the art life

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

Labels: artist run galleries, commercial galleries, exhibitions, Isobel Johnston, painting

From Isobel Johnston...

If you’ve ever fancied listening to an artist talk about their work followed by a dinner with like-minded people then you should think about contacting NG Gallery. It can offer you such an evening. Or you might even like to take one of its newly devised practical art classes. Or try one of the National Art School’s short courses; sign up at TAFE or something on offer through WEA. If the hip and young side of Sydney’s art world is more your thing why not do a one of the myriad of events on offer at the ARI’s from First Draft to St Peter’s Lane to MOP, Slot or Peloton. From Art After Hours at AGNSW, Arthere , Open Sydney to Bundeena’s Art Trail or open studio days – there’s a lot on offer, all of it educational and most of it fun.



Education has always been around as part of the art world and as an integral part of the role of various galleries, although historically it has been primarily the domain of public institutions from ‘big’ museums to medium scale publicly funded organizations. What has changed is that in recent times we are seeing a shift to education programming by commercial galleries and ARIs.

To grow new clients first you must educate them. This might sound more than a little trite yet there is a logic to it as the benefits far outweigh the costs in setting up such programs. This kind of benefit has a great deal more to recommend it than the older style of audience building, which relied upon ‘wining, dining and wooing’ of only wealthy potential or existing clients.

This blossoming of education is maybe a feature of the times, a means of building "client bases", "investing in the future" or "getting through the tough economic times". It is also marks the difference between the new breed of gallerists who have thrown off the mantle of exclusivity to act as a conduit between the artwork and the general public, perceiving their role in terms of a public relations strategy which involves welcoming everyone with the same level of enthusiasm as opposed to an older style manner of conducting business which often made the uninitiated feel like badly dressed customers in a boutique store. Meeting artists, hearing them talk about their work is now a feature of most commercial gallery programs. Tours, soirées and other opportunities to mingle, hear and socialise with artists are also now a feature of the art gallery world.

Michael Reid Gallery is the first commercial space that springs to mind. It has offered education programs in conjunction with and as an adjunct to his exhibition programs for the last few years. More recently, a new breed of commercial galleries like Sullivan and Strumpf, Gallery Barry Keldoulis and Breenspace have shown a way forward that brings a sense of pleasure and engagement with both the artwork and the audience. If the art market is to be revivified then making people feel welcome and enabling them to find the experience enjoyable seems at least one positive outcome of the economic times.

Will it work? And of more immediate concern will it be the silver bullet to ward off tough times for galleries big and small? There’s nothing like keeping busy while we wait and see how the local, national and global art markets recover. But maybe we are in fact glimpsing a shift in the structure of these businesses where selling work becomes only one of their activities. Maybe we’re moving to a new phase where education, entertainment and places for social engagement take on a more a directly remunerative role rather than merely being add-on benefits only available to the serious collectors.

Labels: art market, commercial galleries, Isobel Johnston

From Isobel Johnston...

Why is the Yirribana Gallery the hardest gallery to find in the whole of the Art Gallery of New South Wales? Why isn’t it the first thing visitors should come across? Moving Yirribana to the entrance level of the Art Gallery would fast track education and critical debate that circulates around the growth, encouragement and understanding of Indigenous art to non-Indigenous audiences.

Yirribana runs an exciting and dynamic program of Indigenous art and generally outshines anything else in the gallery. It may be that being in the basement may have certain advantages in terms of the display of some of the artworks. Yet there is also a strong argument to be made for the Yirribana Gallery to be given a more prominent space within the building commensurate with its importance. This shift would facilitate audiences to revaluate the position of indigenous art the AGNSW as well as within Australian culture, creating a public interest accompanying the curatorial and academic re-evaluation that has also gone on over the last twenty or more years. The 14 million dollars recently raised and spent on a minor Cézanne might easily have gone some way towards a refit and rehang of the Yirribana Gallery.

With all the best intentions and academic rigor, galleries and museums are far from neutral sites and bring with them the valuation and validation of art within the framework of their own institutional constraints. Not that this is really a criticism but it may go some way to explaining audience confusion. Gordon Bennett’s piece in Biennale of Sydney 2008 [Bennett wanted to hang some of the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ collection upside down but had to do at as a maquette] drew attention to the way in which the presentation of work influences its reception.

It's not that these questions are new: they have been discussed critically by a wide range of experts and artists for more than 20 years. Vivian Johnson, for example, raised this issue almost two decades ago in 1991 in her catalogue essay for the Donald Kahn Collection citing the comments made by Maurice Jupurrula Luther an Aboriginal elder who was reticent to accept the label of ‘artist’ and instead holding onto a role beyond that narrow imposition. But it is apparent that there is the need for further discussion. I've spent years looking at art but when it came time to consider the Papunya Painting: Out of the Desert a touring exhibition currently on show at the Australian Museum I began to wonder not only about my ability to comment on the show but really about a whole lot of complex questions about our expectations of Aboriginal art.

Walking in off the street we bring (as we always do) our own interpretations and expectations to any work of art. Nonetheless most of us don’t have any or at least almost no framework to reference Aboriginal painting except a history of contemporary western painting- abstraction and some skewered view of the narratives connection to indigenous desert art and vague ideas about histories of urban Aboriginal culture.

But what’s wrong with that? What do we bring to our viewing of a Rothko or a Pollock that is more useful than what we bring to a viewing of a Rosalee Namok or a Judy Watson? Why do viewers want to know a storyline to feel they can properly appreciate Indigenous art? I certainly don’t support this as a basis which guarantee’s access to all punters – by owning/knowing bit about the artist or the story or the culture. This can also be what trips up audiences of non-Indigenous work as well - that the artist’s biography or the narrative surrounding the work provides a greater access or appreciation of the work than the experience of viewing can give.

Aboriginal art is a big catchall: embracing contemporary art from cutting edge contemporary urban artists to artists working from remote desert communities How can we navigate the profusion of interests and the array of work? Location seems to be the key to our reading and yet how easily can we shift this meaning by doing just that? Recently the ANG did a rehang of their collection, which saw the placement of indigenous and non-Indigenous work set up side by side.

Along with the critical debate has also been and continues to be the education and growth of non-indigenous art audiences both here and overseas and the balancing of cultural issues and commercial interests and through the curatorial stewardship of Indigenous and non-Indigenous curators and gallerist including Brenda Croft, Hetti Perkins, Gabriella Roy, Christopher Hodges, John Mundine, Ace Bourke and galleries such as Hogarth, Alcaston, Michael Reid and Wally Caruana, as well as private and public collections - notably the Arnott’s Collection and the Janet Holmes a Court collection - to name but a few. This has also had the knock on of effect of enabling viewers to encounter the work of artists from traditional communities differently - not purely on ethnographic terms nor merely on aesthetic terms but as part of a living cultural pursuit with a concomitant recognition of value that is neither commercial nor aesthetic but which exists for those whose traditions it is a part of.

Utopia Art is concurrently showing 20 yrs of Papunya Tula Artists in a contemporary commercial art gallery space in Dank Street and how this sits with the Australian Museum’s current exhibition, Papunya Painting: Out Of the Desert curated by Vivien Johnson, highlights the dilemma with regard to the display of Indigenous paintings.

Seen together the two present us with a difficult question of what we want from Indigenous art and what Indigenous artists want. Perhaps for many of those artists working contemporaneously yet within cultural traditions it is something more than the accolade of ‘artist’. As cultural custodians, as educators, yet also savvy to the benefits and drawbacks of the art industry these artists may well be the ‘ethnographic’ observers of non-Indigenous culture as we stumble blindly along.

Papunya Painting: Out of the Desert' will be at the Australian Museum from 5 July - 2 November, 2008 'Papunya Painting: Out of the Desert' is a travelling exhibition developed and presented by the National Museum of Australia, Canberra.

Labels: Indigenous art, Isobel Johnston, public galleries

From Isobel Johnston...

‘Open narrative’ is a phrase used by Nana Ohnesorge to describe her desire for her audiences to make their own interpretation of her works. I had asked if the small boy in 18th century costume was wearing a croquembouche (cake) on his head and that was what obscured his eyes as above him swoop two birds of prey - one of which is wearing a human skull. This was just one of the works that makes up her current exhibition, ‘Les Mysteres de Paris’ at James Dorahy’s Project Space.



Ohnesorge’s exhibition was in response to her recent stay in Paris - she had won a National Art School scholarship. Paris is not just the name on the perfume bottle - it offers up all sorts of possibilities: the history, the art, the decadence, all kinds of the historical referents and the kitsch souvenir, to name just a few. These are just some of the elements that meld in this show of paintings, drawings and mostly painted works which even includes a huge dangling chandelier made up of eighty pairs of pensioner style glasses each bearing the trace of an other image on the lens and interspersed with mini skeletons and Christmas baubles.

Ohnesorge’s painting seems located in the tradition of great children’s stories - they draw you in with their detail, focus your attention where the action is, there is violence, there is something more going on in the other parts of the work that you had initially overlooked something which both holds your attention and at the same time makes you want to turn away, just like the scary bits of film. To pull off this kind of broken narrative in paint requires technical skill as well as conceptual input and one could also argue tapping into the vein of the cultural consciousness.


Guo Jian, New Paradise, 2008.
Oil on canvas, 153 x 212 cm.
Courtesy Michael Reid.
Guo Jian’s work at Michael Reid Gallery (although more indebted to pop than gothic) also triggers some of the same said qualities of multiple narratives and desires. As the Beijing Olympics and issues of policing/ control and global access drift off our TV screens Jian’s work have an even more a prophetic quality: summing up all the paradox of contemporary China and most of the rest of the world too. Life is becoming too much like an old TV commercial that promises unfillable dreams and embodies all that is wrong with late capitalism. Simulacra and reality are now indistinguishable and we all are suckled on designer brands and material goods.


Christine Johnson, Hadiqah III, 2008.
Oil on linen, 80 x 70 cm.
Courtesy Martin Browne Fine Art.

So it’s no wonder there exists such huge gaps and dislocations in the story for anyone seeking something more. A little further down the road at Martin Browne Fine Art in Macleay Street, Christine Johnson is having an exhibition of paintings, Arabesque. Her lusciously rendered paintings of almost out of focus details of Islamic tiles and motifs shift away from their original source to occupy another kind of space. Originally they occupied a space of contemplation and arguably still do but it is as if some of them have shifted from pattern to flesh. Two particular works look as though they have been tattooed on someone’s chest and that these are details from a larger tattoo on flesh that seems tinted with life. In other works, a shadow passes over the forms creating a fleeting feeling of mortality.

These are three shows worth seeing and these three artists whose work allows us the opportunity to consider the ‘open narratives’ of our own experiences.

*(Also watch out for Beastly, a curated show by Ohnesorge at MOP later this month)

Labels: commercial galleries, Isobel Johnston, painting