AROUND THE GALLERIES Dan Rule
Published: The Age, A2, February 27, 2010.

WHAT Ron Mueck
WHERE National Gallery of Victoria, 180 St Kilda Road, city, 8620 2222, ngv.vic.gov.au

Wandering among Ron Mueck’s remarkable silicon and fibreglass sculptures is transportive in the extreme. Either gigantic or elfin in dimension, the Melbourne-born artist’s incredibly realistic renderings of the human form give that impression that it is we who have been rescaled. As if on a parallel plane, we can observe seemingly without rebuke. We can follow the contours of pallid, naked skin; study the blemishes of a newborn five times our size; trace thickets of unkempt body hair. Though voyeurism is never without consequence. Isolated and removed from context, Mueck’s works are exemplars of human fragility, anxiety, awkwardness and condition. We don’t merely observe them, but feel them. Surprisingly, it’s the diminutive works that seem the most affecting. There’s something terribly moving about Old Woman in Bed – a gaunt, sleeping figure beneath a crumpled white blanket – her diminutive scale only amplifies our sense of isolation, of vulnerability. Ultimately, at the end of it all, we alone. Nonethless, Mueck’s show is anything but a dirge. Ahead of all else, his works urge us to remember each other – to appreciate one another – for other’s lives are so easily forgotten or misplaced. Adult $15 / Concession $12 / Children $7.50. 10am–5pm (closed Tuesday), until April 18.

WHAT Lida Abdul: Ruins: Stories of Awakening
WHERE Anna Schwartz Gallery, 185 Flinders Lane, city, 9654 6131, annaschwartzgallery.com

There is both a confronting political dimension and a rich poeticism to Lida Abdul’s new collection of works. Across three videos and a series of photographic stills that comprise Ruins: Stories of Awakening, the Kabul artist examines war not just as the destruction of lives and buildings and political regimes, but as personal and cultural memory. In the striking Once upon Awakening (pictured, above), young men in black robes haul at white ropes tied to huge, bombed out ruins (apparently the former Kabul Presidential Palace). Despite their frenzied efforts, the towering shell remains. Their dogged attempts to erase – to forget, to start afresh – are mutely and stubbornly denied. Dome, which plays out in the rear of the space, gives an entirely different vantage. Abdul’s camera dizzily follows a boy, spinning and twirling and dancing amid ruins. His eyes are closed, his face to the sky, the deafening resonance of overhead planes echoing about the space. His dance is both simple and incredibly complex. It is naivety and innocence and childish reverie in the face of unthinkable tragedy and danger. It is also a pure, indelibly human act of defiance. Tues to Fri noon–6pm, Sat 1pm–5pm, until April 10.

WHAT Tai Snaith: The Wild Chorus
WHERE Helen Gory Galerie, 25 St Edmonds Road, Prahran, 9525 2808, helengory.com

Tai Snaith has a thing for bits and bobs. Her unassuming watercolour, pencil and gouache paintings are paragons of bric-a-brac recontextualised. Her world is one where a Kermit the Frog soft toy reclines in a silver stiletto heal, where a horse made from carrots and wooden skewers perches atop a pile of aging hardbacks, where a pair of reindeer ornaments stare blankly into space, as if wondering: ‘What next?’. Indeed, there is a lot more to Snaith’s The Wild Chorus than op-shop kitsch. Running alongside Amanda Read-Forsythe’s Missed Sighting, her work not only documents odd, lost and found objects but employs them as a trigger point for a plethora potential narratives. We not only marvel smilingly at the unsmiling, suffocatingly ordinary portrait on the cover of Ars Camera magazine, we wonder where it was found, who had owned it before and just how the hell the magazine’s art directors kept their jobs. An object can tell a thousand stories and Snaith’s Wild Chorus offers an entry point. Wed to Sat 11am–5pm, until March 6.

WHAT Jonathan Chong: Modern Extinctions
WHERE Kick Gallery, 239 High Street, Northcote, 0412 243 818, kickgallery.com

Something of a tech fetishist, graphic designer and multimedia artist Jonathan Chong’s wonderfully executed illustrations of obsolete gaming consoles, first generation camcorders, Polaroid cameras and Commodore 64’s are as reverential as they are reflective. Combining intricate line drawing and vivid, digital colouration to capture the electronics of his pre-teens, Chong’s work pays homage to both the aesthetics and the ambition behind these once ‘modern’ devices. In an age where technology and functionality assumes an increasingly virtual form, Modern Extinctions takes giddy delight in the cult of the object. Wed to Fri 11am–7pm, Sat noon–5pm, until March 6.

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