Hell Of Paradise

Scanned & printed by Peter Hatzipavlis at Photographic Studies College

exhibitions

Christopher Köller, Soldierboy (4 panel polyptych), 2010 – 2011, inkjet print on archival paper, 112 x 214cm, edition of 5 + 2AP

project 11:

paradise... a hell of a place James Donald

O

ne may choose to stride through Anna Pappas’s

curious fantasies of each work seem to feed upon one another.

group show paradise... a hell of a place cleanly,

The exhibition approaches—but comes just short of—exploring

quickly, surgically; like a scalpel blade through

notions of myth and ideology as a culture of representation. Yet

body tissue. At first it may be an assertion of one’s

own curiosity or enthusiasm, but with each flourish of the eye, dissecting each work, our once-exacting-limbs grow less secure

Natascha Stellmach, Untitled, 2011, mixed media installation: photographic print, found object (tambourine), book, texta & paint on walls, dimensions variable

in their resolve—trembling: Perhaps doubting whether the state of our condition is building to some crescendo of ecstasy; or is it teetering on the verge of being drowned by a wave of senseless corner, or up that flight of stairs.

Project 11: paradise... a hell of a place comprises mainly new works from 11 Australian and European (Berlin, Vienna and Milan) artists with backgrounds in new media, drawing, sculpture and photography. Audiences can rest assured of an impressively cohesive line-up, owing largely to the versatility of a few chief works. The result is a twisting amalgam of collective consciousness, where the morbid revelations and 38

April - May 2011

Courtesy of Galerie WAGNER + PARTNER, Berlin

apathy? The answer seems always to be just around the next

wistful hints at irreducible possibilities. It is thus by opening the paradoxes of myth that project 11 finds itself doomed to constantly ward off the threat of being obscured by its own cyclical rationale.

We see Anna Pappas’s tantalizing flirt with paradise reduced

Courtesy of Anna Pappas gallery

the most that any of the works offer comes to little more than

to its basic components in Bonnie Lane’s installation People’s Paradise. A terrarium occupied by two mice, who seem oblivious to their surroundings, is filled by Googled images of “paradise,” symbolizing the construction of an ideal life. This brings us hilariously close to being an art exhibition within an art exhibition.

Reapplying these symbols through wholly unorthodox means calls into question the illusory nature of the dichotomy between myths of “paradise,” and our “everyday” reality. Lane confesses “a morbid curiosity in human banality, and I am keen to reinterpret observations of the melancholic, humorous, repetitive and relentless human condition emanating from the banal actions and experiences of everyday life.” The work may be conceived as a subtle interrogation of the grounds on which our struggle to endlessly reform our existence is fraught. This struggle, which is conducted according to the most abstract and unattainable ideals.

Sarah Berners, Object-Appendage No.5, 2010, C type photographic print, 100 x 150 cm, edition of 5

Likewise, in the context of our approach to the ordinary, we find the intrigue of the “plastic fantastic” has beguiled Sarah Berners’ photographic series Object Appendage. Set before a pitch-dark

Andy Hutson, Another Day In Paradise, 2011, paper mâché, cardboard, dowel, wire, acrylic paint, 140 x 90 x 76 cm

void, these silent interplays each centre around the probing embraces shared between an anonymous naked woman and an air-conditioning duct. The duct instantly conjures up similar feminine motifs of tangled black intestinal growths, which have loomed large as installation pieces in the Melbourne art scene over the past year. However, Berners strays from the organic connotations of such works, noting rather that “in our modern era, worship of the synthetic has taken precedence. For those of use who secretly relish a smack of petroleum at the bowser, or the acrid scent of a fleshy bleached floor, there is a quality to the noxious that is both ambiguous and beckoning.”

Turning our gaze toward the role of what French theorist Guy Debord coined the “spectacle,” we may consider how project 11 thrives on teasing out the myriad contradictions inherent within popular ideals, often going so far as to satirize paradise’s inevitable slip into decadence. As project 11’s exhibition essay

by Damian Smith points out “... Paradise is material, substantial embroiled.” Scalpel on standby.

The artists’ responses are argued to be “neither pessimistic nor optimistic” but “existential.”

They do indeed gracefully skirt the outspoken melodrama rife throughout many exhibitions.

Courtesy of Anna Pappas gallery

and fleshy. Get what you want and you might find yourself

April - May 2011

39

Courtesy of Anna Pappas gallery

Bonnie Lane, The People’s Paradise, 2011, fish tank, vinyl prints, wood, mice, 30 x 61 x 31 cm

However, what Smith phrases as “existential,” which may

against others, destroy their property, murder and even to stage

otherwise feel empowering, often comes off as more “relativist”

their own deaths.”

and apathetic, proclaiming its situation with the removed demeanor of abstract objectivity.

Ironically, though, we often find it just as easy to slip into our cynically desensitized state as if we were watching another

Similarly, addressing a communion of the intractable other,

similarly tragic episode on the evening news. If the images of

Deborah Kelly takes the knife to existing images of insects,

project 11 are depictions of what Smith calls “the well-heeled but

animals and lizards to give birth to a taxonomy of her own divine

angst-ridden period right now,” we remain safely removed. There

imagination. Collages of life-forms arbitrarily re-defined. Kelly

are a few precious instances that emerge throughout the exhibition

explains “I’ve always wished the parameters around the species

which incite us to contemplate our own relationship with the

were more permeable, the edges more malleable, the imperatives

madness, but the result leaves us more confused by trailing dead-

more negotiable. At various times I’ve thought it would be

ends than engaged. The art most often depends on the relative

heaven to be perfectly mutable; to breathe underwater, to have

context of Debord’s spectacle, offering viewers a chance to

diaphanous wings secreted under this predatory carapace, to

question the white cube of spectacle surrounding and housing

idly groom my silky pelt with the tips of my very many fingers, to

the work. However, it seems that the truly moving work of art

summon my familiars, my millions of minions, to settle this right

demands that its audience rise to the task of questioning itself.

royal, paradise-threatening blood feud between the life-forms.”

Christopher Koller’s photo montage Soldierboy returns Kelly’s blood feud to the pressing reality of current affairs in the Middle East, juxtaposing the fantasies conjured by violent computer games and the guarantees of paradise emblazoned in the minds of child suicide bombers. Koller points out that “Paradise has been used as a lure to get the young to engage in holy wars, to inflict violence 40

April - May 2011

James Donald is a New York-born Melbournite and is currently working in Taipei as entertainment and arts editor at Taiwan’s English language daily The China Post