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

WHAT Sangeeta Sandrasegar: Its feet were tied, with a silken thread of my own hands weaving
WHERE Murray White Room, Sargood Lane (off Exhibition Street, between Flinders Street and Flinders Lane), city, 9663 3204, murraywhiteroom.com

The initial appearance of Sangeeta Sandrasegar’s wondrously light, weightless nylon organza works (pictured, cropped, above) belies their entrenchment in place. Though suspended, flag-like, in the towering Murray White Room space, their resonance is in their connection to the very soil beneath our feet. And it is feet, ornately stitched with cotton thread and beading, that Sandrasegar – who recently returned to Melbourne after a half-decade stint abroad – uses as one of her central motifs. Each organza panel shimmers with a different, washed-out hue, the ghostly silhouette of what we can only assume are the artist’s legs occupying the focal point of the otherwise sheer textile. From her feet grow blooms of native flowers and foliage, climbing and entwining her ankles and shins, binding her to ground beneath. Rendered in thread and glass beading, the flora is the only sure fastening in an otherwise untethered, shadowlike image. In other works, Australian trees (a Ghost Gum, Coolabah and Wait-a-While cane vine) give some sense of solidity to the translucence, but still, their image seems somehow ephemeral. Sandrasegar’s work seems to gesture toward one of modern life’s confounding dualities. In an age of global mobility and communication, our connection to locale is still profound. Even in a different hemisphere, our homeland trails us like a shadow. Tues to Fri 11am–6pm, Sat noon–4pm, until April 17.

WHAT Madeline Kidd: Cruise Collection
WHERE The Narrows, Level 2, 141 Flinders Lane, city, 9654 1534, thenarrows.org

Madeline Kidd’s uber-sensory world of luxurious backdrops, 80s glamour signifiers and synthetic opulence is a treat to the eye and the taste bud. No expense is spared in these vibrant oil paintings. Indeed, the material is king here – the stiletto, the pearls, the cocktails – what can be bought, possessed, eaten, worn and discarded for another brighter, shinier, sweeter round. A string of pearls splays across a bunch of grapes in one painting; white-gloved hands tweak individual pearls and grapes at whim. Elsewhere, a swimming pool shimmers against the sun, a pair of champagne glasses and a bottle of bubbly perched at the ready. What is so charming about Kidd’s work is that if, indeed, there is a moral dimension, it is covert. Cruise Collection seems to celebrate as much as poke fun at the aesthetics of pleasure for pleasure’s sake. It is obligation-free titillation. Pleasure unlimited. Wed to Fri noon–6pm, Sat noon–5pm, until April 9.

WHAT NEW 010
WHERE Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, 111 Sturt Street, Southbank, 9697 9999, accaonline.org.au

The highlights of the latest instalment of ACCA’s annual NEW exhibition series, which produced in sees the gallery recast into several discreet sub-spaces (courtesy of architecture and design studio NEXUS), emphasise gravity as a key means to their outcome. Set in a claustrophobic, crimson, linoleum-floored room, Lou Hubbard’s Dead Still sees a life-size silicon and rubber-styrene horse lying on its side mid-gallop, squished near-flat beneath three huge, 12mm-thick glass discs. Alicia Frankovich’s Medea, meanwhile, sees her transmute a living fruit and vegetable garden into a spectacular, inverted monument, its plants and bushes growing towards the ground, suspended by a rig mounted to the ceiling. In the next space – a room levitating nearly a metre from the floor – Susan Jacobs’ three tiny magnetic installations make minute metal objects literally float in thin air. Tues to Fri 10am–5pm, Sat to Sun 11am–6pm, until May 23.

WHAT Carolyn Eskdale: untitled after room
WHERE Sarah Scout, Level 1, 1A Crossley Street, city, 9654 4429, sarahscoutpresents.com

There’s a fascinating spatial and temporal resonance to Carolyn Eskdale’s hand-drawn photographic prints. In untitled after room she re-imagines the Sarah Scout space, though in reverse. Featuring cropped images of the gallery space prior to renovation and painting, her photographs effectively un-layer their very setting. The square, white room that is Sarah Scout becomes just a veneer atop walls with a life and a history. What makes these matte photographic prints especially interesting, though, is Eskdale’s hand-drawn extensions, which hover web-like among the scarred and scuffed, pre-white walls captured in the photographs. Eskdale’s works loosen and defy the permanence their subject and their surroundings. They encourage to conjure what has been and what might be. Thurs to Fri 11am–6pm, Sat noon–5pm, until April 3.

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