the art life

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.

Labels: art criticism, exhibitions

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.

Labels: art history, exhibitions, poll

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.

Labels: art fairs, art month, emerging artists, exhibitions

From Mr. John Kelly...

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



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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Kelly

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

Labels: exhibitions, public galleries

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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




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

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

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

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

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

Labels: exhibitions, interviews, painting

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

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

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

Labels: art museums, exhibitions, press releases

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.

Labels: exhibitions, regional galleries

"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!"

Labels: art prize, exhibitions, press releases

Labels: exhibitions, new work, painting

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

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.

Labels: exhibitions, the moon

Rodolphe A. Reiss, False bomb found in front of the Banque Cantonale Vaudoise,
Lausanne, January 15, 1905.

"Scientific police photographs are very rarely presented to the public, remaining stored for many years in confidential files because they transgress taboos when their subjects are violent death and crime. These pictures, taken almost a hundred years ago by Rodolphe Archibald Reiss, founder of the l’Institut de police scientifique of the Université de Lausanne, reveal their entire aesthetic dimension while retaining their intense emotional strength. As a forensic science pioneer, Reiss shows photographic skills which are unequalled in this field..." Art Daily

Labels: arson, art news, exhibitions

From Joanna Mendelssohn...

The Director of the 53rd Venice Biennale, Director Daniel Birnbaum, says that the title Making Worlds ‘expresses my wish to emphasize the process of creation’. The problem is that for the most part this process seems to be that of assembling flat-pack furniture. The over all impression of the official exhibition is of art with so few boundaries that it is completely interchangeable, and indeed its component parts often appear to be the same as they cross both nationalities and generations.

If this seems a bit harsh, then consider this. Liam Gillick from the UK, has his solo gig at the German Pavillion where he has constructed a giant raw timber modular kitchen, complete with stuffed cat. The kitchen is based on the Frankfurter Küche (Frankfurt Kitchen), the original modular kitchen designed in 1926 by the Austrian architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky.


Liam Gillick, How Are You Going To Behave?
A Kitchen Cat Speaks for the German Pavillion, 2009
Germany is well represented in the Palazzo with Wolfgang Tillmans’ essentially decorative metallically hued exploration of colour in photography . Meanwhile the Nordic countries, working under the supervision of the artistic duo Elmgreen and Dragset have combined in the Norwegian and Danish pavilions, both critiquing the supposed surface splendour of over-designed lives.

In the politest way, the 24 artists involved in these projects have blown a huge raspberry at the art collecting class. The Danish pavilion has been transformed into an investigation into a dysfunctional family, via the fictional agents “Vigilante Real Estate” who propose to sell this discordant home via leaflets and a tour by a frightening ‘agent’.The culture that brought the world Ikea is now deconstructing what those over-designed lives might be. Meanwhile, at the Norwegian pavilion, they present a ‘crime scene’ where one of the over-designed, over-considered collectors of modern art and modern people has been ‘murdered’. It is a harsh assessment of the very class which travels to consume events such as the Venice Biennale.


Col Tempo, The W. project
Péter Forgács’s installation
As always the national pavilions are a mixed bunch. Some of them are relentlessly dreary, self-important and over indulgent. But there are some high points. Roman Ondak at the Slovak Pavilion is a breath of fresh air. His installation has been to create a garden, where nature reclaims the art. This is the place to recover from the harsh assessments of Péter Forgács in the Hungarian Pavilion. Col Tempo takes actual footage of the Nazi experiments into human body types (and an interview with a survivor) and links it to portraits. The 60 year old Forgács layers his art with family memories of the Holocaust and personal memories of life under the Soviets in this acknowledgment of human evil. In a nod to its colonial reach, Dutch Pavilion has been given to the Indonesian born Fiona Tan has created Disorient, an ironic video installation contrasting opulence and poverty in modern Indonesia, with a voice over narrative from the voyages of Marco Polo. Is another case of cross cultural transfer. In this context Shaun Gladwell’s MADDESTMAXIMVS is both raw and polished; a bit like the movie Legally Blonde where Reese Witherspoon goes to the law students’ party dressed as a Playboy bunny.

The very slick presentations of the Giardini are contrasted in the Arsenale, which is on the whole a disappointment as components of old ideas are recycled again. This is where visitors go to see the new, the cutting edge, yet the high point is a 2002 installation by Lygia Pape, the Brazilian artist who died in 2004.

Sometimes however this can be fun as with the Barcelona duo, Bestué/ Vives, whose 2005 Acciones en el Universo (Actions in the Universe) shows a series of often hilarious surrealist installations in an apartment. In the midst of this one of the artists appears to be stuck across the corridor, heavily made up as ‘Old Bruce Nauman’. This is more than appropriate as the US has exerted a great deal of marketing effort to ensure that the aging conceptualist is the ‘star’ of this year’s Biennale. He is not, but a great deal of fluorescence has been recreated in his name. Bestué/ Vives video also includes a riff on Ikea furniture, which returns to the central theme.

The best part of this Biennale is not to be found inside either the Giardini or the Arsenale, but in the many exhibitions scattered throughout the city. This is the context for Once Removed (curator Felicity Fenner; artists Vernon Ah Kee, Ken Yonetani, Claire Healy & Sean Cordeiro) at the Ludoteca.

As well as the freshness and strength of these installations, the actual placing of the exhibition is brilliant. It is on the path that leads out of the Arsenale so the jaded visitor coming from that seriously disappointing exhibition walks into its unpretentious open door and is bowled over by Claire Healy & Sean Cordeiro’s huge monument to video cassette culture. This is followed in the second room by Vernon Ah Kee’s assertion of surfing as a part of Aboriginal resurgence and completed with Ken Yonetani’s magical sugar corals.

Other pavilions are not found so easily. Steppes of Dreamers, the Ukraine’s great evocation of mysterious desolation is well worth the effort of searching though the confusing alleyways of Venice, especially as the upper floor of the Palazzo Papadopoli presents a mysterious and threatening narrative . The project curator Wladimir Klitschko, stresses his career as a boxer in his official biography, and also in the poster at the Academia. Two of the three artists (Illya Chichkan, Ogata Kinichi and Mihara Yasuhiro) are from Japan. It’s good to see nationalism in retreat.


Sheza Dawood, Triple Negation Chandeliers (White, Blue, Pink), 2008
Neon on aluminium frame, 190x220 cm.
There is a sense here in Venice of the age of empires in both wax and wane. This is especially so in East-West Divan, a collaborative effort from the heartland of the former Persian Empire: Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan. This is a hard one to find, upstairs from Lithuania, more or less north-west from the railway station. It is however one of the more rewarding experiences. Khosrow Hassanzadeh has paintings based on ordinary women who fit the US description of ‘terrorist’ by virtue of their nationality and religion. Shezad Dawood presents a triple chandelier proclaiming the central tenet of faith 'There is no God, but God' in fluoresent light, Muhammad Imran Qureshi presents Moderate Enlightenment, miniatures for the modern world. Farzana Wahidy’s photographs of Afghanistan are able to concentrate on people in more intimate way than the standard sensationalized work of western photojournalists.

The other surprise national exhibition is far easier to locate as it is on the main tourist drag between the railway station and San Marco. Ragnar Kjartansson’s installation for Iceland is called The End. There is a glorious chutzpah to this presentation, and it is no surprise to discover that staff from other pavilions regularly cruise by on their days off. In a darkened room a standard four wall screen projection shows the artist and another playing folk music, filmed in the Canadian Rockies. In terms of interest this is about the same as the Canadian pavilion (ie pretty dull). The visitor then goes to another room where an open door shows the (real) Grand Canal flooding a studio with Venetian light while the artist (from the video) paints a young male model. This exercise will be repeated for six months. A stack of beer bottles indicates the main form of refreshment, and there is a strong sense that people from Iceland really appreciate Italian summer weather.



Oddly enough the best contemporary art exhibit on view in Venice has nothing to do with the Biennale, except for the timing. On the island of Palladio’s San Giorgio Maggiore, Peter Greenaway has directed a tribute, an exposition of Veronese’s Wedding at Cana and is proof, if ever any were wanted, that great art can be nourished by art of the past, and that there is no essential conflict between the creative tools of our age and those used throughout history. The site is the refectory of the Monastery which was the original home of the painting before Napoleon plundered it for the Louvre. Greenaway’s meditation on this work is played over a full size reproduction where figures are highlighted, music played conversations created, and visual relationships analysed.

I am not sure that it is worth the long flight just to visit Venice for the Biennale, but this work alone, with its layers of meaning, and all surrounding beauty is well worth the jet lag.

Labels: exhibitions, Joanna Mendelssohn, Venice Biennale

The Guardian UK's art critic Jonathan Jones has written a blog entry on George Orwell and Salvador Dali. Jones's comments come as the Dali exhibiton Liquid Desire opens at the National Gallery of Victoria. Knowing that certain pundits are fond of quoting or citing Orwell when it comes to questions of social responsibility in the arts, Jones has an interesting take on Orwell's attitude to Dali and the avant garde:

George Orwell isn't usually thought of as an art critic. The author of 1984 is rightly remembered as one of the great political journalists and witnesses of the 20th century. But his contribution to the literature of modern art is also worth celebrating. In 1944 Orwell wrote an essay called Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on Salvador Dalí. It's a meditation on Dalí's book The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, and concludes that the artist's works are "diseased and disgusting, and any investigation ought to start out from that fact".

Never judge an article by its final sentence. Benefit of Clergy is a rare attempt to express, or to honestly attain, an ambivalent view of something that divides people into irreconcilable camps. Modern art is controversial; it was in Orwell's day and it is in ours. It's not meant to be consensual: it's meant to be a slap in the face.

In his notes on Dalí, it's clear that Orwell isn't a big fan of surrealism, the shock art of his time. He is genuinely repulsed by the scatological details of Dalí's art that today scarcely cause a shrug. But what's fascinating and laudable is his attempt to find what he calls a "middle position" between conservative philistines who condemn the avant garde, and its promoters who indulge everything that someone like Dalí does and refuse to see it in a moral or political context.

Labels: blogging, exhibitions

Lucas Ihlein writes:

Just thought to let you and your dear readers know that we've been doing a re-enactment of allan kaprow's wonderful "push and pull - a furniture comedy for hans hoffman" (1963) down at locksmith project space. it's the first time this work has been staged in australia. the project will finish this saturday. all the details, including some great timelapse films and panorama photos, are at our website: Push and Pull - cheers Lucas Ihlein, Nick Keys and Astrid L'Orang.

Caption: This panorama (click on picture to see detail) has been sutured together by Pat Armstrong from photos taken by Tom Spiers on Saturday (Day Five). This composition of the room was the result of Pat Armstrong’s suggestion that we should organise the room in a colour spectrum. Apart from the opening night this was the single biggest burst of energy and activity Push and Pull Redfern has seen thus far.

Sounds exciting, but what is the project? The project info explains:

Push and Pull: A Furniture Comedy for Hans Hofmann(1963) is a participatory installation in which visitors arrange and re-arrange domestic objects and junk. The work was originally conceived as a parody of Allan Kaprow’s painting teacher, Hans Hoffman, who often used the phrase “push and pull” to describe the dynamics involved in two dimensional composition. Kaprow expanded Hoffman’s concept of compositional strategy, moving it beyond the canvas and into social space.

Participants in “Push and Pull” plan and implement alterations to the gallery space, co-operating or competing with each other in an ever-evolving furniture dance. “Push and Pull” is a microcosm of the tensions involved in all spatial negotiations in urban environments.

We are excited to present this piece, for the first time ever in Australia, thanks to Allan Kaprow’s Estate.

The show runs until Saturday at Locksmith Project Space, 6 Botany Road Alexandria/Redfern Sydney, Australia until June 13, Thurs-Sat 1-6pm

Labels: exhibitions, installation, performance art

Please join us for a collaborative improvised performance by Pia van Gelder (Sydney) on original Voice Mask with some members of her Orchestra of Machines together with James Hullick (Melb) on robotic sound sculptures and instrumental automata. This will be the first collaboration between Pia and James and it's bound to be a stunner. All welcome!





PIA VAN GELDER is a Sydney-based electronic artist. In constructing her orchestra of machines and instruments for generating audio and video signals she uses a variety of materials including solenoids, contact microphones, cello-tape, reconstructed records, cassette tapes, guitar pedals, micro-controllers, general household refuse, pieces of two-by-four, midi-controllers, sensors, samplers, surveillance cameras, her mouth, nose, feet and hands. Her work currently involves sample-based live improvisation in collaboration with musician Eden Falk in their group Praying Hands and a solo project called Voice Mask, an audio instrument for vocal performance. She is the Overlord for Dorkbot_Sydney, a regular meet-up for 'people doing strange things with electricity'. www.piavangelder.com

JAMES HULLICK is a Melbourne-based composer, vocalist, pianist and sound artist who makes installations, sonic constructions and midi-controlled robotics. His sound works have been presented in Asia, North America, Australia and Europe for a variety of ensembles. Most recently he directed the multimedia experience/sonic performance The Nis, performed at 45 Downstairs, Melbourne, in partnership with Footscray Community Arts Centre and the Amplified Elephants. He is currently researching the phenomenon of 'Recursion' for his PhD at RMIT. www.jameshullick.com




Click on image to enlarge
Dear friend,

On May 22 the exhibition There Goes The Neighbourhood will open at Performance Space, Sydney. The book There Goes The Neighbourhood: Redfern and the Politics of Urban Space will be launched on the same night with an opening speech by Gary Foley. Both these projects have been organised by You Are Here a Sydney based art collective initiated by Keg de Souza and myself.

There Goes the Neighbourhood was the ironic chorus to the 1992 Body Count song which lamented the invasion of the once poor (and Black) into the neighbourhood of the rich (and white). But an alternative destruction of “The Neighbourhood” can happen when the poor get pushed out of their local community as part of the process of gentrification. This issue is particularly relevant for the suburb of Redfern, an inner city suburb of Sydney which has been home for a large working class and Indigenous community, and which is undergoing a process of rapid development and change. There Goes the Neighborhood is an exhibition, residency, discussion and publishing project for May 2009. The central element of this project will be an exploration of the politics of urban space. It will explore the complex life of cities and how the phenomenon of gentrification is altering the relationship between democracy and demography around the world.

A small number of Australian and international artists have been invited to participate in the project including: Brenda L Croft (Australia), 16beaver (USA), Daniel Boyd (Australia), Temporary Services (USA), Jakob Jakobsen (Denmark), Lisa Kelly (Australia), SquatSpace (Australia), Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro (Germany/Australia), Evil Brothers (Ned and Tom Sevil, Australia), You Are Here (Keg de Souza and Zanny Begg, Australia), Michael Rakowitz (USA), Miklos Erhardt and Little Warsaw (Hungary), Bijari (Brazil), Democracia (Spain) and a re-enactment of Allan Kaprow's Push and Pull: A Furniture Comedy for Hans Hofmann 1963 (with thanks to the Allan Kaprow Estate).

Labels: exhibitions, press releases

Clinton Garofano, untitled : (dead obvious), 2006.
installation detail. reverse painting on glass, antique frames.



Another nail in the coffin is part of an ongoing investigation exploring the limits and possibilities of written language. Drawing on source material from contemporary culture, from horror films to comic models, and from the traditions of Buddhism, Clinton Garofano reflects on the numbing effect that death has had on his voice as an artist. Garofano is interested in renegotiating the perception of dying and the language used to describe death by reinterpreting existing Tibetan Buddhist teachings and texts, and finding relevance within a contemporary context. His work untitled : (dead boring) 2008, fuses language and objects, taking the form of a number of texts painted on glass in 18th and 19th century frames, hung on coffin nails. Clinton Garofano is a Sydney based artist.



Image: Ghost Mountain, video still, 2008


“Long after the firefly had disappeared, the trail of its light remained inside me, its pale, faint glow hovering on and on in the thick darkness behind my eyelids like a lost soul.
More than once I tried stretching my hand out in the dark. My fingers touched nothing. The faint glow remained, just beyond my grasp.”- Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood.

Appearing intermittently in this exhibition as a luminous projected image, Ghost Mountain is in fact the Cooley Mountains, or the tall and rocky hills visible from the garden in front of my Grandmother’s house in Ireland. Over the course of my life I have looked upon these mountains with some mystery and wonder. Often shrouded in mist and cloud they appear in such myths and legends as Cúchulainn, and were home to criminals and terrorists during the troubles in Northern Ireland, to which they lie immediately south. We are warned away from them by my Grandmother who insists evil still lurks among them. Like Murakami’s firefly they remain etched onto my visual memory and ghost there, fading over time. Ghost Mountain’s after-image or ‘ghost’ appears in the darkened moments between its projections.

Coupled with pencil drawings that copy landscapes of Australia as depicted in film, Ghost Mountain is an attempt to understand the significance of imagery from places in the “faint glow” of my memory, where the photographic transferral of experience and the experience of actually ‘being there’ intersect.

MOP Projects Thursday – Saturday 1 – 6 pm Sunday & Monday 1 – 5 pm
2 / 39 Abercrombie Street Chippendale Sydney NSW 2008
Ph: 02 9699 3955 E-mail: mop@mop.org.au www.mop.org.au






Seen and Heard is a festival focused on the works in film by women in response to long-lasting prejudices against women in the film industry. While there are as many women studying film as there are men, women continually have been an underdog in cinema production.

During the 81 years the Academy Awards have been given, only three women have been nominated for best direction with none of them having won, no women nominated for best cinematography and during Australia's film history, there has been 46 years between productions made by women. In addition to all this, women's overall participation in film has gone into decline in recent years, from 19% in 2001 to 16% in 2004.

In its first year, audiences are invited to bear witness to the extraordinary visions of Indigenous and white Australian filmmakers, exploring race relations in Australia, gender, sexuality and class politics, disability and ability.

The festival is a free, not-for-profit event and will feature afternoon teas and evening screenings throughout early January.

http://www.seenandheardfilms.com/

Labels: cinema, exhibitions, press releases

For her latest exhibition Cash Brown has created a series of paintings based on Gustav Courbet's infamous Origin Of The World. On show until April 22 at Robin Gibson Gallery, this 142 year old image - and Brown's treatment of it - is again causing a stir.

For those who may not know your work, what have you been doing over the last few years?

Cash Brown: Heaps. Despite losing the use of my right arm (I am right handed) for most of 2004/05, which was a real pain as I had just graduated as a mature age student from the National Art School, I managed to involve myself in 46 group shows, two solo shows and appearances in the Moran, Salon de Refuses, Portia Geach etc to name a few as well as a couple of residencies, a few months in Europe, a painful divorce, doing lots of charity work, losing my house and consequently moving house several times. Some of the group shows were really time consuming, expensive and great to work on, its a bugger that not many people seem to visit galleries other than the pissup on opening night.


Cash Brown, George, 2008.
Oil on canvas, 50x60cms. Courtesy the artist.


You've had your work hung in the Sulman at the Art Gallery of NSW recently and worked in collaboration on two shows with Adam Cullen. How does this show with Robin Gibson connect to those projects?

CB: Hmmm. I'm not sure I would call one painting in the Sulman a project, but it was a picture of me. The collaborations with Cullen also included a performance at the MCA which may be even more difficult to relate than the two MOP. The MCA work was about censorship, freedom of speech and context of art and literature. The works with Cullen were interesting for us to work on in that they didn't involve painting. We both get sick of making paintings but share a great love of the natural world, playing with stuff, the absurd, the kitsch and the ridiculous. Painting obviously isn't always the most appropriate means of communication and the particular ideas we were addressing or attempting to communicate manifested themselves in those collaborations, which used lots of different mediums, had a great sense of play yet maintained a rigorous conceptual ground. The Robin Gibson show for me is not much different in that it has a core set of ideas played out in a variety of ways using a variety of means. It's pretty playful too, but I did this work all by myself.

What drew you to Courbet's Origin of the World as the subject of this show?

CB: I have been thinking a lot about the concept of originality and the derivative nature of so much contemporary artwork, especially since attending my first Biennale in Venice last year as well as the rest of the "Grand Tour" and heaps of collateral events. This led me to think of the beginning of Modernism. Origin, original, beginning, it all seemed a bit obvious and almost naff but I liked that about it. The idea of revisiting the image became even stronger after reading Juan Davila's thoughts on the work and seeing his versions. He always gets me thinking actually and he kind of reinforced the relevance not only of visiting that image, but also of appropriating imagery from the past and present and referencing other artists. And, it was painted exactly 100 years before I was born. And, I think it is an incredibly beautiful painting. I wish I could paint like that. The fact that it still makes people avert their eyes when they see it at the D'Orsay is pretty interesting too. I wanted to see what would happen if I fucked with it a bit, but not in a vulgar way, I am not really interested in repulsing people on purpose.


Cash Brown, A Mutt, 2008.
Oil on canvas, 50x60cms. Courtesy the artist.

The painting is claimed to being the cause in the end of the friendship of Courbet and Whistler as it is purported to be of their mutual lover Joanna Heffernan. Does the history of this painting have any bearing on your choice of Origin of The World for your series of paintings?

CB: No

Courbet's painting was commissioned by a Turkish-Egyptian diplomat named Khalil-Bey for a collection that was apparently a "celebration of the female body". After that the painting went through various owners including Jacques Lacan but wasn't shown again publicly until 1995. It has been a veiled image, known to art history, yet lost to public view. In your show you're revealing the same image over and over, each time with a slightly different shock. What were your thoughts on that process?

CB: I cant see why this image has been so censored when we have images and effigies of a flayed Jewish guy cruelly nailed to a cross everywhere, that's really disturbing. Maybe its because its been seen so many times and is part of the western landscape that it no longer has the capacity to shock. Sure we don't see images of the vagina every day, but half the population has one, everybody has seen one, touched one, come out of one, its not that big a deal for me but maybe underneath it all I think repetition is a way of making things "acceptable". During the process I actually got really stuck a few times, wondering if it was like a one liner being told over and over again, and painting the same image over and over took a lot of self discipline. The serious questioning and self doubt that crept in was tempered by the desire to make work that goes beyond a gag and to make something relevant. Art history provides all of the nutrition because all of the big ideas have been covered, over and over again, yet we still keep finding new ways to make work. Using shock, humour etc is one way of getting the viewers attention, but it also keeps me interested in making the work in the first place. Clement Greenberg once said something like " aesthetics were of as much interest to artists as ornithology is to birds ". I can only agree with this statement as far as birds have no consciousness so of course he is correct, I however am very interested in aesthetics and this body of work is an aesthetic investigation. I would like to take it further.


Cash Brown, Contemplating the sublime, 2008.
Oil on canvas, 50x60cms. Courtesy the artist.
What do you suppose the image means in a contemporary setting?

CB: I don't think the meaning can change really. It's just a cunt. It is pretty obvious what it is about. The way people react to it though is very interesting, I cant believe they still get upset or embarrassed, that hasn't changed. By putting eyes and a nose on it for example, it seemed to have the effect of immediately sanitising the image. Suddenly one could look at it openly and snigger without fear of being a bit of a perve. By scaling it up to 12 times its original size, it became a kind of landscape, too big for intimacy and similarly sanitised. I would like to put it in a really contemporary setting, like an Ikea store or as a mural on the side of a maternity hospital, on a billboard on the M4 and projected onto the Opera House.

You've used this image in a rather funny way, putting references to various art historical images...

CB: I am a bit of a history nerd and thought if I was going to appropriate one image then why not all of the references? That actually was pretty hard so I referenced myself a couple of times.

Have you had any problems promoting this show using these images?

CB: Both Robin Gibson and I had numerous requests to be removed immediately from our emailing lists. Some people thought it was a very rude April fools day joke and were not impressed. The show opened April 1. A few people phoned the gallery and complained about the explicit nature of the invitation and one woman rang threatening to sue us for sending pornographic material through the post, claiming her daughter had opened the mail and was traumatised and that she would be reporting us to the relevant authorities. This has to be a joke though so very funny whoever did it. I am sure it won't get a centre spread in Spectrum nor will it be likely to adorn the cover of Australian Art Collector. I actually honestly didn't think it would even raise an eyebrow, but that goes to show you how naive I really am, assuming everyone knows their art history, silly me. I think I should have made a T-shirt with the image on the front and back and worn it all week around Darlinghurst where I work, that would be good publicity. The funny thing is how you can see some people trying to be cool about it and not admitting that they are uncomfortable because they know its art and they know its old news. I think its great that art can still affect people.


Cash Brown, Study For Durer's Pubic Hare, 2008.
Ink, conte, gouache and watercolour on arches paper, 13x17cm.
Courtesy the artist.
Why is the title of your show "Appropriate"?

CB: Well it is, isn't it?

We took the title to mean something in relation to the appropriateness of showing such an image, but perhaps all the definitions of the word are relevant. You say that you don't think the meaning changes but doesn't the context change? You'd be getting people who are shocked by the "inappropriateness" of displaying an image like this, but to put the question another way, you're a contemporary artist, and a woman, does that have any bearing on your choice of appropriating this image for your own purposes?

CB: Of course the context changes,and times have changed, but I wonder how much the viewer really changes. That's the point. The shocked people are really funny, I think that comes from a lack of education (they think it is an "original" image) and I find it impossible to think this image could be remotely offensive. Maybe they are shocked for other reasons, I am not a psychologist. But I honestly didn't think it would get the reactions it has received, not now, in 2008. Some people calm down a bit after reading the catalogue essay which is written by Cullen and explains it all rather well. Appropriating this image, changing its context and doing it as a woman are all rolled into one but I seriously wanted to avoid making any feminist statements. I think a male artist could have made this work but I wonder if people would view it the same way. I have tried really hard to find a similarly important image of male genitalia but there isn't one I am aware of, besides, the relevance of the image goes beyond its content, the cropping for example was a great early Modernist innovation and dicks and balls aren't quite as relevant (or attractive). Hardly anyone is painting nudes anymore, they have become kitsch, Lucian Freud isn't the flavour of the decade and yet we see nudity or near nudity and sexually explicit imagery on a daily basis. Some of my past work has dealt with this, and censorship, but no one wanted to show it, (apparently I was labelled a sexist by someone who wasn't aware of my gender) and I think its really amazing that if this image was not viewed in the safety of the fine art context, it would be viewed as pornographic.

Labels: exhibitions, interviews, painting