dan rule

Published: The Age, A2, November 7, 2009.

Around the galleries Dan Rule

WHAT Shaun Gladwell: Recent Photographs
WHERE Anna Schwartz Gallery, 185 Flinders Lane, city, 9654 6131, annaschwartzgallery.com

As you would expect, or at least hope, there’s been plenty of heated chatter about Shaun Gladwell’s recent showing as Australia’s representative at this year’s Venice Biennale. His
MADDESTMAXIMVS series continues at the upstairs gallery at Anna Schwartz, with a collection of large-scale production stills taken from his now famed Interceptor Surf Sequence and Apology to Roadkill video works among others. In Interceptor… a helmeted protagonist surf’s the roof of a replica of Mel Gibson’s famed Mad Max car speeding through red desert plains west of Broken Hill, while in Apology… the same protagonist tenderly lifts a felled kangaroo from an outback highway. In Colour Test, meanwhile, an outstretched arm holding a spray paint colour chart interrupts an otherwise empty desert vista, effectively imposing an urban timbre on an outback setting. Indeed, Gladwell’s use of Australian landscape and film clichés is far more sophisticated and personal than some might have given him credit. Like many of us, Gladwell is a city dweller whole experience of Australia’s interior is limited to film and cultural reference. In this striking series, he explores the interface. Tues to Fri noon–6pm, Sat 1pm–5pm, until November 14.

WHAT Rogerio Duarte
WHERE The Narrows, Level 2, 141 Flinders Lane, city, 9654 1534, thenarrows.org

Only a month after legendary, recently reformed Brazilian Tropicalia group Os Mutantes released their first album in almost four decades – Haih or Amortecedor – The Narrows presents this compact survey of one of the movement’s chief visual and intellectual protagonists, Rogerio Duarte. Taking in the graphic designer, songwriter and academic’s striking film posters, book designs, magazine pagination and of course record covers for the likes of Gilberto Gil, Jorge Ben and countless others, the show not only captures Duarte’s boldly colouristic, motif-driven aesthetic, but the radicalism of the spirit. Tropicalia, a freethinking, politically divisive musical and cultural movement that emerged in the late 60s following Brazil’s military coup of 1964, was about untethered expression as much as it was unbinding officially sanctioned notions of what it was to be Brazilian. Most importantly though, this collection of Duarte’s work – concisely curated by Warren Taylor and James Hibberd – shows its resonance today. His record covers have been re-appropriated 10 times over, and you’ll swear you’ve seen four-decade-old photo-collages in contemporary design-savvy magazines. Wed to Fri noon–6pm, Sat noon–5pm, until November 14.

WHAT Anne Ferran: Lost to Worlds 2
WHERE Sutton Gallery, 254 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, 9416 0727, suttongallery.com.au

In what might seem something of a gentle affront to the landscape photography archetype, long-serving Australian photo-artist Anne Ferran directs our gaze downward in her new show at Sutton Gallery. Scarcely any of the 30 large-scale, monochrome, ink-on-aluminium works that comprise Lost to Worlds 2 even feature the hint of horizon or sky. But Ferran’s focus has little to do with formal concerns. Taken near the town of Ross in central Tasmania – at a site where a 19th Century female convict prison once stood – these solemn, contemplative works seem suggestive of the complications of history. There is no evidence of the structures that occupied this now rural land; no ruins scar the mown paddocks and gently sloping terrain. The sheer absence is enveloping. We are left to study the texture and hue of the grasses and earth, the sinew of a fence-line, the shadow of a poplar – to conjure what once was. It is unclear as to what relationship Ferran holds with this particular site, though it appears unimportant. Lost to Worlds 2 is a wider commentary on the erasure of the past. History isn’t just present in monument and text; it is beneath every step we tread. Tues to Sat 11am–5pm, until November 21.

WHAT Katie Jacobs, Rohani Osman, Brittany Veitch: Veni Vidi Vici
WHERE C3 Contemporary Art Space, Abbotsford Convent, 1 St Heliers Street, Abbotsford, 9416 4300, abbotsfordconvent.com.au

Veni Vidi Vici – the playfully loaded new show from ceramicist Katie Jacobs and maker/artists Rohani Osman and Brittany Veitch – invokes a tension on cultural, domestic and ecological grounds. While the trio take the classic banquet as their setting, they have something very different on the menu. Endangered Australian species take the place of inherited European fare on this dining table of slimy, furry and feathered friends. Jacobs’ ceramic Gummy Shark and chips, Blue Spotted Stingray, Witjuti Grub appetisers and Leadbeater’s Possums on skewers are complimented by Osman’s crocheted Frilled Neck Lizard table runner and knitted Melbourne Bitter tinnies. Veitch, meanwhile, offers up felted wallaby and magpie pies, not to mention a delectable moth cake. It’s delightful and disturbing all at once. While the show harbour’s an obvious postcolonial critique of European culture’s annihilation of native environments and species, just as interestingly, it also works to destabilise the role the “domestic arts”. Indeed, each of these artists use techniques traditionally passed down from mothers, aunts and grandmothers to create very different, rather subversive outcomes. Wed to Sun 10am–5pm, until November 15.

Published: The Age, A2, October 31, 2009.

Around the galleries Dan Rule

WHAT Ricky Swallow: The Bricoleur
WHERE The Ian Potter Centre, NGV Australia, Federation Square, city, 8620 2222, ngv.vic.gov.au

Ricky Swallow’s wood and bronze sculptures possess a rare presence. On the one level, the joys of this wonderful survey of the South Gippsland boy-turned international art star’s recent sculptures and watercolours are in its invocation of chronology and process. Grounded in the 17th Century Dutch Still Life tradition, every groove and contour, every elegant mark of the hand and tool speaks of hours and days and months. Works like the English Limewood Fig. 1, which depicts a baby’s skull wrapped loosely in paper, the puffed rucksack of Fig. 2 and bronze-cast, barnacle encrusted balloons of Caravan defy their materials with a breath-like weightlessness. But while there’s a real enchantment to Swallow’s form and almost freakish craftsmanship, where his work truly resonates is in its personal foundations. His pairing of human skeletons, dead animals and barnacles with everyday objects and material possessions is neither a mistake nor an aesthetic contrivance; it is a solemn marker of the nature of time and loss, memory and connection. Indeed, Swallow’s works not only deal with the life-cycle of the body, but attribute meaning and gravity to the objects we acquire and relationships we establish. When we pass, our memory is stored in our materials. For our loved ones, we live on in our objects and clothes and furniture – in our books and bones. Tues to Sun, 10am–5pm, $10 (adult) $7 (concession)$5 (child) until February 28.

WHAT Kat Macleod: Slight Inclusions
WHERE Lamington Drive, 89 George Street, Fitzroy, 8060 9745, lamingtondrive.com

The title of cult Melbourne artist and Michi Girl illustrator Kat Macleod’s second solo exhibition is a telling one. The “inclusions” it speaks of refer to the natural imperfections and blemishes that give a diamond its singularity, the flaws that make something truly beautiful. Comprising an extensive series of Macleod’s original, untreated pencil, watercolour and collage illustrations from she and writer Jane Rocca’s hugely popular 2005 book The Cocktail and various editorial commissions for Vogue Entertainment + Travel, Real Simple magazine and others, this survey reveals the tactility and mechanics of some of Macleod’s most widely recognised works. The meticulous mess of folds and stiches, the economy of line and lightness of hand, the colour tests and eraser marks are all left in plain view, elucidating both the complexity and looseness of her process. The show also includes a new, four-part series of large, hand-pulled screen prints – the first time Macleod has worked at such a scale. Suffice to say, her beauteous, gestural female forms become all the more cogent. Wed to Fri 11am–6pm, Sat to Sun noon–5pm, until November 15.

WHAT Marie-Jeanne Hoffner & Stephen Garrett: After the Goldrush
WHERE Conical, Level 1, 3 Rochester Street, Fitzroy, 9415 6958, conical.org.au

The notion of capturing and depicting a moment, person or place isn’t always so cut and dry. With their new show at Conical, Parisian artist Marie-Jeanne Hoffner and Melbournian Stephen Garrett challenge us to rethink representation itself. Part of a long-term, intercontinental collaboration, After the Goldrush, in effect, exemplifies different ways of seeing. These seemingly abstract works – a split-screen, mirror-image video, a snaking neon light sculpture, a wall-sized photographic work and a spectacularly intricate and fragile balsawood sculpture that hangs from the ceiling – are apparently representative of places, structures and forms, only to be deconstructed and reconstituted through a series of processes between the artists. Hoffner and Garrett seem interested in slippage, in the elasticity between representation and referent and the possibilities it affords. We’re left with a series of allusions and echoes, meticulous and definite in detail, but unrestricted in form. Wed to Sat noon–5pm, until November 7.

WHAT Callum Morton: Smokescreen
WHERE Anna Schwartz Gallery, 185 Flinders Lane, city, 9654 6131, annaschwartzgallery.com

Callum Morton’s new, prodigiously-scaled sculptural installation Smokescreen casts itself not merely as a spatial intervention, but a cultural one. Spanning almost the entire width of Anna Schwartz Gallery, the towering work repels the viewer’s gaze at almost every vantage. Comprising a galvanized steel frame and a screen made of reflective stainless steel panels, the work throws a distorted mirror-image of the space back on itself. The only clarity is in a series of small fissures, through which we can spy the remainder of gallery space beyond. Morton, who frames the work as a reaction to a contemporary condition awash with distraction, has certainly made an unambiguous statement here. Whether or not Smokescreen offers a convincing strategy as to how we combat such a cultural mire is, unfortunately, not so clear. Tues to Fri noon–6pm, Sat 1pm–5pm, until November 7.

Published: The Age, A2, October 24, 2009.

Around the galleries Dan Rule

WHAT Beverley Veasey: Habitats #2
WHERE Dickerson Gallery, 44 Oxford Street, Collingwood, 9416 0031, dickersongallery.com.au

Beverley Veasey’s ‘landscapes’ are as much about absence as they subject. Her large-scale, monochrome photographs of animal enclosures, captured in zoos throughout the world, chart spaces void of their occupants. In Habitat #3, a tangle of desert brush and high grass frame a crudely painted Grand Canyon-esque backdrop, the outline of a door – the keeper’s entrance – clearly visible against the tallest rocky peak. In Habitat #10, a corner gives a dense jungle scene an almost believable depth. It’s both alluring and haunting. Veasey’s works function on the level of proposition more so than representation. They suggest power and intention. In a contemporary setting, these cramped, contrived spaces are our only interface with rare and endangered species – species that we are collectively responsible for crippling. Nonetheless, all the care and labour that has been channelled into these spaces – the dramatic, painted backdrops, the installation of dead foliage, the illusion of space – is almost entirely for the viewer’s benefit. Tues to Sat, 10:30am–5:30pm, until November 1.

WHAT Steve Carr: Enchanté
WHERE Uplands Gallery, 247 High Street, Prahran, 9510 2374, uplandsgallery.com

The aesthetic markers of refinement, prestige and accomplishment can assume many decorative forms. Perhaps it’s one’s social deportment, one’s cigar brand. The badge on one’s two-door sports vehicle, perchance, or one’s proclivity for the arts. Steve Carr’s new series of works seems to offer an examination of such ultimately disingenuous cues. As its title alludes, Enchanté delves in the processes and, ahem, faux pas employed to maintain the front. Comprising seven large-scale photographs of flamboyant wine-glass napkin folds – a preening peacock and palm frond included – and a 17-minute video work capturing a painstaking roast turkey preparation, Carr points to the planned, practiced and executed mechanics of perfection, sans the supposed mystique. As the table settings take on increasingly extravagant forms, the illusion of sophistication and cultural grandeur becomes all the more explicit. It is elaborate and ultimately desperate performance. Tues to Fri, 11am–5:30pm, Sat noon–4pm, until October 31.

WHAT Paolo Consorti: Exaltations
WHERE Anna Pappas Gallery, 2–4 Carlton Street, Prahran, 8598 9915, annapappasgallery.com

It’s difficult to get bearing within Paulo Consorti’s crowded, technicolour vistas. The Italian artist drops found and original photographs into swirling arrangements of digitally rendered landscapes, moonscapes, warzones and hippie mud baths. While these theatrical, fantastical images are endlessly playful and striking in their detail, there’s a lurking earnestness (and boyish admiration for Photoshop) here that might grate with some. Consorti seems to be exploring the extremes of humanity’s manifestations, good and bad. That in itself isn’t a problem. It’s the fact that he’s done so via what some might consider a dated, soft-lens fantasy art aesthetic that goes some way to blunt his ambitions. Tues to Fri 10am–6pm, Sat to Sun noon–6pm, until October 31.

Published: Music Australia Guide #70, October 2009

BEATS with Dan Rule

Anti-Pop Consortium
Fluorescent Black
****1/2

When New York’s most cerebral, exploratory and downright scientific hip hop quartet called it a day 2003, most read it as a tragedy for leftfield rap. Anti-Pop Consortium built a name for remoulding mutant techno and late 70s electro-punk discord into hip hop’s ever-malleable vernacular. Six years on, Fluorescent Black proves a lithe, muscular and flat-out thrilling comeback. It may not make total sense in fragments, but the record’s true complexity emerges when absorbed end-to-end. Jarring, metallic abrasions rub up against sticky grooves; saccharine techno u-turns into angular hip hop and exemplary, double-time mic skills. Anti-Pop have again paid homage to the past in creating a new future.

Big Dada/Inertia

Raekwon
Only Built 4 Cuban Linx: Pt. II
*****

It’s a task to explain just how good this record is. 14 years after he dropped the key Wu-Tang Clan solo project – sans GZA’s Liquid Swords – Raekwon’s Cuban Linx sequel exceeds all expectations. This murky, brooding, exceptionally balanced record doesn’t just take you back to the Wu’s heyday; it expands and refines the vision. All the Wu players are here. As expected, Ghostface plays Rae’s chief foil, while GZA drops a scorching verse on classic crime cut We Will Rob You. The beats – thanks to RZA, J Dilla, Marley Marl, Pete Rock and others – are as good as they get. Rae has excelled here. NY hip hop lives.

Method/Shock

aus
Light in August, Later
****

There’s a delicate, dualistic quality to whispering sound worlds and pop minutiae of Yasuhiko Fukuzono. This quiet little record from the Tokyo composer and musician (known to most as aus) is as beautifully spacious as it is intimate. Working with untreated piano, voice, peals of guitar and strings and sweep of field recordings and static-strewn electronics, Fukuzono’s art is one of layering and restraint. Tracks like Uram, Remnant and gorgeous closer A World of Dazzle recast crystalline instrumental motifs in a beauteous haze of shoegaze atmosphere and sun-streaked electronic hues. It’s a record of stunning melodic and tonal subtlety – of genuine evocation and place.

Someone Good/Vitamin

Wiley
Race Against Time
***

There’s no doubting Wiley’s legacy. Dizzee Rascal may have taken UK grime to the charts, but Wiley was the man to plant the flag. Following the less-than-impressive See Clear Now, fifth album Race Against Time comes with a weight of expectation. It’s not a disappointment, but it’s not exactly a dam-breaker. Wiley’s diction is as meticulous as ever here and he’s on fire when the beats are raw and rugged – check Headbanger and Off the Radar – but what this serviceable record articulates more than anything is grime’s beepy, bleepy, highly synthesised limitations. Like Dizzee’s latest material, much of Race Against Time espouses a production aesthetic lacking any evidence of light and shade.

Eskibeat/Inertia

Thundamentals
Sleeping on your Style
***1/2

There’s plenty to like about Thundamentals. The Blue Mountains crew hail from a generation of young rappers and producers who’ve dared to bring groove and musicality to the once melodically barren terrain of Australian hip hop. Debut longplayer Sleeping on your Style is a prime example. Cuts like the funk-heavy I HIP HOP and buoyant dub pulse of the title-track anchor flowing arrangements with sticky, melting bass lines, while Move it Up and We Won’t Mind shine with organic soul hooks and instrumentation. At 15 tracks, Sleeping on your Style does fade a little by its end, but for the most part, it proves an intelligent, musically astute debut.

Obese