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DUO MAGAZINE IS PROUD TO PARTNER WITH PERC TUCKER REGIONAL GALLERY AND SHANE FITZGERALD, MANAGER GALLERY SERVICES, TOWNSVILLE CITY COUNCIL, IN A SERIES THAT DISCUSSES CURRENT TRENDS, MUSINGS AND INSIGHTS INTO CONTEMPORARY VISUAL ARTS.
ARTICULATE
04 01 Kate O’Brien, Paris green, 2012. Digital photograph. 61 x 40.6cm 02 Michelle Murray, Newromancer, 2012. Mixed metals. 20 x 14 x 9cm. Photo: Rod Buchholz
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03 Tim Wetherell, The origin of species, 2010. Glass, brass, resin and gold leaf. 41 x 22 x 20cm. Photo: Martin Botika
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WHEN OLD AND NEW WORLDS COLLIDE ON THE SECOND OF MARCH 2012 more than five hundred people gathered in Melbourne for the opening of Steamscape, an exhibition of ‘retro-futuristic fashion and design’. The night was a Steampunk extravaganza, delighting locals and aficionados alike with a panoply of eclectic costumes, elegantly crafted installations, burlesque magicians and firebreathers all accompanied by a Steampunk themed band playing eccentric – but eminently danceable – music enjoyed by patrons dressed in high Victorian elegance, with crinolines, top hats, frock coats, monocles and more spats than you could poke an ebony cane at. This is living Steampunk, the devoted following of a literary sub-genre full of energy, imagination and swaggering stylishness. Steampunk is a phantasmagoria of delights that inspires its audience not only to read voraciously but prompts some to go to outlandish efforts to recreate. In brief, what we call Steampunk is speculative fiction set in (or redolent of) the Victorian or Edwardian era, taking the mood of these times and applying a Science Fiction or Fantasy approach. Steampunk isn’t historical fiction, even though its sense of period is vital. Steampunk thrills in combining the streetscapes, the social strata and the formality of nineteenth/early twentieth century society with delirious technology —
steam driven or not. It often rewrites the events of the period, with real historical personages being dragged into secret plots, bizarre mysteries and—sometimes—outrageously anachronistic hijinks. In some ways Steampunk is a nostalgic modern take on the ‘Scientific Romances’ of Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and other fabulists of this period. Just to set the record straight — Verne and Wells weren’t writing Steampunk. Steampunk has a modern sensibility underlying its gaslight setting. It’s a retro-recasting, affectionately using some of the ambience of technoVictoriana but with an approach perhaps put best by the IO9 blog: ‘Our love for steampunk is a longing for machines that don’t suck.’ Many Victorian readers had a fascination with the astonishing developments in science and technology that were occurring. It was a time of heady optimism, when the future was grand, glorious — and undoubtedly British. It was a time where Great Exhibitions could draw huge crowds to admire the Tempest Prognosticator (a barometer which used leeches in bottles to predict the weather) and the world’s first automatic voting machine. This was the same public that stood in awe in front of the massive sewerage pumping machines when they were opened by the Prince of Wales in 1865, a pinnacle of Victorian achievement and lauded as such by rich and poor alike.
04 Filip Sawczuk, On time, 2011. Found objects, steel, brass, aluminium. 16 x 80 x 10cm. Photo: Rod Buchholz
From February 13, Pinnacles Gallery is delighted to present The Antipodean Steampunk Show, the first Australian public gallery exhibition of this fascinating movement. Developed and toured by artisan, Steampunk spearheads cross-disciplinary creative practice with practitioners ranging from shoemakers to sculptors. The artists of the Steampunk movement draw from the past to interrogate the technology of the future but with a touch of science-fiction and whimsy in the mix. The astonishing diversity of works in the exhibition, ranging from ray-guns to modified skulls, indicates the rich potential inherent in this exciting revival of old and new crafts. Ultimately, Steampunk is part of a wider global movement of artists and designers rethinking the way we create and consume design. Its use of salvage, re-purposing and up-cycling reflects a more widespread desire for the authenticity of the handmade.
DUO MAGAZINE FEBRUARY 2015 duomagazine.com.au
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