AROUND THE GALLERIES Dan Rule
Published: The Age, A2, August 28, 2010.
WHAT Immanent Landscape
WHERE West Space, Level 1, 15–19 Anthony Street, city, 9328 8712, westspace.org.au
This stunning new show stretching across all three galleries at West Space, poses landscape not as something defined or immovable. Part of a two-year creative dialogue between a group of Australian and Japanese artists, Immanent Landscape frames place as at once fluid, porous and multidimensional. Nobuaki Onishi and Kiron Robinson, who share the front space, each seem to trawl the outer limits of the notion of place or the object. Robinson’s two, large-scale photographs exist on the peripheries, the points at which one place becomes another. The stronger of the pair sees three, rectangular metal frames foreground a setting of towering trees and mountains. Though their function is unclear, the frames seem relics; a sign of a failed or forgotten attempt to widen the frontier. Onishi’s resin casts, meanwhile, create intricate “doppelgangers” of everyday objects: a twig, a rusting, steel trestle, a light globe, a strip of barbed wire. So realistic is Onishi’s brushwork that we are left all but convinced, only for him to cut his rendering short. At the stem of the twig, or the lower legs of the trestle, the resin is left unpainted and transparent. The object phases from authentic to illusory. There are several other highlights. Hamish Carr (who is also showing at John Buckley Gallery this week) and Ai Sasaki’s wall pieces render landscape as the sum of its innumerable, tiny parts. In both works, an endless series of minute repetitions and gestures multiply to create an overall texture. In the rear gallery, Atsunobu Katagiri’s installation of ikebana, crafted via Australian plants, seems to offer a deft articulation of the show’s crux. By imbuing materials from the Australian landscape with Japanese cultural tradition, he shows the permeability of each. Wed to Fri noon–6pm, Sat noon–5pm, until September 4.
WHAT Tapeworm
WHERE Neon Parc, Level 1, 53 Bourke Street, city, 9663 0911, neonparc.com.au
There’s something playfully insidious about the works that inhabit Tapeworm, this new group show from Melbourne artist Rob McLeish, London’s Luke Rudolf and New York-based Brazilian artist Eli Sudbrack (aka assume vivid astro focus). Each of the three artists gnaws at the edges of their chosen form, genre or subject. Rudolf’s work is particularly engaging. His two paintings see thick, loose, seemingly abstract smears of oil plastered across geometric acrylic shards and flat, fluorescent backdrops. But not all is quite as it seems. The fact that Rudolf considers the works portraits offers an entirely different vantage. Vague figuration emerges; foundational shapes become heads and shoulders; free gestures become a mess of lurid facial features. McLeish’s installation of smeared, scrunched and otherwise defiled Julie Andrews posters, toilet plungers and a weapon-like, tar-covered bell clapper sculpture is melange of crazed humour and implied violence. Sudbrack’s series of blacked-out, manipulated and redrawn nudie posters and “assume vivid astro focus” anagrams, meanwhile, recast soft-porn archetypes to assume a half-hilarious, half-grotesque concoction of psychedelic aesthetics and cultural mutations. As with the rest of Tapeworm, Sudbrack’s works leech off resources, styles and references to created something toxically new. Wed to Sat noon–6pm, until September 4.
WHAT Lost in Painting
WHERE Dianne Tanzer Gallery, 108–110 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy, 9416 3956, diannetanzergallery.net.au
There are several interesting negotiations of materials and form amongst this diverse compile of contemporary Australian painting, curated by Nellie Castan Gallery’s Olivia Poloni and Dianne Tanzer Gallery’s Gillian Brown. Amid solid works by Chris Bond, Craig Easton and Megan Walch, Giles Alexander’s paintings obscure and cloud their highly intricate oil-on-canvas details with swathes of opaque resin, while Louise Paramor’s fluid, abstract oil-on-glass paintings ripple with almost cellular textures and details. Kate Shaw’s arcane acrylic landscapes, meanwhile, continue her engagement with the lurid, polluted world. Perhaps the cheekiest take on “painting” here is by photographer Drew Pettifer, whose trio of photographic portrait feature naked young men “slimed” by paint. Tues to Fri 10am–5pm, Sat noon–5pm, until September 21.
WHAT Zofia Nowicka: Framing the spectacle
WHERE John Buckley Gallery, 1 Albert Street, Richmond, 9428 8554, johnbuckleygallery.com
Young Melbourne artist Zofia Nowicka’s large-scale, gloss-coated digital photographic prints effectively reverse the gaze. Shot at a recent Leonard Cohen concert, Framing the spectacle sees Nowickia turn her lens not on the stage, but on various subsections of the audience. Her view is both macro and micro, collective and intimately personal. In several of the works, we witness segments of the crowd as a whole, transfixed in a state of near-meditation. Others capture various individual reactions: a young woman joyously applauding, as if a child; an older woman, seemingly in deep reflection; a handsome busboy dashing by; the grainy shadow of Cohen himself, a mere member of the throng. Indeed, Cohen’s image seems to elucidate just what Nowicka is getting at here. No matter the reason for the gathering, the real spectacle is the experience of hundreds, if not thousands of people in the one place at the one time. Wed to Sat 11am–5pm, until September 11.
