 & 2 (detail),
Installation view. Oil on canvas, 130 x 160cm.

"We are exposed to so many colours through the mass media bombardment of visual imagery and advertising that the connection between seeing and experience is often overlooked. These paintings are about taking a moment to explore ‘seeing’: a perceptual encounter, a visual fantasy trip which detaches itself from expectation. Colour, line and form negotiate with one another and funnel one’s vision into a multitude of equally competing directions. The eye is at once repelled and intrigued. Together, the works are not just a collection of objects, but a visual and perceptual experience - Paula Garrard."

Exhibiting at Regional Art Space – 11 July – 6 September, Dubbo Regional Gallery – The Armati Bequest, Western Plains Cultural Centre.

To the moon

2009-08-05T10:52:00.003+10:00

Man on the moon: artists exploring space, 21 July 2009: Celebrating 40 years since man first walked on moon, artworks inspired by lunar exploration. The Guardian.

Ladies love a nice unicorn

2009-08-05T10:45:00.002+10:00

"A clever child might argue that the unicorn could exist because it is no more absurd than the narwhal whale. The twisted tusk of the narwhal is what was supposed to grow from the head of the horse known as the unicorn. The centrepiece of a 15th-century Flemish mille-fleurs tapestry in the Victoria and Albert Museum is a unicorn, with a horn exactly like that: a narwhal tusk projects from its forehead, and a heavy tail with flukes, like a whale's, flourishes above its back. The background is studded with symmetrically placed flowering plants, plus the odd exotic game bird. I would give much to know what the tapestried picture means. Are all the featured creatures imaginary? Is the invented world of human fantasy here presented as superior to reality? Without knowing more about the idea of the unicorn, there is no way I can know what I am looking at.

"A horse with a horn is not a contradiction in terms, unless I define a horse as a hornless creature. It makes no odds that a horse has no need of a horn. The narwhal does nothing with its "horn", which isn't even a secondary sexual characteristic because some females have them as well as males. The tusk is actually an overgrown incisor tooth. In theory, horses, too, could start growing a tooth into a tusk and then into a horn. Rhinoceroses have single horns made of modified hair; the mane of a horse could one day develop into a kind of horn. It hasn't happened – as far as we know – but no evolutionist should discount the possibility..."

The eternal fascination of unicorns, Germaine Greer, The Guardian UK.

The Other P.K.

2009-08-05T10:42:00.001+10:00

Looking but not seeing

2009-08-04T12:09:00.001+10:00

"The young women were unusual for stopping. Most of the museum’s visitors passed through the gallery oblivious.

"A few game tourists glanced vainly in guidebooks or hopefully at wall labels, as if learning that one or another of these sculptures came from Papua New Guinea or Hawaii or the Archipelago of Santa Cruz, or that a work was three centuries old or maybe four might help them see what was, plain as day, just before them.

"Almost nobody, over the course of that hour or two, paused before any object for as long as a full minute. Only a 17th-century wood sculpture of a copulating couple, from San Cristobal in the Solomon Islands, placed near an exit, caused several tourists to point, smile and snap a photo, but without really breaking stride..."

At Louvre, Many Stop to Snap but Few Stay to Focus, New York Times

Job seekers please note:

2009-08-04T11:14:00.001+10:00

Director, Tate Britain
London
Circa 85k GBP
http://www.tate.org.uk
http://www.lizamosassociates.com

Tate Britain, the home of British art from 1500 to the present, is seeking to appoint a Director to lead the Gallery. The new Director will succeed Stephen Deuchar, who has been appointed Director of The Art Fund, joining Tate Britain at a time when a major programme of capital development is under way and when the opportunity to develop a vision of engagement with historic and contemporary British art has never been more exciting.

Reporting to Nicholas Serota, Tate's Director, the successful candidate will be responsible for the strategic vision for Tate Britain, building on the successes which have been achieved in recent years. He or she will conceive and execute the public programme at Tate Britain, representing the Gallery both externally and internally, whilst also working within the Director's Group developing the Tate-wide Strategic Plan.

Candidates for the post will need to command respect across the organisation of Tate, have extraordinary creative vision and demonstrate an ability to work collaboratively with senior colleagues in line with Tate's cultural objectives.

Please contact Tamsin Chandler of Liz Amos Associates on +44 (0) 20 7664 8601 or at tamsin.chandler@lizamosassociates.com to learn more or to receive an application pack. Information is also available at http://www.tate.org.uk or http://www.lizamosassociates.com Closing date: 14 September 2009.

The stay at home art tour

2009-08-03T11:53:00.002+10:00

"Just when the withering economy is shrinking art, antiques and design sales, there is a rise in attendance and interest in historic homes and artist sites in both the US and the UK.

“There is definitely something in the air, with growing numbers seeking out the simple pleasures offered by the National Trust,” says Fiona Reynolds, director general of the UK-based National Trust. Total visitors received in May were 1.98m, an eight per cent increase from the same month last year. Overall, attendance has climbed 24 per cent so far versus 2008.

“Staycations” in the US seem to be driving attendance at some National Trust properties. “We have anecdotal evidence confirming that people are spending less, staying closer to home and visiting more of our sites,” says James Vaughan, National Trust vice president for historic sites in Washington, DC. But the US National Trust, with a membership of only 250,000, pales in comparison to the British National Trust, which has 3.6m members.

"In the US, some artists’ home and sites in a consortium of 36 such National Trust properties are witnessing the biggest bumps in interest. For example, at Chesterwood, the home, studio and gardens of sculptor Daniel Chester French (1850-1931), which are nestled in the Berkshires, Massachusetts, attendance has risen 50 per cent in May alone, reports Chesterwood director Donna Hassler. Visitor numbers to the home and studio of artists Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner in East Hampton on Long Island rose 20 per cent in the past year. Attendance at the Hudson River School painter Frederic Edwin Church’s Persian-style home Olana has always been steady. “But now it’s up ten per cent compared with last year,” says Olana director Linda McLean. “Because we’ve opened the second floor as well as a new gallery and added a new tour, both new and repeat visitors are coming.” In Darien, Connecticut, visitors to architect Philip Johnson’s Glass House have increased 20 per cent so far compared with 2008..."

Recession fuels attendance of artist sites and historic homes, Art Newspaper

Recreating the Wall

2009-08-03T11:38:00.003+10:00

"Visitors to the German capital over recent days may well have felt transported back to the heady weeks following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Then, amid icy winds, blizzards and an inimitable spirit of euphoria, 117 artists from 21 countries gathered to paint works on a 1.3km (1,420yd) stretch of the concrete divide that had previously been out of bounds in the communist east.

"Twenty years on, most are back at the East Side Gallery (a 1.3km section of the Wall), poised on ladders, paint brushes in hand, to re-create their often provocative images - remember Birgit Kinder's Trabant bursting through the Wall? - and to give the gallery a much-needed makeover.

"Their crumbling paintings look as though they have been attacked with acid, thanks to the weather and the traffic that thunders past the world's largest outdoor gallery. There's also the graffiti by tourists keen to leave their mark. This time around, more durable paints are being used and the murals will be protected with anti-graffiti spray.

"Dimitri Vrubel, the Russian who reproduced the passionate kiss - an expression of Soviet-era brotherhood between the Soviet dictator, Leonid Brezhnev, and his East German counterpart, Erich Honecker, is back on site, protected by a steel fence..."

Where art and politics come face to face, The Observer

Train

2009-08-03T11:33:00.002+10:00

Rose Vickers
The Light at the End of the Tunnel is a Train

This much anticipated exhibition is a vivid display of Vickers’ unique visual language and growing mastery over a variety of media. From intimate drawings and photographs to a spectacular chandelier installation of LED lights, bones, and toffee, The Light at the End of the Tunnel is a Train draws you into a world of fragility, undulating flux and the beautiful death.

“If you think you know what you are looking at you think you are in control; you are in control of the visual field, the enfolding and unfolding space, and the restrictive possibilities of the physical body to impact your presence and identity. Play with that certainty and the world you inhabit becomes a mysterious and compelling space of unrecognisable fluidity and (in) tense doubt…

Vickers tests our capacity for accurate observation and self-justifying empirical verification. The truth-value of the work and our own identity is partly at stake… what we expect to see, what we see, and what is real. Any thought to embrace ethereality and sensuality as an escape from the vicissitudes or the temporal transitions of the real is depleted by the inviting and complex ambiguity mobilized through Vickers’ presentation of this new body of work”.

Excerpts from catalogue essay by Gary Sangster (former Curator at The New Museum of Contemporary Art in NYC; Director, the Contemporary Museum, in Baltimore; currently based in Sydney, at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales).

Exhibition Curated by Emily Fitzgerald
Supported by Rococo Productions and ARC

Opening: 6.30 – 8.30 Tuesday 11 August | Exhibition Runs: 11 August – 22 September
East Sydney Doctor’s Gallery | 102 Burton Street, Darlinghurst