AROUND THE GALLERIES Dan Rule
Published: The Age, A2, April 24, 2010.
WHAT John Young: Safety Zone
WHERE Anna Schwartz Gallery, 185 Flinders Lane, city, 9654 6131, annaschwartzgallery.com
This poignant new collection of paintings, chalk drawings and reproduced photographs by Hong Kong-born Australian artist John Young inhabits a space suspended between personal ode, poetic allegory and straight, historical record. Drawing on interviews, photographs and historical evidence surrounding the Japanese invasion of the Chinese city of Nanjing in 1937 – in which more than 250,000 citizens were killed – Young draws attention of to a group of 21 foreigners, led by German businessman John Rabe and American missionary Minnie Vautrin, who established a ‘safety zone’ to protect upward of half a million Chinese from their invaders. The results are intermittently sublime, affecting and almost brutally shocking. The work is split into three distinct zones within the gallery space. Three large-scale mixed-media paintings occupy the left wall, depicting soft spring blossoms against a backdrop of blown-up photographs taken at the Nanjing market in the months before the invasion. The vistas are idyllic. The archival photographic element creates a sense of distance – a kind of historical reverie – before the beautifully rendered blossoms seduce us into the scene and the moment, drawing us close enough to touch. It makes the turmoil images on opposite wall – a panelled installation of chalk drawings, observations and statistics, horrific archival photographs and messages Vautrin and Rabe – all the more heart wrenching. A pair of oil-on-linen paintings of crippled trees bookend the gallery and effectively act as transition point between the two chapters of the Nanjing narrative. Their stripped, butchered trunks and branches evoke the beauty of what once was the reality of Nanjing’s hostile, irrevocable recasting. Tues to Fri noon–6pm, Sat 1pm–5pm, until May 22.
WHAT Deidre But-Husaim: Swan Hunters
WHERE Helen Gory Galerie, 25 St Edmonds Road, Prahran, 9525 2808, helengory.com
Deidre But-Husaim’s soft-lens, photo-realist oils capture the precocious perfection of youth. But there’s a complication to the large-scale, head-and-shoulder portraits of young, beauteous male and female models that comprise Swan Hunters. Indeed, But-Husaim augments her youthful beauties with baroque facial tattoos – flourishing arrangements apparently inspired by a recent trip to St Petersburg. It could be read in a couple of ways. By merging historical decoration with the flawlessness of youth, these paintings seem to celebrate such beauty as art itself. On the other hand, there seems to be a suggestion of generational, cultural fissure to these works. But-Husaim’s blithe young models have allowed themselves to be irreversibly scarred by the hand of another. Wed to Sat 11am–5pm, until May 8.
WHAT Izabela Pluta: Sailing for the Abyss
WHERE Nellie Castan Gallery, Level 1, 12 River Street, South Yarra, 9804 7366, nelliecastangallery.com
Polish-Australian artist Izabela Pluta’s photographic works summon a kind of nowhere place, a point of intermittence between solid, defined locales. Running alongside Prudence Flint’s wonderful paintings at Nellie Castan, Pluta’s new show Sailing for the Abyss features a series of arcane landscapes, interrupted street scenes, screen-printed postcards and an oddly metrical video work. The outcome, it seems, is a rumination on flux. In the large-scale photographic series, landscapes lead only to an unremitting distance, while building facades and streetscapes are muted by timber and black plastic. The video, meanwhile, depicts water rising and falling in Parisian canal lock; a passage for boats to travel between canals of varying levels. In the show’s accompanying essay, Dr Ashley Whamond suggests that Pluta’s work explores a kind of permanent marginality of the contemporary migrant experience. It’s a notion that echoes throughout these works. Pluta intimates a seduction and longing for a destination and grounding that is just out of reach. Tues to Sat noon–5pm, until May 8.
WHAT Territorial Pissings
WHERE Utopian Slumps, 33 Guildford Lane, city, 0403 009 291, utopianslumps.com
Toby Pola’s laminated balsa wood works are a highlight of Territorial Pissings, the sprawling group show to relaunch Utopian Slumps in its new Guildford Lane location. His figurine-sized sculptures of various maimed, injured and freakish people – let alone his wonderful Cigarettes and Undies (no need to explain) – are like a little shop of horrors. There are a couple standouts. Nathan Gray’s lurid paint and pencil-on-ply works continue his fascinating exploration of process and abstraction, while Jake Walker’s video and oil paint work draws various connections between the virtual and tactile. That said, much of the work feels a little unfocussed here and for the most part, connections the show’s proposed objectives of addressing “ironic incarnations of ownership and assertions of ‘property’ in contemporary art” seem pretty tenuous. That said, there’s still plenty to like about this show. Indeed, Territorial Pissings makes for a gritty, fun and happily flawed way to ring in Utopian Slumps’ return to the fold. Wed to Sat noon–6pm, until May 8.
