AROUND THE GALLERIES Dan Rule
Published: The Age, A2, September 4, 2010.
WHAT Mari Funaki: Objects
WHERE The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Victoria, Federation Square, city, 8620 2222, ngv.vic.gov.au
Mari Funaki’s works are the unlikely sum of their parts. The late Japanese-Australian artist, who tragically lost her battle with breast cancer in May, possessed a rare ability to transpose even the most austere and angular of materials into highly gestural and organic forms. This collection of recent, sculptural Objects dates from the early 90s until the time of her passing, and charts the jeweller and metalsmith’s shift into the realms of fully-realised sculptural practice. The magic of the 20 small-scale and four large-scale heat-blackened mild steel works lies in their metamorphosis. Indeed, at first glance, the sculptures’ sharp, shard-like limbs and geometric forms assume an eerily mechanical, robotic and architectural guise. But with shifts in proximity and vantage, a very different set of qualities emerges. Tangles of abstract shards become assume figurative gestures; sharp, angled strands become the stoop of a human form. It makes for a striking dichotomy. Funaki’s Objects,in essence, defy their very materiality. They are harsh and softened, angular and ductile, industrial and organic. They are evocative, but ultimately, undefined. Tues to Sun 10am–5pm, until October 24.
WHAT Harriet Parsons: Homeland #1, Kristin McIver: Divine Intervention
WHERE Blindside, Level 7, Room 14, Nicholas Building, 37 Swanston Street, city, 9650 0093, blindside.org.au
Each of these fascinating shows at Blindside takes a very different approach to notions of place and landscape. In the front space, Harriet Parsons’ stunning Homeland #1 proposes place as an amalgam of personal and cultural memory. Across 12 works, or “maps”, Parsons uses a hybrid Polynesian/British mapping technique – practiced by Cook and others on the Endeavour following their voyage through the South Pacific – to plot her dreams in intricate arrangements of dried plant stalks, shells and string. But Parsons’ works transcend that of the personal document. Indeed, by plotting her own inner moments via a trans-cultural, pre-colonial mapping system, she bypasses colonialism’s broad white brush, instead casting the Australian landscape as a melange of innumerable individual identities and experiences. In this sense, Homeland #1 essentially attempts to eschew the belief systems informing the Western landscape tradition and its imposition of a European vision on Australia. In the back space, meanwhile, Kristin McIver’s striking installation Divine Intervention seems to place the natural environment at the behest of the bright lights of the consumerist cycle. A dense scattering of palms and other pot plants crowd the centre of the space, a steel frame rising abjectly from their midst. Mounted to the frame is a circular neon sign, the words “life unlimited” throwing a cold, white light throughout the room. The statement is cynical in its context. The materials and artificial light are an alien, somehow violent incursion into the surrounds of the plants. The offer of endless life is nothing more than a seductive marketing slogan in a consumerist world that so shamelessly pillages the natural world. Wed to Sat noon–6pm, until September 11.
WHAT Kate Rohde & Romance Was Born: Renaissance Dinosaur
WHERE Karen Woodbury Gallery, 4 Albert Street, Richmond, 9421 2500, kwgallery.com
There’s nothing too deep or philosophical about Renaissance Dinosaur the gleeful, garish new collaborative exhibition from Melbourne artist Kate Rohde and Sydney fashion duo Luke Sales and Anna Plunkett, known to most as Romance Was Born. But that’s its precise charm. The second chapter in a collaboration that began with the launch of Romance Was Born’s spring/summer range at Australian Fashion Week, the show comprises a series of Rohde’s fluorescent fake fur, paper mache and expanding foam dinosaurs, resin headpieces and breastplates and a collection of astonishing key garments (or “showpieces”) from the Renaissance Dinosaur collection. It’s stunning. Rohde’s adorable T rex and Triceratops are definite highlights, while Romance Was Born’s Kate Rohde tribute body suit and Renaissance garden wallpaper (available by the square metre) are spectacular examples of their incredibly ornate, psychedelic craft aesthetic. Indeed, Renaissance Dinosaur doesn’t offer some kind of conceptual revelation. Rather, it evidences the outlandishly playful, aesthetically thrilling results of an unlikely meeting of the minds. Wed to Sat 11am–5pm, until September 18.
WHAT Caroline Rothwell: Transmutationism
WHERE Tolarno Galleries, Level 4, 104 Exhibition Street, city, 9654 6000, tolarnogalleries.com
There is an elusiveness to Caroline Rothwell’s traversal of the interface between the industrialised and natural world. Her discomforting sculptures of humans, animals and plants are riddled with perceptive and material contradictions. Seemingly defined objects are loosened and untethered, like evolutionary phases gone wrong. The taught, shimmering, balloon-like skin of her Tygers series is in fact the painted outer layer of a solid bronze cast; mutant plant formations are rendered in a slick, oily blackness; glittering, nickel-plated human forms sport misshaped rabbits’ heads. It is here, in this unsightly nowhere place, that Transmutatonism appears to find its crux. Rothwell’s augmentations of humanity and mutations of nature are an allegory for our ultimately fraught attempts coexist. Tues to Fri 10am–5pm, Sat 1pm–5pm, until September 11.
