Australia’s Monthly Briefing on
art
JUNE 2013 $5.00
eX de Medici Peter Cooley Stewart MacFarlane
Artist Interview 1
In Conversation with… Peter Cooley by Melissa Pesa Developing on the theme of his 2012 exhibition, Martin Browne Contemporary presents new sculptures by Peter Cooley in his exhibition ‘Through the Archipelago II’. The work in the exhibition depicts Australian wildlife as varied as the cassowaries and tree kangaroos of Far North Queensland and the sugar gliders that frequent the bush around the artist’s home in the Blue Mountains. In his Kites, Gang Gangs, Sugar Gliders, Tree Kangaroos, Swans and Cassowaries, Cooley simplifies and abstracts his subjects to create gestural works of power and beauty - the clay hollowed out, flattened and expressively rippled to suggest the essence of these Australian animals. Cooley has worked with ceramics for many years, forging a much lauded career working with the medium. His works are less about their sculptural 38
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form and focus more on the ethereal qualities of the object – often achieved through his use of glazes. There are glazes so bold you cannot take your eyes off the work, while others are so soft you feel yourself sinking into them. The song of some of the works exactly mimics the raucous call of the native birds. In the lead up to his exhibition with Martin Browne Contemporary, Art Almanac spoke with Cooley about his practice and what inspirations lie behind these delicate objects. The works in your last couple of exhibitions – including this one with Martin Browne Contemporary – depict native Australian wildlife, from cassowaries to tree kangaroos. Do you have a strong connection to nature? Referencing nature is a reflection of living in Australia and its uniqueness, compared to other cultures overseas with their huge museum infrastructure (something I envy!). I try to take advantage of what’s around me, which in turn has sense of place, identity and aesthetic.
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Do you use any reference material like photographs or taxidermy objects when making a work? When possible, I try to view live animals. The Tree Kangaroo’s are at Melbourne zoo; the Cassowaries are next to the train line at Featherdale Park; and the parrots are local to me here in the Blue Mountains. Sometimes I take photographs but I mostly just look, trying to get the feel of their movement and their idiosyncrasies. Looking more broadly at your practice, what triggered your passion for ceramics? I first started making pots at 12 years of age in a Saturday afternoon pottery classes in Tweed Heads but it wasn’t anything serious. I had a revelation in the year 2000 while in New York at the Greene Street Studio that this should start to happen again... I like the idea of and quality of painting on ‘dirt’ and modeling something that is essentially mud. I also like the hands-on aspects, the direct and physical qualities of ceramics. It’s also a basic reaction against technology and corporate nature of much contemporary art practices.
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Your works are often heavily decorated with paint and glazes – how important to the work is this application? The decoration is as integral as the composition itself. I changed over to a majolica glaze which is an on surface decoration rather than an under glaze decoration as before and I like the results. I do feel fortunate that my earlier years as a painter have become something of an asset when it comes to ‘painting up’ the sculptures. Martin Browne Contemporary Until 23 June, 2013 Sydney
1 Gang Gangs 4, 2012, earthenware, 42 x 28 x 28cm 2 Lumholtz Tree Kangaroos, a pair, 2012-13, earthenware, 51 x 31 x 32cm (each) 3 Tree Kangaroo 1, 2012, earthenware, 26 x 17.5 x 19cm 4 Cassowary 3, 2013, earthenware, 60 x 63 x 40cm
Courtesy the artist and Martin Browne Contemporary
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Exhibition Reviews 1
This is Video By Anna Madeleine This year, Sydney plays host to the ‘2013 International Symposium of Electronic Art’ (ISEA): an annual, international platform of exhibitions and events that explore a range of themes surrounding the integration of new technologies into today’s society. Through exhibitions, performances, public talks, workshops and debates, ISEA regenerates ideas around social and political uses of technology in everyday life as well as art, with themes including social media, locative technologies, surveillance, climate, and communication. Stephen Jones, a video artist and electronic engineer, has curated ‘This is Video’, an archival research project that is presented by Artspace in their Reading Room as part of the ISEA program. Jones has re-mastered key historical material from the prominent 1981 exhibition Video Art from Australia as well as sourcing additional work, to highlight early video practice in Australian art. 40
In doing this with the backdrop of ISEA, ‘This is Video’ emphasises the important role that video has played in contemporary art for decades - from performance documentation to abstract psychedelic work of the mid-70’s - and is a reminder of the roots of the new media art we have become accustomed to seeing today, such as immersive, interactive, and augmented environments. With the emergence of electronic and portable means of recording video, artists began working in new and experimental ways to explore the full potential of this new technology: it allowed greater recording time, instant playback abilities, the opportunity to mix multiple camera perspectives into one image, time lapse, slow and reverse motion, fly-overs, and pattern effects. These aesthetics ultimately provided new perceptions of time and space which have resonated through to media art today. For example, the earliest work in the collection, Mad Mesh, 1968, by David Perry, was made by recording images through a damaged television camera. Today, we still see artists using error of technology as a creative intervention in glitch art aesthetics.
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Mick Glasheen, an architect and pioneer of early cinema and experimental film, created work that was heavily influenced by media theorists. His video Teleologic Telecast from Spaceship Earth: On Board with Buckminster Fuller, 1970, is a re-mixed recording of a Buckminster Fuller’s lecture given at UNSW, presenting Fuller’s ideas on science, metaphysics and the universe, merged with just as radical techniques of moving image production, creating a multi-layered expression of image, voice, and sound. Glasheen went on to produce Uluru, 1978, in which he uses video as a new way to tell the stories and traditional knowledge of the indigenous people and their land. Made with a video portapak, this work shows how mobility made room for further developments of video. It was the starting point to further collaborative works and the establishment of experimental video collectives, such as Bush Video. ‘This is Video’ shows us a lot about artists’ engagement with technology. Looking back at this collection highlights the evolution of media and reveals how intervention with technology creates opportunity for creative expression and
experimentation – and that this is not a new phenomena. Just as artists are experimenting with emerging technologies now, as we can see in the rest of ISEA – they did so in the 70s, which had led to the increased availability of the moving image that we take for granted now. By reframing the availability and capabilities of video, ‘This is Video’ presents a new historical perspective on media art, which asks where our experiments now, may lead to in the future. Artspace, Reading Room 30 May to 16 June, 2013 Sydney ISEA2013 7 to 16 June, 2013 www.isea2013.org
1 Peter Callas, I Would Have Run But I Had a Heavy Cold, 1980, still from video 2 Mick Gasheen, Teleologic Telecast from Planet Earth: on board with Buckminster Fuller, 1970, still from video
Courtesy of the artists
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Exhibition Reviews 2
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Stewart MacFarlane Second Sight by Diane Mah Whether it is the confrontational gaze of the model, the scene and the lone figure or a scene loaded with urban landmarks or pastoral bliss, Stewart MacFarlane’s work is distinctive and mature. A painter of 40 years in more or less the same genres, he continues to reinvent his techniques and the nuances that he has developed within it. MacFarlane’s work is embodied, in his words as “diary entries of my experiences, current situations, physical locations and mind spaces”. His current exhibition, painted in the last fourteen months, is grounded in two locations, South Australia and New Mexico. For example, the 42
background in Lantern is the corner of Rundle and Pulteney Streets, a well known hangout, iconic to residents of Adelaide, together with small paintings in a variety of other locations in South Australia. The scenes from New Mexico are a direct response to the streetscape and houses of the town of Roswell of 50,000 inhabitants. Roswell, has a history for MacFarlane, who first painted there as an artist-in-residence in 1988. The inhabitants of Roswell come from varied backgrounds and cultures and the houses in this town have a personality and a mood which reflects this. Not only are the houses of interest but a motel with classic 50’s signage is also a focus of one of his works. An exhibition that spans two continents and two cultures is reflective of MacFarlane’s life story. A
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born and bred Australian but a frequent resident of the United States, his influences include American artists Edward Hopper and Alex Katz as well as Australian influences such as Charles Blackman, David Boyd and Sidney Nolan. His work represents a unique cross-cultural aesthetic. Whilst MacFarlane’s body of work has encompassed different countries and different mindsets, the rendering of the nude has been a mainstay in his career. MacFarlane says: “Drawing and painting the nude has been a constant in my life since I was sixteen. The first time I was confronted with a live nude in art class I was terrified. I was a pimply, inexperienced teenager in front of an attractive, naked woman. I still remember how she looked. I had no idea how to deal with my embarrassment. I just had to focus and put pencil to paper. Forty years later it isn’t much different but the pimples have gone”.
This quote, from his newly published monograph Stewart MacFarlane ‘paintings’ gives us a window into his life as an artist. The book is a wellproduced catalogue of his works over the years, as well as providing an insightful biography. Viewing MacFarlane’s ‘Second Sight’ is a painters’ delight. It is a show of full and powerful works reflecting a painter’s commitment to his art and its expressive qualities. Australian Galleries Roylston Street 18 June to 7 July, 2013 Sydney 1 Stuart MacFarlane in his studio 2 Stuart MacFarlane in his studio 3 Lantern, 2013, oil on canvas
Courtesy the artist and Australian Galleries, Sydney
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Exhibition Reviews 1
Direct Democracy by Jillian Grant Is there no purer form of democratic expression than the presentation of a particularly touchy piece of art? The Monash Museum of Art seems to agree, as it stages its blockbuster exhibition ‘Direct Democracy’, featuring a host of significant Australian and international artists including Hany Armanious, Mike Parr, Destiny Deacon, Raquel Ormella, A Centre for Everything, and many more, presenting newly commissioned and existing work. Curated by MUMA’s Senior Curator Geraldine Barlow, the exhibition is part of a series of thematic and discursive exhibitions at the Museum, highlighting artistic approaches and concepts with broader contemporary relevance. The exhibition is designed to acknowledge and explore the concept of democracy – from the Greek ‘demos’ and ‘kratos’ meaning ‘people’ and ‘rule’ respectively – and to transcend the discursive singularity of the concept, embodying far more than the popular understanding often limited to 44
representative democracy. The title itself refers to a form of democracy in which interaction between a populace and its government is as ‘direct’ as possible, as opposed to the representative democratic model in which elected representatives mediate policy decisions. Though a representative democracy in practice, Switzerland is a country that embodies the ‘direct’ democratic model, in that there is the opportunity for citizens to vote on almost any law established by their representatives of any level, whether that be municipal, state or federal, if they are so inclined. Recent political unrest and change resulting from such events as the Arab Spring, Global Financial Crisis and the Occupy movement have triggered a reconsideration of the position of the individual within the whole, and the role of the collective. A key point of discussion, and a thread that runs through the exhibition is that of collective and individual agency and identity, within the current political climate. After all, this idea is at the centre of democratic development – this exhibition looks at changing democratic models
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in emerging and established democracies; and the place of the individual and the collective within that structure is of paramount consideration. As Curator Geraldine Barlow so nicely states in the opening of her catalogue essay, “As individuals we are capable, but so much more so when we act together.” With this in mind, works by such artists as Gabrielle de Vietri and Will Foster, with their collaborative project A Centre for Everything, promote structural discussion, whilst also making political suggestions. The project, which began in 2012, invites open and indiscriminate participation – this is pure democracy. Each session, three different ideas are united in the form of a Venn diagram, and allowed to intermingle. For ‘Direct Democracy’, the artists have created ‘Group 7: Alternative education, Party food politics and The house 2013,’ in which visitors are invited to vote on the ingredients that will create a meal at the end of the exhibition. Raquel Ormella’s work Poetic Possibility features
two deconstructed Australian flags, overlaid and manipulated, with the words ‘Poetic’ and ‘Possibility’ allowed to converge at the shared points of ‘PO.’ The words meet the icon in almost a propagandist manner; the combination emanates optimism. Part of an ongoing series of artistic discussions, ‘Direct Democracy’ is an exhibition of both artistic and political importance. Such displays reveal the potential of art to reveal – promoting and encouraging discussions that may otherwise be hindered. With a substantial line-up of artists, this is a show not to be missed. Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA) Until 6 July, 2013 Melbourne 1 DAMP (Narelle Desmond, Sharon Goodwin, Debra Kunda and James Lynch), Untitled pencil, 2010, graphite, acrylic and enamel on timber, 240 x 15 x 15cm 2 Raquel Ormella, Poetic possibilities, 2012, flag, cotton, polyester 160 x 200cm (irreg.)
Courtesy the artists and Milani Gallery, Brisbane
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Exhibition Brief
Rue de Belleville A Painting Exhibition
Robert Hollingworth Schrödinger’s Cat
‘Rue de Belleville’ is a group show of paintings by both gallery and invited artists. Each artist shares the experience of having undertaken overseas residencies and research that has contributed to their practice.
‘Schrödinger’s Cat’ is a thought experiment, sometimes described as a paradox. The scenario involves a cat in a sealed box which may be both alive and dead at the same time. In the ‘ManyWorlds Interpretation’ of quantum mechanics, the “alive” or “dead” cats are in two different branches of the universe that never interact.
The exhibition title links the growth of the local artistic community of Chippendale, home to Galerie pompom, to Rue de Belleville – a young, artistic area in Paris that has created a hub of contemporary galleries. It portrays a changing landscape due to an influx of creative industries and artistic culture. Artists include: Ron Adams, Rochelle Haley, Nana Ohnesorge, Tara Marynowsky, Jonny Niesche and Megan Walch. Galerie pompom 18 June to 13 July, 2013 Sydney Nana Ohnesorge, The Journey, 2010, acrylic paint and aerosol, pigment pen and oil on linen, 152.5 x 112cm Courtesy the artist and Galerie pompom, Sydney
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With these new paintings, Hollingworth metaphorically represents alternatives; the way we think or act is discretional – different possibilities and different ‘truths’ may co-exist. Blockprojects Until 22 June, 2013 Melbourne Scarab Nebula, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 100 x 60cm Courtesy the artist and Blockprojects
Burqas, Veils and Hoodies Identity and Representation
Janet Parker-Smith Little Wonders
This group exhibition looks at veiling, covering and identity. Veils have been used in the art world for centuries – both literally and metaphorically – to explore concepts of concealment, sanctuary, holiness, illusion, deception and more.
Janet Parker-Smith’s playful works explore ways of seeing. Parker-Smith’s collage objects employ humour and alchemy to explore how we imagine physical ‘otherness’ and displacement.
The artists come from Australia, New Zealand, France, Afghanistan, Japan, Turkey and Iran. Each seeks to identify cultural obstacles and manoeuvre through visible and invisible spaces, to explore the complex stereotypes that arise from this culturally embedded theme. These concepts are also particularly relevant to the streets of Dandenong in which the Walker Street Gallery and Arts Centre is situated. Walker Street Gallery and Arts Centre 6 to 29 June, 2013 Melbourne
She explores the capacity of reinvention and transformation in natural environments, which also allows her to deal with questions of perception and imagination. The objects, creatures and species she creates evoke an uneasiness yet liveliness, in which the familiar and unfamiliar, order and disorder converge. Brenda May Gallery 18 June to 6 July, 2013 Sydney Strangers in a Strange Land no.2, 2013, collage, 40 x 30cm Courtesy the artist and Brenda May Gallery
Rubaba Haider, Ambiguity 1, 2013, gouache and ink on wasli, 26 x 33cm Courtesy the artist
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Exhibition Brief 48
Chris O’Doherty a.k.a. Reg Mombassa Hallucinatory Anthropomorphism
Daniel von Sturmer A Ten Cubed exhibition
In Chris O’Doherty’s paintings we find anonymous fibro houses. They seem to represent the people who live in them: suburban and urban ‘Mr and Mrs Australia’. They are the backdrop to the stage on which O’Doherty’s inexhaustible ideas play out. The stage is often a landscape upon which a variety of things strut: manifestations of Jesus, Holden cars, space monsters.
Daniel von Sturmer explores the nature of perception, particularly how context and framing affect the meaning and experience of an artwork. In his videos and photographs the frame of the lens becomes an analogue for the frame of perception, pointing to the limits of the visual language we rely upon to understand and define the world.
Beneath the humour in the work lies an expression of deeply thoughtful insights and sympathies. As a child he witnessed his father build the fibro houses of his paintings. From this, we infer that his family and environment of his childhood have stolen their way into his work – O’Doherty inserting something of himself into the landscapes he draws and paints.
Often developed from studio-based experiments and observations, he transforms materials and objects common to everyday experience into props from which philosophical questions can arise. Involving multiple screens and sculptural objects, the experience of looking at an artwork becomes a consciously dynamic interplay between the viewer and the viewed.
Watters Gallery 19 June to 6 July, 2013 Sydney
Ten Cubed Collection 19 June until 20 August, 2013 Melbourne
Mooning the Moon II, 2012, charcoal, colour pencil on paper, 18 x 24cm Courtesy the artist and Watters Gallery
The Cinema Complex (Sequence 1) 4, 2011, production still pigment print, 83 x 52cm Courtesy the artist and Ten Cubed Collection
Deborah Halpern Creatures from the Studio
Daro Montag Dialogues with Nature
‘Creatures from the Studio’ presents mosaic-clad sculptural forms of whimsical and exuberant sensibility combined with a masterful command of material.
A UK-based artist, Montag is interested in understanding, and bringing to light, the inherent creativity of natural phenomena. In this exhibition, Montag collaborates with nature, recording the tracks and traces of natural events.
Known widely in Melbourne for her iconic public sculptures, Halpern’s work exudes an innate vitality and alluring simplicity. Spontaneous in form, her creatures are painted in a style that recalls visions of Gaudi, Picasso and the playful surrealism of French sculptor Niki de Sant Phalle. These influences have shaped the unique artistic and aesthetic voice for which Halpern is recognized. Mossgreen Gallery 1 to 22 June, 2013 Melbourne
‘Dialogues with Nature’ is a series of digital prints; colourful ‘bioglyphs’ – a term that refers to artifacts that register the activities of microorganic life. Noosa Regional Gallery Until 30 June, 2013 Queensland Wind Blows-Bamboo, 2004, bamboo canes, wind carbon and glass Courtesy the artist and Noosa Regional Gallery
Big Bunny, 2013, ceramic and glass tiles on fibreglass, steel, aluminum, 160 x 78 x 88cm Courtesy the artist and Mossgreen Gallery
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