tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32255537450509093192024-03-12T22:08:00.964-07:00InkblotInkblothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560776688196218442noreply@blogger.comBlogger36125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3225553745050909319.post-46497686120241318282012-04-16T04:05:00.002-07:002012-04-23T04:41:36.370-07:00Angelica Mesiti's Citizens Band<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8_FIf46_g-GU3JW_wMq153gEDQWxO55AraL1Dc_FDNoFm3vnLaPFGwP7uQtCeG0fRH42U9yoTrHwWsMjughTW4gdzZD77NtuSEiefGUZO9S17nwLKnltF8KrPAPTmC2ug3n6xITIncC2P/s1600/1500CB_ZONGO_300dpi_warm+%282%29.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8_FIf46_g-GU3JW_wMq153gEDQWxO55AraL1Dc_FDNoFm3vnLaPFGwP7uQtCeG0fRH42U9yoTrHwWsMjughTW4gdzZD77NtuSEiefGUZO9S17nwLKnltF8KrPAPTmC2ug3n6xITIncC2P/s320/1500CB_ZONGO_300dpi_warm+%282%29.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=3225553745050909319&postID=4649768612024131828" name="_GoBack"></a>In the room where <a href="http://www.angelicamesiti.com/">Angelica Mesiti's</a> <i>Citizens Band</i> is displayed at <a href="http://www.accaonline.org.au/">ACCA's <i>NEW12 </i></a>we find ourselves surrounded by four screens. One after the other, short films of people in public places performing an unexpected form of music are projected on the screens. As Juliana Engberg says in the catelogue essay, each film is a portrait of the person as they perform. It focuses primarily on their face, with a clarity that shows pores and creases, hair and sweat. The intimate nature of the close-ups contrasts with the setting of the performance. One is in a public swimming pool, another a train, the third on a street corner and the last in a taxi. These films celebrate the joy of an individual being able to express a profound part of themselves without the anticipation of applause. The music they play creates a bridge between a turbulent internal world of emotions and the structured outside world of language and order. These performers seem at times like transmitters who have something that passes through them. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">In the first film an athletic Cameroonian woman (Geraldine Zongo) beats out a complex rhythm using the water in a bright blue swimming pool. There is an ecstatic energy in her performance that seems as much about endurance as skill. The close ups of water splashing up in her face seem at points like sweat from the exertion of beating the water. The film audience are transfixed by her skill, her concentration, her strength and the incongruity of playing the water in a swimming pool like African drums. By watching her, we understand something of an inner exuberance, of a blood beating heart pumping pressure that needs release. As she sinks into the water, after her performance, we appreciate her cool fulfilment. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZIQ3CzXcInzFUD3nxgy5emN7C6XzKyUL5-N1Wz17hE9yx3VzyzTCmh0hopdfyw256Rzj_TqllWRndm832pO53jhyphenhyphenhyt9oGXEQHRJe-Q03115W80rXVqKAzALY1xVWpgk-v3yN2pa0e7hc/s1600/1500CB_MOHAMMED_300dpi_warm+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZIQ3CzXcInzFUD3nxgy5emN7C6XzKyUL5-N1Wz17hE9yx3VzyzTCmh0hopdfyw256Rzj_TqllWRndm832pO53jhyphenhyphenhyt9oGXEQHRJe-Q03115W80rXVqKAzALY1xVWpgk-v3yN2pa0e7hc/s320/1500CB_MOHAMMED_300dpi_warm+%25282%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">In the second film an Algerian man (Mohammed Lamourie) plays a Cassio keyboard and sings on the Parisian Metro. The keyboard has sticky tape holding one of the keys together. The music he plays has similar sense of tension and release to Zongo's music. However, it comes from a much more melancholic place. His music sounds like the feeling of trying to control your breathing so you don’t start crying. As passengers board the train we see the range of reactions to this public release of emotions in a musical form. A blurry kissing couple seem to be laughing, a woman who wants to read a supermarket advertising brochure seems annoyed and keeps look up with disdain, young girls totally ignore him and share their music on their I pods. A man who must stand near him looks a little awkward at having to be in such close proximity. This is the only film in which we get to see the reaction of the public, in the pool Zongo seems alone and in the other two the outside world is only vaguely present. In the train we sense that Lamourie’s intense expression of something deeply personal is received by the outside world as crossing lines boundaries of suitable behaviour. It must be ignored in a space where people who do not know each other must sit so close together.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6OgWbN87t-zumed8gjqymCmt0NIt8zb0_SOhsSFntDQ-NsM76BAHin8poe6hZoruiju50WiQwEsKtU9wyeH8XfBn8hS7Nq6wl7DxIxTQFVhLmsjBHfVdaCi1tZkdPe1FIUtiNgZorLCUW/s1600/ANGELICA_MESITI_VIOLIN+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6OgWbN87t-zumed8gjqymCmt0NIt8zb0_SOhsSFntDQ-NsM76BAHin8poe6hZoruiju50WiQwEsKtU9wyeH8XfBn8hS7Nq6wl7DxIxTQFVhLmsjBHfVdaCi1tZkdPe1FIUtiNgZorLCUW/s320/ANGELICA_MESITI_VIOLIN+%25282%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">In the third film a Mongolian man (Bukhchuluun Ganburged) sits on a street corner playing a horse head fiddle and throat singing. This type of singing produces harmonic pitches of sound simultaneously over a guttural drone. One sound is like a deep growl, and another very high and pinning. On this street corner, outside a convenience store, people walk past this remarkable performance that growls out of this man. The ordered and itemised outside world of daily activity and exchange is in the hazy background of night. Cans of deodorant are lined up in the window behind him. We buy such things to feel greater control over our body and its internal machinations that tend to seep out without constant vigilance. Ironically, this man outside the shops is able to control the internal. He can manipulate the way his vocal folds open and close. However, the many sounds he creates evoke the very physical and uncontrollable sensation of grief—at once sharp, bright and stinging as well as the dark heavy ache. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU7-DOT4Ta17WM9fIcQgQ3wXUvGA8gRpn2O8i316n2zEDL8qo8qRXZu-mPKCESYfsBkF3HG3xxStiD68xXfKzgTgfwt06A7Wy2j1m08mud2E1tQUVj9ojy9OHWMAWcj0y5gUKf-eTOAsS7/s1600/ANGELICA_MESITI_TAXI+DRIVER+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU7-DOT4Ta17WM9fIcQgQ3wXUvGA8gRpn2O8i316n2zEDL8qo8qRXZu-mPKCESYfsBkF3HG3xxStiD68xXfKzgTgfwt06A7Wy2j1m08mud2E1tQUVj9ojy9OHWMAWcj0y5gUKf-eTOAsS7/s320/ANGELICA_MESITI_TAXI+DRIVER+%25282%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">In the fourth film a Sudanese taxi driver (Asim Goreshi) whistles a beautiful complex melody inside his car as traffic goes past. He seems less exposed then the others. The whistling brilliantly resinates with acoustic depth that is almost unimaginable from the inside of a car. It sounds more like a concert hall filled with the voice of an opera singer. Yet it is also very humble. Every so often we also hear the driver quietly bring his lips together and we are re-familiarised with the natural sound quality in a taxi. These little sounds emphasise the power and strength of the whistling by their difference. The car, even a public car such as this, can become this private space on a public road. Goreshi seems to communicate a longing or love in his whistle and takes the simple idea of ‘whistle while you work’ to an operatic intensity. Initially, the camera sutures us into this film—like we are observing from the perspective of a passenger. However, like the other films, there are shots that are extreme close ups that make us aware that we are being shown these people and their modes of musical expression in much more intense and intimate proximity then we would see in real life. Like the people in the train or walking past the convenience store, in real life we may fail to appreciate the beauty of these performances.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6N6i7_Tufge2l_UJwrEBUD-dHuA7yoVmIIfUv18Dw8HQgq-A5qr2FrZLB6Y6Uq6hDYvIOc2CHQ2vR2wEQ7mjEgC_oK9wVZzmN3uL_JURKcXdCa0yQYhLE3-I8ulgsfuCRUKfexRZBUDS4/s1600/Angelica+Mesiti+Citizens+Band+2012-1+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6N6i7_Tufge2l_UJwrEBUD-dHuA7yoVmIIfUv18Dw8HQgq-A5qr2FrZLB6Y6Uq6hDYvIOc2CHQ2vR2wEQ7mjEgC_oK9wVZzmN3uL_JURKcXdCa0yQYhLE3-I8ulgsfuCRUKfexRZBUDS4/s320/Angelica+Mesiti+Citizens+Band+2012-1+%25282%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">At the end of the fourth film, coloured lights like those of the cars that went past the taxi, circulate around the four screens. The audience is surrounded by the coloured lights whizzing past and the sound of all four performances being played at the same time. After the intimate portraits we have watched, the busy assemblage of sounds and lights gives the audience a perspective of the distance in which we usually perceive strangers in crowds, queues and cars that surround us. The music that the people made in their portraits is complex and structured like the language we must acquire to function and be understood in the outside world. It is language that enables us to develop relationships where we can bring our internal needs into a structure that can be made sensible. However, in each of these performances the musician is able to express something beyond the perimeters of language and metaphor. Their performances are unique moments in time that convey a rich and satisfying personal expression. Mesiti shows us the beauty and worth of these moments. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;">Anna Newbold</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div>Inkblothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560776688196218442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3225553745050909319.post-68554471761468700992012-03-24T03:44:00.011-07:002012-04-23T04:42:25.920-07:00Tony Clark's Myriorama<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhebzen9mX-y3zVnuuqKjl50E8kywxkTY0jXkuWLsTNUkwl4qIDZfpF199Tih30y4j01lysFVQSt721dV54iHDKlrm5CfLceQxYdli8gPLhMVutUaWztqfQi_xUFeCYkM-7tLf-mk0Oei0a/s1600/Sections+from+Clark%27s+Myriorama,+installation+view+7,+Murray+White+Room+%282%29.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhebzen9mX-y3zVnuuqKjl50E8kywxkTY0jXkuWLsTNUkwl4qIDZfpF199Tih30y4j01lysFVQSt721dV54iHDKlrm5CfLceQxYdli8gPLhMVutUaWztqfQi_xUFeCYkM-7tLf-mk0Oei0a/s320/Sections+from+Clark%27s+Myriorama,+installation+view+7,+Murray+White+Room+%282%29.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>Myriorama</i> is a project that consists of landscapes painted on uniform boards that can be matched together to produce panoramic landscape tableaux. These paintings all depict an Arcadian scene and are all painted in an improvised classical style; they all have the same non-determined horizon line. The work invites play as there is no prescribed order in which to arrange these boards. Clark has been painting <i>Myriorama</i> since 1985. This concept comes from a nineteenth century child’s game—myriorama, or in English, the endless landscape.</span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieWa873ju_ZrlKoshIFGSFJIe8Hrz9jf2kthxbs_tYabWvVxQeDdnfb2zjXLVwy7NdO7aRfi3Z8_7UKWwq_yozCZUjD7Gpy0gxHpkwhYDZ_KSknecwP_dAOVI82yAoq-oB_PVBiKNjvY30/s1600/Sections+from+Clark%2527s+Myriorama%252C+installation+view+4%252C+Murray+White+Room+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieWa873ju_ZrlKoshIFGSFJIe8Hrz9jf2kthxbs_tYabWvVxQeDdnfb2zjXLVwy7NdO7aRfi3Z8_7UKWwq_yozCZUjD7Gpy0gxHpkwhYDZ_KSknecwP_dAOVI82yAoq-oB_PVBiKNjvY30/s320/Sections+from+Clark%2527s+Myriorama%252C+installation+view+4%252C+Murray+White+Room+%25282%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>Myriorama</i> works like the unconscious. It has timeless qualities and a rearrangeability that is similar to the way unconscious thoughts reproduce mixed up<i><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span></i><i><span style="font-style: normal;">perceptual phenomena in memory or dreams. Furthermore, these paintings appear like the background from an Italian </span></i>Renaissance portrait. This interpretation of Clark's landscapes suggests a metonym for an unacknowledged subject. The possibility of rearrangement incorporated in the artwork also implies a small reminder of this subject. But there is also, I would argue, an obsessional structure to Clark's work that points to a persistent, radical and highly poetic synthesis of latent and manifest content. It is not our place to ask if Clark himself is obsessed by this ongoing body of work but, rather, it is interesting to propose that the artwork's mode has the structure of obsession. Obsession needn't be read as pathological. The way the project uses repetition and rules is what evokes the idea of obsession.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzWa1iJC-0J9wGnF8Eh7M9R7XvzSIzy4MCWJnoP4l_X4F9dPK6a9QZQ9Ni1CinjGbb6GB5eJa934vWti6iT3PZrE2YqJAie3LTEGo__SLI4Ju3JqcVCcw49TTJjwavmNj49ZQ_fwalEVa8/s1600/Tony+Clark%252C+Sections+from+Clark%2527s+Myriorama+2011-12+%25283%2529%252C+cropped%252C+low+res.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="52" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzWa1iJC-0J9wGnF8Eh7M9R7XvzSIzy4MCWJnoP4l_X4F9dPK6a9QZQ9Ni1CinjGbb6GB5eJa934vWti6iT3PZrE2YqJAie3LTEGo__SLI4Ju3JqcVCcw49TTJjwavmNj49ZQ_fwalEVa8/s320/Tony+Clark%252C+Sections+from+Clark%2527s+Myriorama+2011-12+%25283%2529%252C+cropped%252C+low+res.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">In 1997 Graham Forsyth described Tony Clark as obsessive. The tensions at play in <i>Myriorama</i> have qualities similar to the nature of obsessive rituals. This is most apparent in the fact that they must fit a specific pictorial format. In the case of people who carry out obsessive rituals, usually strict adherence to certain procedures must be fulfilled in order to perform simple everyday tasks. <i>Myriorama</i> follows the logic of a set of rules that enable the process of artistic creativity to be conducted. Each painting in the series must fit together to create a consistent landscape. They all must have a coherent sense of space, volume, atmosphere and perspective. Their shared proportions, in different sizes, are all derived from the golden section. These days the series has a restricted pallet of black, brown, turquoise blue and warm pink. In <i>Myriorama</i>, it seems, the restraints of the rules enable Clark to make work that has a great deal of expressive freedom.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJSM5CZ_fDDvxpw41WhBXKHiZXL6wvqwQmIYBM5VBpKkji0c9bKY9GZ_SgfHDmY96vg1n3Gm02CI0qNquOVVidV8cqNqYW-Boa0eneIueLYW96UUs62ZrGDyOQZZtHEW_d1-N1p2aZ3aYm/s1600/Tony+Clark%252C+Section+from+Clark%2527s+Myriorama+2012%252C+low+res%252C+cropped+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJSM5CZ_fDDvxpw41WhBXKHiZXL6wvqwQmIYBM5VBpKkji0c9bKY9GZ_SgfHDmY96vg1n3Gm02CI0qNquOVVidV8cqNqYW-Boa0eneIueLYW96UUs62ZrGDyOQZZtHEW_d1-N1p2aZ3aYm/s320/Tony+Clark%252C+Section+from+Clark%2527s+Myriorama+2012%252C+low+res%252C+cropped+%25282%2529.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">That the project is ongoing, asks some philosophical questions about the nature of an endless landscape—about endlessness. Clark's <i>Myriorama</i> cannot be fully described, though it has a highly recognisable look. Each individual element, each panel, each set, looks distinctively like the rest of <i>Myriorama</i>, yet this look or ideal is never fully resolved. There is an aesthetic false unity in the relations of the parts to the whole. An ideal, in the classical sense of a perfect example, that represents the whole body of work isn't realisable. The opposition between a part and whole corresponds to the other contrasts in <i>Myriorama</i>, rigorous versus mannered, structured versus spontaneous, prescriptive regulations versus an anarchistic streak. These contrasts all have an open-endedness in Clark's work.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyZcDFvHzYqkSUJZSKLRXPlL9Z9b_ZWi4Qv29CLY6Gdg3sBbUf27N2REs_ZEyi52w8nhrr3SHTAsmwcR9uqgCHoFpdTOCOI-aGp60oysv5QISxgEhLrC3t-hnB_PiITi0P54-w4sVopH3C/s1600/Tony+Clark%252C+Sections+from+Clark%2527s+Myriorama+2011-12%252C+%25282%2529++low+res%252C+cropped.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="53" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyZcDFvHzYqkSUJZSKLRXPlL9Z9b_ZWi4Qv29CLY6Gdg3sBbUf27N2REs_ZEyi52w8nhrr3SHTAsmwcR9uqgCHoFpdTOCOI-aGp60oysv5QISxgEhLrC3t-hnB_PiITi0P54-w4sVopH3C/s320/Tony+Clark%252C+Sections+from+Clark%2527s+Myriorama+2011-12%252C+%25282%2529++low+res%252C+cropped.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Myriorama</i> evokes the timelessness of the unconscious. In the return of Renaissance backgrounds these landscapes have a sense of déjà vu. A moment already past is shown in the style of the work while a moment though not yet realised exists in the false unity of the arrangement. Displacement replaces a notion of an aesthetic absolute. The formation of an obsession takes shape as a way of reconciling the many paradoxical qualities in <i>Myriorama</i>. The radical return of what was old offers renewed creativity. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">At <a href="http://www.murraywhiteroom.com/">Murray White Room</a></span><br />
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Tim Alves</div>Inkblothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560776688196218442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3225553745050909319.post-90261606550946886852012-03-19T03:38:00.001-07:002012-04-23T04:44:04.301-07:00Michael Miller's The High North<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;">
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<span style="font-size: small;">There is an eerie silence in <a href="http://michaelmiller.net.au/The_High_North.html">Michael Miller's </a>photograph series <i>High North</i> at <a href="http://www.colourfactory.com.au/gallery/">Colour Factory.</a> The enormity and tension of the landscape create a suspense akin to a fairytale where the little humans must tiptoe quietly around a brutal sleeping giant. In this series of photographs taken in an arctic winter we see the sleigh dogs are on edge snarling and ready, the boys are bulked up with machismo, guns and camouflage parkas and the train rail from the mine is snowed over. Here, human activity cannot just push forward with its elbows out like it usually does. We can certainly see through his photographs what Miller means when he writes that 'An arctic winter is humbling.' As this winter snores on, we sense the awe and fear that this landscape inspires.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">The hardness and darkness of rock faces, water and bare trees contrasts with the bright white of the snow in many of Miller's photographs. In the work <i>Priest Island, Kirkenes </i>we see the land surrounded by this very flat dark blue water that gradually gets darker the further it is from the land. The land is covered with bright white snow and bare, black trees that seem to encroach around the little houses with little glowing lights. Above the land is a huge expanse of white sky. The houses seem so vulnerable between the darkness of the water and the whiteness of the sky. The perspective seems like that of a powerful predator, watching from afar. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Other works that depict the way the landscape controls and impacts on human behaviour include <i>Parked Car, Lang</i><i>ørhøgden </i>and <i>The Rail from the Mine, Bj</i><i>ørnevetn </i>They snow covered vehicles suggest the inactivity and stillness that the landscape demands. Interestingly, works like <i>High Tension Power Lines, Nordland</i> show power lines in a mountainous autumnal setting. The mountains are so awesome and beautiful that the work resists a simple environmental interpretation about the negative effects human impact has on a vulnerable environment. This image warns against human arrogance. It's not to say the human impact is not disruptive, it's just to say that the natural world seems full of strength and power. Miller's photography evokes the sublime pleasure we take from a turbulent nature that threatens to destroy us. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"> The work <i>Border Guards </i>shows two fresh faced, bulked up young men who are heavily armed. Their heads seem so small in contrast to the bulk of their clothes. They have these wry smiles and intense blue eyes that look back at us. In the context of the rest of the work, their exaggerated defensive stance and armoury seem to protest against the actual vulnerability that comes with living in a hostile climate. The expanse of which we see behind them. In the work <i>Sergeant Pepperoni, Grense Jokobselv Border Outpost</i>, we see inside a cabin we imagine boys like this must hang out. It has tropes of a lodge with plaques for achievements, wood panelling and guitars for a sing along. In the corner is a cut out of a 50's cheesecake style illustrated military girl with big breasts. The crude wear and tear tells us that maybe she been used by a lot of snowed in border guards with big guns with only Sergeant Pepperoni to entertain them. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">In <i>Roll on Turf, Kirkenes</i> we see children playing on big rolls of turf that seems to have gotten all black and soggy over the snow and thaw. The piles look like big beached whales, cumbersome and difficult. The children in their purple jackets are enjoying playing on them. The scene depicts a very mundane reality of living in these conditions. The slush and messiness of the thaw seems like a dank depressing aftermath of white snow. The big grey sky and suspicious looking figure in the window of the house behind where the little children play seem ominous.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">In <i>Miia from Finnland, </i> <i>Kirkenes</i> a very beautiful girl in a white strapless debutante gown waits in the snow on a yellow milk crate. She is so graceful and composed but must be so cold. We see faded tan lines. Her black open toe shoes reveal the seam of neutral panty hose. Her hair is both black and blonde. The window behind her has white curtains and a black space for someone to peek through. Again, there is an eerie incongruity in this work that is led by the contrast in white and black. Like the children on the roll of turf there is sense of suspense of what's to come for this girl. Though for those of us from a temperate climate, there is an exoticism in how we view the soft beauty of this girl from the snow. Like sleigh bells, fur coats and warm fires there is something of the romance of the winter in the dreamy gaze of her icy eyes. It tells us she knows how to manage the slush of this place just fine. She is part of it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">These photographs invites stories as they are rich with disruptions to build narratives around. There is a tension between the human world and the natural one. The human world is depicted diminutively often with little flecks of bright colours that seem to contrast with sombre intensity of the whites and darks of nature. Ultimately, Michael Miller's photographs have a deep humanism. There is a sense of hostility<span style="color: red;"> </span>that somehow always seems to be suspended or deferred in those moments of everyday pleasure. </span></div>
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<br />Anna Newbold</div>Inkblothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560776688196218442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3225553745050909319.post-78098088191902230192012-03-05T03:31:00.005-08:002012-03-05T03:56:29.634-08:00Janine Randerson's Albedo of Clouds<div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIpcLNazTsPp6lg3kFj3lQTJiMKem5a3zu5f4QOLW05NwIJgn1_8IUr59s1Cmzr3Ic4IIWKyVqBGwQu39DALVzVYxgkUTKFIaAv0NL5ysSDzODYHgfbImXAkAT9Pdx7MIVIz-vmfutiwaC/s1600/1-Janine-Randerson-Albedo-ofclouds-Screen-Space-2012-Installation-View.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIpcLNazTsPp6lg3kFj3lQTJiMKem5a3zu5f4QOLW05NwIJgn1_8IUr59s1Cmzr3Ic4IIWKyVqBGwQu39DALVzVYxgkUTKFIaAv0NL5ysSDzODYHgfbImXAkAT9Pdx7MIVIz-vmfutiwaC/s320/1-Janine-Randerson-Albedo-ofclouds-Screen-Space-2012-Installation-View.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Janine Randerson's <i>Albedo of Clouds </i>at Screen Space is a work that evokes the nature of subjectivity. There are two round screens in the space, one up in a high corner at the back of the space and one down low at the front. On these round, planet-looking, screens we see images of clouds projected. We see the human perspectives of experiencing them from the ground and from satellites recording them from space. As we turn our heads to watch the two screens showing clouds we also hear a conversation between two cloud watchers. Each voice is played out of speakers on different sides of the room, which gives a sense that the cloud watchers are in different locations but are trying to see if they can see the same clouds. This gives a sense of following this conversation while being in the privileged position of being able to see both perspectives. The talking is often followed by reverberating sounds that create a soft tension. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">The cloud watchers describe the clouds as things they might look like. One looks like a map of North America, a submarine, "Can you see the head?", one asks. The viewer also sinks into the cloud gazing activity—I can see North America once it has been said but I initially thought it looked like a camel. In some cases they just can't see the same thing. When one describes a cloud as looking like a submarine, the other can't seem to see it. They wonder if it is the interpretation they can't see or if they are just not looking at the same clouds. The clouds on each screen look very different. This opens up an interesting idea about whether what we see or understand of the world is experienced in the same way by other people. We can never know if others see and feel the same way as we do.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"> The cloud, like the Rorschach inkblot, has been used as a way of mapping responses to find out about the psychological preoccupations and motivations of individuals. We can only interpret the abstract shapes of the clouds through a language of associations. Associations that we draw on when we meet a shape again. In art we are presented by an artist with a series of forms or objects. While these objects may have distinct associations particular to the experience of the artist, the viewer will always bring in their subjective projections.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg18eEBcRbedRNPaBRnnuOmyLth-D-mrzgvlXa1jhRdjNUNB_vUU90Pioz3E70IUva4zZltTohgOms4Q5_7jhNRpOgQCuU0GCxpFueghKpLfY8B7NruYVsZtB6GOtPRZXpBbyLo_KKrlvWM/s1600/4-Janine-Randerson-Albedo-ofclouds-Screen-Space-2012-Installation-View.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg18eEBcRbedRNPaBRnnuOmyLth-D-mrzgvlXa1jhRdjNUNB_vUU90Pioz3E70IUva4zZltTohgOms4Q5_7jhNRpOgQCuU0GCxpFueghKpLfY8B7NruYVsZtB6GOtPRZXpBbyLo_KKrlvWM/s320/4-Janine-Randerson-Albedo-ofclouds-Screen-Space-2012-Installation-View.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"> In E. H. Gombrich's chapter <i>The Image in the Clouds</i> he argues for art that exercises the public's imagination rather than just a polished depiction of reality. He says: 'it is an art in which the painter's skill in suggesting must be matched by the public's skill in taking hints'. Randerson's work suggests that the public are very adept in using their imagination to make abstract shapes into forms that communicate. The viewer brings their knowledge, associations and history to make a work understandable. This game of representation has been practised on clouds, rock faces, constellations and birthmarks throughout history. The interesting part of the game in discussing art is, of course, the variety of interpretations. Viewers search through their personal references to understand the abstract ideas that artists have found a way to visualise.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXBkh_1JisEd0jnNjj-4nT1Eqob9c-54SBn_7KTw6UtwIsmFbTlFR0ourH3q-4c20hAkEusOU9mOb0M-ej_3a0O8Xk9LsjUzVwEAwHn2KF_7UUnHEugV4ts-pEA5kRpDm37TQyOZVr1DQ5/s1600/5-Janine-Randerson-Albedo-ofclouds-Screen-Space-2012-Installation-View.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXBkh_1JisEd0jnNjj-4nT1Eqob9c-54SBn_7KTw6UtwIsmFbTlFR0ourH3q-4c20hAkEusOU9mOb0M-ej_3a0O8Xk9LsjUzVwEAwHn2KF_7UUnHEugV4ts-pEA5kRpDm37TQyOZVr1DQ5/s320/5-Janine-Randerson-Albedo-ofclouds-Screen-Space-2012-Installation-View.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Randerson also presents images of clouds from the view of satellites. The contrast between the perspective of the people on the ground and the satellites seems to initially compare the subjectivity of the cloud watchers with the objectivity of a recording machine. However, in the tense hum of the audio, we continue to turn our head from screen to screen. This motion evokes the sense that this data will too be analysed, categorised and interpreted by people who will again bring their knowledge, their history and their projections to the forms and shapes they see. Randerson's work offers an interesting reflection on how we imagine, learn and interpret the world around us.</span></div>Inkblothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560776688196218442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3225553745050909319.post-37420464946946771462012-02-28T18:20:00.000-08:002012-02-28T18:20:30.005-08:00Rob Miller's Odysseus and the Sirens<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-AU</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">The foyer of 101 Collins Street has ionic columns for their beauty rather than their engineering. It has marble spirals on the floor, sculpture alcoves, phases of the moon above the reception desk and 23 caret gold leaf walls. It has a temple like grandeur and stature. Rob Miller’s sculptures currently on display in the water features in front of these golden walls are interpretations of classical Greek myth. One is <i>Odysseus. </i>The shimmering backdrop and the enclosed space of the water feature gives the sculptures and the space an aedicula like quality. With this association in mind, there is sense of the work relaying a parable that through narrative can circle around abstract desires. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDwpdK0ZbG5VjPMeCNUxgvWgUEvi2nnk_NfTTKUae5BCwYblm3KEB6-CFN7lkafMa_PV3d3v9Do1zuHmolpnz8JVMUT5Og2SCUksS80WwXSj5Nxmrvc9HUxQaFE1dlbAdKiRH-C2vULuGt/s1600/DSC_0793.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDwpdK0ZbG5VjPMeCNUxgvWgUEvi2nnk_NfTTKUae5BCwYblm3KEB6-CFN7lkafMa_PV3d3v9Do1zuHmolpnz8JVMUT5Og2SCUksS80WwXSj5Nxmrvc9HUxQaFE1dlbAdKiRH-C2vULuGt/s320/DSC_0793.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span></span>In Miller's <i>Odysseus and the Sirens </i>there is a man with a round head wearing long robe leaning starboard on a boat. In the myth, the sirens sing such a seductive song that it lures sailors to their death. Odysseus ties himself to the mast of his ship to avoid crashing to his death. Miller's sculpture incorporates the mast and the man in one vertical line. The sculpture embodies the nature of the tragic hero; the solid and strong carved figure<span style="color: red;"> </span>leans precariously towards temptation. This Odysseus, in this gilded foyer, seems a reminder of the perils of hubris. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAalLPr3v3TZuLP_btg7Ye7CNZC5oDYvsVn88Q2O_yeEB_5zgOm3NCmst5BN-DC46nO6ObCoKqLe0QaljaLnygXf0560Xrrgqmqa82Ga4Wp8W0GNnOkjOUvty891mhrMJ4YAPOeVUF_auA/s1600/news.2009.473.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAalLPr3v3TZuLP_btg7Ye7CNZC5oDYvsVn88Q2O_yeEB_5zgOm3NCmst5BN-DC46nO6ObCoKqLe0QaljaLnygXf0560Xrrgqmqa82Ga4Wp8W0GNnOkjOUvty891mhrMJ4YAPOeVUF_auA/s1600/news.2009.473.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">There is a focus on the breasts and buttock of the sirens in these sculptures. This creates an ogling element to Odysseus lean that also makes him a little less noble in his clever self-will and restraint. The form of the sirens evokes the little Venus of Hohle Fels, a sculpture from the Stone Age carved from a wooly mammoth's tusk. This reference to Venus and ancient fertility goddesses denote a simultaneous admiration, fear and objectification of female sexuality. Fertility has also been customarily synonymous with wealth and prosperity. In the opulence of this space these exaggerated body parts can be read as embodying a certian bountiful plenty. <span> </span><span> </span>We can again suggest that the desire and temptation Odysseus leans towards may have many faces and it’s left to the individual viewer to imagine what song would drive them off course. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7cKFyM9UEzvtn5NTgGJo0JldVb7VUVEp4fmdEYodgkfdy-23JZ7uHC_-No80YWE45Gu6fqMiW_X9umY-jc9WTkV-5wDK49OvMBxZH904yipd7SneSowUUfX9JFcCox50HyHmJxTtwj3K9/s1600/DSC_0797.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7cKFyM9UEzvtn5NTgGJo0JldVb7VUVEp4fmdEYodgkfdy-23JZ7uHC_-No80YWE45Gu6fqMiW_X9umY-jc9WTkV-5wDK49OvMBxZH904yipd7SneSowUUfX9JFcCox50HyHmJxTtwj3K9/s320/DSC_0797.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">The perils of hearing the song of the sirens has been retold in many ways. We know from Hollywood alone the monstrous destruction that the seduction of the femme fatale can bring. Think of Glen Close or Sharon Stone in those thrillers like <i>Fatal Attraction </i>and <i>Basic Instinct.</i> The female gaze has been mythologised as frightening, aggressive and a threat to society. Homer <span>writes: 'Whoever draws too close, off guard, and catches the Sirens' voices in the air—no sailing home for him, no wife rising to meet him, no happy children beaming up at their father's face'.</span> <span>Though Miller’s siren sculptures have no heads or arms they seem to still be able to frighten by their gaze. However their missing limbs (wings) and heads also imply a breaking or restraint of any real power a siren may represent. These sculptures become a pure fantasy. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtAt_wMpWeauHO-yDh9FTnxdO5Fm4S6MstOXwF3kr1WkAp7DenLs9IKeNLNFERz7YFWC84fFGTOnvfU1xN3NfeRrf067JMZwHcCtR4ngcJr88puzg8ZqjdtJdGP_Tzyhy_vrrBu6YTQ6m6/s1600/DSC_0792.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtAt_wMpWeauHO-yDh9FTnxdO5Fm4S6MstOXwF3kr1WkAp7DenLs9IKeNLNFERz7YFWC84fFGTOnvfU1xN3NfeRrf067JMZwHcCtR4ngcJr88puzg8ZqjdtJdGP_Tzyhy_vrrBu6YTQ6m6/s320/DSC_0792.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>The fetishised focus on the sirens’ bodies suggests Odysseus’ is both a victim and a voyeur. He lives to tell the tale of the women who could have devoured him. The siren’s song is a death song. It brings momentary bliss and unknowable pain and death. That Ody</span>sseus hears this song without being dragged in gives him a knowledge that he can cannot express in language. He never recounts the actual song. It is like the unquantifiable object that attracts us to one another. The focus on the torso in these sculptures suggests a mysterious disembodiment is at play in attraction and desire. <span>These sirens have no mouths. There is no music in the air. The only way that the song is rendered by Miller is in Ody</span>sseus' posture. His desire is captured in his totally physical response, his <span>slant and motion. Miller captures that the nature of the sirens' voice is Ody</span>sseus's own desire that leads him to potential destruction. However, since he momentarily cheats this fate, he is destined to enjoy this satisfaction by unspeakable proxy. <span> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgquqbXXelhCYdK5W4QW8WAP2Qs9-G8iFi0YzWSbIHFe9hyphenhypheniTIYI_9OZJ6XhcOLgkSpUIkAL2hvf-gpf_-O3ZsbkauKTD5Yv2-_jN0HrH6P9GOMbhOoVan74tjgwkWCuP97YcaBOL0yqLJa/s1600/DSC_0798.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgquqbXXelhCYdK5W4QW8WAP2Qs9-G8iFi0YzWSbIHFe9hyphenhypheniTIYI_9OZJ6XhcOLgkSpUIkAL2hvf-gpf_-O3ZsbkauKTD5Yv2-_jN0HrH6P9GOMbhOoVan74tjgwkWCuP97YcaBOL0yqLJa/s320/DSC_0798.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>In Franz Kafka’s essay <i>The Silence of the Sirens</i><span> he reinterprets the story to say that Odysseus blocked his ears as well as tied himself to the mast. However, the sirens </span>admire his "innocent elation" , that they spare him<span>. Whatever Odysseus heard was internal. Kafka writes: 'n</span>ow the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their silence. And though admittedly such a thing never happened, it is still conceivable that someone might possibly have escaped from their singing; but from their silence certainly never.' The song has become a way of projecting <span> </span>his own self congratulatory and self destructive desires onto the sirens. The headless sirens of Miller’s work correlates well with Kafka's approach to the myth. There is a sense that this Odysseus will create the heads of his own nightmares and fantasies and that they may be far more frightening and exciting than any external metaphysical beast. </span></span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>These dark and elegant silhouettes compliment the opulence of the space. Yet these headless and armless sirens are not without melancholy undertones. In this space where giant phallic columns just decorate and the luna cycles are safely under the control of the reception staff, these fierce creatures of the sea have become quite tame. They are beautiful and elegant but are without their song or their gaze to decide who to seduce next. As though this myth can be enjoyed in this space but the scary bits cannot be eluded to too specifically.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span><br />
</span></span></div>Inkblothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560776688196218442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3225553745050909319.post-30253306251879262952012-02-18T02:41:00.000-08:002012-02-18T02:41:28.054-08:00Tom Polo Gestures and Mistakes (Trust Me)<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-AU</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> <w:UseFELayout/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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</style> <![endif]--> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6r8HKKKdFGHaDuxIekD0gRhkTNHIIIK3bM5qsj_TtdnvTgqMXC5ElLKgUf4Gd5td0mY2MkaTQhP31EkwIAbnJXEcgvpxDCF6jR0njPEzM9kxq7E3zeJlZ3MV2vf2UuuI90K3__rGlkxrV/s1600/image+6+tom+polo.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6r8HKKKdFGHaDuxIekD0gRhkTNHIIIK3bM5qsj_TtdnvTgqMXC5ElLKgUf4Gd5td0mY2MkaTQhP31EkwIAbnJXEcgvpxDCF6jR0njPEzM9kxq7E3zeJlZ3MV2vf2UuuI90K3__rGlkxrV/s320/image+6+tom+polo.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span><span style="font-family: Lucida Grande,Verdana,Helvetica,Arial;">Paintings/Props/Personas <br />
2011-2012<br />
Acrylic on canvas, wood.<br />
</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">Tom Polo's work at Gertrude Contemporary alludes to the way the self-help industry now mitigates the language we use to try and express our deepest and most complex emotions. This industry tries to make our internal chaos more logical and controllable. It offers feel good maxims to feed aspirations and "twelve-step-solutions" to complex problems. It also offers easy catch phrase diagnostics. Polo’s work is a funny and cynical play on our obsession with ourselves, our need to "talk about it" and the self-conscious element of all self expression. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl_GspPRqberjHBacKK1G_P1R2ChjEIuKDOwVeEgs-sHbukaWyiaIl7GOg91HRQlv2kBq34NGRefRh9-H5_nw84IgbyOcUCfWYA7bhP1Mu5-OjsCoziP63Wc7nJkXZMmajzUIKi5QGVbtF/s1600/image+5+tom+polo.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl_GspPRqberjHBacKK1G_P1R2ChjEIuKDOwVeEgs-sHbukaWyiaIl7GOg91HRQlv2kBq34NGRefRh9-H5_nw84IgbyOcUCfWYA7bhP1Mu5-OjsCoziP63Wc7nJkXZMmajzUIKi5QGVbtF/s320/image+5+tom+polo.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span><span style="font-family: Lucida Grande,Verdana,Helvetica,Arial;">Self Sabbotage (as you leave)<br />
2012<br />
Acrylic on linen.</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">Self-help allows people to identify, for themselves and the rest of the world, a reason behind the inexplicable emotions they have been feeling. Maybe they have low self-esteem, midlife crisis, self sabotage, dysfunctional family or anger management issues or all of the above. These are terms that everyone now understands and nobody needs any more details about when they are dropped into a conversation. "He quit his job and left his wife." "Why?" "Midlife crises." "Oh ok." Self-help language has also become a useful way to discuss our emotions without actually getting emotional. <span> </span>Tom Polo has identified the way we are talking loudly about our personal feelings everywhere from Oprah's couch to the back of the tram. He conjures the idea of us somehow becoming these emotional activists who march around<span> </span>protesting our feelings for the world to see. He does this by combining the language of self- help on hand written signs together with expressive portraits on placards. The slogans of self-help enable the activists to protest their messy emotions while still keeping it together and tidy for the cafe. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivb4nxzKSb1uHHKj3ft0uXU6q1y7f1vzywHp39_ACAuryyFKiblgutdFpUwF9o8jp001HUoNq4KmwvjCsUWiY9Q6ZTkEwA5uor1gMxoZS3v0yLHRs7FtTHUVWyk7whlBkBMfyzhw6c7H1X/s1600/image+7+tom+polo.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivb4nxzKSb1uHHKj3ft0uXU6q1y7f1vzywHp39_ACAuryyFKiblgutdFpUwF9o8jp001HUoNq4KmwvjCsUWiY9Q6ZTkEwA5uor1gMxoZS3v0yLHRs7FtTHUVWyk7whlBkBMfyzhw6c7H1X/s320/image+7+tom+polo.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span><span style="font-family: Lucida Grande,Verdana,Helvetica,Arial;">Gestures and Mistakes <br />
2012<br />
Time based wall drawing.</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><span style="font-family: Lucida Grande,Verdana,Helvetica,Arial;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">In the front space at Gertrude Contemporary the walls of have been painted a vivid blue. Even the front window has been covered over with a light blue wall. It is enclosed and dramatic. These internal colours evoke the intensity and saturation of emotions that colour our perception of the external world. The placards leaning up against the walls have definite shapes like squares or circles. The portraits on the placards have been painted in similar bright primary colours as the walls. The simple shapes of the placards suggests a desire to control and organise the colours of the walls.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span></span>The portraits are painted in a naive style that is comic and playful. It suggests painting sessions at school or in art therapy where we are asked to paint how we feel. There is a pink fleshy face with an unhappy blue smile, a cloudy grey melancholy one, one with orange hair and a squiggly orange nose, and another way up high on the wall with triangle nose that starts in his eye. One of them has a man with a brown gravy tray nose. We can imagine these placards at a personal crises rally where people go to demand that someone stop this internal chaos. Polo has created placards that express the squelching nausea of anxiety and uncertainty. At the same time, their simplicity makes them unheroic. A placard usually presents a catch phrase that sums up the activist's position and demands in a few words. But these placards are far more ambiguous and communicate abstract feelings that are difficult to express in language. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIXqNQUN8upjbBWWsIs22LEb14dXvhoViZEB9q5h0uNZQi5QKmqKL1j-jfbG7dNloMBNvHu2USC0CrZkKkZWRzePVLeegU2pTqb7jZLqD_x_g9gNwpq0oVGaimR02wI4lJccqa29DQdFMq/s1600/image+4.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIXqNQUN8upjbBWWsIs22LEb14dXvhoViZEB9q5h0uNZQi5QKmqKL1j-jfbG7dNloMBNvHu2USC0CrZkKkZWRzePVLeegU2pTqb7jZLqD_x_g9gNwpq0oVGaimR02wI4lJccqa29DQdFMq/s320/image+4.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span><span style="font-family: Lucida Grande,Verdana,Helvetica,Arial;">Paintings/Props/Personas (Balls)<br />
2011-2012<br />
Acrylic on canvas board, wood.</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"> We are reminded of the idea of art as being able to communicate something pure and honest. It has been thought that painting, in particular, can show emotions that cannot be expressed in any other way. However, Polo's emotional and expressive paintings on placards suggests that any form of self expression will always have an element of presenting oneself to the world in a way that can never be free of self-consciousness. Their messiness seems like a joyful and colourful romp in artistic frustration. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVtImocoztgYlhURFCfW2tkS2jhjMR7iwBicsR5rNHz-jDFGj5-_iBM3j5hy3yfCVC42N2_XXs6PD8KO5hUmxMnQKtfDTHE73dKOBsa4G3KK8qC2t5pcpHuAzkc5bty8bZhOobJgKYtYDS/s1600/Image+2+tom+polo.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVtImocoztgYlhURFCfW2tkS2jhjMR7iwBicsR5rNHz-jDFGj5-_iBM3j5hy3yfCVC42N2_XXs6PD8KO5hUmxMnQKtfDTHE73dKOBsa4G3KK8qC2t5pcpHuAzkc5bty8bZhOobJgKYtYDS/s320/Image+2+tom+polo.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12.0px;"><span style="font-family: Lucida Grande,Verdana,Helvetica,Arial;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Paintings/Props (Flag) <br />
2011-2012 <br />
Acrylic on canvas, wood.</span><br />
</span><span style="font-family: ITC Cheltenham Std Light;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">The self-help slogans in the space<span style="color: red;"> </span>are painted in a thick home-made, garage-sale- today sign<span style="color: red;"> </span>style. They are not written out in their conventional form.</span><span style="font-size: small;"><span></span><span> </span>The spaceless <i>Try Harder to Try Less </i>could allude to the sort of cryptic advice often offered to people who should 'focus on the now' while trying to 'set goals'. This work gives us a sense of how self-help language is used as a sign to explain and clarify this internal world. However, within this intense and emotional world their meaning appears as confused, disordered and as inarticulate as the emotions it tries to organise. It is the sort of catch phrase shared in both the language of the rally, shouted through the megaphone, and the language of self-help, posted on the wall of the gym.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">Placards are commonly used in big rallies where like-minded people meet in the streets to bring about change and express discontent. Perhaps the language of self-help, like the political rally, enables people to come together and feels connected to a wider community that share the same problems. This installation seems to grapple with the actual difficulty of trying to incorporate the public ideas of self-help into the turbulent internal world of the individual. The language of self-help can be experienced as our own imaginary angry activist. They scream out their slogans and demand change of ourselves. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEionRtJMBew-7X7JxK302FT6qgY0QafvgtYkZ2swe25e2jfkLcstoQFJdcDRQ_TmHsZdjK2vnvgyICxb4-8DplPzS83E7tc7o66HunGP_vTI89Ds0bRyPS4AuvluzaOgX8xwYcHX53ENJce/s1600/image+3+tom+polo.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEionRtJMBew-7X7JxK302FT6qgY0QafvgtYkZ2swe25e2jfkLcstoQFJdcDRQ_TmHsZdjK2vnvgyICxb4-8DplPzS83E7tc7o66HunGP_vTI89Ds0bRyPS4AuvluzaOgX8xwYcHX53ENJce/s320/image+3+tom+polo.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span><span style="font-family: Lucida Grande,Verdana,Helvetica,Arial;">TRYHARDERTO TRYLESS (SINCE 2009) <br />
2012<br />
Wall drawing.</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span></span>Self-help has made an industry that profits from people's insecurities <span> </span>and encourages them to repress negative emotions and focus on self-improvement. The use of terms like “heal” or “move forward” to turn sadness or anger into some form of illness that can be treated by following these clear procedures. By turning it into an illness, self-help seems to alleviate the guilt and sense of personal responsibility associated with feeling emotionally terrible. However, by providing easy solutions it also puts the onus back on the individual to change the way they feel. They are obviously not trying hard enough or following the steps properly because if they were they would be successful and have everything they ever wanted and feel great about themselves. So while there is much more public discussion about our feelings and “where we are at” emotionally; there is an implicit pressure to be progressing up some sort of happiness ladder. This is what is so clever and funny about Tom Polo’s work. His placards show an awareness of the absurdity of demanding more happiness of ourselves and the world. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="" name="_GoBack"></a></span></div>Inkblothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560776688196218442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3225553745050909319.post-33573355013089404232011-11-22T04:55:00.000-08:002011-11-22T04:55:41.649-08:00Palace of Tears<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoypnq5CBkzyGkLMCPMLR9mts-60B17Qe_8ePSOOGNNYkjlupWLPRIjbquYKxKNgmBzXWXXFXj1PIrpoaZc4vdMia5PioWo2qyUoA-i16mixmQ0TLbm6CqcBeolY5IPlqvIfhpysXgfceD/s1600/palaceoftears.condensation5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoypnq5CBkzyGkLMCPMLR9mts-60B17Qe_8ePSOOGNNYkjlupWLPRIjbquYKxKNgmBzXWXXFXj1PIrpoaZc4vdMia5PioWo2qyUoA-i16mixmQ0TLbm6CqcBeolY5IPlqvIfhpysXgfceD/s320/palaceoftears.condensation5.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">We enter Hermione Merry and Henriette Kassay-Schuster’s <i>Palace of Tears </i>through a dark confined corridor that feels like a secret doorway. We see two projections on a double sided screen, back to back, that make like a wall that we walk around. The two images refract through the screen and appear on the opposite walls. The two sides of the screen have similar images. The image on each side is a different woman in a blue dress in the internal doorway of a brick building. The doorway dramatically frames them like a proscenium arch. Everything seems the same in both images except for the different blue dressed women. They are waving, sometimes with eyes opened and sometimes closed. They seem to rotate around and around so when one is facing you the other has their back to you. Above the screen wall are jugs of leaking water, below a tilted mirror and under that, on the floor, is dry concrete mix. The water in the buckets leaks down through the screens, onto the mirror and then drips onto the dry concrete mix below. Melancholy music seems to drip down over the artwork at the pace of the tears that the water seems to represent. </span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3iH2v9pXmk0-eKXNmzmEVMXWnacN5B3BsUSo9Mkuv75ZQ-uLsjGO1zK6fHecIXO1RB5RZpacWA_hmak1_y7CGISLXNVPigGzFcpcE0DPbYOhpv7IHq38KlGaef7Rr6P8GNw7OeWX-JqHP/s1600/palaceoftears.full1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3iH2v9pXmk0-eKXNmzmEVMXWnacN5B3BsUSo9Mkuv75ZQ-uLsjGO1zK6fHecIXO1RB5RZpacWA_hmak1_y7CGISLXNVPigGzFcpcE0DPbYOhpv7IHq38KlGaef7Rr6P8GNw7OeWX-JqHP/s320/palaceoftears.full1.jpg" width="201" /></a></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">This artwork is highly contextual. The images were filmed in Berlin. The building represents the “Palace of Tears”, which was a customs house on the Berlin Wall. The people of East and West Berlin were divided from 1961 to 1989 by a wall given names like “Wall of Shame”. The work evokes the sadness of the city divided. The dripping water gives a sense of the individual tears shed in a customs house where people were turned back around and waved muted goodbyes.</span><span style="font-size: small;"> Now that the wall has been pulled down, ghosts inhabit this architecture of division. The artwork seems to question how we capture moments in time and how they are passed on. Is there a notion of history where events, like the demolition of the Berlin Wall, close chapters in time? Or are there, rather, multiple projections that constantly permeate and change within the present? This is suggested by the contrast between the translucent paper screen and the tears which damage it as they fall to solidify into concrete. </span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyWapk5KVFDeaKcaPXfSRnIgYsgdRMGPpBdegl7510d12JzyHfvVJddyuR4vrQcXBlZJ5RVOfeZHav1OKn2T1N8yh7xuImyJVzwc40es5gm-Wro1bQ_6_wpM9xyqz9x1vCjlSvkmUoeM5e/s1600/palaceoftears.full2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyWapk5KVFDeaKcaPXfSRnIgYsgdRMGPpBdegl7510d12JzyHfvVJddyuR4vrQcXBlZJ5RVOfeZHav1OKn2T1N8yh7xuImyJVzwc40es5gm-Wro1bQ_6_wpM9xyqz9x1vCjlSvkmUoeM5e/s320/palaceoftears.full2.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">The two women seem to mirror one another much like the two-heads of the Roman god Janus—the god of beginnings, transitions, gates and doorways. As the god of these passages he is simultaneously looking at the future and the past while stepping through the present. The circular movement of the women around the doorway is not unlike a clock that measures the present, on an eternal threshold to the next minute. When the projection stops and turns to black it is more than a blink, it is like sleep or pause before we are conscious again of time circling. So we are presented with both an objective and subjective understanding of the passage of time as something that we continually objectively move through and yet are always subjectively in the one threshold of every moment.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYgI8MlgCy1aF4KlhvZCROVwL5zwrSTHu_vTwCaaOwC2e4-E0FkWzsoEUejqXtT_cKP09eLKlrh6Z5nTIxM_Vf-SwRFbOA9k3UyTiZjTOU1GZs7Sy5z0LoxXDJbiHXWYVjzVXlwcYvCGgg/s1600/palace+of+tears.tears6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYgI8MlgCy1aF4KlhvZCROVwL5zwrSTHu_vTwCaaOwC2e4-E0FkWzsoEUejqXtT_cKP09eLKlrh6Z5nTIxM_Vf-SwRFbOA9k3UyTiZjTOU1GZs7Sy5z0LoxXDJbiHXWYVjzVXlwcYvCGgg/s320/palace+of+tears.tears6.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">In <i>Palace of Tears</i> the tears shed in suffering drip down but are not dissolved, absorbed and wiped away. The notion of a palace evokes a sense of excess. These tears are beading, brimming, dripping down to wet the concrete mix. The work itself seems to represent a solidification of suffering, suggesting other walls being built. Tears come at an emotional threshold; they tell us something about an internal spilling over that cannot be contained. The blue dressed women tell us how tears flow and repeat. They tell us that past pains and future fears are ultimately always in the passage way of the present—looking forward or back. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Anna Newbold and Tim Alves </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">at <a href="http://seventhgallery.org/">Seventh Gallery</a></span></div>Inkblothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560776688196218442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3225553745050909319.post-6471930234145310852011-11-14T03:20:00.000-08:002011-11-14T03:44:17.555-08:00Souvenir/Memory : Strange Pillows by Wolfie Mayr<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Strange Pillows</i> by Wolfie Mayr exhibits an archive of old slides of travel photos which have been stored for up to half a lifetime. These images can only but evoke the theme of memory. What is distinctive about these artworks is that often the actual slides onto which these moments were frozen are as much the subject of these images as the conventional views, landscapes or people shown. In this sense, this adds an interesting and self reflexive twist to travel photography. While travelling we are more inclined to notice details; to expose our film to banal moments as if they are somehow transcendental. Indeed, in our travels, away from home, they are. Exotic subjects always seem more worthy. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYJgOdUGlEdz7b4-aTM6lb5YtAeZzy3O_TNu7_TtyCzhODW12Qr1Z7TV977nSWTwZVA2GkcJrFh84gAeuvphtGCEpLKOz-mNCYDpkoxSK-NPPWkOcQirs4inQl-kOdW79O7d6R15BQGicP/s1600/web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYJgOdUGlEdz7b4-aTM6lb5YtAeZzy3O_TNu7_TtyCzhODW12Qr1Z7TV977nSWTwZVA2GkcJrFh84gAeuvphtGCEpLKOz-mNCYDpkoxSK-NPPWkOcQirs4inQl-kOdW79O7d6R15BQGicP/s320/web.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">There is a well known theory of the event of watching a film that suggests that we go to the cinema to input virtual memories into our experiences. Often these virtual memories are beyond everyday experiences—among these are the experiences of the exotic and travel. The cinematic theatre’s darkened space, the larger than life image and the spectators’ comfortable passive state all contribute to focus sensory perception on fantastic but realistic virtual memories. The slide (or 35mm transparency) was the most cinematic of all still photography in that its conventional mode of viewing is the slide show in the darkened room. The slide presentation, commonly associated with travel snaps, was accompanied by a story of the trip as the slides clunk into a projector. This medium is also a reminder of actual travel—it is a souvenir. </span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU0lLIXGWGg_nWs0w2DeCxnostsArnd685InNXSr8Fu_l6tNVoSALXiz4dG44y9Nf9G5t4WUTtdj0ed1oiuAgaDWyz32d6PtCw7k67dO7YVtMYiiwToUZTtY2dGtAdZ6F-CFy5LyJoYWtm/s1600/001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="231" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU0lLIXGWGg_nWs0w2DeCxnostsArnd685InNXSr8Fu_l6tNVoSALXiz4dG44y9Nf9G5t4WUTtdj0ed1oiuAgaDWyz32d6PtCw7k67dO7YVtMYiiwToUZTtY2dGtAdZ6F-CFy5LyJoYWtm/s320/001.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">In the past before the slide, however, the same darkened room was used to capture a memory or a souvenir of travelling to a destination. The 18<sup>th</sup> century Venetian painter Giovanni Canaletto made artworks for British travellers on the grand tour to take home. He used a camera obscura to produce his work. In other words, he worked inside a darkened room with a lens on one wall and painted his paintings from the likeness projected upside-down on the opposite wall. <i>Visitor, Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, USA 1998</i> is taken in the dark museum without a flash. A bald head obscures the sky of the painting <i>View of the Grand Canal and the Dogana</i> by Bernardo Bellotto—Canaletto’s nephew. Bellotto was himself a traveller. He was invited around various courts of central Europe and painted views of the cities. In fact, his detailed views of Warsaw were used to assist the rebuilding of the city after World War II. The space in the Getty, vignetted in darkness, seems not only reminiscent of the conventional presentation of the slide photograph but the optics used by Canaletto and Bellotto, the cinema and also a conceptual visualisation of memory. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQNtPkY35srzsOgqsHOH3W8EvlrbY1izCpNc15MQ4H8k3c1hDljVYfU04dmJ9LvQ_VKUrTp65i8raeo-7K0yPVPiH8Sfh5CPKSETen7PhIWsK_umJqYS4o719UqZmJ3ZeOFbJT_jV6Hyvy/s1600/003+web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQNtPkY35srzsOgqsHOH3W8EvlrbY1izCpNc15MQ4H8k3c1hDljVYfU04dmJ9LvQ_VKUrTp65i8raeo-7K0yPVPiH8Sfh5CPKSETen7PhIWsK_umJqYS4o719UqZmJ3ZeOFbJT_jV6Hyvy/s320/003+web.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">Strange looking patterns of mould damage on the emulsion of the film form abstract references to time and memory. The nature of photograph image, which freezes the world’s visual likeness, is undermined by the slides material deterioration. The image continues to change in time. However, the freezing of time is re-enacted with the transfer of the image, damage and all, onto the pristine reproduction colour print. Time’s index, material deterioration, is aestheticised. The colours of slides enlarged in this way also seem less naturalistic, more saturated, chromatically distorted or stained by an unnatural colour. Framed two-dimensional artworks are displayed against windows. This creates an unexpected effect like an inversion of the conventional slide projection; the image is darker than the background of daylight filled glass. This inversion poetically renders the absence of the old slides. This all can be likened to Sigmund Freud’s analysis of his analysand’s memories where distorted colours in remembered situations give clues to an intrusion of the present into past events which have been subjectivity coloured. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhINWaldXl0iGGIJwKJjbArGwP-1-EDA0yp0HFXAw4ZPI479FHW7q5yeD8Mt_PIEFIaUpDlG9ho4-sdwAioVNQDwuMDqexccIemLH539kH-qNobkEFB0E3qu93glOxfLa1GEtVuVp5waGmF/s1600/004+web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhINWaldXl0iGGIJwKJjbArGwP-1-EDA0yp0HFXAw4ZPI479FHW7q5yeD8Mt_PIEFIaUpDlG9ho4-sdwAioVNQDwuMDqexccIemLH539kH-qNobkEFB0E3qu93glOxfLa1GEtVuVp5waGmF/s320/004+web.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">A sense of the artist’s motivations, which differ at various times in his life, come to the fore. Although abstract, different times and stages of creating images with different moods render shifting interests and an ever emerging personality. The viewer is made aware that these images were always intended as art yet this outcome had been disavowed till only now. The artist who emerges within the traveller continues work on this personal art project. The strangely photogenic material deterioration is compulsive. Time is the traveller-artist’s invisible hand. It could be said that material degradation of the film causes aberration in a similar way to how forgetting stains memory. However, in Mayr’s work the beauty of aberration evokes a clear present time. The present seems to wash over these images, and overwhelm their resemblance to the past. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;">Tim Alves</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">at <a href="http://tinningstreet.blogspot.com/">Tinning Street</a></span></div>Inkblothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560776688196218442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3225553745050909319.post-58504424037460075712011-11-08T04:32:00.000-08:002011-11-08T17:49:25.735-08:00Yellow<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7GnVHEdn3YOQ0FPsOoheo2LJs6q0rlZFP5BPXPGmOumXT1hUNQ3sluJDfZhRLFmSt-VniN9uQ06VjENBArJJ-BIcu5oFIOsRPuntqR5gv6vJ0uS8SayXySvEqth6PoUb6JC2vC61Cx7F7/s1600/image001+yellow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7GnVHEdn3YOQ0FPsOoheo2LJs6q0rlZFP5BPXPGmOumXT1hUNQ3sluJDfZhRLFmSt-VniN9uQ06VjENBArJJ-BIcu5oFIOsRPuntqR5gv6vJ0uS8SayXySvEqth6PoUb6JC2vC61Cx7F7/s320/image001+yellow.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">Natasha Johns-Messenger’s installation <i>Yellow </i>in <i>Power to the People</i> at <a href="http://www.accaonline.org.au/">ACCA </a>makes the audience integral to a work. It addresses how the emotional reactions that the public brings to any work of art reveal something of themselves. When Ron Robertson-Swann’s minimalist public sculpture came into the world it was name-less and hated. The public and the press gave it a name of their own that reflected both their fear and loathing “Yellow Peril”. The people felt it had cost too much and said too little. Why can’t we have just a nice fountain some asked? It’s like "an old blonde girlfriend pouting at you" said others. Even the Queen was said to ask if it couldn’t be painted “a more agreeable colour”. Towards the end of its one year in the city square, before it was moved to an obscure public pastures it was officially titled <i>Vault</i>. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">In light of Johns-Messenger’s work <i>Yellow</i>, we start to understand how on many layers the title <i>Vault </i>was an apt description of a work that the people of Melbourne locked out. As we enter the first corridor of John-Messenger’s work, there is a little peep-hole to our right and a large round window to our left. Through the peep hole we see <i>Vault</i> which has now found a respectful home at the ACCA site. The peep-hole in <i>Yellow </i>emulates how <i>Vault</i> must have been viewed in the seventies and eighties. Peeping from behind the closed door, a fish eye distortion makes it at once bigger and smaller. <i>Vault </i>was a big foreign otherness that was tapping at the parochial door of a blue singlet wearing xanthophobic. Melbourne felt a little bit safer that they shut it out.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">In the <i>Yellow</i> installation we see ourselves again and again. Through a big round window in the wall we see a reflection of ourselves looking at ourselves from a side view. Johns-Messenger leads us down corridors that have mirrors on 45° angles that reflect light around 90° corners. You see other people or yourself in unexpected places. With its sharp angles and geometric complexity people can imagine getting inside that feared <i>Vault </i>sculpture. However, <i>Yellow</i>’s big round window in the entrance invites us in to this angular world. One initially feels like there could be many routes or paths to take around this actually quite simple hairpin shaped corridor. Shades of yellow light descend into darkness just as they do in the inner chambers of <i>Vault</i>—suggesting something deeper or more internal. There is an element of Alice’s experience <i>through the looking glass</i> as we start to question what is reflection space and what is real space. Similar to the way any sort of self-examination enables you to be aware of yourself. You think god that woman’s vain look at her pouting at herself in the mirror, oh now she thinks someone’s watching her so she’s trying to act all casual, now she’s looking around to see if anyone saw...oh yeah it’s me..I saw...me. There is a performative element of at once being and becoming. </span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqZ-AUDVpCz3fUvllGdLdJC3Fz2ZUOtStaA9ievBj3gLjtpmb3KqOcVRVgZnQ-e3COJlSSn6p0M2pWKdM8eQ9YahNqMUhpQvBAXOM6-ElYv_F9khUOWsDIlREeQC2qeJNxRt1Gxm49nIqM/s1600/Vault-large.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqZ-AUDVpCz3fUvllGdLdJC3Fz2ZUOtStaA9ievBj3gLjtpmb3KqOcVRVgZnQ-e3COJlSSn6p0M2pWKdM8eQ9YahNqMUhpQvBAXOM6-ElYv_F9khUOWsDIlREeQC2qeJNxRt1Gxm49nIqM/s1600/Vault-large.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Yellow </i>is a playful work that invites us to play a narcissistic hide and seek game with ourselves. The audience is central to the work. <i>Vault </i>was something that seemed to come from an impression of an elitist art world—people felt excluded. Its closed sloping forms, as well as its name, announced something locked or insular. In <i>Yellow </i>we are allowed entry into the secret tunnels of this world and discover in its interior, not a dreaded <i>Yellow Peril </i>Minotaur waiting to devour us; but rather, infinite views of ourselves—which maybe even more frightening.<i> </i>A warning at the entrance asks you enter this space with caution. You never see your double front on in this work but are aware of it like a shadow catching up with you. It is like the sort of claustrophobic madness we might imagine happens in rockets or <a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=3225553745050909319&postID=5850442403746007571&from=pencil" name="_GoBack"></a>on submarines, where the one thing you want to escape most is yourself. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_2wUB5DdgsGm5Z0OW2Vml3qL_d2vwDGN6Eq3I2SS5KrgPmPjobbs-DIrV6gCJ7A2cKXWxGa4TceBXEDKajrJhw77PGzlqsDwNbXwXZdlze9-H6CDPQ-ykUKpUfisgLBVvSGaaau6DRr3P/s1600/image002yellow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_2wUB5DdgsGm5Z0OW2Vml3qL_d2vwDGN6Eq3I2SS5KrgPmPjobbs-DIrV6gCJ7A2cKXWxGa4TceBXEDKajrJhw77PGzlqsDwNbXwXZdlze9-H6CDPQ-ykUKpUfisgLBVvSGaaau6DRr3P/s320/image002yellow.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Yellow</i> shows us that sometimes the most unnerving experience can be watching ourselves watching ourselves. It is much easier to stand outside a work and criticise its aesthetic merits (as Melbournians did with <i>Vault</i>)<i> </i>rather then ask ourselves to critique our own values and attitudes. Ironically, the controversy sparked by <i>Vault </i>inspired discussions about identity, art, cultural significance and aesthetics. Johns-Messenger shows us that however we enter into an artwork, with hate, love, fear or indifference; we do so to look at ourselves. Works that inspire the most hate because of their intangibility can become icons of public debate and reveal collective fears. The adventurous maze like quality of Johns-Messenger <i>Yellow</i> also reveals how simultaneously exciting and unsettling this can be. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
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</div>Inkblothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560776688196218442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3225553745050909319.post-8831093511254224732011-10-18T04:38:00.000-07:002011-11-14T03:21:36.860-08:00Filthy<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;"></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1OCt2Uw7Xxs_j1gmrM2EJq7-q7dYQdLHjoMB8pFgKbDhcSR9ymwoImsWiFYlOTHWI5zB1mfXzqyyhp6DOi07bzoeDDTS7guw4uvg74QmU3suIn6c_Hm2IxBJiN1eqNDibmkoGCcMnsA3U/s1600/Diseased-Roses+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1OCt2Uw7Xxs_j1gmrM2EJq7-q7dYQdLHjoMB8pFgKbDhcSR9ymwoImsWiFYlOTHWI5zB1mfXzqyyhp6DOi07bzoeDDTS7guw4uvg74QmU3suIn6c_Hm2IxBJiN1eqNDibmkoGCcMnsA3U/s320/Diseased-Roses+2.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">My love isn’t good enough. It’s unwanted. I left it on the windowsill and now it’s gone off, spoiled, fly-blown, encased with scar tissue. All my photos have become diseased. </span></i></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">—Glenn Sloggett</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">Glenn Sloggett’s exhibition <i>Filthy</i> - <i>a white trash (lost) love story </i>is about rejection. Throughout his work he taps into the painful clarity of the moment where the lover realises that the beloved just doesn’t like them that much. They have absolutely no chance. The photographs are images of diseased flowers, a waiting dog, graffiti, bright plastic flowers with bright plastic brooms, armless mannequins, cars with tarpaulins on them hitched up on blocks and grinning eager looking skeletons in second hand stores. Each image tells us about how the lover sees themselves at that moment as somehow discarded and repellent. Sloggett also captures the way the outside world responds to signs of a broken hearted self—pity with a sort of bashful cringe. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
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</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGvuIv29VGntVVQxKqnSrU2fQejBhIEXUZVHfIHjIzrILYEHCgaMmdHTdsRXEjx9n3POjC5VE3BSFfYmidR7pBMrfk_mbbYQt_eBFf_z-EnpXIHST0o5KyajDLfjD4wC0G-i1zKY5rJgOf/s1600/Reservoir-Dog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="312" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGvuIv29VGntVVQxKqnSrU2fQejBhIEXUZVHfIHjIzrILYEHCgaMmdHTdsRXEjx9n3POjC5VE3BSFfYmidR7pBMrfk_mbbYQt_eBFf_z-EnpXIHST0o5KyajDLfjD4wC0G-i1zKY5rJgOf/s320/Reservoir-Dog.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;"> </span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">Accompanying the exhibition is a mixed tape of pain songs that range from the Johnny Cash version of <i>Hurt</i> to <i>Hope there’s someone</i> by Antony and the Johnsons. The beautiful melancholy of the music is like the story the lover tells themselves about their endurance, their stoicism and is the tender and romantic way of enjoying the suffering. In a corner of the room is a little plastic poo. This is the antithesis of the heartfelt and earnest music. The photographs themselves are emotionally somewhere in between the poo and the music. They portray the banality of an Ophelia complex or the affectation in a Nick Cave ‘angry man’ strut. These sombre melancholy expressions of the rejected self are seen as awkward and silly in bright suburban clarity and the sunny Australian ‘chin-up’ light.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx-GuLW1TWE38WdnYbkxFOv9DF2wEdAP0nNsY9OePjDeM39-GHwx9isdeoNFr1Dq8OKPWcejULy9pU3HaTXhmlvNSuEGDtzjBN64fNVc0igJGm09clCoj2hLR_-U642N-4lX-Hpc1Wpya7/s1600/Not-quite-right+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="311" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx-GuLW1TWE38WdnYbkxFOv9DF2wEdAP0nNsY9OePjDeM39-GHwx9isdeoNFr1Dq8OKPWcejULy9pU3HaTXhmlvNSuEGDtzjBN64fNVc0igJGm09clCoj2hLR_-U642N-4lX-Hpc1Wpya7/s320/Not-quite-right+2.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">This ‘lost love’ story, speaks of a blunt ache that is not received by the wider community with a great deal of compassion. Australians are not known for their great laments to lost love or rejection. There is a humour in Sloggett’s work that plays on this cultural cringe of displays of the pathetic. In <i>Reservoir Dog</i> the little fluffy terrier tied to the bench, is vigorously bouncing on his hind legs with his tongue out. He is waiting, and waiting for his master to release him and take him home. The photograph focuses on the steel of the bench and the cement of the pavement reinforcing a sense of the happy but impatient lap dog’s captivity. Blurred traffic rushes back and forth oblivious to the plight of the little dog—whose suffering is still kind of cute and funny.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVJ4Aw3A1ZhHsyJZxSKDBskg5VDd31OVmyVyslDhvOo-ulQ48qcJh25K5LQ7pqQBjO6v_rnekC6kSatplQlEjAL1n4IOPzzIDPLtwasDUB5Y3V0dgt0xT7pBGpEPdObydxP_sKxWJd1dlH/s1600/Life-Sux+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVJ4Aw3A1ZhHsyJZxSKDBskg5VDd31OVmyVyslDhvOo-ulQ48qcJh25K5LQ7pqQBjO6v_rnekC6kSatplQlEjAL1n4IOPzzIDPLtwasDUB5Y3V0dgt0xT7pBGpEPdObydxP_sKxWJd1dlH/s320/Life-Sux+2.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;"> In <i>Diseased Roses</i> a scraggly looking rose bush with black spotted leaves produces a couple of lovely velvety looking red roses, the flower of emblematic of desire and love. In the background we see weeds, gumtrees, the roof of brick veneer suburban houses, brown lawn nature strips and asphalt roads. The melancholy and symbolism of the diseased roses seems like a Goth in full make-up walking through a suburban street in Glen Waverley on a summer’s day. Yet the image of the neglected garden is so familiar, like the yapping dog, the element of aberration in it could go totally unrecognised by the passer-by. This is part of the feeling of ‘filthiness’. There is the story of rejection and neglect told by the state of the objects in the photos. And then there is the basic acceptance and lack of empathy from an outside world who view this sort of pain as just embarrassing—all too normal and commonplace to be given much recognition. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieYH3t0Tz0oqNKZHrz-0r1RYTnCZmKhLrhIeyCsLg4OIIH-p-v-4pPOlr49dmj2KogxDdgNtncwfJIkhnwF68WyYv4hG823mFtquYLWvDfVY8rA27QaUpGydtDXhUt2thUtzyi8bASOhLS/s1600/002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieYH3t0Tz0oqNKZHrz-0r1RYTnCZmKhLrhIeyCsLg4OIIH-p-v-4pPOlr49dmj2KogxDdgNtncwfJIkhnwF68WyYv4hG823mFtquYLWvDfVY8rA27QaUpGydtDXhUt2thUtzyi8bASOhLS/s320/002.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">There is a sense in all these works of not only the pain but also a helpless and misunderstood rage. The photograph of the writing in the cement pavement “You are alone” and the hot pink “Sux” seem to capture a frustrated attempt at catharsis. This sort of public announcement and public defilement seems a tough way to release the self-pity. The photographs give us the distance and the narrative to view these expressions of despair with sympathy. However, we imagine the real life response to the angst-ridden vandalism is that it’s just a bit ugly and annoying. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKTOQYhZFn3IoFT2bmG7HwrtiaDZ7J_4J1btAAoLrQAK36vNE_LUjEW10dOFkMLB0uzolmihyphenhyphenWg_bYwvldERvkwWyN9DD5bEVO-PgtEl0woQcoFYjnvfcS9NR8_Qy17Y7EZB6ejpkG2kpY/s1600/Plastic-Flowers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="312" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKTOQYhZFn3IoFT2bmG7HwrtiaDZ7J_4J1btAAoLrQAK36vNE_LUjEW10dOFkMLB0uzolmihyphenhyphenWg_bYwvldERvkwWyN9DD5bEVO-PgtEl0woQcoFYjnvfcS9NR8_Qy17Y7EZB6ejpkG2kpY/s320/Plastic-Flowers.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;"> </span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">In works like <i>Amputee Op-Shop Bride</i> and <i>Plastic Flowers</i> we read a certain shame in ‘trying too hard’. The glittering white wedding dress in the op shop window tells a story of a sullied fantasy. That the mannequin is missing an arm only adds to the absurdity of the rejectee dreaming of white weddings and happy-ever-afters. Similarly the trolley of bright and colourful fake flowers and plastic brooms seem like having too much make up for going down the street in hope that the cute guy is working at 7/11 today. It reminds me of line in the Dorothy Porter poetry book <i>Monkey Mask </i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 72pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">In love I have no style</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 72pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">My heart is decked out in bright pink tracksuit pants</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">Sloggett’s work captures the awkwardness and the obviousness of wanting someone too much to ‘play the game’ right.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghRLnWY1yhVi4d3CE5wtTywei90CktkY1-fwcwkSiMNl6qa-l1rxar9hNQLzrD52pC9SlXSlrh3ewhPX_0qUfoho14DjY9hD0RXUdvyqj31bM_IRYKdGqMW-YzcLlvduZlDEdGbBIAEcQZ/s1600/You-are-alone+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="311" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghRLnWY1yhVi4d3CE5wtTywei90CktkY1-fwcwkSiMNl6qa-l1rxar9hNQLzrD52pC9SlXSlrh3ewhPX_0qUfoho14DjY9hD0RXUdvyqj31bM_IRYKdGqMW-YzcLlvduZlDEdGbBIAEcQZ/s320/You-are-alone+3.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-size: small;">In all these artworks there is tenderness and sympathy for the broken hearted. We imagine characters behind the emotions that are aroused by these images. The photographs depict a beauty in awkward and embarrassing emotions; emotions that are too often considered ok to get drunk over initially but are then best reserved for diary entries and private wallows with ice cream. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Anna Newbold</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">at <a href="http://www.colourfactory.com.au/gallery/current/coming-2/">Colour Factory </a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=3225553745050909319&postID=883109351125422473" name="_GoBack"></a></span></div>Inkblothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560776688196218442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3225553745050909319.post-75538641831414798942011-10-14T04:38:00.000-07:002011-10-16T19:03:42.094-07:00Patrick Pound's Collected Works: Telling Tales<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoFgek5awtbe_221bLpJwYnWvCxauLb2qbMqFQpeoUMUYtvBPiRySR-YQgc38PMjr0mZ7bICszAnv45NhRxSn0l3GwJY32BgVe5Ei5Dq-NKTl2okdk-PU1JRAuSkf6DGmLYRHKdmP16FK6/s1600/_MG_4157.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoFgek5awtbe_221bLpJwYnWvCxauLb2qbMqFQpeoUMUYtvBPiRySR-YQgc38PMjr0mZ7bICszAnv45NhRxSn0l3GwJY32BgVe5Ei5Dq-NKTl2okdk-PU1JRAuSkf6DGmLYRHKdmP16FK6/s320/_MG_4157.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.fehilycontemporary.com.au/patrick-pound.html"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Collected Works : Telling Things</i></span></a></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">Patrick Pound describes his artwork in the <i>Collected Works: Telling Things</i> exhibition as like a ‘dad-joke’. The viewer is faced with a series of collections and with each one we have to establish a pattern. There is a series of books on the floor and we have to work out their relationship to each other based on their titles. There is a series of postcards on a wall that are all from the same place and we have to work out the story. There is a series of objects on a table and we have to work out their relationship to each other. The collections of photographs make us wonder make us wonder who the photographers were. We find ourselves looking for not just what is seen, but also for what is inferred by the space around it. Like the ‘dad-joke’, Pound plays on words, puns and associations often revealing what is most obvious. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyk42soW_IhQLlbO8f5eM6pxd46-vwy5RgaMk6zk7qbkSFEeZWdNbGUBDnezByr6LdIvG74_Y3FNfAYmFUzW8-9Q64tOErg7993mW-jjcD-8Ll_pWz_U4XfCBBB-PEYcVscOAqWggdGGY1/s1600/_MG_4104.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyk42soW_IhQLlbO8f5eM6pxd46-vwy5RgaMk6zk7qbkSFEeZWdNbGUBDnezByr6LdIvG74_Y3FNfAYmFUzW8-9Q64tOErg7993mW-jjcD-8Ll_pWz_U4XfCBBB-PEYcVscOAqWggdGGY1/s320/_MG_4104.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">In the collections of found photographs we search for a common link. In one series all the people have the wind blowing their clothes. In another they are all listening to music. These two collections show us how the key factor in all these photos, the punch line, is in fact invisible and only understood by what is around it. The intensity of the wind is shown by how it affects the hair and clothes of the people. The type of music playing is shown by how the people in the photos interact with their radio—dancing, lying down, working on something else. By the repetition of the blowing clothes as a metonym for wind, or the radio as a metonym for music we become aware of how we make meaning by associations. The very nature of collage makes a search for meaning in the relationships between images. The viewer looks for the cohesion that is made by the empty spaces.<span style="color: red;"> </span>Pound’s work makes us aware of how we understand the world around us not necessarily through what is shown but in the space in between. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPH2HhkF7_s-nCLH3XyM0DCJFvQ6wrIotOCzk00NbN4ngagcUGU3Y8C-o7zs8DN-03bzmdJ76V0bllBFyV_2fyiZo-mu03OLnpCGSmuxsuXX2M4zXj15Q_g7GujPdVv4kDo5N9HSRrIf30/s1600/_MG_4108.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPH2HhkF7_s-nCLH3XyM0DCJFvQ6wrIotOCzk00NbN4ngagcUGU3Y8C-o7zs8DN-03bzmdJ76V0bllBFyV_2fyiZo-mu03OLnpCGSmuxsuXX2M4zXj15Q_g7GujPdVv4kDo5N9HSRrIf30/s320/_MG_4108.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">In another collection of photographs, Pound shows us <i>People who look dead but (probably) aren’t</i>. In this collage the invisible breath and heartbeat of the sleeping, resting people seems initially the invisible factor that we are looking for. We soon realise that it’s impossible to prove if these people are alive or asleep from the photograph. We become aware that what we really need to search for is a sense of the character of the unseen photographer in order to try and work out if these people are alive. Do these photographs reveal their ghoulish or just cheeky interests in stealing these private (or perhaps morbid) moments of the people? So it is not just the search for breath that we become aware of, but also a sense of the other half of the room—the missing space; the other side of the camera where the photographer stands and shoots.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEMJmwmwS4MZ_Yigbb35PJ_T26wfrnuR4dEFMkBtCCC827iKoP74G6v4GfNZ7RNFksb3ro9cuHhMYgVFtNu4hmQ2QSXX9L4Xwmig4AQyap6EtM00qGOX8Wl9L2ttck9qg4dHGI_rtKvHlL/s1600/8048741_orig.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEMJmwmwS4MZ_Yigbb35PJ_T26wfrnuR4dEFMkBtCCC827iKoP74G6v4GfNZ7RNFksb3ro9cuHhMYgVFtNu4hmQ2QSXX9L4Xwmig4AQyap6EtM00qGOX8Wl9L2ttck9qg4dHGI_rtKvHlL/s320/8048741_orig.jpg" width="250" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">Several works deal with the paradoxical presence and absence of the photographer. In one collection all the people photographed have cameras. These people have the potential to take photos of the photographer who we are not able to see. This gives us a sense of the missing half of this reality presented to us. The viewer becomes aware that the photograph is just a tiny square in the photographer’s full panoramic landscape. Photographs tell a subjective story of the events of a place and time and of the interests of the photographer. Yet that person who presses down the button is necessarily absent from the moment that is being recorded. They are the missing space that holds all the meaning of the image.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0zF3V57mQSmjSOJLZ2ujYJRVokV5SGcc8QIwNDD8hnrN1m3foBnzKc9GhfAiTVRRvxtXOM3C1wTbZ89eXn8kPPSIz4ZDvqyeBcdZjCePKVoTaOj6JJ0EJaZ8uuum4OdGnSiryThTS5rBd/s1600/_MG_4150.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0zF3V57mQSmjSOJLZ2ujYJRVokV5SGcc8QIwNDD8hnrN1m3foBnzKc9GhfAiTVRRvxtXOM3C1wTbZ89eXn8kPPSIz4ZDvqyeBcdZjCePKVoTaOj6JJ0EJaZ8uuum4OdGnSiryThTS5rBd/s320/_MG_4150.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">In the collage <i>The Photographer’s Shadow </i>and a series of larger photographs entitled <i>The Photographer’s Hand </i>we sense that<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=3225553745050909319&postID=7553864183141479894" name="_GoBack"></a> the people on the other end of these cameras haven’t quite succumbed to the notion that they can’t be in the photo. In the shadow collage, dark photgraphers’ shadows creep up walls and along cut grass and white skirts, encroaching on the smiling subjects’ moments in recorded history. In the larger works it is literal thumbs and fingers that obscure the image intended on being recorded. These crimes of photography, like the smudged finger prints of a crime scene, mean the photographer will still remain unknown, but we are aware that he has touched this space.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz7Fs5PnmnFXpyi2tvrd9PoORoaSymDO1Y2Yjado_lmieAROa_Ogo4k3RcgeRVmPrvDNdRlziVYjtL5sy-1SJBe-nagIhZNinRjKZjwnPrTE1FGRbJcZ6tCA4uRMjr-qlyAXgPQtK1JiIb/s1600/Cliff_House_Postcard.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="198" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz7Fs5PnmnFXpyi2tvrd9PoORoaSymDO1Y2Yjado_lmieAROa_Ogo4k3RcgeRVmPrvDNdRlziVYjtL5sy-1SJBe-nagIhZNinRjKZjwnPrTE1FGRbJcZ6tCA4uRMjr-qlyAXgPQtK1JiIb/s320/Cliff_House_Postcard.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">In <i>Building Time (the Cliff House, San Francisco)</i> Pound displays a series of postcards that tell the story of the Cliff House restaurant and its repeated fire, destruction, rebuilding and makeover. The site seems to have an almost Hitchcockian curse in its propensity for strange coincidence. The drama of the architecture in each rebuilding, every one so quintessentially in the style of its time, also reminds us of the vertiginous settings one expects from a thriller. Pound creates a flip-book like animation of the story of the site by placing the postcards in a way that shows us the time passing and the creation and destruction of each new version of the restaurant. This space, like all spaces, is changed by what is around it but in some ways reflects the mortality of the people it encounters more than most. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: red;"></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisYYOEmsJDJFlYJ_OjhNoiYUeAO-O9nqqADZ7VdV2CmkI5ljP_f7Y19kdlyzDaulNsEPg2Hqp5TIpq9ohxVNIxsP6Ju8xG0XV2qHU63SVGPqAelPw7xjs034NvN8rj6mBXW_5OvL5FJFJD/s1600/_MG_4125.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisYYOEmsJDJFlYJ_OjhNoiYUeAO-O9nqqADZ7VdV2CmkI5ljP_f7Y19kdlyzDaulNsEPg2Hqp5TIpq9ohxVNIxsP6Ju8xG0XV2qHU63SVGPqAelPw7xjs034NvN8rj6mBXW_5OvL5FJFJD/s320/_MG_4125.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">The ultimate tribute to space in this exhibition is <i>The Space Museum.</i> In this work Pound lays out a collection of found objects on white tables. There are records, pictures, books, video games and postcards and each deals with the idea of the pocket, the void, the gap, the place over there or the spot in between. One is two pictures of a man leaping the chasm between cliffs, another is a tape titled <i>5<sup>th</sup> Dimension/Individually and Collectively</i>, a novel titled <i>Between Man and Man</i>, a relief map of Australia, a University thesis titled <i>Parking Spaces for Cars Assessing the Demand</i>, a hand held computer game called <i>Space Attack.</i> Like the photographic collages, we are drawn to the variations of the conceptual elements that seem only to be defined by what is around them. It is the space between things, like the gaps between words on a page that make meaning. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCgQjN8StEbWaftvf0WKgLj2vSbeMHx6bkNmkGT6pGQ3vFhmkboAd3kk2Q9rRAt09bnrwlnGT_mvShDBnKyFiax42v77qWEGcnoTfavKGWqEnav192FNTXuXll2OgM9uPQNEzFl_yk1cPh/s1600/_MG_4136.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCgQjN8StEbWaftvf0WKgLj2vSbeMHx6bkNmkGT6pGQ3vFhmkboAd3kk2Q9rRAt09bnrwlnGT_mvShDBnKyFiax42v77qWEGcnoTfavKGWqEnav192FNTXuXll2OgM9uPQNEzFl_yk1cPh/s320/_MG_4136.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">The space in the ‘dad-joke’ is like a gap between meaning and form that only becomes apparent when dad takes advantage of the sound of the word rather than its meaning. Pound takes advantage of the obvious thing in the image that hasn’t been captured visually. He also considers how what is not captured visually can create patterns when repeated again and again—so we can see space, wind, breath only by what is inferred. We can only see the photographer when he obscures the image he is photographing. Yet, Pound, in his collections of photographs and objects has embarked on capturing the uncatchable. The exhibition resonates with a Dadaistic poetry, humour and absurdity. Pound shows us that we understand what we see by what we don’t see and that empty space is the place of tension and meaning. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.fehilycontemporary.com.au/">Fehily Contemporary</a> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">Anna </span></div>Inkblothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560776688196218442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3225553745050909319.post-51572980644045519472011-10-04T18:36:00.000-07:002011-10-13T02:32:32.601-07:00Nana<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglhZsvA73vxg3RY7Bwwp8t2qta_cdXN2CeusJqRGs3zJoMByd0aZ-uFMs7OufT79w8AhCHadzom1CyZHypb0ZbtqncfJQZTWBFq3igxek22HJ50YCTHfV2VtxGtrC4mSjX67DP0BHYO0J1/s1600/006.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglhZsvA73vxg3RY7Bwwp8t2qta_cdXN2CeusJqRGs3zJoMByd0aZ-uFMs7OufT79w8AhCHadzom1CyZHypb0ZbtqncfJQZTWBFq3igxek22HJ50YCTHfV2VtxGtrC4mSjX67DP0BHYO0J1/s320/006.jpg" width="205" /></a></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;">Emile Zola’s novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nana</i> (1880) is the story of a beautiful Parisian prostitute who develops a tremendous influence on the aristocratic society from which she has drawn her clients. Written and set at the end of the French Second Empire, the character Nana’s cumulative power and destruction becomes symbolic of the excess and decay of the nobility of France. She comes to represent an orgiastic loss of control that is coupled with a crippling shame and despair. Nana, born in poverty, seeks revenge for what was denied her as girl on the streets. The men who govern society, have enjoyed women like Nana and the other courtesans (such as Gaga—perhaps an inspiration for the Lady?) while duplicitously being able to live double lives. Unlike their wives and their lovers, the men can be a respected but still indulge in their secret vices without any repercussions. Nana changes this. This voluptuous strawberry blonde demands public respect and seems on a mission to reveal the “filth” she sees evident from the Emperor down. She has an enormous appetite for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">more</i>—money, power, clothes, lovers but always remains dissatisfied. With more and more decadence comes more and more repulsion. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdQY_z6ji4AlpPV5KyRQNVOjuGznfjXANAIj94_qkx635Bafqg9N-BhMmKrZyaLz0BYwJOUQ0ZFyBCpaGH2D5SGjYS4o36niZFxmS1W9agRrhXGB_E0cVDcG2uQM-Q94JphgE_6h7WoCnW/s1600/003.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="277" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdQY_z6ji4AlpPV5KyRQNVOjuGznfjXANAIj94_qkx635Bafqg9N-BhMmKrZyaLz0BYwJOUQ0ZFyBCpaGH2D5SGjYS4o36niZFxmS1W9agRrhXGB_E0cVDcG2uQM-Q94JphgE_6h7WoCnW/s320/003.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;">While she moves into an ever more powerful position in society, she is seen by some to be able to “infect” the upper classes with the filth of the slums—‘a fly the colour of sunshine that had flown from a dung heap’. It is perhaps easier for the nobility to see her as a sort of outside parasite that has come to feed on their goodness. However, rather than some sort of outside threat, she could also be read as a manifestation of the corruption in the upper classes. She becomes symptomatic of the hypocrisy, sexual repression and moral degradation for which the prostitution industry has only provided an opportunistic service. Until Nana, the duplicity of these upstanding men had only revealed itself in winks and nudges. Nana becomes more than just an adored and desired prostitute. Like the ‘Blonde Venus’ part she performs on stage in the opening chapter, Nana becomes a goddess of Jouissance—where pleasure is taken to the limits and becomes painful. These men suffer for their pleasure and become total slaves to it. Nana cripples them financially, she bankrupts them morally and she breaks them of their dignity and self-respect. In a frenzy of lust and greed, the men who chase her are brought down choking on their own sweet cake. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1I579z7L4b04QIO7xI5pLvYCxz8tbV7xOokSzs39taOqtmUUv_nMLUoHUSuPsauQobGExfrVZPu0X_7ddeUq5a3buCUTUlPK5c1b6GtlKzfjD0XtF3dm2Zspw16Dre_lePo65OabMZ8Hn/s1600/007.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1I579z7L4b04QIO7xI5pLvYCxz8tbV7xOokSzs39taOqtmUUv_nMLUoHUSuPsauQobGExfrVZPu0X_7ddeUq5a3buCUTUlPK5c1b6GtlKzfjD0XtF3dm2Zspw16Dre_lePo65OabMZ8Hn/s320/007.JPG" width="226" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;">Nana is able to wipe her conscience clean. In her callous response to the suffering of her lovers she is able to say ‘...if they’ve kicked the bucket or lost all their money, they’ve only themselves to blame. I’d got nothing to do with it<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">’. </i>Nana is a selfish, vain narcissist who is in love with her superficial beauty and its magnetic power. She stands naked in front of her mirror admiring herself for hours. As the power of Nana builds we see this beauty as a mask for an internal decay. This is manifested through the piles of destruction she leaves behind. Like some reversal of an alchemist princess story; she is a pretty urchin who becomes a princess to be able to turn gold into straw. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-left: 72pt; text-align: justify;">Nothing remained intact in her hands; everything was broken or dirtied or withered between her little white fingers; a heap of nameless debris, twisted rags and muddy tatters followed her and marked her passage. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;">As readers we pity the destruction of the men who are destroyed in the same way that their gifts are and we are appalled at such waste. However, we can also see that their access to so much wealth for the sake of buying their moments of pleasure is where their waste and ruin begins. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeoJ5GsrjsoyQ67mIWU_vmu53E-qWUg3wYgU-Vpz8XGBeBy02-mt3TMt8hXBdqBvUX2drGRTaRI1ano7plx2-2uWnwVrfe8_T8HdCIpK3wmC83CAPu9iL7BdlqlVcb-nnmAa_n2uCrpHCU/s1600/002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeoJ5GsrjsoyQ67mIWU_vmu53E-qWUg3wYgU-Vpz8XGBeBy02-mt3TMt8hXBdqBvUX2drGRTaRI1ano7plx2-2uWnwVrfe8_T8HdCIpK3wmC83CAPu9iL7BdlqlVcb-nnmAa_n2uCrpHCU/s320/002.jpg" width="196" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;">Nana, as an agent of masculine self-destruction, embodies lack as a necessary component of pleasure. That she will never be satisfied by them is part of her allure. She will never be faithful, she will always detest them and be bored by them, she will always want more—she will smash their presents of Dresden china and throw their diamonds in the fire to see if they become coal. For all they sacrifice for her she will be irritated by their bankruptcy, imprisonment or suicides that leave annoying stains on her carpet. Nana, in her greed, stupidity and lack of empathy, reflects back to them their own boredom and that insatiable greed to have, to own, to possess. They would like to contain her, make contracts with her, and marry her in order to control a manic desire that continues to grow with her power. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWunmWMXF0f3vB40N0lOfpEk0D5K6tFHMf_GrCj-jsPw-8z-3v7FDpms34O0nrOhPKzxDeLREM8O6U2JxAM5BJFrMS2XIVHbuva6xTlSED9G-6J686PYMEJ2_2h7EpXJ7t-utQgEIyBRJe/s1600/012.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWunmWMXF0f3vB40N0lOfpEk0D5K6tFHMf_GrCj-jsPw-8z-3v7FDpms34O0nrOhPKzxDeLREM8O6U2JxAM5BJFrMS2XIVHbuva6xTlSED9G-6J686PYMEJ2_2h7EpXJ7t-utQgEIyBRJe/s1600/012.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;">Count Muffat, Nana’s most generous benefactor and most humiliated lover finds himself totally possessed by her in a way he once was in prayer and religious fervour. On meeting Nana in the din and sweat of backstage he becomes of aware of a sexual freedom that he didn’t know existed and equated it immediately with a path to destruction that he felt was out of his control. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-left: 72pt; text-align: justify;">He was hers utterly: he would have abjured everything, sold everything, to possess her for a single hour that very night. Youth, a lustful puberty of early manhood, was stirring within him at last, flaming up suddenly in the chaste heart of the Catholic and amid the dignified traditions of middle age.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;">It as though Muffat enters into this relationship aware of giving over his free will. In the course of the novel the austere religious world of the Count and his wife Sabine unravels into a reckless debauchery that ruins their family and their estate. Nana s advises Muffat that: </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-left: 72pt; text-align: justify;">If you weren't brutes you would be as nice with your wives as you are with us, and if your wives weren't geese they would take as much pains to keep you as we do to get you.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;">Here Nana’s insight alludes to the sexual repression that keeps her in business. Muffat is a pitiful character whose naivety and cowardliness make him a man who needs to be directed through life. In the hands of his mother’s Jesuit lawyer he can find momentary fulfilment on his knees burning in pain in religious supplication and in the hands of Nana he can find fulfilment on his knees begging like a dog. These are the men in power - gripped by cycles of pleasure and shame.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRpwmNvfTHMwfPMPgTZ7fIKcxJzBqCdfkYsUwRvQFPB0XMrAQ9TOGXEJOnp7o0qzNd6CjWNUx0jbBOlpIg0nNzWYbgz8bG1j-m_x67nEmS52qiz8CvMCnUfefs1-pJBqQ31UHnU8j1tjhX/s1600/004.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRpwmNvfTHMwfPMPgTZ7fIKcxJzBqCdfkYsUwRvQFPB0XMrAQ9TOGXEJOnp7o0qzNd6CjWNUx0jbBOlpIg0nNzWYbgz8bG1j-m_x67nEmS52qiz8CvMCnUfefs1-pJBqQ31UHnU8j1tjhX/s320/004.jpg" width="222" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;">The beauty, wealth and power that make the character Nana almost mythical represent the certain illusions of infallibility in a pleasure culture. Her inevitable rotting demise (that is as ugly as we can imagine) reads not so much as a punishment for the individual woman’s crimes but rather as sort of social tumour finally revealed from behind a mask. The novel ends at the eve of the war with Prussia with mobs of men chanting “Berlin. Berlin. Berlin”—their libidinal energy will turn to a similarly self-destructive avenue. We imagine, <a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=3225553745050909319&postID=5157298064404551947" name="_GoBack"></a>with their defeat on the battlefields of Prussia, the demise of the French Second Empire ended in a horror and shame that is echoed the tale of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nana. </i> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdfSLcItSZ8ZKbAXDIQmvEuzkvz8yXiCUB3onwkA_qS3lXjUYk3If_EuALo-Z_9f-unckJLRUDA5QJjTVjYy77XblC1UyHfaz7_hC4i-5fYFCWPXjlo66KeoZFZ_bD-UFGzabl8rLSB1av/s1600/011.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdfSLcItSZ8ZKbAXDIQmvEuzkvz8yXiCUB3onwkA_qS3lXjUYk3If_EuALo-Z_9f-unckJLRUDA5QJjTVjYy77XblC1UyHfaz7_hC4i-5fYFCWPXjlo66KeoZFZ_bD-UFGzabl8rLSB1av/s1600/011.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"> Anna</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span></div>Inkblothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560776688196218442noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3225553745050909319.post-21761210958387710592011-09-22T03:37:00.000-07:002011-09-23T04:23:58.494-07:00Cloud House<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisTEw9pcG4NeP5ZjFJ7ZP163VdEmPVl2lnU1-tHBoJVXTaFtY7kTHY9sAQmb9ViIihmh8BKJ-xX21RxyLwyhBZUmkOaomdWUA1hf4lJEuC1qj_IyU3R4DHqL7bkAgwYuvE1dHlzmUCvPjH/s1600/michalea+greaves+image+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><img border="0" hca="true" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisTEw9pcG4NeP5ZjFJ7ZP163VdEmPVl2lnU1-tHBoJVXTaFtY7kTHY9sAQmb9ViIihmh8BKJ-xX21RxyLwyhBZUmkOaomdWUA1hf4lJEuC1qj_IyU3R4DHqL7bkAgwYuvE1dHlzmUCvPjH/s320/michalea+greaves+image+1.jpg" width="213" /></span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.michaelagleave.com/michaela_gleave/home.html">Michaela Gleave’s</a> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cloud House</i> in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Octopus 11 – The Matter of Air</i> exhibition at <a href="http://www.gertrude.org.au/">Gertrude Contemporary</a> creates a magic space, even with all the parts of its construction exposed. The walls of the gallery are painted Yves Klein blue. Two smoke machines pump smoke into a cubby-like house through little windows. The viewer must climb a ladder to get inside. The smoke fills the floor of the house to create an illusion of infinite depth. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The clear and logical transparency of how the work is made only enhances the fun. It evokes the smoke and mirrors illusions of a magic show and, thus, the desire of an imaginative audience to suspend the disbelief. It must be heartbreaking for magicians when their audience gets to an age when they only care about how the magic is done and feel annoyed at having been ‘tricked’ as youngsters. Gleave in no way tries to trick us. This is important because it means we can leave our 10 year old cynic down the bottom of the ladder to ponder the smoke machines. We can then feel free to just enjoy the enchantment of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cloud House</i>. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr3K-hISurrFVJnkGv1FpuJ5DMGi6Ivc9efIkPmzOVxmeQOM_iBAV7F0pewWsv1E5rEdZUNB6c_mpj78qKFRqOMSFjrVzp0bAk2_Xi81l_8ojeFBJFWr4AEp1KGqqp-7q8fYR3Lh53bUic/s1600/image_two.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><img border="0" hca="true" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr3K-hISurrFVJnkGv1FpuJ5DMGi6Ivc9efIkPmzOVxmeQOM_iBAV7F0pewWsv1E5rEdZUNB6c_mpj78qKFRqOMSFjrVzp0bAk2_Xi81l_8ojeFBJFWr4AEp1KGqqp-7q8fYR3Lh53bUic/s320/image_two.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The work combines a childhood place of play with the desire to escape the reality of logic and function. Like in Narnia, the Magic Faraway Tree or the Harry Potter series, the work reminds us of our desire for secret doorways to open up for us into a world where we can defy the rules of science, caution and expectations. These worlds, like dreams or imaginative child play, offer characters in fiction the opportunity to work through the tensions and anxieties that underpin life in the ‘real world’. The suggestion of infinite depth and magic contained in this cubby house feels akin to the depths of the imagination in a space where one can play without being self-conscious. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I didn’t realise I could get into the cubby even though I really wanted to. I stood and watched the smoky room from the ladder. Perhaps it was the blinding clean whiteness that inhibited me or a sense of depth created by the smoke that I read as something I would sink into. I now feel like I missed out on an chance to experience something I have fantasised about when staring out plane windows or lying back on picnic rugs. Maybe it was my understanding of clouds as something that you would fall through if you tried to sit on them like they were white fluffy cushions that stopped my ability to reason that this space was open to me to step into. The enclosed cubby house should have logically reassured me. But notions of the owners of cubbies being notoriously territorial could also have been putting me off. The otherworldliness of such a cubby maybe also told me that this space was not for me. It was like where cherubs might go to barter celestial swap cards. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Gleave’s work reminds me of one of the first installations I ever went to - Asher Bilu's <em>Escape </em>1992. In Luba Bilu's gallery in Greville Street, Prahran, in a large dark room, there were piles and piles of white shredded paper that were lit by neon lights. Every afternoon school students like me from all over the south east would dump their school bags at the door of the gallery to romp around in the shredded paper and enjoy the utter delight of entering a secret, magic place. Artworks like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cloud House </i>will let your mind play in them like you were once able to do with a box or a tree as a child. Even if you don't step in. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Anna</span></div>Inkblothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560776688196218442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3225553745050909319.post-25078622461700328842011-09-20T19:07:00.000-07:002011-09-20T19:07:30.834-07:00HEVY<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-AU</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsnSzCiRa5LmmADlR8lyY0CU0NtSBtdM_LQrnU1PCzwA_empleOwIhIlp03t1JV6VL0IeA_PM46X-XYRFiVYGVHKydXaEudxCUDSh9awAL6wQVPk6zF0jJgCnPNsvOPhpbsH1zX5ErRhF5/s1600/Hevy001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsnSzCiRa5LmmADlR8lyY0CU0NtSBtdM_LQrnU1PCzwA_empleOwIhIlp03t1JV6VL0IeA_PM46X-XYRFiVYGVHKydXaEudxCUDSh9awAL6wQVPk6zF0jJgCnPNsvOPhpbsH1zX5ErRhF5/s320/Hevy001.jpg" width="213" /></a></span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>I was under a constraint, against which I had not entirely given up struggling, so I made a demonstration against it by forgetting. </i>Sigmund Freud</span></div><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>‘HEVY’, the title of an exhibition at <a href="http://www.conical.org.au/">Conical</a>, is missing an ‘a’. Freud in <i>Forgetting of Intention</i> discusses the repetition of forgetting: forgetting to pay a doctor, forgetting to return a book, forgetting to buy blotting paper, forgetting to meet a lover and synonymous to this exhibition in a Freudian pun sort of way – forgetting to post the letter. The reasons, he puts forward, are that these acts of forgetting speak of one’s unavowed counter-will. The missing letter ‘a’ seems an aberration. However in being that, it acts as a salute to the counter-will that challenges the heavy weighted constraints of obligation and purpose. The works in this exhibition also evoke the existential absurdity of searching for a deeper meaning or interpretations of such eternal repetition.</span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>The first works we see in the exhibition are <strong><span style="font-weight: normal;">by Sanja Pahoki and Simon Horsburgh</span></strong>. Pahoki’s is a photograph of a cream apartment building that has snow piled high all around it and a fold out black chair directly in front of the photograph. Horsburgh’s work is a set<span> </span>shark jaws made from egg cartons that hang on the top right <span> </span>of the wall from the photograph. Pahoki’s work evokes the heaviness of domestic obligation and the desire to escape it. A little sail boat in the window of the bottom floor apartment reminds us of imaginative child-play. Like the suggested attendant who has escaped staring at the walls of white from this black chair, the child in the house can escape the banality of indoors by playing out adventures. Horburgh’s shark jaws made of egg cartons seem a combination of cold day craft and the trophies brought back from fishing trips. Together they seem to suggest that the triumphant return to the home is a necessary part of the daydream. The malevolence of open shark jaws reminds the viewer of the heavy risks one faces if they decided to throw it all in. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC6Lf4N5Ugr00CY_W3As-WBumPxV3ot-7LFWBdcAOGzmj2Bi_asOfmREwXZfpL3T79mbWR1me7N_utMd3cFbg3vJ_5kMsD-nOHXh8Ugt5BAK9IUPTzK9take7f_4wWCybcX49PVhmn7dFh/s1600/Hevy003.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC6Lf4N5Ugr00CY_W3As-WBumPxV3ot-7LFWBdcAOGzmj2Bi_asOfmREwXZfpL3T79mbWR1me7N_utMd3cFbg3vJ_5kMsD-nOHXh8Ugt5BAK9IUPTzK9take7f_4wWCybcX49PVhmn7dFh/s320/Hevy003.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
</div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>There is a looped video of a bird that runs up a horizontal track up a wall in Lani Seligman’s work. The bird seems to have forgotten its wings and is compelled by some sort of irrational counter-will to endlessly repeat the path up the wall. It is distressing – like a bird in a classroom that keeps banging its head into the window to try and escape. It can seem that despite all our free will, here depicted in an emblem of freedom – the bird, we continue to compulsively repeat. Repetition becomes absurd when we realise there is no sense of progression being made. Like Sisyphus with his boulder or the looped thud of the medicine ball that we hear from another work, the impact of the weight comes in two directions – the labour of rolling, waiting, running up a wall and the heavy realisation of the meaninglessness of the task. It is the actual missing weight of purpose that makes the superficial lightness seem so futile. </span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKhGuT6G_UolK1y-wLT3AI7p7gQ4SAbjhBi3oEJslzDYnmHO_255YfAXzVwqWmojcNTH3yLNpDu4qsdpdQA0OVDCn9t8rmdfuNV8rTDIWAigFNSVIPeCGiPD3ll6uQ0oqqajjFEeJgtLuc/s1600/Hevy004.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKhGuT6G_UolK1y-wLT3AI7p7gQ4SAbjhBi3oEJslzDYnmHO_255YfAXzVwqWmojcNTH3yLNpDu4qsdpdQA0OVDCn9t8rmdfuNV8rTDIWAigFNSVIPeCGiPD3ll6uQ0oqqajjFEeJgtLuc/s320/Hevy004.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>In another bird work, Kiron Robinson’s work, there is a television screen imbedded in the floor and we look down on a video of a little bird who is perhaps convalescing in a box. The box is filled with bread and bird poo and the poor bird seems terrified, huddled in a corner. In this flightless bird we read that it is the burden of security, routine and care from others that add weight. </span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>In Seligman’s other work a black heavy medicine ball thuds into a concrete corner, like the call for exercise in a prison yard. Like the birds, the balls potential for flight becomes metaphoric for a certain paradox of the notion of freedom and lightness. This ball is not one to be volleyed or dunked in a game of sport with winners and losers, arbitrary boundaries and specific ways it can or cannot be handled. The weight of no rules is heavy. </span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>Lou Hubbard creates a sunken heavy Crumpler bean bag creature from found objects. The face is made with novelty eyeballs and a punctured grimy soccer ball. It has baseball bat limbs that connote the sort of striking or infliction made to deflate these round, once more buoyant spheres. The sunken in bean bag, implies the weight of being sat on. The soccer ball shares a similar fate, though we imagine it being waterlogged under a car, waiting to be squashed. When we step back the little creature forms a Jolly Rodger, the pirate flag associated with fighting to the death. In Hubbard’s closet work, two blacked out light bulbs hung over a closet looking frame make eyes that evoke dark depths of deadness, but like the Jolly Roger, there is something quite caricatured and friendly in this uncanny collection of useless found objects. They defy the pity that their heavy, junky uselessness could evoke and smile at their new found meaning and purpose as Duchampian like poetry.<span> </span></span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_jSyTitRTeUeKaJdiO-iRnLohahDhrIsx24IbpVrBQKqRp_jPa2h1atgYxh2wu6VK3RBQ1v2eGMs-Hadfglo0OGvv9MIUCOOxA4KVW5-6FLb30FnQrmrSnhzSY_vKpxOK297wXRJJ-KNS/s1600/Hevy005.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_jSyTitRTeUeKaJdiO-iRnLohahDhrIsx24IbpVrBQKqRp_jPa2h1atgYxh2wu6VK3RBQ1v2eGMs-Hadfglo0OGvv9MIUCOOxA4KVW5-6FLb30FnQrmrSnhzSY_vKpxOK297wXRJJ-KNS/s320/Hevy005.jpg" width="213" /></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>The busted up tyre image by Simon Horsburgh on the wall opposite does not share the chutzpah of the cheeky Hubbard ready-mades. It depicts an object heavy with the weight of being pure junk. Useless and yet not destroyed, the tyre is heavy with the inability to function. It can’t be rolled away. An object that once enabled others to move, an object so essential it has been acclaimed as an intrinsic invention in the history of human progress, will now be picked up and carried, with resentment. This work evokes the heaviness of ‘being a burden’ and the sadness of existing in a state of eternal disrepair. </span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>An analyst searches for the meaning of why one would forget to post a letter. They would look at the constraints associated with this obligation and why a counter-will has emerged to challenge the conscious intentions of this simple act. In this exhibition, the works play with our expectations of what the constraints actually are. It seems often that the absence of purpose, a futile search for meaning and heavy awareness of the comic absurdity of it all can be the greatest of burdens. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>Anna </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Photos: Christo Crocker. Courtesy of Conical & the artists.<span> </span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span></span>Inkblothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560776688196218442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3225553745050909319.post-67221342064433943982011-09-15T04:39:00.000-07:002011-09-17T18:25:43.054-07:00Nothing (but flowers)<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0hT0CbKY90AZezzwiqpzvwl7wOZBttgxGnGnmmz385gTZeNemnL_DD1x-niUBzsAlK2ShSuWZywLGydXqqBKKRwr0omuCA_1s6g1MYiT7hNTQjYIXKS6Ux16LS8raEhUb_XM92VxiFG8m/s1600/011.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0hT0CbKY90AZezzwiqpzvwl7wOZBttgxGnGnmmz385gTZeNemnL_DD1x-niUBzsAlK2ShSuWZywLGydXqqBKKRwr0omuCA_1s6g1MYiT7hNTQjYIXKS6Ux16LS8raEhUb_XM92VxiFG8m/s320/011.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">Entering Benedict Ernst’s <i>Nothing (but flowers)</i> exhibition at </span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1089842574"><span style="font-size: small;">West Space</span></a><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://westspace.org.au/"> </a>is like entering a grand hotel with light streaming through the windows, glossy parquetry floors and Ernst’s striking sculptures of flower arrangements. These works draw upon the elegant configurations of contemporary floristry but are constructed using the found objects one would more commonly associate with household junk. There are bouquet’s made of broken beer bottles, saucepan lids, hose pipes, wire, busted car tires, bottle tops and sushi soy fish lids. However, there is a sense that this is more than just an exercise in aesthetic reconfiguration—sculpting in junk.<span style="color: red;"> </span>Ernst plays on a notion of the bouquet of flowers as an object that is universally recognised and understood. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: red;"></span></span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXYnzJjCsM-tKkmO-8kz1I0xsftOvju0mOicFlJgpTrO6UZJtqCzMDaqCkjpAUTomBfa7xR03e-_xym8_nuF6-UQj1y3Oc23Ok2PGvX3LmLcbtyFd0ylYoHCDk-Mt3ikKRr7AlBfWUurLw/s1600/002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXYnzJjCsM-tKkmO-8kz1I0xsftOvju0mOicFlJgpTrO6UZJtqCzMDaqCkjpAUTomBfa7xR03e-_xym8_nuF6-UQj1y3Oc23Ok2PGvX3LmLcbtyFd0ylYoHCDk-Mt3ikKRr7AlBfWUurLw/s320/002.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">In his ability to arrange sharp nails, scrubbing brushes and tennis balls as beautifully as a bouquet, Ernst raises the question—why do we love flowers? In rites of passage they are symbolic of a life cycle. Like the brides, lovers, mothers and grievers they are given to; they embody the blooming and withering and blooming and withering of life. The language of flowers, picked up in the florist slogans “more than words” and “say it with flowers”, makes flowers unlike any other inanimate objects, except maybe art. They are used to symbolise the abstract emotions that people have trouble expressing. </span><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP2ChcL16zVJ0BqHI-JC8UG17_kC-Xb9QqhfsBx80PDFHkUiV5XlpHSWIIYBppgwwggk9KzsZt_9zvGohweygIwtGrV3QLcM5SfIG-W30cASAkoZcruaWCXA_TFowiow6OlF41YZvHbwPD/s1600/001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP2ChcL16zVJ0BqHI-JC8UG17_kC-Xb9QqhfsBx80PDFHkUiV5XlpHSWIIYBppgwwggk9KzsZt_9zvGohweygIwtGrV3QLcM5SfIG-W30cASAkoZcruaWCXA_TFowiow6OlF41YZvHbwPD/s320/001.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">The title of the exhibition <i>Nothing (but flowers)</i> suggests a certain empty sentimentality that can be bought too easily with flowers. They can convey too much for too little. Though Ernst’s work is made of “nothing”, the items in a household we would generally ignore, the detail and ingenuity of his work make them so much more than the average bouquet. Like the ephemeral symbolism of living flowers, these bits of junk that have been transformed—have had life and death. While a bouquet of nails and screws may seem more confronting and hostile then velvety rose petals, Ernst works asks us to consider what sort of messages underlie the emotionally loaded bunch of flowers. In his catalogue essay Ernst repeatedly apologises for his project. Ernst has accentuated certain sharp, angular and prickly features of flowers to suggest a subtext of ambivalence. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_biNJVwp891etOdMV7GyKHfUv-VIdOmPLBXB7lYS8L1LT9KmhyphenhyphenFQDwUMb4zmSv3ogM_yJz8ghkQWo0WZ2hyBQ_wnhGbriSSdwa66AUAMR_CqSp1wEDXlI-_wZ4VN4XJ41TyTzMX-VDMlJ/s1600/004.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_biNJVwp891etOdMV7GyKHfUv-VIdOmPLBXB7lYS8L1LT9KmhyphenhyphenFQDwUMb4zmSv3ogM_yJz8ghkQWo0WZ2hyBQ_wnhGbriSSdwa66AUAMR_CqSp1wEDXlI-_wZ4VN4XJ41TyTzMX-VDMlJ/s320/004.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">Ernst likens his work to ‘a “gift” your cat drags in from the night, still beating with feathers and blood to your bedroom pillow’. Receiving flowers, though never admitted, may often be like the gift from the cat. It is a way of unloading something on someone; it asks the receiver to recognise, accept and be grateful for an object that symbolises the emotional state of the giver. Much like in all interactions with other people sometimes this is something we are glad to have received—we want to know about, we enjoy it or hope for it. For the giver, the flowers can be used to mask awkward feelings. A clean way of discharging obligations, sometimes by remote, without getting caught up in too much emotional junk. They are a quick solution to unloading a burden, demanding forgiveness, displaying easy care and affection and relieving the anxiety of bearing witness to an uncomfortable pain or sorrow. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZwv3gx50qbS76XiEkWUf7Vp39Fjk36LNqOV8uYgrVSh93N8qH5RzALOUKJlj56vtoH9vHdscJ29tZUMJr9n7xo9Bbg3uV0q76YKfRgYM7fCGgjtH6EKG74igpaHdjVZJtWs2LAHClvMDZ/s1600/007.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZwv3gx50qbS76XiEkWUf7Vp39Fjk36LNqOV8uYgrVSh93N8qH5RzALOUKJlj56vtoH9vHdscJ29tZUMJr9n7xo9Bbg3uV0q76YKfRgYM7fCGgjtH6EKG74igpaHdjVZJtWs2LAHClvMDZ/s320/007.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">Slavoj Žižek would like Ernst’s flowers. In <i>The Perverts Guide to the Cinema</i> Žižek describes flowers as “disgusting”, like a vagina dentata, that should ‘be forbidden to children’. Many of Ernst’s flowers, like the beer bottle tops with fake eyelash petals, evoke this sort of menacing interpretation of flowers that will lure you in like Venus Fly Traps only to devour you to fulfil their instinctual desires. As symbols of love and affection, flowers that devour seem synonymous with an idea of love as a hunger or yearning that needs to be fed. It follows that in Žižek’s <i>Enjoy your Symptom, </i>Žižek writes that the lover seeks the beloved to fill a lack in himself. The beloved in order to resist objectification reciprocates with his own lack/desire. Žižek says ‘the two lacks can succeed and beget a new harmony’. The aggressive quality of some of the flowers in Ernst works evokes certain violence in the objectification of the beloved. The “be mine” demand, so liberally sugared in pop songs and Valentine cards, is often read simply as hyperbole for aching desire. In these works the demanding “be mine” sentiment comes at us in a jealous rage with jagged beer bottles and planks of wood. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR4BrTHu39MJJVG7L2nAhzFZhTdExCu-Hyy81hNrRjP2EuUuWuTACJnNFhD5Ra3zaYWdQnZy1zKE3xyPGKOUVlmujdnQ3OyT7m1VZYek7fcm-z_ZWt4mdOieuCu_HnVyzHGGeLCSBUfkve/s1600/010.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR4BrTHu39MJJVG7L2nAhzFZhTdExCu-Hyy81hNrRjP2EuUuWuTACJnNFhD5Ra3zaYWdQnZy1zKE3xyPGKOUVlmujdnQ3OyT7m1VZYek7fcm-z_ZWt4mdOieuCu_HnVyzHGGeLCSBUfkve/s320/010.jpg" width="214" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">The “Nothing” of the title speaks of voids like they are growling stomachs and hollow gestures. These works show there can be duplicity in grand demonstrations of emotions. Maybe we like to unload our feelings of guilt or shame onto others while making it seem like we are doing something nice. Maybe we give a bouquet to force a person to think about us and not just fleetingly, but appreciatively and affectionately for the duration of the week that the flowers last. Sometimes, though, flowers are very nice. Ernst also seems to celebrate flowers through his affectionate studies. I once entertained<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=3225553745050909319&postID=6722134206443394398" name="_GoBack"></a> a quick and silly idea where I would send flowers anonymously to people working in car parks all around the world—to make them happy. A friend advised me of the arrogance and narcissism of my Pollyanna plan. He suggested I would probably end up responsible for at least one car park attendant’s battering from a jealous spouse who refused to believe the flowers were from “nobody”. Ernst work celebrates the intricacies and complexities of the gifts we give. The too-easy statements conveyed with flowers can be used to mask and prettify ambivalent and confronting emotions. </span><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi75zfNkkdak-VfK-Xo35mACGeUDyjSNoSmJAVb6oWbHgsf7wgzrSlAe9w9gc_S8_ma3sihl2mnOMXU2IZEhEstFf95Yxh6coRJ3ApQKqJuxFh_PFVNXqI9kNdnEydxSxgEMKAhClqUaqfn/s1600/003.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi75zfNkkdak-VfK-Xo35mACGeUDyjSNoSmJAVb6oWbHgsf7wgzrSlAe9w9gc_S8_ma3sihl2mnOMXU2IZEhEstFf95Yxh6coRJ3ApQKqJuxFh_PFVNXqI9kNdnEydxSxgEMKAhClqUaqfn/s320/003.jpg" width="320" /></a></div></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">Anna</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">See </span><a href="http://benedicternst.com/">benedicternst.com</a></div>Inkblothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560776688196218442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3225553745050909319.post-66850487692254627942011-08-22T05:55:00.000-07:002011-09-15T04:43:31.213-07:00The Devil had a Daughter<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicrvvLRGU8p_spDbQtl9-vv_oPdpZbjvfrXNlLPMnbnvJ2gcK4e1Bi_Ml5vKNAQ3s9XFk6krKzhVn7VERT4kcaYYZ1OzJ1LYxtlM0e0HO1_ccBq7bEI0IUTG6vrIu69ytilXisuLGheEtW/s1600/devil-garifalakis.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicrvvLRGU8p_spDbQtl9-vv_oPdpZbjvfrXNlLPMnbnvJ2gcK4e1Bi_Ml5vKNAQ3s9XFk6krKzhVn7VERT4kcaYYZ1OzJ1LYxtlM0e0HO1_ccBq7bEI0IUTG6vrIu69ytilXisuLGheEtW/s320/devil-garifalakis.jpg" width="214" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span class="small" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Tony Garifalakis, Cover ups, 2008. Joyce Nissan Collection, Melbourne</span></span><br />
<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">This exhibition title, <i>The Devil had a Daughter</i>, sounds like the title of a Gothic novel. The viewer is instantly drawn into a sense of narrative in these works and their relationship with one another. These printed works, under this title, seem to evoke all the devil’s daughters of the printed word in literature. They embody a certain power and sexuality that once awakened becomes a force of chaos or destruction. These are the heroines from literature that leave the reader awed and terrified: Medea who ruthlessly avenges her husband’s abandonment; Lady Macbeth who calls upon the dark forces to help suppress her femininity to help kill the King; Arthur Miller’s Abigail who can destroy a community with her jealous and hysterical witch-pointing finger and Toni Morrison’s Sethe who can kill her daughter Beloved to save her from the life of a slave. The devil is in the ambivalence of their acts. These characters, and many others, have carried a warning to readers to avoid assumptions about what should be considered “natural" for a woman. But there is also an ironic tension in many of the artworks that explores the lines between the bawdy and the obscene, the comic and the tragic. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">Jason Greig’s work contrasts the Romantic sense of metaphysical dark forces that leave characters cursed and powerless with the Humanist stories of Ancient Greece. While the Greek plays were in homage to the Gods, they tend to emphasise the responsibility humans must take for the darkness in their lives. The Romantic motifs in Greigs work include Poe-like hazy shadows with small figures, black cats, full moons and willowy women. However, the dangling little legs in <i>Dragonfly </i>speak of the hubris of Icarus. In Greig’s work Icarus hand glides in a giant old man’s head—literally flying in-the-face of his father’s warnings. There is also the haunting Phaedra in <i>Phaedra Chain</i>. She is bearded like a witch from <i>Macbeth</i>. They are “weird women” who can tell the future and in so saying make it happen. Phaedra is a classic devil’s daughter in her lust for her stepson </span><span lang="EN" style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">Hipploytus </span><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">and her ability to enunciate the destruction of her husband and his son from the grave. Despite the ominous metaphysical elements in this work the real devil comes from a knowledge of something that resides within the characters, hidden, repressed and then unleashed in irrational destructive directions. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">Pat Brassington’s photographs evoke a sense of slithering parasitical intrusion into a beige domestic space. The work titled <i>The Wedding Guest</i> shows a pink and lumpy alien substance emerging from a white embroidered satin—suggesting a seeping surprise for the wedding party. In <i>Rocket</i> the slippery alien tongues at the foot of tight white pants also evoke a secret now revealed. These works carry a sense of the suppressed memory coming out in an unsightly and menacing way, growing, slithering and taking over the family home. In <i>Topography in Pink,</i> the holes in the pink pantyhose in the image of the female crotch are not eroticised but suggest an inanimate mannequin, moth-eaten, claustrophobic and decaying. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR0rdw0Z3uIDbu1C5KykvdkYp-yI4bV1ArWHy_ysekDOPxTHhvMaVm1VKaqmQSlkugnvn0ctL9-ysJB17qVeMs265SjB4nTpgXXKsV0Fa9EhQoyEakNaWCze0lTBqOfK6Qt2NkLwucoP7y/s1600/devil-ringholt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR0rdw0Z3uIDbu1C5KykvdkYp-yI4bV1ArWHy_ysekDOPxTHhvMaVm1VKaqmQSlkugnvn0ctL9-ysJB17qVeMs265SjB4nTpgXXKsV0Fa9EhQoyEakNaWCze0lTBqOfK6Qt2NkLwucoP7y/s320/devil-ringholt.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="small" style="font-size: xx-small;">Stuart Ringholt, Circle books, 2005 (detail). Monash University Collection</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">There are lots of holes in the works of this exhibition. In Stuart Ringholt’s work, holes have been cut into the faces in book illustrations and have been collaged with holes upside down or different eyes or no eyes. The faces become grotesque and disturbing. David Noonan also creates collages with holes that reveal multiple faces or another layer below. In a video, Mike Parr inhales his sketches of his self portrait over his face, momentarily breathing life into these masks. His mouth is the hole we see between sketches. Tony Garifalakis has left holes for a model’s blue eyes or smile behind sinister aerosol blackness. In all these works there is a sense of unpeeling layers that will reveal something dark and incomprehensible. The idea of holes is usually that they are a void; in these works they reveal a disturbing and unexpected presence. Like Blanche Dubois’s secret desires for boys at the Flamingo Hotel or the destructive fires and pistols of Hedda Gabler, these works tell the story of masks of repression breaking down to reveal a grotesque and hungry drives. Part of monstrosity of the revelation of these drives in femininity is the control and disavowal of them in the first place. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">In tragedy, these drives reveal themselves to those who seek to control them the most. In <i>The Bacchae </i>the prudish King Penthius admonishes the women for their debauchery on the mountain but would also very much like to see it—just so he can understand it better, of course. He hides in the bushes and peeks through a costume of fawn skins. The women, including his mother, find him and in their intoxicated state they think he is a lion. They rip his head off and parade it through the town. In Sally Smart’s collage on the wall we seem to crouch down before this sort of large dark female ritual. The figures wear puffy Victorian sleeves, swishing petticoats in flight and swatches of floral corduroy—they are like good girls that are now running through woods and metamorphosing. Some have lost limbs, some have beetle heads or stick heads, the tree shapes are horizontal and yet there is a sense of walls; the forest has come into the house and the girls will never be the same. Like a Penthius in the bushes, the viewer watches these figures with fear, desire and wonder. That they are pasted directly onto the gallery walls rather than contained in a frame confronts viewers’ voyeurism. There is no window-like proscenium arch the viewer can just passively peek through and keep protected from a returned gaze. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj3WblOuRsSeB8uopePhMHDhDqanme7l2emaMmEbGkAPek7kFWfR_8LUmwIxpiH2syYb10KKQ5YQkdfz7oosmazS-4KVB3Pd9nz9pbFNnnhiDm39TJh-gwJZVWElCMIfl0_A-LF-hfj9qg/s1600/MUMA_07-11_3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj3WblOuRsSeB8uopePhMHDhDqanme7l2emaMmEbGkAPek7kFWfR_8LUmwIxpiH2syYb10KKQ5YQkdfz7oosmazS-4KVB3Pd9nz9pbFNnnhiDm39TJh-gwJZVWElCMIfl0_A-LF-hfj9qg/s320/MUMA_07-11_3.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Sally Smart, In Her Nature (Performativities) 2011 <br />
synthetic polymer paint, ink and oil pastel on linen and cotton velvet with collage elements<br />
The Devil Had a Daughter, 2011 installation view, photo: Christian Capurro</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">The eyes and holes where eyes should be throughout this exhibition seem to say a lot about our capacity to thoroughly enjoy watching the unravelling of others—as we do when we read and watch films and theatre. They also ask us to consider how this act of watching, admonishing, critiquing, admiring—reveals our own desires. In Dylan Martorel’s work we literally peep through stereoscopes at intricate patterns at once theatrical floral, celestial, insectal and decorative. We peep into a deep three dimensional interior, as the matching wallpaper work opposite suggests. The neon tubing evokes the penny peep show of the carnival. It is the illicit joy of peeking into what cannot be seen on the surface that is so satisfying. Like in a peep show, in art, literature, theatre and film the audience are offered the opportunity to peer into another world. They experience the emotional catharsis dissociatively, anonymously and without consequences—like a dream. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">The drawings of Petrl Herel capture the irreverent humour that runs throughout the exhibition. The figures are little illustrative monsters morphed from wings and genitals. They are like a naughty drawing on a school desk but also finely graphic like an ex-libres printed for an erotica collector. The figures are bulbous and hairy, if they moved they would waddle. These works express a comic element related to the uncanny. Herel’s work acts like the chorus of cheeky satyrs that would follow a Greek tragedy. They would wear long leather phalluses and would perform lots of sexually charged gags similar to burlesque. The lusts and desires that are shockingly revealed in a tragedy are playfully mocked in the comedy. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN7VBcK6HCqktlHAU4WMTJK1J-ChzBtVXXoF0pTyBwV9tVsZwBjE6ejcOodJ8o7szE3n6_cKAPErpPic8-NWdEpSHsUdsHhZHMaaXm_aeW1FGatLfwahTo-htOU-OQExtE8adfnorjQUmd/s1600/MUMA_07-11_13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN7VBcK6HCqktlHAU4WMTJK1J-ChzBtVXXoF0pTyBwV9tVsZwBjE6ejcOodJ8o7szE3n6_cKAPErpPic8-NWdEpSHsUdsHhZHMaaXm_aeW1FGatLfwahTo-htOU-OQExtE8adfnorjQUmd/s320/MUMA_07-11_13.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">The Devil Had a Daughter, 2011, installation view, artists left to right: David Noonan, Tony Garifalarkis, Sally Smart, Jason Greig, Stuart Ringholt photo: Christian Capurro</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">The artworks in <i>The Devil had a Daughter </i>evoke the anxiety central to the tension in comedy and tragedy. This unpeeling or unravelling is unnerving because it undermines the pretence of control that we like to maintain. The eyes and holes throughout this exhibition act as windows where the viewer both sees and is revealed. Like a witches’ séance, the works conjure the monsters of literature, particularly female characters that stretch our empathy to dark and ambivalent places. Their secrets swell like pus from freshly pierced ears and run like stocking ladders to hem lines. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;">Anna Newbold </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 115%;"> at <a href="http://www.monash.edu.au/muma/exhibitions/devilhadadaughter.html">Monash University Museum of Art </a>until 1/10/11</span></div>Inkblothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560776688196218442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3225553745050909319.post-72185970553361465192011-08-15T03:23:00.000-07:002011-08-15T03:23:06.709-07:00The writing’s on the wall<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-AU</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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</style> <![endif]--> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>"Variations of [minor] nature may have an adverse effect on levels of risk”</i> by Tristan Da Roza</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuCHw8leNAZjranltKZJv4P-GWRmf8N-tKgzGQ0YYi4Rw3qrlnNsAOT0EZN8ngBAdRxe2LJz0zAxFECFI61YhNppRE2ASyKTZemSMbkB14FwkmdMdrrTPKJyn6QznUY41kfT93CaVIhg3d/s1600/Gallery-1-Tristan-Da-Roza2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuCHw8leNAZjranltKZJv4P-GWRmf8N-tKgzGQ0YYi4Rw3qrlnNsAOT0EZN8ngBAdRxe2LJz0zAxFECFI61YhNppRE2ASyKTZemSMbkB14FwkmdMdrrTPKJyn6QznUY41kfT93CaVIhg3d/s320/Gallery-1-Tristan-Da-Roza2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">Tristan Da Roza creates a site—a construction site, a demolition site. A site that is bordered, defined, subject to definition and constraint. Literally <i>“Variations of [minor] nature may have an adverse effect on levels of risk”</i> is a <i>site</i> in all this word’s vicissitudes. <span>There is the feeling like we have walked into a world of calculated destruction, perceptual destruction, linguistic destruction and creative destruction. There is a sense that this is an absurd space, like a Borges story of incomplete visions being eternally built and destroyed, rebuilt and discarded. We get the feeling that an earnest architect lost his job or his head on this site. He was telling a joke about a lawyer who walked into a bar.</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></div><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;"> </span><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;"> </span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisUdr3pI7qNClatr_M25wkJkA9dKXPUYLvUaNJhXv6WYGzmwQPE-c9syC7RDWft5Wv6JPMIx2ZjAEiZByxgXqlnRMcg1db2rjEPKOl0UVdAfEyM_kxiMHAEjfTb052T3GLGtkA5jGW3YrF/s1600/Promotional+Image+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisUdr3pI7qNClatr_M25wkJkA9dKXPUYLvUaNJhXv6WYGzmwQPE-c9syC7RDWft5Wv6JPMIx2ZjAEiZByxgXqlnRMcg1db2rjEPKOl0UVdAfEyM_kxiMHAEjfTb052T3GLGtkA5jGW3YrF/s320/Promotional+Image+1.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">A black wooden truss arm, similar to a crane boom, is hinged to the gallery wall and extends across the space of the gallery above the viewer’s head. A pendant line, rigged to the ceiling and winched from the wall, holds the structure in a diagonal position. Perspex is clad along the length of the truss arm. C-clamps hold the Perspex in place. The structure is broken. Perspex shards and casement, or frame are caught in the truss lattice. Shattered pieces of wood, brick and Perspex lie on the floor. Another part of the installation, a chunk of cement, into which an eye bolt is drilled, is suspended by rope and pulley, again, from the ceiling. It hangs over a Perspex platform resting on a square outline of glowing neon lights on the floor—it is covered in broken cement pieces. Neon-orange builder’s line marks out borders and delineates a gestalt on the wall—similar to a picture’s edge. Within is a splatter of grey building-site-like mess—just enough to look like an aberration. A flat high-gloss black surface (that looks like a flat screen TV) supported by a truss frame is horizontally hinged to the wall—it swings freely like an unfastened gate. Lines of perspective, in accordance with a point of view in the gallery, are marked in duct tape on the floor. An octagon, stop sign shape made of hi-vis tape outlined on the floor<span> seems to mark an arbitrary safety zone.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">There is a road delineator post at the entry to the gallery. This forms a threshold—a symbolic entrance into the space contained by the installation. Words activate this space through a series of abstract and complicated warnings. ‘Variations of a [minor] nature may have a adverse effect on levels of risk’—these words, which are presented as makeshift (with intentional errors) in a plastic pocket stuck to the wall, place the onus on the viewer. ‘Spatial awareness can be prompted by potential risks involved occupation; negotiating risks may be a productive process’—is noted on a sculpture similar to an on-site drafting bench made of shards of broken glass. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHx3a47ApirKa5eBdCHL91Nzn4dLyg8SG_JmOHGg1okVwDPYxBZ6D5kVmkfAAtRZmQUuXRexPjrlWLFxOkdiGOHVy-RsXlIFSRoHbSs29e_ZJ7lOJBwMVJJ7vhAAf0683YDZZeZaAerPv3/s1600/promotional+Image+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHx3a47ApirKa5eBdCHL91Nzn4dLyg8SG_JmOHGg1okVwDPYxBZ6D5kVmkfAAtRZmQUuXRexPjrlWLFxOkdiGOHVy-RsXlIFSRoHbSs29e_ZJ7lOJBwMVJJ7vhAAf0683YDZZeZaAerPv3/s320/promotional+Image+2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">By entering into the installation the viewer has accepted the terms and conditions of the signs. This is much like the “enter at own risk” sign on a building site fence or the “you break it you buy it” sign in a souvenir gift shop. However, the signs in this installation are abstract. Whether or not the viewer understands them has no impact on the consequences of actions and reactions within their obtuse logic. Awareness, risk and productivity poetically coincide in this formal sophism. The elusive content of the signs needn’t be read, understood or even real for their implications to feel consequential within this theatrical installation. The jostle of images in the visual field <i>seems</i> to cause breakage. However, by entering the space, the viewer is aware that they are responsible for the damage (regardless of whether they know it or not). This shattered project, this crushed model Xanadu, will be bigger, better and more modern than originally imagined because the architect is dead; the building permits haven’t been approved; the price of materials has inflated; and there has been a catastrophic shakeup in a snow-dome somewhere. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;">At <span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://seventhgallery.org/">Seventh Gallery</a> </span></div><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;"> </span><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">Tim</span></div>Inkblothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560776688196218442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3225553745050909319.post-45670086314300544992011-07-27T05:38:00.000-07:002011-07-27T05:38:18.620-07:00Paradise<div style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyiDzIHqv0zeWYja7Q7u6ee9mL6LX_y4xK4gRSA8rWriKSQXKNjBU21lSeukZHxZj5MEN4ZdKGHcOqZuRKjc6WrA5g9bOXFGKHTvi6cK-Wo0vA7Zn6kkOaNhVSoTu6-S3mUFTOdcNQ89_X/s1600/003.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="228px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyiDzIHqv0zeWYja7Q7u6ee9mL6LX_y4xK4gRSA8rWriKSQXKNjBU21lSeukZHxZj5MEN4ZdKGHcOqZuRKjc6WrA5g9bOXFGKHTvi6cK-Wo0vA7Zn6kkOaNhVSoTu6-S3mUFTOdcNQ89_X/s320/003.jpg" width="320px" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">Brook Andrew’s exhibition <i>Paradise </i>stings of sharp irony from the outset<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=3225553745050909319&postID=4567008631430054499" name="_GoBack"></a>. The work is based around a collection of rare postcards from the past century of indigenous people from a range of countries including Australia. We send postcards when we are on holiday; send them back home to report on the weather, the sights and the curiosities we have found. In these postcards, the indigenous people are objectified as sights seen. In these works, with coloured neon lights behind or around them, there is the sense that the people in these images have been sold - like for a circus or freak show—for a cheap price, for a cheap laugh. They are fetishised, ridiculed and humiliated through the colonial tourist’s gaze. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsM93XS8Fsr6gqfyitkE1-OgXw7FJPx51D3Ri-ppbd5MAlsdTlnq9-0jmiDyl_drKZSmndKiS4-2wrtKyMAhJ1OEUqPjKILKLIJzacOOTiF6ldR_e0gEhXbbtasCVkGrX2ukvrNZQxtxm2/s1600/006.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="243px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsM93XS8Fsr6gqfyitkE1-OgXw7FJPx51D3Ri-ppbd5MAlsdTlnq9-0jmiDyl_drKZSmndKiS4-2wrtKyMAhJ1OEUqPjKILKLIJzacOOTiF6ldR_e0gEhXbbtasCVkGrX2ukvrNZQxtxm2/s320/006.jpg" width="320px" /></a></div><div style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">The first work we see<i> Union Jack </i>is a black and white postcard of young people performing what seems a traditional ritual—adorned with ceremonial body paint. When we look closer we see the body paint is a Union Jack. A white man in a dark suit is watching the performance. The mark of his gaze is unmistakably represented by that imperial emblem. This white man feels present in all these works, watching, appreciating, overseeing; his mark somehow left on the bodies of all the subjects of Andrew’s work. Many of the artworks are framed in thick sapele wood frames. The oversized frames contrast with the small postcards. This proportional association asks the question: what else has been used up and taken from the lands of the subjects of these photographs?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgse27jlJhOpDas58HlbLc2jemKktCY_YjOt1mGQeFu0x-P70rhyphenhyphenkhS6yJ4rKIzO41r69WcdKfOJ1JusQQBKv1Jg6__cAGJvRodZzjnRpMXNeAkg-hvtoVnbL_sGDdixkgKLpyXw70L5Qrz/s1600/002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="283px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgse27jlJhOpDas58HlbLc2jemKktCY_YjOt1mGQeFu0x-P70rhyphenhyphenkhS6yJ4rKIzO41r69WcdKfOJ1JusQQBKv1Jg6__cAGJvRodZzjnRpMXNeAkg-hvtoVnbL_sGDdixkgKLpyXw70L5Qrz/s320/002.jpg" width="320px" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">In the same titled <i>Paradise </i>series, each postcard of an indigenous person is juxtaposed with a postcard of industry. A young girl with bared chest is side by side with a postcard of a big log on a truck, displayed vertically. A man whose bare back and profile is the focus—titled on the postcard “A Warrior”—is displayed with the truck horizontal. There is a sense of the man, like the forest, being cut-down. An older aboriginal woman smoking a pipe is beside a factory chimney. The colour images of industry, along with the rainbow coloured neon borders around each of the frames reminds us of ongoing colonial attitudes. The overt nature of the contrast between postcards makes the viewer also question the moral self-satisfaction that may come from critically judging the postcards of the past while still enjoying the land and resources of the present.</span></div><div style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn0_N8__r-XzMoZB3o7_Qfk6XFZcDAqAriuBAqJ-9qMUPh3SkZ4clFNFJZqkVpXtRjAwsjBr5nWpdASRWdWMxr-hZcMeUtE9C74cgs0ogwYDeJQoMi1We4IQy5m7CgP14HgALq61OaP_o_/s1600/001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="243px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn0_N8__r-XzMoZB3o7_Qfk6XFZcDAqAriuBAqJ-9qMUPh3SkZ4clFNFJZqkVpXtRjAwsjBr5nWpdASRWdWMxr-hZcMeUtE9C74cgs0ogwYDeJQoMi1We4IQy5m7CgP14HgALq61OaP_o_/s320/001.jpg" width="320px" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">In an ABC interview covering the protests in the Kimberley last week, the Goolarabooloo Jabbir-Jabbir women wept as trucks and bulldozers rumbled into a sacred site at James Price Point. They compared the act to desecrating a European church or cemetery. Andrew’s work asks the same questions as these distraught women “what have we got anymore to have rights over?”. We imagine the humiliated subjects of these postcards “feel the pain of those big things rolling on our country”. This is particularly evident in the artwork, <i>The Flow Chart</i>, which links together various framed postcards by neon tubed triangles. At one point, there is a postcard of industry, another, a harmonious depiction of indigenous people on the water. One image is of an indigenous woman profoundly scarred on her face and another, right down at the lowest point, an adult indigenous man in a studio has been dressed up like a baby girl. We imagine a flow chart (a tool of industry and logic) would perhaps show a logic or order to events. However this flow chart maps a neon profit at the expense of all else; including the dignity and rights of other human beings who have been abused and exploited in the name of European profit and expanse. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ4tP3q_1qaJimkWcH6x7V4bnbcIKkj77sH8du6Bn0bLXdWAhhFhuBgs60jaPbCT-hZILUagkARq4tlKknpWWNQjjOFvtBObUGN1jMO8tKp0ghLaZZvr_lvHIdFyZjKxGWUB8JwHzPjg_n/s1600/005.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="290px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ4tP3q_1qaJimkWcH6x7V4bnbcIKkj77sH8du6Bn0bLXdWAhhFhuBgs60jaPbCT-hZILUagkARq4tlKknpWWNQjjOFvtBObUGN1jMO8tKp0ghLaZZvr_lvHIdFyZjKxGWUB8JwHzPjg_n/s320/005.jpg" width="320px" /></a></div><div style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">This exhibition creates an awareness of an objectification and discreditation of indigenous people that has made the lives of non-indigenous people easier. In the work Memorial 4, Andrew creates a black lacquered box that we peer into to see a jumble of neon words that seem to go on infinitely. In Wiradjuri it reads ‘I see you’. In these postcards we understand the colonial gaze as having seen, bought, sold and sent home the image of these indigenous people. However, the message from the box, which cannot be as easily seen or understood, is that these viewers can be viewed.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><span style="font-size: small;">We have a sense of a meta-experience of seeing and being seen in this gallery. Any contemporary moral righteousness with which we may initially view the images of the past seems also to be “seen” and makes us aware of the duplicity of believing these attitudes towards indigenous people exist only in history. Andrew brings these postcards back into a public consciousness. By bringing them back to the surface, Andrew makes us confront the repetitious exploitation of indigenous people. </span><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">All images are courtesy of <a href="http://www.tolarnogalleries.com/engine.php">Tolarno Galleries</a> Melbourne</div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"></div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black;"></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"></div><div style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif; text-align: justify;"></div></div></div>Inkblothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560776688196218442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3225553745050909319.post-13005258744230733442011-07-12T05:20:00.000-07:002011-07-12T05:55:11.222-07:00365 Split Crumbs<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis8CmAKzZWAZolu0Ki6fx8gBQHSOgWE1687ZmQ0OCghyphenhyphenaoZTV7kA7fywxCeXsIJubqtumHFDMBNQ6zBCVLPVNBiBZV9xCPDIXI58VIT6QxgRxRQWo8KJrm9nnw5IMW5_5ShuV1kLnSQyWV/s1600/impossible+objects-5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis8CmAKzZWAZolu0Ki6fx8gBQHSOgWE1687ZmQ0OCghyphenhyphenaoZTV7kA7fywxCeXsIJubqtumHFDMBNQ6zBCVLPVNBiBZV9xCPDIXI58VIT6QxgRxRQWo8KJrm9nnw5IMW5_5ShuV1kLnSQyWV/s320/impossible+objects-5.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">Dan Bell's <i>diagonal cross section of angora aurora, 365 split crumbs</i> at Utopian Slumps as part of the <i>Impossible Objects I</i> exhibition considers the nature of mementos. It is a web of necklaces, like diary entries, that reveals a little something of what has or will happen on each necklace day of the year. Each necklace has a pendent dropping down that is strange, sparkly or curious. There are plastic bok-choys and sparkling corn, silver tea pots, marbled plasticine, a little black alarm clock, rust, nuggets, vine leaves and vials of sparkly dust or liquid. Maybe they are the remains of a shaved glittering bouncy ball or a shredded rhinestone tiara. The sparkly nature of many of the objects and the diamond-like pattern they form remind us of what is considered of value in the jewellery industry. However, the crystals and buttons and plastic strawberry shortcake and bob bon novelty rings that hang from these plastic, gold and silver chains tell us also about a different kind of value that with which the individual imbues an object. The work feels like an elaborate charm bracelet that suggests a story behind each of these objects. The crumb is a small piece of the cake, as the object is a piece of the memory. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM7RV5P54t6X2fZmcUtyuLiU72WG5Z4shMHk6APZ5sPBgSBQfhLqwRXoT7lu_Q5ixyEqMdFdo-2jlz2B9b7J5kwA40hUT2ffjtsTmwTbJZDeDlUTNJM1chcKzMrq8WezR9VeqPjxN7GmT-/s1600/impossible+objects-7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM7RV5P54t6X2fZmcUtyuLiU72WG5Z4shMHk6APZ5sPBgSBQfhLqwRXoT7lu_Q5ixyEqMdFdo-2jlz2B9b7J5kwA40hUT2ffjtsTmwTbJZDeDlUTNJM1chcKzMrq8WezR9VeqPjxN7GmT-/s320/impossible+objects-7.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"> The web like presentation of these individual pieces denotes the spider catching the flies. While it’s not sinister, it does evoke a sense of these objects becoming essential. So they can stick. So they can stay. So they won’t get lost or stolen we will wear them around our neck. The interconnectedness of the diamonds and triangles also tells us something about handing things on and where they end up. These objects will get passed down or across but will end up somewhere. They will all eventually disintegrate, like the sparkly stuff in the vials. These objects will probably outlive their owners and will come to mean something different with each hand that holds them.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjulqar36d2n-aQlipVdBTS99V9vqK7ABrfGsiW3H-HvzOqCbnFPcT8yK7ueommWHr62yU6FcsmXclAqN58hcgUY0LsnYGfTlTH2X75tAOfUKWH6YotBHpoLc1rUg4QUV1Jmz9bKIuIvD3g/s1600/impossible+objects-10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjulqar36d2n-aQlipVdBTS99V9vqK7ABrfGsiW3H-HvzOqCbnFPcT8yK7ueommWHr62yU6FcsmXclAqN58hcgUY0LsnYGfTlTH2X75tAOfUKWH6YotBHpoLc1rUg4QUV1Jmz9bKIuIvD3g/s320/impossible+objects-10.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">In gestalt psychology, the law of simplicity holds that objects in the environment are seen in a way that makes them appear as simple as possible. The web-like pattern is what we initially see. When however, we get up close we see the complexity and range of objects within this pattern. This tells us something of how these laws of simplicity (in terms of how we perceive the world visually) can act as a metaphor for how we see the world emotionally. The life and meaning of objects seems to have a simple order of function and disposal but in actual fact the reality of what happens to people’s objects is a much more subjective and complicated. The objects come to represent a part of the person. When a necklace is being worn it has the shape of the neck and decollete; when it is taken off and set down it becomes a clump. The way they are displayed shows the path of least resistance in terms of a gravitational v shape that is harmonious to the eye. The pendent that has lived around a neck can no longer be viewed in terms of its use, function or value. It will come to symbolise an aspect of the wearer. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_cjwoNjNPxo-XR-mTs4zB8f9t5kSu-nbDRnA2SoOGUcX5R-rQwYs4xAIT-hf6njecWqbGUpwpm8hX9EStkfZL0uJg6t9tm75if3r_Z_cRaAC7au3KIqBOqxB1yDBaeEs0G1ViRIgWheuk/s1600/impossible+objects-9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_cjwoNjNPxo-XR-mTs4zB8f9t5kSu-nbDRnA2SoOGUcX5R-rQwYs4xAIT-hf6njecWqbGUpwpm8hX9EStkfZL0uJg6t9tm75if3r_Z_cRaAC7au3KIqBOqxB1yDBaeEs0G1ViRIgWheuk/s320/impossible+objects-9.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">The pendent in jewellery often acts as a symbol of something that can’t be represented physically or literally. They are used as lucky charms, subculture signs or tokens of endless love. They are a symbol of belonging to a gang or a faith. In each case the wearer tells the world that there is more to them than just the lone individual. They are part of something bigger. Like the chains that the pendants are attached to, the individual declares himself linked into a greater whole. Bell’s sparkling array of kitsch and crystals playfully celebrates the diverse and absurd lengths will we go to to find ourselves a part of something bigger. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">Bell’s work reminds me of the gifts Boo Radley leaves Scout and Jem Finch in their tree in <i>To Kill a Mockingbird</i>. The older Scout reflects at the end of her story ‘Neighbours bring food with death, and flowers with sickness, and little things in between. Boo was our neighbour. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a knife, and our lives.’ That objects have sentimental attachment gives them a value beyond their use. We keep them as a direct and physical link to the time and the person they remind us of. Although it is sometimes clear that by their very presence that that time is over and that person is gone. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">Bell makes us consider the objects we choose to keep in our lives. These seemingly meaningless objects that come in and out of life can become talismans of identities and stories. Bell gives these crumbs the potential to be sentimental. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Anna</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"> at <a href="http://www.utopianslumps.com/">Utopian Slumps</a></span></div>Inkblothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560776688196218442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3225553745050909319.post-26152756438906490862011-07-07T06:15:00.000-07:002011-07-11T19:13:52.946-07:00The Structure in the Falling<div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmcFLD14Qs8G2VgxwCSl20frerMU-GDXBx5cZyLIyFWw0UnehC13UXpvHprXATg-VJ54ZOSKQbeluYm3rc9NAPAJzH41psB3c95pUtCfOVxs5Rz_Zy1Gby9jJBKlugeHzumQUwR1fNCJvI/s1600/m-untitled1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="243" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmcFLD14Qs8G2VgxwCSl20frerMU-GDXBx5cZyLIyFWw0UnehC13UXpvHprXATg-VJ54ZOSKQbeluYm3rc9NAPAJzH41psB3c95pUtCfOVxs5Rz_Zy1Gby9jJBKlugeHzumQUwR1fNCJvI/s320/m-untitled1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Naomi Schwartz’s works in her exhibition <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Structure in the Falling,</i> at the City Library, evoke the sense of comfort we derive from memories. These works of ink and collage seem like swatches of textures, shape, and fabrics that are often all that remain in memories of fleeting contentment. It’s a mother’s blouse or a quilt in the car, the lining of a handbag or the wallpaper at a holiday house that you followed with your fingers as you went to sleep. These abstract collages are layered like mind associations that hide and disclose fragments of stories.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFem4yImpZXys2fSD9_SmOUURUEu4FSn7lZlj_dX9xTlpresnA6rnLsgvss_4ANaLrplgsDWdGecD5IUD-C7rR0tMV-XWhghqnnwll4Ccvzeq2YyV0ZutRCxeXJ8yvCWf91Xkeutw7xujD/s1600/japanese+screen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="138" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFem4yImpZXys2fSD9_SmOUURUEu4FSn7lZlj_dX9xTlpresnA6rnLsgvss_4ANaLrplgsDWdGecD5IUD-C7rR0tMV-XWhghqnnwll4Ccvzeq2YyV0ZutRCxeXJ8yvCWf91Xkeutw7xujD/s320/japanese+screen.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">There are several works titled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Whose sleeves?.</i> These works were inspired by the rich depiction of kimonos on late 16<sup>th</sup> century Japanese screens, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tagasode</i>. In the screens kimonos are rendered in a natural state between clean and dirty draped over the structure itself; a trompe l'oeil of living. In Schwartz’s work the viewer is asked to imagine “Whose sleeves?”—to whom does each of these objects belong. While they seem so abstract and geometric, not wrapped around their owner, they still can communicate so much of their owner’s identity and personality. The clothes, like the screen, both hide and reveal. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioMgp9VIrPGLPhhfVGwVdnlhaHTPSk6wPH2Nt7bVS_a7RQcdih0LNi1EoEwhq4ySyq48I3mRzPaCTwH3c1JhEDxWvCwWulnsb6wG3KtNznj7MKK8t-7PTbygVd20SywzPCbIW7-KYMy_Hw/s1600/e-whose-sleeves-41.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioMgp9VIrPGLPhhfVGwVdnlhaHTPSk6wPH2Nt7bVS_a7RQcdih0LNi1EoEwhq4ySyq48I3mRzPaCTwH3c1JhEDxWvCwWulnsb6wG3KtNznj7MKK8t-7PTbygVd20SywzPCbIW7-KYMy_Hw/s320/e-whose-sleeves-41.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Schwartz’s work also takes on the abstract form of shapes and structures that are like garments cut from a pattern before it is sewn. They are like the hazy, curved and layered memories an adult might have of themselves as a child. The curved forms of fabric like patterns of stripes, checks, pink circles on orange and buds about to bloom, suggest a woman whose shoulder you remember well. They are like the memory of falling asleep on a cotton sun dress lap. It’s the vanilla smell of Shalimar perfume. They take you to the ridges of a beautiful bottle on the dresser or a swish of fabric before a dinner dance and a pile of dry-cleaning and after dinner mint wrappers in the morning. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcjPoR4U-m4X8fUNw64WJkqFpOcH8TT8n0e-VUV75m3v_0YpA8S8gbPKjD_JtUWdfxxfqEgHbxiKS5UHnkI_yULgULtl43caP5XUwBmp5jgr1ec0LVcWuKXUl4UC24A51omgXQZSdh1_PZ/s1600/a-whose-sleeves-11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcjPoR4U-m4X8fUNw64WJkqFpOcH8TT8n0e-VUV75m3v_0YpA8S8gbPKjD_JtUWdfxxfqEgHbxiKS5UHnkI_yULgULtl43caP5XUwBmp5jgr1ec0LVcWuKXUl4UC24A51omgXQZSdh1_PZ/s320/a-whose-sleeves-11.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Ropes and knots are a dramatic motif in these artworks. They evoke notions of how memory is contained and released. It as though memories can become entwined and knotted. They are like thickly twisted braided fibres that can be made stronger with repetition; or as in Schwartz’s work – split and frayed. The unravelling or splitting of the tightly wound ropes of memory and consciousness, reveal, as in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Split Ropes </i>piece, textured and colourful layers of beauty and intrigue. Between the split ropes are leaves, caves, diamonds and dandelions. The split rope acts compositionally almost like the curtains opening on a proscenium arch to a backdrop of a Russian ballet. As an audience we wonder what will emerge from the cave. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsnHNWksDW-euPIbwTzZDxktC4csSn1xYhS9VmU8s3O7vPgSAI8M2foVKLseIUApKw7FG_olDGMeH9nIQEYYSI9DdKjAD-yefvRGJn61VbVFinMk-ZGT2HBOwSXcqeNpUtuSsOzY4NsMKK/s1600/c-split-ropes1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="243" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsnHNWksDW-euPIbwTzZDxktC4csSn1xYhS9VmU8s3O7vPgSAI8M2foVKLseIUApKw7FG_olDGMeH9nIQEYYSI9DdKjAD-yefvRGJn61VbVFinMk-ZGT2HBOwSXcqeNpUtuSsOzY4NsMKK/s320/c-split-ropes1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Schwartz’s work reveals a tension between what is tightly woven, neat and contained and what is loose, unravelled and falling. It is this contrast, like the unravelling of tightly plaited hair for romantic escapes down towers that creates a sense of drama and narrative in the series. In works such as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">In Under the Shadow</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bundle</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sleep</i> there is a pillowy soft comfort in the artwork that is like a bed or nest. They are warm, safe spaces that protect and hide. These seem like the places one would stop and enjoy. The sharp angular forms throughout the work contrast with these billowy fabric forms to suggest the momentary nature of contentment.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2BEFkuAITZBZqUZCcITAg3Q2USI9LXa4MUZTJeNx1A0su5pirhRAsppZeSkHY5v9lbNivIsBYO1vAIxeybxmcC5qZkoFWDqyyoUdtMYZxpOvJxfjEv_G7z4Qd2_oEixwWMEFKoLpITwqC/s1600/structure+in+falling.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2BEFkuAITZBZqUZCcITAg3Q2USI9LXa4MUZTJeNx1A0su5pirhRAsppZeSkHY5v9lbNivIsBYO1vAIxeybxmcC5qZkoFWDqyyoUdtMYZxpOvJxfjEv_G7z4Qd2_oEixwWMEFKoLpITwqC/s320/structure+in+falling.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The title piece of the show, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Structure in the Falling</i> is a work of dark bulging ink shaped crosses. The paradoxical notion of a structure in falling denotes a reason in chaos, or a necessity in letting go of some notion of control, order or direction. The thick short crosses, like birds, planes or flailing falling figures have a rounded cushioning form. It seems that one may only find these places of comfort depicted in the collages, when willing to embrace the ambivalence of the metaphor of falling. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieKiWhS8chhZG4naEx9gG98NIEo6KeIZ9P8CLF5FrOIg73Rg2b9ZlC3dlhCo0BEu40blCQfsDAnBbHQZxF_JrcfknmWnFSnSui9P0ftlE0A3a8CuJzsU8LWVAQHGKSj9idI0n_pc58R48b/s1600/t-sleep1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieKiWhS8chhZG4naEx9gG98NIEo6KeIZ9P8CLF5FrOIg73Rg2b9ZlC3dlhCo0BEu40blCQfsDAnBbHQZxF_JrcfknmWnFSnSui9P0ftlE0A3a8CuJzsU8LWVAQHGKSj9idI0n_pc58R48b/s320/t-sleep1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Throughout this work, there seems a sense of joy in the act of unravelling and remembering. There is warmth that makes reminiscence seem comforting rather than confronting.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=3225553745050909319&postID=2615275643890649086&from=pencil" name="_GoBack"></a> The sense of cushioned landings encourages courage. We are reminded of places in our memory we were caught, held and protected. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.naomischwartz.com/%20"><i>The Structure in the Falling </i></a>at Melbourne City Library </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Anna </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div>Inkblothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560776688196218442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3225553745050909319.post-81114087631603323452011-06-27T05:05:00.000-07:002011-06-27T05:41:52.740-07:00Without Words<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIW0aRjZRXfLd9ZXiL5qTjAP8F3tafsZvbs733Ga4Rh6T6ImgeYfvXiLAF-_9ghSjPo2dxu1sXKb68ev3d3dactjaR2e2KDdiMn0F7AXdibUTAm6W3n7H2EiCCUXnAzi3v3SL8ahPGJmyY/s1600/Paul+Knight+02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="277" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIW0aRjZRXfLd9ZXiL5qTjAP8F3tafsZvbs733Ga4Rh6T6ImgeYfvXiLAF-_9ghSjPo2dxu1sXKb68ev3d3dactjaR2e2KDdiMn0F7AXdibUTAm6W3n7H2EiCCUXnAzi3v3SL8ahPGJmyY/s320/Paul+Knight+02.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">Paul Knight’s works in the exhibition <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Without Words</i>, curated by Kyla McFarlane, at Centre of Contemporary Photography, are photographs of couples embracing in bed. One member of each couple always has one eye open while the other sleeps. The photographs have a deep fold in the middle of the figures that feels like the crisp turned over sheet in a hotel room. This deep and precise fold contrasts the creamy crinkles of sexed up sheets and flesh. The fold has the effect of making the two figures seem anatomically one. The photographs are light and bright with details of wrinkles, hair and skin pores conveying a visceral sense of reality. There is a clear sense it is morning in these photos. These couples will not be able to stay like this for long, as the person with the eye open seems to know. These works depict an intimacy that is tender and familiar. They show a comfortable state of togetherness that will not require any awkward language about the state of their relationship when they wake.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">However, the fold in the photo acts as a dark void. It suggests that moments in relationships that no longer have a need for words are as deep and relaxing and as comfortable as sleep. In John Donne’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Song</i> (circa 1600)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>a poem about leaving a lover for a time and trying to convince her not to worry about him—he concludes by saying:</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; text-align: justify;">But think that we</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Are but turned aside to sleep;</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; text-align: justify;">They who one another keep </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Alive, ne’er parted be.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Donne and Knight both allude to the solitary nature of sleep. Even when we sleep beside someone, we are in a state of internal isolation. The void created by the crease in Knight’s work suggests the depth of the individual’s unconscious that draws the two together in the first place. It keeps them separate not only in sleep, but as individuals that don’t function as some sort of morphed unit once together. The couple who, as Donne says, ‘one another keep Alive’ must separate from each other in order to function in the world outside the bed. Though awake, they will need each other, be conscious and appreciative of each other in a way that they can’t be in sleep. It seems the member of each couple with their eye open might appreciate this. Though their dry stare to the ceiling or camera tells us they don’t need to like it and are perhaps envious of their partners deep comfort and sleepy solitude. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwSN2d7kyRc9LmXKRHubO_IP3kn-5459XGq3wqlyv_Q7HtkqV_GlW0BnKitM6BLxyFPej1TnLptM3ZyN_wTMOEoDjnu-Sh3AdkF0Yz-juGKumurX3Pqqplt-25C252Y-HZ_ps-2wk-Z9td/s1600/Paul+Knight+03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="292" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwSN2d7kyRc9LmXKRHubO_IP3kn-5459XGq3wqlyv_Q7HtkqV_GlW0BnKitM6BLxyFPej1TnLptM3ZyN_wTMOEoDjnu-Sh3AdkF0Yz-juGKumurX3Pqqplt-25C252Y-HZ_ps-2wk-Z9td/s320/Paul+Knight+03.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">However, the crease in the photographs is unsettling. The part we can’t see makes us curious of a “something missing” in this relationship. So while we might say it’s simply the parts that are unknowable of each other, it still doesn’t quell our desire as the viewer to iron it out. Make it more like the album cover for the soundtrack to Franco Zeffirelli's version of Romeo and Juliet. In psychoanalysis, language is used as the “talking cure”; words open up associations and understandings. The crease seems to imply that perhaps the closer and more comfortable these people become, the less they need to speak. But things that maybe should be said, get lost down the same crevice that binds them. They risk seeing their partner as perhaps an extension of themselves rather than an individual. Freud writes ‘At the height of being in love the boundary between the ego and the object threaten to melt away’. If too much is left unsaid, it falls down the comfort crack. The deep and dark void becomes a form of waking sleep.<br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig1w7IbLFiBF4Qph5p7_89hnTS3QQJ4bcZhJXBV4YPpS24LHDZtcfhFMyR88YdslPUnyXBnS0Qxpo0fk8t-J__EMeMBm5bS2P5VH_oybKXeIcNWMJCsVIRR923qSq5E7ngIRKON_07Xl_t/s1600/002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="292" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig1w7IbLFiBF4Qph5p7_89hnTS3QQJ4bcZhJXBV4YPpS24LHDZtcfhFMyR88YdslPUnyXBnS0Qxpo0fk8t-J__EMeMBm5bS2P5VH_oybKXeIcNWMJCsVIRR923qSq5E7ngIRKON_07Xl_t/s320/002.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">The viewer gazes at this scene with a self-conscious fascination of watching a moment that is intensely private. John Donne in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Sun Rising</i> (circa 1600) admonishes the sun as a ‘saucy pedantic wretch’, who wakes up sleeping lovers. Like the sun in the poem, the viewer and photographer are an outside world that see the loving couple and speculate on the creases in their relationship. The gaze of the viewer objectifies the couple as perhaps generic types; the old couple, the gay couple, the young couple, to differentiate the untitled works in our mind. So we get a sense that they have woken not only into the arms of a lover who they are close, connected but not co-joined; but also in front of a world of people like me who start finding words and categories for them “old”, “young”, “gay”, ”hairy”, “straight”, “male”, “female”. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLYcYB7hO3qI-YWvz15AkG_f1CMCU0rR6rp6qeTjJLRZD4gzeym4_Uw36JG5DnFco8mpdS_eQZ8rxN6PwGDZzAgNzFnVFB24XmJistncCW-9kcFbYbFIh_R91rjoUdzawB7EKd0zODNXiu/s1600/Paul+Knight+01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="292" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLYcYB7hO3qI-YWvz15AkG_f1CMCU0rR6rp6qeTjJLRZD4gzeym4_Uw36JG5DnFco8mpdS_eQZ8rxN6PwGDZzAgNzFnVFB24XmJistncCW-9kcFbYbFIh_R91rjoUdzawB7EKd0zODNXiu/s320/Paul+Knight+01.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">The crease, while seemingly menacing, could be about what can remain hidden. Perhaps it is hidden to protect something even more private then this morning moment. It can stay comfortably hidden between couples. It has to stay hidden from the taxonomic tendencies of the viewer. It may even stay hidden to the individual. They will tuck themselves in it at night and iron it out to face the world in the morning. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">at <a href="http://www.ccp.org.au/">CCP</a> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">Anna </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
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</div>Inkblothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560776688196218442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3225553745050909319.post-19073717225062110382011-06-23T03:29:00.000-07:002011-06-23T04:21:06.924-07:00Catching Trucks<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpgE0sdMkdzc81bNOpVNTJKc_naBD3CV70B2JWZJqL0F7CMuJssaWXy067ynsaHbjaviUshNzf4IKyx-KptK-LWcAY2VAgpcENGZmSCg5aG0uZiSab5lNxLzkrpXFAe5i_LnnpotI8eprA/s1600/009+%25287%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="237" i$="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpgE0sdMkdzc81bNOpVNTJKc_naBD3CV70B2JWZJqL0F7CMuJssaWXy067ynsaHbjaviUshNzf4IKyx-KptK-LWcAY2VAgpcENGZmSCg5aG0uZiSab5lNxLzkrpXFAe5i_LnnpotI8eprA/s320/009+%25287%2529.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Catching trucks is an a imaginative game played, on road trips, by putting out your hand and pretending to grab trucks that seem as though they could fit in your palm—a comparative size thanks to distance. A players hand frames the trucks between thumb and figures and then squishes it in a tight grip. The exhibition <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Catching Trucks,</i> curated by Amita Kirpalani, at Gertrude Contemporary, focuses on artworks that block but also frame our vision just like the way a hand can clutch a truck. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGD9rtrTW5PVo_5jbkb7iRlncoILfMthhrn28Att458ogdV08MoiFWQG9s9RYi-3hx8hqLAU9MmBnpPqbAbhnJ1KzLomcFFFPWHi1uiKhjsb75bPCP458cPwsPRTdQ6rOt8QIsEGW5-zUM/s1600/009+%25283%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="211" i$="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGD9rtrTW5PVo_5jbkb7iRlncoILfMthhrn28Att458ogdV08MoiFWQG9s9RYi-3hx8hqLAU9MmBnpPqbAbhnJ1KzLomcFFFPWHi1uiKhjsb75bPCP458cPwsPRTdQ6rOt8QIsEGW5-zUM/s320/009+%25283%2529.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Elizabeth Newman’s untitled consists of two large plywood structure made like schematic three dimensional windows and doors. They block the surrounding view but also offer passages; they frame an aspect of the view. They’re awkward and skinny in profile. This skinniness reminded me of Jude Law’s character in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I Heart Huckabees</i>, Brad Stand, saying ‘How am I not myself?’ They reference their surroundings but they are artworks that never seem to be themselves. In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Catching Trucks</i> there is a dichotomy between screens and passages; blocks and thoroughfares. Liminal spaces are described by their concealment. The translucent screens onto which pleasures are projected lose their opaque significances.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8ROvWvwxzXk8i5xsAZLWBctBpzorgB154TsXjViQRgmpDDnz4OfELaOVXEVIF_CyOt6E-Nyk4RhPVFia_A1EHg_51Kp7xteIgY6V-Kqr_NApVgn17eFbyN_kySBkS7OaxvLH0JJTBwqD-/s1600/009+%25286%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="320" i$="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8ROvWvwxzXk8i5xsAZLWBctBpzorgB154TsXjViQRgmpDDnz4OfELaOVXEVIF_CyOt6E-Nyk4RhPVFia_A1EHg_51Kp7xteIgY6V-Kqr_NApVgn17eFbyN_kySBkS7OaxvLH0JJTBwqD-/s320/009+%25286%2529.jpg" width="314" /></span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Numerous collages by Sean Bailey render desire and pleasure in small glimpses of images which seduce the eye in ways a complete image cannot. His artworks are collages where blotches of flat opaque pigment are painted over printed photographs which are only visible at the very margins of the image. Nothing of the action of these images can be seen. It is obscured by the blotches leaving only unrecognisable suggestions. Yet an intrigue is sparked by these vague edges. The blotches are a murky dreary colour and an ugly shape. They have a spilt quality which suggests that what was in the printed picture was more interesting to look at. But, of course, the blotch is the picture. It is clear that the buried content is more banal than its suppression requires.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixCRoUQYWiatjUWO88G1OBxefLQVb8wmdqMPrD3-QudAyhkELJfCzKgKaP9Xcl9iQ6y9D6BuK2diNfBmU5YNvTLn6lujizEdGTf_-jdvGQjGMa2utg5irSHZHaiEuR90nLyq2W7Pea0hhe/s1600/009+%25288%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="214" i$="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixCRoUQYWiatjUWO88G1OBxefLQVb8wmdqMPrD3-QudAyhkELJfCzKgKaP9Xcl9iQ6y9D6BuK2diNfBmU5YNvTLn6lujizEdGTf_-jdvGQjGMa2utg5irSHZHaiEuR90nLyq2W7Pea0hhe/s320/009+%25288%2529.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Green Structure</i> (2011) by Richard Maloy, installed in the front gallery, is a lot like the apple in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Listening Room</i> (1952) by René Magritte. It is granny smith green and its brimming proportions fill the space of the gallery. When we first enter the gallery the view is very similar to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Listening Room</i>—we see a square room with the window on the left which is filled with something big and green. There is one important distinction however; Maloy’s room cannot be seen as a full composition—in the same way as Magritte’s painting. Magritte puts the viewer in a pseudo-space in the logic of the painting to enable them to see the view. This view contradicts the emotions of the artwork; the viewer remains in the comfort of space in order for the artwork to render a cramped feeling. However, with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Green Structure</i> the viewer is stuffed-in with the artwork and it evokes actual claustrophobia rather than a metaphor. Like the magnitude of a natural disaster, we are only ever able to see parts of this huge object and, like in Bailey’s work; we experience the thrill of the limits of what can be seen. </span><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-gljozzPbmumeEN19FW1KIsBEy63u8Sf_RQgpAW28B4TR13PDI9FGeTUpohgW-Y77uvEZZLELdmaLO9jhmUKA6BkfdMvWzQvUny2XtWoqnKg5l830KTlbvVIm92dQpWfKFo1V38iBbjeG/s1600/009+%25285%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="258" i$="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-gljozzPbmumeEN19FW1KIsBEy63u8Sf_RQgpAW28B4TR13PDI9FGeTUpohgW-Y77uvEZZLELdmaLO9jhmUKA6BkfdMvWzQvUny2XtWoqnKg5l830KTlbvVIm92dQpWfKFo1V38iBbjeG/s320/009+%25285%2529.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh92w5E1fxjAn_HhwtZ-iJf_UssaZISW4J8qPK07uNN0mI746JP7Y_welje-RAsZl4r1I1zPkBEDAOXhQTvYwtLwLxYJ_F0CvuhBaWcwagQ2b1qbeKXjN9FkQvgTQTKLNSDHP0eX8gm6Nr0/s1600/009.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="217" i$="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh92w5E1fxjAn_HhwtZ-iJf_UssaZISW4J8qPK07uNN0mI746JP7Y_welje-RAsZl4r1I1zPkBEDAOXhQTvYwtLwLxYJ_F0CvuhBaWcwagQ2b1qbeKXjN9FkQvgTQTKLNSDHP0eX8gm6Nr0/s320/009.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">This exhibition snatches the straightforwardness of reality from before our eyes. Lisa Oppenheim’s slide show <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Sun is Always Setting Somewhere</i> (2006) is more like the screen than the projection. A hand holding a photographic print of a sunset extends into each frame which is also of a sunset so that the two images match up. The sun, at the end of the day, gazes back at the viewer from the horizon. A photograph held against the blazing sun would be dark with a radiating light aura beyond its borders but the camera’s limitations condense these tones to the point where the image looks coherent. The sun’s gaze penetrates the photographed photographic image. Likewise, the six films of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ideal Demonstration</i> (1972) by Peter Kennedy use a screen to reveal as well as conceal. In one Kennedy attaches sheets of transparent acetate between his face and the camera, one by one, until his image disappears. In another his body’s bright image burns a trace on the film after he has moved. In a third he opens and closes his eyes. Kennedy’s film reveals a subjective vision which is a product of a state of mind. While the screen can <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">screen</i> our view it is also the media onto which our view is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">screened</i>. Can it be that we see and also see what we see? We project our fantasies onto our visual field but we censor them from ourselves behind a series of stereotype images.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgksNkFGgd_9WVLZSZ7eSDbWJp5eIrdtFy6JRykBXYlaZUr4mVbzamLIhoVBxa0yUit2-wqzd2JHZvES7qrAlVnCDr827oRfAyWuJ3hrI8GQdwOncjwjUf_0RxIZyNoQHh541CR-ZPI6wQ8/s1600/009+%25284%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="214" i$="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgksNkFGgd_9WVLZSZ7eSDbWJp5eIrdtFy6JRykBXYlaZUr4mVbzamLIhoVBxa0yUit2-wqzd2JHZvES7qrAlVnCDr827oRfAyWuJ3hrI8GQdwOncjwjUf_0RxIZyNoQHh541CR-ZPI6wQ8/s320/009+%25284%2529.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The hand seen holding up the sunset photographs in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Sun is Always Setting Somewhere</i> is like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Green Structure</i> in that it demonstrates our inability to visually assimilate our body. In Oppenheim’s collage the hand poetically belongs to the viewer but it doesn’t meet our arm. While in Maloy’s work the view is felt with the body more strongly than it is seen. The point of view implicitly laid-out in each of these artworks is strangely missing even though it is right under our noses.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRtbh3Q1nB2dtiZRFscCqXTFe1PS0OyRvzVmKXJg5FU35FvZDQZKth0UBsKCaYNehrgqKm5FylaJbonHmg98OxNFGyozekvoE6bVKtxTpzC-i37S87SmOC7tV-4jl4qo9q0kK-7dxwiWxY/s1600/009+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" i$="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRtbh3Q1nB2dtiZRFscCqXTFe1PS0OyRvzVmKXJg5FU35FvZDQZKth0UBsKCaYNehrgqKm5FylaJbonHmg98OxNFGyozekvoE6bVKtxTpzC-i37S87SmOC7tV-4jl4qo9q0kK-7dxwiWxY/s320/009+%25282%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">At <a href="http://www.gertrude.org.au/%20%20">Gertrude Contemporary</a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Tim</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRtbh3Q1nB2dtiZRFscCqXTFe1PS0OyRvzVmKXJg5FU35FvZDQZKth0UBsKCaYNehrgqKm5FylaJbonHmg98OxNFGyozekvoE6bVKtxTpzC-i37S87SmOC7tV-4jl4qo9q0kK-7dxwiWxY/s1600/009+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></a></div>Inkblothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560776688196218442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3225553745050909319.post-15681204660230712392011-06-11T21:54:00.000-07:002011-06-14T01:41:16.602-07:00The adventures of an orange vinyl chair<div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9qdnCfKaZIDSJXyAPdRe53yXLBK9vD57WBt2ND5O15kZgnSsG92qzW7cjEzM6qqcKWPsgjWntUZ0_eegR52e0fmzBf7yrAr6k6q0RIxGyGFDwZlS2M7-FFChwDEAiqo4QzBybCyz_bHnN/s1600/Untitled+%2528Stuff+Jump%2529%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="254" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9qdnCfKaZIDSJXyAPdRe53yXLBK9vD57WBt2ND5O15kZgnSsG92qzW7cjEzM6qqcKWPsgjWntUZ0_eegR52e0fmzBf7yrAr6k6q0RIxGyGFDwZlS2M7-FFChwDEAiqo4QzBybCyz_bHnN/s320/Untitled+%2528Stuff+Jump%2529%25281%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><i><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">Imagine your primary school teacher’s orange vinyl chair falling through the air. Your teacher is not on it anymore. The chair has been thrown out of a plane by sky divers and they are filming it. It doesn’t twirl around like a crazy out of control object hurling to its doom. It just falls gracefully upright, like someone could still sit on it. This work, Matthew Greaves’ <i>Untitled (Stuff Jump)</i> at tcb gallery, evokes the fleeting feeling of a fall in a dream. The orange chair in white fluffy clouds and blue sky reminds us of a Rene Magritte painting. Like Magritte’s cloud wallpaper with big toiletries, moon in a tree or train coming out of a chimney, there is a gentle curiosity that<a href="http://www.blogger.com/" name="_GoBack"></a> makes us ponder the hows and whys of how it came to be there. There is something about the ordinary becoming extraordinary that fills us with hope. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">This chair has probably been sat on, without love or comfort, in portable classrooms watching <i>Behind the News</i> or poster presentations on amphibians. Its life as a chair has been practical and no frills and it has done its job and there’s not much more a chair should expect in this life. But this moment, this moment post function and before destruction; this is the terrifying joy of being completely free and useless. We don’t see the destruction of the chair. It fades on down through the clouds. As we anthropomorphise the plain and functional chair, we perhaps find this chair’s end as unimaginable as our own. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">It is sometimes hard to remember that the chair is falling. It seems attached to something. An invisible string attached to the plane, or perhaps a ceiling of sorts. Of course we did our poster presentation on the sky and know there is nothing to attach this chair to. No puppeteer or secret string that will pull it up when it gets too close to the ground. So you start to imagine that the chair is not falling at all. It is flying. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVBNdA1D55Ra7UO20jINNxzSMwjSUwPP02glW5hAhlADXOFzNnL9O7zLUCEifNDXHgW1mo2QU46dA43kPQ4UiCmC2er_JfWMOkPtf7WLZYsvWAHAbcIXNC7eZk316N7zfmICQ-jnw-plrB/s1600/DSC_0008.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVBNdA1D55Ra7UO20jINNxzSMwjSUwPP02glW5hAhlADXOFzNnL9O7zLUCEifNDXHgW1mo2QU46dA43kPQ4UiCmC2er_JfWMOkPtf7WLZYsvWAHAbcIXNC7eZk316N7zfmICQ-jnw-plrB/s320/DSC_0008.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">The work is a fantasy of escape reminiscent of Enid Blyton. In childhood these adventures of flying chairs give the child an opportunity for vicarious heroic adventures. The primary school teacher’s chair’s escape divulges the secret desires of adults to escape on heroic adventures too. Though as adults, flying may seem too much like falling to risk it. This flying chair, with its life before and its life after this moment alluded to by its nature and circumstance, is a celestial salute to the present - with all its fear and beauty. </span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">On at <a href="http://www.tcbartinc.org.au/">tcb gallery</a> until 25th of June</span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span><br />
<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Anna</span></div>Inkblothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560776688196218442noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3225553745050909319.post-86954280858344239452011-06-01T05:30:00.000-07:002011-06-27T16:23:49.073-07:00Jesús Malverde, Santa Muerte and the Virgin of Guadalupe<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;"> </span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhteelZ-iOXPT7pCuRjyEcwscsMEL_hqU2G68YvwumJe2IR6gMb5Zwbxb0fXDqNqRa5fkMXVMj99LMkqsA-ckBw5Q9t6K5SKqYiQ0IDgZmYcPbuK3qOxXV-fepuUa9VAwY8p21TNdbtgB03/s1600/004.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhteelZ-iOXPT7pCuRjyEcwscsMEL_hqU2G68YvwumJe2IR6gMb5Zwbxb0fXDqNqRa5fkMXVMj99LMkqsA-ckBw5Q9t6K5SKqYiQ0IDgZmYcPbuK3qOxXV-fepuUa9VAwY8p21TNdbtgB03/s320/004.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 150%;">Mexicans are tough. The <i>Mi Casa Su Casa</i> exhibition at No Vacancy gallery shows why. It has stencil art of smashed up cars, wrestling masks in orange juice ads, skeletons singing and stigmata bleeding Christ holograms that turn into Pope John Paul. It is tough but it is bright and it is festive and there are doilies and embroidery and colourful cowboy shirts and beer bottles with flowers in them at the altar of the patron saint of narcotics. The smashed up cars are displayed on a sunny roller-brush background. One death skeleton has the virgin of Guadalupe’s crown being placed by angels on his head, while he is surrounded by American eagle body builders and fake tanned pole dancers. We see how Mexican culture not only lets Death in but laughs at the arrogance or absurdity of ever trying to keep him out. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid6IpKlTqgP0rS-aw6GKVrWmuZie6O3DSQSGhFV6-yEYrxjsWuA5nKhcYoR8Cm9th1CXzDQrkDfiSYcFTm9cfxWhwWa-4GCRL-FX1fhVzepHy1jwoioPYNEoYeASja4Z-V3PcOWRRpfEQY/s1600/001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid6IpKlTqgP0rS-aw6GKVrWmuZie6O3DSQSGhFV6-yEYrxjsWuA5nKhcYoR8Cm9th1CXzDQrkDfiSYcFTm9cfxWhwWa-4GCRL-FX1fhVzepHy1jwoioPYNEoYeASja4Z-V3PcOWRRpfEQY/s320/001.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 150%;">Oscar Reyes and Watchavato show us the side of Mexico that Octavio Paz describes as ‘the hubbub of a fiesta night our voices explode into brilliant lights, and life and death mingle together’. In his essay <i>The Labyrinth of Solitude</i>, Paz contrasts a North American preoccupation with purity, health and longevity with the Mexican belief in communion and fiesta. Paz puts it that ‘there is no health without contact. Tlazoltetl, the Aztec goddess of filth and fecundity, of earthly and human moods, was also the goddess of steam baths, sexual love and confession’. Paz suggests that the disinfected North Americans live in a perpetual denial of filth that manifests in a ‘sadism underlying all relationships imposed by a doctrine of aseptic moral purity’. Reyes’ collages juxtapose the tropes of North American advertising (that focus on the individuals desire to be “cleansed” or “improved”) with the chaos of communal catharsis in the fiesta.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEge3485Edotbr5QIub0BqprAnPEH-H6L6GXezXLSuZt8hgTG9JZWHeXfjWKvmuCs700QqeZy1gosGHE2fUum-rDsTcHYSVZlSd5uQHLKO7BqfgQG4yAXz1JYyrMtyIG1-SeDGhXxXd5y0gt/s1600/005.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEge3485Edotbr5QIub0BqprAnPEH-H6L6GXezXLSuZt8hgTG9JZWHeXfjWKvmuCs700QqeZy1gosGHE2fUum-rDsTcHYSVZlSd5uQHLKO7BqfgQG4yAXz1JYyrMtyIG1-SeDGhXxXd5y0gt/s320/005.jpg" width="272" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 150%;">Throughout the exhibition we see an embrace of destruction as a part of life. The skeleton Santa Muerte (Saint Death) playing on a guitar, is printed on embroidered roses and mounted in a pretty white frame. The image evokes a reverence and humor in response to the inevitability of not just our actual death but also failure, sadness, life’s frequent banality. The embroidery and detail evoke a warm domesticity that makes us even more comfortable with a singing death. We sense the presence of a mother.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 150%;">When we look to the side, we see her. An altar for the Virgin of Guadalupe with a sculpture of her surrounded by lights, flowers, pictures of her that sparkle and a little diorama of her rose bush miracle in a clear box. It’s beautiful and excessive and we feel how much this image is adored. The dark skinned Virgin of Guadalupe is symbolic of the fusion of Spanish and Aztec cultures that was born from colonial violence. This is the ever loving mother who forgives. Sin is not to be denied but rather confessed. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix8nLd1LfmZV_IkHzZ09Q3OvNJo_BmvIy2GQ11umLTgey7LpsdEBTIjtzFzAIYs2ZLEO5nbVnDh6t6S9RHmiRvesr6xYr4hOmDufGBMolIJ0JcnD9dkQn6vXChuLyQv-z9Y2Sn47gE1EP7/s1600/002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix8nLd1LfmZV_IkHzZ09Q3OvNJo_BmvIy2GQ11umLTgey7LpsdEBTIjtzFzAIYs2ZLEO5nbVnDh6t6S9RHmiRvesr6xYr4hOmDufGBMolIJ0JcnD9dkQn6vXChuLyQv-z9Y2Sn47gE1EP7/s320/002.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 150%;">Opposite the shrine to the Virgin is the shrine to Jesús Malverde—the patron saint of narcotics. He is prayed to, to help conceal drugs across borders. Watchavato has made wallpaper behind the shrine of Malverde’s image on American style bank notes. This evokes the capitalist conundrum of supply and demand in terms of North American’s participation in this drug trade. Next to this is a work commissioned by a drug lord, including skate boards with Malverde’s image (among others) airbrushed on them. The druglord was killed before he was able to give them to his sons. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzsAdyAoZZJtYbBTQpqiYfN5SooqouNfAoQjtSUxN0MwflnUwf8hNjFVd6ZE1IqjdCGP5qeAGR4tASx0Xq48dwkU5Sn9pYUIRNfzhbiEaYwXKxVLvP1pwup-y848tjMIC3Ogt3osQR7pI-/s1600/003.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzsAdyAoZZJtYbBTQpqiYfN5SooqouNfAoQjtSUxN0MwflnUwf8hNjFVd6ZE1IqjdCGP5qeAGR4tASx0Xq48dwkU5Sn9pYUIRNfzhbiEaYwXKxVLvP1pwup-y848tjMIC3Ogt3osQR7pI-/s320/003.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 150%;">So amongst all the colour and festivity of this show there is a confrontation with destruction. Amongst the flowers,<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3225553745050909319" name="_GoBack"></a> the girls, the cars and the ever loving mothers, you get the feeling that death is avowed and homely. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 150%;">At <a href="http://no-vacancy.com.au/">No Vacancy</a></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 150%;"> </span></span></div><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;"> </span><br />
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</span></span></div><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;"> </span>Inkblothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560776688196218442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3225553745050909319.post-89087487194711727692011-05-19T05:20:00.000-07:002011-06-27T16:24:49.168-07:00A Party at Balfron Tower<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIyrcMI6TQ7O2DJHpNp6ifFfQkIFLOfPXUYt6Uh1QZOFUEMXIC51ZT9KUdTlelAoBPqgN3khzj7-r3Eckadk-9u3r1jTvBHSRMWhVTXkUVV7RfrrH8rEgQZVK8sfUv8zG-D0mAwphfcpue/s1600/Terrill_Arsenal+vs+Fenerbahce+120cm+x+142+cm_2009.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIyrcMI6TQ7O2DJHpNp6ifFfQkIFLOfPXUYt6Uh1QZOFUEMXIC51ZT9KUdTlelAoBPqgN3khzj7-r3Eckadk-9u3r1jTvBHSRMWhVTXkUVV7RfrrH8rEgQZVK8sfUv8zG-D0mAwphfcpue/s320/Terrill_Arsenal+vs+Fenerbahce+120cm+x+142+cm_2009.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">A crowd of people storm up stadium steps on Sunday and on Monday the steps are deserted. Just the railings and the concrete remain. People whirl around a turquoise dance floor and have blurry memories of a girl’s hair and an amber light that haloed her in the morning. Simon Terrill’s exhibition <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Phantom</i> at Sutton gallery explores the nature of people, place and time in photography. Terrill is able to capture moments of great human frenzy and excitement and then the stillness and consistency of the spaces they inhabit. These joyous and ephemeral moments become memories that will morph and change as they are remembered. However, the concrete stays still and objective and (like an Aldous Huxley nightmare) can be wiped clean of today’s individuals and gets ready for the next batch. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Balfron Tower</i> is photographic mural of the dark, monolith housing estate in which Terrill lives. Balfron Tower had been designed by Erno Goldfinger as part of a post war vision of a vertical London. In the process of constructing this photograph, Terrill enables the residents of the building to make their mark on the place they live their life. By photographing it, Terrill makes the human moments, however small and quirky, rival the longevity of the steel and cement.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The residents of Balfron Tower are out on their balconies or on the green lawn in front of the building celebrating with coloured lights, potplants and streamers and cups of tea and TVs on and holding hands and making joyous circles. The building has been flood lit and has been photographed from a distance so all of the residents seem tiny. It feels similar to looking at a model railway where we are initially awed by the size and scale of the construction and then on looking more closely start to marvel at the detail. We get the perspective of perhaps some omnipotent being that sees all and can peer into any apartment we choose or perhaps we are just a little voyeur who lives in their own big concrete slab across the street. </span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDS8klWSybgJ_RqYvZ1LSwvodSaRp0Uzzr-kxKiK6pp97XUZdGc3VzDvg1wjHdcYvKKYLlV5-YjEtC8pfLBIxzUWxgVE3Pz0b8qEn60ADrlBq4Uo4IivIh143vAOG-SUGynCgz6a8Q55aZ/s1600/Terrill_Balfron+Tower_2010.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDS8klWSybgJ_RqYvZ1LSwvodSaRp0Uzzr-kxKiK6pp97XUZdGc3VzDvg1wjHdcYvKKYLlV5-YjEtC8pfLBIxzUWxgVE3Pz0b8qEn60ADrlBq4Uo4IivIh143vAOG-SUGynCgz6a8Q55aZ/s320/Terrill_Balfron+Tower_2010.jpg" width="259" /></a></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The cold and blocky architecture of the Brutalism movement in the 1950s – 70s was founded on a socialist utopian ideology. Erno Goldfinger was part of this movement who wanted to create highly functional, uncompromising, antibourgeois buildings that would be affordable and honest. However, the great grey masses tended to look rather unfriendly and miserable and would stick out from the rest of the urban environment like stark, alien fortresses. We see in Balfron Towers these small, dark bridges across to the lift tower on each floor. These bridges have an ominous narrowness in comparison to the bulk of the building. Like a gangplank of a pirate ship, they suggest limited ways to get out once you’re in. The building was said to evoke ‘a delicate sense of terror’.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Terrill picks up on the terror. The floodlit building against the dark sky with the small celebrating figures throughout it fills us with an existential chill. When we start to look at the little groups we see one has written the word disco in lights on their balcony, others have suspended a little donkey piñata between the floors with colourful streamers. All these tiny people, with their tiny expressions of joy or laughter seem so vulnerable. This architecture does not encourage individuals to express themselves outwardly. So while these residents may be close to their neighbours in proximity, they are encouraged to keep personal expression to the confines of their apartment. The building protects these humans from really having to live together and accept diversity.</span><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij4LOX5XVq5q0FwBNA1hVJUTDHVarZS7-lx7CEdCAtQzMT8vF7o24FFjUb1or-PXCb3Pi3zCjFG6QNaCQwNnFiIFVmn2MUfkk6USin7F4_ST_UYfqKbK2JwjyvxjzlgZ98dd4hXF5YlQRS/s1600/Terrill_install_2011.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="202" j8="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij4LOX5XVq5q0FwBNA1hVJUTDHVarZS7-lx7CEdCAtQzMT8vF7o24FFjUb1or-PXCb3Pi3zCjFG6QNaCQwNnFiIFVmn2MUfkk6USin7F4_ST_UYfqKbK2JwjyvxjzlgZ98dd4hXF5YlQRS/s320/Terrill_install_2011.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> By constructing these joyous crowd scenes, Terrill comments on the original utopian ideals of the architects. Utopias rely on a sense of a communal whole that puts aside the needs for individual expression. The little individuals contrast their expressions of happiness with the giant looming ideals of promised freedom and equality that the building evokes. We know this moment of togetherness and community will end like a New Years Eve countdown and they will kiss and say goodnight and wake up to concrete and the gangplanks down to the lifts. However, this does not have to end so melancholically. The project itself was very uplifting for the residents of the building and they got a great deal of joy and empowerment from this event. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
Anna </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">at <a href="http://www.suttongallery.com.au/">Sutton Gallery</a> </span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Inkblothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560776688196218442noreply@blogger.com1