Trouble May 2017

trouble 145

ACE Open: 24 Frames Per Second 25 MAY – 1 JULY 2017 The Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia (CACSA) and Australian Experimental Art Foundation (AEAF) have joined forces to form ACE Open—South Australia’s leading organisation for contemporary visual art and artists.

Opening hours Tue-Sat 11am-4pm Location Lion Arts Centre, North Terrace (West End) Kaurna Yarta, Adelaide, South Australia 5000 Free admission IMAGES IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE PAGES 2–11: Francois Chaignaud, Solitude, 24 Frames Per Second, Carriageworks, 2015. < Sophie Hyde in collaboration with Restless Dance Theatre, To Look Away, 24 Frames Per Second, Carriageworks, 2015. Photo © Ben Searcy.

- aceopen.art

CONTENTS 24 FRAMES PER SECOND

Arts Open ................................................................................................

COMICS FACE

Ive Sorocuk ..............................................................................................

DOUBLE DATE NIGHT: EPISODE 6

Yung Victoria ..........................................................................................

IS LANDSCAPE PAINTING HISTORY?

Alexandra Sassé .....................................................................................

SEEING NATURE: SARAH ORMONDE & JOHN WOLSELEY

Dr Mark Dober ........................................................................................

MAY SALON

Mature Sometimes .................................................................................

FINDING THE ART IN PHUKET: THE ART OF LIVING

Anthony S. Cameron ..............................................................................

02 15 16 18

28 36

48

COVER: Emmaline Zanelli, Red Room (Safe House) 2017, archival inkjet print, 1189mm x 841mm, edition of 5. Rife Machine, ACE Across, Lion Arts Centre, North Terrace (West End) Kaurna Yarta, Adelaide (SA), 25 May – 17 June 2017 - aceopen.art Issue 145 MAY 2017 trouble is an independent monthly mag for promotion of arts and culture Published by Trouble Magazine Pty Ltd. ISSN 1449-3926 EDITOR Steve Proposch CONTRIBUTORS Ive Sorocuk, Molly Daniels & Juliette Strangio, Alexandra Sassé, Dr Mark Dober, Anthony S. Cameron, love.

GET from AppStore FOLLOW on issuu & twitter SUBSCRIBE at troublemag.com READER ADVICE: Trouble magazine contains artistic content that may include nudity, adult concepts, coarse language, and the names, images or artworks of deceased Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people. Treat Trouble intelligently, as you expect to be treated by others. Collect or dispose of thoughtfully.

DIS IS DE DISCLAIMER! The views and opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of the publisher. To the best of our knowledge all details in this magazine were correct at the time of publication. The publisher does not accept responsibility for errors or omissions. All content in this publication is copyright and may not be reproduced in whole or in part in any form without prior permission of the publisher. Trouble is distributed online from the first of every month of publication but accepts no responsibility for any inconvenience or financial loss in the event of delays. Phew!

This comic first appeared in Trouble July 2014

web comedy series

by Molly Daniels & Juliette Strangio

DOUBLE DATE NIGHT: Episode 6 Vic is determined to give Riley the date night she deserves, even if it means replacing Double Date Night with Single Date Night.

Starring Laura Buskes as Vic, Molly Daniels as Riley, Tiana Hogben as Chelsea, Hayden McKertish as Noah. visit Yung Victoria on Youtube

IS LANDSCAPE PAINTING HISTORY? Alexandra Sassé

Seeing the world as more than a backdrop or stage-set for unfolding narratives is the basic premise of landscape painting. It requires sensation rather than symbol to be the dominant motive. This is at odds with the corrosive didacticism of much academic art, which looks for the obvious moral in every artwork. The recently set up Hadley’s Art Prize – a $100,000 prize for a landscape painting – is a case in point.

Hobart hotel owner Don Neil has launched one of Australia’s richest art prizes, with an annual $100,000 award for landscapes.... and this year invites artists to address the theme “history and place”.

Artist and curator Julie Gough, who is one of the judges, says the award encourages artists to think beyond European concepts of landscape as depictions of sublime nature. “History is about story, and the entrants have to consider that as much as things such as vegetation and landforms,” says Gough.

“It will be interesting to see how people push that theme.”

The Australian 27th Jan 2017 And here is Ben Quilty, judging the 2017 Glover Prize for landscape and commenting: “And I think the three of us wanted to pick a work that wasn’t just a celebration of the aesthetics, the pretty landscape, but to engage more with those contested histories – what happened, not only here in Tasmania, but right across this country.

“For me, it’s impossible to engage with ideas of landscapers and artists in this country without acknowledging all those histories and some of them are pretty gruesome and grotesque and people shy away from that, but it’s for the arts community to step up and engage with it.”

Ben Quilty March 10th 2017 ABC News website Look deep into my eyes and tell me that you know they are talking nonsense. Do they really not know the difference between history painting and landscape? Are they seriously prepared to write off pretty much the entire 17th century and its progeny (basically right up to Seurat), and re-instate 18th and 19th century history painting – much of it the stultifying stuff, against which modernism rebelled – as the one true artistic calling? Do the benefactors of these prizes feel robbed?

All images: Alexandra Sassé. PREVIOUS SPREAD: Clifton Hill from Studley Park (detail) 2017, oil on canvas, 76 x 97cm. RIGHT: Hawthorn Towards Richmond 2015, oil on canvas, 85 x 65cm. NEXT SPREAD: A Quiet Day in Northcote (detail) 2016, oil on canvas, 65 x 85cm. FINAL SPREAD: Clear Day, Camberwell (detail) 2016, oil on canvas, 30 x 40cm.

Is Landscape Painting History? / Alexandra Sassé

For a Gordian knot of reasons, the 18th century is a lot more appealing to our current culturati. And it of course goes without saying that Rembrandt, Van Ruisdael, Lorraine, Cozens, Turner and Constable did not spend their lives, energies and talents on sentimental prettiness. It’s not Constable’s fault that, having forged an entirely new vision of landscape – the actual landscape with all the detritus of industry – his work was printed onto thousands of greeting cards. Such is not a fate likely to befall ascetics who prefer ideas to things.

But Constable’s work should make it blindingly obvious that aesthetic aims are not divorced from either social commentary or profoundly revealing insights into the outlook of an epoch. Aesthetic aims are as much about the search for meaning as the most carefully constructed argument. This is because aesthetics are very closely related to value. It is a truism that we tend to think that what is beautiful is both good and true; this unlocks the values of previous ages to us in a way no illustration of dogma ever could.

“Aesthetic aims are as much about the search for meaning as the most carefully constructed argument.”

Aside from wilful ignorance, the aims of the current arts establishment are much better served by history painting than landscape. The former is perfectly matched to the motives of the discourse people and, when mixed with a little Duchampian fizz, offers us badly painted sermons. Having decided both myth and religion are off limits, contemporary history painting is doomed to recycle post colonialism, globalisation, climate change and identity politics as subject matter.

The landscape painter essentially deals with space, not narrative. Space is a metaphor (as is light), a psychological force and a physical fact. Architects and emperors know how it works on our minds. Stand in Tien’Anmen square and feel the oppressive monumental symmetry of those rectilinear monoliths looming on every side. Or wander through the Sagrada Familia and let your thoughts unravel and entwine with the sinuous organic forms reaching up through a vast volume to the intricate ceiling. Pictorial space is equally eloquent.

Against the odds, perhaps, we currently have a very exciting crop of landscape painters working and exhibiting in Australia. It’s a travesty you won’t see their work in a hijacked landscape award. Although they work under the duress of a system that often denigrates their entire genre (never mind their actual work) very high quality pictures are being made. They continue within a vein of history that is vibrantly alive.

Is Landscape Painting History? / Alexandra Sassé

Despite the marginalisation of landscape painting in the context of 20th century abstraction and certain narrow readings of modernism, it has always remained a vital resource and practice for artists. Some of the most memorable Australian art from the height of modernism are landscape paintings such as Drysdale’s Sofala (1948), Williams’ Upwey Landscape (1966), Whiteley’s The Balcony(2) (1975) and Smart’s Cahill Expressway (1962).

Today landscape painting is widely practiced around the globe. It takes dedicated blindness to ignore highly acclaimed contemporary painters as diverse in their approaches as William Robinson (AUS), David Hockney (UK), Antonio Lopez Garcia (ESP) and Wayne Thiebaud (USA). Ranging from a high degree of urban realism (Lopez Garcia) to gothic-inspired forests and mountains (Robinson), massive installation paintings (Hockney) and stylised, flattened forms that recall both mid century modernism and pop (Thiebaud), contemporary landscape painting is richly diverse.

“My paintings come not from an analysis, but from an encounter. The work is not a proposition but a set of objects.”

I hope for a more inclusive approach to appear in the stifled environment of contemporary art in Australia, one in which landscape painting is not cannibalised by history painting or denigrated as sentimental stodge. And, one in which contemporary history painting stops serving up the thin gruel of discourse strained through disdain and instead grapples imaginatively with both painting as a medium with all its possibilities, and our diverse stories.

My own work has a very simple premise. It comes out of my interest in looking at things in the world around me and making pictures. My paintings come not from an analysis, but from an encounter. The work is not a proposition but a set of objects.

On the other hand, you will encounter recurring themes. I am fascinated by the juxtaposition of urban and natural forms and the ongoing attempts to reconcile our lives with our places. I feel very passionately about the particularities of the volumes of space that are uniquely Australian, and I am very grateful for the vast resource of paintings made across history upon which we can draw, and without which my own work would not exist.

Alexandra Sassé: Contemporary Landscape Paintings, fortyfivedownstairs, 45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne (VIC), 2 – 13 May 2017 - fortyfivedownstairs.com Artist website alexandrasasse.com

Seeing

Nature Sarah Ormonde & John Wolseley Dry sand, wet mud, moving earth Falkner Gallery, Castlemaine (ends 21 May 2017)

Dr Mark Dober

< John Wolseley, Ganguri vine and yam 2015, linocut and woodcut, edition of 40.

In the gallery notes to this collaborative exhibition of prints, drawings and ceramics, Bendigo-based artists Sarah Ormonde and John Wolseley state: “In this show we have chosen to focus our enthusiasms on the tracks and traces we find in the dirt around us… this show celebrates the extraordinary beauty we see in the dry sand and the wet mud…”

The fulsome statements the artists make about the experiences and observations that underlie their work speak of an intimate identification with the minutae of the natural world. The artists note that just as they make use of mud, sand and wood to make things (art and studio buildings) so too are termites, beetles and birds busily making their own structures (burrows, mounds) from these same materials. To most graphically make this point, fragments of termite mounds have been fired in the kiln and exhibited in ceramic form, while sections of tree trunks with termite burrowing are exhibited alongside the frottage derived prints. The “collaboration” that the artists talk about is inclusive of these creations of the insect world.

In this we can see an idea of Gaia, that is, that nature is a unified and selfgoverning organism operating in kind of mystical realm beyond conventional science. “I feel my work is about trying to reconnect with those big, frightening but creative forces that are the dynamic of the world we live in”, 1 Wolseley has said. The artist believes we are of the earth: an idea made manifest by the materiality, organic form, earth colours and patterns of Ormonde’s ceramics.

But a problem in identifying so intimately with nature as the artists do, is that nature, as represented in the world of termites and other micro life forms, can appear as if on a distancing pedestal.

Perhaps a more inclusive way of regarding nature is to view it as one with reality. In this view, comprehensively set out in the writings of American environmental aesthetics philosopher Arnold Berleant, ourselves, the forests and creatures within them, the cars in our streets, supermarkets and everything else in the world, make up the one interconnected reality. This view argues that everything impacts on everything else: the human is necessarily featured (just as we impact on climate, climate impacts on us – hence climate change).

So far as making art is concerned, this way of thinking about our place in nature is well expressed in plein air painting. The artist places him or herself within the landscape and the ensuing painting represents a bonding of the observed (the subject) and the observer (the artist). The painting documents

4

the interconnectedness between the two; a sense of belonging, of “being there”, is conveyed, and the presence of the observer is acknowledged. An artist who asserts this idea, in ambitiously scaled paintings up to 5 metres wide, is Mary Tonkin. Her immersive paintings are made in the forest of the Dandenong Ranges, where she lives and has her studio.

Nature does not necessarily inspire sensual delight or a sense of belonging in contemporary art. A contradictory set of responses may be invoked, or a Gothic-like strangeness or sense of disturbance may permeate the work. The artist may convey an idea of nature and culture (ourselves) as separate and binary opposites. To represent our relationship with nature from this perspective is to acknowledge a gap, perhaps an existential gap, that expresses uncertainty about how much we can know or possess of the world.

A sense of nature’s separateness may take the form of an otherness loaded with spiritual associations and yearnings. Hence the ubiquity of the void in landscape painting, both in the nineteenth century (for example the German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich) and today (particularly where the painting is sourced from photography and other media).

It is not uncommon to find contemporary artists representing our place in nature with an ambiguous mix of the existential, the void, beauty, yearning, and an edgy disconnect all in the same work. These are qualities which feature in the work of Rick Amor: an artist who has deeply immersed himself in the visual world, and who continues to this day to regularly paint plein air, while also representing a personal vision that draws inspiration from cinema and crime novels.

Back to Sarah Ormonde and John Wolseley: the artists’ celebration of nature – grounded in a contemporary discourse of the ecological – also echoes pre-modern responses, when eighteenth and nineteenth century > FOREGROUND: Sarah Ormonde, Moving Earth, Safe Harbour series 2017, porcelain and terracotta mixed clay bottles. BACKGROUND: Sarah Ormonde, Rain Gauge series 2016, porcelain and terracotta mixed clay cylinders. John Wolseley, Found - Rainbow Country and Found - Sunset Tank, 2008, carbonised wood and natural stains on paper.

4

4

European explorations of nature and New World landscapes aroused intense curiosity. The botanical recordings of Joseph Banks, who accompanied Captain Cook on the Endeavour, and the geological drawings of John Ruskin, the art critic who championed J.M.W. Turner, come to mind when looking at Wolseley’s signature highly detailed drawings (however, these are not on display in this exhibition).

The exhibition also invites associations with a premodern conception of beauty, where beauty is held to be a quality or element intrinsic to nature (which can be discerned by us to the extent our awareness allows).

This concept of beauty seems to be at odds with the modern idea – associated with the ground-breaking philosophical writings of the late eighteenth century German philosopher Immanuel Kant – that beauty is not a discoverable ingredient in things, but is in the eye of the beholder. Beauty, said Kant, was a quality of perception – it was experienced subjectively – and could not be objectively ascertained.

Asserting that termite burrows are beautiful is a necessarily subjective view; for the termite mounds in the exhibition are no longer termite mounds, but ceramic objects in a gallery context, and anything in a gallery context is no longer what it was outside that context. The claim that these objects represent a collaboration with nature strikes me as fanciful.

However, Ormonde’s and Wolseley’s work is an interesting collaboration between these two artists, and the exhibition can awaken our aesthetic curiosity to the microstructures of nature, so that we experience them in a different and more thoughtful way.

Dry Sand, Wet Mud, Moving Earth, Falkner Gallery, 35 Templeton Street Castlemaine (VIC) until 21 May 2017 - falknergallery.com.au References: 1. John Wolseley, quoted in Artist Profile, Summer 2007, p. 31 > John Wolseley, Umwelt of the Grey Box Beetle (detail) 2015, relief print from found wood, chine-colle over watercolour on paper, edition of 40.

may salon

1. Jackie Gorring, A’Dale Mayor (detail) 2016, relief print. The A’dale and Beyond – Jackie Gorring, Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery, Horseshoe Bend, Swan Hill (VIC), 28 April – 18 June 2017 - gallery.swanhill.vic.gov.au 2. Sarah Boulton, Mode & Motif, Bendigo Living Arts Space, Bendigo Visitor Centre, 51-67 Pall Mall Bendigo (VIC), 26 April – 30 July 2017 bendigotourism.com.au 3. Mark Lourensz, Degraves Street Reflection 2017, photograph. & 4. Joe Chow, Footscray Station footbridge 2017, photograph. Shot in The Heart of Melbourne, Victorian Artists Society, 430 Albert St, East Melbourne (VIC), 11-22 May - sithom.com.au 5. Mandy Martin & Alexander Boynes, together with a score by Tristen Parr and performance by Laura Boynes, Luminous relic (detail, still) 2017 pigment, sand, crusher dust, acrylic and oil on linen; three–channel high– definition, stereo sound score; 6 minutes, 10 seconds. 260.0 x 1150.0 cm.

Reproduced courtesy of the artists and Australian Galleries, Melbourne and Sydney. Photographer: Andrew Curtis. Geelong Gallery, 55 Little Malop Street Geelong (VIC), until 12 June 2017 - geelonggallery.org.au 6. Georgie Roxby Smith, 99 Problems [WASTED] 2014, GTAV intervention, 4 mins 45 secs (continuous loop). Warp, presented as part of the Revelation Perth International Film Festival, Fremantle Arts Centre, 1 Finnerty Street, Fremantle (WA), 27 May — 16 July 2017 - fac.org.au

1

2

3

4

5 4

6

FINDING THE ART IN

Phuket The art of living

by Anthony S. Cameron

4

What I love the most about Phuket is the eclectic bunch of humans that find their way here from other parts of the world and decide to call it home. We have all sorts of reasons for coming here: some are running from an unsatisfactory life; some are enamoured by the closest thing to paradise they have found so far; some of us come here exhausted from the pressure of being someone we don’t, or never did, want to be. Some of us come with pockets full of money, others come with pockets full of dreams. Nearly all of us have decided to jump off the treadmill and live cheaply and easily, for a while at least.

You know you’ve come across a unique human being when he shares his dream with you and infects you with its intoxicating rhythm, a rhythm driven by the ocean currents and a love of dancing with the energy hidden in those currents.

Without doubt the most talented and prolific sculptor I have come across on this mad island is a former landlocked Swiss watchmaker who is sculpting objects of beauty out of EPS foam, fibreglass and resin. And not only do you get to stare in awe at his work as it sits on the wall above your dining room table, you get to use it to find the art trapped deep inside you.

David “Mousset” Sautebin started making surfboards only a handful of years ago, and this makes his body of work even more amazing. I have had the pleasure of watching him at work and trying to fathom the effortless precision and joy he brings to his designs, the innate understanding of the ocean inside each custom design and the freedom he gives to each lucky owner to explore themselves.

When an artist can awaken the creativity in others and then encourage them to explore it, I think that is the most successful art you could hope for. It seems to make a lot of the stuff that passes for art in the gallery scene look very static, and dare I say, unimaginative at best.

Not only does this guy humbly go about the business of exploring his inner creativity, he has a credo that he actually lives by: live simple, consume less.

Most of the manifestos about art practice I have read are so fake and lofty in their intentions, but this one rings true. You won’t find David waxing (excuse

Finding the Art in Phuket / Tony Cameron

4

the pun) lyrical about his philosophy of life and art to a bunch of nodding cronies over a cheap glass of red in an over-lit gallery. He just lives it.

As you well know, I have trouble with the lines that exist between artist and artisan, and if it wasn’t for David, I would still be floundering and seething with the injustice of it all. But this guy personifies the living, breathing, interactive art that so-called career artists can only dream of. For some reason, if an art form, such as surfing, is all about fun and has a kind of beautiful pointlessness about it, then it is not considered ‘serious’ art. To that I would say, I wish looking at ‘serious’ art put the kind of smile on my face that surfing a wave does, and that it could help me feel so happy to be alive.

Every wave is a completely unique experience to be involved in, and lasts the briefest of moments. David’s art celebrates the beauty of those moments in a way no other art form can. He gives you the tools to find in it something you didn’t even know was there. I am hard pushed to find another art form that could make this claim, nor could I find one that has such universal appeal. And the overriding beauty of it all is that anyone can have a go, anyone can paddle into a wave and look for the stuff a mirror cannot see. It doesn’t matter how many times you get pounded or thrust onto the sea floor, it doesn’t matter how many times you fall off as the wave has its way with you. If you keep at it, soon you will find the rhythm that we search for in the rest of our lives and rarely find.

One of Australia’s great singer/songwriters, Broderick Smith, for whom I had the pleasure to manage sound many years ago, would say of his favourite musicians: you could lock them in an empty room and eventually you will hear music.

This is David’s great art. He helps you find the music we all have in us. On his website home page, you will find this quote: “The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labour and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which.

He simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him, he is always doing both.”

Finding the Art in Phuket / Tony Cameron

Sarongs from all over Sth East Asia adorn his boards, fitting snugly over the custom designs he and the new owner collaborate over. Arresting veneers of sustainable Paulownia wood cover the decks, stunning testimonies to the eternal and sublime beauty of the forest. So, not only do you get to ride a work of art on a wave that is a work of nature, but you get to be involved in the design process. There’s no cloak and dagger stuff going on here, no hidden method that has to be protected lest it is stolen by people with less vision. It’s an organic free-for-all. The only constraints are the need for the sculpture to glide through the water like it is a part of it.

With this guy, it couldn’t be any other way.

You can find David’s work at: elleciel.com ANTHONY S. CAMERON is an Australian ex-pat living in Phuket, Thailand, and the author of two novels, Driftwood (2014) and Butterfly on Bangla (2015).

Born in Melbourne, he escaped in his early twenties to central Victoria, where he designed and built a sustainable house, raised two sustainable children. His books are available on Amazon here.

Pics by Roxy Cameron.