AROUND THE GALLERIES Dan Rule
Published: The Age, A2, September 11, 2010.
WHAT Marco Fusinato: Noise & Capitalism
WHERE Anna Schwartz Gallery, 185 Flinders Lane, city, 9654 6131, annaschwartzgallery.com
Noise & Capitalism marks something of a continuation for Melbourne’s Marco Fusinato. Where the multi-disciplinary artist’s brilliant Double Infinitives, which showed at Anna Schwartz last year, saw him present massively up-scaled, newsprint photographs of activist riots, this new exhibition inverts the vantage. Gleaning their source material from underground, photocopied insurrectional pamphlets and zines, the five, large-scale works that comprise Noise & Capitalism go some way to offer a view from the inside of grassroots political actions. Presented in a uniform, window-like, quadripartite configuration, each work features the front cover, inside cover and various, in some instances, layered pages of images and text. While works lifted from shorter pamphlets like Why she doesn’t give a f—- about your insurrection are clearly readable, denser pamphlets such as Thesis on the Imaginary result in a squall of illegible, layered text, or as the artist might put it, “noise”. On the one level, what Fusinato seems to be getting at here is the nature of exchange; just how information shifts relative to the context of its presentation. What does it mean to stand in a commercial gallery with others and read The Capitalist System? What are the implications of turning Escapism has its price, the artist has his income into a huge, saleable art object, framed behind glass? That said, it is the crowded, layered works – which pile mountains of text atop heroic imagery of riots and actions – that pack an imposing graphic punch. They seem to espouse the great challenge of translating one’s message to the morass that is the mainstream. No matter its social and political merits or significance, among a snoozing populace, the message will seem little more than unruly noise. Tues to Fri noon–6pm, Sat 1pm–5pm, until October 2.
WHAT Kit Wise: Explosion
WHERE Sarah Scout, Level 1, 1A Crossley Street, city, 9654 4429, sarahscoutpresents.com
This stunning suite of video works and stills by Melbourne-based UK artist and academic Kit Wise offers a disturbingly beautiful meditation on man-made violence and its portrayal in popular culture. Utilising open-source footage and imagery of the infamous Nevada desert atomic test known as “Operation Cue” (1955) and later explosive tests of “Project Dugout” (1960), Wise accentuates the transformation of horrifying blasts into detached, purely aesthetic cultural moments. In the larger of the three video works, Explosion (Geranium), a layered time-lapse image of a geranium bursting to life echoes a spectacular bloom of detonated desert earth, while the smaller Explosion (Operation Cue, 1955) and Explosion (Project Dugout, 1960) works loop, manipulate and rewind brutal blast footage to forge a kind weightless visual poetry. The stills, meanwhile, offer a digitised filter to the events at hand. Indeed, with proximity the blast images reveal evidence their mediation, becoming blurred and abstracted amid a cloud of digital pixelation. It seems an allegory for our wider engagement with nature via pop-cultural representation. An excess of stylised, mediated imagery creates a spectacular, nonetheless hollow event of its own. It does little, however, to advance our understanding of its point of reference. Thurs to Fri 11am–6pm, Sat noon–5pm, until September 25.
WHAT Eamo Donnelly: Health Food of a Nation!
WHERE Lamington Drive, The Compound Interest Centre for the Applied Arts, 15–25 Keele Street, Collingwood, 8060 9745, lamingtondrive.com
Lamington Drive gallery relaunches in fittingly rambunctious style with cult illustrator Eamo Donelly’s lurid ode to Big M’s, bikini’d beach bums, milk bars and various other archetypes of 70s and 80s Australiana. Indeed, the defiantly titled Health Food of a Nation! is a guilt and irony-free celebration of the era that spawned Sir Les and Hoges (how fitting that the latter slipped the ATO’s travel ban the week of the show’s launch). Donnelly’s illustrations – pegged and pinned throughout that cardboard-walled gallery space – are maximal in the extreme. Garish fluorescents render gnarled, ciggie and beer-swilling characters; raw prawns intermingle with Mr Whippy’s and Gouldburn’s famed Big Merino. As wonderful as Donnelly’s work is the a scattering of his own collection of 80s Australiana, including posters, post cards, calendars and various milk bar and promotional paraphernalia. It’s a hoot. While Health Food may represent an Australia that many would rather forget, Donnelly’s rose-coloured recollection proves little less than irresistible. Wed to Fri 11am–6pm, Sat noon–5pm, until October 2.
WHAT Jo–Anne Duggan: Wondrous Possessions
WHERE Colour Factory Gallery, 409–429 Gore Street, Fitzroy, 9419 8756, colourfactory.com.au
This sumptuous collection of large-scale photographs from photo-media artist Jo-Anne Duggan injects a dose of everyday pragmatism into the realm of the extravagant historical monument. Each of her photographs of the interiors of historic palazzi built by the Gonzaga family in Mantua, Italy evidence not just the buildings’ elaborate architectural and artistic detailing, but elements of their practical modernisation. Duggan’s lens captures the power points, exit signs, wall heaters and non-descript office furniture amid the Renaissance murals and sculptures. She extends her gaze from a cropped mediation of the historic monument to include the realities and details of its preservation, administration and upkeep. Mon to Fri 10am–6pm, Sat 1pm–4pm, until October 1.
