cold and icy. yes.

being back in melbourne for 10 days, it was nice to see stuff again.

like, I had to miss exhibitions* because there were clashes, too many things on at the same time. and of course quite a bit of that time was spent putting together, performing and invigilating my own show.

i feel like i haven't written about other people's shows for ages, so here are a couple of shows i saw, with a strangely icy theme:

this is before that
kiron robinson and sanja pahoki at sarah scout


it felt like the first time I have seen more than one artist per show at SS and i liked it. there was a polarity and/or synthesis that was art of the show that hasn't been before.

the simple concept of kiron's used hours/wasted hours prints were OK: coloured block prints with scratch marks - like days of labour are tantamount to prison term or gallery visitor numbers.  they're short, sharp and to the point.

however, the sentiment of the work was really not my thing -  I prefer to subscribe to the pollyanna view that 'time wasted is never wasted time'. perhaps i'm losing my cynical edge. perhaps i'm just feeling quite grateful for being able to spend all my time on my art practice at the moment.

I did really like sanja's icy photographs of frosty scando landscapes and cold, empty stares of portraits, mounted on the wall around cool, white neon text 'i have loved' 'i have been loved'

this tableau, or scene, actually, was in balance and still edgy without wanting to fall over itself. tick.

my personal tip of the iceberg would have been a sculptural ice-based work in the gallery - even just for opening night. i imagined a big block of ice melting, or even stalactites dripping down the windows. this may have been influenced by the condensation on the windows of the gallery that night, but I couldn't shake it.

kim jaeger at seventh


I may be biased because i think almost everything kim does rocks, but this little work was properly BEAUTIFUL. yes, i said beautiful.

nothing like that image above, it was a diorama created in a blacked and blanked out project space with a large-ish peep-hole at a low eye-level, to create a dramatic and mystical landscape. the landscape was filled with large, white, iceberg-like spikes, appearing to rise up out of a still, dark water. this 'grotto' was perfectly and cool-ly lit, with the scale of it just right. it was like being on a boat, making my way through the floes of scandanavia, or the dark arctic.

it was so succinct and so clear - it actually took my breath away. for real.

sadly, the show finished on sunday, so you can't go and see it anymore. but hopefully there will be images online somewhere that will come closer to doing it justice than this little blog.


*like christopher hanrahan's show at tristian koenig, the vienna show and those egon schiele's at the NGV and the shaun gladwell extravaganza at ACMI.

image credits: sanja pahoki and kiron robinson from the sarah scout site 
kim jaeger you geysir crazy from the seventh site

london calling

can i just preface this with the caveat: i'm having a good time, really i am. i'm making lots of new work, feel good (apart from brief illness) and have excellent choices for visa situation.

oh my god, london. what are you doing to me? there are 4 major exhibitions that i need to come and see in the next 4 weeks - i'm trying to be frugal, can't you see?

christian marclay's clock at white cube (mason's yard). 

this is a fantastic a real-time clock (projection) made up of scenes from movies showing the time. pity to have missed the full version at the private view - i would love to have seen 3 - 4am in real time via marclay's film snippets. but, given that it was impossible, a daytime viewing or 5 will have to do. imagine a sleepover at white cube to watch the whole thing - that would be awesome. either way the soda jerk girls and i are already plotting ways that we can get there without spending any money. hmm.

rachel whiteread's drawings at tate britain.

i'm a massive fan of this woman's work, have paid homage to it in my own and only ever seen a few bits and pieces. i'm stinging to see this major exhibition, which features her workings and beautiful drawings - the basis behind any good spatial practice, i reckon :)

ai weiwei's sunflower seeds at the tate modern turbine hall. 

all those porcelain sunflower seeds... swoon. sadly, we can't walk on them anymore, which means that the work isn't really as awesome as it was before (sorry, but it's true). but, i would still go and see it. yes, in a heartbeat.

james turrell bindu shards (perceptual cell) at the gagosian. 

light, experience, perception, time. joy. an immersive installation that you have to book in for. i'm in heaven. here's a quote from the site (where that image is from too)


"Through light, space can be formed without physical material like concrete or steel. We can actually stop the penetration of vision with where light is and where it isn't. Like the atmosphere, we can't see through it to the stars that are there during the day. But as soon as that light is dimmed around the self, then this penetration of vision goes out. So I'm very interested in this feeling, using the eyes to penetrate the space.
--James Turrell"

see? there's 2 days in london right there. peeps - beware. i might just have to skip over the channel and back.

image credits: tate website, gagosian website and the economist websites. all deets, re artists rights are on those sites.

art fair mania

don't they know we already have too much information? maybe it's some kind of ploy where if you blast a stack of data at people, whatever sticks is worthwhile remembering.  like i mentioned in another post, there were six art fairs on this weekend. i only managed three because i went to berghain until 7am and couldn't manage more than one on saturday.


sunday was devoted to dancing in the streets, so i didn't attend any art fairs. and, because there was so much to absorb, i'm only going to talk about two on here: art forum and preview - because that's the kind of girl i am - binary.  and, i'm even going to review them in the reverse order that i saw them.


well, it's my blog and i'll do what i like.

berlin art fairs have a strange feeling about them, as berlin isn't a city that is swathed in collecting cash. all the big money for art investment happens in the south/west and so there's this strange sense of futility or abandon about them, backed up, perhaps, by the fact that frieze and the london art fair extravaganza is next week, which is where the money comes in.

preview
my understanding of preview was that it was the emerging art/gallery fair, so i was quite suprised at the prevalence of painting and digestible sculpture. not really a lot of boundary-pushing. in fact, i saw more of that at art forum, really. my summation from preview was that the only thing that was really 'new' about the fair was the economy behind it; without long histories or financial support/investment/weight behind them, there was no risk being taken. 


i saw more 'risk' from artist being supported by the bigger galleries. in fact, it reminded me that risk is actually the privilege of the privileged - with art, collecting, setting up a business, gambling, eating.


a few notable exceptions, obviously.


riflemaker
this is a gallery i love in london and check them out whenever i can. if i'm completely honest, i don't think they showed the best work that they have at this fair.  i spoke to one of the staff and it was their first time at a berlin fair, so perhaps it's a little bit of putting feelers out for them. but they did have some good work by artists anonymous, who i haven't seen in a while and a beautiful paper-based animation from a rotary contraption by juan fontanive, whose bike film i saw a while back.


galleri maria veie
the only gallery, in both art fairs, to really deal with the site and to take control of it. maria (who was super-nice to talk to) and her artists built an amazing ante-chamber within the small booth space as a space to view the excellent video by and also as a work of art itself. it was like a unicorn mixed with high math geometrical sculpture. super-nice. and it crowded out the space in a way that made it attractive - you had to line up to get in (almost). for me, this shows a boldness and a level of engagement that is not only attractive in an artist, but in a gallery. go team.





galerie leuenroth - daniel behrendt
these paintings were a.mazing. i literally gasped when i saw them. almost sculptural paintings of super-flat post-war architectural facades - walls, with a simple window. or just a wooden window, they gave a life and a stickiness to these utterly depressing spaces. and it's pretty much the only way i would ever spend more that 0.12 seconds looking at such a space. they were so divine. and a combination of matte fine finish, with thick, lush, trowel-finish. seriously, if you buy painting, buy these. they're amazing.




foundation for promoting contemporary art - michal smandek
a nice, simple work: model for a sludge leak made from glass and concrete, then the documentation of a larger version done in an old industrial space - a constructed black ooze coming out of the wall. always poignant (hello gulf of mexico, hello hungary)

actually, most of the eastern european galleries were killing it - making the most interesting works/exhibits overall. i guess it's unsurprising, given the history of eastern-european risk-taking in art, but i will still a bit intrigued.

kunsthaus erfurt

two nice works about pixelation - a site-specific coloured paper installation by martin pfeifle, which cheered the whole place up to no end and a series of beautiful triangular pixel drawings by DAG. i'm not always a fan of pixel drawings, they can be a little dull, but these were such a perfect combination of abstract, form and system that i forgave and fell in a love a little.

a few other things i noticed:  a surprising number of amateur signage. boo. not a lot of women artist. boo. not a lot of politics. boo.

so, that's my review of preview.

art forum

art forum is pretty big. and although not as big as i imagined there was still soo much stuff to see, as there is in any art fair, so i made sure i prepared, had my list of galleries/artists i wanted to see and launched in with as open a mind as possible. 

by the way, the architecture at the messe in berlin is out-of-this-world awesome. built in the middle of the fascist regime (1935-37; Richard Ermisch), it is furnished like something out of a grace kelly movie - i felt like we all should have been wearing dinner suits and maxis.

in the middle of my rounds, i went to one of the talks, held on the mezzanine level and moderated by texte zur kunst, which was one of the highlights of the day. i think the onsite discussion and critique is a really important part of the commercial nature of the fair, each connected to the other.


overall it was just OK. a few excellent works, some nice chats with peeps i already knew (from australia and london) and interesting to see the focus away from painting and more towards everything else.

so, highlights.

johnen galeri - tim lee


just a small photo-based work, but after seeing his daad exhibition and now this, tim lee is now one of my new favourite things. a diptych recreation of  the merce cunningham poster from 1953 with tim as the solo - in his trademark grey button-up shirt, black jeans, thick geeky glasses and salary man haircut. hot.




DUVE
one of the only other galleries to really deal with the space well - a combination of aluminium geometric shapes and video/sound work of a ballerina en pointe. a beautifully dichotomy of soft/hard and understanding of space by Jen DeNike and Sarah Oppenheimer.

roslyn oxley9
as one of the consistent big guns in australian art, unsurprising that the artists that rosox had on board were great. hany armanious, mikala dwyer, michael parakowhai, newell harry and his palindromic neon. awesome.




häusler - fred sandback
i know he's been gone a while, but the guy continues to float my boat with his site-specific geometric/spatial works and diagrams. they had a small red work between the two walls at häusler that made my heart skip a beat.




yvon lambert - douglas gordon
excellent conceptual works - especially the two wall-text works - both abandoned mid-sentence: one of graphite i am the director of my own downfall and the other carved into the chipboard, i am the author of my own addictions. i liked the form of the latter, but thought that the words were a little overstated. and vice versa.

arndt - ralf ziervogel

a suite of small exquisite and depraved drawings presented really cleanly - on with a black right facing page on a series of small shelves, squished right into the corner. quite an easily digestible format, but with the right amount of gross to make it interesting.

pianissimo - ingo gerken

this was the kind of show that people who aren't artists, or aren't that into art history would hate. but i loved it - it was a stack of responses to conceptual works from history, mostly really well done in a quite subtle and understated way. i laughed out loud. for real.


he added his name/birth year to the top of list of saatchi exhibitons, entitled my life and the saatchi program, he added a purple strip of colour to an image of ellsworth kelly minimal paintings, and a photo of a john baldessari image with a post-it note as an echo of the plain interrupting the plane. see? art geek stuff.

contemporary fine arts - max frisinger

i met max in hamburg and his work is on a similar plane to australia's ash keating. although max still trawls the streets for rubbish by hand. it was great to see his works sell out and interesting to see how he had 'contained' a practice that is usually site-specific, or at least very gallery-site-specific.






and i also really liked the sector focus intiative in the middle of the grounds, which had a series of emerging spaces who invited another emerging space to join them and both of them had booths that backed onto each other. it acknowledge the community aspect of independent spaces and made for an interesting study.




i did come away from the forum a) feeling like australian artists still match up with the best of germany, especially when we're rigourous. and b) that an art fair is an art fair is an art fair. having said that, i've not been to the biggest three: frieze, basel or the armory, but i wonder how different they really are.








image credits: ralf ziervogel installation at arndt, from the art-forum-berlin site. newell harry reverse missionary (nerveless rats hesitate/as venereal theists rest) from the roslyn oxley9 site.

this week at the galleries

if you're a little bit into the art thing, this weekend is INSANE in berlin. there are at least 3 six(!) art fairs (art forum berlin, preview, stroke), a stack of other new shows starting, events, openings coming out of your ears.. it's fucking madness.


i wasn't quite cool enough to get invited to the opening night of art forum last night (er... ), so i thought i would be a good artist girl and prepare for the onslaught of viewing this weekend, by bringing y'all up to speed with some of what i've seen this week.


as i mentioned, i'm going to a gallery a day, which usually coincides with part of the new work i'm making. i've found a new rhythm with it and it's been pretty easy to find some pretty good shows to go to.


in fact, this week has been a cracking week of shows. highlights:


aando fine art
choi jeong hwa -  in the mood for love.





named after the wong kar wai film [you know the one with all that romantic suspence, the endless cheongsam action of maggie cheung and those amazing corridors], this series of works by korean artist choi is actually spread across a couple of spaces in mitte, around august/tucholskystraße - one on the front of a building, another in the platoon containers, a giant pile of cabbage at kimchi princess (excellent restaurant in k-berg) and then the two aando spaces.


i often feel like i don't really know a lot about asian art, but when i walked into the show and found myself relieved at the colourful, gaudy-but slightly reserved aesthetic, i realised that asian art plays a huge part in my art palette. strings of decoration, trinkets, flashing spinning flower sculptures were a welcome play on tacky/cheap and OTT. i think this is bad, but it reminded me of every $2 store i've ever been into, and i kinda got homesick.


sprüth magers







ed ruscha 
oh ed, your parking lots drive me wild.
that is all.


barbara kruger
a separated, moving version of her image+text aesthetic, this 4-channel work was about the spoken language, more than the written. a stand-up comic makes jokes about stereotypes, a voice-over externalises fear of stillness/darkness, there is 'dialogue' between drivers from within the car, and there is the silent/voiceless experience of a psychotic episode. they are all really powerful images/audio with interspersed impact text, in her usual style. oh, and the space is hu-uuge!


daad galerie
tim lee - streichquartett Op.1





this work really appealed to the stuff i'm looking at currently. tim lee learned the classic piece of music he plays in the work, but filmed the process as a collage of sounds, or short sequences for each instrument - in effect creating the work as a modular configuration. it was beautiful to watch. and, with my back turned, i listened to see if i could tell that it was all chopped up and reconfigured. i couldn't, but that could have just been the style of music too.

the sculpture of him listening atop a massive phallic monument was a bit weird, but actually just the kind of image i have been sourcing lately, so i appreciated it for that.


daimler collection: contemporary
ampersand

i currently share a studio with south african painter, daniel popper, and as a result, this show popped up on the radar. i've always liked a lot of south african artists, but this was a chance to see a stack all in one place, mixed with some current european artists from the daimler collection.


mercedes benz (current owner of daimler) has a plant in south africa and so invests money back into the country and its cultural identity through ongoing support of its artists with a sizeable yearly award for art and culture. [the things you learn when you're away from home.]

i don't know much about the interests of the company and how well-behaved they are, but i can tell you that it was obvious what money, time and 'investment' does to art. there are some shit-hot artists coming out of south africa now, ones who perhaps wouldn't make quite the quality or intensity of work being shown here without the level of support from the collection.

there were three works that really stood out for me: lerato shadie's performance video Mmitlw . it was fucking mesmerising and yet, you could also leave and come back for a few views.
with a nod to bruce nauman's art paint works and to marina abramovic's bones scrubbing, shadie sits cross-legged on a plinth and wraps her naked body in white masking tape, contorting and constricting her figure - making some interesting statements about race, art, history/ties that bind, sensuality and femininity. then, in the second half, she rips the tape off in a frenzy. i'm not sure if the level frenzy was originally intended, but it was real - as her constriction and panic rise, it becomes an amazing metaphor of desperation, oppression, release and determination.

i have been thinking about this work all day, wishing that i was half as poetic as she was. it was amazing.

two other powerful works i liked: zander blom - a black'n'white installation using paint, fabric, dot matrix printers which really owned the space like none of the others and actually made this beautiful silhouette that almost replicated tundra, which i only noticed when i was sitting down to hear the willem boshoff artist talk [which was also mind-blowing].

and the final work that has stayed with me was by lawrence lemaoana. i don't actually really like the works per se, but the didactic panel mentioned the link between the textiles and their social relevance to the rape trial of president zuma, which has had me going back to the work since then.

south africa is a crazy place and the work in the show speaks about some of that craziness. it's going to be interesting to watch how the nation rights itself, and how/whether art helps or hinders that process.



general public
erfolgereich geführtes real life/ successfully felt real life


curated by the crew at general public, the show was primarily about perception. i only liked a few works in it, and missed the performance, but i was a bit cold/hungry/tired, so that's probably more the point. shintaro miyazaki's logic-based philosophy posters were instantly relevant, four bespoke newspapers were great - each with a single word in half a centrefold to say something simple and meaningful (although i can't find the image i took, so can't remember what that phrase was, dammit). it reminded me of the newspaper club kids anyways. and an intense red sound box was unnerving, but i wanted to have it anyways.


plus two shows i've seen through the windows only, thanks to random acts of not being open when the opening times say they should be:


grimm museum
D12 [dirty dozen]
excellent show, curated by Despina Stokou- i could only see her paintings in the front space, but they looked pretty spanky


nymphius projekte
Koksen ist 80er: Kunst der achtziger Jahre/Art of the 80s


featuring a stack of great non-objective artists, including gerwald rockenschaub and the most-excellent john nixon.


see - not a bad stack of shows.

each day.

so, since i've been here, i've had quite a list of things to do every day.

each day i'm trying to go to a gallery.
each day i want to do a listening project and then, each day do something towards being able to stay here for longer than 3 months.

each day some of those things are easier to do than others.

in the last week, i have seen some shit-hot artwork. and some shit. stupidly i assumed that all art in berlin must be awesome because it's, you know, german. not so. i forgot that germans have as much bad taste as the rest of the world.

here are some of the exceptions:

essays + observations: the mistake



a new gallery run by an english couple, this is a space after my own heart - one about conversation, critique, quality and art practice that makes no assumptions. not that i have that kind of art practice, but it's one that i aspire to and that i love looking at. i had a fantastic conversation with matthew, one of the directors, about art, quality, conceptual laziness and german art habits. i look forward to seeing more of what they're doing here.

haunch of venison: yoko ono, das gift



this is only the second time i've seen a yoko ono piece in the flesh - i was a bit excited. some of it was disappointingly fey, but there were parts that were beautiful: the motif of the bullet hole - viewed from telescope to a window, through winter coats and then to the back windows (via a wall). the 'smile' interactive work was simple and gentle, in typical ono style. i actually couldn't help smiling as i watched smiling face after smiling face. so of course i added my own in there :)


NGBK/kunstraum bethanien: the tourist syndrome



this is a good group show, although i think the works in the NGBK space are mostly underdone. australian timothy moore has a collaborative work in there, and before i noticed who it was, i found myself liking only his work.

the works at the kunstraum, however, are much better, and speak well about transitory, migratory, icky icky tourism-ory. there are a couple of fantastic works:

an installation/photos of 'hand drawn' LV and gucci bags by alex auriema and senagalese helpers which were sold on the streets of naples, like your standard fakes seen in the back streets of rome, paris and athens;

photos of dystopian 'holiday' pics - setting up picnics on a nice bit of gravel, sunbathing on an old toilet: like anne zahalka works in desolate parking lot neglected spaces in former soviet states. (did i just say photos were great? wow! i've changed...). i didn't catch who they were by - sorry!

and the best was a series of photos/dioramas about an egyptian holiday/comic adventure, egyptomaniac by collaborative team J&K. my all-time fav was horus and anubis in islamic cairo (see above).
if i had the cash, i would have bought it yesterday. laughed my arse off.


sammlung boros (the bunker)
i had heard from a reliable source that this was a super-ace collection and that you had to book 2 months in advance. when i was able to secure 2 tix within a couple of days, i jumped at the chance and dragged on of my new studio mates (a painter from RSA) along with me. as much as i wanted to completely love it, i was pretty disappointed. mostly thanks to expectations i guess.

some of the works were amazing - the shibboleth-style wooden 'crack', by monika sosnowska, through 3 rooms by was great, some of the olafur eliasson works were great to see (although they were smaller/stage - works of museum works, much better executed) and the space itself was impressive. but, i did leave wanting more. and i found it hard to justify to my grumbling painter friend why contemporary conceptual art was worthwhile. existential crisis much?

some of the galleries on linienstraße in mitte are a bit crap. but i guess some of the galleries in paddington and armadale are too, so that's OK.

two nice surprises there, though:

abnormals (i think run by italians)

they had a hybrid work cantiere corpo/corbo: video, costume remnants and illuminated duratrans of a performance. the main work was a three-part opera, performed simltaneously in three adjoining spaces. visually and experientially it was reminiscent of the cremaster code and monika tichacek's the shadowers. sexual, dark and way kinky in parts, it was a compelling show.

neugerriemschneider: pawel althamer



i forgot that i really like pawel althamer's work. i don't even know where i saw it first, but when i walked into the gallery, i was so relieved and excited to be seeing work that was well-constructed and in a nice white cube [sometimes they are exactly what a work needs, OK?].


if i see too many galleries, i'm not going to have time to do my own work, so it's back to one a day for me. that seems kind of manageable. and maybe i'll even embrace my old slacker-fantasies and not even do that.

quick update: LDN >25

i'm currently suffering badly from a punishing hangover. except i don't drink alcohol. so it's just the result of punishing my body with an all-night raggahton/boombahton/dance-ahton, arriving home at 6:30 am. i haven't had one of those for a while and, let's face it, i'm not as young as i used to be. [although the girl i'm sharing a dorm with did the same and she's still sleeping, so bully to her]

tomorrow will be the start of my ISEA2010 experience, so my wrap up of london is going to have to be brief. [sorry lucas, you're wrong about me being thorough now].


so, pretending that i'm entering a competition on a cornflakes pack, here are most of the london galleries i saw in 25 words or less:





national gallery, 18C
discovered gainsborough's late landscapes. beautiful active figures in the environment. also drank in chardin, vigee le-brun and the french rococco titillation.

tate britain: mike nelson's coral reef
largely uninterested by banner's planes - kids posing underneath them, repulsive. getting lost in nelson's labyrinth was thrilling: FPS game + inception -styles. redeemed orwell st.

MOT: ongoing program
i like this revolving project. good selection of works - especially brian's twitter treatise on sculpture: daily tweets transcribed onto shutter door, transferred to a weekly poster.

chisenhale: 27 senses
nordic responses to kurt schwitter's hütte. excellent theme, great space, nice works underpinned by drawing - humourous merzbau, interesting video about an exile and intriguing spatial projection.

whitechapel: alice neel, chapman bros, john latham
alice's paintings were divine and the accompanying video accentuated them. chapmans' story was good, etchings 7/10. john latham, new discovery - love his knowledge processes.


not that there's a whole lot on in london right now - summer holidays has everyone shut. perhaps for the best, considering my short stay.

oh, and to add to that, i drank so much excellent coffee over those two days, that i was at once wired and embarassed for melbourne and its rapidly-declining scene. sorry.


images: major lazer from maddecent.com
s. mark gubb at concrete hermit. never laughed so hard at a gallery.

london: wednesday.

the last couple of days have been like a dream come true, really: art, coffee, art, coffee. as a result, my reporting is a bit behind.

on wednesday, with my inimitable art-pal, john dodds, i took in the V&A, the saatchi gallery and a weird place called chelsea futurespace (which i'm not going to go into, but it was kinda weird and all display-home).

V&A: 1:1 architecture spaces.

this was the exhibition highlight of the day, really.

a series of 1:1 spaces designed/built by architects as investigations into small spaces. there were 2 in a designated area for the show, with the rest dotted around the collection, perfectly responding to the various galleries and sections*.

all of them were great - you can see them here:
and here

but there was one in particular that totally floated my boat people and i'm going to devote the rest of my laptop battery to it: the bookshelf space.




the space, called Ark, by Rintala Eggertsson Architects is kind of a well-made, solid, ikea open bookshelf x 4, facing in on itself. the 'walls' are enclosed using books, the ground floor opens into the bookshop, whilst the roof meets the floor of the library upstairs. in between is a spiralling space of booky goodness! oh my lordy i almost fainted with overwhelm of all the books. i find going into book shops and libraries hard enough - i often need a chaperone in readings.

of course, john and i took the opportunity to do a quick little intervention into the space, rearranging the books to make a whole shelf of the conqueror by jan kjæstad - a massive paperback with a distinctive cover.

i loved the obvious idea of a place of literature, where knowledge is the foundation of space (something that john latham would have gone a bit goo goo about).

i also loved also the idea that this situation - a site and non-site of shifting space as the same time. and that small spaces were being created and filled in by books. and that no book was more or less important than another.

the whole colour palette of the place also had me gabbling - the exterior, with the exposed pine beams and then the out-facing pages were all the same colour, because they were all the same 'stuff'. wood and paper together again.

and then on the inside, the colour explosion was so pleasing to the eye - in a way that something more contrived would just make me wanna vomit. part of me wanted to spend hours in there, organising all the spines by colour. but then the whole bottom floor would probably be orange :)



the smell of the place was so comforting and homely. it reminded me of all my favourite bookstores and the times i've spent with friends just wandering, head tilted, perusing.

if you're in to books, in even the slightest way, go see this space at the V&A.


saatchi gallery: newspeak.

newspace too - i didn't get a chance to pop in last time i was in the hood, so i'm grateful for the opportunity to do so. for the most part, the show was frightful. i haven't had such a violent opposition to works in a while - there was some real shite there. but, there was also some excellent work, and some obvious themes being investigated, which was intriguing and enlightening. even if i didn't like the particular works investigating those themes.

new british artists (still mostly painters, according to the saatchi kids - maybe because painting is still the prime-market) are mostly looking at human disfigurement and apparition.




not part of this show, i loved two works in the two large project galleries: richard wilson's 20:50 - a beautiful, reflective space made from the gallery filled with oil. the reflection was slightly disconcerting, the smell even more so. and as atmospheric and moody as the work was, i also ended up feeling angry that it somehow vindicates the disaster of oil-space c/- British Petroleum. I felt the need to make the work political by chucking a stack of animals in there to float and then see how beautiful it looked. not that it has anything to do with mr wilson's formal concerns, i guess.





the other beautiful work was john wynne's pianola composition for 300 speakers - a stack of various speaker boxes, mostly beautiful old ones, with a pneumatic automated playing system that cardiff-miller and meireles would have been proud of.

there were a few other good works, namely the pixel rug and guillotine by rupert norfolk and the boys in the corner by littlewhitehead.

it was great to see the gallery in the flesh - i hadn't ever seen it. i expect it will be a fairly regular visit for me when i'm in london town now.





*almost funny anecdote about the studio mumbai work: you have to remove your shoes for this exhibit, and while we were putting them back on, we were accosted approached by education staff from the gallery to survey our response to the show. she kinda messed with the wrong sinatra, 'cos when she asked about how i would describe the show to a friend, little did she know that my friends are all pretty well-versed in architecture/art vernacular and i started rattling on about interstitial spaces and textured experience. ha! what wanker i am.


ark images are from the V&A site and REA.

gesture and procedures

there is an amazing exhibition on at ACCA at the moment. i haven't had a lot of time to devote to checkin' out exhibitions at the moment, but this one is right up my alley.



the new macpherson commission is bianca hester's massive work Please leave these windows open overnight to enable the fans to draw in cool air during the early hours of the morning - it is a whole-gallery installation on action, movement and tension. from the school of fischli & weiss, it's an opus of balance, possible action, phenomenology and spatial composition.

(that's her above). bummed i missed out on seeing the horse!

the other show is a group exhibition of artists who work across concept/performance and action - gestures and procedures is great title for it, actually. a whole swag of my personal favs are in the show: marina abramovic, mike parr, francis alys, vito acconci, john baldassari, anastasia klose, beth arnold, tony schwensen and bruce nauman.

it was the kind of show i had seen on my european trips, so a perfect send-off for my impending departure.

i had actually seen a fair few of the works, which is reassuring and comforting sometimes. and they were all good and obvious inclusions. except, perhaps, daniel von sturmer's works - i would say that von sturmer concerns himself more with traditional, material and construction considerations, rather than process/gesture. but that's just me being a tad pedantic. and nothing to take away from how good mr von sturmer is as an artist.



i love mike parr's early body work - 100 breaths, and the ulay/abramovic aaa-aaa was great to see IRL. as was the abramovic art must be beautiful/artist must be beautiful. i'm reading her biography at the moment and these works are even more powerful within a context of an intense life story.



even though i have to store them in my best friend's garage for the next 6 months, i grabbed a couple of beth arnold's discarded object project posters, one of the objects - an old granny cart - was from carlton north, near my old haunt. i couldn't help but get a bit sentimental about that one. heh.



i actually really loved the video work by delphine reist of an empty fluoro-lit room in which the fluoro globes would 'randomly' fall down and smash on the floor - the noise was amazing and the heist of it was pretty damned delicious too. i'll be chasing up more work of hers, that's for sure.

i didn't have a lot of time to spend in the show, but still a great, great exhibition of works that are about the particular type of art i like - where art is a verb and space is an indirect object.


image credits: acca website, the age and eternalnetwork.fr

geek week 4

phi-yew! what a massive week! there is so much to write about - so much to distil. but i don't want to overload you all so i'll do my best to eek it out in a reasonably logical manner.

the end


monday was a day of endings - the de-install of structural integrity at the meat market and then the AGM at the gallery. i found myself haunted again by my untangling video work, having to disentangle the meters and meters of flags, then same again for lights and extension leads. it was a great opportunity to spend time hangin' out with the crew that made the space happen. i was also able to do an audio interview of them, which will go up on the new version of the site. in fact, sitting them down for an interview felt like a major imposition, but i think it enabled everyone to rest, take stock and to reflect on the project - often an act not afforded the busy.

the AGM went very smoothly and it was lovely to meet a huge swag of the (primarily voluntary) organisation. names and faces began to connect and i was very warmly welcomed. even if i couldn't get the projector working in time :D


the beginning



three new shows started installing this week too. beautiful shows, with far less tech/AV support than the last one. I was able to help out a little, but i really wasn't needed much. *sniff*. it's ok.

this week also had some funding granted to put towards tech equipment. the office had been running on really old macs (G4 PowerPC tower/G5 imac) and i was able to facilitate a good price for a brand new suite of workstations and support equipment/software. it finally went through and i spent most of the week working through the slow process of archiving, installing and updating computers.

i'll write about the process in another post (as much to distill it for myself, as a possible place to discuss it further), but as the new equipment rolled out, it was pretty awesome to see the joy and relief on kelly and phip's faces as they realised how awesome it's all going to be from now on. it sounds like such a small thing to install two new computers and a back-up system. but for these guys, their tech was so fragile, that the change is going to make a MASSIVE difference to them.

for instance - 1GB to copy used to take 2 hours. now? 2 minutes. this upgrade is going to save them so much time, it's not even funny.

and, i'm so lucky to be working with a pair of mac-native, digitally mature lasses who have rolled with the hiccups, trusted that the end product will be worth the ride and supported me through the process too. there were some hairy 'oh fuck, i think i've lost the database' moments that i never want to go through again. these gals just let it all roll out.

at the end of the week (and a very, very late friday finish) my hosts now have working computers, connected, transferred, mostly updated software and only a couple of extra bits'n'pieces to finish off.

the office looks amazing and, interestingly, it was a whole lot quieter in there too! the new systems hardly emit any noise and the keyboards are the sound of a sleeping cat! rather than the clatter of old hardware - even our ears are happy.



in the middle



at the end of the fourth week, it really feels like things are starting to settle in and to go places. i feel very much a part of the organisation now and, as much as i love the ephemeral, it's nice to have some tangible outcomes starting to happen. warm fuzzies.

next week, we meet with the developers. [cue: suspense-filled music. roll credits]

hot in the city

i'm sorry if you don't live in melbourne right now. there is SO much on for anyone who is mildly interested in anything other than the lost finale (which, for the record, i'm not).

firstly, the next wave festival is on and although the first week of stuff didn't really get my heart started*, there have been some excellent works on and this week i'm finally having that 'oh crap i need to see 5 things in the one night' moment. PLUS the emerging writers festival has started!

if you haven't been down to the meat market to see the structural integrity pavilions and scott mitchell's smoke machine, for god's sake brave the cold and do it. it will make it all worthwhile.




and if you're whinging about how out-of-the-way the meat market it is, i understand. really, i do. but it's worth it - just get off the 19 tram at queensberry st, it's pretty easy from there.


the other thing you need to do is come to west space and see the feminist project exhibition, the view from here. and you should buy/read the catalogue. it is the hopeful beginning of the next wave of feminist discourse (see what i did there?).




interestingly, the introduction to the female eunuch could easily be the introduction to this work, whereby we've sat on our laurels again got all caught up in raunch culture and fake tans/boob/lips, forgetting that we STILL need to loudly remind ourselves and everyone that exploitation of any kind based on gender (or race, sexual preference or creed for that matter) is not OK.


it's pretty shit, but i've already missed out on the parachutes for ladies' i thought a musical was being made and tape projects' 100 proofs the earth is not a globe. if you're going, i think i might hate you for a while. and if you're not - join the philistine fan club.

things i will not be missing out on:

great heights 2 at melbourne central tonight, featuring kay abude, sam george, michael georgetti, tegan lewis, andrew liversidge, amy + claire spiers and paul wotherspoon.




the infinity tube near the neck face piece off meyers place (now that it has finally arrived!)



and estelle tang's 15 minutes of fame book launch extravaganza, as part of the emerging writers' festival. estelle's blog 3000books is one of the best lit blogs going around, so you should read it and come to the events this week. super ace.


two other shows you should see:

glenn walls' show at john buckley, projects for total urbanism (pictured above). i think it's in the last couple of days, so you should run to richmond. (yes, lauren. ahem)

and owen leong's show, birthmark, at anna pappas. SUCH beautiful photographic works. but you know, i'm biased as he's a dear friend.



PLUS there are a few things i'll be missing out on because i'm giving a lecture at RMIT.

so, if you're not going to grace us with your presence, one of the things you should go and check out the soundkilda music vid competition on at the palace george in st.kilda - showing the hottest music vids on the big screen, which i'm totally into as an idea.

and...actually i can't remember the others - i live in a purely need-to-know timescale at the moment. ha!


if you're not in melbourne, i'm sure your week is great - you've either got waaay more interesting things to do, or you're watching re-runs of the lost finale. either way, i'm happy for you. really.



* except the taking it to the streets forum with lucas ihlein on sunday. i'll talk about that another post.

image credits:
estelle and her facebook page
next wave site
john buckley website
owen leong website
dell stewart and her flickr stream

shows, shows, shows!

after that burst of blog activity last week, i dropped off the posts for a bit because there were a stack of shows i had to squeeze in. i'm now working full-time to earn some cashola, so my free time has been streamlined. which of course = less blogging time.


"hooray!"


anyway, there are a stack of great shows on in melbourne at the moment, which you should all go and have a look at. and there are more this week too!


grant nimmo and julia robinson
anna pappas gallery



it's quite exciting to see some of the new kids on the block at anna pappas. grant nimmo's paintings from if you are a big tree, we are a small axe are part of a new crew of artists making work that collages chronic colour symbolism, landscape and portraiture tradition with ITC language. think delaunay, and yahoo groups.

some of the works in the show i fell in love with immediately. others are really not my taste. and maybe that's because i'm too closely attached to language and symbols from online communication to have detachment from it (and therefor be able to see the beauty/irony/message/meaning in it).

julia robinson makes sculptural work that stylises the animal form by creating it using textile techniques. although i appreciated the work, i couldn't help but think about the work of melbourne artist natalie ryan who is currently making very similar work, albeit with a style and material (that deep, lush flock/velvet) that i like more. i felt like i had done julia an injustice by that instinctive comparison, like instantly comparing muse to queen, so i left feeling une petite remorse.


izabela pluta
nellie castan gallery



in the back project space, iz has a selection of subtle, but carefully selected series of photo and print-based work that map out the litoral edge and the point at which the place meets the urban architectural experience. the three projects are so quiet and clear and graceful and yet manage to pick up on a really interesting reflection of line: the line of the rushing canal, the line of the almost-dormant creek and the line of hardened ice and/or snowfall.

i've not been to this gallery before, and it was well worth the cross over the river, that's for sure.

simone slee
sarah scout presents



simone slee's action works have a similar process to my own and an obvious relationship to the difference between architecture and art practice and critique. are you true to your materials? is a modernist question. and a painter/sculptor's question at that. it is the question which plagues generations of artists and a question that seems to be justification for critique (as opposed to 'are you actually saying something interesting?'). simone has placed this question in front of a series of modernist residential architecture sites, apparently asking the same question of Architecture and highlighting it as a question that is, in my opinion, completely irrelevant to art.

i love the idea of this process. i would love to see some images of the actual process of these works and i was excited to see the signs in the gallery space. as i mentioned on the night - how much fun would it be to hire the signs out for the night and encourage the audience to ask that same question of whatever aspect of public life they felt needed critiquing.



the nothing
west space



as a whole, this show is fantastic. curated by kelly fliedner, i was instantly impressed with the breadth and quality and stoush of this show - a real range of works by melbourne artists who are all doing some amazing things right now:

damiano bertoli, lou hubbard, sanne maestrom, deborah ostrow, daniel price, matthew shannon and jackson slattery (who i keep calling slattery, jackson - channeling the teacher from ferris bueller's day off)

ok, so the whole idea of having a bunch of artists that sews a theme together is nothing all that new, but i still thought it was reassuringly cohesive.

my favourite work in the show was, unsurprisingly, the damiano bertoli video work, continuous moment: andandand - a video montage of empty residential/architectural spaces. i'm pretty sure it's cut together from other film works (i reckon there's a slice from the german film 'die fettern jahren sind vorbei' in it and a piece from a chantal ackerman work. but i'm probably totally wrong). it creates an almost-narrative, full of suspense from all that possibility, all that just-before-the-action context and lead-in. and the use of colour field had me literally ooh-ing and aah-ing. i think i gave my fellow viewers the shits very quickly.

other works of note (for me) included:

deborah ostrow's photo/video portaits (pictured), which - aesthetically speaking - surprised me into loving them. in fact, they have a similarity with the grant nimmo works (you know, the ones at anna pappas) - with their dutch renaissance, colour symbolism, nu-tech language mash-up.

lou hubbard's ET. nothing mind-blowing, in terms of concept, but still fuckin' fun. bring back art with a bit of fun on top, i reckon. of course, it doesn't hurt that i am immature and have a deep love for sue webster/tim noble. my first thought was, i wonder whether she figured that out by accident - like maybe someone through something at something and it made a shape that eventually became ET.

and of course sanné mestrom's a door opened and almost closed again conceptual work in the doorway of the gallery. the whole imagination/action/text overlap floats my little boat.


territorial pissings
utopian slumps



this is the opening group show for utopian slumps in its new form, as a commercial gallery. including a load of well-known hip young thangs:
sean bailey, dan bell, nathan gray, michelle hanlin, matthew hopkins, rob mchaffie saskia leek, toby pola (pictured), tom polo, tim price, mark rodda, gemma smith, masato takasaka,jake walker and amber wallis.

there are a couple of good works in this show, but if i'm terribly honest, i wasn't really taken with many. nor was i really in love with the new space. i haven't given up hope, but it might take me a few returns before i can really get in the groove with the new space.

now, you must forgive my lack of names in this mini review - all the room lists had disappeared and i couldn't jot any of the names down. you'll just have to go and see the works and match them to the room sheet when you get there.

i loved the sculpture piece on the shelf as you first walk into the space - i was like a bower-bird. all taken with the bright sparkly objects and the colour co-ordination.

and i also really liked the pair of paintings on the wall opposite the entrance - muted palette utopian cityscapes. like egon schiele mixed with gemma smith and danila vassilieff. he also made the work that was on the laptop on the floor - an unexpected joy for me, with surprisingly great combination of image, depth of field and selection of materials.

in the hype of the evening i missed out on seeing rob mchaffie's drawings, but i just know they would have been stunning too.

all in all, the new commercial version of utopian slumps will be a fascinating trip and i wish all the peeps involved a stack of success.

*just for the record, territorial pissings - the song by nirvana - was the song that turned me onto the joys of punk music. you can take that how you wanna, but goddammit, it's still my one of my alltime favourite songs.


epilogue

I didn't see this show when it opened last week and finally got to see it yesterday. it is such a perfect match for the show at west space that, if you are interested in either show, you must go and see both. it's like they are an echo of each other. the nothing and the something, anything. it is the lack and the desperation. the emptiness and the need to fill it. it is the wax and the wane of art making, of thinking, of doing and of the driven.

a quarter turn on every screw
kings ARI



another exhibition, based on a theme, with a stack of excellent artists from melbourne and beyond. a few more interventions into space, a couple of works that made me laugh out loud for real and this show is easily of my highlights for the year so far. and the essay by curator kel glaister is fantastic. sorry, it's FANTASTIC!!

this show is about the reasons - the compulsions about making art, or making something. filling in the gaps, filling up spaces and how/why/when artists make art: brad haylock, anthony johnson, yvette king, sanné mestrom (again), sanja pahoki, kiron robinson, jackson slattery (slattery, jackson - remember?), nedko solakov and lee walton.

i laughed myself silly at sleep transcript by anthony johnson - a record of an artist asleep on a laptop, i was flooded with thoughts about the irreverence and potency of this absurdity: challenging the weight of critical theory in publication with the weight of an artist's slumber, i was reminded of the highly inspiring text my cat produces when she decideds to parade across my keyboard and also loved his reflection that, even asleep, artists make work.

patti smith said, when she was here a few years ago: "artists are always artists. i could be taking a crap and i'm still an artist!". i loved this quote and have it written in my diary as a constant reminder. the sleep transcript connects me back to this idea in a way that encourages us to have a sense of humour about the dumb shit we do under the guise of art too.

sanné's signage and text-based badges were a great touch and, i guess in counterpoint to the omnipotence of artists production, her idea of artists and art as pawns (as opposed to kings) was poignant. this cynicism keeps us honest, although i guess articles in the herald sun damning art as a waste of money do that too, right?).

and i also really liked the video works of both lee walton (pictured) and nedko solakov.

the former - minor adjustments and personal modifications to public space was stunning. my mother, whenever we go away, rearranges the furniture of the hotel if it doesn't feel right and this work was reminiscent of that. the artist adjusts and intervenes into the objects of public space if they don't feel right.

the latter - the violent and open and not-subtle-at-all modifications to objects in public space was thrilling and exciting in its brazen display. and, in my opinion, the aesthetics of public space need both methods to produce great works and pleasant spaces: bold gestures and attention to detail; swinging mallets and 10 cms to the left.


image credits: all images pinched from the respective websites, except the one of the balloons. i took that.